Monkey blogging

Apparently I am to write a post on behalf of Hector Monkey.

This is a picture of Hector Monkey.



He wanted to upload a picture of his butt, as he is inordinately proud of it, but I vetoed that idea.

Okay, okay. Here is a picture of Hector's butt.



He would like to express that he is against global warming and he is very worried about the polar bears. He saw a picture of a polar bear stuck on a piece of ice with no place to go. We brought home a plastic (resin?) polar bear for the front porch recently. You can help the polar bears at the World Wildlife Fund.

New Year's resolutions 2008

Last year I made nine resolutions and did reasonably well in terms of achieving many of them. This year I'm going to have five resolutions.

1. Read 45 books or more this year, 15 or more of which are on the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list. Last night I was less than 20 pages from the end of the book I was reading before we went to Dan and Douglas's New Year's Eve party, so I finished that this morning, and I've started three or four other books. Last year I read 41 books, so I think this is achievable.

2. Use up another three bottles of perfume. Last year I did this by mid-December, and I'm hopng to do so again this year.

3. Save money toward the Smart car and our wedding. I'm listing this even though the Smart car should arrive by March and our wedding is in May.

4. Increase my daily pushups and situps to 50 each. My coach suggested doing pushups and situps to increase my strength for skating, and I'm up to 32 of each per night.

5. Go out for lunch only once per week at work. I'll keep track of this one again and see if I can do better this year.

Weekend update from last weekend

Lots of fun things were going on in town last weekend. On Saturday afternoon, we went to the Indianapolis Auto Show at the Convention Center downtown. It seemed small to me in comparison to Chicago's, but I expected that.

VW had a nice area with two New Beetles (a triple-cream 'vert and a Sunflower Yellow hardtop), assorted Rabbits and Golfs, and a Jetta sporting VW statistics all over (VW owners are 29% more likely to recycle, 70% more likely to maintain their own Web site, and so on). I asked the guy how much they'd pay me to drive around with statistics all over Phoebe, but he said they'd probably just give me the stickers.

We sat in numerous cars, including a Toyota FJ Cruiser, a Honda Element, and a Dodge Magnum. The Smart Car was in the middle of the Mercedes section, and t were so many people crowded around it that it was difficult to take a picture. I talked to the two salesguys there, and they put me on some sort of VIP list to go to the dealership and take a test drive. They also told me that I'm in the first wave of cars to come in based on my reservation date. Yikes.

At the Mini display, we sat in the new Mini Cooper Clubman. It's like a Mini Cooper with extra room at the back, kind of like a station wagon; it's nine inches longer than the Cooper. Steph fell in love with it and wants one. I wonder if we could fit both of them in the garage at the same time.

Saturday night we finally got to see the Naptown Roller Girls roller derby team skate a bout against the Kalamazoo Kamikaze. It was fantastic -- not something I want to do, as I sustain enough injuries on my own, but I appreciate the skill involved. Their next home bout is Feb. 9.