Christmas Vacation

Icy outside this evening and it looks like we're going to get snow on top of that. But it was above 40 today and most of the snow is gone from the yard (the grass still looks great!) Missing out on a Waterloo dance this evening, but I'm just not up to challenging the icy roads ... a DVD, ice cream and some coffee really does feel good tonight.

Got lucky at the video store and picked up 5 movies in about 10 minutes of searching. One of them is Christmas Vacation with Chevy Chase. Takes me back .... Anyway, I'm watching it right now and seeing many new things in the movie that I hadn't noticed before. It's a hoot.

I have a few new songs to practice, including Garth Brooks' Belleau Wood. This song, a favorite of mine, is about a 1914 Christmastime truce along the Western Front in WWI. The truce really did happen and there was a recent docudrama about it on the history channel. The final few lines of the last verse always get to me and, if taken to heart, would certainly make for a better world. See what you think: "Heaven's not beyond the clouds, it's just beyond the fear. No, heaven's not beyond the clouds, it's for us to find it here." And it seems that would be so much better to find heaven here than to be spending so many lifetimes and resources hoping for that imaginary one "beyond the clouds".

Speaking of hope, I hope everyone (or at least most people) got all they wished for and deserved this Christmas. It was a nice, if quiet, one for me.

Get A Grip

The replacement units for the failed YakTrax "ice walkers" arrived today. Called "Get-A-Grip", they fit over the shoes and 6 small carbide-tungsten spikes provide traction on ice. The spikes are only about 1/8" long and they seem to work well even on hard surfaces (such as cleared sidewalks/streets). It remains to be seen how well they'll really hold up, but, for now, I recommend them over the YakTrax given that two YakTrax failed in only 30+ miles of walking (and no response at all yet from the company). By the way, I've now been able to find many negative YakTrax reviews with the same complaint as I have ... namely, that they are very unreliable as the gripper springs separate/break.

Today it's snowing again and the roads are very slick with an expectation that it will get worse if the wind picks up as forecast. This will be good for skiing, so no room for complaints.

Meanwhile, I'm testing out the complete hardware setup for Monday's Christmas karaoke show and, with some cappucino, Milk Duds and a couple of DVD's to watch, I have plenty to keep me occupied for this Saturday afternoon and evening. If the roads get reasonably cleared off I'll likely get out to sing tonight but probably no out of town driving as blowing snow is often worse than slippery roads.

New X-Country Season

Today was my first day this snow season to try out the Cross Country skis. The snow was great and the temperature was mild (mid 20's).

Also got some new karaoke software today (a version update download). The software I'm using is called Karma and the engineers working on it seem to go 24/7/365. It's great to have such good support and they even installed two of my recommendations from Tuesday of this week into today's release. Now that's efficiency. Anyway, I heartily recommend this software as it seems to be pretty efficiently coded (runs well on my 1.73 GHz Pentium M laptop) and it now supports MPEG, AVI and WMV video in addition to MP3-G and .ogg (for DJ work).

Monday will be a fun day as I'll be doing a Christmas karaoke show at The Villages rest home here in Marion, IA.

Looks like more snow headed in this weekend ... but the snowblower is working well and the skiing should just get better and better.

Thought about going up to Waterloo to dance but decided I really didn't want to take a 2 hour drive for that tonight. Maybe I'll just go out for a quick drink ... but I do need to practice some of the songs that will be on tap for Monday. This weekend will likely be spent getting more videos ready to play on Karma. Karaoke on a PC is really fun ... nice to not be dealing with CD's (and scratches, etc.) anymore.

But I am still ready for Spring ...

Sunday Highs and Lows

I'm pretty sure the high temp here on Sunday (the 14th) was above 50 degrees ... and Monday morning it was about -4. Quite a swing. But the good part is that I did get one more bicycle ride in on Sunday for a revised total of 3688 miles and 240 hours for 2008. Looks like the rest of the week is going to be around zero (or lower) at night and we'll have snow off and on almost every day. Well, walking still works, eh?

Today looks like a time to "stay indoors" this afternoon and evening. But I have Hot Tamales and M&M's along with a couple of DVD's to watch, so, along with some song practice and watching "House" this evening, it will be a great day.

Mac Is Back

Got my Mac back from its warranty repair yesterday and it seems to be working great. Turns out that the problem was not the hard drive but the power supply. So they replaced the power supply and all is well ... plus I didn't have to go through any data restore process(es). Glad that's over with, for now anyway. Hopefully that was the one issue with the computer and it will now work fine for many years.

