Another gem from the Best of Craigslist:

[apologies for the all caps]

I HAVE A 1995 MO' VAN THAT GOT TRANSFORMED INTO THIS CATBUS. I BROUGHT IT TO A SHOPS AND I WAS LIKE HEY, CAN YOU TURN THIS INTO A CATBUS? SO THEY DID. THEN THAT DAY I DROVE IT HOME. THE CAT BUS ONLY HAS 50K, WHICH ARE ALL HIGHWAY MILES AS I DROVE IT TO WORK 2 DAYS A WEEK AND THAT WAS IT. IT'S IN REALLY GOOD SHAPE AND ALL THE FUR IS STILL ALL THERE. THE STEERING WHEEL HAS A CAT ON IT. IM ONLY ASKING 2900 FOR THE CATBUS BECAUSE ITS REALLY FURRY AND SOMETIMES PEOPLE GET SICK ON IT.

I almost fell out of my chair laughing at this one.

What I really want to know is… what is a "Mo' van"?

After spending most of my Saturday morning/afternoon scrubbing the bathroom (since my male roommates seem to be allergic to Comet and scrub brushes… "Comet, it makes your mouth turn green… Comet, it tastes like Listerine…"), I headed over to the Tidal Basin with my roommate Eileen to participate in the Crohn's & Colitis Foundation of America Take Steps walk. The theme of the walk was "Make Noise!" — to not only help raise funds for research, but raise awareness for these little-known diseases.

Doing the walk was pretty inspiring. There were a ton of participants… basically every age, gender, species (yes, dogs were included) walked the two miles around the Basin. What was so inspiring was seeing all the family members and friends of those who were supporting a family member or friend with Crohn's/colitis. Most had formed teams, and had names such as "Stolen Colon," "The Crohn Rangers," "No Guts, but all the Glory," etc.

One of the more memorable teams was "Walt's Rockets." Their leader is Walt, who is seven years old and has Crohn's. Walt was one of the honored heroes at the walk — his team had 38 people walking, and so far they've raised $2,481. He said he picked rockets as his team symbol because rockets are fast, and he wants to find a cure fast. (Walt's team last year was "Walt's Cheetahs.")

I don't blame Walt for wanting to find a cure quickly. Crohn's is a devastating disease, and having seen the effects it's had on my own sister, I would do anything to get rid of it. To see Walt, who is only seven (and obviously has had Crohn's for over a year) bear this burden really struck a chord. It's not fair to him. There's no reason why he should have to deal with the countless blood tests, trips to the doctor, and explaining to his friends why he has to use the bathroom frequently. But unfortunately, it's a reality for him and 1.4 million other people.

Crohn's isn't easy to explain to people, and it's certainly not for the squeamish when divulging its details. For that reason, I respected my sister's wishes and kept my sister's condition quiet throughout grade school. She didn't want everyone to know WHY her face was all puffy from the super high doses of prednisone, why she had to miss summer camp because she was in the hospital… I felt it was the least I could do. Not to say that I was the best sister in the world and understood why she could be happy one day and so horrifically cranky the next… because I really didn't get it. Despite the change in diet and the seemingly thousands of pills she had to take every day, life was a rollercoaster of emotions and frustration for all of us.

Looking back, I feel really selfish. I can't sufficiently say I understand what people with Crohn's are going through, because I don't. I'm fortunate enough to not have this disease, and I will never know what it's like. But I feel like could have been more supportive in those early years. If there's one thing I truly regret, it's not being there for her enough (or, in some cases, leaving her alone) for the times when she needed it the most.

And for kids like Walt, I sure hope his friends are mature enough to realize that he needs their support, even if it's just acknowledging that even though he's a little different from them on the inside, he's still a great person on the outside.

That being said… Walt's team is looking to raise $3,000, and they're still a little over $500 short of their goal. It's not too late to donate, so please consider doing so.

After months of ignoring the "A new version of WordPress is available! Please update now" message on my dashboard, I finally took the time to download and install the update to v2.5.1. Bad idea. Not only did I immediately get a nasty undefined function call (remedied with a simple require statement), but the new version is really slow. Really, really slow. Like drunken turtle slow. I tried posting an entry, only to have the auto-save draft feature (which for some reason kept saving every 3 seconds instead of every minute or so) prevent me from publishing the post. After several unsuccessful attempts and three browser crashes, I said "F— it," and went in and uninstalled 2.5.1 and put 2.3.2 back in.

So, for the 0.00072 readers on here, just an FYI that all my smilies are messed up as I forgot to back up my functions.php file, which had all the shortcuts that called the smiley images. Will fix that eventually, once I edit the quicktags. (Also forgot to back that file up. Shoot.)

I need a new domain name. Rainypony is… well, uh, 8-year-old-girlish. When I registered the name during my senior year in college, it was one of those moments of desperation. I needed a "real" website for my resume, and I needed a domain name that was easy to remember. After many many many tries (including kendallchurch.com, kchurch.com, etc. — boring but simple, plus people never spell my name right), I chose rainypony in honor of Rainy, my first horse. She was a big, white draft cross that resembled an overgrown pony. There ya go.

I also learned an important lesson 8 years ago when I chose the name for the Bike Across America website - apparently (at least on Angelfire) capitalization does matter. bikeXusa != bikexusa.

Anyway, now that I've actually had some time to think about it, I need something a little more mature. I headed over to nameboy.com for some inspiration. Unfortunately, I didn't get far, as suggestions like these really don't do me any good:

• thekchurchster
• kchurchaccelerator

Well, that doesn't work — people don't know how to spell accelerator.

I was really hoping that kcdc.com (easy and clever, huh?) would be free, but it's not. Same goes for kcindc.com.

Looking over at my [small] blogroll, it seems that pretty much everyone has a clever, fun, non-humiliating name. Except me! Where are my creative genes when I need them?!

No, not the computer virus or the narsty Mountain Dew. I'm talking about the air quality index, thanks in part to the Hades-caliber heat we've had over the past two days.

Air Quality indexes basically fall into 7 different levels, much like the absurd minorly informative Homeland Security Threat Level system. Good (0-50) is green, moderate (51-100) is yellow, not-so-great/"Unhealthy for sensitive groups" (101-150) is orange, and so on until we've reached maroon, a.k.a. "there's been a volcanic eruption, and if you haven't died from that, you'll probably get emphysema in 10 minutes and die in another 20" (301-500).

This week is my unofficial three year anniversary of living in the D.C. area, and probably my first experience of a "Code Red" day. I knew that the combination of heat, humidity, and pollution was probably going to up the index but didn't realize that it was that bad until I saw an Arlington ART bus pass by with "Free Rides Today" flashing. That being said — it's nice to know proactive steps are being taken when the air is this unhealthy. Not only is it good for those who would otherwise be walking and breathing in tainted air, but it also cuts down on emissions. Well, theoretically.

That being said… my goal this summer is to start biking to work again. I had a pretty good gig going when I first moved down to DC - I was living in Fairfax, so I would bike to work in Arlington, bike home, then drive to the barn to ride. Then, when I moved to Arlington and started working in the city, I'd ride to work, back home, then drive to the barn. Pattern that works with biking to work: home -> work -> home -> barn. Pattern that doesn't: home -> work -> barn -> home, which is what I doing when I went to the barn every day. Now that I'm horseless and only have to ride a few times a week, it frees up three days for me to bike to work.

Now that it's June, and I have no more excuses to avoid bike commuting, I need to get my ass in gear. I think I've found a route, it's only about 9 or 10 miles door to door. Stay tuned for adventures in bike commuting. One less car! (Three times a week.)