nekosensei

The brakes on my bike are squealing again. Earlier in the season, I took my bike to a bicycle repair shop, and they did a tune up of the brakes. The problem disappeared for awhile, but started resurfacing again the last time I went out on my bike several days ago and got even worse during today's ride. I did notice that the brakes started squealing while I was on the bike path. Do you suppose that it's dust and gravel that's pissing them off? Other than the noise, they appear to be working fine.

Any thoughts? What should I do?

Also, for the record, I haven't taken my bike out very much this summer until just recently. I've probably gone out on it five times maybe.

* Yesterday afternoon, doomsey and I went to see the play, "The Sins of Sor Juana," at the Goodman Theater. My in-laws really liked the play and told me that I was going to enjoy it, but neither doomsey nor I were very impressed. I think part of the problem is that I'm familiar with her history and her writings and I didn't feel as if the play really did her any justice.

* After the play, doomsey and I went down to 79th Street to get dinner at Yassa, a Sengalese restaurant. I ordered what I always get when I go there: Maffe. Yes...it is that good that I only order that and nothing else when I go there. *drools at the thought of eating her leftovers Wednesday night*

* My crappy neck muscles have been triggering more headaches / migraines. I had another one last night and wasn't able to go out on my walk.

* This evening I went for my usual walk and saw what I thought were three squirrels climbing a tree. The thing is, they were a little bit too big to be squirrels. I turned on my little flashlight-- great for avoiding skunks and getting hit by cars in general-- and saw three young raccoons blinking down at me. So cute! Too bad I didn't have a decent camera.

* Speaking of walks, I'm down between 15 and 20 pounds thanks to all the exercise I've been getting. Whee!

Reposting this here because Twitpic is being flaky:

Cosette likes to sit with her paws crossed, just like a little lady...

( Cut for image )

Link:
Here's an article on how the Cajuns living near the Gulf have been affected by the oil spill. Very sad. (Link via rm)

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

Lately, I've been taking my three to four mile walk at night because it's too frigging hot out during the day. The only problem with that plan? Skunks. For some reason, this neighborhood has a lot of skunks. And this evening I damn near got skunked. This is the third frigging time! Of course, it didn't helped that this thing came out at me from the shadow of a tree...and I was being blinded by the lights of an oncoming car at the time so I didn't see him until I was damn near on top of him.

So anyhow, I see a black shadow come out from by the tree and pass within inches of my right leg and cross the sidewalk behind me. Um...why did it come towards me? You'd think that it'd either hear me or see me coming and hide. As soon as it passes me, I let out a startled gasp. I turn around (and I'm still moving because there's no way in hell I'm gonna stop!) and I see it standing on the sidewalk behind me all puffed up. And I could have sworn that it hissed at me too. The little shit.

Well, if I show up to work one day smelling of skunk, everybody'll know why...

[Edited to add: I think I'm going to have to be more careful on that stretch of road. It doesn't have any street lights].

I've also posted this question to Twitter.

On my daily walk, I keep passing a very beautiful tree whose leaves are green on top and silver on the bottom. The leaves are also slightly curvy, giving the tree an almost scalloped look. Today, I grabbed one of the leaves and took a picture of it when I got home. I've been admiring this tree for months, but still have no idea what kind of tree it is. Any tree huggers out there who have any idea what this is?

Here are the pictures:
Picture 1
Picture 2

Maybe I should have whipped out my iPhone and taken a picture of the tree itself, huh?

I've been a bad nekosensei and haven't posted in almost a week. Sorry! My bad!

So...what have I been doing this past week? On Sunday, doomsey and I went to art in the park. We didn't buy anything this time around, but we did pick up some cards from a few artists we liked. Maybe we'll buy from them later this year. I really like this artist, and this one...and also this one.

Sunday evening, judygs, forestdruid, and his fiancee came over to watch the latest Doctor Who episode. forestdruid came to my house bearing various tomato, eggplant, and pepper seedlings, which I planted in my vegetable garden on Monday afternoon. I also did a bunch of weeding that day.

Tuesday and Wednesday were busy with work work and school work. Thursday I bought poblano pepper and acorn squash seedlings. I also got some cilantro and basil plants. Mmmm....cilantro...me loves the smell of cilantro. Future plans for my yard are adding more wood chips to the flower beds, planting a Japanese maple (which I've been meaning to do for years), and buying a hammock. Of course, I'm half tempted to hold off on the wood chips this year because they're going to replace the water mains on our street and they're probably going to have to rip up part of our front yard. I guess I'm going to have to see what the city is planning to do before I start working on that.

