Good chick, bad chick.

Our favorite local ice-cream goddess Miz Amy made NPR's "Weekend Edition" !!! You can read/listen to her here:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11980712

The gist of the story is how dairy prices (among many other things) are going up because the demand for ethanol is driving up grain prices. Corn is far from the most efficient way to make ethanol, anyway.

Every time I drive (or, this morning, bike) past a cornfield, I wonder how many people we could be feeding if we weren't concentrating on ethanol and animal feed.

Go give Amy some love and treat yourelf to Ivanna Cone today!

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Thanks to yesterday's venture outside my natural habitat (I got groceries at the HyVee in the Stepfordurbia that is Williamsburg), I now have a terrible, terrible noise stuck inside my head.

If I were to make a mix list titled Songs That Have No Business Existing, "My Baby Takes the Morning Train" would be the intro, and maybe the outro as well. Bad enough that this pablum of a melody ever passed for popular music in the first place, but have you ever listened to the damn message? I remember when this stupid song came out ... even then, my barely pubescent self found it ridiculous to celebrate seeing your man off to work so he can buy you pretty baubles and take you dancing, while you just daydream about him all day. Snap out of the daydream, Sheena -- get a job and buy your own damn baubles!

This wasn't back in the 1950s, btw. This was the '80s! We were still hearing these messages when I was growing up, in the supposed heyday of feminism. (Today, of course, is so much better. Women of song lyrics no longer lie around waiting for their men to bring home the bacon ... their men are pimping them out as ho's and beeyotches ... )

Ugh! I can't get it out of my head! Damn you, HyVee and Sheena Easton! Damn your bland pop sensibilities!

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Another chapter by Miss Cellanea.

Photo of the day:


Which doesn't exactly make me want to join the fight for a women's running of the cows, to compete with the running of the bulls at Pamplona.

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Hooeee, was this a disturbing movie!

Good soundtrack, though.

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For the second time in a week, some cute boy has complimented and fussed over my badass bicycle. Now that is a benefit I hadn't considered when I bought it.

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The other day I spotted my first sweet corn stand of the season.

Then Miz Amy came by that evening with a lovely bowl of tomatoes from her garden ... cherries and "Fourth of July," which are simply perfect, sweet and meaty and just a bit bigger than a golfball.

Then I realized I must have tomatoes of my own ripening out by the fence. SO I went out and there they were. Seems like a week ago it was full of little yellow flowers with a little green ball here and there. Now the green balls are everywhere, several have started to color and a few are full-fledged red. I like to put them on the roof of my mouth, still warm from the sun, and squish them with my tongue. "Supersweet 100s" ... my all time favorite.

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Bad News: O Asian Garden has closed -- the whole thing, market, restaurant and all. My fault once again ... I haven't been there in ages, and hadn't even had a chance to try the sushi bar they put in over the winter.

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Also my fault: Thanks to my near-constant use, "ginormous" is now recognized by the fine folks at Merriam-Webster Dictionaries. What's next, fantabulous?

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Can anyone explain to me how one can accuse someone of rape, and be expected to testify without using the word "rape"? Anyone? Bueller?

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Back from the road.

Miz K and I took a kickass driving tour of Nebraska over a three-day weekend. We took Highway 2, to see all the little towns (how can there be so many "towns" with fewer than 5o residents?) and so we could stop frequently to pee and refuel (Diet Coke, Dr. Pepper and pie).

Carhenge is totally worth the six-hour drive. The near-dusk light was perfectly eerie. The view from my dashboard:


Krista showed me how to frame this shot:


From Alliance, we drove up to Chadron State Park to camp for the night, setting up in the dark. The piney scent was lullabying. In the middle of the night the pine mixed with the smell of what we thought was leftover campfire smoke; in the morning we learned there'd been grass fires up on the Pine Ridge reservation.

From Chadron, we drove to Smith Falls State Park and set up camp there for the second night. It's "Nebraska's newest state park" and doesn't have much in the way of amenities. But it's on the Niobrara River, which I had never seen. Sunday was freaking hot, so we didn't do much but sit with our asses in the river water, drinking High Life.

Krista at Smith Falls:


On Monday morning we set up an impromptu, short Niobrara tubing expedition, just a couple of hours before we had to head back to Lincoln. The river is so beautiful, and so utterly quiet. Stark bluffs topped by forest. It's like a whole 'nother Nebraska from the one I know. I was afraid to take my camera along on the river; then we got off and I complained that it would have been fine, nothing we brought got wet; then I dumped the cooler (which would've held the camera) into the river.

So no tubing photos. But here's a view from our campsite:


Mostly we spent our weekend just driving, snacking and talking ... perfect. K & I made good camping partners ... we don't mind getting dirty and smelly, we overpack for any situation, we can talk the virtues of roughing it even while listening to a "This American Life" podcast, scratching our mosquito bites and wishing we'd brought a pad to sleep on ...

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Road trip by the numbers:

Road trip iPod mixes: 2
Signs involving animals: ??? (Krista will have to fill this in, she was the official keeper of the animal signs list)
Tubing outfitters in well-worn Wranglers: 2
Tanks of gas: 3
Stops by state troopers: 1
Warnings instead of tickets: 1 (!!!!!)

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Here's a good road trip mix list:

Hit the Road and Go, Johnny Cash
The Truck Song, Lyle Lovett
Interstate Cannonball, Bastard Sons of Johnny Cash
Another Traveling Song, Bright Eyes
Passenger Side, Wilco
Dirt Road Blues, Bob Dylan
Lonely Road, Sarah Benck and the Robbers
Dashboard, Modest Mouse
Floorboard Blues, Cowboy Junkies
Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, Lucinda Williams
Ghost on the Highway, Exene Cervenka
Speeding, the Go-Go's
Devil in My Car, B-52s
King of the Road, REM
Let's Get Lost, Lloyd Cole
My Way Home, Citizen Cope

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