Amy’s Gripping Commentary

Now what do we do with them?

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My keyboard did have to be replaced after the wine incident a couple of nights ago; space bar and enter were casualties. Apparently while connecting and testing the new one, the blog software saved a draft! The zeroes appeared when I plugged in the USB connector, not from typing.

Then there was another wine incident tonight. I knocked over a full glass again, this time while eating dinner, and the glass crashed into an empty glass also on the table, breaking both, and splattering wine on the couch, wall, me… and one side of Casper was also purple. Then she moved around and wiped the wine on two more walls. Geez.

Dinner in our apartment in Rome. Note the wine.

Somehow I asked for this red wine and how much it cost in Italian in a little grocery…

Feel free to suggest a caption for this one.

I was just going to share a couple of reviews with you but then some really random material came along for the ride.

EcoSelect 100% Biodegradable Dryer Sheets: I found these at WalMart, of all places, a couple of months ago. They are made with a vegetable derived softening agent. They aren’t tested on animals and they totally degrade (buried in soil) in 21 days. So, I figured I’d give ‘em a try.

They’re great! The texture of the sheet seems a bit odd, but my laundry behaves the same as it did with Bounce and I feel much better about this product. But, alas, I can’t find it anymore. I tried to find it online and only saw a few notes from other people who can’t find these dryer sheets either. Let me know if you see them, or tell me about a substitute!

Tossed is a new-to-here franchise that has, well, salads. I picked up dinner last night and was impressed that they made the whole wheat crepe right in front of me from batter, though he messed up one of them and had to start over and it took a long time. David liked his crepe with roasted chicken, portobellos, roasted onions, spinach, and balsamic vinaigrette, though mine with tofu, carrots, sugar snap peas, shiitakes, romaine, and honey sesame dressing was just kind of eh. It may be NYC’s best salad, but it was just kinda plain to me. The crepe itself was the best part and reminded us of Ethiopian injera bread. I guess I’m not much of a salad person, but if you are, try Tossed in Fishers. You can put together your preferred ingredients in salad/sandwich/crepe, or choose one of their combination ideas.

So, the doorknobs:

Note the product placement, PQ.

Nicole and I meet regularly to exchange odd items. They make total sense to us, but most people probably don’t save their Wall Street Journals for their friend’s litterboxes, trade coupons, collect and pass on #5 plastic recyclables, or order detergent and hay for each other. This time I was surprised to get a bag of doorknobs (along with the books and detergent); Nicole had replaced all the knobs in her house and I was to give them to David to use in his remodeling jobs. (Never fear, if he can’t use them, I will donate them to Habitat for Humanity’s Indianapolis HomeStore where they resell them and use the funds to help build houses.) Here I thought I had brought the weirdest item, named The Quiet Check Valve which David had sourced for her sump pump, but then it was all topped by her rented fish in the front seat. I guess it eats a particular aquarium pest and once it eats all yours, you return the fish to the pet store to be sold to someone else who has this unique stuff that causes tank problems.

In other news, I spilled an entire glass of red wine in my keyboard last night, but it seems to be working fine at the moment. Also, David looked up an ex-girlfriend online, described as “90210 pretty,” and discovered she works for World Wrestling Entertainment (you know, as in SmackDown). And Nicole picked up a disease in Puerto Rico last week, so I hope she didn’t touch the doorknobs.

ETA: This morning my spacebar and enter keys have stopped working in their alcoholic stickiness.

Also tonight, I was all warm and fuzzy at seeing goose parents leading their juveniles across the Menards parking lot. There was another adult with about five fuzzy gray followers behind this batch.

If you notice the motorcycle in my mirror, you’ll see some punk guy who thought it was hilarious to zoom at them and rev his engine. His buddy on another excuse for a small penis also found this to be a great activity. I’ve never been so close to yelling DON’T BE AN ASSHOLE out my car window. The adult geese stayed with the juveniles who could not fly yet. The 15 seconds summed up how I feel most days: Aww, animals are awesome, and there’s no hope for humanity.

New foster Harrison came from Fort Wayne ACC several weeks ago along with three other Flemish Giants apparently surrendered by the breeder. We shuffled some foster care slots and now Harry has come to stay with me.

We’ve been treating Harry for a snotty nose and a bad limp in one of his front legs (note how he holds it up), which some veterinary sleuthing pinned down to Pasteurella and hairline fractures, but things haven’t gotten a whole lot better. I’m going to try with another vet and hopefully get him to the point of neuter soon enough that he might be friends with one of my own rabbits.

