This is what happens when it snows in Philadelphia. Jennifer and I went to the store to get some black pepper and instead found that all of the table and kosher salt had been cleaned out. Philadelphians don't really understand winter. I can only hope the stores have had time to restock since Saturday as Snowmageddon Part II has arrived and who doesn't need some table salt to aid snow melt?

I've been spending a lot of time in the basement recently. I'm currently working on a bamboo and carbon bike for myself, and also a bit of a birthday present for Jennifer. I will post pictures of it at the appropriate time, which will be this coming Saturday, of course. I'm rather pleased at how it turned out, but I'll leave the final judgment to her.

We've also been watching a great deal of Daily Show episodes online. I like the show overall, and I really love the way that Jon Stewart, or at least his writers, are able to call out humor in the idiocy of our country. My main gripe is that the show could be so much better. With all of Stewart's penis jokes and googly eyes it's kinda like watching a precocious 15 year old ripping on politicians. I laugh at the penis jokes, as intended, but it's only my lizard-brain giggling. My other critique is the inconsistency with which Stewart approaches the interviews. With arch-rivals such as Lou Dobbs or John Yoo, he's an extremely good interviewer; asking hard, probing questions and letting his respondents answer for themselves (mostly). With people who are non-controversial though, he asks nothing but slightly insipid leading questions. It's like he has no faith that the people on his show have anything to say for themselves. If that were the case, why have them on in the first place?

 
More pictures of the holidays to come, but they were grand. One week home in Iowa, followed by one week up north in Montreal. The above is a picture of the ice hole into which we plunged for comic relief after half an hour of sauna-ing up an hour north of Montreal. Excellent.

 
Cold up there.

Snow biking. Like regular biking, but it's actually really fun to ride at 5 mph.

Philadelphia is not really built to handle snow. Philadelphians as well are not really able to deal well with snow. Especially not 23 inches of it. While anywhere else I would be ecstatic with the amount, here it has presented a bit of a problem, and that problem is paralysis. When one's street is only wide enough to accommodate 2 cars on a good day, it doesn't really have enough room for all of that extra frozen stuff. Therefore, our car is utterly blocked in, and it's even a bit too deep for my studded snow bike tires to do much good. I did go for an awesome snow-bike ride yesterday though, before we had gotten ourselves quite so boxed in.

It's confirmed. All is not as it was assumed to be in our neighborhood. For three years now we've known our neighbors by their nicknames, and now those names are ruined. I'll explain...

Next door to us are an elderly Cambodian couple, Old Guy and his wife Smiley. Old guy is named as he is primarily because he's old. Smiley, well she almost always has a scowl on her face as she shuffles down the block. Next to them is another Cambodian family that we have known for years as "Young Mama's Family". From youngest to oldest are Brandon (3) Nana (6) Jordan (10) and Jackie (13). There were also Young Mama, Young Mama's Husband, Young Mama's Mama and Young Mama's Dad. They all live in the house two doors down from us that is about as big as ours, maybe even slightly smaller. We've been calling them by these nicknames since we moved in, and it's waaaaaaaaaaay too late to go asking their names now. But there's a problem, and it all started when the guy we know as Young Mama's Husband bought a purple Chevy Impala. Jennifer asked Jackie who's car it was and responded that it was his brother's. Whaaaa? We had assumed that this guy who looked to be about 27 or so was his dad. Yeah, that would make him an extremely young parent, but that's not impossible right? Through some more sleuthing we have since determined that Young Mama is not the mama at all, but is the sister of all these younger kids. Now we're stuck without any names at all for the 4 adults in the house, since they were always based on Young Mama. We're going to have to go back to the drawing board with this one.

Unbusted

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Originally uploaded by aaroneritz

This is probably my best repair to date. It was ridiculously lucky that I happened to have exactly the same color of touch up paint as the rest of his bike. But I'll take all the credit.

Was Busted

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Originally uploaded by aaroneritz

Some jerk cut off my teammate Justin in a race, and then some other jerk ran into his bike. Lucky for Justin, he's got a teammate like me who fixes shit for fun.

Repairing bikes like mad. I've been spending far too much time in the basement these days, working on other people's bikes. Not that I mind working on bikes all that much, I just wish for the process to go a little quicker. In general though fixing bikes for my various teammates who have smashed them is not too difficult and does add a bit of cash to my otherwise cash-strapped existance. That existence will become ever so slightly more strapped once the default period for my deferred student loans expires next month. Yikes. I'm working full time these days which is great, but it's splitting between the two jobs that makes it challenging.