Gadabout girl.

All the dire warnings about greenhouse gases have made me think a lot about what I can do to curb my car use. I don't expect I'll start taking the bus to work anytime soon -- that would require getting up a lot earlier -- but I can walk a lot more places, and it would help me keep my girlish figure. After all, that's one of the reasons I wanted to live downtown -- to be within walking distance of everything. So Saturday I decided I was going to walk on most of my errands. I took my regular walk around the neighborhood with Sharon, then walked to my massage appointment (a.k.a. walking machine tune-up), and then to the library, and then home. Besides getting exercise and feeling a tiny bit better about my pollution generation levels, I spotted some fun junk. For starters: the Wicked Witch of the East has crash-landed into a yard in my neighborhood. A pair of pink flamingos look on, unfazed. Call the Munchkins for a cleanup on Aisle 7!

Nothing says "the landlord's got a camera hidden in your bathroom" like an apartment building named "Spyglass." Yikes!

Apparently I'm not the only lonely heart in the Avenues. Or maybe this message isn't "I have no one to love" but rather "I love everything"? "I love this sidewalk and the people on it and the earthworms under it and the pigeons above it and..."

I've collected a lot of fun Dickensian names the last few years in my walks through the Salt Lake City Cemetery (the Umpleby family, Fairy Gentry, and Virgil Groo, for starters), but Saturday was the first day I'd noticed this one. Sharon has a friend named Linwood, so we decided a Linwood is a country Lin and a Linville is a city Lin.

My former Young Women's leader, Ruth Menlove, sculpted this bronze a few years ago for the Peter Prier violin-making school in Salt Lake. I've driven by it a billion times in the years I've lived in Salt Lake and each time I've thought "gotta get out and see Ruth's statue up close...but some other day." Turns out "some other day" was Saturday, as I walked to the library. Great job, Ruthie!

Digression: Everyone tries to deny it when I speak of my crazy-huge head. Here's Ruth's caricature of the 14-year-old me in a sea of girls' camp comrades. Mooniest face in the bunch -- the artist lieth not. The one behind me with the halo is Ruth, of course.

This synagogue, built in 1903, is now a Greek Orthodox church. I loved the Hebrew script below the Orthodox onion domes and Islamic arches. Made me think....in this age of interfaith marriages they should have religion malls -- all your religion needs in one stop, then meet up in the food court after services for Starbucks.

There are six separate apartment units pictured in this photo. Apparently the residents of #1, #7, #9, and #11 were involved in some sort of secret love rectangle and didn't want #3 and #5 in on it. Or maybe that's a fire escape and you get a special discount on your rent if you choose one of the firetrap apartments with no access to the staircase.

This church has a new clever tagline each week. I want to go in and ask them if they have some wisenheimer pastor who comes up with them or if they consult a fat book of cheesy religious jokes. My favorite in recent memory was "If Jesus is your co-pilot, switch places."

This little Christmas mouse was sitting on the sidewalk in front of a house that was still fully decked out for the holidays. I can only assume that he had gorged himself on one fruitcake too many and was heading off in search of a nice Easter salad.





To be continued....