Gadgets and Gizmos A Plenty

Today, I acquired two cool new gadgets. One is my Arrowhead water cooler, which is really handy to have.  It makes hot water, too, so I guess my tea kettle is now fairly useless (Shh. Don't tell it).  I dragged the thing inside, which was not easy, then brought in the three enormous water jugs, and finally, two 24 packs of water bottles that they threw in for free.  I managed to hook the thing up myself, and that includes putting an open, splashing, 5 gallon jug on the top of a rickety little plastic doohicky.  The second I opened that jug, I regretted it but I somehow managed to get it on without incident.  Here is a picture of my cats giving it a thorough inspection:

                                          

The more exciting new gadget that I got is my bike! It is a beautiful, brand new 2013 Trek 7.2FX in red and I love it.  I was going to get a more demure color, since they also have it in black and gray, but I thought, "Screw it.  If you're going to do it, do it big." We got new helmets (which are a lot more expensive than I remember.  Then again, all my helmets came from Toys R Us when I was 5) and really high tech Kryptonite locks that have a feature where you register your lock and key online so in case you lose your keys, they can send you new ones.  With all the money we spent on those bikes, that lock had better be harder to get into than a pair of Lil Wayne's jeggings.

We also got racks put on the back for bags. Mat has a laptop messenger bag for his and I have a general shopping bag for mine, as seen below.  It literally just hooks onto the rack and stays there while I ride.  It's really cool.  I plan on getting a water bottle holder eventually but for now, the bottle just hangs out in the shopping bag.

Let me tell you, when you haven't ridden a bike in years, it is very difficult, especially on hilly streets while attempting to stay in a bike lane.  I had actually never ridden in a bike lane so I seriously asked the guy ringing us up at Helen's Cycles if there was some sort of speed limit.  I played it off like it was a joke but it wasn't.  I am just that bike illiterate.  I went without incident except I did fall on the floor while getting off the bike, since I wore a pair of shoes that have zero tread left in them and they slid on the slick sidewalk.  It was at an intersection and plenty of people caught that award winning move.  I would have been embarrassed if I wasn't so preoccupied with how hard riding a bike was after 15 years of only being in four-wheeled vehicles.  I had grand plans to bike down to Santa Monica beach and then head down the boardwalk to Venice but maybe I'll take it a few blocks at a time starting tomorrow.

On a more old fashioned sort of note, I have decided to crochet an afghan for our future couch.  I've been working on it for the last couple of days and I have quite a long way to go but I think it's coming out really well so far.  I must admit that I got the pattern from a YouTube video but I feel like I've learned a lot of things from YouTube including how to knit, how to do fancy makeup, and how to turn almost any vegetable into a bong. Thank God for the Internet, eh?