These photos were all taken along the bike path I use to ride home from work.  They weren't all taken on the same day.

Canada geese on the Olentangy River

I have always loved that circle of trees.  I call them the Sisters.

Looking north up the Olentangy River at Northmoor Park

Looking south from the same spot

Flowering crabapple in Northmoor Park - You can see the bike path along the left and the river is just out of sight to the right.  The Sisters are also in the background to the right.

My one-track mind:  I broke down and bought a pair of cycling shoes.  I was whining to a guy at work about how my foot went numb when I was riding my bike and he said I was wearing the wrong kind of shoe.  I wore my shoes for the first time today and, I swear, there's magic in them!  My legs felt like they belonged to someone else - someone with actual leg muscles!  They powered me down the wind tunnel known as Indianola Avenue, they shoved me up the nasty hill by Dairy Queen, and they didn't quiver when I dismounted!  There wasn't one part of the ride this morning that made me wish I'd get hit by a bus so I could get a ride and not have to keep riding.  I even arrived at work 10 minutes earlier than usual today!  I think the best part about my magic shoes is that they were on sale!  Shweet!

For Earth Day:  My company always celebrates Earth Day and, I'm not sure why, it's scheduled for this Thursday.  I'm hoping to score some baby trees and some seeds.  There's also a celebration in a local park (Goodale, for you local peoples) and Em and I are going to stop by and, hopefully, get more life-greening stuffs!

At home, I'm still working on clearing away last year's leaves and dead things so there won't be a whole lot of gardening going on this weekend.  Oh!  But Alison, my little hippy veg-head, wants to grow some tomatoes.  I saved the plastic buckets that kitty litter comes in and we'll be planting tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers in them!

I hope everybody has a fabulous Earth Day and that you do whatever it is that makes your heart SINGGGGGG!!!!!!!

It changes often but here's the current soundtrack to my life ...

I know it's corny and sentimental but I am so in love with everything right now!

Some people, who I won't name [Alysia], seem to not like my life-song, so here's another:

Of course, she does!

 Earth's Hum Sounds More Mysterious Than Ever

Charles Q. Choi
Special to LiveScience
LiveScience.comWed Apr 16, 9:11 AM ET

Earth gives off a relentless hum of countless notes completely imperceptible to the human ear, like a giant, exceptionally quiet symphony, but the origin of this sound remains a mystery.

Now unexpected powerful tunes have been discovered in this hum. These new findings could shed light on the source of this enigma.

The planet emanates a constant rumble far below the limits of human hearing, even when the ground isn't shaking from an earthquake. (It does not cause the ringing in the ear linked with tinnitus.) This sound, first discovered a decade ago, is one that only scientific instruments - seismometers - can detect. Researchers call it Earth's hum.

Investigators suspect this murmur could originate from the churning ocean, or perhaps the roiling atmosphere. To find out more, scientists analyzed readings from an exceptionally quiet Earth-listening research station at the Black Forest Observatory in Germany, with supporting data from Japan and China.

Different types

In the past, the oscillations that researchers found made up this hum were "spheroidal" - they basically involved patches of rock moving up and down, albeit near undetectably.

Now oscillations have been discovered making up the hum that, oddly, are shaped roughly like rings. Imagine, if you will, rumbles that twist in circles in rock across the upper echelons of the planet, almost like dozens of lazy hurricanes.

Scientists had actually expected to find these kinds of oscillations, but these new ring-like waves are surprisingly about as powerful as the spheroidal ones are. The expectation was they would be relatively insignificant.

New thinking

This discovery should force researchers to significantly rethink what causes Earth's hum. While the spheroidal oscillations might be caused by forces squeezing down on the planet - say, pressure from ocean or atmospheric waves - the twisting ring-like phenomena might be caused by forces shearing across the world's surface, from the oceans, atmosphere or possibly even the sun.

Future investigations of this part of the hum will prove challenging, as "this is a very small signal that is hard to measure, and the excitation is probably due to multiple interactions in a complex system," said researcher Rudolf Widmer-Schnidrig, a geoscientist at the University of Stuttgart, Germany.

Still, a better understanding of this sound will shed light on how the land, sea and air all interact, he added.

Researcher Dieter Kurrle and Widmer-Schnidrig detailed their findings March 20 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

See Earth's Hum
101 Amazing Earth Facts Top 10 Unexplained Phenomena Original Story: Earth's Hum Sounds More Mysterious Than Ever

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So yesterday I participated in my first ever bicycling event, Woodstock 2008!  We rode 33 miles and it's the farthest I've ever ridden at one time.  The temperature high was in the low 50s and it was windy as all get-out!  Despite the wind, which Marc insisted on calling a "pixie wind" because it's capricious, we averaged about 10.5 miles per hour and it took us about 3 1/2 hours to complete.  Toward the end, I wasn't sure I would be able to finish - being outside when it's windy is tiring enough but riding into a brisk headwind is exhausting! 

Marc laughed because, as a woman passed us (one of MANY people passing us!), she commented on the wind and I told her it was sucking away my will to live (I'm a wee bit melodramatic).  About 50 feet later, we arrived at the end of our ride.  Heh ...  His GPS unit calculated that we'd spent about 1800 calories, so he treated me to Cold Stone (oatmeal cookie ice cream with Heath bar is the BEST!) and we came home and took a long nap.

It was a beautiful ride, though, through mostly flat farmland.  In about two weeks, it will be breathtaking.  Already, we were seeing signs of new life.  The fields were so lush with spring grass that I wanted to roll in them.  Marc said he didn't think the farmers would appreciate my crop circles.  :(  I only took a couple of pictures; I wanted to take more but, each time we stopped, we got that much colder.

Next organized ride is in a couple of weeks.  Fifty miles.  This time I'm praying to the wind AND rain gods to give us a break!  Pixie wind, my Aunt Fannie ...

Photos: