room for small luxury
Fog never really lifted today. Dissipated a bit, but it only served to hang the misty drifts near the horizon rather than the head-level of 8am. Sharaun’s still taking me to work. The GMC hasn’t come back from the shop. The accident was a month ago come Friday. A month.
I’ve gotten used to being down a vehicle, it has its upside. Sharaun can park in the center of our tiny garage affording passengers on each side a wide enough berth to enter and exit the vehicle comfortably. What’s more, I’ve been able to reclaim some of the space with one of those pop-up camp chairs. Turned it into my own little smoking lounge. Sit out there in the cold and read my book and smoke my pipe and listen to music. No room for that sort of small luxury when there’s two cars shoehorned between the shelves of old boxes and air compressor and bicycles hanging from rafters.
I suppose I could use this as a sort of period of adjustment.
When the second child comes I’ll be hard pressed not to forfeit the new car to Sharaun and our progeny. It’s larger and it’s safer. I should be steeling myself for that day during this period of absence. Too bad you can’t get an iPod integrated into her Saturn. If it weren’t for that I wouldn’t too much mind trading vehicles. I can get on with a smaller passenger car OK, I don’t really mind – it’s not the sports-utilitarianism I’m beholden to. I guess I could put in an aftermarket head unit, but it seems like an awful amount of trouble. I’m so irrational about it that I’ve considered ditching her car and leasing something newer to drive. This is how ridiculously my brain holds to it being “her car.”
The gym is full of new-year-resolution folks. Packed. I remember it like this when I myself resolved to start going shortly after the start of 2009. Like many other good-intentioned people my fervor ebbed in the later quarter of last year. Not to say I stopped going completely, but I did backslide. Late 2010 travel and holiday don’t-cares saw me put back on a good ten pounds of what I’d shed earlier in the year. So I, too, am back with a vengeance.
Before I go… recently there was a comment on a blog I wrote way back in 2004. The “satanic flier” post was my recounting, supplemented with media, of a rather juvenile, yet still pretty funny if you ask me, prank my friends and I pulled back in high school. The comment led me to re-read the post again and remember the event. But I’m not writing now to rehash the entry but rather to laugh at the string of comments its collected. They crack me up:
harmony ponders...
i wonder how santinic people do there richals and thing’s like that cause i have a friend named shadow and he’s only about 14 and i wonder how much he would know at he’s age?
disaster asks nicely...
please send me a photo 4 the satan
Blake isn't satanic or anything, but...
wow that was amazing. my nickname is SATAN so i think its kinda funny story, im not satanic or anything i think i might do this at my school would u mind if i used a copy of the same flyer?
DarkJoeri warns me...
yow mutherfucker dont mess whit evil
And finally, Anonymous says...
we flier of ot good
Guess the devil really does bring out the worst in people, huh?
Good stuff. Goodnight.
UAL to PRC
Friday and, wow internet...
...I think I actually hit all five days this week. First time in a long time and it was a busy week, too. Good on me, I suppose. By the time you read this, I'll likely be on a plane somewhere over the vast Pacific. I'm still waiting for the day when the trip to Asia take as long as the trip to Florida and the trip to Florida takes as long as the trip to Oregon (the trip to Oregon, I suppose then, would be near instantaneous). Point being - flying to Shanghai takes too long. Especially when the direct flight is all booked and you have to take the crappy layover version through Tokyo. But anyway, let's move on.
OK well, maybe not move on too terribly much... since I'm going to talk about flying still. For the morrow, I've think I've got stuff ready. I'll be bringing the current book I'm reading (book freakin' ten of this massive fantasy epic I've been trying to get through off and on for ten years now), as well as the next one in the series. Book twelve just came out and I think I have to wait another couple years before the two final volumes are published. This means that I'll have been working to get through the story for near fifteen years. That's a long time to read a "book," even it's over 10,000 total pages. Additionally, I've got my laptop, my iPod, and my iPhone. With these things, I feel well-equipped for the long flight. Since I got the business class upgrade, I'll at least be able to lay flat to sleep and plug in to a real AC outlet to keep my tech running. So, I think it's sorted.
We went out for dinner tonight, used a coupon. Just a little family thing before I split town. Got there early, got back early, and was all packed before 8pm. Not bad, actually... and was able to spend the rest of the night (after coming here to write this last paragraph) hanging out on the couch with Sharaun watching TV. Yup, just wasting away in front of the tube. And now it's time to hit the sack.
Goodnight and I'll talk to you next week from the People's Republic of China.
sayanora, trumpet man
Happy Thursday folks.
