Del.icio.us Links: April 25th – July 7th

Getting the Blogging Bug (and the Traveling Bug) Again, But No Shicken Dobbies, Please

I recently rediscovered an old favorite – Robert Llewellyn’s blog is full of funny and interesting observations of life in the Cotswolds, where he keeps chickens and answers questions about whether there will ever be another episode of Red Dwarf, and browsing some of the entries makes me want to blog more (and better), and other entries make me want to travel more (and sooner). Most of the LlewBlog is about… life as you live it, especially if you’re interested in quiet country life in the Cotswolds, but occasionally have these other lives where you vacuum spaceships with groinal attachments, build things to compete in challenges, or drive people from one place to another while talking about things in general. So the blog covers a lot of topics, but much of it is grounded in Llewellyn’s love for his village

On our visits to the Cotswolds, we spend as much time as we can rambling along footpaths and stopping for lunch at village pubs. The first time we were there, we were met by a perfectly turned out older couple who looked like they stepped out of the pages of some posh magazine. Even their beagle was beautifully dressed for a Day Out. The way they exclaimed “Oh, but you’re Americans!?” made me think we weren’t supposed to be on a public footpath wearing hiking boots taking pictures of duckponds and . Um, well, we’re weird like that.

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I took a picture of my husband as he drank his first cool cider ever, sitting in the outdoor garden of one of the big pubs in Bourton-on-the-Water. The look on his face was pure, happy contentment. I couldn’t understand why my compatriots stay in their tour buses, and miss the simple pleasures of a ramble on a warm day, with a cool drink and a good meal at the end of it.

On our second visit, we did more of the same, but it was around the time that the green activists left all the horseshit on Clarkson’s driveway, which made me laugh like stink (well, it would), and made me feel a little less of a foreigner in the Cotswolds. It just seems like a lovely place to call home, if you don’t have Clarkson as your next-door neighbor (he may be a solid chap, but he’s probably always tearing away in the early morning hours in a supercar).

I originally went looking for @bobbyllew’s blog because I ran across references to Seinfeld’s “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee” show (AKA CinCgK, or “sink guck”). And after watching it, inevitably, I wondered whether Llewellyn’s “Car Pool” series was still being made or not, and found this recent post which concludes that Seinfeld’s show may well be derivative of his original idea for driving people around and talking with them on camera. But Llewellyn isn’t bothered, because he’s getting a lot of pageviews and downloads, and it’s made him think about making some new episodes to benefit from all the extra traffic he’s getting. He sees it as a “win-win,” which I think is very wise. I hope he does make some new ones, because I used to enjoy watching them where ever he happened to have them (some were on iTunes, some were uploaded to his site).

I’ve added The LlewBlog to my feed readers (lately I’ve been leaning ever more strongly in the direction of Feedly) and it’s on my blogroll.

The latest post is about his chickens, which had their first day out in the garden – which of course reminded me of Mom’s story of one of the aunts, who had an unfortunate encounter with the family chickens (it was either Sis or Florence – probably Sis, who was pretty insufferably prissy according to Mom). This was back… before the Depression, probably not long after the turn of the century. My aunt apparently ran in from the back yard, blubbing and wailing, and holding her mouth open because she’d eaten something nasty and couldn’t get rid of it. She was too prissy to spit it out, the way Mom told it. When she was asked what was the matter, she bawled out, “I shot it was a shockit drop, it was a shicken dobbie.”

Mom used to say it and make faces when she tasted something nasty, so it became a family joke that all the older cousins still get – she was the youngest in her family, and I’m the youngest in this generation, but I’m not sure this joke will make the leap to my nieces or great-nieces and nephews or not. Although, people ARE starting to keep chickens again, it’s kind of trendy. So maybe we’ll still pull it out at family gatherings – we’ve got one coming up in August where I’ll get to see some of the fam-damily in Idaho again. I’ll have to check the details with my sisters, since they heard the story long before I did.

So hey! a real blog post for a change. Just wait until I post the picture of the birdies in the nest on the front porch. Then I’ll be well and truly blogging again.

It's been a long night, but Relay for Life in Second Life is still going strong….

It's been a long night, but Relay for Life in Second Life is still going strong. Closing ceremonies aren't for a few hours, and we're closing in on making an overall goal of TWO MEELION DOLLARS for cancer research. My team, the Steelhead Salmons, has raised just under 400,00 Lindens, which is between 1500.00 and 1600.00USD. Steelhead is a Steampunk community in Second Life – anyone is welcome to join, live, create. We take Relay seriously.

Please consider donating – even a few dollars means a lot.

Here's one of the photos I took last night – the track is lined with luminaria, which accept donations and display a dedication message to honor or remember someone special in the fight against cancer. See the link in my previous post.

