A howlin' alarm clock

The last two mornings in a row, I have woken up to the sound of Bear and Jack howling their hearts out. A police car had driven by the house on the way to an accident (I assume) and it really riles the dogs up. Jasmine has only joined in twice but ironically, she howls much better than either of them. Bear's howls are just a pathetic high pitched squeal kind of noise.

This morning, I got out of bed after they did that and looked out the window. The sun was just rising and it was so vibrant. It's been quite some time since I've seen a good sunrise.

During the day, I took my sewing machine to a reapir shop. I've had some problems with it since getting it (Adam bought it as a birthday present the second year we were married). Sometimes it behaves better than others though. I was just going to get it looked at for an estimate, thinking that I wouldn't have it repaired unless it was $20 or less. The guy working there was very knowledgable and before even turning it on, he told me what he thought was the problem. Sure enough, that was it. The bobbins that came with it were too small for the hole (he says he had three sewing machines last week with the same problem). He used one of the shop's bobbins and it worked great. So for $7.00 I got a package of new bobbins and didn't have to have it repaired. Yeah!! Now maybe I can work on some of the projects I wanted to do with my sewing machine.

I tried doing a tune up on my mountain bike last night. There were 2 spoke nipples that were stripped...the ones that needed to be adjusted most of all. So I trued it as best I could without the use of those two spokes. Then onto the brakes. It took much longer than it should have but in the end, I got that done as well. The front brake pads are both split so those really need to be replaced but I'll hold off on that for now. I don't use front brakes often so it's not worth the money. The hard part came when I tried working on the derailleurs. I decided that the derailleurs were shot but after thinking about it, I think it is a combination of old cables and bad shifters. I tried with all my might to get it to work to no avail. Again, not a huge deal since I only bike on flats with that bike so I can handle a single speed but I can see having to replace the shifters/derailleurs if we move back to our hilly neighborhood in GA...or anywhere else. Altogether, it wasn't a very sucessful tune-up but I did what I could and really, everything I need on it works well enough.

Sunsets here have been mazing lately. So I decided I would drive out to a small reservoir close by and see the sunset from there. Wouldn't you know it, the sunset wasn't as beautiful as they have been. I'm glad I drove there though. I was thinking about biking to it but you couldn't see it from the road and the road that lead to it was private so I couldn't use it. The drive was fun though.