I Love To Ride My Bicycle

Vimeo, a really great video sharing site a la YouTube minus the crap, TV shows, stolen movies, and etc., just put out a new “channel” called I Love To Ride My Bicycle. Sounds like that Queen song, doesn’t it? Well, Lisa and I are on it, just scroll down a little bit and you’ll see the video post card I sent to my Oma saying thanks for the bike (we inherited her 1972 Schwinn Twinn).

Bagging the Female

My cousin works in fashion. Or, rather, she writes about fashion — which is probably all together better than working in, oh the prepositions — and I wonder what she would think about these thoughts on the handbag.

Lost Pets: be patient

Tonight I was helping a good friend and his wife locate their dog. They thought it had escaped their house and yard so around the neighborhood we looked. I mentioned that they should re-investigate their house, but they said that was already taken care of. Long story short? Dog was under the couch. No fault of theirs.

This is the third time I’ve experienced this situation: pet is “lost”, owners scour neighborhood, pet is hiding in house. (Or, to be fair in most recent case, stuck). Advice? You betcha.

If you pet is missing, and you’ve already looked in all the normal spots, WHILE other people are scouring the neighborhood, go into each room in your house, call the pet’s name with normal tone or clucks, or what not. Be patient and quiet, wait. Listen for footsteps above you (cats like to get above dropped ceilings) or listen for whimpering in strange places (bugle pups can get stuck under reclining couches). You never know. If you don’t find the pet indoors after repeating these steps in EACH room, join the outdoor team. And good luck.

Internetting from the right-side of the brain: My Mileage Marker

File under: the internets

My Mile Marker . com is a great way to keep track of your car’s fuel economy (or lack thereof). I know these things can be accomplished in spreadsheets, but it’s nice to have someone else take the headache out of it for you, plus there are neat graphs to view once you establish your MPG (ie, fill your tank more than once, consecutively). And, we all know that if your MPG is decreasing, something is wrong with your car. So give it a go, and help the planet a bit while you’re at it!

Go There!>>

Farmer’s Market

We struck it big at the farmer’s market today: 45 peaches for $6.00, and a monster bag of produce for $10.00. Dinner was baked tofu with peach chutney and peach pie. MMmmm… Next week we’ll be riding there more prepared — the green machine didn’t have the storage capacity I would have liked for today’s goods.

Bumper Alert!

If you can read this, I’m not impressed. If you can buy me one of these, I will be your friend for life.

Energy Savings

After finally remembering to switch the hot water heater in our house to “vacation” on our last vacation, I’ve tried to be a little more energy conscious. To accomplish a small start, I picked up a few lower energy light bulbs and also took a quick inventory of the power-suckers in our house. Deciding that the basement computer has to stay on for the majority of the day, I found SwitchOff, installed it hassle-free, and set it to 4am (the time after which the computer does no more housekeeping tasks). Admittedly, the computer will not save me the most energy. Saving money, it is important to note, is not the goal. My goal with this small exercise is to save energy.

Thus, instead of the computer, I decided to look into my lighting habits. Ironically, on the same day that I decided to add a few low-impact CFL bulbs to our lighting repertoire, Snopes.com (the post-humous-Faulkner-character’s eponymous site of urban legends) decided to run an article [link contains popups] on the bulbs’ mercury content. Whew, that was a wordy sentence. The short story? The site found no extreme danger of mercury, and with an average savings of around $45.00 / year it is one of three things I’m working on to save a few nickels per kilowatt hour. The others? Unplugging the wine fridge until company comes, splicing in a programmable thermostat, and trying to make the most of Great Stuff, which truly is great stuff.

 

Paul Simon for the Birthday

As you may know, I’m a little obsessed with numbers. For example, I’ve just broken over from 999 to 1002 miles on my current bicycle odometer (was reset in April). I have a hard time climbing stairs without counting them, and although I don’t have it as bad as the protagonist from The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, I do pay attention to the makes and models of vehicles on the road.

Last night, as a birthday present, Lisa took me to see Paul Simon. The most salient aspect of the experience in my mind? Numbers.

0 – The number of people sitting down during favorites (which really are all songs that aren’t slow)

1 – Simon and Garfunkel were one of the first acts to use ethnic names as title of their pop group (both Simon and Garfunkel are Jewish names).

2 – The number of songs played from the days of Simon & Garfunkel (an almost unrecognizable version of Mrs. Robinson), which in my opinion, is better than it is with Garfunkel.

3 – The number of times he said something to the audience (like most good performers, he lets his music do the speaking).

4 – Count ‘em, yes, FOUR encores. 1 – Call me Al, 2 – 5 songs 3 – Bridge Over Troubled Water and 3 more , 4th – just Paul and his guitar.

65 – Paul Simon is 65 years old. And he rocks. His voice is still exactly as it sounds on the albums. Exactly as it sounds in The Graduate, and his songs are imbued with life and benefit from a harder edge exemplified on his new album, Surprise.

Paul Simon, live, around the corner from our house, was absolutely the best live music experience of my life.

When Cat Meets Water

I’ve always known that cats don’t like water very much, but this incident takes the cake. Our house has been without water for 2 days. Why? I’m glad you asked.