Weekend News

Had a great weekend. We didn’t do one big thing but lots of little things that added up to lots of fun. Now granted, most of the fun things we did were very domestic in nature but I guess we’ve moved on to that stage in life. I overheard the husband telling one of his friends that now he would get excited over fancy ranges and huge refrigerators and modern couches and he didn’t understand why. He’s friend responded with “yeah, it’s called a wife.”

Friday I went to Sacramento with my boss for a meeting. We drove 2.5 hours for a 2 hour meeting and lunch and then drove another 2.5 hours to get home. This wasn’t very environmentally conscious, I know, but it was worth it. We had a great meeting and will even get more funding to do more work. Another agency had done work similar to us but had gotten different results, but it turns out that they did a lot of things differently so we would have been comparing apples to oranges. Friday evening we worked out in the husband’s home gym and then went for a walk around the park, which was filled with families and little kids.

On Saturday we went for a 3 hour bike ride. Our mission was to return something to Costco. We took my usual path to work (a hike/bike trail) for most of our ride and had an awesome experience. The hike and bike trail was bustling with cyclists and pedestrians. I typically see about 10 people during my 6 mile ride in to work and on Saturday morning we saw 10 people in the first 30 seconds. I guess the trail is the place to be on Saturday morning. We saw a really cute all black bunny along the side of the trail. He (or she) appeared to be someone’s ex-pet since he wasn’t shy at all until the husband tried to pick him up, and then he only hopped out of reach. The bunny drew quite a crowd and it turns out the bunny and some of his friends have been on the trail for about 1 month. By the time we continued on our trip, there were three ladies who had gone home to get supplies to try to trap and rescue the bunny. When we returned on our way home, we saw some lady walking around with a carrier and some veggies but there was no sign of the bunny.

The rest of Saturday we just hung around and did a few things around the house.

On Sunday we went to The Home Depot and Ikea. We tried The Home Depot closest to us but it’s a smaller store than the one we used to shop at and it didn’t have a big selection of some of the things we were looking for, so we went to our usual Home Depot. We bought a storage/shelve thing for the garage, a tool box for our current tools, and a cat door the husband will hopefully install in the door leading to the laundry room/litter box so that we can keep that door closed to keep out the chills (there’s a big vent in there) and the liter dust. We then went to the Ikea across the street and were exhausted, hungry, and dehydrated by the time we found the exit (and we even took the shortcut). We didn’t buy anything at Ikea.

This morning I rode my bike in to work. It was great a ride. The weather was cool and I felt I was going pretty fast but I still couldn’t get my ride time to less than 35 minutes. Oh well. I feel great right now so we’ll see how I feel in a few hours.

On my ride, I was thinking about the differences between conservatives and liberals. I always figured the conservatives are just the people who don’t know – the ones that don’t travel, have lived in the same small town all their lives, don’t have any friends who are different from them, and are probably religious. But I figured that you could still be really religious and liberal, as long as you respected other people and other people’s views. For example, you can be a devout Catholic, but still respect other people’s religious views and understand that this country was founded on religious freedom. Often this respect for other people and their views comes from traveling and meeting other people who are different from you and realizing that while they may attend different churches, have different activities at family reunions, eat different things, they really want the same thing as you – the opportunity to provide the best life for themselves and their families. The thing is that I’ve met quite a few people who are well traveled and have done lots of different things (like the peace corp and living, and not just traveling, in other countries) who are still quite conservative. The only other reason I can think of for being conservative is that you are super rich and you don’t want too much government involvement in your everyday activities. It doesn’t pay to be poor or middle class and a conservative. So that’s my political two-cents for this week. I used to always listen to my ipod on my bike rides, but I’ve been lazy about updating it and charging the battery. So now it's just me and my thoughts.

I can’t believe it’s a Monday again and that it’s another 4 days before the weekend. Happy Monday!