Well, friends, after four years of a happy sunrise theme on my blog, I’ve decided it’s time to get with the times and refresh my blog’s look. Granted, I’m not posting 33 times a month (!) the way I did back when I started this blog, and I don’t really have a list of links to blogs or other pages I visit that I want to share because I don’t surf much anymore, either. But I still like having this non-Facebook presence, and at the very least it’s a valuable resource for me, like a public scrapbook. So I’ll be fitzing with the new look for a while, but we’re going clean and modern, in keeping with today’s web standards.

Here are a few random things I’ve been thinking about or experienced the last couple weeks.

One evening, about 6:30 pm, Dad and I were riding north on Lake Washington Boulevard, a common bike route that has a bike lane and parallel parking to the right of the bike lane. We were in the bike lane, tooling happily along, when we got to the usual traffic slowdown. Cars always back up along this road, and especially at rush hour we expect it. We slowed down but continued along in the bike lane, passing cars on our left and keeping a cautious eye out for surprise moves from the cars on our left.

Sure enough, almost into Kirkland, a car ahead of us abruptly pulled into the bike lane right in front of us and then started backing up, clearly starting to parallel park in an empty spot. Dad and I slowed down dramatically and, with some sputtering, got into the driving lane and went around the car. As I passed the driver’s window, I said, “You almost hit us!” She said, “No I didn’t, you were behind me!” This made me wonder: If we’d been going too fast to stop, and we’d run into the back of that car, whose fault would it be? Seems like (a) we would have been going too fast for the conditions if we couldn’t stop in time, so that could be our fault; but (b) she should not have blocked a lane of travel, especially of vehicles that could be going faster than her lane, so that could be her fault. Plus, she wouldn’t just pull into a driving lane full of cars going by and stop abruptly, would she? (Well, maybe she would, but it’d be her fault if she got hit, right?)

I’ve been wondering about that ever since. Seems like it might depend on how bike-friendly the city was, too. I remember a bike-only crash where somebody slipped going around a corner on Mercer Island. The cop who came threatened to give our crashed buddy a ticket for riding too fast for the conditions — this was as paramedics packed him up to take him to the hospital, mind you.

Can police officers give tickets outside of their jurisdiction? I saw a Sammamish cop car pull somebody over in Woodinville a while ago, and I’ve been wondering that ever since. And I’ve also been wondering: Do cops pull each other over? If a police car is speeding without lights, just going faster than the speed limit like we all do, can he get pulled over?

I’ve just been wondering things lately, I guess. Another thing I wonder: Why are we having to spend thousands of dollars on water mitigation in our crawl space, when I’d really like to spend it on landscaping our back yard? Invisible trenches in the crawl space are way less sexy than new fences, trees, and general yard improvements. The answer to that one I already know, though; it’s because we’re grown-ups, and grown-ups have to do the responsible thing before the fun thing. At least most of the time. It’s such a bummer, too, because we’re working with Carlson Landscaping to evolve a plan for the yard that I really like and would love to see come to life sooner than, oh, 20 years from now, before Benji outgrows all the kid-friendly stuff we’re thinking of.

Speaking of Benji, he’s turning into a toddler, but he’s a delightful toddler. Yes, he does the annoying fake crying to try and get us to do things (alas, even Mommy can’t make 30 seconds take less than 30 seconds), and he’s kind of whiny and demanding, and shakes his head “no” a lot. But he also does imaginative play, babbles constantly with endearing and hilarious sounds, understands an alarming amount of what we say, and loves to spend time running around outside. We try to visit other kids often to practice socializing, but for now it’s mostly parallel play with imitative actions. Benji watches other kids and imitates what they do, but I haven’t seen actual cooperative playing together happening yet.

So, all this sums up to: Things are going about as usual. More on our visit to Crescent Lake this past weekend in another post soon.