So a little over 6 months ago, they started building 4 huge “luxury town homes” (were not aloud to say row houses, that sounds too blue color or dare I say Baltimore). They are more or less done now. They are huge (you could fit 2 of our house in one of them), have elevators( because you know 3 floors, who would walk all the way up them), 3 decks, off street parking, all shinny and empty. I looked them up on mris yesterday and found they are going for $875,000. You heard me right, that’s 3/4 of a million dollars for a row house. About a million things have come to mind as I’ve watched these things be built.

1. you bastards took my view (almost entirly blocks my view of downtown)
2. could I have anything in common w/ some one whose house costs 7X mine (petty but kind of true)
3. why cant they just renovate row homes in my neighborhood to be comfortable livable row homes for normal people, not just “luxury people”
4. why cant modern day masons learn to do arches anymore, for real, what’s up w/ those dorky key stones they have to use
5. I’m sure those rich bastards wont be moving in w/ kids, because if some one could afford that house /wanted to afford it, they probably wouldn’t be moving to the city w/ kids(sad but true)

I’ve been mulling this all over for a while, then read this editorial by dan rodricks, which put the climbing rate of homicides in Baltimore into a very sad economic perspective. Basic gist I got out of it was, could the advancing home prices in Baltimore lead to progress in decreasing the amount of homicides in our fair city. The idea seems plausible, more people w/ money move here, they want their investments to be secure, keeping them secure and equity rising would mean they would need homicides to decrease. All sounds very much like a side plot on the wire. Something where string bell(rip) buys a “luxury townhouse” on the water in canton, and then convinces his soldiers to cool it, for business sake. Bringing the connection of homicide to the drug trade is obvious, just read any of the crime reporting in Baltimore and you’ll see a pattern, the homicides == drug trade. The sad reality of crime and specifically homicide in Baltimore, is that if your not involved in the drug trade your reasonably safe.

I guess the question is will the people w/ money, start to consider themselves not “safe” because their money invested in the property isn’t safe? If that’s what it would take to help save the 95% of Baltimore that isn’t 3 blocks from the water, then level my house and bring in the condos. I doubt it though.

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Dear Cherokee,

Sophie is blocking and drying out as I type this. Felting by hand was a smelly pain in the butt a fun new experience. If you don’t like the finished bag, I will cry silent tears inside understand. It might need a spin through the washing machine, but I won’t know for sure until it is completely dried out and no longer smells like a wet fart.

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so this weekend me and the lady had a bit of alone time. Its a rare occasion, but one Ive figured out need to happen at least once a month. Granted this month this is the second time, thanks to jim and jen. But I definitly found last night me and the lady felt more like ourselves than in some time. Now im not in any way saying that having the boy around all the time isnt amaizing, but lets be honest, we all play the roles were placed in. If you are working all the time, you tend to feel like a worker, and less like a human, well If your the parent all the time, then even when you dont need to be, you tend to both feel like the parents all the time and not so much the partners.

of course I say this w/ 1 week left till xmas which will 100% be parent child time.

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So the surly crosscheck has been converted over to a fixed gear for the winter. Let me reiterate that I just love that bike. Riding fixed with clipless pedals is really awesome when riding, but all my unclipping skill goes out the window when on a fixed gear.

Yesterday I did a quick 10 miles on the PG county trail system that involved a 3 stooges-esque slow motion fall on the ice around lake artemesia. I also managed to replenish any calories I burned (and 10 miles doesn’t burn that many) and then some at Nolen’s cool ass xmas party!

today I mixed biking and bouldering (it was a bit tricker than I thought). Slapped the crashpad on my back for some great falls and went riding in great falls doing recon. I found some cool stuff that was wet or icy and then put up 3 problems. None of them are crazy hard, but I feel like they are decent problems. There’s definitely potential for more.
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1 Comment || Topcs: General, bikes, rocks

so yeah. I think a lot of people know that I work at an awesome bike shop. the main reason I work there is because all the people there are awesome. On the environmental / political side of things the shop is about as right on as they can be in an economical manner. If you’re the kind of person who doesn’t like the walmartization of america and you ride a bike, you should really be patronizing your local independent bike shop. A lot of times you can get a better deal through one of the big internet bike companies or the bike dept. of a large sporting goods chain (and I think we’re all guilty of this from time to time), but it’s really awesome when the people at a shop know what you ride, where you ride, etc. That’s the kind of thing that you get from a local bike shop. Often when people get to know you better, they’ll make sure that you’re not getting stuff you don’t need. It’s not the same as a hook up, but a lot of times will save you more money in the long run anyway.

So yeah, back to my commercial. The shop has a mailing list now, it will have information on what’s in stock, what’s happening at the shop (like mike and Iplay a show) and the interesting musings of Jill the owner (oh yeah, it’s woman owned too!) So if you want to sign up for the mailing list, go here.

