Pseudo-Spring Is In The Air!

We've entered our annual False Spring here, and it's gorgeous. Highs in the mid-60s to almost 70, lots of stuff in bloom. We usually get a week or two of this, and then back to winter until sometime in March/April. But it's warm enough to enjoy biking outside now, instead of girding up for it!

Speaking of biking, I've mostly been without a cyclometer since Christmas. First the batteries die, and I replace them and there's a mini-revival. Last year, all was good. But this year, my CatEye model finally lost its brains (like its predecessor). At that point, it's hosed—you have a stopwatch and nothing else. I've tried to get a replacement, but everything now uses "Automatic Timer," which means that your ride is never really over—even when you're warming down or walking your bike. You can't turn the data-gathering off. I consider that a "non-feature," and it pisses me off to be 4+ weeks into this without having a replacement. I bought one, which turned out to be an Automatic Timer model (manual stop/start is on the "higher-end" version which Performance Bicycle does not sell). My husband tried to buy a ridiculously expensive and overengineered one that supposedly had a "sleep" function, but as far as I could tell that was a "lap-timer" and trying to navigate the controls while riding was horrific—it always assumed I wanted to gather information for Bike 2 (mid-ride? Seriously?) instead of changing to a different display.

Fine. I bought a low-priced GPS watch and bike mount from amazon.com. Now I'm eagerly awaiting its arrival...

Haven't been watching too much of the Olympics, other than figure-skating. Too many "Dude" sports for me—snowboarding versions of things that are more interesting to watch skiers do.

I HAVE been reading finished Everlost by Neal Shustermann, as recommended by wendy. It's fascinating, and really different from the two comedy books of his that I devoured and reviewed for Amazon.com ("The Schwa Was Here" and "Antsy Does Time").

And this weekend, we watched The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada, which we both enjoyed. The non-linear storytelling adds an element of mystery to it (there is still some mystery remaining at the end), and the theme of friendship and loyalty is very appealing (plus, it has Tommy Lee Jones, one of our weaknesses).

LJ, WHY are you randomly emailing me notifications of payment for v-gifts I bought at Christmas? Purge the queue already and move on!

ETA: Now 2/3rds through Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book. Really interesting!