HOCO Thursdays-HOWARD COUNTY IS THE BEST hocoblogs@@@

Yes, I live in the greatest place in America.  My hometown rocks and every place else sucks.

Um, you know what, I'm pretty sure statements like the one above is how wars get started.

So let me rephrase that, Howard County is the Beatles and every place else is Twisted Sister.

Hey, Twisted Sister is pretty cool, they were mentioned in the greatest movie of the 1980's Flight of the Navigator:  Compliance. 

Back to my point, Howard County is awesome.

Last week I posted a blog about the street I live on. 

By 9:45 I received this comment:

Just after the information was tweeted I received this comment:

Are you kidding me?   The COUNTY EXECUTIVE'S DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF commented on MY BLOG.

So I did email him about the exact street names and so on.  He got back to me in the matter of hours.
He said he'd keep me in the loop about the progress of my streets and that he's looking into the problem.

By Monday he emailed me with more information.  WOW!  Amazing.
Wow!

Local government at work.

Also there's a website called The Patch and they focus on Hyper Local news.  From my super quick research,  Howard county has  Columbia Patch, Ellicott City Patch, Laurel Patch and Elkridge Patch

For those of you who don't live in Howard County, go check out if your own town has a Patch website. 

It's amazing what a little local networking can do and what a huge difference that can be made.

I'll keep you up to date about my road.

But my spine doesn't bend that way...

Last night I started to go back to my dance work out class.  If you know me at all, you'd know that:
a. I don't dance
b. prefer to sit very still
c. I'm a general spaz.


But I'm been feeling pretty crumby lately and my friend suggested we go back to our class.

I haven't gone since September--- it wasn't pretty.

The  instructor wanted me to do things that my spine won't let me, because, you know, I'm not a slinky.
 As I watched the instructor lie on her stomach and arch her back in some unnatural form, and look pretty awesome doing it, may I add, I wondered how she and I could be the same species.  I would NEVER Be able to do that.

EVER.


But when I wasn't staring at my shaking muscles, I was thinking about biodiversity.


Humans are amazing, aren't we.


Such a HUGE vast of interests and skills.

Think about how you got to work today, and think about the number of people you passed along the way.  Now think about all the people who helped get you to work today. The people who paved the roads, who designed the cars, made the cars, found the raw materials to make both the cars and the roads.

Look at all the books that have been written... all the topics.  Some topics are awful but the writing is superb.   Others the writing is unspeakable bad but the content is interesting.

Think about all the STUFF that's out there.

Think how every THING has a different levels of quality.  There's crappy pencils and then there's awesome pencils.

Human really are incredible.   We are diverse and still the same.

Tonight, after you drive home and eat your dinner, look up to the night sky and know you're doing the same thing humans have done for  thousands  of years.

Stupid Toy Tuesday- FOR THE WIN!

I decided to do a post of Stupid Toy Tuesday about a toy I LOVE.  

I love every Melissa and Doug product we've ever bought.  It's the quality of the craftsmanship and the though that goes into every toy that impresses me. 

One of my favorites is the Melissa and Doug's spin art.

IT doesn't have excellent reviews in Amazon and it isn't a perfect toy. 

But it is an wonderful ten minute activity. 

Pop it out of it's box, yes it still stays in the box, suction it to the table, place the paper squares on the spinner and paint away.

My daughter does the paint, I do the spinning.  It's a hand cranked spinner and doesn't have the power of a battery opperated one.  (restaining myself from a joke here)

But because it's not as powerful the mess is minual. 

My God an arts and crafts project with paint and NO MESS!  Insanity you say, but I say neigh.

It's the prefect activity my daughter and I can do without one of us getting bored (me), and it always comes out looking awesome.  

I always feel like an awesome mom whenever my daughter and I play with it.    Then I shoo her off to go watch tv so I can blog and play on the computer for hours on end. :-)

Jousting Peeps- Ninja's VS Pirates

The first official day of Jousting Peeps and we're deciding the age of question Ninja's verses Pirates.

Two peeps are chosen -Purple for Ninja (since purple is the closest thing to black) Green for Pirate because water is green... or um, seaweed is green

Into the battle arena:

The battle begins:

The results

NINJA'S WIN!!!!!! 

Pirate's sword didn't even touch the Ninja. 

Isn't it nice to finally have closure on that raging hot debate?

If you have a question please post it in the comments.

My favorite graffiti

I was out at my neighborhood park on Saturday.  It's a cute little park, newly renovated about two years ago.   My daughter ran around and played on everything.  She likes the big equipment more than that baby stuff and I saw why.

On the tube by the train engine I saw this written in sharpie. 

For those of you who can't read it, its says people made out in here.

I instantly had a ton of reactions to this.
First I went into snark mode: "Thanks Captain Obvious, nothing says romance more then a red train.  Guess what? "People" probably did more than "make out" in there. 

Second I went into mom mode: "Gross my kid plays in there.  There's not enough purel in the world to disinfect that tube."

Then I went into writer mode: "Damn that would make a great YA short story.  Two people hook up in a park and want to be immortalized some how."

Then I went into teacher mode: "Isn't that what all teenagers want, to me immortal, to be remembered some how?  What a better way to be rebellious youth then to taint a place of childhood innocence's then to vandalize it."

Then I went into practical mode:  "So people made out AND had a sharpie?  Really?"

Then I went into word nerd mode: "Interesting that  the word choice was "people" and not implying genre. Who were these people?  I assumed girl and guy but maybe it was guy guy or girl girl."

Then I went into skeptic mode: "Maybe NO ONE made out in here. Maybe it's just a prank."

Really I want to know the REALLY want to read what you think happen.  I want to READ your stories about the "people who made out in there."  I'm thinking a mini blog fest, maybe?  Let me know what you think.