Harry is quite mellow; I’ve never seen a calmer, cleaner unaltered male bunny, especially when other rabbits are around!

Here’s a bunny statue from the Vatican Museum. I’m just now getting everything downloaded from camera cards. Would you believe I bought a 2 GB SD card at one of the Vatican gift shops for €18? I expected to pay twice that.

I walked 65 MILES last week (Mom had a pedometer) and didn’t lose a pound!

Maybe that’s why I look a bit ragged at Pompeii. (Mom walked that far too!!)

I went mountain biking for the first time in several years today, with someone from the cycling club at work so at least I didn’t get lost (or mugged). I did, however, fail to make it all the way up a hill, put my foot down onto nothing, and fell off the side onto a big rock with my bike on top of me and did this:

The latter is after David tortured me with Betadine. The Betadine itself doesn’t hurt, but rubbing all over the scraped area sure does!

The place where I fell was only a couple of minutes from the end of the trail, right before an area named Tetanus Hill because an old rusty car is buried in (and sticking out of) the singletrack. My experienced guide fell off too not long after I did, so I didn’t feel like a complete idiot. I don’t remember ever getting hurt while biking before! It stings. I suppose it’s like running to Mom after scraping your knee. I just hadn’t had the pleasure in a long time, and Mom would have been WAY gentler with the cleanup.

This has been a very long day, and I’m about to climb in bed! Thankfully we had a direct flight from Rome and Dad picked us up in Chicago. Downloaded about 1,000 pictures, but I’ll just put up a couple for now.

The keyboards at the internet cafe here in Trastavere are different enough that I canàt type worth a crap.

Weàre having a great time, and the streets are bustling at 10ç30 p.m. (canàt find that key at all= ). Tomorrow is Pompeii, and still tonight Iàm off for falafel and gelato (not sure if that will be a good combo). I have not been chased by dogs nor screamed at by drunks for Bushàs atrocities, but other members of my party have!

Now to figure out how to fix my in-flight meal for the way back…

Cìao!

(a little IRC speak from ages ago)

See y’all in a week or so–I’m on vacation! It takes more time to get READY for vacation than to take one, so let’s hope it’s a good, relaxing one!

I leave you with this, watching TV with my first piggy, Frisky:

David is usually still in bed when I leave for work in the morning (that’s what I get for working for The Man while he is self-employed), so I leave him reminder notes occasionally. A couple of weeks ago I didn’t have time to give the dogs breakfast, so I left this:

Note the torn corner. That’s because Walt took the note off the kitchen counter and ate it! We found it on the floor.

Last week after a light to moderate commuting load on my bike (i.e., no laptop, no full change of cold weather clothes), which felt pretty heavy going home in another headwind, I decided to weigh the beast and found out it was 47 pounds! With more stuff, which I carried the previous week, it would easily be over 50 pounds. Hauling around a third of my body weight isn’t very speedy.

Yesterday I tried reducing the load as much as possible. I took off the pannier and left my Timbuk2 bag at home, just taking half a change of clothes (I keep the shoes and stuff in a locker at work) and even leaving what I wore to work behind for the way home. (It’s storming today so I drove, and I can pick up all the dirty clothes and other things I left behind.) Since it was warm yesterday I hadn’t worn a jacket and tights in the morning so I didn’t have to haul that either.

Bike + minimum commute stuff = 38 lbs. Well, that’s better. I have to say both directions felt a lot better and went a LOT faster, even in hot & sticky afternoon sun. I guess I just need to learn to haul less. I barely missed the things I normally carry. Perhaps this will be a new era of simplification!

Other than not having the pannier hanging off the rack, this is my new setup. A slimmed down road bike with commuting accessories could weigh ten pounds less, but seeing as how I don’t have hundreds of dollars sitting around, I’ll just learn to exercise harder on the bike I already have and like. Meanwhile I can trust it on debris, railroad tracks, crappy roads, and gravel, and all my experience is on trails anyway, so as long as I treat the streets of Indy that way I shouldn’t fall too often. Speed would have been handy yesterday when a Rottweiler tried to eat me, though. He charged off a porch a few feet to my right and bottomed out when he reached the end of his chain.

Cheesy picture from back when Dad and I went off road several years ago! This was back when cameras had much worse resolution, as you can see.

I wore those shorts yesterday!