take a picture, make a show

You know how when you've had to go so long without it, that when you finally get some, it's just SO good?  This weekend was like that.

I'm sitting here in the afterglow, still feeling a bit drunk from it.

Plus, I even got some more this morning.

Gone is the cold / windy / cloudy / snowy frustration.  Here is the warm / sunny / festive release.  We took an enjoyable bike ride yesterday afternoon.  I made a sex tape helmet cam [video] to record our love.

Loitering outside 7-11
Under the "No Loitering" sign

Maybe it's my imagination, but I think the traffic was more cautious during our encounters with it than usual, thanks to the helmet cam.  I've heard that more bicyclists and motorcyclists are wearing helmet cams in full view so that the traffic knows it's being recorded.  Best to behave.

So, like the hideous crossing guard vest, the geeky helmet cam serves a safety purpose.  I take another hit for our fashionless city.






Today is "Run With Lumber" at the school.   It was supposed to be a couple of weeks ago but got postponed on account of weather to last week but got postponed on account of weather to this week.  Today should be a lovely Lumber day.  I've kept a low profile just in case my friend's Lumber victim's plans were thwarted by the multiple postponements.

And in times like these, as we bask, pillow talk turns to what's next.  Many locals now have Wednesday on their minds.  What's wrong with THIS picture?

I think I can do this, though.  I can do Wednesday.  I'm going to go outside today and be a sun camel!

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Silver Liningness Sunday

First of all, a big shout out to Mother Nature.  The weather is Gor-jous, just GOR-jous!  I ran yesterday morning OUTSIDE... in SHORTS!  SQUEEEEEEeeeeeee!

Chaco literally dropped by yesterday.  I was sitting here drawing shoes when I thought I heard Wolfgang return from his run.  Instead it was Chaco.  Apparently the March of Dimes was having some event on the college campus and decided to start by blasting through the speakers at 7:30 am right next to the dorms.  A local news personality purposely fired the crowd up to "wake up the college kids on Saturday morning!".  SO not nice.

It was such a nice day out, though, so Chaco thought he'd go for a hike (since he was awake at such an ungodly hour), and then he just ended up at our house.

Hung out, got sunburned, got me to take him shopping, played with the pets...









Magnum and I watched "Bridesmaids".  I grabbed it off the library DVD shelf.  I thought it might be too chick flickish for Magnum, but I've watched my share of guy movies in the name of motherly sacrifice, so I invited him to watch with me.

I would say that the movie as a whole is just okay, but there are some hilarious moments.  Melissa McCarthy steals the show.   I later learned that the guy who plays the air marshall is her husband in real life.





Wolfgang had another track meet where the relay team set a new PR.  Meego had his first track meet with the middle school.  They've hardly had any practice at all because so much has been cancelled from the weather.  They just sort of winged it.  Gotta start somewhere.

The rest of the week was good and productive.  I'm thinking the wintry weather is behind us?  Is it safe to say that now??
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Farewell

Wolfgang had a rare track season Saturday off today (track meet yesterday), so he took advantage by getting various pieces of "business" taken care of.  This involved dragging me around since I hold the pla$tic.

All missions were accomplished, and I managed to squeeze in an illustration for this week's Illustration Friday prompt:  Farewell.

One of our $top$ was the running store to get him a new pair of running shoes as he's sent another pair into retirement.  As I looked at his old beat up pair that has gone over 600 miles or so, I was reminded of that scene in Shaolin Soccer.  Remember the one?

The team has just made the big time and gotten a shoe endorsement deal, so they have a little ritual for their old beat up shoes.  "Today we say good-bye to our old shoes and our old way of life, so... BYE BYE!"  Then the shoes get the last laugh.

So I decided to have a little ritual for Wolfgang's old shoes and draw them as they head off into their retirement of mowing the lawn, chopping wood, cleaning the dog kennel...

BYE BYE!

something to admire

Remember when I logically predicted that this would be MY year?  My fave number is 13, I started this year - 2013 - by getting 13th place in a race, then I turned around and won a buncha groceries mainly because I didn't want to clean my house.  Add to those things our freshly acquired no-named black cat, and I'm the luckiest girl around!

But wait!  There's more!

I broke a mirror.  YES!  Oh, I absolutely maimed it!

It was a couple of weeks ago.  We'd had a snow day that day.  By the evening, I was delirious with cabin fever and ventured out into the blizzard only to get into a nasty car crash!

No I didn't.

I went out to run a quick errand, and when I returned home I clipped the driver's side mirror on the driver's side garage.  WHAT?!  STU-pid!  I  BLAME  THE  WEATHER.

I have never, in 33 or so years *COUGH* as a driver, had so much as a scrape / scratch / fender bender.   Okay, I've killed a couple of batteries and once took out a Sonic tray with a truck.  But other than THAT stuff...

