I came across this post via Unstoppable Robot Ninja’s website the other day. It’s with regards to the 12 Items or less isles in the grocery store. When I first read it, I thought amen!

Tonight I’m in the grocery store, I’ve got my 9 items in my hand basket, I go to the 12 items or less check out and there’s a woman checking out with not 12 items but an entire shopping cart. She’s throwing the items up on the belt as fast as she can and making sure all her coupons are getting scanned. Meanwhile there were a good 7 other check outs open plus the self check outs.

I really wanted to snap a pic with my iPhone, but she seemed slightly crazed and I didn’t want her flipping out.

But come on people? I really wanted to ask her if she had read the sign that was lit up on top of a pole in big print saying “12 items or less”.

Sunday we revisited Cobble Mountain in Kent. Craig and hiked back here in April on Earth Day. Over the summer Craig made it part of his weekly trip over to that area and had gotten a fairly good time at going up and down.

This time we had Kelly and Scout along. Currently, and probably for a while, I’m the anchor of the group. What takes them 1.5 hours takes me 3.5. But like Craig reminds me, “Your doing it though, which is more than most can say”.

The weather was great, it looked like rain but the sun kept peeking out and made for some beautiful colors in the woods. We met a trail angel along the way. We called her trail angel because she told up little bits of advice that were exactly what we were thinking but had not said out loud. She recommended I take up snow shoeing come winter. Which pending the arrival of actual snow, I’m all for it.

I uploaded several pics to Flickr.

ecto

A dream I’ve always had is sitting a desk, looking out a window in front or to the side of me and seeing trees and a field or forest. To me there’s something inspiring about looking out over nature in it’s solitude. I can see it perfectly in my head, and some day it will be true.

John Hicks posted a picture of the view from his office. I can see why he likes it.

As a new owner of an iPhone, and a previous Treo owner, I decided to use AppInstaller. I’m really enjoying the different 3rd party apps.

These are the apps I have loaded:

FiveDice
Colloquy
MobileChat
SummerBoard
Blackjack
iLigh
iSplit
Lights Off
My eBay
Pirate
Pushr (removing this)
Soduko
Tetris
VNotes

The first time I added apps it was a bit buggy and things were crashing. I uninstalled things, and started over. All seems to be working smooth now. I’m holding out on updating to 1.1.1. until the 3rd party groups have been able to get things working again.

My personal take on Apple crippling all this; if Apple is going to release their own apps (widgets) great, then tell us. If your not, it’s ok to take a “we’re not going to support the apps”, that’s the same stance as Palm has taken, but don’t cripple devices all together.

It will be interesting to see how the next few months pan out.

I don’t get people, why are they self-centered and always on the defense. It seems like people are getting more and more snappy, impatient and rude.

Today Craig and I were at the natural food store, let me preface the parking lot is a little tight. So Craig backs up, and we start towards the exit. A woman is walking towards us on our side. So he slows down and gives her some room. Coming in the parking lot is a small panel truck. By the way we were positioned he’d have to move over a bit on his right and we’d all be happy. But does this happen, no he yells out his window at us, “Move over you god-damn moron”. People are just so friendly.

Then we come home to find a note on the windshield of my car. Again a little preface. Our apartment complex does not have enough spots in front of each building for all the people who live there. There’s 5 units in our building and 5 parking spots, well each of us in the units has 2 cars… you see the dilema. Last night I parked over in front of the building next door because they have several empty units. The reason I did this too was so my neighbors were not inconvenienced by us having a guest over for a short period of time. Back to the note, I find a hand written note by a woman saying, “If you don’t live here, then don’t park here”. I read the note, looked around in the building and ripped it up. My theory is this is from one of the new people who just moved into that building. It will be interesting come winter when we generally lose 2 spots due to the way the snow plow clears the lot.

An open statement to the world. Have some patience, think about why a person might be doing what they are doing, maybe there’s a reason. From the 7 Habts of Highly Effective People, “Seek first to understand, then to be understood“.

