Category Archives: My Life

Clothing optional?

St. Louis boasts a multitude of outdoor entertainment in the summer, most of which is free.  We favor the Whitaker Music Festival at the Botanical Garden and The Muny free seats.

Last week, we ventured out to our first Muny show of the season, The Sound of Music.  The first few shows really didn’t appeal to me this year, and, though I wanted to see Cats, that week ended up being pretty busy and it just didn’t happen.

I insisted on biking, despite the fact that it made a late night even later.  The actual time difference between biking and driving there is pretty minimal for us, but I know the biking will leave me too keyed up to fall asleep immediately.  Ah well, we enjoyed the show, and riding home under a full moon was worth it.  It’s hard to properly enjoy the night sky from inside a car.

Anyhow, we scored some good tickets to Footloose tonight.  Actual tickets, not free seats!  The only problem?  101 degrees.  Actual temperature.  Add in heat index, and we’re looking at 110+.  Does The Muny have a policy against nudity?

Behind Door #1 . . .

I biked to my old stomping grounds (U-City Loop area) today for a conference at the RAC and the Moonrise Hotel.  The day ended with networking at the Moonrise’s rooftop bar — very cool space, other than the ashtrays.

Anyhow, I headed to the restroom to morph into biker girl for the ride home, and that’s when things got weird.

I walked into the restroom.  “What a strange restroom,” I thought to myself.  “What are those . . . ?  Hmm, they appear to be urinals.  Wait a minute — urinals?!?!”

I did an abrupt about-face and slunk out the door, hoping no one noticed.

Next time I’ll try the door that says “Women” on it first 😉

Whatcha gon’ do with all that junk?

In addition to the requested items (yogurt maker and food dehydrator), my mother arrived in St. Louis two-and-a-half weeks ago with an 18-gallon storage bin.  When I visited my parents in April, I diligently sorted through some stuff in my old bedroom, narrowing it down to this one bin that I was allowed to keep there.  Little did I know that my mom would rescind that offer only a few short months later.

So now I’m stuck with this bin, a bin that contains some items that I want to keep, including a couple of nice photo albums that I made in high school — lots of smiles and cringes looking back through those — and the items pictured above that are on the chopping block.

The high school yearbooks?  They seemed so essential in high school.  Now I’m ambivalent.  Due to some mix of shyness  and wanting my beautiful new yearbook to look beautiful and new, I never collected many signatures/messages in the books, so they’re not overly personal.

I’ve looked back through them a couple of times in the last nine years, but I certainly don’t need them.  Maybe they’ll be fun to share with future generations?  Or maybe they’re just more stuff to occupy space on a shelf or in a bin and add weight on future moves.  I’m guessing that the photo paper they printed the books on is NOT recyclable.

And those athletic honor roll plaques?  Those have got to go.  Sure, they represent some hard work on my part, but even in high school, I didn’t display them on my wall or anything, and I’m not about to start now.

Maybe a trophy shop could remove the engraved metal plate and reuse the wood part?  And the metal plate could be recycled?

Second best

My one hangup with my fabulous new carpool is the bike parking situation.  I hoped for some kind of covered, secure place to lock my bicycle, perhaps a garage, easily accessible basement, or a covered porch at my coworker’s house.  I rode the first morning, not knowing exactly what I would find (I already knew the garage option was out) but determined to make it work one way or another.

I arrived early on day one and found no covered parking options.  Instead, I locked up to one of the vertical support poles of a chain link fence in the back yard.  Baby Jake and I were not pleased.  Other than when actively being ridden, or for relatively short lock-ups when running errands, Baby Jake is an indoor bicycle.

I didn’t like the idea of my lovely bicycle sitting exposed to the elements for ten-and-a-half hours every day, not to mention some concerns about theft.

Enter Back-Up Bike (BUB).

BUB lacked some of the convenient commuting accessories I’d added to my main bike, namely a rear rack and crate.  I found a used rear rack at Bicycle Works, and planned to just switch my lone plastic milk crate back and forth between Baby Jake and BUB, but I tired of that pretty quickly.  I toyed around with the notion of carrying a back pack, but it’s so nice to ride “naked,” i.e., no back pack, especially in the heat of summer.

I could just bike to a store and buy a plastic crate, but that would be too easy, so the search for a used milk crate (or something similar) continues.  I will find one!  In the mean time, I rigged up a super classy cardboard box, as you can see in the above photo.  It fits will with some of BUB’s other swanky features:

Wine cork in handlebar end
Another cork, plus fender secured with string

Très chic, non?

Steamed potatoes

Round two of the Great Potato dig commenced on what may have been the hottest day of the year.  Our camera rested in air-conditioned comfort before I cruelly pressed it into service in the heat of the day.  It protested with a foggy lens.

Steamy!

Our little helpers were out playing and asked if we could put them to work.  Um, did you really just ask that?  Quick!  Put them to work before they change their minds!  They didn’t stay long, but we had fun.  Far too many kids (and adults) have no idea where food comes from — we’re happy to help remedy that 🙂