Perusing Woodburn Circle

Hanging out at the ‘Lair

Waiting for the Drunk Bus

Checking out Oglebay

Knock knock!

Everyone loves to hang their head out the car window

Click on any picture to go to my Flickr set with more adventures!

Free to a good home:

Amazon Basics Camera Backpack. It’s perfectly fine for what it is, but what I finally decided I wanted was a backpack that would hold my camera AND laptop AND didn’t look like a camera back that screamed “POSSIBLE EXPENSIVE STUFF HERE! STEAL ME!”

I instead went with something like this (but not this, mine is a drawstring not a zipper) and a regular laptop backpack–one that I can easily lock for travel and leaving in a hotel room–which I absolutely adore. But of course all that was a hell of a lot more expensive than this plain camera backpack.

Also free to a good home, some books:
Bread Machine baking book, which we don’t need because we got rid of the bread machine years ago.
Bright Young Things (hardback); I can’t get into it, but I somehow ALSO have the ebook version, so I really don’t need the hardback.
A Beautiful Blue Death – Grandmom really liked this series. I found it… meh.
Growing at the Speed of Life: A Year in the Life of My First Kitchen Garden – A gift I have no interest in reading

Anyone interested? Friends and family will be given to preference. Because I can.

Oh, if you click on any of those links and then go buy something after, (same as for my book blog) I get pennies from Amazon. Hint. Hint.

Click through to Flickr to see more of Ricky Martin’s adventures!

Janiece may well be the MOST awesome person in the entire world.

I… I have no words…

Drive from Fort Collins to Denver

Fort Collins

That pre-soak lead me to wonder–would an automatic car wash get your car cleaner if you went when it was raining. If a pre soak does anything at all, then I would think that your car already being wet from the rain would help soak the grime off.

Any argument as to why this would not be so?

That really isn’t anywhere accessible to young, gullible kids.

We were walking across the Pleasant Street Bridge when I noticed chalk marks on the wall over to the left.

We stopped, Michael ran to make sure he wasn’t hurt, and I grabbed a flashlight from the trunk. The man was trying to sit up, his cart tipped sideways, and the contents of the basket on the front of his scooter strewn around his cart.

After getting him into a sitting position, we started picking up the scattered papers and various grocery items–his bananas and yogurt didn’t seem too much the worse for wear.

While we were picking things up, a taxi pulled partway into the intersection. The driver said something that I couldn’t hear, so I ran over.

The driver, a man probably in his fifties, leaned out his window.

“Am I clear to get past?”
“Yeah. You’re fine.”

After we got all his belongings picked up, Michael started to try and help the man stand, by standing in front and pulling him up by his arms, but the man cried out in pain and I stopped Michael, reminding him of the proper way to help someone up, which I had learned for Grandmom. The two of us together smoothly got him standing, though he was unsteady and I was nervous about letting go of him.

In the meantime, a young couple had stopped, the guy saying he had a truck and we could put the scooter into the bed of the truck so the man could be driven home.

The older gentleman insisted he was fine, so the young man and Michael start trying to get the scooter straightened up and pointing in the right direction.

While they were getting sorted out where the man was going, another young couple stopped, asking what they could do to help. The three guys got the gentleman back on his scooter (he still wasn’t very steady) and up on the road (no sense in trying to get back on the treacherous sidewalk), while I stood in the road with my flashlight to stop traffic.

After a moment, the older gentleman puttered off. Michael and I walked back to the car, and I put the flashlight back in the trunk, taking a deep breath as I closed the trunk. The couple who had pulled off near us, pulled out behind the gentleman, and followed him down the road, keeping cars from zooming up behind him and/or passing him.

Anyone who tells you that young people these days are irresponsible and don’t care about others?

You tell ‘em from me they’re full of shit.

Hope you’re enjoying yourselves, since your birthdays now come less frequently than the Olympics!

I can’t claim that I’ve been diligent and written every day, but I do believe that for the most part (once I really started it) I’ve posted at least once a week for the entire time.

Yeah, some of the most recent posts are pictures and not writing, which is perhaps not quite right for what was supposed to be a writing exercise, but this turned into something very different from how it started, which was simply for a place to me to record my thoughts.

The first post I wrote was primarily about the courses I was taking at the time: The Faiths of Abraham and Women in Islam. Both classes were fantastic and also educational in many different ways.

At this point, Michael and I had been home owners for about six months, and were regularly doing a lot of work on the house. It had been almost three years since my Dad’s cancer diagnosis, and Grandmom was still in Baltimore.

Please note that when I started, I was simply writing in basic HTML, and adding new thoughts to the top of the page as they came to me. No indexes or even individual posts at that point.

Obviously, this changed within a year or so.

February to April 2002
May to June 2002

Addendum the First: I emailed them, and they’re going to send me stickers to fix the numbers. Too bad I already messed it up by writing in the correct dates. :(

Guns N’ Roses, the Beastie Boys, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers are this year’s inductees to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Not making it this year? The Cure, Eric B. & Rakim, Heart, and Joan Jett and The Blackhearts.

I… I think I need to go have a midlife crisis now.

They’re far more broadminded than I’d expected.

Chosen especially for the woman who is forbidden to drink cappuccino and does not own a dog?

And with that, he’ll probably never rappel either.

via Neil Gaiman

I believe that I am going to estivate this entire weekend.

However, soon after we got on the interstate, we ran over something (kuh-thunk). A bit later, we discovered that when braking, we now heard a vibrating sound from the driver’s side front wheel air. I’m fearing either the disc (more bad) or the pad (less pad) got warped, which would account for the vibrating with braking at interstate speeds, but no noticeable change otherwise.

Regardless, brake problems + highway speeds != safety, so we turned around and came home. Tomorrow we’ll call the shop by our house and see if we can get the car in on Tuesday. (Having only one car means repairs are done at places within walking distance. The only real drawback we’ve found.)

Guess we wanted to spend the long weekend in town relaxing.

Women Fighters in Reasonable Armour

And this one too!