Thursday, April 5, 2012

While Walking

After ending the month of March with record setting heat in the 80's, we started April off with a nice little snowstorm. I was feeling disheartened because all of the spring flowers had just come out, and I was just sure that the snow would kill them.


Fortunately, I was wrong and the flowers survived! So yesterday, with beautiful sunny weather and the snow almost melted, I decided to go out for a walk. I had to pick up a few things at the grocery store and the library, so it was a good excuse, plus I wanted to play with my new telephoto lens, and get some shots of the spring pretties before they fade for good.


Sooo... a few blocks from home, on my way to the grocery store, I come to an intersection where a woman talking on a cell phone blows straight through a stop sign and nearly gets broadsided by an oncoming truck. She has the audacity to wave her arms in disgust. Well, you know, I guess it was rude of him not to be paying more attention to her distracted driving and blatant disregard for the stop sign. Sigh.

But the walk was lovely and after I dropped the groceries off at home, I headed to the park & library, camera in hand...


I pass a house with a very cute golden lab in the backyard, and a fellow outside working on his car. I ask if he would mind if I took a picture of his dog, and he looks at me like I'm from Mars. I soon realize he doesn't speak English so I ask him in Spanish. We proceed to have a bizarre conversation where he remarks that he always sees me out walking and wonders why.


I tell him that I just enjoy walking and he again looks at me like I'm from Mars. He asks if my car has broken down. I explain that no, I just prefer to walk. "But why?" he asks. Hmmm... perhaps I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume his stupid question was just the result of my bad Spanish. Things do sometimes get lost in translation...


At this point I decide that the best course of action is to just move on, so I turn to snap a few polite photos of the dog, where upon I notice, to my horror, that all of his um... doggy male parts are showing. Oy vey! I mumble something in broken Spanish about the dog having moved into the shade where the picture wouldn't be any good and leave quickly! Hey... we couldn't even communicate about walking, I wasn't about to broach that topic!


Undaunted, I continue along my merry way snapping photos of the spring blossoms.


Next thing that happens... a car starts coming up behind me moving very slowly. It rolls to a stop in the middle of the intersection about 50 feet in front of me. Hmmm... I think. Maybe they need directions? I keep walking and as I pass the car I see it's a young woman in the driver's seat completely and totally engaged in texting on her phone.


She is completely oblivious to me, and also seems not to realize that she has just stopped her car in the middle of the intersection. Now, they say that you should stop the car if you MUST text while driving, but somehow, I don't think that's what they meant! Well, at least if she causes an accident she'll be the hit-ee not the hit-er...


I finally make it to the park where young children are running and playing. One little fellow seems fascinated by the camera around my neck. He looks at me with eyes the size of dinner plates and asks, "Is that a gas mask?" OK... camera... gas mask... it's an easy mistake to make...

I continue walking around the lake and stumble upon these two little heart breakers under a picnic table...


It takes every ounce of strength that I have, but I keep walking... I'm already at the legal limit for the number of cats I can have... and they might just live nearby... oh but those little faces...


And so I continue... and who knows... maybe the cats were just there to watch the wildlife...


I finally veer off to the library, get my stuff and decide to head home... taking an alternate route so as to avoid Spanish speaking horny dog guy. As I'm walking along one of my neighbors pulls up beside me. "Do you need a ride?" she asks.


Sigh. Do you ever feel like people just don't get it?


I wonder how it is that taking a walk has become such a complicated activity. But the flowers sure were pretty!


How about you? Are you out enjoying the spring?

30 comments :

  1. Oh you and your bragged-y-brag spring flowers. We had a snowstorm this morning -- buses aren't even running... In ALBERTA. That should say it all. As for me, I could care less because the white stuff is much prettier than all of the yucky brown that it covered up. About another month (or two) until the flowers show up here. Glad that you got out to enjoy -- nice shots by the way -- minus the dog one... that was ummmm... not something that I needed to see :)

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    1. Well, it's been a strange spring so far. As much as I love the warm weather, 83 in March is just TOO HOT! You have my sympathies on the snow though... Just remember... you have universal health care!

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  2. Beautiful photos! The kitties are beautiful too; so hard, I know, to walk away.

