My own LOLcats

This is my own version of LOLcats with my friend Whitney's cat. Maybe you'll see it on the site.

More Bruges

Ah Brugges, how we would have liked to stay. Brugges is a little piece of history with its cobblestone streets and Medieval architecture. It's a beautiful little town. Again, our goal was to drink as much beer as possible while we were in Belgium. If you are not already aware, Dan loves beer. And I love Belgian beer. So this whole stop was a win-win for both of us. We saw a sight, has some beer. Saw a sight, had some beer. Here's a little taste:



This is the oldest pub in Bruges. It has been in operation since its opening in 1515.


Here is a dog sitting on a bar stool in the bar. I don't know why this was cracking me up so much, but it was.

On to Bruges

Bruges is a lovely town. It has become quite a popular tourist destination for Europeans on "holiday." The town hasn't changed much since the 16th Century, making it like a little trip into the past.

Here's one of the windmills that surround the city:



This is the life. Sitting on a bench and looking out over a canal. I could live here...

Deck Updates

Slowly, we are making progress on our deck. It's not going to be perfect, but hopefully no one will crash through and injure themselves. That's the ultimate goal, really.

We have posts in the ground. After this picture we taken, we completed the process of framing the exterior.

You know you wanna come over and help....

On to Belgium

To continue the European vacation story, we went from Rotterdam to Brussels for one night. We were told that was all we needed to see Brussels. It's dirty, known for its high crime and didn't have much scenery. Our main goal was to find Belgium beer, chocolates and waffles. And that's what we did!

Bittersweet Parting

As you may recall from a previous post, we were fostering a dog named Sonic. He is a great guy (except for his superhuman ability to climb chainlink fencing). He is just old, which is why it was so hard to find him a home. Everyone wants a puppy. Everyone but me, that is. I am a huge advocate for adopting adult animals instead of getting a puppy or kitten, which is why we tried to find Sonic a home.

Well, it worked. Sonic is going to a new home today to meet his new friends. He will only come back if things don't work out for him there. Otherwise, he will have a new cat roommate and will make his new home feel very safe.

We will miss him. Goodbye Sonic.

Tiniest Spook You Ever Did See

Our neighbors had a baby last week, and she is about the cutest little thing. She was only 4 lbs. 10 oz. because she was early. No one anticipated that she would need a Halloween outfit, so I jumped into action on Thursday and brought them a Halloween onesie to the hospital.

Here is the tiniest spook you ever did see:

Notice the rolled up sleeves so it would fit.

Congrats Matt and Ariana!

Rotterdam, The Netherlands

On our European trip, we spent about half of our trip in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. It is the second-biggest city in The Netherlands and is the largest port city for the country. It has a unique history that I thought would bore me when I arrived. But I was pleasantly surprised.

Rotterdam was essentially destroyed in WWII. Because it served as a major port to Northern Europe, the Nazis destroyed it to control the import, export and transportation. So the city was rebuilt almost from scratch in the 20th Century. Almost all of the buildings you see in this picture were build after the war. This photo was taken from the Euromast, the tallest building in Rotterdam.


You get to sit in the "crow's nest" and spin around to see a panoramic view of the city. We took a little video so you could hear some Dutch:






Some nice German tourists took our picture and we took their picture for them:

In the giftshop of the Euromast, we found my FAVORITE souvenir of the entire trip. I didn't get these but they cracked us up so much that we had to leave we were being so obnoxious. Giant slippers that resemble classic Dutch wooden shoes.

The one on display was GINORMOUS and I could not stop myself from trying it on.

Who doesn't love Craigslist?

I love Craigslist. I buy as much stuff as I can used from Craigslist. We got our dogs off Craigslist and we sold the Mercury Grand Marquis on Craigslist. (We bought a new car--photos to come)

Now we're trying to get rid of our old scooter on Craigslist. We're not having any luck so far because it's not a high-quality name brand. It's a Chinese knock-off that has its own issues. But, we did get a good laugh when we received this query from an "interested" buyer:

"Would you trade for five large gumball machines, these cost $1000 each? They make you money."

