At the risk of sounding like a real whiner, I have to say it was hot yesterday. According to the Weather Channel, it hit 91 degrees.
It was too hot for a motorcycle ride. For me anyway. Because I hate being hot. The air may have “only” been 91 degrees, but it felt hotter inside my helmet.
My head was sweating. I HATE that.
Maybe later in the year 91 degrees won’t feel so bad. Maybe by then we’ll have had time to acclimate slowly to the increasingly warmer temperatures. But when the HIGH swings 40 degrees in mere days, from 50 to 90, temperatures in the 90s feel damn hot.
Speaking of damn hot… it appears my post about my ass-less leather chaps was quite popular. So popular, in fact, that I felt a follow-up was in order.
Unfortunately, it was too hot to wear them yesterday while riding. But I know y’all are just dying to see what they look like, right?
Oh come on and just admit it.
Go ahead and say, “I’ve got to see what this idiot looks like in these ass-less leather chaps she keeps prattling on and on about.”
Periodically, I do poke fun at people on my blog. I try no to be too mean about it. And I poke fun at myself sometimes, too.
Like now, when I reveal the pics I took of myself yesterday. The pics I took actually wearing my fancy new chaps…
And you thought "hot" was referring to temperatures!
You may notice the dogs in these shots. That’s not because I wanted them there, it’s because I can’t do anything without my girls by my side.
See? They really are ass-less!
They are called assless for a reason. Now, at the risk of looking slightly pornographic and extremely silly, I just could NOT resist this shot…
Lovely' eh? This is why I need a wide motorcycle seat.
Also, just for you, I assembled all three pics into one nice little collection…
One Not-So-Hot ToadMama
I may not be afraid to poke fun at myself, but you may have noticed the size of these pics. The resolution is low so that, if anyone decides to plaster these lovely images anywhere for the entire world to see, they won’t be life-size shots.
Recently, a self-proclaimed left-brained photographer left a comment right here on this very blog. Which is awesome. I love getting comments from new readers. Anyway…
Me being me (I am afflicted with CRS syndrome), I couldn’t remember if left-brained is more analytical or more creative. I was headed to the kitchen for some pretzel nuggets, i.e., lunch, so I popped in to ask Hubby.
“Do you remember…” I began, “which side of the brain is analytical and which is creative? You know, like what kind of person is right-brained or left-brained?”
He sort of rolled his eyes, sighed theatrically (after 17 years he is completely used to me asking weird questions) and said, “I don’t know which one is left-brained and which one is right-brained. All I know is that no brained is called a Terry.”
It’s a good thing I wasn’t already eating a pretzel nugget, I may have choked at that one. Yeah, it was a little mean. But it was also pretty funny (and appropriate).
In all honesty, I wasn’t going to share that little gem of a story here on the Blog. But it slipped. (Here’s a link in case I got you wondering about the left brain/right brain thing.)
Every now and then, Hubby comes up with some pretty good stuff.
Like one year after Thanksgiving. It’s typically my job to decorate for Christmas and his job to box everything up post-holiday. He’s very careful and neat, too. After I’d taken my snowman cookie jar out of its box and carefully removed it from its plastic bag, I found a hand-written note that said something like, “Help me! I can’t breathe!”
Okay, that wasn’t hilarious, but it struck me pretty funny at the time.
This next story is funnier…
If you read my blog a few posts ago where I mentioned our upcoming motorcycle tour, you know I had to buy a pair of leather chaps. I’ve been wanting some for a while. They help keep you warm AND are safer for motorcycle riding. But I just hadn’t taken the plunge.
There’s a joke in our family about these things. At Christmas a few years back, Hubby was pretty excited when he received a pair as a gift. Shannon’s ex, Daniel, found it hysterical that Hubby had gotten ass-less leather chaps for Christmas and was happy about it. That’s because Daniel was picturing this sort of man in ass-less chaps.
Ever since then, we never just call them chaps. How boring! We always call them “ass-less leather chaps.” And yes, once I’d placed the order for a pair of my own, I was pretty excited.
Every day this week, I’ve been asking, “Did Fed-Ex come yet?” The answer was always no.
Finally, today, while I was on a phone call, they arrived. Hubby was kind enough to collect the box from the Fed-Ex dude. He even delivered it to me in my office and put it face down on my lap.
The Long-awaited Package
“Oh, look. The box says stuff like ‘leather’ and ‘hawk’ and ‘outlaw’,” I said. I have a biker image to uphold you know.
Then I turned the box over.
Check Out the Hand-written Message
Now THAT was funny.
