I rode my bike with Ron today - I am up to being able to go around the long way (which is about two blocks?). Still not as good as I could do before getting sick, and I'm tired now - but it's progress!

When we got back, I noticed a little bit of green under the steps of the porch where we store our pots for plants. It turned out to be a plant, growing all by himself under there. We'd thrown the pot down there with the other pots when the plant died last year. Well, this year he decided to resurrect, apparently - surviving on whatever water and light got through to him down there. I brought the plant out and repotted him nicely, and put him on the porch with our other plants. Welcome back to life, little guy.

My new bike! It is a very girly Schwinn that my mom and brother Joe bought me for my birthday. It's so very pink - partially to help it avoid the fate of my last bike, which was that it got kidnapped by teen boys and subsequently broke. If the color isn't enough of a deterrent, it also has a very thick chain lock.

I am pleased to announce that the Holy Church of the Creepy Christ has a few new additions. Just bought a 1948 lithograph of a nun which has eerie holy glow going on, and a late 1800s statue imported from Italy of St. Rocco which has a creeptastic leaking plague sore on his leg, along with some kind of dog waiting eagerly for Rocco's blood or some such. So now in addition to praying to Creepy Jesus for all your salvation needs, you can also hit up St. Rocco. He's the patron saint of contagious diseases, so whether you've got VD or TB, give him a prayer and he'll get back to you. I am considering starting an LJ community for the church one of these days - let people post pictures of their own creepy religious statuary and post their prayer request and so on.

I'm babysitting my brother's dog today which, while the dog is cute, is a big pain in the ass. She needs to go for walks quite frequently and sniffs everything before deciding on the right spot to go. It'd be like if we, as humans, had to travel around from public bathroom to public bathroom, sniffing every toilet until we found that one magical spot that we felt like going in.This is why I'm more of a cat person - they can take care of their body functions on their own as long as you provide them with a place to do it in.

The lilacs are blooming, which always puts me in mind of the Walt Whitman poem. I performed that and O Captain, My Captain once for high school forensics (public speaking sort of deal - not to be confused with the dead people kind) and I have been fond of them since. Other signs of spring - a herd of eight deer spotted by the side of the road, the birds flying in pairs, all sorts of insects and animals starting to run about again.

I went for a bike ride with my brother today, and would like to go walking this weekend if the weather and time permit.

I am just about to start reading Geek Love which Ash and Jess both said was really good. I am also going to start in on some comics as recommended by Dien, but I do not know where to start as yet. Too many choices!

I am feeling a little unwell today, though likely from allergies. There is swine flu reported in the next county over, but I'm not going to get paranoid over it. Aus made dinner for us tonight - he's such a good husband.

Our shed should be here in about a week- then it will be time to get the book business going again. It is also almost time to put the houseplants out on the deck for the growing season.

Meme time:

(stolen from Jeffie - which I totally pronounce as Hef-ay sometimes in my head just because I can)
1. Tell you why I friended you.
2. Associate you with something - fandom, a song, a color, a photo, a word etc.
3. Tell you something I like about you.
4. Tell you a memory I have of you.
5. Ask something I've always wanted to know about you.
6. Tell you my favorite user pic of yours.
7. In return, you must post this in your Lj.

Today my brother Joe came down from Virgina - he's only staying through the weekend, but still good to get to see him for a while. Today we had italian buffet at Marcello's and played Scrabble. I also rode my bike with my other brother Ron.

This cold has me pretty run down - have way fallen behind on NaNo. I need to try and make up for lost time over the weekend especially.

I finished Ordinary Heroes - it was very good! Lots of surprises, all the way up to the end. Now I need to re-read The Secret Life of Bees for the next installment of the Gather Book Club.

The first five chapters of my novel are written, and I'm up to a count of 9,920 words.

I am a bit worried with the election so close - what will our country be like in the next four years? Things are so bad now, and I can't imagine they will get any better if McCain is elected. With Obama, at least we have some hope for the future. I believe he will genuinely try to fix the things that are wrong with America and get us started on the road to sucking less as a nation. The only question is - will he be elected? And once elected, will what he tries to do be enough to save us?

I need to remember to pick up my prescriptions tomorrow.

