Happy Birthday Kizzbot!

Off to Ohio with Justintime, Wait, Wait I Need to Pose, and Kizzbot for a full weekend of Birthday celebrations.

Does anyone know what to expect from Ohio?

No?

Correct.

…..but there is are great sights to see in this “San Francisco of the East”

North Market

Indoor Market of Columbus

Balcony View of North Market

The Book Loft

37 rooms of books. Each room has it's own music.

Short North

Welcome to Short North

HipstaMatic on a Sunday Morning

Ohio State University

Justintime promoting safety awareness at the library

The original OSU building.

Wait, Wait... Waiting in the rocker.

Justintime

Dan Savage...we thought about waiting around..but we had beer to get to.

Muggle Quidditch

Karaoke at Club 20

Dive Bar Extrodinairre

Food Trucks

Friday Night Food Trucks

Pizza Food Truck

Birthday Time for Kizzbot!

Sup! Happy Day!

Ohio's first pickle shots at Betty's Fine Food & Spirits

Kizzbot and Wait, Wait

Betty's bathroom

Shenanigans

BattleShip, Justintime, The Captian, Rolled Rick, Kizzbot, and Wait, Wait

Kizzbot

betsyvonawesome and Wait, Wait

Wait, Wait and Justintime

and it ends all with a lil’ Snus.

Snus

Happy BDay Kizzbot!

(City of Portland Archives)

This was something she couldn’t tell.  This was bad.  But she had to tell.  Later that day, she told her mother what happened.  They were standing at the sink doing dishes together, and the girl just blurted it out.  Her mother was obviously shocked, but yet she seemed to believe her.  This one event…changed their family forever.  The girl moved out, in with other family members…eventually her parents divorced…but remarried a few years later.  The girl went on to high-school and just went on living on auto-pilot really.  She continued to get good grades and continued to write in her diary daily…and holding tight to her faith in God.  But not so tight that she stayed completely on the straight and narrow.

She had a best friend, they did everything together, like best friends do.  They were bored alot, as alot of teens are.  They hung out at the mall alot, their parents would drop them off at 10am and not come back to get them til well into the evening.  The girls friend told her how she had been stealing from stores for almost a year, and had never gotten caught!  She was shocked at this revelation of course, but excited at the same time…she knew what her friend did was wrong…very wrong, and yet there was something about it that sounded like a fun thing to do!  New clothes, purses, and makeup…for free?! 

One day while they were together at the Mall, her friend showed her how she could steal make-up and jewelry so easily…and then her friend DARED her to take something as well.  Now the girl knew this was bad…illegal bad…but she wanted to impress her friend, show her how “cool” she was too.  So, she walked around the make-up section of one of the department stores, she was so nervous!  Her heart was pounding til she thought it would jump from her chest!  She looked around, trying to be casual…and slowly grabbed a grape lipgloss from the shelf, and slipped it into her pocket!  They headed for the door to the store, as soon as they had crossed the threshold…they heard “Girls!” and she felt a hand on her shoulder!  She turned around and there stood a police officer…her heart now felt as if it had stopped beating all together and was lodged in her throat.

They were taken into a backroom of the mall.  Their parents were called.  They were escorted through the mall out to a “paddy wagon!”  The girl was crying, but her friend was being all tough, like this was no big deal!  NO BIG DEAL?  We are going to a jail for teenagers!  My family will kill me!  The shame!  So there she was.  Straight A student.  Never done a bad thing really in her life.  Had a tortured childhood.  Felt she carried the world on her shoulders.  And here she was…riding in a paddy wagon, going to jail!

To be continued…

Thank you so much for reading!

Wherever you go…there you are.

Then I rooted for Payton Manning… HEY what can I say!!!! He won me over when he did that little dance on Saturday Night Live to that Henry Mancini Music from that (1967?) movie “Casino Royale!” Lol. Or was it Burt Bacharach HMMMM. I think it was Bacharach….

Anyway, I pondered…. WHO DA heck do I root for NOW … I couldn’t figure it out ….

When one team was loosing, I’d find myself rooting for them; the moment  the other was down” RUN!!!! GET HIM!!!!” seemed to leap from my lips like a gold medal diver!!! I rooted for the looser at any given moment. I didn’t discriminate… “your loosing I root for you,” Folks around me  thought I’d just fallen off a fruitcake paddy wagon.

