fff|ppp|
One of the coolest “Babes”!
|ppp|fff
Happy Birthday Beth!
Chubbs
1 Reply
Bumper Sticker Downgrade
So, I decided it was time to downgrade the bumper stickers on my car. Here’s what it looked like before:
ggg|camry_outside_shots/200205061717732_G|Lotsa Stickers|ggg
And here it is after:
ggg|2001_toyota_corolla/P1040810|No Stickers|ggg
As you can see, the only way I could get rid of the stickers was to get a new car… 🙂
It’s a 2001 Toyota Corolla LE. It has about 58,000 miles on it. It’s not an extravagant or terribly exciting car by any means, but it’s in much better shape than my old 1994 camry with 210,000+ miles. It also gets much better gas mileage:
2001 Corolla vs 1994 Camry
* City: 30 mpg vs 21 mpg
* Highway: 39 mpg vs 28 mpg
* Combined: 34 mpg vs 23 mpg
That should come in handy considering the constant increase in gas prices.
I’m sad to see the Camry go. We’ve had some good times in that car. Becky and I drove on some of our first dates in the Camry, and it has taken us down to Florida and back, out to Ohio and back, and all around New England. It’s taken me to and from work every single day that I’ve been at [CBD](http://www.christianbook.com/) … except, of course, on the various occasions it was in the repair shop. Becky’s dad has taken it upon himself to fix up our car and to try and sell it, so hopefully it will be useful to someone in need of a car.
Check out my [goodbye Camry](http://gallery.prwdot.org/goodbye_camry) album, and some initial photos of the [Corolla](http://gallery.prwdot.org/2001_toyota_corolla).
Gallery 2 Released
The [Gallery](http://gallery.menalto.com/) team announced today that Gallery 2 [has been released](http://gallery.menalto.com/gallery_2_0_released). Gallery 2 is a *complete* rewrite of Gallery, from the ground up. It has some very exciting and powerful new features, the interface is a lot cleaner, and it is much easier to administer than Gallery 1. We’re currently running Gallery 1 on our [photo gallery](http://gallery.prwdot.org/), but I have been looking into Gallery 2 for a while now, as it has been in alpha, beta, and release candidate testing. It will probably be a little while before we switch over, because there are simply so many things to adapt to in this new system. Theoretically, we could easily switch over to the new system in a day, but the resulting gallery would be less than optimal for our visitors. So I want to make sure we take the time to get things just right so that the gallery is as useful for our visitors as it is for us.
In the meantime, head over and check out some [screenshots of Gallery 2](http://gallery.menalto.com/gallery/screenshots/screenshotsG2/).
Nana Day
Happy Birthday, Nana!
ppp|
|ppp
Hoping that everything is swell out there in Schuylkill Haven!
S dnem rozhdeniya! (Happy Birthday!)
I don’t know if we got that right… but the sentiment is the same!
ggg|gostinyy_dvor/P1010761|Kim, Peter, and Becky|ggg
Happy Birthday to our cousin Kim! We have many happy memories ([and photos](http://gallery.prwdot.org/russia)) from our trip to visit her in Russia earlier this year.
Where’s George?
At work today I was handed a $20 bill with [www.wheresgeorge.com](http://www.wheresgeorge.com) printed on the back. I love Where’s George but hadn’t been there or seen a marked bill in a while.
I logged on and entered the bill and was quite surprised when I saw the [results page](http://www.wheresgeorge.com/report.php?key=a749bf6f9a094bcbf295477b3408fa1e94c7ab93e2defa04).
I love coincidences like that!
Eastern Fells
fff|ggg|eastern_fells/P1040684|Half Mile Pond|ggg|fff
On Saturday, Becky had an outing with her friends [Jill](http://www.theholtsite.com/) and Kendra. We planned our day so that the outing could occur on our way up to Townsend for the weekend, so we drove from Beverly to Woburn, where the ladies met up at the [Crate and Barrel](http://www.crateandbarrel.com/) factory outlet. While they shopped and had lunch, I did a bit of adventuring.
I hiked around the Eastern Fells, part of the [Middlesex Fells Reservation](http://www.mass.gov/dcr/parks/metroboston/fells.htm). The Fells is one of my favorite parks in the metro Boston area. I hiked down the blue blaze trail to the yellow blaze trail. It was probably a 15-20 minute hike each way, with a couple of somewhat steep spots, and lots of rocks. I hiked down the yellow trail to the edge of Spot Pond. If you’ve ever driven the section of I-93 in between Boston and Route 128, you have probably seen Spot Pond. It’s an enormous body of water to the east of the highway, with a large island in the middle, and some large buildings visible above its eastern shore. Anyway, it’s a very nice area to hike around in, and very close to Boston. I’d definitely recommend checking it out if you’re in the Boston area.
Becky and I have previously hiked around in the [Western Fells](http://gallery.prwdot.org/middlesex_fells), which is home to three reservoirs and two climbably towers. The Western Fells are on the opposite side of I-93, and the trail systems are mostly separate, save for the Cross-Fells trail.
You can view all of my [Eastern Fells](http://gallery.prwdot.org/eastern_fells) photos.
How appropriate.
I was poking around the staff library at work when I found this little gem of a book: aaa|The American Frugal Housewife|048640840X|aaa by Lydia Maria Child and published in 1844. It is full of helpful hints on how to tell if walnuts are ready for pickling and how housewives should be sure to employ their children in making their own clothes, etc.
With all the talk about the price of gas the past few days, I thought that this passage was particularly timely. While there may not be anything individuals can do about the rising prices, they can change their practices to save, none-the-less. Child tells us not to be ashamed of our frugality, but to embrace it.
>We never shall be prosperous till we make pride and vanity yeild to the dictates of honesty and prudence! We never shall be free from embarrassment until we cease to be ashamed of industry and economy. Let woman do their share towards reformation- Let their fathers and husbands see them happy without finery; and if their husbands and fathers have (as is often the case) a foolish pride in seeing them decorated, let them gently and gradually check this feeling, by showing thatthey have better and surer means of commanding respect- Let them prove, by the exertion of ingenuity adn economy, that neatness, good taste, and gentility, are attainable without great expense.
Thanks, Lydia!
Dolla bills, y’all
Without going into the actual monetary values, our [ING Direct](http://www.ingdirect.com/) savings account has generated more than 10 times the interest in the year so far than it did for the entire year of 2004. And our balance is more than 50 times what it was at this time last year.
w00t!
p.s. If you’re interested in setting up an account at ING Direct (they have a 3.3% APR right now!), let me know, and we can help each other out with some referral bonuses. 🙂
Markdown
I’ve just installed [John Gruber](http://daringfireball.net/)’s [Markdown](http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/) plugin for [Movable Type](http://www.movabletype.org/). This plugin allows us to use nice, readable, non-HTML markup when we write our blog posts. It also allows our blog readers to use this same shorthand when posting comments to our blog entries. You can get a basic intro [here](http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/basics).
Enjoy!