Jennifer's 365 Project

I headed over to Rosa Park Circle after work to enjoy the weather and wait for my ride. Just a few minutes after sitting down a nice older gentleman came over, chatted me up a bit, then sat down to play some music on the harmonica.

The sky over Grand Rapids about 20 minutes before some heavy rain and fierce thunderstorms rolled in.

Not unlike Saturday, Sunday was relatively unstructured. So we decided to do a bunch of random stuff, starting with heading over to the Fulton Street Artisan Market. We strolled around a bit in the heat, looking at all of the random arts and crafts.
After we headed over to Brick Road Pizza for a delicious meal. I'm not a huge veggie person, but their veggie burger is fantastic. I need to seriously look into making my own. There's corn in there, and I think rice or oats. I dont know what it is, but it is super tasty.

After that we ran some various errands then hung out indoors for a bit to cool down.
In the evening I played a little bit more with Google+. It's an interesting concept, not that unlike Facebook, but with a cleaner layout and a more intuitive UI for placing people in groups as opposed to how Facebook handles it, which is with their cumbersome lists. I actually like it quite a bit. Maybe that's because I'm adding people to Google+ that I already have on Facebook and Twitter (though there is some overlap).

Anyway, I'm not a huge video chat person. Heck, the Evo Shift not having a front facing camera was a plus. So when we picked up a webcam today so that Chris and I could test Google Hangout (video chat) I wasn't excited.

But, it's much cooler than I thought it would be. As you can see, we called Comfort (and Obi Wan, The Uniques's kitty, joined us as well) to see how it worked.

You can have a sidebar of text chat, plus you can watch YouTube together. All you need is one person in the hangout to go to YouTube (button at the bottom of the screen), pick a video, and the option for everyone else in the hangout to switch to YouTube comes up. Click than that BAM, you're all watching the same video at the same time. Plus, everyone can control the video, so if you need to pause but you didn't start the video, no problem. It also mutes everyone's microphones by default and you have to push a button to talk (or pause the video) - that way you dont accidentally talk over the video.

Anyway, I've been having fun messing around with Google+ all weekend. If you're on there (or are interested in an invite), look me up. You can find me on Google+ here.

Today ended up more productive than I thought it would be. It started early with getting some normal "you're getting older" blood work done and a credit union pit stop.

We then headed out to a mini comic-con at Grand Rapids Public Library. As you can see, mini is the correct word.
Then we headed out to Chris's work, I dropped him off, got some work done on the car, then picked him up for lunch at Richmond Park.

I'd only really been in the area by the park a few times when looking for a house years ago, so it was nice to get a better look at the park (which apparently has a pool/splash park). It's larger than I remembered, and there were far less ducks swamping park-goers than I last saw.

On my way to meet Lori for lunch today I noticed rows of arrows (or are those houses?) crisscrossing Rosa Park Circle. Not sure what they're for, but they're interesting looking.

Nice weather, clear skies, wooded stroll. I'd say nice way to spend the evening.

I'm afraid of the dentist (like a lot of people are) so I spent the last few days acting hysterical, insisting that Chris reassure me everything will be ok.

And it was. No cavities, no work that needed to be done. Just the wisdom teeth that are there and recommended to be removed but aren't really causing a problem at the moment.

Hooray for no cavities!

Today was almost like the long weekend, except instead of having hours back to back for reading I just had one-my lunch break.

I need to spend more weekends and weeknights just reading. I also need to find more engrossing books...

There's a craft/art fair in downtown Grandville in conjunction with a carinval for the 4th of July. So after a late breakfast we headed out to see the festivities.
We timed managed to time it where we were walking down the road just after the parade, a glittering float in the distance followed by police escort, marking the end of the parade.
The craft/art fair section was fine enough and about what you'd expect. There were plenty of random food booths tossed between the craft tables, which seemed like odd placement. We also stumbled across chainsaw carving and plenty of carnival food.

All in all it reminded me a bit like the Oak Park 4th of July celebrations, although without the awesome train structure for kids and with a much less lively band playing.

This afternoon Leki was determined to show me some of his tips for hanging out and enjoying an unstructured day. Here's just one of various poses and activities he insisted on. Other tips for relaxing included napping, purring, snuggling, and bird-watching.

With a weekday off and a 4-day weekend ahead, today quickly turned into a day of errands.I finally got spare keys made (what a pain to have to have programmed car keys), a doctor appointment down, and grocery shopping.

Plus, thanks to the awesome xda forums, I rooted the EVO Shift this morning and was able to remove those pesky pre-loaded apps (I'm looking at you NASCAR and NFL apps).