Dazed and confused? Not me. I’m just Lost in the Cheese Aisle.

Sunday, March 13, 2011

SPRING IS IN THE AIR

Spring Blossoms

Spring Flowers

Things have definitely become more spring-like in the north Atlanta ’burbs.

Over the past week, the trees and bushes have burst into bloom. Bradford pear (complete with stinky blossoms), cherries, and bright yellow forsythia splash their colors across the gradually greening landscape. The dogwoods will follow in another couple of weeks.

This afternoon was about as nice as it gets... sun, blue skies, and a temperature in the low seventies. Gary and I got out the bikes and enjoyed a fifteen-mile ride on the Greenway, a path that runs between Roswell and Alpharetta. Alas, it’s extremely popular with pedestrians and rollerbladers, so a certain amount of navigational and piloting ability is called for. Nevertheless, it’s a great way to spend an hour on a warm, sunny day.

On the way home, Gary shared a story about his granddaughter Sydney, who was in Colorado with her family. Sydney and her big brother Josh are already past masters at skiing - Josh, despite being not quite nine years old, is already tearing up the double black diamond slopes the way only someone with a child’s total lack of fear (and low center of gravity) dares to do. And when Sydney saw what she thought was a familiar object in her hotel room, the following exchange ensued:

Sydney: Mommy, is that a snowboard?

Mommy: No, that’s an ironing board. You’ve never seen one of those before.

Ain’t that a sign of the times...

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

What might she think of a rotary phone, a turntable, or (gasp!) a gas station where an attendant pumped the gas FOR YOU?!

- Morris William

Kevin Kim said...

For that last item: there's always New Jersey, where you never pump your own gas (see here).

Elisson said...

Yes, it's true - for whatever reason, New Jersey has never permitted self-service gasoline pumps, thus ensuring the continued well-being of surly gas pump operators.

It's not a completely stupid law, even if it results in costlier fuel for New Jerseyans. One time - we were enroute from Connecticut to Princeton, New Jersey for my college reunion - we stopped for gas on Route 1, somewhere around New Brunswick. There being no attendant in evidence, and with my being unaware of the New Jersey law, I simply got out and began pumping my own gas. Only problem was, the pump's automatic cutoff was defective, causing me to get a nice healthy schpritz of gasoline on my pants.

What was especially galling - after the dressing-down by the attendant who eventually showed up ("You're not supposed to pump your own gas!") was that I worked for the petrochemical company whose name was on that filling station. Crap. Crappity crap.