Crafty Sea Lion Befuddles Fish Biologists

What a fantastic headline. I love crafty critters - though so deserving of such a better name then C404. I think we should call him Hank.

Hank the Crafy Sea Lion Befuddles Fish Biologists. -- How do you like dem apples?


Crafty Sea Lion Befuddles Fish Biologists

No Metering Lights Required

Some food for thought. Now if only they would construct the Bay Bridge so that the bike lane will get you farther than halfway across the bay.

"It takes two lanes of a given size to move 40,000 people acrossa bridge in one hour by using modern trains, four to move themby buses, twelve to move them in their cars, and only one lanefor them to pedal across using bicycles."-- Ivan Illich, "Energy and Equity," 1973

Note: This does not account for "Blazing Saddles" riders that stop with their bikes in a horizontal position across the aforementioned lane.

Top 10 Quotes from our Landlord

So having recently moved, I have also acquired a new landlord. Now, the old landlord was a bit sketchy, and deserves a page all to himself. This one suffers from either a)personality disorder or b) jackass disorder. Here is a sample:

10 Top Quotes from our New Landlord (predominantly prior to move in)


1. "Don't talk, Don't try to do the thinking for me! I do the thinking!"
2. " If you keep talking I'm just going to hang up on you!"
3. "You're wasting my time"
4. "I'm having a shitty week and you're just adding to it. Stop Thinking! I do the thinking here!”
5. “Let’s not start a legal battle here!” (When asking for the garage door opener)
6. “I don’t want to be put in the crossfire!”
7. “I can’t put the painters in the crossfire!”
8. “You’re asking to be put in the crossfire!” (All in regards to asking to move our couch into our vacant unit 3 days early)
9. “I need to be there. Two sets of eyes are better than one - And by that I mean my eyes are better than yours. You won’t know if the car fits in the spot or not. You need my eyes!”
10. “Are you sure your roommates know the meaning of “mandatory?”
11. Bonus: “Do you think Melanie will be able to handle screwing in the lightbulb? I helped her screw in the lightbulb the other day. I think she got the hang of it.”

Only 86 days away!

Only 86 days until Summer Solstice everyone! Get your Summer Solstice Celebration dances ready!

Soundtrack

So the other day I got a phone message from an old friend of mine - Kate, who is the bomb. And it was one of those where I was listening to the message and laughing so hard that my roommates in the other room had to inquire what in the world I was doing by myself that was so funny. I had a smile plastered to my face for the next hour I think. And I still get a smile when I think of her message. These are things you want to make a soundtrack of life with, ya know? You have got to keep the quality people of life in the pocket at all times.

A New Hobby

So after 3.5 years I am moving out of my apartment, a sad day. My choice, and and I am stoked about the new place, but the end of an era if you will. But I digress. I wanted to share with you what should be everybody's pasttime. Posting to Craigslist. And I don't mean to sell concert tickets, throw your resume up there, or even under the Rants section.

Put your apartment up there (you don't need to tell them this is an experiment), make sure you make it decently cheap so that you get a lot of responses. It is AMAZING what people write back. You could do a whole psychology experiment in what people choose to disclose about themselves and their methods of getting them to contact you. Really. If I had not gotten so many responses so quickly, forcing me to take down the ad, since I did actually need to find someone, it is all I would have done last week. I think if I go back to school for psycholgy, I will definately have to do my thesis on this.

A Happy Place

So my friend/co-worker commented the other day that the bike shop seems to be my happy place. In fact, it was less like a comment and more stated as accepted fact -- so off the cuff, along the lines of "You have the bike shop, I need to find a happy place."

At first, I was a little put off, thinking that it sounds like a positive spin on Bike Shop Groupie. Not a huge fan of that spin. But maybe I should embrace it - and its true. I like learning about bikes, and being around bikes, being around people talking about bikes, and hell, bike shop guys are generally pretty cool, so isn't a bike shop a better happy place then, say a local bar? And more productive? Well, granted the productive argument could be up for debate given your learning curve of bike mechanic skills . But if, for example, you hurt your knee, and lose that quality one on one time with your riding partner ("Jake" in my case), working on bikes fills as a nice substitute perhaps.