Aus has had a bit of good fortune at work - he's now working on a different case, where he makes two dollars more an hour and has some overtime. Let us hope that this job somehow lasts long, or even becomes permanent. There are some promising signs- they keep telling him he's really good at this, for example.

Been a lot of driving lately - my back is not pleased with the back-and-forth direction life has taken me lately. I want to ride my bicycle tomorrow, so I hope it is feeling somewhat cooperative and not giving me a hard time and keeping me from doing what I want to do.

Went for my longest bike ride yet yesterday, with my brother Ron. My legs kind of hurt from it today though.

Last night we finally brought the houseplants inside - and just in time, too as it's raining like crazy today and we might even have snow flurries tomorrow. Yuck!

Aus got me some books in preparation for NaNo - the No Plot, No Problem book, the No Plot No Problem novel writing kit, and Self Editing for Fiction writers. Husband for the win! <3

Now I just need to make sure to keep my stress levels down, keep the kids from driving me crazy, and figure out the rest of the research I need to do before Nov 1st.

Thursday there's a NaNo get together in Hammonton that I might attend if I'm feeling together enough to be social with strangers.

I have a bicycle! My very own bicycle, which I purchased today. After looking at the 200-500 dollar bikes at the Bike Shop, and the 77-180 dollar bikes at Wal-Mart, I went to Goodwill and purchased a second hand 18 speed 26 inch ladies mountain bike for ten bucks. Yes, ten dollar.

Now of course, this bike was not entirely up to speed so to speak. It isn't the latest fashion or anything, and it's got some rust pitting here and there (though the frame is still solid). It also had two flat tires. We went to Wal-Mart, and collected a couple of tubes (four dollars each) a new seat (a comfort gel wide seat to help support my back) and a tire tool to take the tires off. It took us a couple of hours to get the tires changed since we didn't really know what we were doing - but once we did that, and got the chain back on, the bike was ready to ride. The brakes work great, and it's a very smooth ride.

I have never owned a bike with speeds before (or well, any bike since I was a little kid) so I have no idea how to shift gears or when it is appropriate or necessary to shift them. There are two knobs which I assume are for doing this, but I have no idea what I'm doing there so I will leave them alone.

Steve is going to put the seat on for me sometime this week (he and his friends are good with bikes), so that should make the ride even more comfortable. I also want to see if I can get some handlebar grips to replace the ones it has on there as the rubber is somewhat torn up on the ones it has.

I wonder if there's anything I can do about the rust? I know it is primarily cosmetic, and at least it's not on the painted parts of the bike (which are purple and pink), but it would be prettier if I could get it less rusty by the pedals.

Oh, update on my other project - the box is solid brass, not other metals - all the weird colors I was turning up are finish on top of the brass. The interior is likely cedar. My brother brought me jewlery cleaner, which is fixing it up pretty nicely (the wash with dish soap followed by a dip with some jewelery cleaner seems to be doing pretty good - it's just a matter of repeating it until I can get the layers and layers of gunk off of it). In addition to the toothbrush I've been using, I also picked up a little rubber tipped dental tool today to dig into some of the crevices. Will keep folks posted.

Comic update - it looks like we have found an artist to continue the Michael's Story comic series! spiderteo is going to be our new illustrator. That means back to work on the comic scripts for me. I'm going to be locking myself in my room and writing this weekend - so apologies in advance if I am very out of touch and unavailable to play / hang out.

Though I think I will take pictures of the bike and upload the pictures I took of the box this weekend, too.

Today I hung out with my brothers - we had lunch, went for bike rides, and make sure everyone was registered to vote. If you are in NJ, you must be registered to vote by October 14th - so PLEASE take some time and check out http://www.voteforchange.com/ and make sure that you are registered and all set to go. My mom and I were set up fine - one of my brothers thought he needed to re-register, but learned he was already in the system - and my other brother had to change his registration to be able to vote in VA. So we had a variety of voting situations - but we're all voting for Obama, so go Democrats!


Watch KEATING ECONOMICS: John McCain & The Making of a Financial Crisis:



In non political news, bike riding was fun! I should try to ride more often - it'll help me get some exercise.