    In SD people don't seem to think much about people out walking, but the 3 years we spent in TX...oh my. I can't tell you how many times people asked us if we needed a ride; and we were walking with our dogs on leashes! The local convenience store was our turnaround point; 2 years later I was inside buying something on my way home from running errands in town and the clerk said "So you finally got a car, huh?" =0

    I have had to dive into a ditch twice while walking to avoid being hit by people driving & messing with their cell phones; I wish people could see that they honestly can't do both well at the same time. I'm sure they don't realize how erratic their driving is, but as a daily walker I see it all the time :-/

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    1. OMG... and I was just thinking that maybe I should borrow the neighbor's dog so that people would understand that I really was out for a walk... I guess even that doesn't help!

      It really astounds me how people just can't wrap their brains around the idea that I'm walking because I want to! I didn't even mention that the parents of most of the kids playing at the park were watching them from their parked cars where they were busy texting and talking on their cell phone. So much for enjoying the beautiful weather...

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    2. Oh no, that makes me so sad :( Some of my best childhood memories at the park are of my Dad going down the slide with me, or my Mom pushing me on the swings. Back in the 70's that was the norm...apparently not so much nowadays :(

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    3. You make me jealous... my mother NEVER took me to the park, even once. I fear she was a woman ahead of her time.

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  3. OMG you are so funny! I always love reading your posts but this one with horny dog and horny dog owner just cracked me up. Love all the beautiful spring flower photos and the kitties - how did you control yourself and walk away? On the subject of walking, I was just talking about it at work yesterday saying if I didn't have to work or if I worked close to home I wouldn't own a car. Well, you'd think I was from Mars too! I got questions like how would you get your groceries - huh? I'd walk to the store, a whole 1/2 a mile away. But how would I get the groceries home? Ummm, luckily I've been blessed with not only feet for walking but hands for carrying as well - duh! I just walked away from the conversation shaking my head.
    Enjoy your beautiful weather and have a wonderful weekend :)

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    1. Arms & legs are marvelous inventions, aren't they? I'm not about to get rid of my car, but I just vastly prefer to walk or bike when it's an option!

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    2. I would get rid of my car quicker than we can say the word car if I didn't have to get back and forth to work. I'm within walking distance of everything else I need - my needs are simple :)

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    3. I am in great awe of people who can go car-free. I know I could do it if I really had to, I mean, I drive less than 1000 miles per year, but it's just soooo nice to have around for things like hauling 50 pound bags of cat litter, and getting around when it's below zero outside, and midnight trips to the emergency vet. I'm sure I could come up with creative solutions if I needed to, but I think I'll keep my little 22 year old Honda, it only has 85K miles on it. Who knows, maybe I'll set some sort of a record for the oldest car with under 100,000 miles!

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  4. Hah! Love the dog incident. Other animals don't really get human sensibilities...and how boring for our world if they did!

    It's actually been kind of a cool spring here; usually the heater's turned off by now, but it's been seriously nippy in the mornings and evenings. A lot of our trees and plants seem a bit delayed this year.

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    1. Hey Jennifer!

      Wow... now that's amazing... warmer in Denver than in California! Except for a few days during the snow storm, my furnace has been off for a month! Of course, I do tend to sleep through those nippy mornings.

      And in terms of human sensibilities... CatMan tells a hilarious story about being at the zoo where there was a monkey right up at the front of his cage who was very busy umm... "spankin' the old baloney" if you get my drift. He said it was really funny to watch how people reacted. Mothers would arrive with their small children and they'd be like "Ooooo a Monkey!" Then mom would realize what the monkey was doing, and you could just see the horror wash over their faces as they ushered the kids away from the exhibit as fast as humanly possible. Oh my!

      p.s. - Sorry your comment didn't appear at first, Blogger somehow thought you were spam, but I think I've got it fixed now. :)

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  5. Geez, a snowstorm? I was a little miffed we had frost today. Hope my seedlings coped okay. I would have taken them inside, but I missed hearing about this one. And I agree, 83 in March is way too hot!

    Excellent choices on the accompanying images! I mean, they're always funny, but these are top-notch. I love the mis-translation the most.

    Excellent flower shooting too. Sometimes I want to upgrade to a nice camera, but, well...I don't wanna spend the cash.

    p.s. I'll take the fluffy grey kitty if you ship him to Ohio! ;)

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    1. If you enjoy reading botched translations, try doing a Google image search for "funny Chinese Translations" or something similar and you'll see thousands upon thousands. I can spend hours reading through them and giggling to my heart's content.

