Jodi Speaks Her Mind

possible solutions 4/29/2002

The Arizona Hiking Shack might be the answer to my dilemna. Can’t wait to get there to check out their selection. If THEY don’t have what I’m looking for, I may as well give up. I’ll report back what I find once I can find an opportunity to get out there. It’s about a 45-min. drive if I go during non-rush hour times.

Final alternative is to hold off until late fall and look again then. That’s when the hiking season really kicks in out here. Right now most hikers are shifting gears because it is so hot in the summer that most folks don’t hike unless they are die-hards, in which case you get up around 4 am so you can hike before it hits 100.

Yikes!

no shoes at the shoestore 4/28/2002

I desperately need a new pair of hiking shoes. I tried REI, but couldn’t find any that were quite right. So I went today to a store at a local mall called “Sole Outdoors” that specializes in outdoor footwear. They had exactly 3 styles of women’s hiking shoes and NONE of them in a size smaller than a 7. The saleslady kept telling me that they could order me my size if I was willing to pre-pay. I was too stunned. Pay them $80 to WAIT for an opportunity to TRY ON a pair of shoes?! Surely they could order them just to have them for sale, eh?!

It’s amazing places like that even stay in business. I am feeling pretty discouraged…

Test post again 4/25/2002

Please forgive the intrusion, testing again.

Test post

please ignore

“getting in shape” update

It’s a mega slow process. It would of course be sped up by consistent and regular exercise. But discipline is not one of my strong suits. Anyhow, I AM exercising, it’s just a bit sporadic. So nothing grand to report right now. I went walking/running this evening, and we are doing a pretty substantial hike on Saturday, though. So maybe the next time I run it won’t be as tiring as it was tonight. Trudge, trudge…

feeling like a dork 4/24/2002

Here is the link to the official OpSail 2000 website. Needed to search for “Operation Sail” rather than just opsail. Sometimes I wish google would search actual domain names and give those matching results first. Would have saved me a lot of time…

Of course I could have just tried typing in www.opsail.com but still would have failed since the domain is .org, which as logical as it may seem, I seldom think to try.

iTools, ships, and a tangent or two

As preparation for another iPhoto class I’m teaching, I played a bit more with the webpage publishing capabilities and am wishing I had done so sooner. Here is my first “album” of published photos. Just so you know in advance, the content is two years old. It’s from OpSail 2000, which was an awesome event that took place at a series of port cities. (That link was about the best I could find…. surprisingly.)

Funny, while searching for a good website on OpSail 2000’s stopover in Norfolk, I stumbled on another iTools user gallery of photos from the very same event. His is a more diverse collection of photos than my own I might add since we really only went to the one dock. Ships were docked at about 8 different locations around Hampton Roads.

One other interesting photo I found while searching about…. question for family and close friends: doesn’t this guy look like Laurent!?

thumbs down 4/20/2002

We saw the movie Murder by Numbers last night. Thankfully, we used free movie passes because I would NOT recommend anyone paying to see this movie in theaters. Okay to rent it but I declare it unworthy of theater-viewing by my standards anyhow.

Now the story itself wasn’t ALL bad, but it was pretty ho-hum. Sandra Bullock was…. well, Sandra Bullock. I like her movies and I like her, but most of her characters are the same. This movie is no exception.

What I DID enjoy were the performances of the two teenage “killers” played by Ryan Gosling and Michael Pitt. Their characters were frighteningly believable as intelligent teenagers psychologically “messed up” enough to commit a murder just to prove that they could do it without getting caught. The rest of the movie wasn’t even as good as any episode of C.S.I., which is one of my new fave TV shows. Perhaps it was my love of the TV show that ruined the movie for me…Anyhow, it was disappointing. I will say that I’ll keep an eye out for the two young actors, though. They showed definite promise!

City Lights

We took a drive to the summit of South Mountain tonight and saw an incredible view of the city of Phoenix at night. The lights spread out for miles and the sky was dark and endless. Awesome!

Our intention was to watch the sunset, but the drive up there took longer than expected. Next time we’ll be sure to get there in time to see the sunset. In either case, it was totally worth it. We desperately wished we had a digital camera to capture at least some of the views. I guess we’ll have to go back as soon as we buy one. With or without pictures, it was a memorable experience.