A Work in Progress

I love facebook, but it has its drawbacks, as we all know. Poised to turn 30, it is my generation whom has taken over this free version of classmates.com and made it what it is today: a place where we can all annoy each other based on accomplishments, vacations, jobs, spouses, and babies. I’ve seen pictures of babies I will never meet, weddings I didn’t attend, and vacations I didn’t go on. It’s really rather insane. While I love hearing about everyone’s successes and accomplishments, seeing your vacation pictures and keeping up with kids I rarely see, sometimes it’s all too much. Now I know that I’m guilty of too many pictures, too many meaningless updates, and too many ‘wish you were here’ posts, but...I don’t know, I’m empowered to complain. Here’s a list of things I’d consider banning if I were in charge of anything. 1. Baby development pictures. I know you’re excited about your baby and you should be! I just don’t want to see every moment of its gestation. Especial...

I recently acquired what I call my ‘pirate tooth,’ a crown of gold atop a, now humiliated molar. It was very expensive, so I like to show it off. It can’t be seen unless I pull my cheek back, so showing it off is difficult and gross. But all will appreciate my hard earned tooth! I have one, unrelated half crooked tooth in my mouth and when I first met my new dentist, she looked at me carefully from each side and then determined that the side of my smile without the offending tooth was my “better side.” Well, thank you, that is the angle used in all of my photo shoots. Then she suggested that I get invisalign for my one semi-crooked tooth which I entertained for a second before she said it was $4000. Then I laughed for five minutes, but what if I had two “better sides”? Anyway, back to the pirate tooth. I found the whole thing traumatic as I hate all things teeth and dentistry. Like many people, I have an irrational anxiety at the dentist. I guess I should stop hiding my anxi...

In cycling, if one rides 100 miles in a day, they call it a century. It sounds cool. When I did 50 miles for a charity ride last week, they called it 50 miles. I think it would be much better if cycling adopted cool names for smaller accomplishments with your velocipede. Such as 50 miles is a 5 decade. It can be applied to any number of miles under 100. "Yeah, I did a 7 decade yesterday, it was awesome." or, "I did a 2 decade! And I lived!" or, "I did a decade on my bike yesterday," he proudly sniffed. "Wasn't so bad." Anyway, I did 50 miles and it really wasn't so bad. Probably because I was slightly prepared, had good company, and the terrain was more or less flat, but I did survive. I'm not sure how I got roped into it, but, it was one of those situations where I knew I wouldn't regret saying 'yes.'  Only three days before, I bought my first proper road bike.  It's a 1983 trek, sold to me as 'vint...