I could not help but fall in love with Drew Bree’s gorgeous baby… I couldn’t make up my mind… “wishy, washy’s” my new nick-name at work!

Now all my friends are, Who Dat’s! Oh ! Facebook’s littered with who dat’s; “Mary Jo Who Dat Johnson,” “Alison Who Dat Weiner,” “Marie Who Dat Asshole!” (sorry I couldn’t help it). So…. “What’s in a name?” asked Shakespeare… Hmmmm I wonder…. Country Who Dat Club Housewife? “Country Club Who Dat Housewife? WHO DAT COUNTRY CLUB HOUSEWIFE? Hmmmmmm

©copyright, 2009, Confessions of a Mad Country Club Housewife, all rights reserved.            ©countryclubhousewife, “Confessions of a Mad Country Club Housewife” and http://www.countryclubhousewife.com, 2009.Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Countryclubhousewife and Confessions of a Mad Country Club Housewife with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

The kinder, gentler NYC Department of Correction rounds up lawbreakers in the mini wagon like it’s carpool time. Apparently, paddy wagon is now considered a derogatory term. The theories are that it originally referred to the numerous Irish cops or the drunks they were picking up. (I’m using it here to draw attention to the issue.)

Todd Oates

Once we arrived Todd Oates and the rest of the Allegra staff greeted us with open arms. Todd, who is the location manager, told us a little bit about Allegra’s history; for instance, it began as a family business in the 1970s and was Chattanooga, TN’s first digital printing press. After conversing for a bit, we began our tour.

In-house design department

Our visit kicked off in the in-house design department, which receives orders from clients and preps file formats ready for print. As a graphic design student, it was interesting to hear about some of the day-to-day interactions and situational humor that they experience, like heinous photo qualities or missing typefaces. Funny, I see similarities already. Heather, the graphic designer on staff, explained that sometimes she has to jump through design hurdles that she wouldn’t prefer to in order to please the client. I’m not sure how I felt about that but having previously done freelance work myself, I understand that the client’s needs must be met, whether they have impeccable taste or otherwise. As for missing file links…

Bonnie

The next room over housed two giant machines named Bonnie and Clyde. This room is called the Digital Print Center and it’s where…digital prints are made. Chandler, the print operator, was more than hospitable by showing us around and explaining her routine to us. As for Bonnie and Clyde, she says they totally have personalities: when Bonnie jams she screams, when Clyde jams he growls.

Roland

People, meet the Roland! Obviously, this is what larger print jobs, such as banners, are made from. Talking about some serious paper jams. In awe, I asked Todd how much this baby cost. The answer? Over 30 grand. Yeah, that’s more than the cost of my college tuition…and car…combined. Luckily, Allegra was nice enough to print some things off for us so we could see this machine work. Look at the photo gallery below and take note of its magnificence.

Roland

Gigantic ink cartridges

Printing in progress

Printing in progress

Classmates

Classmates

Trimmer

This is Andy and what he is doing is trimming the edges of some pamphlets that Chandler printed for us in the Digital Print Center. It looks pretty simple to operate. There’s a back wall to line the documents up against and then you just press a button to activate the blade. Seemingly unimpressive, this paper cutter looks like it could take a couple fingers off with eeease. Luckily for us, there’s a motion sensor that locks the blade when you cross its path. Watch those phalanges, Andy. Watch those phalanges.

Magnified CMYK

This image is the final result of a custom print job, which is more closely regulated. The dots are CYMK indicators that are viewed from a magnifier. This is how the printer can tell if an image is pristine or blurry. If the dots aren’t clear then it’s a misprint. There are two machines at Allegra that produce higher quality prints, which take more effort and measurement. Unlike Bonnie and Clyde, these machines are controlled by the printer instead of a circuit board. Dan is Allegra’s custom printer and he has complete control over the ink and speed of the document being printed on. images below shows details of one of these machines. The gallery below that shows envelops being printed.

Printing press

Rollers

Paper stack

Printing press

Cylinders

Last but not least, we were shown abbreviated binding and lamentation processes. I learned that when a booklet is saddle-stitched wire is used instead of staples. I also found out what a paddy wagon is (a cart used to adhere glue binding by hand).

