Two Nerds Shopping

A few days ago, Justin posted the following amusing web-comic with the conclusion that he and Erin are nerds...



Well, it appears that Jeromie and I are nerds as well.

In addition to riding our bikes to Target/the grocery store with a mass amount of carrying capacity, we spent probably an hour debating over the best organizing strategy for Jeromie (in lieu of the options he's already picked out, which turned out to be unnecessarily expensive). Then we pedaled over to Sunflower Market (which is awesome) and proceeded to make a usually quick grocery trip take nearly twice as long. See web comic.

The moral of this story: I should probably go grocery shopping alone if time is ever an issue.

But, I shall embrace my nerd-dom and share with you my new favorite toothbrush. That's right, I said toothbrush.

the wild toothbrush in its natural habitat!

I'm notoriously hard on toothbrushes, so it came as no surprise to look at it this morning and decide I needed a new one. I read somewhere a few weeks ago about toothbrushes with removeable/replaceable heads & figured I'd see if the environmentally-conscious Sunflower had any. They did... and the price was competitive with the sorts of toothbrushes I normally get... especially when you take into account the cost of the heads you replace them with!

So, I have a new toothbrush.

Yay!

Of Hobbits and Happy Trails

I must say, I've had a pretty happy day.

Our hiking venture was full of fail (for lack of planning), but we've had a great time anyway! After a month here, Jeromie and I figured it was about time for some mountains, but we really had no idea of where to start without tackling on of the (in)famous Colorado 14-ers. Don't get me wrong, we'd love to hike five or ten or all of them, but we didn't want that to be the first trip out... so, on the recommendation of a new friend, we headed toward Boulder.

Fail factor #1: a late start (what with work, cleaning and laundry that needed to be done)

Fail factor #2: lack of a packable lunch

Fail factor #3: the decision to stop in Boulder for lunch

Upon entering Boulder, we headed for Pearl Street, and that was the end of any plans for hiking... downtown Boulder is just plain crazy. Perhaps it was just today, since there was a fall festival going on, but I feel like we saw a little bit of everything there, and it was awesome. We grabbed lunch at a place called the Falafel King (which was delicious), then puttered around taking the place in. We ended up spending a looooooooooooong time in a kite/toy store (can't remember the name) and found a furry friend that very nearly came home with us:

From K100D

They also had some hilarious band-aids at this toy store, like ones with sushi, kiss marks, pirate symbols, or Jesus on them. I don't know why, but sushi band-aids are kind of tempting to me. :-)

Once we finally wrenched ourselves free of the toy store, we headed for the car to salvage the plans for hiking, at which point the sky decided to threaten rain and then *dump.* We still might've made it out, had we not found a cozy coffee/bike shop in a TRAIN.

A bike/coffee shop in a train in the rain in the mountains.

From K100D

Folks who know me well will recognize that this is a win/win/win/win situation in my book... a lot of my favorite things all rolled into one. Add some thunder (of which there was some), and you've got one happy Liz. The only thing that could've made it better would be either hiking before, or biking to get there.

We'd planned on finding a coffee shop to crash & study in anyway, so we stayed. And it was the awesome. And it's still the awesome... because we're still there.

* * * * * * *

In other news, we now have confirmation that Jeromie is a hobbit:
- he has furry feet
- he eats about 8 meals a day
- he lives underground (mmmm... basement)
- and he gives presents on his birthday!

Meet Maple:

From K100D

She's an MSI Wind Notebook... about 10 inches wide & 3lbs. Tiny and cute. After a few weeks of school, we realized that one computer and two paper-writers was just not working out. While I love Macs to pieces, they don't make any particularly small and affordable laptops... thus we started looking at windows machines and found out about netbooks... which is what this thing is. Small, very portable, and great for all the things I typically use a computer for. What's funny is that Maple makes Jeromie's Macbook look fat... and Macbooks aren't fat at all! She came in the mail yesterday, and I've already been vastly more productive. :-D

Anyhow... back to my studies.

Itteh Bitteh Mad-Typin' Committeh

Yes, that is a spoof on the LOLcats. It's also an apt description of my new laptop, but more on that later... I've got a bike to ride!!

Um, so...

I promise I didn't fall off the edge of the earth. Really, I'll just have to agree with Corey. Grad school & sleeping are not exactly compatible some days. Grad school & blog posts are not exactly compatible most days. Unfortunately, neither are grad school and sewing, painting or taking the time to start a new knitting project. So far. But I still have a lil' hope.

One thing grad school is conducive to though (at least in our current living situation): riding bicycles. So far, Jer and I haven't taken the car to school yet... and we went about 2 weeks on a quarter tank of gas... only using that because we were heading to Nebraska!! All this bike riding makes me *very* happy.

Nevertheless, we've swapped our SC plates & licenses for CO ones:



The house in the background is the one that Ben and Cori Hamilton are so graciously sharing with us (for a small fee). We live in the rather well-lit basement & share the kitchen. We're really loving it so far... especially the "book nook" that we set up in the living room. At some point, I'll take some pictures, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. Our commute to school is a whopping 1.75 miles (3.5 round trip), so we intend on riding regardless of the weather (even in the winter if we can manage it).

Pigeon likes it here... thinks there are plenty of shenanigans to be had, but hasn't been caught in the act yet... at least around Denver. But in Nebraska on the other hand...

He pulled a fast one on the Mattisons by moving the pig!

He snatched the camera and snapped a picture...

He checked on the bikes on the way home
(cause it was *super* windy)

aaaaaand... when we stopped at the Pony Express historic spot on the way home he insisted that "Nooooooo, it's not Pony Express, it's Pigeon Express... you know, homing pigeons?? they've been around for waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay longer. The horse & rider?? Oh, that's just our mascot!"


- - - - - - -

B vs. C: 171.2 / 52.4*

*(This does *not* count road trips. The goal is to use bikes more around town. Had it not been for the DNC though, we would've taken the train to Nebraska!)

And the winner of the 100th post drawing is... Teresa from Affectioknit! I used a random list generator & she came out on top! Maybe next time I'll draw names creatively, but I am just toooooo tired. (Please email me your address!! eliz(dot)rand(at)gmail(dot)com)