STOP!

Today this teenage girl on a bike had the distinction of coming the closest to being killed by me.

Occasionally when I'm on the north end of town and coming back in on 105 I'll take Jefferson instead of Willamette. I'm not sure why I don't do this more often, because it's really a better route. I just seem to be programmed to drive on Willamette, because for the longest time I didn't know Jefferson was there.

As you can see here, it's a straight shot on Jefferson off of 105 all the way to 28th st. What makes it a good route is that the only time you have a stop sign or light is on 18th, so you don't stop anywhere near as much as on Willamette.

18th to 28th is a residential neighborhood, and as you're driving south, College Hill is on your left. The ridge parallels Jefferson and Willamette, so all the streets that run perpendicular to them are short and steep as they come off the hill.

I was heading south down Jefferson, going maybe 25-30 mph. There was another vehicle maybe a few car lengths behind me; maybe a second or two back at the speed we were going.

I was around 24th street when a cyclist flying down one of those steep hills shot through a stop sign without slowing down and missed slamming into the side of my car by maybe a quarter of a second. Had she stretched her arm out in passing she could have touched the back of my car easily. So not only did she miss slamming into me by a hair's breadth, she missed getting t-boned by the car behind me by only a second or so.

It happened so fast that I don't recall seeing the other driver slam on his brakes. She just flew through the gap between us like a movie stunt. In my rearview mirror I did notice that another cyclist with her had her bike tipped over on its side, and I was wondering if maybe they overestimated their braking power and just weren't able to stop. I can't imagine anyone being stupid enough to try a stunt like that on purpose. I see plenty of people around town cruising through stop signs in front of traffic with several seconds to spare, but never anything as reckless as this.

I was so shocked that instead of just driving away, I turned the car around and headed down the street she'd gone down in search of her. Sure enough she was sitting at the side of the road with a couple of friends. I went into old person lecture mode and rolled down the window to give her a piece of my mind. She was maybe 11 or 12, and was apologetic for having almost smooshed herself against my car. She wasn't wearing a helmet, either, so there's a decent chance she'd be dead had myself or the car behind me had the misfortune to connect with her.

I wasn't quite as freaked out as I might have been had I been the one on the bike, but it still shook me up just a little.

Playtime!

I started building the kids a play structure maybe a week and a half ago. This was all part of the master plan, and one of the reasons we left a big, open flat spot in the backyard. When we expanded the deck we used Trex for all the new stuff, and replaced all the existing cedar since it would have looked a little goofy if we hadn't. I ended up salvaging about 40 20' 2 x 6s, along with some 2 x 4s, and a bunch of railing material. I had to pull out millions of nails, but I got them all cleaned up and stored them under the deck, where they've been sitting for a couple of years.

The idea with the playhouse was to salvage as many of these as possible. I used them for floor joists, bracing, decking... When I get around to the roof I'll use them for the rafters and the purlins to hold up the roofing. I've made a pretty big dent in them.

The building is slow going. The first day I decided not to move things back and forth so I set up a table in the back. It's got the miter saw on top, and I've got a big plastic bin underneath I'm storing things like hand tools, clamps, fasteners, and anything else I think I'm gonna need. I still end up hiking up to the garage half a dozen times a day for things I forget, though.

I usually get the most work done on the days the kids are gone. I drop them off at school and daycare, then usually I need to stop by the hardware store for a new batch of stuff I need to pick up. Then I head home, carry all the new stuff out back, and then make a couple more trips to pack out the power tools and other stuff I leave inside. I usually don't get started working until 10 or so, and have to start cleaning up by around 2 if I need to pick up the kids.

I've made some decent headway, but there's still a lot to do. I need to attach the railings to the bridge, put down all the decking, build the climbing wall, figure out how to attach the slide, add the fireman's pole, add some railings, and put the roof on. If it's done in 2 weeks I'll be feeling pretty good. I'm starting to think those kits that promise that you can build and play the same day would have been a lot easier. But no where near as cool. Or as big.

You can see pictures over at my flickr account.

Where were you at 8:00 PM PST on 8/16/08?

You should be somewhere, glued to a television set tuned into NBC. You're excused if you happen to be in Beijing at the aquatics center, you lucky dog.

Unless you've been living under a rock, you know who Michael Phelps is. Tonight in less than two hours we should see history being made. After tying Spitz's long standing record of seven gold medals in a single Olympics, tonight Michael Phelps should add one more for a total of eight.

His last race is the 4 x 100 medley relay, in which he will be swimming the butterfly leg. Apparently the US has never lost this event. Unless something goes horribly wrong, they should win this one as well.

Not only has he won seven gold medals, but in six of those he set world records. The seventh he could only manage an Olympic record. Let the enormity of that task sink in for a second. It's entirely possible that he could leave these games annoyed at having only broken seven world records instead of eight.

This is moon landing big! Spitz held onto his record for 36 years. It's entirely possible that no one else will equal or best this in my lifetime.

So go make sure your TV is working! If not, find a bar or something. Just make sure you're watching.

Creepy Crawlies

There are two types of spiders in my house. There are the web spinning kind, that more or less keep to the top one foot of the ceiling. There's always a cobweb or two floating around up there, almost invisible against the white paint. Occasionally I'll leave them alone, until I do something like walk into a web, then it's time to throw down. Out comes the vacuum and I start sucking them up.