Wire stitches

Lamenation process

Paddy wagon

Overall, I enjoyed visiting Allegra. It makes a grand difference to see a printing press in action rather than reading about it. You can only read about something you don’t understand so many times before it starts becoming nonsense. This was excellent. I can’t wait to go to the Times Free Press tomorrow to compare a small printing press to a large one. Thank you Allegra for being such great hosts and additional thanks for all the swag.

Process and Materials 2009

Chris Daughtry!  Please come round up your fans!! They are running amuck at Bill’s Top 40.  They’ve been over there causing trouble since Taylor Hicks‘ new song, What’s Right Is Right, was posted for reviews. They have gone through the entire spectrum of chroll lunacy. As they do on every Taylor article, they have pretended to be Taylor fans.  They have acted like complete imbeciles, hoping the other posters here would think Taylor’s fans were psycho. I would imagine that the other sane posters here see right through their crap. Surely, they are intelligent enough to realize that these are the usual psycho Daughtry fans trying to cause trouble for Taylor.
 
I’m not sure why the blog owner is putting up with this disgusting chroll display.  I’m sure he’s enjoying having people leave comments, since there don’t seem to be many on his other entries. It’s gotten to the point of chroll chaos.  Now that the release date of Taylor’s new song is approaching, they are really acting like fools. They are taking  shots at Taylor, including the tired old insinuations about his friend Bill. It really makes YOU  look bad, Chris. There are several articles at this site that  mention you.  These articles don’t have any comments.  Why aren’t your fans  writing nice things about you instead of vicious lies about Taylor and Taylor’s fans.

Please, bring a net and come round them up.   I’m sure the usual cast of demented regulars must be here.  As always,they are led by the maniacal Bon Jovi, queen chroll from the American Idol message boards. She has many aliases. Among them are HOvi, Ho-Ho, Ho-Jo, HOvi-Jovi, Bon Coney, Cone HOvi, Daughtryarehot, DAH, Bertha4tay, Taylor44, hopelesslydevotedtogrease, etc.  I’m sure I don’t have to tell you to bring the industrial strength straight jacket for that one and the giant paddy wagon to transport them all back to the asylum!
Help restore a little peace to this nice man’s blog.

Please, Chris!

Come round up your lunatic fans!

They’ve been thrown out of the Grease site several times, but since they registered multiple user names in the beginning, they keep worming their way back in. Now that they know Grease is closing this week, they are really acting like fools. They are taking backhanded shots at Taylor and his fans. It really makes YOU look bad, Chris.

Please, bring a net and come round them up. They are hopelesslydevotedtogrease, Henrysmom, KarenP, ChraceFan, Greaseboy2008, Acearehot, Goober, NewDayDawn, hellsink. There may be others. Actually, some of these nuts go by more than one name. Whatever! Bring the giant paddy wagon!

You are probably already familiar with hopelesslydevotedtogrease. She has many aliases. Among them are Bon Jovi (AI boards), HOvi, Ho-Ho, Ho-Jo, HOvi-Jovi,  Bon Coney, Cone HOvi, Daughtryarehot, DAH, Bertha4tay, Taylor44, etc. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you to bring the industrial strength straight jacket for that one. Give the nice people at the Grease Forum a little peace for their last few days. Please, Chris!

Come round up your lunatic fans! 

Chroll Transportation - I'll bet that's HOvi!

 

 

 

 

Yet here we are, at Paddy Wagon Hostel, in Dublin, Ireland. I may be hungry and tired, but at least I’m clean and safe. Of course, all I wanted was a hot shower, but instead I got the type of shower that you have to press down on a button for water to run, so it’s more of a battle of wit and skill rather than a relaxing time to unwind.

And I miss Bill and Katie- I’m not going to lie. I even miss our sketchy little cabin in the woods, because we were all together, and we were happy. I don’t know whether I have ever known such camaraderie and kindness.

I guess now all I really want is a week straight in a lovely cottage in County Clare. For some reason, Kara gets really annoyed when I mention John O’Donohue, but I have to admit, he is definitely one of the reasons I am still believing in anything beautiful in this world. And the thought of being in the land he loved… it means the world to me. If I really get to visit his grave site (we found the location), I will be beyond honored. However, simply to be in County Clare and West Ireland – it will mean so very much to me, and I am anxious to be on its soil. A place that cultivated such a soul, heart, and mind as that man – is undoubtedly a place of palpable power and purity.

