shady

It's hot! We're having perfect racing weather here in Springfield. I'm sitting in a shady spot at the Harley pit, waiting for the next qualifying run.
I am finally, finally feeling better after a rough, headachey week. I took a chance with the pit chiropractor at the short track race last night. He was awesome and I'm feeling good today.
I've gotten some cool pics already. Can't wait to upload them!

off to the races!

We're en route to Springfield, Illinois, for the AMA flat track races. The weather is going to be beautiful, the cycles fast, the beer cold, and it's always fun to catch up with friends I only see once or twice a year.

But we have to get there first. We're only about an hour into the 300-mile drive. Baxter is not a happy camper -- I finally found something this fearless baby doesn't like. He's been in the motorhome tons of times -- but never when it's been in motion. He's freaked out, sitting at my feet right now. Poor guy! I'll have to give him some Benadryl *before* we travel home on Monday.

Have a wonderful and safe weekend, wherever you are! Photos on Monday or Tuesday.

@ the Movies!

I dragged my dad to the movie theater on Thursday. When we got there, the line for Sex and the City 2 was waiting to get into the theater for the first showing of the day.

But that's not why we were there. What, you thought I would make my dad see SATC2? We went to see Robin Hood -- with captions!

Yep, I went all the way to Iowa so I could go to an accessible movie theater.

Seriously, at home, the closest theaters with either rear window captioning (more on that in a minute) or open captions are in Kansas City or St. Louis. So I only seem to go to the theater when I'm traveling. Good thing I travel a lot, right?

My first experience with rear window captioning was with Ms. Brenda herself in April! We went to see "Hot Tub Time Machine," and came away scarred from reliving the 80s and with side stitches from laughing.

Rear window captioning is fairly new -- to me, at least. I don't get out much, apparently. In theaters that choose to offer this technology (the hardware runs about $12,000), a LED display is at the rear of the theater, to the side of the movie projector. The display board shows two lines of text in a mirror image -- the captions are synchronized with the movie via a CD-ROM.

Viewers like me can request a rear window captioning device at the ticket or customer service counter. Actually, it's a little too low-tech to be called a device. It's just a plastic base molded to fit the theater seat cupholder, with a 20x4 piece of plexiglass attached with a flexible metal cord. Once seated, I can adjust the panel so it reflects the LED captions at the bottom of the movie screen -- and follow the movie dialogue.

I'm sure other theatergoers wonder what the heck I am doing, since they can't see the captions reflected on the plexiglass from their angle. And I'm pretty sure they were like WTH yesterday when my RWC getup fell out of the cupholder during a particularly moving (read: quiet!) scene of Robin Hood. The plastic base didn't *quite* fit in the cupholder perfectly and popped out, making quite a racket when it hit the uncarpeted floor. I got the giggles -- and it's probably a good thing Stephanie wasn't with me because we probably would have been disruptive laughing about it.

I love the RWC. It's beyond awesome to go to the theater -- with my dad, no less -- and sit back and enjoy the movie.

Iowa!

Yep, Iowa. It isn't a bad place to be, although I seem to have brought the heat + humidity with me!






Had a great first few days up here, hanging out with my brother, sister-in-law & dad. I even snuck in a special visit to a good buddy when we were at Super Target.

That's (seriously) all I bought there. That one trip, at least!



We roamed around downtown Cedar Falls today & went into a kitchen store. It was jam-packed with some very neat items, including a lot of things I didn't know I "needed" for my kitchen. Plus these darlings were strung up on almost all the available wall space: Pretty, pretty!!

Summer is in the air!

I've been home for more than a month, and it is time, once again, to hit the road! North, east, west, south.... I'm literally going in all four directions.

And am I ever going to rack up the miles.

I just made the mistake of adding up miles on Mapquest. Let's just say I will tally nearly 5,000 miles on the road over the next month.

Yeah. My tailbone hurts just from thinking about it. Which reminds me, I need to get a pillow for that.

But before I can take off, I have one last commitment here in Missouri. I'm not sharing details until after the fact, but let's just say it has a taste of "Sweet Home Alabama" to it.

The blog will continue from the road -- in-between my freelance writing. I admit I've slacked on blogging lately, but why write for free when I can get paid for it?

Patience

You know the saying, "You plan, God laughs"?

It's true. So very true.


I'm not where I planned to be this week! I had everything all planned out and everything was falling into place. Then it rained. And rained. And the event I was going to cover for Connection magazine was postponed a week.


But I'm not complaining too much. I'm getting a lot done at home. I just haven't been blogging much because, well, I'd rather get paid to write. And the new freelance gig I have is turning out to be a gem. If I didn't have so many other projects going on, I would be writing more around the clock. I'm trying to pace myself so it doesn't get old, but I don't think that's going to be a problem.


The creek is finally drive-over-able (yeah, not a word, but whatever), at least barely for my car. Of course, it may not be that way over the next few days, since Mother Nature is dumping more rain on us. So my car's parked a mile up the road on the other side of the creek. All I have to do is figure out how to get TO it when I need to get out Thursday or Friday.


We had some much-needed sunshine today. My new sunpatiens is turning out to be my favorite plant ever. I think I'm going to get more of these next year -- with full sun and at least 2-3 blooms going all the time, it's gorgeous.

Stormy!

There hasn't been much excitement around here. The big storms keep missing us -- including the big one that ripped through Oklahoma Monday evening. A big hole opened up in the radar and we didn't even get a drop of rain. I was hoping to try my hand at some photography, but by the time anything was within sight, it was too dark. I'm sure there will be other opportunities! Maybe even today -- it's hot and steamy already this morning with thunderstorms promised later in the day. I suppose I should be careful what I wish for!

I've become fascinated with tornado chasers: Vortex2, Weather Channel, ChaserTV. I even put up with having Jim Cantore in my living room (ok, on the TV) for four hours on Monday night, watching the tornado coverage. If you haven't seen the video of the multiple tornado that came down in Wakita, OK, you're missing something really wild!

I've been told we're "safe" in the hollow. Really? Does Mother Nature know this? I may have to find out a scientific answer from one of my tornado chaser friends. I truly don't think there are any guarantees in life. I don't have a basement or a tornado trap and haven't decided whether a corner in my bathroom or the icky, dark crawl space would be "the" place to hide if we did get a tornado.

Hoping the storms wear themselves out by Saturday. I'm obsessively watching the weather, as I have an outdoor event to cover for the magazine that day. First it was 70% chance, then 40% and now it's 50% chance. Please, please let it rain Wednesday, Thursday AND Friday. Sunday, even. But not Saturday!