Is That What You Call Sharing?

I have a bone to pick. I get the whole bicycle commuting thing, and I get how, as a 'motorized vehicle', I'm expected to share the road. No problem! But can we 'motorized vehicles' get the same respect, please??

I love to take bike rides as much as the next guy, so I thoroughly get sharing the road. Granted, I get on the sidewalk whenever possible because I am a leisure bike rider, not a commuter. Or someone who *thinks* they are a commuter... you know the ones... they just about go at a snail's pace but assume since they're commuting, then they are a commuter bicyclist, nevermind the bells and tassels they have on their handle bars. But some of these bikes out there never think to look behind them to see the mile long back-up they're causing. They just ride in the middle of the lane, like it's their road to own.

Um, hello??!! I don't care how fast you're going, you're not going as fast as cars!

And the fun part? You get to a stop light and they ride all the way to the front along side of all the cars that just passed them... forcing them to all pass the bike again.

Hey... if you want to share the road, then have respect for what's bigger than you on the road... cars are expected to respect semis, and the same should apply to bikes! Share the road... move over when you can and let people pass, and wait in line at traffic lights just like the rest of us road-worthy vehicles! It's really just common courtesy!

Then there's the really obnoxious bike riders... the ones who expect cars to share the road with them, but then feel they still have all their pedestrian rights, too, and won't hesitate blowing through an intersection, expecting traffic to stop for them. Wow... aren't you just the man!

I know I might get some argument here - but you can't convince me otherwise. Yes, we are behind with the whole alternative transportation thing here in Indy. And I know not all bicycle commuters are like this. In fact, most probably are not. But it's the handful out there that are that give the whole community a bad name and make people have road rage against bikers.

Free Weekend?

I can't remember the last time I had a free weekend. I don't even remember what one's like... seems we always have something going on! I really miss my truly free weekends.

When I say free weekend, I don't mean a 'fun' weekend, I mean a FREE weekend... free on ANY commitments. If there's things around the house to be done, you can do them WHEN YOU WANT, not at a certain time because of something else going on. If you choose to do them at all.

Don't get me wrong, most of the stuff we have going on is fun commitments (aside from the renovation stuff), but I still enjoy that true 'off' time. Some weekends, I'm more tired going into the work week than I was going into the weekend. That's just not right.

The reality is, I know I won't have a chance of a free weekend until after the master bathroom renovation is done. And even after that, I'm sure something will keep us busy - Eric has a list of 'small' home projects he wants to do. I just want a weekend of nothing... shoot, I'd settle for a DAY of nothing. I'd love to have a day in my PJ's just completely veggin' out.

*sigh*

I miss my free weekends. Sad to say I may never have one again.

Music

Have you ever found yourself going through your music collection (whatever the format), just reminiscing and find yourself becoming re-energized in the process (even if you weren't looking for that)? Do you get lost in the songs and the moments, and realize you've been at it for much longer than you intended? Did you ever realize how much music impacts your life, even if you're not in 'the industry' in some way?

Eric makes fun of my 'music collection' that still remains on CD (or even tapes in some sad, rare instances). But most of my music is digital now... just not ready to part with the hard copies until I know I have them digitally. Why? Because of the reason I bought those CD's to begin with. Because of how I slip into a daze when I hear the songs. Because I love the music.

If I start playing songs on the computer, I can almost guarantee a minimum of a hour 'lost' that was meant to be doing something else. But n the flip side, it inspires me. My best cleaning/organizing/epiphanies have been brought on by the shuffle of iTunes blaring over my speakers. Yeah... for the longest time, my computer speakers were better than my stereo speakers, complete with a subwoofer.

I remember my last data migration for my computer, if it was anything but an mp4 format, I couldn't play them. I was very distraught. Then I was full of mixed emotions when I did a search and found them in the recycle bin! Thankfully, none were lost - all were restored to their rightful place. This day and age, it's a scary thought at how easy you can lose everything like that. It's happened once... I learned the benefit (and the reason) for back-ups years ago!