I've also gotten back into my old habit of walking three miles a day. And the past three days I've walked about three-and-a-half miles. I used to do a lot of walking in 2008, but stopped at the end of the year and eventually fell out of the habit. Seriously, you people need to yell at me if I stop going for my walks because they're so helpful: I have a lot more energy and I don't get the munchies quite as much when I'm exercising.

I've been reading LJ sporadically, so if I missed something, sorry! If there's anything you think I should know, please send me a comment.

Amusing Links:

Quantum Honeybees: How could bees of little brain come up with anything as complex as a dance language? The answer could lie not in biology but in six-dimensional math and the bizarre world of quantum mechanics. (Swiped from doomsey)

Lord Jesus Christ suffers minor injuries in downtown Northampton crosswalk mishap -- Uy...what were this guy's parents thinking? If I were him, I'd change my name STAT! (Swiped from bottledgoose)

* I had a good time at a friend's baby shower this afternoon, as I got to sit and chat with many of my friends. Towards the end of the day, I ended up sitting at a table with a bunch of other friends who have health problems. Someone pointed out that most of the people sitting at that table were defective in one way or the other. The one older lady at the table remarked that she felt so young compared to some of us....

* At the baby shower, we got playing cards as party favors. Instead of diamonds, clubs, hearts and spades, the suite had rubber duckies, baby carriages, pacifiers, and rocking horses. I made an ESP joke and asked one of my friends what card I was holding up: it was the three of pacifiers, and obviously my friend got it wrong. Then, she asked, "but is the three of pacifiers a pacifist?" *snicker*

Yeah...I guess you just had to be there.

* The weather was gorgeous so I went for a three mile walk after I got home from the baby shower. doomsey didn't come with this time because he had walked to the library--a four mile hike both ways-- while I was at the shower. When I got back, doomsey made dinner and then we watched a four hour Japanese film called "Love Exposure." It was one weird ass film, and I'm not sure whether I liked it or not. The plot seemed kind of disorganized and four hours of that was a bit too much for me. On the other hand, the movie was humorous at times and often poked fun at itself. Also, the outlandishness of many scenes reminded doomsey and I of "Kill Bill."

The server holding my email is down, so I probably won't be able to read any of my emails until tomorrow morning at the earliest. What a pain in the ass! Let's hope that the computer it's on just needs re-started and that it doesn't need any other work. Otherwise, I will be email-less for a couple of days.

This morning I studied for German class. Then, in the afternoon fuzzyscribble and samcallahan showed up so that doomsey could help fuzzyscribble with her computer. It turned out that the poor computer died a horrible death. Fortunately, doomsey was able to pull off all the data that she needed. fuzzyscribble and samcallahan also brought their dog, Re-run, who is a Beagle Coon Hound mix. He's an adorable dog. Anyhow, they put him on a tie-down in the backyard so he wouldn't traumatize my cats too much. Don't worry! He wasn't neglected for too long. samcallahan and I sat outside with him for a while while doomsey and fuzzyscribble worked on the computer.

I also got some time today to do some reading, go for a walk with doomsey, and knit. I am four rows from being finished with the hat I'm making for doomsey! Aside from the computer server blowing up, it was a pleasant day.

As I may have mentioned earlier, doomsey and I went to Seattle on Thursday and came back yesterday afternoon. On Friday, a bunch of us went to Mount Rainier and hiked all the way to Comet Falls. Our friend, Kumar, found the hike in a book of hikes for kids. He saw that it was a 1.8 mile hike and thought it was doable for us and his family. Um...no. First, it was 1.8 miles uphill. Second, the ground was wet, and it was quite treacherous going downhill. I'm pretty damn lucky that I didn't end up skidding off the trail, down the mountain, and into the rapids below. Can you say certain death? If I had known ahead of time that we were going to do this hike, I would have procured a pair of hiking boots.

I also discovered this weekend that I'm better at high altitude hikes than my husband. You'd think with all of my lung issues, that it would be the reverse. Of course, it didn't hurt that I was guzzling water like there was no tomorrow.

Anyhow...I thought I would share this video that I took of Comet Falls. Pretty, huh?

Aside from yesterday's freak out, the past two weekends have been fun.

Let's see. Last Saturday, doomsey, his family, and I went to see Ain't Misbehaving-- a musical revue of Thomas Wright "Fats" Waller's music-- at the Goodman Theater. It was an amazing show.