If you're viewing the page via your iPhone or Android device today, you've likely noticed that I installed a much more mobile-friendly theme that takes over when the page is viewed in a mobile browser. I like it a lot, and it's actually what inspired me to change up my current desktop theme (the main look and feel of sounds familiar). I haven't done this in a long while... but my current theme was kind of clunky compared to some of the more modern themes.
My goal was to maintain as much of the look and feel of the site as possible while taking advantage of something less hacked-together (I still have to go through and reformat some of the more kludgy CSS remnants, but I'll get it all modernized soon enough). I think it's mostly in-place now, the only drastic change being my decision to drop the years-old header logo... which meant ditching the Bible-times trumpet man image Ben stole for me off the internet way back in 2003. Sayanora, trumpet man.
OK enough website junk. Let's talk about something better. Maybe something funny... Oh, I know!
Sunday evening this past week my daughter spent nearly five minutes explaining to me the wonder that was her Halloween-acquired Ring Pop.
See Dad, it's like ring but you can eat it like a lollipop. It's candy. You put it on your finger like a ring and it's pretty like jewelry but it's also candy like a lollipop. See? See it on my finger like a ring? But watch, Dad!, look with your eyes!, see... I can... mmmpphh... see, I can lick it like a lollipop. Isn't that neat, Dad? Dad... did you see? It's a Ring Pop. It's called that because it's a ring and a lollipop. Dad. Dad?
About two explanatory sentences into her rant, I started laughing a little. By the third or fourth recitation of her stark wonder, I had all but lost it and was cracking up. Sharaun, sitting opposite me on the other couch, was also laughing. By the end, I was playing with her (I think she figured it out). "But wait," I'd stop her to interject, "Is that thing a ring, or a lollipop?" Aaaand we'd start all over again. Good stuff.
Changing subjects...
Recently, I've started using the track rating feature on the iPod. I never really used the functionality before, for a couple main reasons: 1) I pretty much only put music I like on the iPod, so I would hope not to find anything less than "middlin'" were I to do a "rating audit" or somesuch and 2) I don't use iTunes to manage my music, so the track rating metadata would only live on my iPod and not be transferred permanently back into my collection. If my iPod ever went south or I had to reload tracks off disk, I'd lose the ratings data anyway, so I've always considered it fleeting and useless.
Over time, my mind has changed somewhat on each point. Yes, everything on my iPod is there because I at least "like" it. But, as I've learned being a manager at the sawmill, even a group of top-performers has a bottom performer - regardless of whether or not that person is generically "good" or not. Same with a huge batch of "good" tunes, I suppose. Even if I like it all, there are some tracks that deserve a star or two more than others. I figured that exploiting the natural strata of my tastes might actually make for some neat ratings-based "smart" playlists.
Furthermore, about a year ago I bought some software that promises it's able to make a complete, hardware/firmware agnostic, restoreable backup of my iPod. The idea being that, as long as I keep up with the backups, were my iPod ever upgraded, lost, or ruined, I could restore it to its previous state - including track-by-track metadata. Still, ratings wouldn't get sync'd back into my master collection on disk - but I gave up on this a long time ago after a couple failed migration attempts. But, at least I could carry the ratings metadata through an iPod crash or upgrade... better than nothing.
Anyway... I'm trying it out. Why not?
Goodnight.
on abundance
Howdy for Tuesday morning folks. I got lazy tonight, left the dishes to rot in the sink until tomorrow. Not my normal M.O., but I was preoccupied.
The other night our neighbors invited us over for dinner to celebrate a birthday with them. We had some great food and sat around watching some gameshow broadcast via satellite from the Philippines. At some point I ducked out into the backyard with the neighbor to check on the ribs on the barbecue, and noticed all the fruit trees growing. I've been over before, but had forgotten that they had so many trees planted. Turns out one of those trees is a Gala apple. And, being that it's planted about 30ft from my Fuji tree, I think I've perhaps found the answer to my questions the other day about this year's apple crop. Hopefully the Gala and Fuji can continue to cross-pollinate and make better crops for each of us. Kinda cool I don't have to worry about planting another tree to do it.
Yesterday, as I prepared and posted the pictures from the Halloween party, I realized just how behind I am on posting new pictures to the gallery section of the website. I haven't updated the pictures of Keaton since back in June when we went to Aruba, and before that not since February. This used to bother me, actually, I'd feel way behind on updating the content, like I was letting folks down or something. Now, however, I'm almost of a mind that static "gallery" installations on personal webpages are fast becoming a thing of the past.
