A Doggy Day

Yesterday Brenda and I rode 20 miles so I went easy this morning.  I was just going to run up to the bank, stop at the grocery store, and then come home -- about 2 miles roundtrip.

But I forgot that the bank doesn't open until 9, so I decided to press on and make it a real ride. I went up to the Town Center to check on my geocache.  Someone said they found it but the coordinates they needed for the next stage were illegible.

Yep, the person was right.  I fixed it (temporarily until I can get a new one over there) but then realized that I had stepped in dog poop.  Darn it!  This is an area at the base of a staircase for a parking garage. It's very nicely maintained so whoever let their dog poop there and didn't clean it up was being a real jerk.  Why do some people NOT clean up after their dogs?

So I scraped the best I could and then rode back down to the bank, which was now open, got some money and ran into the grocery store and then headed home.  On the way home, a person walking her dog let it chase after me growling and snarling.  Yes, it was on a leash (thank goodness), but the other dog with her was not.  I get it -- the dog was old and not likely to chase anyone.  But what if it had wandered into my path?  Sheesh...

I like dogs.  I like people who own dogs. I like people who are responsible about dog ownership best.

Wild Goose Chase

You might wonder where I've been.  Of course, as haphazard as I am in posting, perhaps no one even checks anymore.  That's okay.  I've had to accept that blogging is for my own good (or not), not to stroke my ego.

Even so, we've been busy.  We had a sweet Danish girl stay with us for 10 days, then my daughter left for college.  We're in the throes of football pre-season.  Tonight is the first real Varsity game against the team that gets raw meat thrown to them from when they're little ... just kidding, but the school is huge and the players are huge.  Our school, is at the lowest end of the bracket in terms of population vs. this school which is at the top.  It's kind of like your just-turned-8 year old swimming against kids that will be 12 right after the season ends.  David and Goliath...but hey, David beat Goliath, so we can be optimistic, and certainly supportive, right?  I'm just praying for no injuries.  Our JV playing their JV last night lost one of our bright stars to a concussion.  Grrr...

You know I love my bike, so I've been continuing my obsession. My friend and I decided to bike the Wild Goose Chase ride through Blackwater Wildlife Refuge in October.  It's a women-only event!  We're going to try to do the 40+ miles.  I've started extending my rides.  I did 15 on Monday, 20 on Tuesday, rested yesterday, and just got back from 12 easy ones.  Moreover, I figured out how to change my own flat tire this morning.  Thank God for youtube videos I watched earlier!

I've also started being more conscious of my intake.  I use the Lose It! app on my phone to record calories.  Can I say I LOVE the scan barcode feature?  Restaurants are a little problematic, but I estimate high.  So between MapMyRide and Lose It, and the great weather we've had, I haven't been spending much time on the computer...or even in the house.

And now, (drum roll please), I'm 12 lbs lighter to show for it.  We're attending a friend's son's wedding on October 7, and my goal is to "have" to get a new dress!  As long as the weather cooperates, that's definitely doable.

How about you -- what are you doing to be self-indulgent these days?

The Great Unveiling

Here's the bathroom.  First, the before photos.  Next, the after photos.  NOTE:  It has not been decorated and we haven't hung the towel racks.  But you can see the HUGE improvement.  What you can't see is that in the before photos -- we had the circa 70's one inch tile in brown, white, and speckled.  At least when the kids barfed it blended into the floor.  Sigh.

The pink towel reflected in the mirror is hanging on a towel rack on a solid wall -- all the way to the ceiling.

This vanity went from end to end on this wall.

Yes, the 4x4 tiles really are yellow.  Ick.

TA-DA

See that half wall?  My idea -- privacy but not a barrier to the whole room!  I'm going to cap it with a piece of wood laminate to match the vanity.

If you click on the photo you can see the detail work in the tile, and the color of the vanity (it's more a lovely brown teak)

Short Break

Well, I was going to show you the before and after photos of the room I painted, but almost immediately after I finished and before I got the room situated, we started our bathroom renovation and when they took out the toilet and needed a place to put it and the tools ... yeah.  Sigh.  Good news is that you'll get before/after photos of both projects!  The guys doing the bathroom are amazing.  The head guy goes to my church.  He escaped from Iran after hiding from the gov for 2 years for being involved in opposition activities. When he got here and needed some help he was afraid to go to the mosque.

