Yesterday Mom sent me a link to Huffington Post where they had a short article up about OK Go’s latest music video, White Knuckles. The video is supporting Animal Rescue. As the new owner of Sparky, who was a stray that his previous parents had found and we eventually continued caring for, I have a newfound love of doggies.
Enjoy the video, which I’ve embedded below in HD.
Today I had taken a vacation day to get some stuff accomplished around the house and to just rest some. Both missions were accomplished successfully. While outside getting rid of some dead plants, I found a few small friends. Say hi to the caterpillar and the grasshopper.
The day I fell off my bike, we decided that one car just wasn’t working out anymore and it was time to start looking for a second car.
After work, I walked my bike to the car (Justin had it) and we went to Bob Rohrman’s Fairgrounds event. Pretty much every car was at the local fairgrounds along with all the sales reps. We knew from earlier searches that we wanted to look at a Scion xB and saw the differences between the xB and the xD (xD is like the smaller cousin to the xB). After taking it for a spin around the area I knew that I wanted it. However, we also went for a test drive of a Kia Soul as we’d been looking into that car as well.
The Kia Soul, although cute and all, doesn’t have the same driving experience that the Scion xB does. The Scion has a larger engine and a more solid build in my opinion. After looking at a few cars we obtained information on what Rohrman could offer for financing and went home to look over everything. The next day, a Saturday, we ended up driving to Scion of Danville to look at their Scions and talk with their salesmen.
After a short bit we knew that we wanted to buy the 2011 Scion xB from this dealer instead. Our salesman was David and our experience with him and the dealership in general was more friendly. David let me test drive a manual-transmission Scion xB despite my warning that I’d never attempted it before. After a quick lesson, I was able to get the car up to 10 mph, but stalled it when I went to brake. After going back in and discussing the various options, we picked out the car we wanted and scheduled to pick it up that next Tuesday, August 31.
On August 31, we went in and picked up the car, signed all the paperwork and drove off as the new owners of a 2011 Scion xB. Although Justin doesn’t really like to drive the car, he does like driving the Maxima which is great – I love the Scion and gladly will take the driver’s seat.
© tandemracer - Flickr
On August 27th, I had a pretty bad day. I was riding my bike to work like the weeks before and was about one block from work. When I was close to the last intersection that I had to pass, the pedestrian light was on. It had started to blink that there was only twenty seconds left, but I still had plenty of time left. However, I saw a car that wasn’t going to stop and in a split-second decision, I put the brakes on my bike. Unfortunately for me, I used the front brakes instead of the back. Even worse, I had just tightened the brakes a few days earlier so they were super sensitive. As such, when I slammed on the brakes, they were very effective!
As any science student who knows the basic laws set by Newton, although the front wheel of the bike may have suddenly stopped, there’s nothing to stop the rest of the bike or me from continuing to move forward. As such, I continued moving forward and slid across the sidewalk on my arm and the bike flipped over me. I later found out that my Macbook Pro had a fun meeting with the sidewalk as well. The driver of the car stopped after they turned the corner, but with what had happened I’m not really sure what they did. I think they saw me get up and just continued on. Only one person actually even asked if I was OK.
I walked my bike the rest of the way to work and as I was walking up the stairs to my office the pain and reality of what happened started to hit and came out pretty strongly. My coworkers were very sympathetic to what had happened and were very kind in helping me to try to patch up my arm (it was almost dripping blood on the floor). Jaime, an administrative assistant, brought up a first aid kit and helped to get the wound under control. Despite many people volunteering to take me home for the rest of the day, I ended up finishing out the work day and tried to use work as a distraction from the pain.
Well, it’s now been almost three weeks since the incident and although the physical damage to my Macbook Pro is still very much visible, my arm has healed up nicely!
Justin and I would like to introduce you to Sparky, our newest family member. We adopted him from his earlier parents who had taken great care of him and had done all the first legwork of shots, neutering and housebreaking. I greatly appreciate that we got a great friendly dog who is already house-broken!
Sparky is a Dalmatian/Pointer mix. He now weighs about 40 lbs and is 9 months old. Justin had responded, on August 31, to an ad and late Tuesday we went to see him. He was very hyper but just wanted to play and towards the end before we had left was already calming down. So, before we left we agreed that we would take him and pick him up that weekend. After a few visits to various stores on Friday after work, we had all the supplies we would need and picked him up on Saturday morning. The car ride home was interesting – he was trying to chase cars that were going by – I was in the back to try to calm him down though. His first weekend at our house was pretty good. He peed on the floor in our bathroom only once and it was probably because the rug was a green color. Otherwise he lets us know when he has to go out. After a few days of going in and out he already knew which house is his and walks up to the door to wait for us to let him back in.
The only problems that we’ve had, which are going to take time to fix, are that he needs to stop jumping on people and he needs to get used to sleeping in our kennel at night. His previous parents had already been doing that so I think it’s just because of the new surroundings.
Me being me, I setup a Sparky-Cam to view him throughout the day. View the Sparky-Cam to watch him during the day too.
Welcome Sparky!
