The Good, The Bad, and The Detour
This weekend was a crazy rollercoaster of insanity. My friend Christina recently wrote about how you’re never prepared for home-ownership, and this post partially addresses that issue. But since my comments regarding this all under “The Bad” let me first start with “The Good.”
The Good
Friday night, DH and I went out with some friends with all the good intentions of trying out the “luxury” bowling lane that opened in our town, King Pinz. Unfortunately, when we arrived we found out that there was nearly a 2 hour wait for a lane. Like any good luxuary bowling alley, they take reservations; a convenience that twarted our spontenaity. With nothing else to do on a Friday night we ended up at the movie theater taking in Inception, the newest flick by Christopher Nolan. While I had not at all seen the trailers or read about it, one of my co-workers had talked about it before I left work on Friday and it peaked my curiosity. Lately, I’ve been completely avoiding the movie theater scene because I think it’s absolutely astronomical to pay $11.00 a person for a movie. However, Inception was worth every penny. In fact, I would go so far as to say that I would actually pay $11.00 to see it again!
This movie absolutely blew me away. I was on the edge of my seat for nearly the entire film and I followed the crowd as the theater erupted in cheers and applause when the movie ended. I would take a leap and say that this was by far my favorite movie since American Beauty (which I ended up seeing 4 times in the theater and it’s one of the few DVDs that I actually own). The acting was top notch, Leonardo DiCaprio has really come a very long way from his early days when I wasn’t so sure that he was going to make it a serious film actor. I really don’t want to say anything about the plot other than it twists and turns so fast that it will make your head spin… and despite that you might not understand what’s going on in the first 5 minutes of the movie, stick with it… it’ll get you in the end. It was absolutely thrilling and it comes highly recommended from me.
It was kind of Momento meets Matrix meets edge-of-your-seat-thriller Bourn Series, and I hope to write a fuller review of it after I rewatch Momento.
The Bad
All good things have to come to an end, and of course the best scenario is that a good thing is followed up by a good thing. Unfortunately this wasn’t the case for coming home after seeing Inception. DH and I walked in the door and I kind of tripped over our floor; which I thought strange since neither one of us had done any drinking that night. Of course, I’m clumsy so it could have just been my feet getting in the way of the direction I was headed in, but the floor felt strange underneath my Vibrams; and since Vibrams really let you feel the ground underneath you, I knew something was up.
I looked down and noticed that our hardwood floor was buckled all across the front of the refrigerator. I also noticed that the tray that collects overflow water on the in-door ice/water dispenser was full. I made a snarky comment to DH about making sure that he cleaned ice out of it if it spilled. He told me then that he had already cleaned a ton of water out of it earlier in the week and that I need to be careful when I filled up my water bottles to not miss. Of course I hadn’t filled up my water bottles at home all that week. Thinking back, I had cleaned out the tray myself at least one other occassion that week. This curious happening prompted me to open the freezer to inspect what might be causing the excessive water leaking out into the tray.
What I found was an entire freezer full of dethawed food, and a completely empty ice bin. DH thought maybe the temperature controls got changed accidentally so he opened the fridge side to change them. When he did, we were disappointed to find that the fridge was nearly warm inside. All the water in the tray that we kept cleaning up all week was actually all the ice melting out of the ice bin and running out of the freezer down the front of our fridge; incidentally landing on the floor and warping our hardwood floor.
Since we were having a party the very next evening, we knew that a new fridge was inevitable and an immediate need, so Saturday morning we headed out to Home Depot where we found an awesome deal on a floor model. To be honest, I think buying a floor model is the only way you can get a fridge with a 1-day turn-around service. Two hours later DH and my BIL had the thing installed and it was already cooling down! I’ve got a little throw rug down in front of it to hide the horribly warped floor which we hope to replace the damaged parts this winter. The cats are enjoying the rug greatly; both as a bed and an endless source of entertainment when it acts like a slip-n-slide across the floor.
Home-ownership… the joys never end. Neither does the sarcasm.
The Detour
The detour that I speak about is actually the detour on the W&OD multi-use path that had to be put in while Dominion Power ran new underground lines for the extension of the grid in our area. About a month ago my mom and I tried a very teeny portion of the detour and I gave up quickly due to the steep climbs that happen to be a part of it.
The map looks harmless enough, but it doesn’t give you the elevation map to go with it. I guess if it did, people might just turn around! Well, my friend Cece and I tackled it again this past Sunday! And much to my surprise, I was able to go all the way East-bound on it, and most of the way West-bound. I only had 2 briefly humiliating moments. The first was when I attempted to power up an East-bound climb in a rather difficult gear, giving myself a fairly impressive asthma attack in the process. Wheezing and seeing stars I made it to the top of the climb though! The second slightly humiliating moment was when I underestimated the severity of a climb and didn’t downshift fast enough, lost all momentum and hit the wall. My bike and I went up that hill on two feet instead of two wheels, two bikers passed me in the process and I sheepishly made a ridiculous comment about the severity of the hill when I saw two more taking a water break at the top. All-in-all the detour is quite fun with a bunch of little dips, turns, and runs interspersed between the two major climbs.
You can check out our ride here from my Garmin Connect page – the detour is on the end to the far right:
Well, the silver lining to the bad is that the new fridge is awesome looking! I’m totally jealous.
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That’s true. I cannot deny the awesomeness of the new fridge. But I’m still jealous of your closet!