And that's just it. You can tell your life story with music. You can pin point certain songs and remember exactly where you were when it played. All the 'big days' in your life are associated with some song, from prom, to your wedding, to your kid's first recital. So the idea of losing music should cause anyone stress...embrace it, enjoy it, cherish it. Every song, every memory, ever moment. Whether it's on your computer, on the radio, or on a CD somewhere in your closet. Music is everywhere in our lives... you don't need to listen too long to figure that out.

More of Mother Nature's Wrath!

And the year of insanely crazy weather continues...

Around 5am-ish, I was awakened by the sound of a pretty severe storm coming through. I normally sleep right through storms, but this one just hit right, I guess. I eventually was lulled back to sleep by it... until the alarm went off. I hate alarm clocks...

The rain continued through most of the morning, with some pretty heave downpours at times! 'They' said we had a chance of storms, but this was crazy!! A big red blob just say over Indy all morning and dumped on us! Since we had a steady drizzle for much of Saturday evening and Sunday morning, the ground was pretty saturated already... so the water today had nowhere to go today... which meant flash flooding.

I didn't realize how bad until I had to head out to a meeting near the end of the downpours. Got there fine, but noticed back-ups on the way back, so decided to try to go backroads to get around it. Many of them were blocked by IMPD already because of cars being stranded in the high water. But the bad thing was, the 'detours' they were directing people down were just more flooded roads! I went through so many areas of roads with high water! It's days like this I'm very thankful for my high truck frame clearance!

Beyond the roads, there were older shopping centers that now have front door access to water, which also spilled over onto roads. A bridge even started to was out on a major thoroughfare (Keystone Avenue) that completely killed rush hour! And the flooding was in areas that aren't necessary known for flooding... that particular area (Castleton) got over 4" dumped on it in way too short of a period of time (some tv stations are saying as much as 6")! Here at our house, our rain gauge showed us getting just over 4", so I could believe the 6" reading...

Most of it did recede later in the day, thankfully... but the threat of more rain still looms the rest of the week, so it could get interesting. Especially considering we're still not seeing the river and creeks crest, yet! It makes me wonder what more can happen to us this year...

One Year

It has been one crazy year for Eric and I, but we made it... our one year anniversary (within an hour!).

Let's do a quick recap... got married, I moved in with him, I lost my job, put my house on the market, sold my house, I got a new job, started more renovations on our house... am I missing anything?? Oh yeah, I was within weeks of going overseas for a stint at work to what is now a nation in civil war. Awesome, huh? No stress in our lives. But if we made it through this year, we can make it through anything! At least that's what I think... no couple should have to go through so many life changing aspects in one year, I don't care how long you've been married!

We kept out celebration simple and sentimental today by recreating the day we got engaged. We started with breakfast and 'Good Morning, Mama's Cafe', where they were having a great deal for breakfast for two that included mimosas. We though that was a fun way to celebrate and fit into our little recreation pretty well, too. Afterwards, we drove over to the Indianapolis Museum of Art and walked the grounds for a bit and ultimately ended up at the Robert Indiana "Love" sculpture Eric proposed to me in front of.

It was there he surprised me again with a simple, but pretty necklace with a 'Two Heart' charm. He is so wonderful to me! I hope I give him half the happiness he give me... so to my wonderful husband, "I love you! Happy Anniversary and here's to many more!"

Italian Fest!

Eric has been anxiously awaiting and counting down to this weekend... Italian Fest! Especially since we missed out last year, this year was going to be a good one! It had to be!

We, once again, opened our house and out kitchen for some good Italian cooking! We celebrated the halfway way point to Italian Fest in similar fashion with a more formal dinner party, but we decided to keep this one a little more of an 'Open House' feel, complete with porch dining if you wanted. We has some stuffed shell, which I tried for the first time (turned out great!), and meatball sandwiches. For dessert, we actually had some 'authentic' Italian Fest cannolis, which we bought on Friday night at Italian Fest.