Yesterday was a tough walking day as we had a coating of ice over everything around here. The YakTraks were indispensable as they made it into a fairly routine stroll. Funny thing is, I actually bought them at least 18 months ago and then never used them last winter (all workouts were indoors or else outside on the cross country skis). This year there isn't enough snow around here (yet) to ski but I just don't feel like working out inside. I have this major urge to be outdoors and so I guess all things do finally work out.

Got some new "old" songs for the PC karaoke system and they've been pretty well received at the retirement home ... will give them another spin this Friday as I return to The Villages in Marion. Those folks really like the old Sinatra, Johnny Mathis, Perry Como and big band stuff. I don't want to get stuck in a steady diet of that myself so I sprinkle in a few other songs ... that way everyone gets to experience something different and we all get to smile at the end of the day.

Time to get going on today's walk.

Covers Installed

Today I finally covered the motorcycle and put it on its stand (weight off the wheels) and then brought the bicycle indoors (I like being nice to my bicycle and warmth is what we all crave, n'est pas?). So the riding year is truly over. I must admit I'm still seeing a few hardy souls on bicycles ... even yesterday there was a guy riding up 1st Avenue in Cedar Rapids on a bicycle. I looked at his tires and they didn't appear to have any chains on them, although they were fairly wide. All I can say is that it's nice to know there are some folks out there crazier than I, hehe.

Had fun singing at The Villages rest home today. Seems that they must have enjoyed it as I've been invited back for next Friday afternoon as well as for a Karaoke Christmas program on the 22nd. Well, I'm not sure about the karaoke stuff as I don't have a very large selection of songs (especially Christmas songs) but I've already talked to a couple of my friends, who do have a large collection, to see if I can use some of their Christmas tunes and if they'd be interested in going along to sing. If they can't make it, I'd still like to use the songs, but we'll see what happens. I also would bring along a CD drive that can be used to play CD+G karaoke disks as the activity director said they have some there that they might want to use. Anyway, it should be fun.

Not sure if I'm going out tonight ... I have a few DVD's I can watch and that might be just the thing for a cold Friday evening.

Walking & Ice

It's just so much nicer to get outdoors in the winter that I think I'll focus on cross country skiing and walking rather than indoor exercise (Nordic Track or stationary bicycle). All well and good but it's sometimes difficult to walk with the snow and ice that remain on sidewalks around here. A few years ago I happened on a device consisting of a set of shoe add-ons called "Yaktrax". They are stretchable and the bottom has a series of criss-crossing and tightly woven metal springs. When they are on your feet, they provide extremely reliable footing in slippery conditions, even ice. However, that first set did not stay on my shoes extremely well and it didn't take more than a season of walking for some of the rubber stretch parts to break apart. But, liking the sure footing when they worked, I decided to try again and now I have a pair of Yaktrax Pro attachments. Their initial test period started today and they fit very well. They also have an additional velcro strap across the top that allows them to be better positioned and maintained in that position on the shoes. So they worked great ... and we'll see how long they last.

So I've decided that the motorcycle's time is over for the year and, most probably, the bicycle's too. But, while I'm ready for spring already, winter is interesting in its own way. And it will be fun to ski, not to mention singing in many new places as I tour the rest homes in Cedar Rapids.

It feels like just a regular year coming up in 2009 ... we'll see, eh?

Riding In December in Iowa

Today could very well have been my last bicycle ride for the year. There are 3671 miles on the odometer and it looks like cold, snowy weather for the foreseeable future ... sigh. Of course, hope springs eternal and, after all, the year isn't over ... yet.

Latest news is that the hard drive on the Mac does not restart reliably upon returning from "sleep" mode. I'm pretty convinced it's the drive itself as it has been gradually (over the past month or so) taking longer and longer to "kick in" and start spinning up after I wake the computer. That time has gone from practically zero to 5 to 20+ seconds and in the past few days it has failed to start at all. So now my only issue is to decide whether to just buy a new 500GB Seagate drive for about $69 or spend time on the phone with Apple support and get to the same point, with significantly more aggravation, in about 2 weeks. Of course, it is possible that something else (memory, some other hardware component, maybe even software) is the problem. And then I would kick myself for wasting time on the Hard Drive replacement. But I don't think it voids the warranty ... I'll have to check it out.

Hope everyone got a chance to see Jupiter, Venus and the crescent Moon (the 3 brightest objects in the earth's night sky) in conjunction last night just after sunset.