Weekend Wrap
A mellow Friday night gave way to a pretty busy and productive Saturday. Started out with breakfast at Aldo's in the harbor which is a pretty well unbeatable spot for view, sun, ocean action and good food. Further enhanced by the addition of some friends and their Weimerauner who's my pal. It was a good way to start the weekend, I thought.

Got my cruiser into the shop and had them replace the bottom bracket with a narrower one that's supposed to fix the chain line issues. So far so good, I buzzed down the hill, passing one slow pedaling mountain biker along the way and pounded on the pedals as hard as I could to see if I could break it. If its going to break then I want to break it quickly so I can get the shop to get it fixed up (again).

Saturday night was a little dinner party thing at some pal's, good fun, good food, good people and we came up with a bachelor party plan that will work, can incorporate SO's if they want to and should be a total blast. If you guessed, Jailhouse Paintball then you are damned near pyschic. This place is about a half hour or so south of Santa Cruz. Not many of my pals have played before, I've only played it a couple of times and not in a few years. I figure spending the afternoon shooting at each other with paintballs and then going out drinking afterwards should be a damned fine way to commemorate the occasion. We'll need 20 people minimum to rent the whole place out but I don't think that'll be too much of a problem and we might just end up with a bunch more than 20 which'd be just fine.

Sunday late morning was an exercise in doing nothing and allowing the toxins to work themselves out slowly. It had been a late night but at least I didn't pass out on their couch like two of the girls did. Instead I wandered home in the wee hours of the morning, drunk and talking to myself, as I nearly always do. And I found out that its harder than I thought to break into my house, took me about a half hour or so before I was able to get in and sack out.

Sunday was nice, though hotter than fuck in the house. It got to the point where I'd had enough. Had gone to get my bike already and headed down to the beach where I assumed it would be truly dashboard melting excrutiatingly hot. And it had been but by the time I rolled down the heat of the day had started to give way to the cooling breezes we get in the afternoon sometimes. Played a game of volleyball with the guys, actually had good hands and we won by a decent margin. Then went down to the water and did some body surfing for a bit which was good fun because the waves were occasionally really pretty damned big. And I was finally able to hold myself in the wave itself and not get launched out and down in front of it to get washing machined into the beach. Did that make sense? Maybe I should try again for my Mini-soda readers who wouldn't know a wave from a handshake. Or maybe Ryan and Layne are ocean stars stranded in 10,000 lakes country, some sort of ironic purgatory?

Anyway, it was damned fun even though the water's down about 5 degrees from last week and was damned cold amid the damned fun. I've gotta start trying to remember to bring my boogie board down with me on Sundays because it would have been excellent fun slamming those waves. Though they would have been scary as hell in a surf kayak because they were breaking so sharply.

Got a haircut last night so I'm like a third blond now, kind of a cool look but it didn't go with a week's worth of whiskers. My electric's breaking so I'm shaving a lot less than I normally would. Looks like another thing that needs to be gotten. Oh well, if Costco had had the right one the last time we went in then I'd have been all set but they had some crappy Panasonic thing and not the Braun that I want.

On the work end of things, the second incentive and bonus program of the year has been initiated by my boss. Which means that I've got some specific marks to hit by the end of the year to get another bonus which'll be even better than last time. I'm quite stoked to start up the game again. The incentive program is a truly excellent motivator as I now look at work like an elaborate game. Push the right buttons and you get the hits! And the hits is what I'm all about now. It also says something about my value to the company because I was one of the very, very few in the company to get a bonus this last June due to the diminished sales. But we are definitely bouncing, we're hiring and growing (heck, we got a new printer on Friday and you really have no idea how important that is to a small place like ours!).

So, on that note, I'm off to start digging for my hits, making them happen all over the place and tabulating my wins for future proof of the ass kicker job I'm doing for the company. If we aren't doing well then it is most certainly not for a lack of exposure in the press.