Photo Blog :: Signs of Spring

Granted, Spring has been rearing it's beautiful head for a few weeks now - at least in waves. But today I took notice of just how stunning some of the foliage is in Manayunk. So after my run I grabbed our camera to document some of the beauty just outside our door. Hope you're all enjoying the delicious weather!

Happy Spring!


Ashley

Prison Break

Violet

Tilted Petals

Sleeping Petals

Swirling Petals (My favorite!)

Tired Toes

Path to Heaven

Here Comes the Rain

The things I own...

So I just took a look back at my blogging past and realized that I have not written a blog in almost 2 months. Two months… I have no explanation… I will just claim that it took me two months to dig our cars out of the multiple blizzards we received and just go on allowing you to think that I’m just now kicking the snow off my boots and able to take time away from my impossible task to write for a few minutes.

In reality, that is not the case at all… I have just been short on blogging topics with which to occupy the masses (this is me thinking there are throngs of people out there waiting with bated breath for me to write my next edition). I also feel like we have needed a lighter topic with which to fill our page, and honestly it has taken me a while to develop a topic… I’ve recently been involved in an “academic competition.” Yes… I know… I won’t go into that little expedition into the ever-interesting field of academic competitions, but none-the-less it is neither interesting or “light” so it will not suffice for the current matter.

No… for this I would like to talk about the things I own.

I know in the past I have made some references to my Geo… So what better object to begin the diatribe; My 1996 white (with a black front bumper) Geo Prizm. No they don’t make Geo’s any more… which was much more rare until about 5 months ago when a lot of car brands became extinct. Alas, it is now 14 years old - and sounds like it… when listening to it you could probably more easily equate it to a boat than a car… maybe there’s a muffler problem, but to me it hardly seems like it is worth taking care of at this point in its life. However, as I write this I think about the long and storied history of the car. (cue birds chirping, fluffy clouds floating in a blue sky, and a sun that sings and smiles)

When I got the Geo in 2002 it was used, and within about six months of the acquisition, the pant started chipping off the front bumper (clearly a bad repair job by the previous owner). Unfortunately, starting around that point (where I pulled out the paint scrappers and just decided to take all the paint off the bumper) I decided that the car was destined to die and it really wasn’t worth much love and attention…

However, here I am 8 years later driving around the same car that every winter I assure myself is going to be the last year of the Geo… I guess it’s the Toyota motor in it or something… but it just won’t seem to die. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining (too much), I have neither the money, time, or decision-making ability to pick out a new car at this point. Thus, I continue to drive around a car that now has a matte finish (I gave up waxing it around 2004), is incredibly dirty (I don’t think I’ve washed it in two years, thank God for rain), and sounds like a boat or small aircraft that you would never trust to get you anywhere safely. It did have a near-death experience about a year or so ago when the transmission broke, but knowing that I was not going to have an income for the next year I decided it best to sink the money into it (goodbye wedding money) and hope it makes it until we both have incomes. But alas, the Geo keeps on running, so I’m holding onto it until it dies or I somehow receive the financial means to buy a new one, I’m not holding my breath.

I have a Mac. I know… WOW you have a Mac? You must love it, that’s so great, everyone loves Macs. And I do… it’s all true. I do love my Mac. I love how it looks and I love the overall simplicity of the whole thing. The only problem is my Mac is 7 years old, and thus a solid two years past its useful life. Like anything that’s old, it’s just not quite as great as it used to be. While it used to feel like it was lightning fast, now it feels like it moves at the same pace as the people who walk in front of your car in the ghetto… I may be exaggerating, it’s much faster than that. The worst thing is that it’s not slow just when I open a program or do something that involves heavy quantities of RAM, it has gotten to the point where if I do so much as type two letters too fast I get the little wheel of death while it tries to decide how exactly it should go about putting that “N” after the “I.”

For our wedding we received a number of very nice and generous gifts. One such gift came from my brother and his fiancée - a nice set of living room tables. These tables were very nice, a nice dark brown finish that looked very nice with our off-white couches. However, due in large part to some nail-painting mishaps (see previous entry about Ashley’s nail painting obsession) the once beautiful coffee table now has two large white splotches where nail products have removed the finish. Upon telling Ashley that our coffee table now looks like it has cancer, and there is no way we can possibly have anyone over to our house, she assured me that we could strategically place bowls, drinks, napkins and other such materials on the table in such a way as to make it look totally normal. So if any of our loyal readers happen to come over in the future to find our house clean other than the coffee table, which for some reason has three plants, two napkins, eight glasses of water, and a cat on it, you’ll know why.

Shortly after I met Ashley she moved into a new apartment and had to purchase new couches that would fit in the provided space. The furniture was attractive, affordable, and quite comfortable as well. They are contemporary and an off-white color, well, they were an off white color. In yet another, separate, nail-polish incident, a bottle of burgundy nail polish was left on the couch without the lid fully secured, thus causing the couch to match our beautiful table. They now both look like they have leprosy or are going through chemotherapy together, what an adorable couple… Not that the nail polish is the only thing on the couch, there are plenty of other marks as well. One time someone slept on the couch, on top of a pen. Wouldn’t that be a little uncomfortable? Somehow, in a feat of extreme dexterity, he managed to have the pen scribble all-over one cushion without ever stabbing himself with said pen during the night, truly amazing. However, the couch still does have its extreme comfort going for it. After my father spent 4 nights on the couch (which I was convinced he would hate) he informed me that he had the best 4 nights of sleep of his life on our couch.

Now, I don’t want to give anyone the impression that I only have junky stuff, because when I say that to Ashley she never fails to remind me that she is not junky, which is totally true. I then must rephrase my statement to say I only own junky stuff, and that I don’t own her. She then thinks for a minute and stops arguing… But we do have a lot of nice stuff, well at least nice from a “we got it at IKEA” standpoint. I keep thinking that once we find jobs we will slowly be able to replace all of my junky things… the only problem is that I need to find a company willing to hire someone who drives up in a Geo…