Dog Days Are Over

This morning I had my first serious, instead-of-the-gym bike ride.  I was all, "I'm gonna go out and ride for an hour!" and then at one sweaty, exhausted point I looked at my phone and I had only been riding for 20 minutes.  I managed to eke out 45 minutes, barely, and was exhausted for the rest of the day. 

I may not be triathlon-ready. 

Plus, my bike needs accessories!  I attached a water bottle to the handlebars without a water bottle holder, so yay thriftiness!  But I also needed, in order of importance: a lock, a cushiony gel seat cover, and some kind of little bag to go on the handlebars or behind the seat. 

Feeling guilty that I had purchased the actual bike at Target instead of our local mom 'n pop bike store that sponsored the indoor triathlon, I popped over to see Mom 'n Pop for accessories.  First of all, thank God I didn't shop for a bike there.  They had some neat ones, but the $150 I paid for the bike at Target wouldn't even get me one wheel with Mom 'n Pop.  And then it's like I'm cornered by a salesperson right in the door, and I'm like, "Umm, I need a lock," and then it's not like I can be all, "Thanks for your help, I'm going to Target."  Well, I'm sure there are some gutsier people who can do that, but I'm not one of them.  So, I ended up with a $35 U-lock/chain combo, so I can use the U-lock for my bike and then attach Nathan's bike to mine with the chain.  Then I briefly inquired about bike bags, but they were so fancy and expensive I decided I'd just check out Target or Amazon later.  I did my duty and shopped local for the lock. 

Besides the bike, I'm also very excited about my recently-improved Technorati authority.  I'm now back to an authority of 385 (the scale is 1 to 1,000), up from last week's all-time low of 87.  My blog is now number 8,474 out of all the blogs on the Internet, or at least the blogs that Technorati knows about. 

However, only five people have entered my contest to win a free cookbook!  And while I'm sure those five people are pleased to have a 20% chance of winning, I want some more entries.  So go here and enter, people!  Makes a great wedding gift?  Hostess gift? 

Oh and also, influential and knowledgeable user of social media that I am, I just now found out about Google Page Ranks.  And I entered in my site, and my page rank, on a scale of 1 to 10, was ... zero.  Yay. 

Oh well, to the world you may just be one person, but to one person you may be the world.  And that one person is Leia.  That's why I put a picture of her in this post.  That and I was listening to Florence and the Machine's "Dog Days Are Over" when I started typing, and so I decided to make that the title of the post, and so the logical picture when the dog days are over is a cat.