One time I was staring at what I thought was a speck of dust on the ceiling of the hallway. Then it moved. Then I realized it was a microscopic baby spider. Then I realized there were dozens and dozens of them running around up there, probably just having popped out of some egg sac somewhere. Blech. The vacuum earned its keep that day.

Then there's the other kind of spider. I still don't know what the hell these things are, but they creep the shit out of me. They don't do webs, probably because they scare their prey to death. They are gigantic, and hairy. They are often found in bathtubs, skittering around trying to find their way out. What really freaks me out is knowing that for every one that I see, there are probably ten more hiding out in my shoes and my underwear drawer.

Think I'm overreacting? Take a look at what I saw hanging out on the wall on my way downstairs.
I stuck the dollar bill on the wall for scale. People never believe me when I say, "Oh, including legs it was about the size of my palm." Need more? Can do! That's what macro settings are for.
Not good enough? Let's go in for a close up!

Look at the size of that thing! It thirsts for human blood!

I seriously need to find out what kind of spider that it. If it turns out it's venomous I may have to cleanse the house with fire.

It's Better Than It Sounds

A while ago Sarah found some recipes online for these smoothies this woman was making in an effort to sneak veggies into her kids' diet. As I recall the first one we tried out was a mixture of spinach, mango, ice and maybe a little fruit juice. The sound of blended raw spinach sounded pretty nasty, but supposedly the other ingredients were supposed to make the taste disappear. As I suspected, it tasted pretty nasty. Sarah didn't give up, though, and tried different mixtures, though all of them had spinach in them. Some were better than others.

Another problem we were having was that our blender was having trouble dealing with the smoothies. There were almost always chunks of frozen fruit and ice left in the bottom. For a Valentine's Day present I splurged and bought a Total Blender. I'd been dying to try one ever since watching the 'Will It Blend?' movies, though I wasn't planning on running hockey pucks or iPods through mine.

The new blender did not disappoint, and now smoothies could be made with ease. I found that if I added enough fruit, the spinach did indeed disappear. I was making mine with about a 50/50 blend of spinach to fruit, and that was working fine.

Recently I started on a different tack. I wanted to put protein powder in my smoothies, but I didn't think that would jive too well with fruit. So I made a new recipe. I have to admit that this one seems even nastier than the fruit smoothies. It's surprisingly good, though. I don't even think it's an acquired taste because I don't remember having to choke down the first one I made. I've tweaked my ingredients to where I like them, but you may want to adjust to your own liking. This is a great way to get a good portion of leafy, green veggies into your diet if you're not eating them already.

So that's all that's in it. I start with 1 cup of milk, then add spinach up to about the 4 cup line of the blender. I don't know how much people compress spinach when they're measuring it, since I could probably stuff a pound of spinach into there if I pushed hard enough. I give it a gentle shove, so it's not super loose, but there's still some air pockets in there. Then I add 2 tbsp of peanut butter, 2 tbsp of wheat germ, and two scoops of chocolate protein powder. I top it off with maybe 6-8 ice cubes and a little bit of water.
Then I put on the top and let 'er rip. This makes sort of a milkshake consistency, though not so thick you need to eat it with a spoon. You can add or subtract liquid to adjust that, though it probably won't blend if you take too much of the liquid out.
There's the finished product. That's about 600 calories or so for about a 28 oz. smoothie, with 18g of fiber. You could toss some flax seed meal in there if you want to up the fiber count. The peanut butter adds some fat, but better to eat it this way than on a PB&J. This makes a pretty decent meal replacement, and is good for after workouts.

Commute

I decided to take some pictures of my commute this morning. The kids, Noah especially, aren't too happy if I stop moving, so I waited until after I'd dropped them off. Then I stopped every couple of minutes on the ride back and snapped a pic, so I'd have a slideshow of my ride home. Here's the route that I'm taking, and here's the photoset. I even geotagged all the images so you can see exactly where I took them.

Did I mention I got a Flickr account? I like the organizational tools better than the photo album on my own site, so I'm duplicating everything there. Better to have stuff backed up in more than one spot, anyway.

Camping Indoors

The other day I dropped the kids off and decided to go for a little longer ride. There was a sporting goods store out by Home Depot that I wanted to stop by, and it was only another couple of miles down the road. I was trying to find another flag that I could mount on the trike.

When I got there I found that they were having a huge tent sale in the parking lot out in front of the store. I wandered around for a while looking at everything and noticed some tents near the back. They were pretty crappy quality, but the smallest of the three was only $18, marked down from $70 or so. I didn't feel like toting it around for the rest of my ride, so I stopped by again that evening after picking the kids up.

We had a little tent from Ikea that Ian liked, but it was tiny, and he ended up jumping around on it and breaking the poles. This one is a little bit bigger, about 7' square at the base, so it'll probably stand up to the little beasts better.

He tried sleeping in it the first night but got freaked out and moved back to the bed. The last couple nights, though, he's been doing better. I'm not sure how long it's going to last because it takes up most of the free floor space in the room. It'll be fun while it lasts, though.