Then one day he was at the local community center and a man started talking to him and asking him about his life.  Pretty soon he was telling the man his story and the man said, "why don't you come to my house for a meal and tell my family this story."  Turns out he had met our pastor.  Over time, their meals and fellowship became a solid foundation for a friendship and then ... one day ... he started asking about this "Jesus" the pastor kept talking about.

He became a Christian a few months later and was baptized.  His testimony was so AWESOME when he shared it at church.  He continues to walk with Jesus and grow in his faith.  Right now he is excited about the growth of Christianity in the underground churches in Iran.  He can't wait to go back as a missionary.

So ... on another note, I was in Baltimore this weekend.  My daughter and her friend attended Otakon 2012 dressed like this:

K & L dressed as characters from Portal.  End of the night waiting for the light rail.  They were tired pups!

K & L dressed as a character from Homestuck and Phineas & Ferb

While they played at the convention, I toured Balto (city of my birth) and geocached.  It was lovely having NO ONE demanding my attention!  Here are some photos of what I saw:

Bromoseltzer tower - now an artists' co-op.  Click on the photo to see the dial.

I just love tugboats.

Big Russian ships

Flag at Fort McHenry (you know -- Star Spangled Banner fame?)

Guns pointing out to where the British were anchored.

Oh say does that star spangled banner still wave

o'er the land of the free

and the home of the brave?

Collection from the Week

Just a few photos that capture one week in my life!

This is the Mark Twain house in Hartford, CT.  When we dashed up to see my grandmother, we flew in and out of Hartford, so we seized the opportunity to see it.  No photos allowed inside, but suffice to say it was HIGHLY decorated in the style of its time.  Very few original Twain family pieces are there.  If you remember your Twain history, they had to leave Hartford because they were broke.  When people are broke, their belongings are sold off piecemeal, so most of the Twain stuff probably languishes in the homes of people who don't know the history of what they own!  Such is life.  The first of their 4 children was born here, and died at 18 months.  Later, their second child, Laura, died here at age 24 -- so they didn't really want to go back to the house anyway.

Sam (that's how they refer to him) did all of his writing in this house in the room on the upstairs left (obscured by trees, sorry).  There's a small desk in the billiard room that looks out upon where I was standing.  While in residence though, he was so disturbed by visitors, most of his writing of those years was done when they visited his wife's family in Elmira, NY.  There he had a studio where he could lock himself away and write.  

This photo is a reconstructed slave cabin on the property at Sully Plantation.  It's within a bike ride of my house, near Dulles Airport, so I went to it on Tuesday.  I don't think the slave cabin would have been this close to the main house, but it seems that all historic properties in Virginia have to display one in order to get school kids to visit.  I'm not sure why they saved this site.  There are so many in Virginia that are beautiful, specifically connected with someone famous (Geo Washington, Jefferson, Madison, etc.).  This one pales in significance and even looks.  Here's what our county parks & rec site says of it: 

  An oasis of the past, Sully reflects the history of Fairfax County. Completed in 1799 by Richard Bland Lee, the main house at Sully combines aspects of Georgian and Federal architecture. Richard Bland Lee was Northern Virginia's first Representative to Congress, as well as General Robert E. Lee's uncle.  It took an act of Congress and President Eisenhower's signature to save Sully Historic Site from the Dulles Airport project demolition in 1959. Today, the story of Sully, from its "new nation" roots to its permanent place in history is being preserved through a new, interactive exhibit that was three years in the making.

 I didn't take a photo of the main house because they're working on it right now and it looks pretty terrible.

And finally, at the end of Wednesday's ride, ten feet from the path where I was riding, the real movers and shakers behind the business that's done in our area.  They are responsible for helping the medical industry flourish as they carry the ticks that carry Lyme.

And I'm continuing my painting of our upstairs guest room today, so next time there will be some before and after photos.

That's all for now!

Rethinking the Library

One of the venerable New York Public Library lions

A couple of years back our county was struggling (like all others) with trying to do the same number of things (or more) with less money.  Tax revenues were down, federal and state allocations were down, and the cost of services to the residents was up.  Despite the library representing less than 1% of the entire county budget (schools get 54%), the library and parks & recreation were hit disproportionately.  This led to some interesting conversations and interesting accommodations.


I was on the board of directors for the Friends of our local branch at the time and one of our main arguments in favor of fully funding the libraries (an argument led by the Library administration) was that libraries provide a great meeting place for people to read, visit, learn, etc.


Since that time I have finished my service to the board and started thinking about why the arguments in favor of saving libraries seem to go unheard.  It isn't simply a matter of priorities.  Everyone thinks literacy is a good idea and reading books is the way to gain a foothold in the American dream.


