Another long blogging hiatus. It's not that nothing has been happening around here, just never seem to get around to writing it down. I just finished refinancing my house and am now driving around in my fully registered, titled and tagged, new to me car. Plans for redoing my 70's vintage kitchen are floating through my brain. Planning for a big summer vacation with AM and the kids has been keeping my mind full of things to do, tickets to purchase, passports to renew... where is my daughter's birth certificate? Searching through my cryptic filing system to find it. (I did).

Then there are all the delightful weekend activities. Celebrated a wonderful Valentine's Day with my sweetheart, followed by her birthday a few days later. We had a lovely time together, celebrating, wandering around the historic part of town and shopping. Her youngest bought a puppet that I will wait for her to describe, but she has had us laughing many times with "Chris". We also got to celebrate her dad's birthday, with dinner one weekend and a big party the next.

Weekdays have been primarily work, taking care of the daughter, running back and forth to the farm. I kept the old to me car for farm trips, but we did decide to take it to the car wash and remove at least a few months mud from the inside and outside. I washed the other car too.. which led to the two bouts of winter weather last week, so the Maryland road crews could turn all the roads white with salt and turn my car into something that resembled a giant salt lick. Not complaining too much.. at least I could get out and about.

So, lots of fabulous things going on, many mundane things going on, all in all, life is good! :-)

It's always a challenge, and I don't do this very often.. probably only a few times since I have lived in Maryland. I researched... we both did. Thought we had crossed all the t's, dotted all the i's. But they always find a way, it is their mission... to crush your organizational skills and send you away dejected. You all know this.. I am sure it has happened to all of us! I had the proof of insurance, the title, the lien release on the title, the notarized bill of sale, the inspection certificate.. and I presented these to the Frederick MVA with the hope of getting tags and title to my new to me car. But, noooooo! I had the yellow copy of the inspection.. not the white one! It was a disaster.. everything started to spin.. they were all laughing at me.. the humiliation! :-)

OK, it wasn't that bad... it cost me an extra $20 for a temporary sticker and I have to go back with the white copy in the next month.. but I got the tags and picked up the new to me car at my friend's in Baltimore. This car is a Civic coupe, 5 speed, and it's been a while since I drove a stick regularly, but I got good practice driving it home in rush hour, in a freezing rain storm. What a day! Hope you are all home, safe and warm on a night like this.

Another evening at the farm. I will appreciate when things dry up a bit and I am not tracking so much mud around with me. It was warm today, almost 70 and the storms held off so my daughter was riding in the outdoor ring. Her and her horse were having a nice workout, when the wind started to pick up. After a nice combination jump, the horse got spooked and took off a bit. I was proud to see her sticking with it, but it was a bit of a battle... I stopped taping as they sped past, in case I needed to help in some way, but she worked him into a corner, hopped off and calmed him down. I remember a few years ago that this would have been a major trauma.. but her thoughts were... "I can't wait to post this to my YouTube account!". Boy have things changed since I was a kid. :-)

Here is the video, taken just a few hours ago and now available to the world!

Had another wonderful weekend. Went to my first yoga class on Thursday night and followed it up with a 6 hour "retreat" on Saturday. I now have a full understanding of how inflexible I have become, at least as far as my joints go. ;-) I have to say that I felt very relaxed the rest of the day and just a little bit sore the next morning.

Today I was running errands, picking up my daughter, taking her to the farm, general dashing around stuff. On the way home I was saying we needed to go to the grocery store, the daughter suggested we go during the Superbowl, since it wouldn't be crowded. I though this was not a bad idea, we weren't going to any parties.. so at 6:30, we went to dinner at Uno's (there were 5 groups of people there), service was excellent, and then off to the grocery store, which we completeted in 15 minutes. It was strange seeing how much of an impact this sporting event has on our society... it was a ghost town out there. Oh, and the soda and potato chip aisles at the store were barren!

Did watch the second half... the game was actually more entertaining than the commercials for a change. We enjoyed the horse race with Shaquille O'Neal as a jockey for Vitamin water. What were your favorite commercials?

I found this entertaining today...

British newspapers went crazy Wednesday morning about an image from Mars that appears to show a humanoid figure descending a shallow hillside.
The "alien" is actually a blurry detail in a huge panoramic photograph snapped on the edge of Mars' Gusev crater by NASA's Spirit rover in early November, and posted on NASA's Web site on Jan. 2.
Naturally, it took the Photoshop skills of dedicated bloggers to find the "humanoid."
"NASA scientists have been puzzled by the peculiarly life-like image," declared the Times of London, despite the apparent fact that no one from NASA has had any comment.
The skeptical Web site BadAstronomy.com, however, scoffed, "Puhlllleeeeze. A man? It's a tiny rock only a few inches high. It's only a few feet from the rover!"
Other British papers saw the humo(u)r in the story, with the Sun theorizing that it was Detective Gene Hunt, the drunken, sexist policeman from the BBC time-traveling crime series "Life on Mars."
"It's Usama bin Laden!" declared one Times of London commenter. "All this time we thought he was in Pakistan."

I thought life on Mars had been proven years ago... with this image from Spirit.

My daughter has found the place she wants to live when she is a bit older and able to afford it. I have to admit, it looks pretty nice, even if a bit cramped, and at $400 a month, seems quite affordable. OK.. this is a bit ridiculous.. this is a horse trailer! Space for two-three horses in the back, living quarters in the front, and then you just need a big truck to pull it around. I remember as a boy thinking Winnebago's were so cool.. you could drive around the country and have all the conveniences of home right there with you. This was before the reality of employment, schools, return on investment, personal space, gas costs and other issues were present in my life. Still it was nice daydreaming about traveling around, seeing the sights. I guess no harm in my daughter doing the same with her horse. :-)

I have been thinking about changes to my commute. Sometimes I listen to the Jazz station, sometimes NPR, or other times I leave it on my daughter's station from her drive to school. But I need more variety than this. A pleasant phone call can help, perhaps satelite radio, maybe a new car will be the answer? But today, I passed a fellow on a unicycle peddling his way to somewhere. He had a helmet and backpack, so he was in for a serious ride, not some juggler on his way to a kid's party. As I pondered this form of transportation, I thought... 28 miles on a unicycle would not be possible for me, I just don't have the leg conditioning for that and passing slower cars at 70 mph would be a challenge. So after a little research I think I may have found the answer. Just don't ask me for a ride to work!