Breathe, Breathe In The Air

Hey everybody, back from vacation. Sure is pretty in the mountains this time of year. I was going to do a write up on the vacation with pics & such, but the girlfriend beat me to it - head over to her site if you want to read it (Caution: do not proceed if you harbor any delusions about my secret identity). I still have to get my 35mm film developed, and there's a photography contest that's run by the local entertainment newspaper coming up that I like to enter every year - I took some shots of waterfalls with my fish-eye lens that I think might be very, very cool if they came out. I will post some here as soon as I get them developed.

I spent several hundred dollars more than I intended to on vacation and there was an unexpected $700 bill waiting in my mailbox when I returned home (attorney fees from a matter that I thought was long resolved) so that's just great - looks like I'm going to have to suck up as much overtime as possible at work for a couple of months.

Shortly before I left, my doctor diagnosed me with sleep apnea - which makes sense, considering I haven't gotten a good night's sleep in about seventeen years. The cure involves learning to sleep with a mask attached to my face that is connected to a CPAP machine. This is a lot harder than it sounds - so far, the routine has been 1.) Get ready for bed, 2.) put on mask, 3.) lie awake for three hours, 4.) yank off mask in frustration and fall asleep, and 5.) wake up feeling like crap. Luckily there is a pretty active online community of people dealing with this, and apparently it's a pretty rough thing to get used to, so I don't feel too bad. My biggest worry was that it would freak out my girlfriend, but she's been really supportive about the whole thing (I think she prefers the mask to my snoring).

I need to winterize the bike and put it on the battery tender, don't want to have to drop another $100 on a battery again next year. Lots of people getting in the last rides of the year around here lately, hopefully this month will stay mild enough that I can do the same...