spoiled chinese girl

a.k.a. I still don’t really want a smart phone.

Well, first go here and sponsor my friend George: http://bit.ly/cmHcU1

Even when I have to play within the rules of the department of redundancy department to get my point across.

My phone doesn’t connect to the internet (well it’d probably cost me 50 cents per kilobyte), I can’t e-mail photos from my phone to my e-mail (probably the same charge). I can’t even connect my phone to my computer (the software doesn’t support my phone anymore).  My phone isn’t that old. It’s like.. 4 or 5 years or something? Maybe that is old these days. Who knows.

Anyways, the only way I can easily do this is to take a photo with my Motorola Razr. Go home, Fire up my Nikon Coolpix S10 to Macro, take a photo of the Razr’s screen, then import the photos to Picasa.  Which is what I did below.

Erm, I was talking about vehicles wasn’t I?

So around the time Camera guy got his motorcycle I was super duper thinking I should get my license too. I’d wanted to for years, even if I didn’t get a bike, and even though it felt like I was copying. Til I remembered my mom would kill me (and yes, I still live at home ) and never bothered. But I kept hearing all the good about gas milage and this that and the other.  Although, comparing his bike’s published milage against my Honda Fit, I actually calculated that it should be just about even, depending on driving/riding styles.

And tonight I noticed this:

This would be the number of kilometers my car drove since the last time I filled up, to when I hit the gas station, about 10km into the little fuel light going on. (Both highway and city… and rush-hour driving.)

This would be how much it cost me to fill up my tank. The automatic stopper actually stopped me about 50 cents before but I try to get rounded numbers.  I could actually have put a little more gas in… but didn’t really want to bother.

Yeah… I might still want to fulfill a lifelong dream/fantasy of owning a motorcycle… but fuel efficiency is no longer going to be one of the driving factors. Heh. Get it? Driving?

Well, it’s probably just as bad as my “no, nothing earth shattering” punny after the earth quake that I felt at work yesterday.

He who got hit by a car invited me out to take photos at his softball practice. The team members that I’ve met, all seem to think it’s a great idea and apparently I’ve been drafted into the team, and more than welcome to come take photos during games that happen every Sunday afternoon too. Fun. Automatic acceptance! And I didn’t even have to pull out the unicycle.

It was fun. I’m trying to get outside and do more photography stuff, specifically sporty stuff… in the day time. I feel that my flickr account is naught but nightclub photos of my friends on stage. So I want some daylight pictures… of my friends on a field.  Been playing with the settings on my camera some more.  I’m more into experimenting with the settings to try & get to know my camera better, since it’s been set up the same for years now.  It’s not going to improve until something changes.  Well… changes made, nothing’s quite improved. But I’m… learning?

First I took photos of everyone warming up playing catch. Then everyone chasing after batted balls. Then… everyone took a break. Then some more catch and some more batted balls. Then I put the camera away and played catch with them. And yanked out the unicycle for everyone (who was still around) to attempt hurting themselves on that as well. I brought Chicklet (trials unicycle). Next time I need to bring probably Danielle (mountain unicycle) & Ted (freestyle unicycle) with me as well. Chicklet’s not the friendliest for n00b’s.

And these are the only photos I really feel are worthy of being made public… which isn’t a lot.  Granted, I think I lost about 50% of the photos on one card, getting errors like crazy, had to sort through 100+ photos individually to see which would be copied and which were corrupted.

Without further ado, the Dirty Ballers of the Bloor West Village Softball League!

So I tried to ride my fixie bike a few… months back by now. It was warm back in March-April-ish that one weekend, or it felt like it in the comforts of my car.  Terry just got his motorcycle and needed to learn how to ride it and I wanted out on my fixie.  I raced him to an area of small neighbourhood side streets (me walking my bike because I’m scared of Scarborough traffic!)  Ended up being way too cold and I cramped like crazy after one lap around the block.

This past Sunday I went out again. Planned on a Saturday AND Sunday but Saturday ended up being cooler than I expected and I didn’t want the same result as before.

From the time I walked out my front door, to when I got back into my front door, was about 30 minutes.  In that time I also had to haul my bicycle out of my trunk, and fiddle with the tires and pump.  Also the last block and a bit I ended up walking because my area is really hilly, this was all uphill, and I don’t really have an easy gear set up… I think. It’s set up I believe as a 48-17.  Anyways, I believe I ended up riding around 4.6km according to google maps.

Oh, and I fell off my bike twice. First time trying to make a u-turn when my front foot hit the wheel as I tried to make the sharp-ish turn.  Second was trying to just get off the bike before I started walking because I’ve not yet re-learned how to get out of my clips without getting all tangled.

I’m hoping to make this an every-weekend type of situation.  I’m going to try to head down to the Lakeshore paths for a lot of this because I would prefer the (hopefully!) smooth pavement, no minimal stops and no cars. I’m not a good enough rider quite yet to be able to handle all of that all at once.

Hopefully in a week or two I’ll be able to get off the bike without falling into a tree!

This is why I ride unicycles. There’s nothing to get tangled up in!

I’ve never done this before so it’s totally new territory for me.

My neck hurts.  A lot.

Last Wednesday I went to get a massage where I complained the left side of my neck was kind of stiff.  Worked on it, and it felt pretty decent.

Problem started Thursday morning when I did some combination of a stretch and a yawn to wake up.  Stiff neck came back… and moreso.  Owwie.  Was kind of sore all day at work, couldn’t hold the phone to my shoulder like I normally do (which was probably what caused the bulk of the neck soreness to begin with) and finally broke down & bought some of those microwavable bean-bag heat pads.  (Got two of them, a skinny round-ish one for around the neck, and a square-ish one for more flat areas.)

I never tried it before, and it was kind of exciting to microwave a bean bag (I’m easily amused it seems) and worked quite well.  I used both alternating, the skinny one around my neck or the square one kind of on the shoulder while laying down.

Neck/shoulder rubs can help but I’m just not comfortable doing that with people who didn’t actually train in it.  I often can’t believe people trust me with their necks, shoulders & backs considering I’ve really not got much of a clue of what I’m doing.

The sore-ness made me skip out on Thursday night’s unicycle club practice too.  I need to go back, I miss those guys.

Anyways, it’s almost been a week, it’s mostly back to normal.

So for now I’ll leave it I guess.

Going to schedule another massage for next week anyways.  Two maybe.

I just really wanted to show off the insane gas mileage this car gets. My old car, Mark the Mazda3, was just about 400km (city driving) from full to empty. About 500km if straight highway driving. And Freddy the Honda Fit just passed the 400km mark mostly city driving, with probably 1/3 of a tank to go. I wanted to get a pic at 300km because that was exactly the halfway point, but it looks better at night. With me trying to drive while holding a dSLR mounted with a fisheye lens driving 35km/h. Heh.