It was the most gorgeous day yesterday.  And today?  It's supposed to be EVEN NICER!  So, as I've been itching to do since fall, I hopped on my bike and cruised through town.  Oh my gosh, it was lovely!  I happened upon some new graffiti on the trail, and it made me wonder if it was put there in the fall or winter or just recently, although it looks like someone tried to paint over it unsuccessfully a while ago, so my money is on fall.  Anywho:



"How many have to die?  STOP THIS WAR"

And about three feet down was this:



"Free Tibet."  Good advice.  I think I'll put it on my to-do list for the day.

And, close to my own heart, someone did this:



A cute little bird...oh, and my shadow.  You can't see it there, but the wind was doing tragic things to my WAY-TOO-LONG hair.  It was a wreck.

But I had this little gem to remind me that it didn't matter:





It says, "Whatever you are, it's beautiful."  I'm just glad they got the punctuation correct.

And then I headed past the old train depot,



And into the college multi-family homes area, the older section of town.  While I was riding I noticed this building that I've never seen before, despite living in this area my whole life:



It looks like an old school or a hospital, but it was completely empty with "No Trespassing" signs all over it.  How strange that it's not in use AND that I'd never seen it before...And here DeKalb is in an uproar about building a new school...they're not even using this one!

But I continued, on a beeline for where the Water Guy works.



I took no photos of his place of employment because I didn't want to seem like a creeper, but mostly because I already have some.  So you get this church steeple and this odd house:



I love that neon lime door.  How cute!

I'd never really been in this area, so I rode around for a while, taking some photos.  This house was all decked out for Spring, and I wondered if it always looked like that:



Cute. 

I was exhausted, though, and I had decided that I needed a hair cut.  Badly.  So, I rode home, past an inadvertently funny sign that's in a neighbor's lawn.  There's a back story here.  The county is discussing building a huge landfill somewhere in the vicinity.  So people are sort of in an uproar over it.  Signs have popped up all over in the lawns of people who oppose it, and this is what they say:



Yeah...it kind of makes me want to take a giant steaming dump in their front lawn.  Not gonna lie.  I snicker every time I see one.  And then I crave chicken and dumplings, because what's the opposite of a mega dump?  A dumpling!  I'll be here all week.

Onto the hair cut.  Here's my truly atrocious before photo:



I look wasted, and sort of stoned.  I was neither.

And after?



Much better!  I got so many compliments on the beard at church last night...it's a little overwhelming.  So...there.  Welcome to my day yesterday.  What you didn't see?  Three hours of Final Fantasy II, and me dancing along to Adam Lambert in my car.  That's about it.

I hope you take some time to get outside and enjoy the weather, if it is, indeed, nice today.  My old college friend Derek (derektb) is coming out here in the afternoon and we're going to drive to our old Alma Mater with the windows down and the music on and then meet some people for dinner later.  It'll be a hoot.

Out