      I totally know what you mean about the expense of the camera. I justified mine by starting a free photos website with the hopes of making enough money from ads to pay for the thing. It took me nearly a year, but it's actually picking up steam now and currently makes be about $500/month! Not a bad deal at all!

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  6. We've had the same weather as you - freaky heatwave in March (though not quite as hot as you had), snowstorm a few days ago (note - snow in April not considered freaky in Wales. The frost on 12 June last year will be remembered for some time, though.) That must be a first!

    We live in hillwalking country and get the opposite reaction - "Where are you two off to?" "Just going for a walk" "Oh, up to the Arch?" (A steep couple of miles) "Um no, just a stroll round the village." A neighbour of ours walks 100 miles in a weekend for fun!

    Those picnic cats look very healthy - I'm sure they're doing just fine :-)

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    1. Wow! Frost in June, that is remarkable... although it's certainly not unusual for us to get snow well into May, and I think we've had snow in June but it's certainly not typical. But we usually get well over a foot of snow in March, so this year was strange indeed!

      Hey... random question for you... I watched a movie last night that was set in Wales: The Englishman who Went Up a Hill but Came Down a Mountain. Anyhow, I'm notoriously terrible at sorting out British accents, but the way the narrator sounded really threw me. If I hadn't known better I would have sworn he was from India. Was that just my uncouth American ears, or is there some similarity between Welch and Indian accents?

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  7. Just accept the fact that you are a card carrying Weirdo! Walk? Seriously? It's dangerous out there, dontcha know?

    And, you have will power. I would've headed home, gotten the car & 2 carriers and brought those babies home. What can I say? That's why I have a gazillion cats & you don't.

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    1. I seriously thought about a kitty rescue mission, but in my neighborhood it's really common for people to just let their cats run wild, and they were right near the edge of the park... I wouldn't want to steal somebody's pet. Plus I know there's a woman about a block from there who feeds a colony of ferals & strays, so I think if they're really homeless, they've probably found her buffet by now... I hope so anyhow. But I'd be lying if I said it didn't break my heart. Heavy sigh...

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    2. You need to design some t-shirts just for your walks. You are so good at funny phrases In fact, there's another way for you to make money. Design some t-shirts and sell them on Cafe Press. I think they make everything & ship the stuff & you get a percentage on each sale.

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    3. Now there's a thought! I wonder if anybody ever really buys that stuff...

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  8. I thought of this post while we were out today because we passed a Dad and two kids who were out together....riding Segways on the sidewalk. And this isn't an area of town that runs Segway tours that I'm aware of, so I think they may have owned the things.

    God forbid anyone take a walk or a bike ride on a sunny spring day. Man, people really suck.

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    1. Ha! Maybe they were riding their Segways to the gym so they could get some exercise on the treadmills! Who me? Cynical? :~)

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  9. Well...it's always spring here in San Diego soo....can't answer that question :)

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    1. I've been to San Diego once, it was when I was a kid. And what I remember the most was a trip to the zoo where a baby goat tried to eat my hair and where I spent the entire day being absolutely obsessed by these vending machines that would make animal figurines out of wax.

      Anyhow, I'm jealous of your weather, do you really have no seasons at all?

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    2. Due to my own issues with zoos (dislike animals in captivity, prefer larger sanctuaries), I've never been to the zoo.

      We do have a bit of a drizzle season. It rains a few times, it gets a little cloudy every once in a while....

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    3. Well, I have to say I have VERY mixed feelings about zoos. It's heartbreaking to see the animals kept in captivity... especially when the cages are just so small, on the other hand I know that captive breeding programs may be the only thing that keeps many of these species from going extinct since humans are busy destroying all of their natural habitats. Sigh.

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  10. Dude, I saw a cop walking and texting the other day. Hello, criminals! It's a new day! The cops are no longer paying attention. Have at it.

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    1. Ha! Did you see the clip of the bear that got loose somewhere in a California town? Some dude is walking along texting and looks up to see a bear coming straight at him. Oh my...

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    2. I did! I'm surprised he didn't pass out from the shock.

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  11. ahahahha Missed that one, but oh lord, hilarious!

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