I was going to share a picture of me wearing them (I HAD to try them on), but they looked really dorky over my baby-blue flannel PJs…
According to the Hampshire Review, the local newspaper that serves the area around our WV place, the stand of Eastern Redbud trees along Route 50 I spoke of the other day is a national treasure. The reporter, who actually did some fact-checking with the WV Department of Highways (WVDOH), says the trees were not planted for a purpose. They occur there naturally. Which makes it even more special in my book.
The blooms don’t last long. If you’re up for a drive this weekend, head for Hanging Rock, West Virginia. It’s on US 50 just West of Capon Bridge. At any other time of year, if you blink while driving on US 50 you just might miss Hanging Rock. But there’s no chance of that when the Redbuds are in bloom.
While you’re there, be sure to stop for fine eats at El Puente, our absolute favorite restaurant in Hampshire County. Or, even better, let us know you’ll be in the area and you can stop in for a visit. We’d love to see you!
No Fly Zone Across the UK
Did you know there was a complete closure of British airspace yesterday? A COMPLETE closure from noon to 6:00 PM. That’s huge. Check out this aerial view of Heathrow. Did you see all of the planes? Not only are there a lot of them, they are BIG planes. I have never seen so many 777s and 747s in my life as I did at Heathrow. Now look at the aerial view of Dulles Airport in Virginia. That should give you some idea as to how much traffic goes through Heathrow. And that’s just one of the UK’s major airports.
Talk About Embarrassing Husbands
And now for the Psycho Dog Man. My favorite CNN reporter, Jeanne Moos, did a story on the Psycho Dog Man that’s pretty funny. Not LMAO funny, or even LOL funny. Just odd. Apparently, he’s an Internet sensation. I’ve never heard of him. But this guy is now famous for his “absolutely spur-of-the-moment” impression of a ferocious dog. I bet his wife wishes she had a dog house to hide in…
I Live for Tight Corners
Frugal or Just Plain Stingy?
Amy and I had a discussion recently about this exact thing. She’d read this interesting article about it and asked me what I thought. She works hard and is very good at saving money to make her family’s income go further. But she wonders if she’s wrong, maybe even (gasp!) stingy. Or even a tightwad.
My answer? “Nope. You’re smart. You are working hard to stretch your finite amount of cash. Besides, you’re saving money. You’re not being stingy or refusing to share.”
I will never be rich. Being frugal (a good thing!) like Amy takes a lot of work.
No one will ever call me a tightwad or accuse me of being stingy (a bad thing!) that’s for sure. I’m not an irresponsible “loose spender,” mind you. I’m just the kind of person that has no problem sharing.
Hmmm, SHARING. It has sort of a nice ring to it. Two sweet syllables… shar-ing.
What’s that mean really? Hubby and I had a treadmill we probably paid a few hundred bucks for several years back. We’d talked in the past about selling it on Craigslist or eBay. Recently, one of Amy’s friends saw it in our basement and offered to BUY it from us. Jess is a very sweet girl. She’s been Amy’s friend for years. She’s not poor or destitute. We could probably have gotten something out of her for the treadmill, but the thought didn’t even cross our minds. It was a thing we didn’t need any more. Jess could use it, so we gave it to her. Free. No strings attached.
It really isn’t that remarkable a thing to have done. Any NORMAL person would have done the same. I wouldn’t even be mentioning it here if it weren’t the first example of sharing that came to mind.
There’s that word again. Sharing.
Oh no! Don't let it go!
Taking money from someone for an inexpensive thing you are no longer using is just wrong. It’s very self-centered. It’s the perfect example of selfishness. Of putting ones wants/needs/comforts above those of everyone else. Would it have been different if we needed the money? Say, if we were out of work and struggling to pay our bills. Maybe. But we don’t need the money. What if it were a higher-ticket item? Then it might have been different. It would be okay in that case to expect something in return, just nowhere near the original cost.
There are just some folks who seem to think hanging on to things and every sad, stinking penny, being miserly, selfish, and a tightwad is an acceptable way to be. But you know what? It isn’t acceptable. It’s sad, pathetic and just wrong.
Hypothetically speaking, let’s say you bought a blender a couple years ago for $30. It’s serviceable, but on the small side. You want a larger-capacity blender. They’ve come way down in price in recent years so you buy yourself a brand-spanking-new, bigger blender for half or even one-third the cost of the first one. Good deal!
Then someone comes along with a blender even smaller than your first one. Let’s say it’s your uncle. Uncle needs a bigger blender, too. The thing is, Uncle is older, somewhat technologically challenged, and doesn’t know much about blenders. He doesn’t know he could easily get a new blender that’s four times the size of your old one for about $15. Since he’s on a fixed income, he can’t afford to spend money blindly. So he asks you for advice.
What kind of person would say, “Hey, I just got a new blender myself. It’s probably a little bit bigger than you need. But my old blender is bigger and holds lots more than the one you have. It still works just fine, too. So I’ll sell it to you for $10.” (Making the net cost of the new blender $5, by the way.)
