100 word minimum

Objects in mirror are closer than they appear

Oz says I need to re-title this blog to "100 words whenever I feel like it."

Well. Nothing much is going on. Why write a daily boring entry when I can write an occasional less boring entry? A daily dose of boredom is more likely to drive people away than intermittence. What I really need is to get out more. Other people are the best material and I never see any. The human contact alone would almost make it worth going to grad school, except for the hell, nervous breakdown, and financial ruin.

I did find a little material on my own this weekend.

I recently joined Utata and started participating in their photography projects. It's fun and I tried a little light painting and it was good. Then this weekend's project was to get a shot of a creature, human or non, jumping. This requires people who don't mind having their picture on the internet, or cats who have no opinion on the matter. Another requirement for the cat is the ability to launch his fat butt into the air on demand. My sleek and mysterious gray cat jumps all the time, but he's hard to catch. That leaves me with El Gordo, who used to do some fabulous leaping back in the long gone days of his svelte and bouncy youth. Now when offered the dangle toy, he lies on the floor and bats at it. With the laser pointer, we used to make him leap five feet in the air, chasing the red dot up the wall. Now? The one shot I got where he looks like he might be jumping, his hind feet are firmly on the ground.

I had to admit defeat. I need to put this cat on a fitness program.

Also, the side mirror fell off my car today. And broke. And then I ran over it.

Not the housing, just the mirror bit. The adhesive that holds the mirror on the back plate must have given out from the cold, which makes you wonder, because you'd think a Volvo would be able to take these 20 °F temperatures. It's not like we're in Sweden.

This happened right as I was pulling away from the curb in front of my house. I heard the thunk, clink! My first reaction to seeing the smashed mirror on the road was to grab my camera out of the car and take pictures of it. Oz got a sheet of paper and a brush to sweep up the glass.

"Wait, no! This is art," I said, crouching over the broken mirror.

"It's not art! It's the middle of the road!" he said.

We were both wrong. None of the pictures is worth looking at (next time I'll do better) and it was only halfway out to the middle of the road.