Interesting offer, but I don't think so...

September 29, 2008

Who is Sonic? I've had some folks ask me who is this Sonic I talk about sometimes? He's a dog that we've been fostering until we/his rescuer finds him a home.

He's a great guy, but I'm not sure if we're ready to commit to having another dog full time.

If you know of anyone looking for a dog, he's great. Don't let my previous posting scare you. The fight was all Maddie's fault. It's not the first one she's been in.

We actually really like Sonic, who gets his name from the fast food restaurant where he was found digging through the dumpster. 

He's 7 to 9 years old and is a complete and total mutt.

September 29, 2008

There's nothing like an emergency trip to the vet over the weekend.

Our foster dog, Sonic, and our dog Maddie got into a big fight over the weekend where Maddie was injured. It was all over food because Maddie has some food aggression that we have to handle before this happens again. 

She had a lot of puncture wounds on her body, including her throat. She was bleeding pretty bad after the whole scene so we drove her to the closest vet to see if she needed stitches. The vet said she would be fine and put her on antibiotics.

What are some good resources for finding some help for Maddie before she gets herself into trouble again?

September 26, 2008

I got the dumbest email ever today. Someone really wrote these words. I still can't believe it.

I posted a listing on Craigslist about some leftover bricks I am giving away after finishing up our patio.

A man we shall call George responded to the posting with this:
"Hello I saw your post on Craigs List I am interested in picking up some bricks. I just have a few simple questions. What is the diameter of the bricks? I am looking for something to build a small doghouse with in the backyard. My worry about these bricks is that the diameter might be too small allowing insufficient support for the bricks to be placed on top. Also, I have designed some blueprints for the doghouse structure, maybe we could review them together and you could give me some pointers or ideas since you seem to be a brick expert. My plan seems solid but I would like to talk to you about the structure I plan on building to ensure top building quality."

First off, cubes don't have a diameter. Secondly, his dog is about to die after being cooked in a brick doghouse. Thirdly, I have become a brick expert somehow.

So, I think I can get George off of my back by telling him
"I don't think these bricks will work for your project."

He responds:
"They might be able to work for you it is only for a doghouse. If you could just get back to me with the diameter and maybe I can scan my blueprints and we can discuss the best way to construct a fundamentally sound doghouse."

Seriously, this guy has got to go. So, I point out the obvious to him:
"I'm sorry. I'm not an expert. I got these from a demo and just lined them up on the ground to make a patio. I have a few leftover. And bricks don't have a diameter. That is a circular measurement."

George did not respond.

More European vacation:

So after I took my little trip to Frankfurt, I flew to Amsterdam and met Dan at the airport. It took a while to find him since the Amsterdam airport is HUGE. It has a mall attached to it and could have its own zip code.

We finally found each other and headed straight for the train station to go to Rotterdam. Dan had been in Amsterdam for a couple of days and now we were headed to Rotterdam for his conference.

On our train trip, we saw this lovely windmill in the distance:


Our train went through Den Hagg, which is what we would call The Hague, the center of international justice and law. The bicycle parking lot that we saw from the train was great. However, it was not the biggest one we saw.

Everyone bicycles in the Netherlands. I mean everyone. There are more bicycles than people in the country. The entire country is flat and the cities are fairly compact. Everyone at every stage of life uses a bicycle as their primary means of transportation. Babies ride on their parents in a papoose (e.g. Baby Bjorn) until they can hold up their own heads. Then they transition to a little baby seat on the front or back of the bike. I loved it.

More bicycles! And no one wears helmets. They don't have to really, because cyclists have the right of way and designated bike lanes in Rotterdam.

There's a distinct hierarchy of transportation in the country, but Rotterdam in particular. First, pedestrians have the priority, then cyclists, then small motorized vehicles (scooters, etc.) then cars. Cars always stopped for pedestrians and bikes, and never got mad at them. More on that later.

September 16, 2008

How was Europe you ask?

