Not the Brightest Thing to Do....

The governor of New Jersey is in the trauma ICU of a hospital today following a rather nasty car accident. The SUV he was riding in yesterday (driven by a state trooper) was struck by a white pick-up truck on the Garden State Parkway and ended up slamming into a guard rail. The white truck swerved into them after it swerved to avoid a red truck which had suddenly entered the roadway from the shoulder. The red vehicle left the scene without stopping.

Ooopsie. *That* will be at least a misdemeanor and possibly a felony. Fleeing the scene of an accident is bad. Very bad.

(Update 4/15/2007: The driver was found by law enforcement and interviewed. He left the scene because he did not think his vehicle was involved in the accident. Apparently the police agree and the driver will not be charged. That's quite a change in attitude since the day of the accident.)

It hasn't been mentioned whether the governor was wearing his seatbelt or not, but based on the severity of his injuries and looking at photos of the damage to the vehicle, I'm pretty sure he wasn't wearing it. He's got an open fracture of one femur (broken in two places and now pinned together), a fractured sternum and a total of twelve broken ribs, six on each side. I'd bet that he might have had a collapsed lung as a result. The good news is that he didn't suffer a head injury and no brain damage. Right now he's on a ventilator, however, and the docs say it'll be at least a few weeks before he can run the state again.

Dinner plans
Since I have managed to not eat as well as I'd like for the past few weeks, I am going back to planning my meals day by day. This makes shopping much more efficient and effective, not to mention reduces food (and money) wastage. Tonight I'm going to have a hummus-veggie wrap, just as soon as I go make the hummus. Tomorrow I'll make some quinoa with black beans and corn. Later in the week I'll have vegan sweet potato enchiladas.

Speaking of vegan, just for giggles and as an experiment to see how difficult it will be, I'm going vegan for the rest of April. I can do anything for two weeks. If it goes ok and I like how I feel, I'll keep going until at least the end of May.

Although it seems like it would be limiting to give up all animal products, I disagree. There are all sorts of things I can eat. In my pantry, I have three different varieties of dried beans, plus millet, amaranth, barley, rice and wheat berries. I also have whole wheat pasta, marinara sauce, canned tomatoes (whole and diced) and beans (kidney and great northern), seaweed (nori and kombu), and crushed pineapple. In the freezer I have pecans, walnuts, spinach, collard greens, peas and corn. Other than possibly needing a bit of fresh fruit and leafy veggies, I ought to be in pretty good shape to just eat my way through the groceries I already have, which ought to take a couple of weeks.

More on reasons why to go vegan, or at least vegetarian, later.

Knitting Progress
I have started the border of the Kiri Shawl. Since the weather is expected to be cold and rainy, at least for tomorrow, I should be able to get a good bit of knitting accomplished and might, barring any disasters or major errors, even finish the shawl. Tomorrow morning, I figure I'll make the usual run to Wal-Mart, library and Lowe's, then fire up iTunes and listen to podcasts while I knit away the day. If I have time, I need to darn two socks as well. I still have no idea what I'll knit next although I'd like to crank out a Dulaan Project hat on Sunday.

Bad Weather
Today the world was cold and wet. Not at all pleasant. It's going to continue that way tomorrow as well, which rather precludes working in the yard. I really need to mow, but that won't happen until at least Sunday afternoon and possibly not until Monday. I had hopes of planting some of the plants I bought yesterday, but I don't think that will happen. I did work on developing some sort of plan as to where to put the plants though, so that's good. I think I will buy the holly plants to go around the deck. I'm debating buying a discounted Japanese maple too, but I'm not quite sure where I'd put it.

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