I love when my brain is tricked into thinking my 4:30 am wakeup time is sleeping in.
I love having some daylight in the morning (but I hate the lack in the evening), when I was a morning rower this was one of my favorite features about you.
I’m sorry I resented you as a kid. I didn’t see you as an opportunity to sleep in but rather a early bedtime punishment.
Now I love having an excuse to go to bed as early as I like to. I’m adjusting you see.
Now daylight savings time, I love you and your fake additional hour in the fall.
I’m really tired as I write this. It’s 7:30 pm after my first day of waking up at 4:30 am to get to my new job. A new job that takes me down to Massachusetts. A new job that is a one hour commute when traffic is good.
The first few days, traffic was not good. And I didn’t want to waste an extra hour a day living in my car. So I made the conscious decision, get to work by 6 am, miss the traffic jam that starts by 6:45 am. So after a few months of sleeping in, I am returning to a schedule I promised I would never follow again. The 4:30 am wake-up call of a rower.
Perhaps waking that early has its advantages?
The new job is closer to the university where I take Master’s degree coursework, so I will hopefully be able to hammer out the classes I need faster. A disadvantage of this, I will be tired, very tired.
I will probably also need a new car at some point soon. I’ll probably be putting 600 miles a week on my current Subaru Outback, a car with 170,000+ miles already.
Speaking of my poor car, last night I decided to go to Target. So I got off the busy highway and took the side road to get to Target without going through major intersections. As I drove on the side road my car suddenly died. It died right in front of the only auto repair shop on that side road. The mechanics were able to repair the car on the spot and I was out of there an hour and a half later.
But I was lucky. Lucky that I got out of work a little early that day so there was less traffic on the way home and that the shop had time before they closed. Lucky that I was on the side road not the highway. And lucky that my car chose to die in front of a very helpful auto shop. Things work out sometimes.
Sometimes when I step away from this blog I find it hard to come back. It’s not a lack of topics, it’s an overwhelming amount of topics. Over the last few months I have:
Been to Colorado for the first time
Raced in Quebec City and visited the area
Gone to several of Adam’s running races
Done tons of stuff with Cooper
Been frustrated with unemployment
Learned a ton about couponing
But I have not been finding the time to share here as I have on Plastics and the planet. I may cheat on some posts and make them more of an almost wordless feel, but I want to share again. Especially because people start to ask me how Cooper is looking lately.
He is looking shaggy and is in constant motion. During one of the weeks I was not posting my hubby took him for a 36 mile run. Cooper came home and wanted to play frisbee.
You know how weather tends to ruin outdoor events. I didn’t think it would happen this Saturday. The sky was clear, the wind was calm, I thought it was a perfect day to drive out to the Pittsfield Balloon Rally. I was excited to see a dozen hot air balloons lift up into the sky. I was going to take great pictures!
But I arrived to find that The Rally was most likely not to happen. The wind was perfect, it was only about 1 mph. Only problem was, it was in the very wrong direction. The wind would carry the hot air balloons directly into a small but very wooden mountain.
They did launch a balloon called the Irish Rover.
But then they decided that it was too risky and just tethered the ReMax Balloon so that spectators could be given rides at $10 a head.
The ride was so popular that they inflated my favorite Balloon of the evening, Wild Ride. It had silhouettes of Giraffes and elephants on it. And it was just a really pretty hot air balloon.
The hot air balloon festival is an important fundraiser for the Rotary club and it certainly attracts a crowd. I couldn’t get over the commercial aspects of the festival. Complete with greasy food vendors (major tummy ache from the fried dough) and a small midway section.
The commercial aspect of the festival bothered me a little. I wish it could have been a family event with the focus mostly on the hot air balloons. I didn’t mind the craft fair, or the rotary club booths, but I hate to see teenagers spending money they should be saving for college on overpriced oversized stuffed animals for their girlfriends. Goodness I sound old.
When I get inspired to blog and have great posts all lined up, my computers seem to kick the bucket. Last time my Dell stopped working, my dad gave me his old laptop so I could still type (ok it was for homework not for blogging but who is counting). Now that laptop seems to be refusing to power up.
And while the Dell works for browsing, typing on it is difficult. I have no space or backspace key.
I’m trying to figure out what happened to my dad’s old Compaq Evo 610c. My previous laptop happened to be of the same model and died of the same fate. I also happened to still be in my closet.
Because I’m broke and because I’m a nerd, I spent a good part of the day disassembling the laptop trying to find a failure point. No such luck.
In the meantime I’m posting this from my cell phone. I’m sure I’ll do more nerdy investigations tommorrow.
I love listening to audiobooks that I download from our local library. The library has a huge selection of books available. I often pick young adult and children books because the drama is usually less intense and they are often shorter quicker reads.
Another aspect I love about Young Adult books is that they are often written as a series. When you fall in love with the characters you get to continue following their stories.
Everyone who has not been hiding under a rock has heard about the Twilight Series. But here are a few of my favorite book series. Some are more successful than others.
Percy Jackson is a demi-god and discovers this fact in the first book when strange things start happening. He realizes that the Greek Gods are real and that they are alive and well. He gets drawn into their world just like the original Perseus did.
It may be a book about adventure and history, but it is also a book about a bunch of misfit children who find friendship and their way in the world after a lifetime of being different.
This is a great series reminding us of the stories of Greek mythology. It is full of characters from legends of old and adventures set in modern times. For example, God of War Ares is a leather wearing motorcycle tough guy.