Well, I love to procrastinate on blogging, but I'm trying to grant everyone's wish. Instead of providing a narrative of our trip (Day 1, Day 2, etc.), I will scatter some pictures around while providing some insight/observations into the life and culture of the low countries.

Dan left on August 18 and arrived in Amsterdam. He began his sight seeing there. More on Amsterdam later.

I left on August 19 after work and flew to Amsterdam through Frankfurt. I had a long-ish layover, so I decided to explore Germany for the few hours I was there.

It took me at least half an hour to figure how how to buy a subway ticket. Very few things are posted in English in Germany. This is not the case in the Netherlands, but more on that later.

So I'm in Germany and I decided to take a trip to the Römerplatz, described by Lonely Planet as "the centuries-old square that is flanked by the imposing facades of the Rathaus (town hall), Paulskirche (St Paul's church) and, of course, the mighty Dom (cathedral)."



It's pretty great to just wander around in. A lot of it has been rebuilt since the war. About the only thing left standing in this part of town after the war was the cathedral. A few pictures of the cathedral are below.

These are from the River Main.


It's really windy...As you know, I love scooters, so I couldn't help myself when I saw this huge scooter parking area in Frankfurt. Love it!


This is one of my favorites. This is proof that the "cat lady" concept exists all over the world.

September 11, 2008

The Barbie scooter is famous!

Scooter Blues

Eye-catching scooters are popping up on Nashville streets, but riders say they may as well be invisible

By Tracy Moore

published: September 11, 2008

You would think someone riding a praying mantis-like vehicle the color of a strawberry milk shake—in glaring daylight, no less—could make it through workday traffic without cheating death. Not in Nashville, where rising gas prices and the attendant popularity of pump-friendly scooters are creating all new hybrids of traffic hazards and road rage.

Last July, Jan Morrison was driving home from her job at a PR firm in Green Hills. It was 5:50 p.m. on a bright, hot summer day when she reached her East Nashville neighborhood. Cruising down Meridian Street on her blazing pink Buddy scooter at about 30 mph, she approached an intersection. She'd taken this particular route at this particular time often. The cross streets had stop signs, and having right of way made her feel safer.

When she saw a dark-green sedan approaching from the right, it appeared to be slowing down. But as she neared the intersection with every intention of sailing legally through it, she realized the car wasn't stopping. It was rolling right on through.

"I knew I had only two options," says the 27-year-old by phone. "One was to not slam on my brakes, and run directly into the driver's side door. The other was to slam on my brakes and see where it got me."

Scooters use hand brakes to slow down, and after riding for two years, Morrison knew grabbing them too hard could result in the front wheel locking up or the bike flipping. So she braced herself and squeezed. The scooter buckled, hurling her onto her left side. She skidded along the pavement with only a white long-sleeved Oxford and jeans between her and the steaming asphalt. She thudded to a stop, her head stopping directly at the nose of the other car, just as the sedan screeched to a halt.

The story didn't make headlines. If the car had gone two feet farther, it would have. But when a van on Main Street failed to yield a few weeks ago, smashing into musician Will Hoge on his scooter and landing him in critical condition at Vanderbilt, news stations perked up. Overnight, Hoge became something of a local poster boy for scooter awareness.

Interviewed at the scene by Channel 5, Sgt. Bob Sheffield summed up the dilemma scooter and motorcycle riders face every time they buzz into traffic. "I guess the burden of safety is on the motorcycle rider [or] scooter rider," he said. "They are in, I mean, on a much smaller vehicle and, you know, a lot harder for folks in passenger vehicles to observe them."

The comment drew ire on message boards and blogs around town immediately. Local blogger The Musician and the Geek fumed at what she described as a "shining example of tactlessness."

"Too bad Will's thoughtless actions as the 'smaller vehicle' nearly cost him his life!" a post from Aug. 21 read. "Since the 'burden of safety is on the...scooter rider,' I guess it's his own fault that he hit the side of a van!"

