Tour de France

It's that time of year. The time for Dan's eyes to start doing that funky spiral thing they do, kind of like a bike wheel does, a bike wheel going up a hill in France, for example. One of those kinds of bicycle wheels.

Tomorrow the tour begins. And this morning it was announced that a crapload of the top cyclists are disqualified because of doping allegations. Favorite Ivan Basso is out. Long-time front runner Jan Ullrich is out. And because most of his team is out, machine-like hero Alexander Villakourev is out. I have grossly misspelled probably all of those names. The truth is that if I weren't married to Dan, I wouldn't care a rat's left ear about this. But because I am married to Dan, and I do therefore care about it, let me just say that this is ridiculous.

None of my favorites were pulled from the race. So this is not just me being sour. Levi Leipheimer, Floyd Landis, and George Hincapie are still fine. In fact, they're way better off now that those other guys are out of the way. These guys were disqualified the DAY BEFORE THE TOUR STARTS because they were on some list that some Spanish doctor had. This doctor has been involved in some shady stuff, and everyone in his files is suspect now. SO SUSPECT that they are disqualified from the biggest race of the year ON THE EVE OF IT. That is just foul. Test them on the day of the race, test them after the race, TEST THEM EVERY TEN MINUTES DURING THE RACE, and if they are dirty, then boot them out. But do not boot them out before the race even starts, based on paperwork you pulled out of the basement of some dopey doctor in Spain, when nothing has been PROVED.

This is just ASININE. Take Jan Ulrich as an example. He won the tour in 97. In 98 Lance Armstrong started winning it and Jan Ullrich has been 2 or 3 or something ever since. He's just been WAITING for Lance to go away, and finally Lance is gone, and... the dude got a $100,000 altitute simulator installed in his basement so he could train for the alps WITHOUT doping (the doping is when they inject more red blood cells into their blood to help with the oxygen depletion) and he STILL GETS BOOTED. WHO is the asshole in charge of this and WHERE is their mother because she needs to hear how he is behaving!

Here's a link to a blog about it. And here's another one.

tour de france
cycling
sports

Done

Bones

Eggs

Bones

Flat Benny and Sadie

Buzz

Walk

Concert

Warm up

Dolly

Baby

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Bikes

Playground

Ducks

Making a fossil

Stuffed

Ladybug

Painting

Smile

Labeled

Chess

Geocaching

WELL.

We are off to a bumpy start. We found 3 and failed to find 2. Our username on geocaching.com is lostcheerio (wow) so we have recorded our finds and non-finds there. Benny has decided that whenever he finds "treasure" he will pick out a treasure that Sadie will like. This breaks my heart with sweetness, he is such a nice boy and good brother. So he's found her two sparkling necklaces and a McToy from Chicken Little (Runt). When we took the McToy we left another McToy (from Cars, natch). The necklaces... in one we left a little violin pin I had made out of sculpey, and in another one we left a toddler hat I made. And we left little fabric yo-yos in the 3 caches we found -- that will be our dorky calling card because I am a dork.

We have not been able to find two of the ones we went looking for -- one yesterday and one today. They were just too hidden, I guess, or we are too newbish.

If you do geocaching, send me your username so I can check you out! Kristen and Rob, this means you too! Still finding my way around the geocaching site. I also bookcrossinged my copy of Karen Brennan's book today -- at a local Starbuck's.

Also K&R -- I picked up a travel bug in one of the caches, and I am going to send it to Utah when I send your pants, Irene's pajamas, and Rhys' underwear. The only person who didn't leave me a piece of clothing was Mrs. Kristen but WAIT A MINUTE -- HEY -- did one of you DELIGHTFUL PEOPLE send me this pearl cotton from this place in WISCONSIN!?!??! DID YOU DO THAT YOU DELICIOUS PEOPLE? Hmm?