But what's your favorite piece of graffiti?   Or maybe that could be the blogfest. Let me know in the comments.


BTW today is Hubby's birthday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY HUBBY.

HOCO Thursdays-The road I live on

I live in Howard County, it's one of the wealthiest area's in the nation.  It's been voted one of the best places to meet a geek and to live.  (I like geeks, they are my people, so being able to meet a geek would naturally make it a great place to live)

However not all places in HOCO are created equal.  I live in the "not as rich" part of the county.

A few weeks ago they started to fix the very old water main under our roads.  Now I realize that construction is going on and things won't be pretty.  However, my concern is more about what will happen when the construction is over, and what will happen to our roads. 

NEWLY PAVED--- LAST WEEK

Yeah, they didn't know WHAT that is.

The main street of my development

Patch work from a year ago.

A road that was NEVER paved

This is in front of a house

Where the NEW patchwork cracked the road.

New patch work next to the OLD patch work

The road I have to drive down to leave my house

This road was NEVER EVER patched. 

I know it's asking a lot to repave the road when construction is complete.  It will be expensive and a burden on the tax payers.  I too, am a tax payer, I've lived in Howard County for ten years now.  I know all of the money is spent in Columbia, and I know Elkridge has the misfortune of being on the "wrong side of 95" but still, I'm a member of this community too.  I know how I feel when I drive down a road that hasn't been cared for.

It makes me feel worthless, like my home, my neighborhood isn't valued.

So Ken Ulman and all the people who are in charge, will you fix my road?  Thank you.

Road Trip Wednesday- the house next door

Road Trip Wednesday is a ‘Blog Carnival,’ where YAHighway posts a weekly writing- or reading-related question and we answer the prompt on our own blogs.




This Week's Topic:
Which book character would you like most as a next door neighbor? 

As you know, I love John Green.  But my favorite of his characters was Tiny Cooper.  Mostly because I had a friend JUST like Tiny Cooper.   BIG GAY AND FAB-U-LOUS. 
But I would like to live next to Quentin Jacobsen.  I'd be the girl who had the crush on the boy next door who had a crush on the girl who lived on the other side. I could never compete with Margo, and I'd be secretly jealous of her but I would swoon a little if she spoke to me.    In other news I want to share my latest fail, because sharing fails are fun.  Guess who sent out 10 queries with THE WRONG PHONE NUMBER and I spelled my comp titles wrong. **head desk**
You know when they say, triple check your query? Yeah triple check it by the tenth power. 

Stupid Toy Tuesday- My Little Ponies.

I'm a girl.
I'm a girl who grew up in the 1980's, which means I watched a lot of cartoons.
Jem, She-ra, (who deserves her own blog post one day) but the BEST was My Little Ponies.  I loved the cartoon but I also loved the toys.
Oh they were glorious.  Moondancer was my favorite.  

Then I grew up... Stupid time. As a married woman, I walked around Target with my hubby and what did we see, but MY LITTLE PONIES.   But now Moondancer looked like this.

The 2000's pony is thinner and we wonder why girls have such awful body images, even horses need to be a size 4.

Then my husband bought all the Little Ponies he could.  My hubby is a collector and needed something to hunt for... and I ended up with EVERY PONY in Maryland.  Flash forward five years and I find out I'm preggers.  And when we found out I was going to have a little girl,  my first thought now I have to SHARE my ponies! Then I thought my daughter's teenager years were going to suck, because that's the life of a teenage girl... sucky.

So when my daughter started potty training, she got a pony every time she pooped on the potty. It was the poop for a pony program.

That's a TINY fraction of all the ponies she has.

Over the years Hasbro has reduced the size of the ponies. 

Then a few weeks ago she discovered the NEW My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic TV Show and since she had surgery so got a few new toys and I noticed some differences.

The two pink ones are the EXACT same pony, but "reimaged", Look how the eyes have changed and heads have changed,  they're thinner and have cute smiles.  OH AND LOOK HOW SMALL THEY ARE!

The yellow one with pink hair went to my staff development meeting with me.  She was jammed in my back pocket by some three year old as I was walking out the door.  Some ponies have brushable hair, some are all plastic. 

Then there's princess Celestia, she's the princess because she's the tallest. (yep, stealing ideas from Invader Zim... which the world would be a better place if MORE things were stolen from Invader Zim.

But the ponies from the early 2000s and current ponies can't play with each other.  Look at the scale of the differences between two ponies and their playsets. 

My Little Ponies, how I love you... but it's still a fail.  And I don't want to talk about how much money I've dropped on these damn things.

bonus points if you can tell me who this guy is:

Peeps... the jousting kind, day 1

I discovered a brand new way of making decision.

Two peeps go in, and one is declared the winner. 

It's kind of the best thing entire world and I'm thinking about making it a regular feature on my blog. But first I need to be sure it's the right thing so I will ask the universe. 

I was very excited about this and told my family about it.  My parents were less then enthusiastic about it.  I think they were questioning how I was related to them.  But my husband was more supportive, he went out and bought me an army of peeps.

Life does not bode well for these sugary warriors.. for this experiment green means GO-- peeps should be a weekly feature on the blog, and pink means Stop, Erinn what are you doing, this is super dumb.. 

Place two peeps on a HEAVY DUTY paper plates.

 Now they are armed for battle. Weapons of war.   Stab the peeps with "swords" or toothpicks. 

The battle arena!

 30 seconds later the peeps expand

EXPANDING... that's what victory looks like.










Seconds after taking the peeps out of the microwave, we have a winner.  The green peep has stabbed the pink one. 


The Universe has spoken, jousting peeps will be a weekly feature on the blog. 


Please pose a question to the universe (or me) and I'll have the peeps make the choose.  Leave your questions in the comments.