But Metro Police Dept. spokesperson Kris Mumford insists Sheffield's message was purely educational. "He simply wanted to say it is important for people on scooters and motorcycles to be aware that they aren't as visible," Mumford says. "It was not his intention at all in any way to blame Mr. Hoge."

That didn't appease scooter riders around town, whose numbers are soaring in step with a national trend toward ditching the gas guzzler for the fuel sipper. They say the subtext is nothing new. They're used to getting cut off, honked at, or worse—ignored.

The risk hasn't stopped Nashvillians from buying scooters in large numbers. Dealers like East Side Scooters on Gallatin Road said they've sold more scooters this month than all of last year. "The demand this year has been insane," says co-owner Josephine Duer. She explains that Nashville's terrain allows scooters, meant on average for maximum speeds of 55 mph, plenty of surface streets to avoid the interstates. "Nashville is laid out in such a way that you don't have to hit major streets to get across town," she says.

And they're not just selling to trendy 20-somethings or kids. "When we first opened, I pictured having a niche group like that, but it's everybody buying them," Duer says. "We've had doctors, lawyers, musicians, men, women, everybody. I've had a couple guys come in who wanted to buy motorcycles and their wives were like, 'No way.' So they came in to get a scooter."

As it turns out, though, scooters are just as susceptible to sideswiping as cycles, which raises the question: Why do many drivers fail to register a brightly colored anomaly inserted into their environment? A term called "change blindness" partially explains it.

"People have difficulty detecting visual changes in their environment—salient changes you think people would find easily noticeable," says Vanderbilt psychologist Dan Levine, whose research focuses on change blindness in natural environments. "There's an enormous amount of info out there, and to think clearly we have to select little bits of it. What we select is generally a reflection of what's important. But not always."

Change blindness afflicts Nashville in other ways. Thanks to a dearth of bike lanes, which have been slow to develop here compared to cities such as Portland or Minneapolis, Nashville drivers are peripherally lazy when it comes to alternate forms of transportation. If we were used to sharing the road with cyclists, we might notice scooters more often. It's a new concept for a city whose rise coincided with the rise of the automobile.

Though they find Nashville a fun city to zip around in, scooter owners Adam Tanaka and Funky McDonnell say they've still experienced their fair share of hostility. They've started an online community called Scoot Nashville for riders to become acquainted and talk shop. Finding safety in numbers, they hold mass rides every third Sunday at 2 p.m.

"People treat it like it isn't a real motorized vehicle," Tanaka says. "Like, 'Get your two-wheel toy off the road.' You go to turn and you have your blinker on and they just get right on your ass."

Or they cut you off, as happened to McDonnell recently. Driving in the far right lane on West End, a woman on the far left crossed three lanes of traffic to pull directly in front of him. Then she stopped hard to make a quick right into a business. Like Morrison, McDonnell had to decide whether to become road kill or take a dive.

"I had the option of taking the scooter down to the ground, or slamming into the back of her and probably going through her windshield—and it would have been my fault," McDonnell recalls. "So I took the scooter down. She had no idea that it even happened."

None of that incensed him nearly as much as what happened next.

"This guy walking down the sidewalk saw what happened," McDonnell says. "He made sure I was OK, then walked over to the woman and told her what she did. She looked up, looked over at me, and then went right back to what she was doing. Didn't even find out if I was OK. I got to work with blood all down my legs."

In spite of drivers' tendency to ignore the latest mode of transport at their peril, the police department says scooter accidents haven't increased. Though given the increase in their presence, they wouldn't be surprised if they did.

Hoge's condition was recently downgraded from critical to stable. In a post on his MySpace page, he describes his injuries with a chilling directness: "My left eye was almost ripped out. My entire forehead looked like chopped ground beef."

Public awareness campaigns are tentatively in the works from some East Nashville residents, but other scooter riders have more ad-savvy ideas. "Maybe bikers and cyclists should wear shirts with half-naked women on them," said a user named Brandon posting on an East Nashville message board. "That should get attention, since it appears that it gets America's attention already—according to every commercial, advertisement, etc."

