Gas

So, how about those gas prices?
Actually, I'm not bringing it up for a debate. Everyone would agree that rising gas prices are a pain in the wallet, and it seems everyone has theories abut why it's happening what and how to change it. All of that is a conversation for a different day.

That said, I saw this cartoon and I liked it. Enjoy!

If you can't laugh at yourself...

So, I had a coffee date with Suzanne this week. We had planned to meet on Thursday evening. Most weeks, I am yawning by 8pm on Thursdays. This particular Thursday, I had had a cavity filled only a few hours prior to our meeting. So, when I was getting ready to head out to Starbucks, I was already red-eyed with exhaustion and my mouth was numb on the right side. I was concentrating on whether or not I was drooling without realizing it. I'm not saying that these conditions are to blame for what happened next, I'm just setting the stage.

So I throw on a fleece and I go to the door where there is a long metal tray filled with shoes for when people walk in the door. I tend to be the member of the household who changes shoes most often, so I have many shoes in this tray. I slip on my shoes, and out the door I go to coffee.

I get there about 5 minutes early and find a table to sit and wait for Suzanne. I'm sitting in typical girl fashion: crossed legs, top foot swinging. I look down at my swinging left foot:



Upon seeing it, this is my thought: "Hmmm, that's funny... I thought I put on the grey (gray?) shoes when I left." I was even a little disappointed because the grey shoes matched what I was wearing better than the black shoe I was seeing. I almost moved on to think about something else, when I suddenly had an instant replay flash through my mind of my right foot stepping into a grey shoe just before leaving the house. Now my thought is this: "No........ Surely not...."
And despite the part of me that screams out not to look, that ignorance is bliss, I force myself to look down at my right foot. This is what I see:



I cannot begin to explain the horror, and perhaps if you had been there you might have seen the physical manifestation of my inner panic. I swear, at that moment, a neon blinking arrow popped up next to my table, pointing directly at my feet. I pulled the 'ol look-around-to-see-who-sees and to my relief, the world at that moment did not seem to care much about my shoe debacle. As it turns out, people go to Starbucks to meet with other people and drink coffee, not to shoegaze and journal about fashion accidents.

I briefly tucked one foot under my rear in an effort to hide my error, but then I just felt like a phony. I decided to suck it up and hope that the other patrons assumed it was crazy shoe day at my work.

And when I got home, I laughed till I cried.

Do you feel lucky?

Last weekend my sister had the coolest birthday party ever. She and all her guests got to fly in small airplanes for free! We have a group here at a small airport who is trying to get kids interested in flying, so they have monthly events where families can come and the pilots donate their time, their skill, and their gasoline to give as many kids as show up a free airplane ride in a small plane. I absolutely love these planes and I was recruited to take some photos of the event for the association's website (here). What I took has not been posted yet, but here are some of my favorite shots:

In return for taking pictures, I also got to fly. I rode in the yellow plane pictured above. It was awesome- we flew south over Shriever AFB, East out to goodness knows where, and back around to the airport.
The flight was quite interesting and fun, until about 5 minutes prior to landing. We had just reached a point farther east than I have ever seen, and we were flying over large green crop circles and sparse 'farms' with trailer park farmhouses. None of this evoked any fear until I turned my attention from the ground below and looked at the instrument panel. There, directly in front of my seat, silently screaming out to me "why haven't you noticed me???" was this sticker:
"STANDARD AIRCRAFT??!!"
What is not standard about it? Why is it in quotes? Nothing in this warning made me feel the least bit safe. So, despite the fact that I got to fly for free in a sweet-looking "airplane," the last 5 minutes of the ride were spent in vivid day-mares about my death on the eastern farming plains of Colorado.
But it turns out that even non-standard aircraft can fly successfully. And I lived to tell about it.

pumpkins can win contests

I know this because my pumpkin did just that. I attended a lovely fiesta called "BYOP" and there was a contest for the best carving. We were assigned teams randomly, and my partner was a nice guy named Kevin. I had not met him before, but it turns out strangers can carve pumpkins together without any problems.

This is our winner. We won silly putty and a 3-pack of Pop Rocks for our efforts (which turned out to only have 2 packs in it).


A shout out to Toby, who lent his creative ability to me by creating a template for my pumpkin. I did not use said template, mostly because it was largely incomplete and also quite nonsensical. But I still think the inspiration helped me know what not to do, and therefore contributed to the win.