As mentioned before, to lose weight, I’ve been riding my bike. The whole family finally got bikes, so now we can ride together. The only problem is, things keep going wrong with the bikes! Personally, I don’t understand why on earth a bike has to have 18 or more gears. The one I have is a ten speed, and it still likes to get its gears gummed up. Greg’s bike has a zillion gears that are constantly having problems. It makes me wish we had just gotten cheap beach cruisers instead.

The thing about a beach cruiser is that it’s not complicated. You don’t have endless gear and brake problem. They look cool too. I like the whitewall tires and cool colors that you can get them in. As long as you don’t have major hills you are going up, a beach cruiser will probably work for you. Assuming that you’re riding just to do errands and tool around a bit, anyway. No one is going to mistake you for Lance Armstrong or anything.

These are the sweet kind of bikes you can put decals and baskets on. They’re the type of bikes that don’t hurt your butt. And despite the name, you don’t have to live near the beach. I so want one of these!

Right now, you can use this coupon code (5OFFXPP) and get five bucks off an already inexpensive bike. It’s good for the next two months. Shipping is affordable too, and people who live in Cali get it shipped for only twenty dollars–imagine that!

I’d like to have one shipped to Texas. Light blue, please.

When I bought my 1920’s house, I was just delighted to see the wood floors. Some rooms had some old nasty carpet in them, and I just couldn’t wait to tear it up and get to those gorgeous wood floors. Boy was I mistaken. I went to one room, tore up the carpet, and what awaited me was a big sheet of vinyl. I pulled that up, and found some vintage linoleum that almost certainly has asbestos in the sticky tar-like adhesive that adheres it to the floor. I believe it was about at that point that I started to cry. Seriously.

I tried everything to get that stuff off of the floor. My husband and I spent an entire school holiday working on it. Finally, we gave up and covered it up with carpet.

I still have two more rooms that have the same problem. This time, I’m not wasting my time with my pitifully amateurish efforts. I’m going to call a company like Sacramento flooring, who has some expertise, to come in and do it for me. You can just look at the photos on their site and tell that they have a much better concept of what they’re doing than I do. I was all for doing it myself, but I think for this project, I’ll be more than happy to hand over the reins.

And I’m sure I’ll have some beautiful floors to show for it.