We had a great group of friends over, including neighbors and a mix of Eric's and my individual friends. We all laughed a lot, had some good food and wine, and just enjoyed hanging out. What started out as dinner eventually ended up as a group of us actually heading over to Italian Fest to catch the end of the fun. It's such a fun thing to have in out neighborhood and it's so great to just be able to wander over to enjoy it and not have to plan out an event to go there!

We headed straight for the games, which you wouldn't expect the adults to do, but we figured we might have a little more fun since the carnies would ready to wrap up and move on! And we were kind of right... we walked away, as a group, with three small stuffed animals and a live goldfish. There were many laughs on the way to those prizes! After our full of the bright lights, we wandered over to where all the food vendors were closing up (scored some free breadsticks) and the band was playing their last few songs. There were still a ton of people having a good time... gotta love that!

But the evening ended up back in our backyard for a few final snacks and drinks. Everyone had a blast, but the evening ultimately wore everyone out. So all in all, another successful (and fun) Italian Fest has passed.

Construction Zone

I currently live in a construction zone. Construction is all around me... on the street, out front, in the parking lot out back, above my head. It can be quite dizzying!!

Out front is rather temporary. The City in installing some new curbs and sidewalks. Great benefit in the end and should only last a week. But it's taking away my parking space in the meantime and there's a lot of beeping from the concrete hauling backing up constantly. They start no later than 8am.

Out back it actually much less of a nuisance. In fact, I never even know what's happening hen since it's really just a staging area for the Cultural Trail. And not even so much a staging area as it is a place to park the big trucks overnight. But there's enough trucks to notice and make you wonder what's going on... if you didn't already now.

Now... above my head... that's another story. There's no doubt somethings going on and it is quite annoying! But this one benefits me the most, so I can't really complain too much. Currently, it's actually contractors tearing off part of our roof to install a dormer. The dormer will ultimately be part of our new master bath, which will be awesome! But the contractors decided to start doing this on a couple of the hottest days to date this year.... in the 90s with heat indexes near 100! So what does that cause them to do? Start earlier. They were on ladders and banging around at 7:30am this morning! Yes, I was already awake, but I was still getting ready for work upstairs. Which made me nervous about a huge whole sudden;y appearing somewhere overhead. No... that didn't happen... but it's not a very comfortable feeling hearing a bunch of guys yelling right outside your bedroom.

*sigh*

At least they didn't wake me up. And I just keep telling myself, this is only a couple of days until the roof is done, and then they will go back to a normal schedule back inside (like a 9am or later start). Until then, guess I'll just be getting up and out the door to work earlier than usual...

Jillian and Dave's Wedding

Eric and I have been to three wedding in the past month! Seems crazy, but they've all be fun!

Last night was Jillian and Dave's (Moser's) wedding. This one was unique for a few reasons, first being that it was one a Friday evening. Secondly, the ceremony was at the Statehouse, which was a beautiful location for such an event. I think it's very cool that they rent out the space for things like this!

The ceremony was personalized just enough, yet kept enough tradition to know it was a wedding, even if it was in a different location. They were even able to include their dog, Cosmo, in the ceremony - it was too cute! But I can honestly say, anyone who was there had no doubt how much this couple loves each other and how excited they were to be at this point in their lives. It was truly the stereotype of the blushing bride in her beautiful dress and the nervous groom, still grasping the fact that she said "yes" when he asked her to marry him.

The reception was held at the skyline club in downtown Indy. The name speaks for itself... it's on top of a building and there's great views of the city skyline! While everyone enjoyed the views, they kept the reception simple with some good hors d'oeuvres lots of drinks... but again, kept the important traditions, like the toasts, cakes cutting, and dances. In fact it was much like the reception Eric and I have after our wedding in FL with the family - nice and simple.

All in all, it was a great evening that just seemed to fly by for us... so I can only imagine how it was for the happy couple!

So now the weddings are done for Eric and I... at least for awhile. Everyone on my side of the family is married (or still too young to get married). All of my 'local friends' are all married now. On his side, he still has some cousins, but nothing on the horizon, as well as the same deal with his friends. So I guess only time will tell when I write about a wedding again... and I have so much fun taking pictures at weddings, too!