That Was The WeekEND That Was

[anarchist_nomad]

Saturday: Got up and went to the lab. Escorted a gaggle of high schoolers -- and some parents -- on a tour of the magnet facility. Came home and was met shortly thereafter by langs_place. We went into the city to buy bicycles at the Working Bikes Cooperative.

In a nutshell, Working Bikes is a volunteer-run collective that recovers landfill-bound bicycles, repairs them to working condition, then sells them (at a low cost) to fund shipments of bicycles to developing countries. I was duly impressed by Working Bikes -- it looked like they had at least one thousand bicycles for sale. After an hour of browsing, Lang and I had each picked a bike that we were happy with: She had a Schwinn Suburban and I had a Univega. Each cost about $50. I haven't owned a bike in many, many years -- so I am quite delighted with my new purchase.

Afterward, we dropped in on B&C, who happen to live a short distance from Working Bikes. Though longtime friends of Lang, I had never met either of them -- only heard much talk. So it was good to finally spend some time, get Thai food, and chat. We called it a night fairly early and went home. After a short bike ride down my street, we retired to bed at a reasonable hour (for once).

Sunday: The earlier part of the day featured calls to Mom (for Mothers' Day, of course), the Kiddo, and resourceress. After cheshcat and Cabaret Girl returned from Michigan, we headed out for Italian food at Bucca. My vegetarianism was temporarily forced on CG and Chesh; we shared a meal of eggplant parmesean and ravioli (plus chocolate cake). Yum! Chesh commented that she still finds it odd to watch me eat eggplant. After all my years as a carnivore, I can understand why.

After dinner, we rented some movies and came home. Chesh and CG have been in the living room working on grading and other faculty-prep work. Meanwhile, the Moof and I played GO in the family room. Tonight's game was 11x11 and was relatively closer -- he won 23 to 17. Ah well, next time! I find that I really enjoy having the Event Horizon be a community center, even for a small community. It's nice having work and games and whatnot going on at once. This reminds me of my college years, when my closest friends all lived on the same dorm hall. I suspect that we'll see more of this over the summer, as both Chesh and I will be here (as opposed to AZ or traveling) for most of the time.

Soon it is off to bed, for cuddling with cheshcat and then sleep.

Comments

[lakenaiad.livejournal.com]

question about WBC - do you know whether they will work on/add parts to the bike i already have? or, do they do trades?

btw, Hi, it's me, K, the girl whose bed you fell asleep on watching porn last weekend... :) hope you don't mind i friended you.

[anarchist-nomad.livejournal.com]

I've only been to WBC once, but I suspect that they will work on the bike that you have if you ask them to. Their labor rate is $15/hour, so it isn't unreasonable. As far as trades go, I doubt it because they don't buy their bikes -- they take them as donations. It is work worth supporting, though, since the profits go to sending bikes to third world nations.

Also, don't mind at all that you friended me. I'll friend ya back now! Oh, and for the record, you have a very comfortable bed. So in the war between sleep and porn, the bed tipped the scales on the side of sleep. :)

[lakenaiad.livejournal.com]

Cool! I'm pretty happy with the bike I have, I just want to get better wheels put on it. I have road wheels that don't handle the rought terrain of Chicago streets very well, and the rims are all bent up as a result.

I find that sleep usually wins out over porn in most cases. Or at least, the porn has to be really exceptional to have a fighting chance. :)