Stalked by a grasshopper

I'm being stalked by a grasshopper. Well, maybe..
It started last Friday. When I parked my bike at work, I noticed a grasshopper was on my bike. I thought, "hmm, that's strange" but then forgot about it. I saw her (I think it's a female) again on Monday while I was on my way to work. When I got there, I carefully brushed her off.
Today, I found heron my sleeve when I entered the building (it was raining, too!). So I brushed her off on to the pavement, over 30 feet away from my bike.
I went to an advising appointment at Kent during lunch, then stopped by my apartment to change (more about that later) and on my way back (it was still raining) I saw the grasshopper clinging to my right mirror. It was pretty sweet to see how she flattened herself out to avoid getting blown off.
Every time I got to a stop light, she would readjust her position. I left her on my bike this time when I came into work.. I wonder if she'll be back?
I actually have 3 theories for this one:

1. The grasshopper is stalking me.
2. My bike is a breeding ground for grasshoppers.
3. Rival companies have hired grasshoppers to sneak into my workplace and steal company secrets.
   

Consistently crazy

Work has been super busy of late. There's so much stuff to do and document - I love it, but it's crazy. Last Thursday our aging primary domain controller finally gave up the ghost, so we spent that day making sure the replacement DC was doing everything correctly, and spent the next day doing data recovery on the old one - which left me racing to beat a programming deadline on Monday.. =D

I've been working on my freerunning skills lately as well. The fivefingers are awesome. They give me great grip while still allowing me to feel the surface I'm on. I had a great time training at a local playground yesterday. There's an even bigger playground I'd like to check out, but it tends to have a lot of people at it. Maybe I'll go there on lunch one day.

One of my favorite things to do with fivefingers is climb. Climbing pipes up the sides of buildings is suddenly super easy. I really freaked myself out the other day, however, when I climbed down a 2-story pipe. About 5 feet down I passed over a buzzing bees nest that wasn't visible from the top or bottom. Thankfully, the bees ignored me. When I saw them, the only thought in my head was "don't let go, don't let go, don't let go..."

I'm also working on performing a front flip. So far I've only succeeded in landing on my back, but I understand what I'm doing wrong so hopefully I can change that. The technique itself is really simple; unfortunately, my confidence in the technique working is very low. I have a fear of landing on my head. This isn't a problem in rolls because I know I'm in control - I've taken 10 foot drops with no problem. But what gets me on the front flip is when I jump up, I'm not rotating. I have to generate the rotation by curling my body, but I feel like I won't rotate enough and will simply land on my head. Ah well, practice makes perfect.

On a side note, futon mattresses make good substitutes for gym mats, but bed mattresses do not. Although a bed has more padding, it is too springy; when I landed on the bed, I hit the ground with my butt, then got shot back up. With the futon mattress, there is no springiness, so although it has less cushioning, it ends up providing more.

FiveFingers Day 4

Now that I caught up to today I can drop the date in the subject.. woot!
Gah! My calves are still really tight today. Stretch, stretch, stretch... eventually they have to loosen up again, right? It's a good thing that walking in VFF's is practically effortless.
I'm having a good day at work, but I just realized I forgot to make up a report so I'm going to end my break now and knock this thing out before the end of the day.