Not in here

Cache

Micro

Caching

Tree

Engineering

Talking to Grammy

Step2 is Great

We bought the Step2 playhouse in the pictures below for Benny after he won the 50 day challenge. I like the 50 day challenge because it gives us a reason to give Benny something cool halfway through the year, since his birthday and Christmas come together. Anyway, we got this playhouse used for about half the price we would have paid for it new, but some of the stickers were faded and peeled and the phone and chairs and stuff were missing. Dan bought the chairs and a little set of dishes for them, and he emailed Step2 to see if we could buy the phone and the stickers and whatnot. They never emailed back so he forgot about it -- AND THEY JUST SENT THEM TO US for no charge. Isn't that nice? Good karma in giant buckets for Step2. Thank you, thank you.

We Have a Bird Down

My poor, innocent, sensitive, husband was on his way to get a vegetarian burrito with a wheatgrass smoothie when he saw this lying on the street:

In case you can't read it, it says, <----DUMBASS.

The poor man was overcome with emotion. You might say his sweet soul suffered torments over the plight of his feathered fellow, so ruthlessly smashed against the iconic (and transparent) skyscraper, that symbol of brutal capitalism. He was moved, he was distraught.

Okay, actually my soulless heathen husband, that paragon of cynicism, was actually only moved to laugh hysterically, take copious pictures with his phone, and then carry on with his plans to eat baby seals and drink condors from an ivory goblet.

Flannel pants @ Ninety degreer

Rocket

Benny draws Little Einsteins for Sadie

Leedy McRoy

Sadie, Co-proprietor

In the little house

Chairs

Slide

Benny

Splash park

Princess

Human body

Zoe pushing

Rock wall

Dog

Pool

Kids

I can do it

Release

Bubbles

Baseball

Sunny dog

Sunny dog

Playhouse

THANK YOU

Thank you to Mom, Terri, Kevin, and Sydney for my beautiful birthday flowers. I've been a little busy with the company at our house and I don't have access to my regular email because my computer was consumed by a flesh-eating virus -- BUT I have been enjoying their byooteefulness for days now and you guys are SO NICE for remembering my retarded birthday. Finally I am 30! Heh.

Jackets

Help

Memories

Mrs. Kristen sun-printed a big piece of muslin and had the kids draw with sharpies to represent the different things they'd done on the visit. Irene drew the waterfall at the Japanese garden, and she drew tubing with the boat. Benny drew his quilted fish and he drew his sunprinted t-shirt. Rhys drew Saturn and a rocket! Which I totally missed us doing! But man! We are good! And Sadie drew several strange little lines which she said was the tube and the boat.

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Sadie doing sun printing with Mrs. Kristen. We finally found a use for our porch roof!

Paint

Sun painting on the porch roof.

Tank

Rays

Turtles

Fireworks

Lost

Tubing

Children

Maymont

Torch

Learning

Sadie

Quilt

Friends

After

Before

Maids are here!

Happy Birthday To Me!

The Apprentice

Biggest Pain of the Week becomes Biggest Pain of the SEASON!!!
$10,000 becomes $30,000!!!
The Boardroom becomes The Wood Chipper of Screaming Death!!!
Don and Ivanka become GODZILLA AND MOTHRA!!!
Commercials become fists punching you in the FACE!!!

It is the season finale of The Apprentice.

With a special guest appearance by Randall, who took the opportunity to plug his personal web site. Still exhibiting all the class which led him to the decision to publicly and uselessly snub that girl with the broken leg. Whatever. Kendra could kick your ass, Randall. And probably has.

Between Lee and Sean, there's not much to choose. Lee was sluggish. Sean was pompous. Whatever. I do not remember Pepe very well.

And the winner is... whoever can say the word "PASSION" the most times!!!

the+apprentice apprentice donald+trump i+have+passion tv television

MERCY

We. Made. An. Offer.

I'm having trouble with the computer. Viruses galore. Viruses eating my processor in big, hungry gulps. I'm on the laptop from the stone age at the moment.

However, I had to say... pictures below. We made an OFFER. You will see, this is a fixer-upper. Definitely falls under the "Pick the worst house in the best neighborhood" rule. It is... in ruins basically. Standing water in the kitchen, having poured through THREE FLOORS to get there. Truly amazing. The house will be absolutely majestic and fabulous when it is finished. Right now the only thing majestic is the mold.

We shall see. Interesting!!! If they take the offer, we are going to have a very busy summer.

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Sadie

Leroy

Don't worry