i definitely need a patron.
Oh, like you wouldn't want this (or your appropriate gender preference equivalent) fetching your tools for you.

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• I don't want to know what this says about me. I've learned an interesting thing about myself in the past few weeks -- whenever I get really depressed, I mark time in terms of mileage instead of date. I was sitting at home one night last week and realized I had no idea whatsoever what day it was, nor the date. I was fairly sure it was still August, since I hadn't paid my rent check yet, and I'm fairly good about getting that in on time. I did, however, know without a shadow of a doubt that the SVS had 11,827 miles on it. I pondered the meaning of this for a while, and eventually just gave up and went to bed.

• Every tool is a weapon if you hold it right. (apologies to Ani DiFranco) The nicest thing about my new exhaust is that I get to really use it every time I'm at the intersection that I was hit at. Since it's an underpass, the ramp is surrounded by concrete slabs on three sides. I've discovered that if I coast to the bottom of the ramp with the clutch in, but holding the throttle open to about 4k rpms, the cars behind me are painfully aware that I'm still in front of them. While I'm waiting for cross-traffic at the stop sign, and cars are waiting behind me, I hold the throttle at about 5k rpms. It sounds approximately like a jet taking off. No one tailgates me there anymore.

• If you get hit, people will throw money at you. I'm almost done dealing with the mountain of paperwork from the accident. Last night, dingleberry's claim adjuster met with me to discuss the X-ray bills. He cut me a check for my health insurance's reimbursement (today's word of the day: subrogation!) and gave me some extra money for "pain and suffering". This morning I got to call my health insurance's Risk Management group. Eventually, I figured out how much money to send Blue Cross, and to what address. Now I'm just waiting for dingleberry's claims adjuster to reimburse my bike insurance company for my deductible, so they can reimburse me. Whee! When I grow up, I want to be an insurance company. It's such a racket. I pay them a premium to cover me, and then they get reimbursed by dingleberry's claims company. Motto: "Subrogation -- we'll double-dip as long as it's legal!"

• Take my money away! I've decided that since the Nighthawk is just sitting in my garage taking up room, it might as well be a project bike. Since the brakes on that bike are personally offensive, I'm going to rebuild them. I found a website that caters to people like me -- people with mid-80s Japanese bikes and an obsessive spending problem. I ordered a master cylinder rebuild kit and a front caliper rebuild kit -- we'll see how my first foray into rebuilding old bikes goes.

• Other Nighthawk news. I finally did a service on the poor bike last week -- it had been quite a while -- and the battery lasted for approximately 37 seconds after I started doing a compression test. So, last night I drove around with a dead battery strapped to the SVS, trying to find a Kragen which had a 12AA battery in stock. I finally found one in Mountain View, and brought it home. Naturally, I don't have a battery charger, so I had to borrow Peter's late last night. I don't want to overcharge it, so I'm going to wait until I'm in the garage tonight to charge the new battery. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the Nighthawk will be happier with the new battery, and that there aren't other charging system problems as well. I feel like the bike is laughing at me. "Keep me in the garage unridden for months, will you? I'll show you! BLAM! There goes the battery! BLECCH! There go the brakes!"

• It's a miracle I fit in the garage. It's a good thing I'm small. I've got three motorcycles in there now, along with my upright toolchest, Neighbor Rob's bicycle, a dozen or so planks of wood that I'm sure will come in handy Any Day Now, my bicycle, a broken lawn mower ("You can take it apart!" -- Peter), a draft table doubling as a workbench, and lots of other random stuff like a case of new motor oil, bottles of used motor oil, a box of shop rags, a trash can, etc. Did I mention this is a one-car garage?

• Why three motorcycles? I've got Peter's Superhawk this week, so that I can do a service on it in my copious free time after work. This wouldn't be as bad, except for that the bike hasn't had a service in two years, and needs approximately 15,000 things checked/tightened/replaced. Last night around midnight found me writing up a detailed "to do" list on my garage whiteboard. This sounds relatively normal until you hear that I have four colors of whiteboard markers, and I was color-coding the tasks depending on (a) which day I'll probably do that task, (b) whether or not the tank needs to be up for it, and (c) whether I'll have two days or three days this week with enough time to work on the bike. In hindsight, it's sort of a frightening whiteboard at the moment. I'm torn between taking a picture of it, and wanting to keep y'all safely sequestered from the nightmare that is my overly-organized brain on overdrive.

• A true story. In my performance review last year, my boss described me as having an "almost supernatural" ability to organize. I still haven't figured out if it was meant as a compliment.

• People who're writing peer reviews at work for me should stop reading now. It's becoming increasingly distressing to me lately that all these other people seem to be doing cool and interesting things with their lives, and I sit at a desk, smacking little plastic squares with letters on them all day. It's tempting to want to uproot and try to make "something motorcycle-related" into my day job, but the trouble is, I don't know what that "something motorcycle-related" is. So far, I've been unable to find anyone to fund a lifestyle of writing columns, riding around, and puttering in my garage all day. I need to work on Peter, I guess, to get him used to the idea of being a sugar daddy. ;) Seriously, the decision would be a lot easier if I didn't genuinely enjoy working at Danger. It'd be a no-brainer if I still worked at my last company, where my "programming job" consisted mainly of carrying around the projector for other peoples' presentations...but I like Danger, and have been learning a lot. Some internal organizational changes are making me wonder if I can continue a learning curve at the same level that it's been over the past two years; I suppose all I can do is wait it out and see how things go. In the meantime, I've sent out more writing samples and cover letters and requests for writing guidelines.

• OK, Tony, you can read again now. ;)

• How "California" am I? Sheesh. On Thursday, I'm going to my first-ever yoga class. That's right. I bought yoga pants today and everything. I've been really amazed at how a twice-daily stretching routine (with some really light lifting every other day) has helped my comfort while riding, and my friend Paul claims that yoga is just as useful. Since Paul and his wife Carla are normal people who don't chant or pray to trees or anything, I have high hopes for the yoga studio that they attend. I still felt like the biggest dork ever buying yoga pants, though. I mean, really. I wouldn't have bothered if I owned any pants at all that weren't jeans, baggy cut-off cargo pants, or leather/PVC clubbing pants. Or, I suppose, the armored leather motorcycle pants. ;)