Sunday was my niece's birthday party. emygination, the kids, and I ended up swimming in the pool even though it was a tad bit cool outside. That's the day I also discovered the usefulness of Nerf guns.

On Thursday, doomsey and I took the train into the city. We hung around the Art Institute during the afternoon and in the evening, we met up with various friends at our usual meeting place in Grant Park to see the fireworks. After the fireworks, we walked to Greek Islands for dinner, where I got burned by a hot plate of saganaki and threw my fork. By the time doomsey and I got home at one-thirty to two o'clock in the morning, I was wiped. We had probably walked six or seven miles that day.

Friday was the Fourth of July party at voidness' house. During the day, C. and I went to see if it was too late for me to do Lombard Idol at the Taste of Lombard fest. It turns out that you had to audition back in June. I promised C. that I would definitely look into doing it next year. That evening, we saw more fireworks, followed by another private fireworks display *cough cough* in a friend's backyard. By the way, there's a firework out there called "The Big Mother" which I hear was only purchased for twenty dollars. It turned out to be quite impressive. I got to cross the state line and get my hot little hands on it next year.

Saturday, judygs, bmtstandard, and emygination went to Ren Faire. I would have liked to have gone, but I was too beat from events on Thursday and Friday. I also had work that I needed to get done.

Yesterday, I met up with my parents, my sister, and my niece, E. I'm surprised by how big E. is getting. She's walking much more confidently now and she's saying a lot of words. She's very vocal for her age and she loves books. I have a feeling that she's going to be one smart cookie when she gets older.

Yesterday was pretty busy. In the morning, I waited for the heating and air conditioning guy to come out to clean the air conditioner and try to figure out what was wrong with the furnace. This winter, the furnace had a tendency to click (it stopped and started) numerous times before turning on and staying on for good. We had the home warranty people out to look at it earlier, and they cleaned the flame sensor and, when that didn't work, they replaced it. However, that never seemed to fix the problem. The warranty people have a reputation for being incompetent so we had the guy we usually hire to clean the furnace look at it while he was out. It turns out that it was just a broken connector, a very inexpensive part. He put on a new one, tested the furnace a bunch of times, and it worked after that. I'm still amazed that the warranty people never caught that.

I wonder if doomsey and I are going to renew our home warranty again next year. Since we've had it, it just seems like a waste of time and money. The people they send out are usually very incompetent and they never do fix the problem. The plumber the sent us to fix a broken pump about a year and a half ago was a real piece of work. The motor was on the fritz, so he ordered a new motor to replace it. Since he couldn't find a quarter horse power motor to replace it, he got a half horse power one. It turned out that the new motor was too big for the container. The really stupid thing was that he never tested anything before he left to make sure that it worked. In fact, when I was there, he got a phone call from his office saying that he had to go back to a house that he had been at earlier that day because the tub he had "fixed" wasn't working. I should have taken that as the warning sign it was, but I didn't. After he left, I did a load of laundry only to find that the floor was wet. The pump was not working. It turns out that the motor was a bit too big and that it was hitting the top of its container, so it never turned on. The guy told me that he was going to try to find the correct sized motor for it, but he never got back to me. When I tried calling him, he never answered my phone calls. Finally, I got in touch with his supervisor. It turned out that he hadn't shown up to work for a week and they were "worried about him." I kind of suspected that he went on a bender or something. In fact, they never did find the correct part. I kept calling the plumber, but they never got back to me or they told me that they were still looking for it. doomsey ended up fixing the pump himself. Thankfully, the plumbers never cashed the check that we sent them.

Let's see. What else did I do yesterday? I went for a three and a half mile walk and then I did some weeding in the garden. By the way, listening to music and audio books while walking and doing outside work makes the time go faster. It's really pleasant actually. I'm really enjoying the Neil Gaiman book I'm listening to now. And an added bonus...I stepped on the scale this morning and noticed that I had lost a little bit more weight.

The squirrel people are at my house again this morning. They removed the trap from my roof and they're spraying Sporacin in the attic to disinfect it. I tried telling doomsey this earlier, but I think he was too busy to notice or respond (he's incredibly busy at work this week because of some big deadlines), but there were two squirrels in the trap. Unfortunately, one didn't make it. The squirrel guy thinks it was the second squirrel that was trapped. It ended up dying because the first one ate all of the food. He warned me before I looked at it because he said that it sometimes makes some customers upset. I wasn't really. Such is life. They couldn't come out any sooner and we weren't comfortable going up there by ourselves.