I’m getting a new baby niece in a few months and the baby shower is coming up this weekend. Since I can’t be there as it’s on the west coast, I’ve been furiously knitting up a present so I could at least be present in a different sort of way.

babysweaterIt’s super cute, more muted than this photo shows and it’s wicked stroft. Not too girly either. I haven’t been knitting very much lately, and as a result there are a few mistakes that I was too time crunched to rip out and fix. But it’ll do.

Fun riding last night. I was practicing what it might feel like in the first few minutes of a cross country race going all out. What it feels like is not good. Not only is it painful, but choosing to do these intervals in town loops is fairly dumb. Town loops are a bit technical in the rooty, rocky, and full of bridges arena. But it was pretty cool to be literally flying down the long bridges, accelerating into top speed.

Then I ran almost head long into a huge group of riders and had to shut it down a little at the end. Oh well, I got what I needed.

For those interested, Dooce was recently invited to the White House for a forum on Workplace Flexibility, a subject near and dear to my own heart as a full-time working mom. The best part of her report was this excerpt from Michelle Obama’s speech. Well said. The daycare thing is such a hard thing to manage and I’m lucky to have a flexible workplace, but a grandparent upstairs would be even better.