But in lieu of racy attire, scooter drivers are left frequenting the pockets of town with sympathetic drivers around Five Points, 12 South or Hillsboro Village, or fingering their worry beads. Most have their own mantras, and they all more or less amount to one thing: Drive like you're invisible.

"You get this scooter sense after a while," says McDonnell. "Even if someone doesn't have their blinker on, you just get to where you know when someone's going to pull out in front of you."

Still, scooter drivers like Morrison—who limped away from her accident with bruises, road rash and skin loss (particularly on her feet from not wearing socks) but no broken bones and no serious injuries—find that even after the road rash has healed, the road rage lingers like a stubbornly infected cut.

"I've just turned into the meanest driver you've ever seen," she says with a laugh. "This morning I was driving in to work and this truck pulled up. I don't even think he was going to cut me off, but he just looked like he was getting a little too close. I just laid down my horn and flipped him off. I just can't take it anymore."

http://www.nashvillescene.com/2008-09-11/news/scooter-blues/1

August 12, 2008

What a terrible picture of me...but a cute one of Hubble. He's on the Tennessean's website!

August 11, 2008

Pinky is back! The scooter was repaired and is back in full force! I'm so excited to be driving it again.

Here are some pictures that I took of my outfit the day of the accident. Note the asphalt on the left side of my clothes. That's where I hit the pavement.

August 11, 2008

Hubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble...

Our little dog Hubble was featured in the Faux Paw Fashion Show, part of East Nashville's Tomato Art Fest this weekend. My friend was coordinating the contest and got me involved because I submitted the winning name for the contest.

He dressed as LeBron Hubble, an NBA star. He wore a tiny jersey and a gold chain to compliment his tiny basketball chew toy. He was a real trooper as you will see from his picts.

Hubble won third place in the contest, which got him a toy and some gift certificates.

He tolerated his torture pretty well, I have to say. He may have been discovered by some folks doing pet product advertising. We'll see if that pans out. I think it would be hilarious to have Hubble featured in some pet ads, but don't want to get my hopes up too much.

Our home was on the news!

Check out this story about protecting your home against burglary.

http://www.newschannel5.com/Global/story.asp?S=8700673

Friday, July 18, 2008

I've got some good news and some bad news.

Chronologically, the good news came first. I got a new scooter. I bought it from my neighbor, who will need a car as opposed to a scooter in the near future. It's the most awesome scooter ever, because it is only a year old, starts every time, is a high-quality vehicle and is PINK! Pink isn't really my color, but I love that it has such a big personality all by itself.


Now the bad news. I had been driving it everywhere for two and a half weeks. Then, Monday as I was driving home a car decided to roll through his stop sign at an intersection where I had the right of way. I had two options: crash head-first through the driver's side door or slam on the breaks and see what happened. Apparently, I chose the latter because I opened my eyes when I landed on the pavement on my left side under the scooter. All the neighbors came out of their houses and called 911. Where I landed, it looked like I had been hit by the car.

The cavalry arrived--paramedics, fire truck, police, everyone. I assessed my injuries and found nothing to be broken. I could move everything and stood up without difficulty. Miraculous, really.

I have some massive bruises that are getting more and more purple by the day. I have also lost several patches of my epidermis, which I very much miss. I've been limping around like an old woman in need of a walker. But, I'll recover.

How is the bike you ask? The answer is that we don't know yet. We have to wait on insurance paperwork, police report, etc. to figure out all of that. I will let you know. In the meantime, I will be hanging around the house this weekend, convalescing, as Dan says.

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

The other task we took on when the Pucketts were in town was cutting down trees around our house. We rented a lift and my dad spent some quality time in the air with his chain saw cutting down trees from the top down. We cut down six small ones right along our back fence that were in the way of a future privacy fence and the utility wires.

We also cut down a 60-foot hackberry tree that was 30 inches in diameter. It was huge, and quite an undertaking to remove.

Who does that? I mean, don't normal people just cry when they write the check to the tree service?