Bring out your dead!

Well, not really, but at least consider bringing back a dead blog.

When I started this blog, I didn't really think that others were blogging about Columbia or suburban life for that matter.  Boy was I wrong, within a couple of days I found a treasure trove of useful Columbia blogs.  I even stumbled upon the Embrace Hostility In Howard County blog.  I was excited and dejected when I found this blog, only because I was planning on blogging about the silly Choose Civility bumper magnets found in Howard County.  Then I found that the blog was closing shop and changing to Columbia Now.

I would like to plead and beg for the writer of the Embrace Hostility In Howard County blog to start it back up again.  We need some power, some force to fight all the "Choose Civility" individuals out there.  Bringing back this blog would really be the Civil thing to do.

If you choose not to bring it back, that's fine too.  I plan on incorporating some means to fight the power of Civility in future blog post.

Peace out Civility!!!

Public transportation, that doesn't exist in Maryland, does it?

A few months back (when gas was an arm and a leg) I was talking to a co-worker about my newly purchased hybrid vehicle.  The conversation turned to public transportation and he asked me if I would consider public transportation to get to/from work (I must warn you this co-worker lives in Baltimore and is not familiar with suburban life).  I'm not against it, I rode on public transportation when I worked in DC.  I told him I didn't think that there was any form of public transportation that I could take to work. He then introduced me to the public transportation tab on Google Maps.

What I found was somewhat surprising.  By car my commute is roughly 14 miles and will take, on good days, approximately 22 minutes.  Now, onto the surprising part, public transportation to and from my office does actually exist.  Further examination though shows me that public transportation is definitely not a word in Maryland's vocabulary.

Google Maps tells me that I would have to walk a short distance to a bus pickup location.  Then I would get on a bus that takes me into Baltimore.  Once in Baltimore, I would have to get on the Light Rail that would take me back towards BWI airport.  Once at the Light Rail station I would have to take another bus and then finally I would have to walk another short distance to get to work.  This whole public transportation ordeal would take approximately 2 hours.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for public transportation, but for suburbanites that only commute a short distance, the state of Maryland needs to do a better job.

What Does It All Mean

Some of you are probably asking yourself, "what the heck is lumburbia?"

Well, a good friend of mine and I were talking about Columbia one day and in order to jazz it up a bit we decided to call it "The Lumb."  So, since this site is about Suburban life in Columbia, I figured what better a name than lumburbia.

Enjoy!!

The storyboard

Deciding on topics to blog about is certainly a difficult thing to undertake.  In order to contribute to a blog on a daily basis, some type of content is needed for posting.  With this in mind, I've developed a storyboard for daily posts to this blog.  My current ideas for this are:

• Lumburbia photo of the week (either my own or from others, by way of Flickr)
  
• Suburban musings
• Breaking news
• Where is that in Columbia
• The great unknown, life outside of the burbs

These are my initial ideas and I'm sure I will have others as this blog evolves.  I would also like to delve into topics that everyone in the burbs must overcome, like the neighbors, parking situations, the slow death of the suburbs, and commuting.

Hopefully, I can get a better handle on categorizing and developing these other topics.

The Beginning

This is my second attempt at a blog and hopefully I've come up with a decent idea for this one. In my first attempt at blogdom, I noticed that no one visited my blog, not once.  My guess is that the blog was just a bad concept and that without word of mouth no one would visit the blog.

At first I wanted this blog to be about all things photography and my newfound adventures in photography.  I began reading other photography blogs and I learned that in order to do a photoblog you needed to take pictures, a lot of pictures.  Unfortunately, I don't have much time to take lots and lots of pictures.  Then I started thinking about the fact that I live in boring suburbia and I realized that there is not much of interest to photograph in suburbanville.

These ideas lead me to develop the concepts for this blog.  I can't say that suburbs are completely void of inspiration or interesting things, but I also can't be too far from the truth. So I started thinking maybe, just maybe I would be able find something exciting to blog about in suburbia.  Then I decided that I could incorporate my newfound hobby of photography into this blog.  This would hopefully allow me to get out more and photograph the community that I live in, as well as, examining photographs of what other people find in Columbia.  Please accept my sporadic postings as I am working on a story board of ideas for this blog.  As of now posts will be hit or miss and when I'm not too busy.  In all hopes, I'll be able to develop a decent story board for this site for all to enjoy.

Without further ado, welcome to suburban life and welcome to Columbia, Maryland.  For more information on Columbia please check out the following sites.

• Columbia Maryland Online
• Villages of Columbia