Even though he has passed, the fact that John O’Donohue even lived gives me hope. The idea that there are people out there who understand and revere the concepts I have secretly clung to – is so beautiful to me. To find someone, perhaps one day – even one person – who can speak of the landscape and the language of a place, and pull poetry out of the earth – oh… it makes the trek worth trekking.

I can’t imagine returning home. It’s very hard for me to accept, even while simultaneously I am eager for it. It is quite the contradiction.

And I miss love. At the same time, I am terrified and desensitized by it.  I suppose it is O’Donohue’s talk of the ‘anam cara’ that calls to me – that person whose presence in one’s life breaks boundaries and conventions, and transcends this world. I know it is possible – and I have certainly tasted it briefly before; however, in a world so numb and devoid of passion, it is hard to still believe in.

Writing this has made me feel a bit better. Perhaps I can sleep now. I will talk to God for a while, since I have been very silent with Him this past month. And then I will clutch Panda to my side and fall into the world of recovery and Dreams.

This edition of the Spoken Wrench is brought to you by the letter “V” for Victory, Vigorelli, and Velox rim tape. Victory seems pretty self explanatory, and the parts of it that aren’t, well, this is not a political newsletter for a reason. Bianchi will welcome their much loved steel frames back for 2009, including a new version of the Vigorelli. And Velox rim tape may be the greatest thing to happen to a rim with spoke holes, ever.
Interbike!
Paddy Wagon rides anyone?
Bike Lights! And all that Fall stuff.
If you can spare your Monday…

Interbike!

The show is rapidly approaching, and we’re mostly ready, (though obviously not packed yet) for our annual trip out to Vegas. The shop will be closed September 21-24 for Interbike. Yes, we’re always closed on Sundays. But we just want to make sure everyone hears. We’ll be back Thursday 25 September, at 10:00 AM, no earlier. We’ll be sleepy, and probably in some serious need of caffeine, but we’ll be here with lots of new information on 2009 stuff.

Paddy Wagon rides anyone?
No, I’m not offering free rides in a police car, thats only for special people, the 2009 Kona Paddy Wagon’s are here. Now, the Paddy Wagon is a bit of a flasshy single speed, what with yellow wheels and all, but otherwise, the grey is good and understated. If you want understated. The yellow wheels do much for the not so understated look.

2009 Jakes are also in, just in time for cyclocross season. They’re red. And flashier than last year’s black. So if cyclocross, or the world’s greatest commuter bike, is in your future, stop by.

And remember, don’t get mad, get ‘cross.

Bike lights and all that Jazz.
It is September in Michigan, which, despite what the weather may do between now and the 21st, means that fall is definitely on the horizon. Which means that, well, riders are going to need some lights. (State law says, bikes must have a headlight and a taillight while riding between dusk and dawn.) So, that means, commuters, anyone who might believe that night is a perfectly good time to get ice cream, and anyone who might want to venture near Ferndale, needs a bike light. For everyone wanting to see where they’re going, as well as be seen, this year’s Light N’ Motion Stella lights have mostly arrived, as have the NiteRider MiNewt (which you can charge with a mini-USB cable). The MiNewts start at around $100, and the Stella’s we have in stock start around $130. There’s a $90 version that uses AA batteries, but those are due in October.

If you can spare some of your Monday….
Monday 8 September, the Public Health and Safety Committee for the Detroit City Council, will be discussing and hearing comments on the Detroit Non-Motorized Transportation Master Plan, hopefully, (as shakeups in the Mayor’s office and city government could possibly push back the hearing). It is the first step in getting the Master plan recognized by MDOT and getting their help. There’s a lot of plan in that master plan, but it calls for 400 miles of bike lanes and other ways to connect cycling destinations in the City.

So, if you’ve got the opportunity on Monday, go out and tell the Council, we need a more bike friendly city. And this is one part of that goal.

When: Monday, September 8th at 11:15 AM
Where: City Council, 13th floor of the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center, Jefferson at Woodward.

As I mentioned earlier, the meeting is supposed to be on Monday. But to be certain, please call the City Clerk for verification. 313.224.3266. Thanks to Todd Scott, the Detroit Greenways Coordinator for the Michigan Trails and Greenways Alliance, for the heads up.