Wednesday, September 18, 2002

Woo Hoo. I am down to 174 from 178. Although I'm a bit dubious about having lost 4 pounds in 3 days -- wonder how much of that is just the ubiquitous water weight.

I had a nice weekend. My hike to Henry Cowell went really well. Four women showed up for it and we were all nicely matched in terms of pace and interests. The conversation flowed and we all enjoyed going up and down the ridge and hiking by and through the San Lorenzo river. We had a great lunch stop on Pipeline road with a marvelous view of the river and Santa Cruz in the distance.

Sunday I finally got to sleep in late in my own bed! It had seemed ages since I had done that. It was truly marvelous! Then I happily puttered around at home till it was time to go to the GLS hike leaders barbecue at John's house. The barbecue was pretty mellow. John and Tina S. greeted me with inquiries about whether I knew much about barbecuing. Neither of them had much knowledge. I played expert which I'm not really and instructed John in how many coals to put in the barbecue grill and how much lighter fluid to squirt on (I prefer to use the no lighter fluid method of starting the coals but John didn't have the contraption you need to do that). We got the coals lit OK and barbecued our food. I splurged and had a nice steak but passed on the chips and dips. We talked about past, present, and future trips mostly. We talked a bit about finding folks to serve on the board next year. I continue to resist volunteering to do it myself. Several of us took off at 5ish.

I happily managed to get lots of home stuff done over the weekend and the past two days also. I planted the plants Linda gave me in my garden. I removed the rat skeleton from the dirt exposed when I tore down the shed. I emptied the garden trash into the condo dumpster. I threw the plywood pieces I had saved from the shed floor into the dumpster since Jen said they were not good to burn. I bought two new inner tubes and tires for my bike and got them on the tire rims and then on the bike so I have a working bike again. I finally got the last of the camping gear put away. I moved my old Mac computer from my bedroom to the guest room and shifted the shelf in the guest room to my bedroom as my book collection is growing and I needed more shelf space in there. I stuffed the four inch foam pad that I use to car camp back under the bed in the guest room. Phew.