A Less Busy Week
Apr. 7th, 2013 11:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aSince I'm taking a few weeks off from Designers & Dragons, I was thinking about taking a long, adventurous bike ride today of the sort I haven't been doing since last summer. Alas, the weather conspired against me. I woke today and it was threatening rain, gray, humid, and too windy. (My least favorite riding weather: cool + humid + windy and today was trending in that direction.) Adding that on to a busy-ish weekend, and I decided to push my adventurous bike ride to next week. I've got some maps printed out for riding along part of the Carcinas Straight.
I did still ride today. I went up to Albany Hill, and once I'd ridden to the bottom of the park (which was a lot less trouble than on previous trips), I decided to hike the whole park, something I hadn't done before and had wanted to. I just had to lock my bike among thorny plants to do so. (Sigh! I have the same issue at Temescal. Park folks: give bicyclists places to lock bikes!)
Albany Hill Park was generally attractive, though I'm sad that the eucalyptus trees have been allowed to grow wild and block most views from the park nowadays. (Planted by a dynamite factory that used to be there!) I was a somewhat surprised to find a big electric cross on the southeast side of the park, it being public land and all. I looked it up when I got home, and discovered (as I'd guessed) that an easement for it was part of the agreement when the land was made into park. (I also discovered that much of the south "park" is actually private land, though there's pretty much no division.) It was very pleasant up on the hill, and I even got a few minutes of sunlight while there. I sat up there and read (by the cross) for quite a while.
Then it was home again, home again. Total ride was only about 10 miles. I was surprised to also learn that Albany Hill is only about 299 feet at its summit. I guess that matches with the effort to ride/walk up it ... but it always seems as tall as the East Bay hills when you see it. (Perspective.)
The rest of the week was mostly low-key reading and writing. Though I'm not working on Designers & Dragons I have been catching up on other stuff — including board game reviews. I also ran Kingmaker on Saturday. We've thankfully gotten back to something like a regular schedule. (Next game in three weeks, tho, due to EndGame auction on the 20th.)
And I (finally) started out taxes Saturday night. Bleh. Got most of the way through, just excepting stock-related stuff (as our broker's site was amazingly partway down on Saturday evening, which seems like pretty horrible timing) and health-related itemizing. The health stuff is unfortunately still going to take some time, but it proves worth it more often than not. I'll get back to that tomorrow.
And sadly, we'll probably owe money, now that the $400 a year everyone was getting as tax rebates has ended.
I did still ride today. I went up to Albany Hill, and once I'd ridden to the bottom of the park (which was a lot less trouble than on previous trips), I decided to hike the whole park, something I hadn't done before and had wanted to. I just had to lock my bike among thorny plants to do so. (Sigh! I have the same issue at Temescal. Park folks: give bicyclists places to lock bikes!)
Albany Hill Park was generally attractive, though I'm sad that the eucalyptus trees have been allowed to grow wild and block most views from the park nowadays. (Planted by a dynamite factory that used to be there!) I was a somewhat surprised to find a big electric cross on the southeast side of the park, it being public land and all. I looked it up when I got home, and discovered (as I'd guessed) that an easement for it was part of the agreement when the land was made into park. (I also discovered that much of the south "park" is actually private land, though there's pretty much no division.) It was very pleasant up on the hill, and I even got a few minutes of sunlight while there. I sat up there and read (by the cross) for quite a while.
Then it was home again, home again. Total ride was only about 10 miles. I was surprised to also learn that Albany Hill is only about 299 feet at its summit. I guess that matches with the effort to ride/walk up it ... but it always seems as tall as the East Bay hills when you see it. (Perspective.)
The rest of the week was mostly low-key reading and writing. Though I'm not working on Designers & Dragons I have been catching up on other stuff — including board game reviews. I also ran Kingmaker on Saturday. We've thankfully gotten back to something like a regular schedule. (Next game in three weeks, tho, due to EndGame auction on the 20th.)
And I (finally) started out taxes Saturday night. Bleh. Got most of the way through, just excepting stock-related stuff (as our broker's site was amazingly partway down on Saturday evening, which seems like pretty horrible timing) and health-related itemizing. The health stuff is unfortunately still going to take some time, but it proves worth it more often than not. I'll get back to that tomorrow.
And sadly, we'll probably owe money, now that the $400 a year everyone was getting as tax rebates has ended.