Shoddy planning

We received a notice at our house the other day informing us about a bike race that will be taking place next month. The second leg of this three stage bike race will travel through the streets of Reading on a Thursday. The route for the racers starts downtown, heads up Centre Ave to Richmond St. to 6th St. (right past our house) to Spring St. to 8th St. to downtown again (I can't remember it exactly). Anyway, this is going to cause more problems than the mayor will admit to. First, it's on a Thursday, with the final leg finishing downtown around 5 p.m. This is right around the time that employees downtown, like my mother, will be "attempting" to leave work, only they'll most likely be delayed for a while. Secondly, they want everyone to clear their streets of cars. Parking will be available at the south end of the Reading Station lot, near Oley St. Yet, they didn't mention how anyone who parked there was supposed to get home. Must everyone walk home? Will there be some kind of shuttle service? Either way, we the residents will have to drive or be driven across the race route to even get to the parking lot, let alone get home from it. They'll have fire officials and other volunteers stationed at key intersections to allow traffic through when necessary. I wrote and sent a letter to our honorable Tom McMahon outlining all of these points and why I was upset about them. Will I get a response? Probably not, even though I'd like to hope for one. Now, I'm all in support of bringing events like these to the city as a way to pull people in and generate revenue for city businesses, and to bring prestige to our city. This, however, was poorly planned.

X3

I understand Bob has seen this already but he has yet to post his review, so I'm going to get on the ball. I had my doubts about this movie pre-viewing. With a new director, I wasn't sure how much in the direction of Fantastic Four this would lean. Add to that Kelsey Grammer. I think we all had trouble picturing Frasier Crane playing Hank McCoy, aka Beast. And how well would they be able to show the destructive power of the Phoenix? Well, after seeing it, my doubts were laid to rest. Even though the atmosphere at first didn't seem as dark as the first 2 movies, the subject matter took the mood there. Magneto whipping his "brotherhood" into a frenzy over the supposed "mutant cure". Some of the main characters still reeling from the death of Jean Grey (little did they know that she was coming back with a vengeance). Next was Beast. The next action star. The make-up looked almost real, and Grammer actually did sound like the book-quoting intellectual who jumps around like an acrobat and has blue fur. The special effects showing the destruction caused by the Phoenix force were killer. I just wonder if the full force was released, what the hell would that look like?! But no Nightcrawler? What gives? Aside from that, I thought it was really good. I enjoyed it. We got to see some new (to the movie, but not to the comics) characters, like Multiple Man and Juggernaut. I don't think there are plans to do a fourth movie, which is a shame. There's still so much they could do with this "franchise" to make up for Daredevil and for casting Nicholas Cage as Ghost Rider.

I finally set my sights on this view of 13th street as you're travelling east on rt. 12. I had to pull off the highway and onto the gravel, then stand on the overpass to get the shot (I kept waiting for a cop to come along and ask me just what I thought I was doing). I've passed by here many times, and always thought this would make a good shot. I hope to stop again in the fall, when you can see more leaves but less buildings.

Overseas stalker

Okay, so I answered a personal ad on Yahoo for this lady over here, one which read that she was 28 and lived in Philly. When she responded to me, she told me she was really from Siberia, in some small town named Yuzhnyy. Now, after the initial falsity, I figured, well this could be fun and interesting, talking to someone from a foreign country. And so it was...for the first week or so. This was before she told me she had feelings for me. Before she called me her soul-mate. Before she told me she loved me. Before she said she wanted our oceans to collide and create a tidal wave of love, or something to that effect. Now, don't get me wrong...she's very attractive, and under other circumstances, I would like to date her. Yet, it almost smells of a scheme. Yes, a scheme, to get out of Russia and into the U.S. Even if she is sincere about her own feelings, I'm not buying it. She wants personal information and names of airports near me. Maybe she's a terrorist? Har, no, I highly doubt that. But she is knitting me a sweater with my name on it. Go figure. She's had erotic dreams about me (yet the English seemed too good to be her broken typing of the language, so my guess is, they aren't actually her words). Anyway, at first I felt a little freaked out. Now, I'm just wondering how long she'll keep writing to me without getting a response and finally ask me why I don't write back. Thank you, Yahoo Personals, for bringing this drama into my life. You just felt like my life wasn't interesting enough, so you had to throw this my way. Sheesh.