A domestique is a bicycle racer who works for the benefit of his team and not themselves. So, what do domestiques do? For the most part, they ride in front of the team leaders and cut the leader’s wind resistance. Experts say that “drafting” like this can save a third of the leader’s strength. In addition to drafting duties, a domestique will also fetch food and water for the team. The French word, domestique translates as “servant”.
Anne and I rode in the Park on Tuesday and got 15 miles. Anne only needs another 23 miles to meet her annual cycling mileage goal of a thousand miles. I’ll be her domestique and work to keep those cold December winds off of her, so that she can make her goal.
In other domestic news, Anne knitted the above pictured cap for our house gnome, on Christmas Day. Under the rubric of making lemonade out of lemons, Anne took Dave’s news that he cannot find the beautiful argyle cap that she made for him surprisingly well, maybe too well. She later remarked, “Well, at least this creates another knitting opportunity.”
Speaking of Christmas Day, we had a double disaster in the kitchen that day. Our two oldest and most venerated cutting boards fell to the floor and then split in two. Anne and Dan went to the hardware store the next day and purchased two clamps and wood glue that specifically says that it is for glueing cutting boards. The picture above shows the first board drying in the clamps, while the second one patiently waits its turn.
Dave is lucky that I chose to knit for the gnome and not him with that yarn! It is scratchy, stiff acrylic, left over from crafting activities with the Cub Scouts. Not to mention that Dave would have to be really, really cold to ever wear a hat in the tri-Xmas mix. The gnome however, is not complaining, but thinks its really silly that I didn’t do the two decrease rows over eight rows instead of six.
–Pooh
Wait a minute. You broke *two* cutting boards? Did they fall together?
I was practicing my karate, don’t ya know…
Actually,
I had put them on top of the refrigerator, so they’d be out of the dish drainer and out of the way. When I put the Xmas groceries away, and closed the door, something shifted and they both fell off the top and hit the floor just so. “Oh, SH!T, and yes that was a major ‘Oh, sh!t.'” I sort of wish I’d seen it happen, just to see how it did, but I’d already turned away.
This happened Xmas Eve, so had to chop the onions and sweet potatoes on half a board.
–Pooh
Almost as good as our exploding stuffing casserole, only no food was sacraficed.
Also much easier to clean up than exploding food!