Right now my belly is pleading with me to go stretch out on the couch, to relieve the pressure that an overabundance of Morimoto’s sushi. Tonight I went, with my five favorite girls, to celebrate our friendship and the fact that we finally have Lara back after months of wedding planning and preparation.
But I wanted to finish the story of the bike I started yesterday. Mel asked in the comments what happened to the bike, and it’s a funny story. I rode it all throughout my senior year of college, back and forth to campus, and out on longer rides, along Mill Creek. When graduation rolled around, I decided it really needed to stay in Walla Walla, and so I posted an ad on the campus listserve, offering it for sale. I put the price at $15, which was what I had originally offered to pay at the thriftstore in the fall. I got a response from a hipster-y sophomore and we met in the parking lot behind the Harper-Joy Theater so she could check out the bike. Her mom was with her, for some reason I don’t totally understand, and they looked it over, and offered me $12. I took it, because hey, it was $3.50 more than I had paid for it seven months earlier. So I got a great bike, enjoyed it for a year, and made an almost 50% profit in May. Not bad at all.
That seems like bargaining down just for bargaining’s sake. How could they have really determined it was worth $12 and not $15? If you had advertised it for $20 they would have offered you $17. Guaranteed. Sounds like she needed her mom there for the serious negotiations.
I was waiting for you to say you counteroffered with $8.50.
I’m baaaaack! Thanks for the recognition as your first commenter, although I never would have known if I hadn’t just happened to check out the stats of where my five visitors per day have been coming from. Why is it so strange that a “religious” homeschooler might enjoy and want to support other people? I think maybe, not only was I your first commenter, but also that it may have been one of my very first comments! I was new to the whole blog thing and was really enjoying the way it opened up the world and the diversity of people to me. I live in a sea of ticky-tacky houses among people that are all the same and it’s been a great adventure to explore the diverse thoughts and lives of others through the blogosphere. Have you found what you were looking for?
Hey Kris,
Thanks for coming back. It isn’t strange, and I didn’t mean to impugn you or your blog. It isn’t strange at all that you were looking to explore the blogging world and wanted to support others.
I think I have found a lot of what I was looking for in the blogging world. It has given me the opportunity to meet a whole community of people here in Philly as well as across the country. I write just about every day, and the blog has really helped me tap into my creativity and desire to keep writing, so this is all good.
Thanks!
I don’t feel impugned; just a lingering curiousity. I was surprised by your comment that you found it “kind of strange” that someone with a blog like mine would leave a comment on a blog like yours. I guess I had just never thought about it like that and was curious why it might be considered strange. I love to leave comments on all kinds of different sites and this is a new thought to me.
My blog has only recently taken on an overtly religious tone… I think it’s a reflection of my own journey right now. I haven’t posted much on homeschooling at all in months, but intend to get back to it soon.
Thanks for your quick response to my previous comment! I came back so soon because I was unsure at first if my comment had even posted and was trying to find out.
I guess I found it strange because we live in a world these days where people become entrenched in their own viewpoints and don’t often want to see those that might differ from their own. And I assumed that because you blog about religion and it says on your sidebar that you write about homeschooling we would have different opinions. To me, those are indicators of a particular perspective on life and the world that is divergent from my own, and so I was surprised that you would read my blog or comment. But obviously, I was wrong, and shouldn’t have made any assumptions. Thanks for the helping me remember that.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Marissa,
I really appreciate you response to my initial question and I understand why you would make the assumptions you did.
When I first started blogging, I was quite taken aback by the number of blogs which were filled with nothing but anger and hostility toward those with divergent viewpoints.
I was especially saddened by the Christian bloggers who use their religion as a justification to be hateful. And not just expressed toward non-Christians. The vicious fighting among and between Christians is shameful. Christ was crystal clear about his commands to “love each other” and that others will recognize us as His followers by our love for one another. But, I digress..
I think there is a common misconception that people who homeschool do so to keep their children from being exposed to differing ideas, viewpoints and cultures. Possibly, many do. (I don’t spend my time with groups of people who homeschool and don’t really know for sure.) The friends I know who do homeschool try to give their children a broad education and expose them to a wide range of ideas.
The world is a big, interesting place and my dream is to one day have enough money to take my daughter and travel to the different places and cultures we’re studying about.
That’s unlikely to happen, so the internet is second-best. It’s such a rich resource of ideas and people and places and information.
As you can tell, I’m prone to wander and ramble…
I’m enjoying this respite from the cognitive shut-down of the last several weeks. Trying to enjoy it while it lasts..
I LOVE talking to people and exchanging thoughts… whether they match mine or not. And I also happen to think that my daughter is more likely to enjoy and seek out discourse with a wider range of people than if she went to a public school, where I believe what’s being taught is not individuality, but conformity.
My headless Lego Man painting is a commentary on conformity by the way… It also is in my sidebar.
I wonder what ever became of that bike, if it continued to pass from student to student? That is a funny thing.