Start with: Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief Books currently in Series: 5 (4 companion books)
Mary is a teenage girl living in a Post Apocalyptic World. She lives in a fenced in colony surrounded by a mob of Zombies. She longs for a world where she can be free.
This is also an epic story of a love quadrangle with two best friends fighting over two brothers. Move over Twilight, these kids know how to long for each other.
Written beautifully I’ve only read the first book of the series. But I look forward to reading The Death Tossed Waves as soon as it becomes available.
It does deal with some more mature aspects of life (love, death, marriage), so I would recommend the series to older teens and adults.
Start with: The Forest of Hands and Teeth Books in Series: 2 (3rd releasing March 2011)
Cammie Morgan is what is a known as a pavement artist. It’s a spy term for someone who blends in so well to a crowd that no one notices them. Why would a teenage girl be described in Spy terms? Because she attends an elite school for young girls who will become the worlds most advanced Spies.
I have to admit, I fell in love with the first book I’d tell you I love you, but then I would have to kill you the moment I picked it up. The story is engaging, captivating and not at all believable. It has it’s fair share of humor and I adore Cammie and her classmates. This is book that was meant to be put on the big screen for kids to enjoy.
I would encourage this book to middle school girls. To show them that being smart can get you places when you get older.
Start with: I’d tell you I love you, but then I would have to kill you Books currently in Series: 4
As a young child, living the the greater Toronto Area, I decided to go sledding on the snowbanks by my tiny suburban driveway before school one morning. The snowbank was steep and I smashed my face into the driveway. I cracked my brand new front tooth diagonally, starting a drama that has recently had another chapter.
But this new chapter gave me a glimpse at some amazing technology. Over 10 years ago I had the tooth crowned (without root canal).
On Friday afternoon, I bit into an ice cream sandwich and found my crown in my mouth. I looked like a hillbilly. It was awful. I’m currently looking for employment and I couldn’t exactly go to an interview with a single front tooth. If you want a picture of the hilarity I placed a picture on flickr here.
I called my dentist’s office (The same place that told me not to worry about it when I still had dental insurance) to find that their office isn’t open on Fridays.
So I went next door to the Amoskeag Urgent Dental Clinic. I was amazed by some of the technology now available to make crowns.
Last time I had a crown made, I went into the dentist’s office and he took tooth impressions, shaved down my tooth stump, tooth a tooth stump impression and made a temporary. When the Crown came back from the lab we took off the temporary crown to find that my crown didn’t fit correctly. A new temporary had to be created while we waited for the lab to create a crown that didn’t look ridiculous.
The process was much more streamlined in Dr. Adam Salem’s office. My crown was created in office while I waited. And understood my nerdy nature enough that he asked the technician to explain to me how they were making my new tooth.
Step 1: Yep, tooth impressions. They took a tooth impression of the broken crown stuck back together. Then Dr. Salem removed the rest of the original crown and we took a tooth impression of the tooth stub.
Step 2: The tooth impressions are scanned into a CAD software and the technician smooths out the scan and fixes places that would interfere.
It’s amazing how much a computer software can make a difference.
Step 3: The crown design is sent to a rapid machining machine that is small enough to be on the dentist’s benchtop. A small block of the desired tooth color is placed in the machine and the computer program does the rest.
The tooth took about 25 minutes to fabricate. I guess it’s longer than usual, but it gave me a chance to talk to Dr. Salem in french.
Step 4: Prepared tooth is fit tested.
Step 5: The crown is additionally coloured with paints and glazed. Glaze is then cured in this little machine.
Step 6: The Crown is installed.
Except I didn’t make it to step 6. Dr. Salem was not satisfied with the tooth colour, and it was late on a Friday afternoon. He wanted to make a new tooth with a different base colour. He glued the crown down with temporary glue and sent me on my way. I wasn’t supposed to return until Wednesday or so.
But my luck with that tooth has never been great.
I found myself back at Dr. Salem’s on Saturday morning. The temporary glue was a little too temporary and the crown came out overnight. He gave me a temporary crown and sent my fabricated crown out to a lab for professional painting.
Overall, it sucks to have to deal with dental work when we don’t have the money to waste, but it was very interesting to this little engineering nerd to see some of the new dental capabilities thanks to new technologies.
I would also recommend the Amoskeag Urgent Care Dental clinic if you ever find yourself in a bind. Everyone was super friendly. I really liked Dr. Salem and his technicians. His receptionist is exceptional, I really felt like she understood my problem.
As a freckled skin, heat sensitive person I’m not generally a summer person. I chose to stay in an area that gets snow because I like the cold. But there are some things I love about summer in New Hampshire (although I’m sure I could get the same things in plenty of places).
The availability of fresh berries right off the bush in my yard (and a poodle that steals said berries from the bush)
Flowers after months of bleak.
Farmer’s Markets full of fresh veggies. Especially veggies I’m not familiar with. Ready for experimentation.
Summer evening skies although I grew up on the other side of the same time zone and the sun sets almost an hour later over there.
And last but not least swimming in little lakes and ponds. (I just wish the most local ones were not part of Manchester’s water supply)
Women’s Rowing as an NCAA sport was created to help meet the requirements of title 9. Many schools added programs to help compensate for the vast amounts of money being poured into the football programs.
So when places with huge expensive football programs like Texas – Austin and University of Miami came a courting I should have been interested. But I couldn’t imagine living somewhere THAT warm.
And this weekend reminded me why I chose not to live in Southern States. I was miserable in the heat and lack of air conditioning.
With temperatures reaching 95F (not including humidity), even the hydrangea bush was wilting away.
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