Today, I found a bat.

This was right after I got in a battle royale with the eco-pass dude for not letting me take the bus paper back to the office. Anyways, I digress. I found a bat friend today. It was raining a bit on Pearl Street today and a bat friend came out to drink up the water pooling on the brick pathway. I'm now going to do a long, arduous Google search to find a bat that comes close to the one I found today since I forgot to take a photo of him.

He looked like the photo to the left but a little more alive looking and fluffier.

I sure find bats to be quite interesting. For example, look at his little hands. They are little baby high fives waiting to be united with someone's hands. I also learned from a blog (see photo credits) that if a bat gets caught in your house that you should shoo it out with a tennis racket. Just in case.

photo credit: some dude in Michigan's U.P. who also blogged bout bats!

Honeysuckles and Other Such Matters

When I was little I lived in a house that had a tennis court in the yard. I say this not to brag, because while having a tennis court sounds posh it was rather run down with cracked green paint which exposed the black, gummy tar below. Also, I am not a world class tennis player, which means I might be making up this whole story.

Anyway, I spend my tricycle riding days on the tennis court, driving around the chalk drawn roads my sister and I had created. We created a delightful metropolis complete with highways, homes, and shopping malls.

While I remember little of many things that happened during this time in my life I do remember these key moments:

:Near the honeysuckle bush by the stairs, I said my first swear word when my foot fell through the wood staircase and my tricycle crushed me. I had picked up the word from my sister, thinking it was the word you said when things weren't going how you wanted them to. This incident would later come back to haunt me when I swore at a friend of mine on my soccer team. Years later she would tell me it was the first time anyone had ever sworn at her. I don't remember the incident, but I don't deny it happened.

:There was a rosemary bush planted right where the net met the end of the court. This caused riders to off road for a moment to avoid crashing into the net. The rosemary was always covered with bees.

:I remember the weird smell of the big leafy plants that bordered the bottom of the stairs. I deemed these plants the bank where I would collect my money to pay the tolls on the road.

:I got really mad at my sister for chalking express lanes for her bike, saying I couldn't use them because a tricycle wouldn't fit through the lines. To mend this situation, I made the "tricycle express" lane. My sister proceeded to zip through my tricycle lanes. She explained that she could fit through the lane so she was allowed to use them too. I started crying and went in the house.

Bouldersauce

While most of the other people at Adcenter fill their summers with exploring huge cities, I find myself amidst nature's finest offerings - boulder, colorado. Yes, it is true I have spent some time here in my past, four years to be exact, but I almost feel as though I'm re-exploring it for the first time. Except that I don't need mapquest to find my way around. Highlights from my big city experience include:

nature's skyscrapers:


vast works of art:


skyline views:


let's just say I'm working my way up to the big city sights.

Penguin: A Brief History

On a neon light filled sky a few days back, Caitlin won a dear new friend.

The night began when Alex, EB, Caits, and I decided to take a night stroll around the Boulder Creek Festival. While most of the vendors had given up on sales for the day and left abandoned half raised tents for the morrow, the newest addition to the festival had just got its second wind. This new addition, of carnival rides and games was a far cry from the festivals normal sites: the handmade hemp doggie leashes, the “do you have a minute for the environment” folk, and the 600 flavors of organic honey.

We didn’t really fit in with the crowd of scantily clad teenage ladies giggling at teenage boys attempting to sport their first mustaches and the various carnie folk who looked sincerely bored and just couldn’t wait for another smoke break. This scene would never stop Caits from finding a true friend amongst the carnies and angsty teenage folk.

As we walked from each game with their stuffed offers dangling from the walls and ceilings, like meat hanging in a butcher shop, Caits spotted a game she demanded we all had to play.

It was the horse race game, where you roll a ball into various holes, which equate to various point values. Instead of horses, this game had English Bull Terriers on various pastel colored surfboards, and instead of 15 players we had four; the four of us. I rolled the ball twice and the game was over. Either it was a lot harder when I was a kid or they increased the pace of the horses (well in our case surfing dogs) to make the games end quicker. Anyways the pace of the game is not what matters here, but what does is the prize Caits chose after her victorious win: a penguin.

For his first adventure as a free penguin, we took him to a little spot in Ireland called Connor O’Neills. We took pictures and laughed the night away.

Well, that was until a gentleman came up to the table and asked Caitlin, “Can I see your penguin?”

Being the generous, penguin sharing person she is, Caits hande over the penguin. Apparently, the gentleman was looking for a baby penguin for his niece. Since we could give him no answers regarding baby penguins, we went back to taking penguin photographs.

XXX

After arriving in Boulder for the summer, I felt it necessary to go to King Soopers and buy some sustenance. Boulder tends to be a health conscious city, which can only mean one thing: more flavors of Vitamin Water to choose from.

The stores in Virginia (or more notably The Market) stock themselves full with the more mainstream of the Vitamin Water flavors: you know your 50 cent, focus (the kelly clarkson one), power-c (dragonfruit) and energy (the yellow one). While I usually gravitate toward the 50 cent and the dragonfruit (because I have no idea exactly what a dragonfruit is exactly, except something obviously amazing as indicated by the name), I stumbled upon the oh so delicious acai-blueberry-pomegranate flavor or XXX as it is named.

My love for Vitamin Water started even before I had actually ever had any of the delicious nectar to start with. It started with the Vitamin Water trucks. They are so delightful to the eye, with their line of flavors in color coordination.



But once I actually got my hands on a bottle I realized, not only were they delightful to look at, but they also had witty recaps of the flavors on each bottle. The xxx reads:

c'mon, get your mind out of the gutter. we only named this drink xxx because it has the power of triple antioxidants to keep you healthy and fight free radicals. so in case you're wondering, this does not cost $1.99/minute or contain explicit adult content or anything considered 'uncensored'. it has not 'gone wild!!!' during spring break nor will clips of it be passed around the internet like a certain hotel heiress. and it has never been seen live or nude, but it is definitely au naturale.

I'm not sure how to end this now. perhaps a poll on what I should have ended with:

a. a nudie picture of jenna jameson
b. a link to coupons for FREE burritos
d. a pony picture

AH HA!

So to update you on the post about the dips, they are actually called Dibs. They are bite sized ice cream snacks apparently. Here is a link to the commercials. They still make no sense.

Dips Commercials

and here is a pony for good measure:

time machines

from the front porch i can see to the west.

it stretches, bends and eventually
wraps back round again.

warped clocks line walls,
created with unknown,
particular intent.

each hung and rearranged
as
seconds,
days,
years,
pass.

some are forever missing
or stolen.

others,
wait.
still
ticking.