Today was a day where I was certainly uninspired by humanity. There are such great things we can do, when we drop the chip on our shoulders.

These two visited my inlaws a few weeks ago with Mom and much smaller. Mom seems to be gone now, not sure if she moved on or something else happened. They’re very curious, which is probably not good. I hope no one does anything to them, i.e. shoot or hurt them. They stick together and watch each other’s back. But at one point when they felt comfortable with me hiding behind the car snapping pics they started walking towards me. I shooed them away, as much as I’d like to visit and pet, not a good thing to instill in them.

I’m not sure if it’s because I grew up in New England or my internal clock is off, but Autumn is the time of year I recount the year prior, reflect on what I’ve done, could have been done better, the times I take great joy in. It’s the beginning. For most it’s New Years Eve/Day that they set out new goals, or their birthdays, not me it’s the Fall season.As the leaves turn all around me, I get really excited. Every year is different, when I drive I try to keep an eye out for that one tree that really stands out. The changing of leaves is like mother nature’s present for me. I think back to wonderful memories of being in New Hampshire’s White Mountains during October.  Read the rest of this entry »

Although not as funny as the one on SNL. We had a pretty busy weekend, what else is new. We helped out at Friends Meeting with supplies for the Underground Railroad Walking Tour on Saturday morning. Came back to meet up with our friend Ron at Sherwood Island State Park, but he ended up with car trouble so that was out. Then we thought, ok we will head up to the Apple store in Westfarms to check out the 24″ iMac and 30″ Apple Cinema Display. The store was packed. The new iPod Nanos were really amazing. If I was independently wealthy maybe I’d get one and an iPhone, but I’m holding out for an iPhone. We never were able to checking out the, ONE, 30″ Display because a store employee was teaching a woman how to use her MacBook in front of it. Poor planning if you ask me.

We came back home, relaxed and watched “Because I Said So”, with Diane Keaton and Mandy Moore. It was a cute movie, but we won’t be getting a copy for ourselves.

Sunday morning we woke up to this great sky outside our door.

Later on we met up with Kelly at Starbucks to see how she was doing, and plan a hiking trip for next weekend. As we were leaving Craig and I both saw the beautiful colors of the leaves on this tree. It was so nicely contrasted, with what I think is a cedar tree next to it (left) and pine tree on the right.

Kelly and I got together to knit at Panera. I had tried toe-up socks once before and I did not get how to do short-rowing. We decided to take the challenge together. We’re using Wendy Johnson’s toe-up sock instructions from Knitty.

We both got soups and broke out the yarn. Had some hot drinks later on as the night got cold. We did make some progress, as usual I knit so tight my socks could pass for being water-proof, and Kelly knits quick and loosely, so she was almost done with her toe. We had a good time catching up and are determined to get this right by the other foot.

I’m doing a little transition. I started up http://www.dianaleroi.com in 2003. I blogged pretty regularly using pMachine Free first, then iBlog and then WordPress. I always had trouble trying to pick a “theme” for my writing, and sometimes I felt after the fact on a few posts, that I wrote too much.

Craig and I have been tossing around the purposes for our websites. KregMusic would clearly stay Craig’s personal music, but what about CRIANA. CRIANA started off as our wedding website, which then transformed into our business. A business we have not been active with for a while. Which brings us back to the dilemma, what site to use for sharing information with the family, which for business, and which for writing our ideas out on.

We settled with buying www.leroischmidt.com, and yes there’s no hyphen in it. We felt that would guarantee the least amount of trouble with people remembering it.

The main site will be where we share pictures of the cats, our trips, family and friend updates. Under my subdomain, I will write about what ever starts pouring from my head, I’ve had lots of ideas but have not been collecting them anywhere.

At some point I might try to bring in my previous WordPress installations from 2003 to current. In the meantime, welcome and slowly I’ll get things going here (flickr, twitter, claim id…)