Unlucky 13? Nah!

Based on the way this week has gone I am hoping that today will go just as good. Mostly because even though it has been busy for me, and a crazy nightmare busy kind of week for Cicely, overall and big picture things have not been too bad. We are all healthy and common cold, flu and all viruses in-between free.

Now that said, I am not extremely superstitious to the point of black cats crossing my path, walking under ladders or breaking mirrors. For some reason or another though I always have a weird feeling when it comes to Friday the 13th, which happens to be today's date.

I'm not into the Freddy movies where he goes around on Friday the 13th cutting people up with his chainsaw so that is not the problem. So yea, I am really not sure ow hat the reasoning is behind it other than it's drilled into our heads at an early age that it's an unlucky number and unlucky day.

Weekend, Plus One

Normally we are happy that it's Friday because of the fact that we have a couple days to do what we want to do, catch up on things we should have done or simply rand out of time to do throughout the busy workweek.

This weekend is essentially the same with an added bonus, that being we have a holiday on Monday which turns our normal weekend into a three day weekend. Sometimes the extra day is awesome and really helps to give us one more day to relax. Other times we end up either doing so much or so little that the day ends up being a day of playing catchup before starting next week.

Valentine's Saturday

This weekend is unique as well because Valentine's Day falls on Saturday. Normally it falls during the week so I have to wonder if this hurts sales of flowers and that sort of thing? My guess is that flowers, candy and that sort of thing do continue to sell, though there is no real chance for anyone to show it off at the office as they normally would be able to do.

I would also guess that restaurants are going to be doing a decent amount of business and will remain booked up and busy as they would be had it fallen on a weekday. Possibly the only businesses that will suffer are those that look forward to the extra business from lunch if they are not open on weekends or for dinner service.

Cicely and I along with ZoBug (Zoey) are not planning to do anything on Saturday and I have not made any reservations or anything like that for us, neither has she as far as that goes. We generally don't celebrate these holidays in the same manner as others, if at all. I'm not sure if that is a good thing or not.

The one holiday I think we will always celebrate in a big way will be Easter. Cicely loves all of the wonderful pastel colors, the fact that spring is right around the corner depending on our winter of course, but it's there none-the-less. For me, probably her as well, there is no better smell in a store than walking down the candy isle setup for Easter basket building, hard boiled egg coloring. Ah the smell of the jelly beans, peeps marshmallows, chocolate bunnies.

Oddly enough I would have to say that it's one of my favorite holidays as well. I actually have always been a big fan of the 4th of July as well. Problem is that in Nevada fireworks are illegal so that takes most of the fun out of it. I use to love going firework shopping when we lived in Missouri. Having a big BBQ and anticipating nighttime so my friends and I could start launching bottle rockets, lighting sparklers, watching those black snake things grow once lit and I can't not mention the roman candles and those other things, pinwheels I think they are called, that you nail to a tree or a fence, light the fuse, run, turn around and watch them spin, putting on a great show for a couple to a few minutes.

Hopefully we are able to expose Zoey to some of that. I don't know if will actually be able to shoot off fireworks and less we bought some and went somewhere where it was actually illegal to do so. It would be a really cool experience for her it's something I will always remember.

It's just funny, but not at all, how anymore people are so weird about everything and scared so you know that it would be exactly the same with fireworks or anything that has a sharp edge for that matter based on my observations.

My guess is they would think we were bad parents allowing our kids to shoot off fireworks. Same thing with firearms. I plan to teach Zoey how to be responsible around guns as well as learn how to shoot them. That said I have a feeling that many parents will look down on the fact that we want her to be educated in this way. Hopefully they will not be ignorant enough to take it out on Zoey and not allow her friends hang out with her because of our hobbies or opinions.

The same thing can be said if some of her friends are people that are crazy about religion. This is something I would not want spewed her direction because I have my own opinions about that as does Sicily. At the same time this does not mean I would not allow her to hang out with those people so long as they did not try and brainwash her with things we do not believe in.

That said I have no problem with her learning about other beliefs and that sort of thing I actually think it's very healthy for her to make up her own mind on certain things. We can only do our best to instill the things that we believe in and go from there. If she chooses to go another direction all we can do is support her the best that we can as hard as it may be at times.

Anyway enough about all of that somehow I got on a completely different topic then where the post had started from. I mean, it was still all around holidays and that sort of thing but then it started getting into other stuff naturally.

Cycling

My hope is that tomorrow I will be able to write a post regarding how happy I am that I was able to complete my 100km ride, my goal for this month. I know that it sounds lame to a lot of people because I don't only want to do it for health reasons and because I enjoy cycling, I also want to earn the shirt from Strava this month for the achievement. Because of the crappy weather last weekend I did not attempt it, so I'm thinking tomorrow is the best day to kick ass.

Glutton For Punishment

Because I always have the desire to achieve more and push myself to places I did not think I could go physically, yet within my limits I decided to sign up for the climbing challenge this month as well. 

This challenge consists of challenging cyclist to climb a minimum of 28,000 feet during the month of February. This means with only 28 days in the month I gave to climb at least 1,000 a day.

This is not crazy difficult if it were summer and the weather was nicer. It would also be nice if I decided to start on the first day instead of the 10th or 11th day like I ended up doing.

So far I am only at 8000 feet so I have a ways to go although I'm still confident  that I will be able to accomplish the goal one way or another. With the trainer I could easily do 6 more rides on the route that I did Tuesday or Wednesday because it was just over 4,200 feet over an hour and 15 minutes time.

Photo: A cool bumper sticker that someone had on their car in the parking lot this morning. First time I have noticed it so I could not resist taking a quick photo of it.