Puddle Jumping in DCI was thinking about that as I was playing in traffic riding home this evening while the rain got harder and harder. Being out in the weather can be really invigorating; it makes you realize how lucky you are to be alive, how very amazing nature is, and how little control we have over so many things (how very Zen).
I was having so much fun tonight that it was a challenge to make myself pay attention to all of the things** you have to pay attention to while biking in DC if you'd like to stay alive. I guess I have mentioned
Watch for the new blog theme. |
 Photo by CNN. Now tell me that doesn't look fun? |
* Safety first, of course.
** Moving cars, parked cars, drivers in cars, pedestrians, other bikes, traffic lights, dogs, holes, bumps, stray objects, the occasional heavy thing swinging overhead on a crane . . . .
I think it might be time to rebrand the blog. I've struggled with the Why blog? question off and on - burning desire to post cute pictures? share my witty remarks? express outrage? habit?
When I first started this, I had just adopted Little Miss Cuteness (a.k.a. Bug, left) and was an avid reader of the Finster F-log. In the beginning, most of the entries were about Bug. However, there's a major flaw in a blog about Bug - she has a pretty simple life and doesn't say much that's quotable (there are peeps of happiness, peeps of contentedness, peeps of eating euphoria, peeps of irritation, peeps of "yer not skritching the right spot", peeps of "hey, where'd you go?", and peeps of "let me out", there are also some grunts that have similar meanings).
The F-log has bunches of finches and the Master of the Universe (a.k.a. Peanut). I, on the other hand, have political and issue content, the occasional home renovation, and miscellaneous life observations . . and, apparently, and identity crisis. So, out of 192 entries, only 58 of them are about Bug (I didn't count, the script counts entries by category).
So, if Bug Blog doesn't really reflect the blog, what does? Discuss.
Or at least sleep habits.
Can somebody tell me what I was doing reading Slate Magazine at midnight on a Wednesday?
Slate covers the proper shipping of legless reptiles.
It may not be for everyone, but I'm really enjoying Blogging the Bible on Slate. [Warning: Irreverence ahead.]
"9:9-17. God announces His first covenant with man, that He will never again destroy the earth with a flood. He doesn't rule out other catastrophes. (God, apparently, is the opposite of an insurance company. He offers flood protection, but no other coverage.)" - David Plotz, Abraham vs. God
Sadly, he only seems to get as far as the end of Genesis by June 1. No sign he'll keep going.
ed. note (Aug. 26): I misunderstood the links which are divided by book. On to Exodus. . .
It's hard to really complain about my pants problem . . . but they're noticeably too big again (I know, it's rough) and my office building is kept so cold that always wearing skirts isn't practical. So, I trekked off to the thrift store again and I have to say
capri cut pants have revolutionized thrift shopping for the short person!
It used to be that I'd find so few "short" and "petite" pants on the rack that I'd end up buying regular pants promising that I'd trim and hem them, but never would so the pants shortage would remain - it would, in fact, be worse since I'd own more pants that didn't fit after I shopping than before. Now instead of only dejectedly going through the regular pants looking for the elusive "S" or "P" label, I can shop in the capri section too.
I know this doesn't sound all that momentous but, if you too have searched for thirft pants for the short person, you know that it is.
This picture: 
of Bug chasing my pen and generally being adorable is the #2 search result for "parrotlet" on Yahoo Image Search. Cool. Her rank isn't moving up at all on the Google image search though. What's up with that? If you search for "parrotlet, Bug", she's all over the place, but that seems like cheating.
Given that this picture: 
is #21 when searching Google for Jen Mueller and there's no chance you'ld get me at all if instead of my name you searched for "woman" or "human", Bug's fame on species search is that much more impressive. Oh well, she's definitely cuter.
So we're settling into a post-travel routine. Mac is off at a dance workshop in Maine for the next week which gave me some time this afternoon to finally post photos. (And completely demolish rearrange the bedroom.)
My initial edit to 220 balloned to 344 (12 pages of photos) once I added Alex's pictures and Mac's special requests. Have Fun!
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Just a sample of a few of the new images.
More than a week after getting back, how can I be so busy that I haven’t updated the blog? What have I been doing?
Sleeping. Between jet lag and picking up a cold/stomach bug in the final week of our trip, I didn’t manage to stay up past ~7pm until last Thursday.
Rescuing Bug from herself. The poor thing spent 6 weeks first in a house with 3 big conures and then one little cockatiel and managed not to get eaten or otherwise perish, then, she’s home for three days and gets her neck tangled up in the little tent in her cage for several hours (which could have ended really badly but thankfully didn’t) and now has bruised vocal cords. She’s recovering and the tent has been trimmed of all loose threads and will be inspected more often in the future. Her peeps are returning to normal.
So, we drank a lot of bottled water in China. No one drinks the tap water straight – most of the locals boil it and fill their travel bottles with tea, which wasn’t practical for us – and bottled water consumption is on the rise in China. According to the Earth Policy Institute, sales increased by 250% between 1999 and 2004.
Here in the U.S., where we have some of the safest municipal water in the world, consumption of bottled water nearly doubled (from 4.7 billion gallons to 7.3 billion gallons per year) between 2000 and 2005. Most of this (40%), of course, is merely filtered tap water poured into bottles that probably don’t get recycled (only 35% are) and marked up about 100,000% (16 oz of tap water costs about 1/10th of 1 cent). Not only that, designer water with even bigger markups is becoming more popular – bottled water for dogs, bottled water that gives you a tan, and bottled water than transmits love (left) are just a few of the stupid waters on the market.
The ourtrage is twofold: 1) none of this water is required to meet the same standards as tap water so there is no guarantee that bottled is better or even as good as tap water and, 2) just half of the $100 billion that consumers spend on bottled water annually could be enough to provide world wide access to clean, drinkable water.
For more, check out Food & Water Watch’s bottled water page and/or sign up for the Aquabits newsletter.