new internet toy

Thanks to Unified Theory of Nothing Much I have a new internet toy to suck away time I could be doing something productive play with.

It's for book geeks. An easy way to catalog your collection and even cooler, to get recommendations based on what you already like. You can track up to 200 books for free (you can add more for a fee - there's someone on there with 8,000+ books - yikes!).

It's called LibraryThing.

My list is over there -----> under the SilverTurtle.goodies.

car free day 2006

I never even heard of Car Free Days until about 20 minutes ago. [Thank you Internet].

I actually saw a local event listing for April 26, 2006 and signed up to participate. Unless it's raining. I'm all about moderation. That's why I drive when the weather is sucky and ride when it's nice and I have time.

There's an old out-of-date Car Free Columbus Site, too. I sent them a comment to recommend they update their site. Maybe. Since there is another event in 6 days.

I'm also thinking about the campus-area bike ride, which is at 9:30 PM on Monday night. (Bike riding on a week night? I *heart* college kids. I wonder if they bike to different bars?)

Back to these Car Free Days for a minute. I'm American, too, and that means I LOVE MY CAR. Even though it's a 1996 Buick that has some dashboard parts held together with duct tape. (Am I classy, or what?) I don't love pollution or paying $3.00+/gallon of gas (especially when I'm averaging 18 mpg) or not getting any exercise. I think it's silly to expect a city to just eliminate cars altogether. Although it's not as silly as the people who move 40 miles out of the city (which they commute to daily), buy an SUV, vote for politicians who have their hands (and arms and elbows and shoulders) in the oil business, and then complain about gas prices.

bike and stuff

Yay for getting my bike's flat tires fixed! Finally got out to ride this spring. (Yes- I'm one of those people who only rides her bike in nice weather. When I move to someplace warm and sunny 365 days a year, then I'll ride year round).

So I rode about 2 miles to this local organic market. I stopped in to buy a sandwich and then rode home. I was surprised I didn't have to push myself on the ride - felt pretty natural. Which is good, because my ride to work is about 3.5 miles each way. Of course, the way home is mostly uphill, so I've got to get conditioned for that.

Oh my...maybe it's just because I haven't eaten much healthy food lately, but the sandwich thing was awesome. It was totally vegan and had hummus and mushrooms and peppers and cheese and some other veggies. It's like the best tasting thing I've eaten in a month. Maybe several months.

What was I saying... oh yes... yay!bikes!

craziness

Today was one of those days where normal activities turned crazy, but in a fun, surreal kind of way. It started off with the sparkly easter egg kit:




Eventually we ended up outside around a fire enjoying the finally warm weather and toasting marshmallows and just goofing around.

Which somehow led to this:

Marshmallow Theater I



And was then followed up by this [this one is probably NOT exactly WORKSAFE]:

Peeps Last Date

No- we weren't stoned. We weren't drunk. We were completely sober. And I think we're on our way to an entire marshmallow theatre series.

just a litle jealous

I just found out that some friends-of-friends are moving. To beautiful, wonderful, warm, often sunny San Francisco. Because one of them just got a job at Google.

That enough right there was enough to make me a little jealous, a city I'd love to live in, and a company that seems like an awesome place to work.

Apparently Google is even more awesome than we thought, because they are paying for:

A company to pack and move all of their stuff, including their car. [Oh, and if the car doesn't pass the emissions tests, they'll just buy them a new one].

Airfare to SF and their hotel room while they are in transition.

Someone to show them the city and help them look for apartments.

And they have incredible benefits that include domestic partners (they're not married).

I want to apply to Google, too.