Alas, there it was, the mirror, or rather, pieces of the mirror scattered about the garage floor.  For the past two weeks, it's been held in place with duct tape, rounding out a nice White Trash ensemble for the Civic.  But today, that all came to an end.  I took her to The Shop.  The duct tape masterpiece was removed, and we have a boring factory mass produced driver's side mirror again.

The luck just keeps a-piling up!  As more proof of that, of our vehicles that actually have mirrors, this was the cheapest to fix.

How lucky is that, right!?  It's already working!!

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going nowhere fast

Another April day, another donning of the long johns.  I hate to keep harping about the weather, but seriously, it's snowing?  Again??

Yeah.  Okay.  Fine.  Whatever.

I can roll with it.  This morning, I layered up in my finest winter wear again.  But I refuse to wear the Frankenstein snow boots in April.  My toes froze in my hiking boots, but it's the principle of the thing.

I returned home, made some comfort coffee, and settled in for some comfort math.  But first I decided to check my facebook page. Oh great, a bunch of Colorado friends feel it necessary to put up snow pictures and (expletive laced) snow status updates.  Like I need to relive it all while back INSIDE the house during my thaw time.

Then I put a comfort camping photo for my desktop wallpaper.

Attitude is everything.

Speaking of which, I was running on the treadmill this snowy morning, trying to convince my brain that I wasn't.  I've found that treadmill enjoyment requires iTunes and daydreams.  So I was treading that mill and daydreaming about high school track days while listening to Justin Timberlake sing about me, because I'm certain that I'm his muse.  

Anyways, I'm having a good old time, and I guess I got a little too into it. I caught the cord of my earbuds with my hand.  My iPod was sitting on the treadmill console, so whacking the earbud cord pulled it off its perch, thus subjecting it to the pull of gravity, disconnecting it from the earbuds, and sending it to the speeding belt of the treadmill.  This series of unfortunate events snapped me out of my daydream and forced me to remember that I was actually on a treadmill in a little room rather than winning that big race while boyfriend Justin cheered me on.  

I was glad I didn't step on it, but I stopped running to pick it up, and I could not find the thing.  I figured it must've gone flying off the belt, landing somewhere behind the treadmill ala George Jetson, right?  Wrong.  After an exhaustive search, I found the poor thing lying in front and a little to the right of the treadmill.  How it got there is a mystery of physics.

At least the tunes fired right back up again.

And how is your day going?  

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Silver Liningness Sunday

What a week, eh?  Started with the crazy Boston Marathon bombing.  The surviving bomber - he's just a kid.  What the hell?

In the smaller circle of things, we dealt with more winteriness here.  While I'm not happy to be freezing my buns off in April, I'm grateful for the moisture.  We had a dryer than usual winter, so if we're making up for it in spring, so be it.  People out here have cows to feed and stuff.

Despite the wintry weather, it got nice enough for another track meet for Wolfgang and the team yesterday.  He and the rest of the 4x800 team are looking pretty good to be contenders at state this year.  Yesterday was the first time they've been beaten as they took second place, just one second behind the winners.




The winning team actually dropped their baton, which is an automatic DQ in the Olympics and, I think, college.  In high school, it can depend.  The officials apparently didn't see it, and Wolfgang said his team didn't want to bring it to the officials' attention because that would be admitting that a team that dropped their baton still beat them.  I totally get that!






Reese the Snake shed another round of skin this week - always a momentous occasion.  It's interesting to me how "playful" and energetic he becomes right after he sheds.  Like he's all happy with his new clothes or something.

Similarly, I'd made a grooming appointment for this week for China, but the groomer called and said she'd injured her hand and can't work for a while, so I rescheduled.  I think China knew it was going to be cold this week and wanted to keep her long fur coat a little longer, so she set the universe in motion to injure the groomer.  Dogs can do that.

In movie news, Magnum and I watched The Awakening.  It's a ghost story.  We liked it.  I thought it was well made with good casting.  And the ending... is she?  Or isn't she?

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Train

This week's prompt for Illustration Friday is "Train".  Train is one of those words that has many meanings.

It can be a noun, as in a succession of railroad cars or a part of a gown dragging on the ground.  It can be a verb as in teaching or coaching or preparing...

All those choices left me behind, so I drew none of them.  I drew a caboose.

When I was a kid, I'd get excited to watch the trains move through town.  My hometown was a coal mining town (there's more to life than sex change operations), so coal trains moved through quite frequently.  We'd never know how many cars there would be, or if the train would come to a stop while we watched.  One thing we knew, however, was that the caboose signaled the end.

Cabooses (Cabeese??) provided shelter for the train crew and used to be required.  Now, they are quite rare.  As a mom of boys, I have been to many many a train museum, and I always enjoyed climbing around  the old caboose displays the best.  They just seemed so cozy and restful compared to the rest of the old freight trains.

So, always a fan of the behind, I do a caboose.

Now a major [motion picture]
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