A cheap, stingy, thoughtless person. That’s what kind.
The right thing to do would have been to say… “Uncle, I just bought a new blender myself. It’s four times the size of my old blender. And it only cost $15. It might be way bigger than you’ll ever need, though, so you can HAVE my old blender if you like. It should be plenty big enough. Of course, if you’d rather have a new blender, which might have too much space but is really better in the long run, I’ll show you where you can get the same one I got for only $15.”
You know what I would have done? (Tight corner here I come!) It’s $15 we’re talking about. That’s about what I’d spend on a nice lunch (if I ever got out of the house).
I would’ve said, “Uncle, I just bought a great new blender that would be perfect for you. It was only $15. I’d like to buy one for you, too.”
Uncle, knowing I can easily afford that second blender would be thrilled. I’d be $15 poorer and have nothing tangible to show for my expenditure. The stingy tightwad would be $10 richer.
This is all hypothetical of course.
I just REALLY felt an overwhelming urge to say I would so much rather be poorer than CHEAP.
You know what? Sometimes it’s hard to come up with interesting things to write about.
Some days, there’s just not a whole lot going on. I mean, I could blog about how it took me two weeks to paint one small bathroom and just under four hours to paint an entire bedroom (minus the ceiling, which Hubby had already done), but that would be boring.
I could talk about the crazy way K insists on waking me up in the mornings. But without audio or video proof, you just wouldn’t appreciate the strangeness.
Of course, I could just fill this post full of random images and see if you can figure out where each was taken. But I think only Hubby would do well at that one…
Can You Name the State?
Instead, I’ll just share some fun stuff I’ve found on other blogs and/or Web sites recently, such as three fun games from the Mental Floss Web site:
The License Plate Game: I got 11 out of 15 right. Let me know how well (or poorly) you do.
The Quarter Back Game: This one was way harder for me. Surprisingly, I got 15 out of 20, which isn’t bad considering how many guesses I made. I bet my Dad would do better. He really got into the state quarter thing.
Here’s one I preformed extremely poorly on — 35%!: Spoon Candy (all about cereal).
I guess I should have told you this BEFORE giving you a link directly to the Mental Floss site AND links to three of their quizzes (they have a TON of fun quizzes)… it’s one of those sites that really sucks you in. Meaning, you’ll waste far more time there than you actually have to waste. Which is why that’s all the fun stuff I have to share for today!
Our house in West Virginia is about 150 miles from our house in Maryland. Depending on traffic, if we stop to eat and how many potty stops we have to make for the dogs and me, it’s about a three-hour drive each way. Some people would call that crazy. We’re used to it. We do, however, like to switch up the routes every now and then. We do this primarily to avoid traffic, but we both enjoy the change of scenery.
Unfortunately, we’ve never actually stopped to explore either town because the girls are always with us. Both seem like pretty nice places. We also go through Sharpsburg, Keedysville and Middletown in Maryland. On the West Virginia side, there’s Kearneysville and Leetown.
Small towns are cool. They have character.You never know what you’ll see, like this lady and her dog randomly greeting passersby through their window.
"Hello, stranger!"
Okay, maybe the lady and her dog aren’t real. But I think they are awesome. They are painted on the back of Vesta Pizza in Boonsboro at the intersection of MD-34 and US-40.
This painting technique is known as trompe-l’oeil. That’s French and essentially means “trick the eye.”
Here’s another view of the same building from a slightly wider angle.
Rear of Vesta Pizza in Boonsboro, Maryland
I don’t know when the painting was done exactly, but it’s been within the last year. The Google Maps street view stills shows the unadorned building.
Hubby told me to make sure I got the cat laying in the sun at the back door, so here it is.
Sleepy Cat
The trompe-l’oeil (pronounced “tromp-lou-e”) technique has been around since the Renaissance. If I’d paid attention during History in high school, I could probably tell you when that was.
Google trompe-l’oeil and you’ll see a very wide and interesting variety of examples, such as:
I’m not sure if you can see this next one without being a Flickr member, but we’ll try. In this picture of St. Paul’s Cathedral, you can see the trompe-l’oeil facade employed during renovation.
Sorry, I didn’t set out to make this post an art diatribe. I just wanted to share a few nice Boonsboro pictures. But the more I looked, the more I learned and the more images I discovered, which of course I had to share.
Anyway… the next time you drive through Boonsboro, don’t forget to look at the back wall of the Vesta Pizza building.
I was just checking out my YouTube videos and noticed this one only had 180 views. It is one of my favorites. That’s mainly because CeCe is in it and I can see the goofy way she used to bark when Hubby came home (her whole front end lifted with each “woof”!).
Meg is the all-time Nose Game champ, but Belle and K are learning.