1 Comment || Topcs: General, bikes

back when i was 15 and had nothing better to do than ride my bike and imagine my future as a pro cyclist (needless to say it never happened) I used to ride a super cheap ass bike trainer everyday in the winter. The rubber melted off the wheels and I watched this super boring video of people in the early 80’s in a race accompanied by REALLY bad music and someone cheering you on for the hills etc.

I still haven’t caught on to what the big deal with the “spinning” business is but the people I know that have done it swear by it.

But, here is my new cheesy substitution. Mike asked me if I ever just throw in quicksilver while I’m riding the trainer. THis is tempting because even though the plot is terrible, it’s filmed in a super cool way. BUT EVEN BETTER. Riding the trainer to lucas brunelle videos.

I like the word “posenger” because that’s pretty much me.

that said, Even I’M not enough of a poser to take advantage of this ebay auction.

1 Comment || Topcs: General, bikes

When I was little, I refused to let my mom give away any of my toys. When she finally convinced me that there wasn’t enough room in my closet to keep them there, I reluctantly let her put them up in the attic. (She told me that they’d be ok even in a garbage bag.)

Here they are, much loved and much abused. Big Sophie the lion was one of my favorites; she kept the monsters under the bed and in the closet where they belonged. I can’t remember all the names of the others. The squirrel is a puppet named Rocky; there’s also raccoon named Rocky that will appear in a picture later on. Almost all of my stuffed animals were hand-me-downs or garage sale purchases. I wish I could remember where the trippy purple dog came from. I know that I strongly believed that she was French, but I’m not sure why.

For as easy as it’s been for me to throw away just about everything else, I can’t say goodbye to these guys. Jim is going to have to take care of that for me. I took some pictures so they won’t really be completely gone, but I read The Velveteen Rabbit too many times as a kid to be able to toss them away myself.

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well. By the time I went to bed, I had bought into the and actually wanted the snow day. I made a point of doing no work since it was a summer sacrifice. I woke up late, rode my bike to ikea to buy a frame for a print I ordered. And discovered that while my huge ass bag will hold ALMOST everything, a 27×19 frame falls outstide of it’s ability range.

But it was not a wasted trip, it was my first real ride on snow. I took the singlespeed out and the snow made the pretty pedestrian street, bike-path, grassy-hills-for-fun route a lot more interesting. I have pretty wide tires on it (2.3) but I there were plenty of times that they didn’t have the bite to keep me going straight and I ended up fishtailing all over. It took me forever too, but might just be because I’m slow. I took this pic of the tornado alley section of the bike path.

when I got home we got a call to sit for H-dog. It was our first sitting experience so we were kinda nervous. Jen missed that part of being a 13 year old girl and I’ve always considered my strength with Holden to be holding him upside down and making noises that he likes.

But, there were no zany mishaps ala

so everything went well (although it would have been cool to see Thor). watched some peewee’s playhouse, played with some boxes, drank some apple juice, drew some pictures and then bedtime came. This sneaky-ass kid has the bedtime tricks down. as soon as bedtime came around, that was when he finally learned our names so sucker-ass “aunt jen” and “jim” were more reluctant to put him to bed. but it all worked out in the end, even though asking to watch more tv, asking where darby was, asking for a book, and asking for more apple juice all came into play. While this parent stuff is old hat to whatsername and whatsisname, babysitting is new to good old aunt jen and uncle jim so we were happy to come out unscathed.

I also thought it would be funny like in the movies, if the babysitters were making out on the couch when the parents came home, but instead we watched kung fu hustle.

4 Comments || Topcs: General, parenting, bikes

so there are a couple essential kid life ideas that are hard to break. for example

1. Summer is made for fun
2. snow means fun and no work

when I was teaching these rules carried over, que jim screaming ahmen. When I stoped teaching these ideas have been hard to loose. Maybee because im surrounded alot by people who still live alot of the trappings of academic/school life. I miss summers dreadfully, the types of summers where you see it comming and you can dream of all you can do with it. Now my summers are just another season, where I get to do other fun stuff, but the time doesnt scream endless possibilities like it once did. Instead I some what stress over how to manage my holidays so I can utilize as much of it as possible. So here I sit, watching the snow fall outside the window, which I can see a sliver of from my nameless cube. Thinking wow, driving home is gonna suck, and wishing to good some one would break into my development duldrum with a notice that all work every where is closed. Wishing I could just kick all this useless code aside, run home, and take holden out in the snow, and relish in the thought that for him, snow means all fun, and summer is still endless.

this post brought to you by more usless c# code, a small window view, and Chisel 8am all day on random repeat.

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There are now entirely too many things that I want to do. It’s all well and good not to be depressed, but I’ll have to develop manic tendencies to keep up with the list of things I want to try. The new issue of Knitty went up today, and there are two toy patterns and two sweaters that I’m eyeing up. Not to mention the Sophie bag, the bike helmet ear warmers, sweater, toys and hat ideas that I have. I can’t keep up with my imagination, and my spinning wheel hasn’t even arrived. It’s going to be hard to make sure my dissertation doesn’t suffer cuz of this.

Wow, remember when napping used to be my hobby?

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