It needs a name...Carla? La Tigra? I'll work on it.

msrp: $1069.
Actual Cost: 80 Hours of surprisingly therapeutic landscaping

First and foremost, behold!  The Cannondale Caad 8 6 Tiagra, a very decent road bike and now the most valuable thing that I own, having beaten out my MacBook.

Today I was listening to Sufjan Stevens and pondering about weeding as a sort of existential allegory for life.  By any measure, weeding is an utterly futile exercise.  Nearly before you're done weeding, new weeds have already begun to grow.  This can become a bit daunting, but if everybody weeds just a bit every day, then there would be no weeds in the world.  Then of course you have to consider the moral relativity of weeding, since a weed is just a plant you don't happen to want where it's growing.  Some weeds are the offspring of plants from just a dozen yards away, where they were planted and where they are wanted and where other plants were being removed as weeds.  Even if you hate them, you do have to appreciate the resilience and determination.  I found a little plant that was growing through a stick and rather successfully splitting it in two.

Banana Muffins,  a delicious last resort

One of the most interesting things I found as I was sitting out in the parking lot waiting for Dave, the bikeshop owner who i've been doing all this for, that after several hours of weeding today, when I saw a couple weeds growing up through the cement I had this very innate compulsion to pull them out.

So i'm pretty stoked about the new bike and I can't wait to take it out.  I just realized, to my chagrin, that I only have one bike lock, so it looks like my other bike will be living on the balcony for a while.

So life is great.  I finally went grocery shopping.  You know it's been too long when your only option for breakfast food is banana muffins with an egg borrowed from your roommate.