Okay, I lied.

Umm... so yeah. In that last post I said something about me not buying a new bike this year. Tell that to the guy who bought a 2007 Trek Portland this evening.

I had been looking pretty hard at the 7.7 FX, but the guys at Pittsburgh Pro Bikes showed me the Portland, and explained how awesome disc brakes would be for a commuter bike. I rode a couple different sizes around, and the 52cm was a good fit. I rode the 7.6 FX, too (they didn't have any 7.7s in stock), and I was happier with the ride on the Portland.

I really lucked out in that they had one 2007 still in stock and it was a 52cm. The burnt orange looks waaaaay better than the pearl ecru of the 2008. Since the 2007 was $175 less, I'm getting the drop bars swapped out for a straight bar and changing out the aluminum seatpost for carbon and it'll still cost me less than a 2008 would have cost.

With any luck they'll have it built before the weekend. Of course, the weather looks crappy for the weekend anyway, but things can change pretty quick around here.

Also: Go Pens! Up 3-0 on the Rangers. I don't think that was expected.

Taxes.

Mailed our PA and Federal tax returns last week. Did our local taxes this afternoon. We didn't owe Munhall anything, so that's good. Too bad we owed the Feds so much this year.

I had had dreams of using our Federal return to maybe upgrade my bike (i.e. get a new one), but then we ended up owing about twice what we got back last year, because we both screwed up when we filled out our W-4s after switching to new jobs. That's been rectified. We might not get much of a refund next year, but we shouldn't owe, either. I'm going to have to keep track of things as the year goes on to make sure we don't need to have more withheld, or set some extra cash aside somewhere or something like that.

We got kind of lucky this year, because we owed all that money, but Heather also got reimbursed for a class she took last fall, so that all went to help pay the taxes. We still had to shell out a lot when we weren't expecting to, but it didn't hurt as bad as it could have.

The end result is that no return = no new bike. And that's fine. My Sirrus has over 3,000 miles on it, and it's had relatively few issues to speak of. I just bought some new pedals on eBay for half of the MSRP on the Crank site.

I've been using the Candy C's for almost a year now, and I like them and all, but I had initially bought them with this crazy idea that sometimes I might want to ride without bike shoes, and as such the platforms would come in handy. I have found that I've never really wanted to ride without bike shoes, and even if I did, the Candys came with these cool little plastic platforms that you can clip onto the the pedals, for regular, non-cleat riding, so I'll always have those. I might see if I can get $20 or something for the old pedals on eBay. Hell. Even $10 would be fine.

First Post!

I was sort of getting sick of my LiveJournal. I never read any of my friends posts, and most of the people who ended up commenting on my stuff weren't LJ users anyway. And I didn't feel like paying to renew my membership benefits.

So. New place.

After a week, I think I am almost over my cold/flu/bronchitis/etc... I went to the doctor today. He gave me a prescription for Albuterol (a.k.a. Ventolin to help with my chest congestion. He also said the thumb thing is most likely tendonitis. He gave me a prescription for Motrin to help with that.

I also have to get my cholesterol checked again, because it was high when I had it checked last January. I'll be interested to see if it's gone down much since switching to the vegan diet. I would hope so, anyway. I mean, I've probably cut about 600 pounds of cheese out of my diet. That has to count for something.

Skipping hockey tonight so as to aid my continued recovery. That basically sucks because I missed last week, too. Now I only have four classes left. I need to sign up for a league soon. Or something.