Month: May 2018

Five Things Meme

Holly

Five things you’ll find in my bag backpack:

  1. my fleece winter hat that I use as a cushioned pouch for lunch food
  2. ziploc “possibles bag” (i.e. things I might possibly need), currently has teabags, binder clip, quarter, bandaids, ibuprofen, antihistamine, dental floss
  3. eyeglass case containing tampons, ibuprofen, and spare pair of contacts in case I break my glasses and still need to drive somewhere
  4. drawing supplies: blue non-photo pencils, extra-fine sharpie, blank 4×6 index cards in a ziploc bag
  5. spare deodorant: Old Spice Deodorant for Nocturnal Creatures: Wolfthorn, which oddly smells exactly like lemon-lime soda

Five things you’ll find in my room:

  1. my alarm clock, a small battery-powered cheapie
  2. photo of sang and me in our opera duds in 1993, a stand-in for a wedding photo since we don’t have one. She’s in white tie (head shaved), I’m in her former prom dress.
  3. the small cedar box I made in woodshop in eighth grade, with a rose wood-burned on top: currently holds jewelry, much of it broken
  4. “rice socks” that are actually nicely sewn bags with slipcovers even, but we still call them that from when we used tube socks. Filled with rice for microwaving, essential for cold bedtimes.
  5. the Box of All Tapes (scotch tape, masking tape, painter’s tape, packing tape, doublestick tape) that got moved onto the bureau when the windows were being refurbished and never found another home.

Five of my favorite things:

  1. dogs
  2. trees
  3. chocolate milk
  4. library books
  5. mac and cheese

Five things I’m currently into:

  1. learning Japanese kanji and vocab at http://wanikani.com
  2. Megan Whalen Turner’s Queen’s Thief series. I’ve reread the first four and have now gotten to the one I haven’t read yet!
  3. berry season
  4. the front porch
  5. using https://checkvist.com for weekend and evening to-do lists

Five things on my to-do list:

  1. clean the gutters, figure out what the deal is with that one, and trim back encroaching tree limbs. Save bay leaves for shellynoir.
  2. email my parents. (a frequently listed item)
  3. finish that 1940s children’s book that’s overdue at the university library
  4. dishes (frequently listed item)
  5. try that barre workout DVD I checked out from the library

 

new bike 100 miles

Holly

Today I reached 100 miles of bike commuting (plus a few short errands) in May. I wouldn’t ordinarily keep track, but May is the bike commute challenge at work.

I am a lazy bike commuter– there’s secure parking in my building, so I ride in, leave the bike overnight and use my bus pass to get home, and ride the bike home the next day. It’s about 50 minutes to work and an hour home (homeward is uphill), and the one-way time commitment is all I really want.

I am loving my new bike, which I sprang for in celebration of completing 100 straight days writing on 750words.com.

stock photo of Priority Continuum Onyx bike

Things I love about my bike:

  • it has a kickstand
  • the lights are pedal-powered and integrated so I never have to decide whether to turn them on
  • the gearing is continuous so I don’t have to decide whether it’s worth changing gears or have a gear-shifting strategy
  • the belt drive is very quiet and grease-free
  • I can wear my normal clothes (hiking pants and running shoes, we have a very lax dress code) to commute

The gearing range is pretty small; I top out and bottom out on my commute. I’m slow, but I’m slow at lots of things so I don’t mind. In general, everything just works.

I like how absorbing riding a bike in the city is. I am busy and don’t have time to mull over something from work or whether I did the right thing six intersections ago. And my commute is on Clinton Street, which I love because the car diverters make it feel like Portland of 20 years ago except bike-centric, and then on the car-free bridge.