This one is for Leah.

Relay for Life in Second Life STARTS NOW

You can donate to the American Cancer Society via my Second Life team, the Steelhead Salmons, at this page.  I've donated $50.00 to start myself off, and I have a goal of $100.00. That's US dollars, but any currency (including Lindens) is welcome. I'll be walking the virtual track for few hours – some of us will be here for 24 hours.

GO RELAY! GO SALMONS!

Listen to T1 Radio today for music and announcements direct from the track in the Relay sims. We're looking to help raise $2m US Dollars this weekend.


Why We Formed a Relay Team Welcome to our team page! Almost all of us have been touched by cancer in some way, so we’ve decided to make a difference by walking and raising money in the American Cancer Society Relay For Life event. At the event, our team will camp out overnight and take turns …

My new BIKE and other updates

So yesterday after a really rough day at work (my main reservation system was down all day, ALL DAY, and I had to stick around waiting until a tech IMed me at the end of the day) David took me to our local bike shop.

And look what followed us home! We’re keepin’ em!

My Specialized Crossroads
DavidsNEWROADBIKE

My bike is a Specialized Crossroads Sport Step-thru (that’s what they call women’s bikes now) and David’s is a Specialized Allez Elite. He’s serious about road riding, I’m just getting back in the saddle (heh).

I still have a mountain bike that I haven’t ridden in at least a year or two; chiefly because when I did ride, I felt like I was putting a lot of stress on my arms and wrists and my hands would start to go numb and feel like I was wearing softball mitts or cartoon hands. With all the riding David’s been doing, I’m interested in riding too – but I’m realistic in not thinking I’m going to be much more than a recreational rider. Also, I decided on the step-through frame because I’ve found it awkward to mount a bike when I’m in good shape, and I’m not in very good shape now (all that hard work at the gym 2 years ago wasted).

I test-rode several bikes at Bike Connection, starting from the lower end, and worked my way up to this one. Decided I didn’t even want to try a full-on mountain bike; I wanted something that was suited to bike routes, paved paths, and crushed gravel that was lighter and had less rolling resistance. With this bike, I can jump on and ride over to Poplar Creek (or down to Busse Woods) easily. I’m planning on riding the Tour de Cure next year (probably the 20 mile, may up that to the 35 mile if I stick with a riding routine through the summer (and figure something out for the winter, maybe).

In the meantime, I’m looking forward to riding around the village. There are bike paths and routes under construction or being planned. Some of the maps are out of date; there’s a brand new bike path coming up Higgins that’s gotten as far as Roselle, and David says they’re building a bridge between the sections of Busse Woods Forest Preserve that’s presently served by a very, very busy crosswalk.

I may be taking a friend over to look at bikes tomorrow after church .

Other Stuffs

We had a nice Fourth of July with my bro-in-law Dan; bison burgers out on the patio. We haven’t used the patio much in the last few years, it was a nice time. There was a nice bookend the last couple of weekends; a memorial dedication and a family get-together, and the next week a surprise birthday party with a family get-together.

There’s a lot to look forward to in the family now, as we’re doing a shared vacation in August (WOOOO, VACATION). More on that later, but the tentative plans are to fly into Seattle August 18, do touristy stuff and see friends for a few days, go to Victoria, possibly stop off at Olympic National Park, then head to Idaho to see more family. Kind of epic, and I may have to sit down with a map and my husband and father-in-law and show them just how much driving they’re enthusiastically building into this vacation! However, I’m thinking we might need to do Victoria on the high-speed passenger ferry from Seattle and a package deal from there, and may have to skip the Olympic Peninsula… otherwise, it’s a marathon of driving, unpacking, and driving. However, there are passenger ferries and so on, though no longer a car ferry between Seattle and Victoria any more, it seems.

I’ve spotted a couple of interesting places to stay but will probably have to confirm places by working backwards; I haven’t decided yet which direction we’ll do a big loop that might get us from Seattle to Victoria to Port Angeles and back to Seattle, before taking off east toward Ho-De-Ay. For various reasons I’d like to have a Saturday night in Victoria, which would probably mean doing the loop in counter-clockwise fashion. Or it could be Seattle-Port Angeles-Seattle with a ferry excursion from there, aughghghgh but the ferry from Anacortes is so much more scenic. See what I mean? Augh.

Okay, I've updated the Google+Blog plugin, missed the announcement about the…

Okay, I've updated the Google+Blog plugin, missed the announcement about the bugfix, and it had stopped working when I last upgraded WordPress. Now to figure out if my Google+ posts will eventually update to my blog, or if I'll have to send them by hand.

https://plus.google.com/103697821787469756035/posts

Daniel Treadwell