Denver Museum of Nature and Science

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You know how when you go to the automatic car wash, you often get a “pre-soak” where they drip soapy water on your car and let it soak in for about 20 seconds?

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?

These are… meh. But it was a lovely day for walking and looking for them yesterday.

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These are for Anne, who had grave concerns about the hopscotch pictures.

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

I forgot I’d taken these pictures a couple weeks ago.

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

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Driving home, we just barely noticed a man on a scooter who had toppled trying to navigate the horrible sidewalks and hills on University Avenue. It was dark, the intersection was a steep hill, and his scooter was blue, so I saw the reflector in my headlights more than anything else.

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.

Happy Birthday to all those leap year babes out there!

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

I realized that it’s been ten years since I started keeping a blog. (Obviously, I realized this in the past, and am writing it for the future, but not too far in the past.)

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

My 2012 Denali Wildlife calendar.

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. :(

Michelle: What’s a ton?
Michael: I think it’s seven.
Michelle: Really? That doesn’t seem right.
Michael: I just checked. It’s seven.
Michelle: Are you sure? That seems light.
Michael: Light?
Michelle: For a ton.
Michael: I thought you were asking what TIME it was.
Michelle: No, I want to know how many pounds are in a ton.
Michael: I think it’s fifty four.
Michelle: WHAT? NO! I do not weigh more than two tons! Fuck you!
Michael: I don’t know how much a ton weighs, other than it weighs less than my wife.

I am officially old.

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.

Just took a survey about our hotel stay this weekend.

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

Close, except for being completely wrong.

Michael: My neck is sore.
Michelle: I’m not surprised.
Michael: Can I blame my mother for this?
Michelle: Sure. You can say your mom is a pain in the neck.