However, I think the libraries (across the country) have shot themselves in the bookshelf.  Instead of focusing on what the libraries provide -- that NO OTHER AGENCY provides -- the libraries tried to diversify.  As if the mission of providing reading materials for free to the community wasn't enough of a mission!  Libraries marketed themselves as meeting places, concert halls, art galleries and museums and minimized their main mission.  But there are many places in each community that can provide those other activities and venues.  ONLY the library provides access to books.  Even competing with the schools over early literacy access might have been a mistake.  In fact, in our county, the school libraries and county libraries only began to talk to each other about working together in the last couple of years.  And why?  Because there are limited available funds and they are both suffering the same problem -- what is the mission of the library and how can we make people care about it?  My kids report that at their high school, no one actually checks out books at the library -- they just use the area to study.  And by the way -- it isn't even CALLED a library anymore. It's a "media center."


Now we are moving away from bricks and mortar library buildings and into digital books.  The writing is on the (ahem) ether that physical library locations will be less and less important.  Our local branch is a regional library and thus has LOTS of room.  It is also next door to the mental health clinic/homeless shelter and across the street from the county municipal center for our area.  That means people with a LOT of time on their hands (i.e. homeless and mentally ill) spend the majority of their day inside the library building.  This has led to fewer and fewer people of means wanting to go into the building and stay for any length of time, much less take their children for programs.  Statistics show the libraries are busy, but very little of the business involves using books.  People come in for English classes, to use the public access computers, to use the meeting rooms, and to get cool/warm depending on the season.

As digital books flourish, publishers will find it less and less cost effective to print physical books.  I predict that in 20 years, the vast majority of libraries will no longer need all their space for physical books.  If I were in the administration end of the library business, I'd be crunching numbers to figure out how I could pour all my money into support of the digital media hunger that is out there.  I'd be taking a hard look at staff as well.  In our county a lot of jobs that we used to pay staff members for are now done by volunteers (shelving, processing books in and out, etc.)  The paid staff may end up coming down to just a few people who are trained to use the many databases for research.  And at some point, people will be able to access a "personal researcher" via the internet from home -- and will not have to go to the library at all.

It breaks my heart to say this out loud.  I grew up in libraries and raised my kids in them.  However, since we got Kindles, we only go there about once every couple of months.  My kids' kids probably won't even do that.  I don't see libraries disappearing entirely, but cutting way back on physical space and need for staff? Yep.

My friends who live outside the Washington DC area always tell me that we don't really understand what's going on in the rest of the country.  Is what we're experiencing here unique?  What do you think?  Is it twilight for our libraries?

No Great Choices

Ha - you thought I was going to talk about the election, right?  Nope, I'm going to talk about what we did this weekend.

We flew up to Hartford, CT and then drove to a little town called Agawam (a suburb of Springfield, MA).  That's where my 96 year old grandmother lives.  Born in Iowa, spent most of her life in east Texas, she moved to Agawam to a very nice senior community about fifteen years ago.  Until last summer, she was doing fine living there but then she fell.  Climbing your way back to "good health" at her age is daunting and the senior community requires its residents to be very self-sufficient.  Because she requires "skilled care", she had to move to a different facility. Although she has recovered very well from the fall, can't go back there due to the "skilled care" designation (i.e. someone has to adjust her cervical collar and administer pain patches!).  In the old place, she had an apartment with her own things. Now she shares a room separated by a curtain. She is in remarkably good shape for her age, but she is bored, bored, bored. She still has her wit, and when I asked if she wanted to play bingo with the other residents she said, "there are worse things than being bored."  You can tell looking at her photo that she still takes great pride in her appearance!

So here's the lack of great choices.  She can't live in my uncle's home (he lives nearby) as she can't do stairs. The time to have made the adaptations was fifteen years ago but she refused to live with anyone.  Now she has outlived her money, which is another reason she can't go back.  Massachusetts is a socialized medicine state, so she had to spend all her money before she qualified for financial help, but now there are very few places for her to stay.  If my uncle and dad (or us) help her financially, she is no longer qualified to stay where she is, but there isn't any place nicer she can go due to her "needs:.  It really sucks.

We could tell she was depressed, but just making the best of a bad situation.  I'm hoping that when my dad comes through here on the way to visit I can give him an easy (big button) CD player so she can listen to books on CD.  Her eyes aren't good enough to read for any length of time anymore.  She's not interested in computers either.  Sigh.

Did I mention it sucks?

Lois with her great-grandchildren