Hailstones

Yesterday afternoon while Torsten and I were in the car about 10 minutes away from home, it started pouring and hailing. At first we weren't concerned, even though we could hear a tornado siren going off nearby (which is a very scary thing to hear), but then the hailstones started getting bigger and louder, so we pulled into a nearby parking garage and waited it out with about 15 other cars. It didn't last long and when we drove home, the roads near our house were dry. So, we thought the house had missed the storm entirely. Until we saw the giant hailstones in the backyard:


But really, we were lucky, because the siren was for real: there were tornadoes in the area yesterday. Hopefully nobody was hurt.

Also this weekend, on Saturday, we went to the People's Fair in downtown Denver. We took the lightrail to get there, having heard about street closings. We live very near a lightrail station but had never actually taken it before. And can I just say... we weren't very impressed. We were hoping to be, especially since they are expanding the system, but our minds were blown by the sheer ticket prices. The trip from our house to the fair, which would have been about a 15-minute drive, cost $3.50 each one-way. As in, $14 altogether. That's a LOT--that's how much you pay to go from the outskirts of the Virginia/DC suburbs to the outskirts of the Maryland/DC suburbs. And I thought THAT was a lot. If we'd had two kids above the age of five with us, the whole thing would have cost $28.

This infuriates me. Public transportation is supposed to encourage people to leave their cars at home, but when you can park downtown for no more than $5, and often for free, why in the hell would a family drop thirty bucks to take the light rail instead, especially when it takes twice as long? AND, despite the small fortune that you have to pay to ride, they don't take credit cards. So if you want to take the light rail and you're not the type to carry cash with you, you have to plan in advance and hit the ATM ahead of time.

Plus, the trains are tiny, and if you don't live in the transit district, you have to pay for parking at the station. Guess how you do that? Meters? Pre-paid tickets? No no, you PUT YOUR CASH OR CHECK IN AN ENVELOPE, label it with your license plate number, and leave it in a slot for someone to come by and pick up later. What is this, 1930?

OK. Vent over. All I'm saying is, the only time we'll be taking the lightrail in the future is if we're going somewhere with no available parking, or somewhere where both of us would like to drink. Which is really too bad, because with just a few small tweaks, the system would be a lot more palatable and user-friendly.

The other thing we did this weekend was to FINALLY (seven months later) pick out the photos we want in our wedding album and give the info to our photographer. The album was included in the package so we don't have to pay anything for it, so it was just sheer laziness that prevented us from ordering it earlier. We picked all the photos ourselves but we left it up to our photographer's discretion to decide which ones will be in black and white, so that will be a nice little element of surprise when we get the final product. I can't wait to see it.

Lastly, I leave you with a gratuitous (and tragically slightly blurry) dog photo. She loves the car because she associates it with the dog park, so as soon as we go into the garage she follows us. This time I went to put something in the trunk before I let her into the backseat, but she didn't let that stop her: