Around the house this hot morning...

I meant to post this several days ago, but had it as a draft and just couldn't get time to post it.





If you look really hard you can see Smap's solar panels in the top middle of the roof in the shot below. I think I have mentioned before that Smap has our kitchen TV hooked up to it. One of these days hopefully we'll build an earthship somewhere (not in our present neighborhood)! One of our far out future goals...

Lucky for me, I work when I want to work this summer. I am trying to keep my work schedule to a minumum (15-20 hours) this summer because last summer the only thing I remember doing with all my time was working at the bike shop. Not going to happen this summer!

Smap is able to ride his bike to work now, which is great! He is going to try to ride one way a day saving him about 15 miles on his tank a day. He rode home yesterday and back to work again this morning. I am glad for him because he has been wanting to commute for so long. I wish I had a photo of him this morning leaving on his commuter....next time.

Ippon and I got in a walk at 7 this morning after Smap left. It was already getting super hot. It is funny how in the winter all I can think about is it being summer. When summer gets here, I am cussing the heat and humidity. I can't ride like I want to because I can't breath...blasted asthma! Ippon is in the house as I take some shots. He just got through walking and decided it was too hot already at 8 am to come back outside. He is just a little bit spoiled. I told him we would go to grandma's (my mom's house) to swim a little later today. He is excited about that.

Here is the really cool cactus that Skinny D gave us! He and Tim brought it over the other night. The thing is a monster! I need to think of a cool name to give him. We placed him on our front stoop for the ample amount of sunshine we get on this south facing side of our house. He'll be a lot of fun to watch as he continues to grow up and out!

Fun with colors... Smap and I have a colorful house....purple dining room, red pool room, yellow den and hallway (I'm going to carry the yellow into the kitchen when we get around to it). Here is one of our guest bedrooms...lime green and brown! LOVE IT... When I am not teaching, working at CBC, riding, reading, or whatever, I love doing my little interior design thing. After my junior year in college, I lived with my sister pretty much until I got married. My sister has always been in charge of decor and furniture/home accesory arrangement...she is really good at it, so I never minded letting her be creative. Well, now that I have my own home (with Smap of course), I finally get to dabble in interior design. Below and above is the most recent room Smap has painted. We're still waiting on our blinds, but otherwise it is a pretty cozy room. I like mixing antiques with contemporary items (shown above). And of course, I LOVE art. The picture below is fuzzy, but is a shot of Smap sitting in a classroom at Farragut High (he was in summer school one summer) with Ronald Reagan. Reagan was in town and had heard about some kids giving up their summer to get their last year of English out of the way. Yeah right. Smap and his friends were in there because they were grounded and the only way they could get out of the house during the summer was to attend summer school. Pretty funny that he got to sit next to ole' Reagan himself. I like the story that goes along with his photo.

This shot above is Smap's water catchment thingy majiggy... He has like 10 of these water barrels he got for a song, so he is going to start collecting lots-o-water...just another thing he is doing to make us more green.