There's just no guaranteed permanence with any of the current solutions: free online services are likely to fade away and die at some point, so Flickr, Picasa, and the like are unattractive to me; and hosted services like Gallery and Coppermine and the like are only around as long as you maintain them and don't lose the database (has happened to me at least once). All this makes me think that perhaps the future of photo-sharing online isn't a centralized repository that has staying power, but rather a Facebook-style quick-and-easy type of instant-sharing. Something that casual enough that you don't feel overly committed to uploading and sharing, something quick enough that you're apt to upload frequently, and something fleeting enough that you'd not feel gutted if everything were lost in the internet ether.
I've almost convinced myself that it's the way to go... timely, frequent, small bursts of quality photos posted to the blog instead of doing massive dumps to a dedicated location. Furthermore, I'm going to try and make this happen here on sounds familiar from here on out. I mean, nothing says I'll keep up with it - look at how much my daily writing has fallen off lately (things have been busy, y'all) - but I'm gonna give it a go.
Goodnight.
we’d smoke anything
Well internet, I thought I'd drop in after the week absence Mexico so lovingly provided us.
Yes, we're back... and yes, I'm back to work. Confined once again in my tiny shoulder-height grey box, staring at my monitor, typing, and talking on the phone. It's a far cry from the routine we'd fallen so easily into last week on vacation.
For reference, that routine went exactly like this: Wake up at 8am, get Keaton and Sharaun up. Change into swimsuits and lube up with the sunblock. Meet our co-vacationing friends for breakfast at 9am. Poolside by 10am at the latest. Bloody Mary or Malibu and pineapple to start the day. Swim; read; lounge. More drinks. Lunch around 1pm. Swim; read; lounge, drinks. Back to the hotel to shower and change around 6pm. Meet for dinner at 7pm; switch to martinis. In bed by 11pm to do it all again tomorrow.
Blissful; it was blissful. But being back is OK too. We got home at past midnight on Saturday (OK Sunday), and I spent Sunday putting up all the Halloween decorations. Got everything up too, but things need the usual tweaking and yearly repairs. Coffin guy needs a new head, time has disintegrated the plastic near entirely. The ceiling dropper's rope broke from friction and strain again, so I have to replace that once more. The ghost needs to be re-tied at better heights so her motion is more natural, and the witch's dress needs a new pinning to keep it in place. But, over the years I've streamlined the setup so much (with permanently installed hooks, platforms, and ties) that everything went up easily. So easily, in fact, that I'm thinking of trying to finish off an old prop concept I started and never finished...
Today at work Buffalo Springfield’s “I Am A Child” shuffled up on the iPod. Any time I hear Buffalo Springfield, I get mega-nostalgic. For whatever reason, the part of the past when I bought their greatest hits record, back in middle school, is indelibly burned into my brain. I write a lot about how certain music melds with memory for me, forever linking a song or album or sound to some event – and Buffalo Springfield is one of the strongest of those associations. I have the clearest memories of sitting in my room back in Florida listening to that album over and over. One memory in particular is actually strange enough to share.
Before I was exposed to marijuana, I was already fascinated with the concept of smoking something to “get high.” After all, practically every 60s musical and cultural icon I idolized as a teen glamorized the experience… how could I be expected to not want to try it? At one point, I can remember hearing, somehow, that cloves could get you high. This led to Kyle and I rolling up and smoking cloves, yes… plain old dried clove, whole and un-ground from the spice rack, and nearly coughing to death as we tried in vain to catch a buzz. Ditto with the recipe for “banandine” we got from the Anarchist Cookbook. Try as we might, we couldn’t seem to figure it out. But really... try we did. I mean, we'd pretty much smoke anything.
I remember one afternoon, while listening to the Buffalo Springfield album that spurred this whole ramble, actually smoking and inhaling some spent firecrackers I had in my room. Over the years I've wondered where I would even get such an idea... I used to be obsessed with fireworks (well, fire and fireworks in general, really). I used to ride my bike around the neighborhood early on the morning of July 5th, collecting the burned shells of the previous nights fountains and bottle rockets and roman candles. Not only did I love the labels and packaging, but I loved the burned-out smell of the things. Maybe that's what made me decide to try and "smoke" one. Buffalo Springfield in the background, bedroom window open, and I'm sitting there "smoking" a used ladyfinger.
Goodnight.
sunset on her breath
Busy nights Monday and Sunday, no time to write. Or, more accurately, writing eschewed in favor of other things.
I’m busily working to get two weeks of work done this week, in eager anticipation of our coming week getaway in Mexico, which begins Saturday. We’ll be jetting off with friends for a stay in an all-inclusive beachside joint, where our week is sure to be filled with early morning poolside chair-claiming, umbrella drinks, tacos, and lots of time spent doing nothing. Well, something… reading, dozing, playing with Keaton, swimming, lounging… but really a lot of nothing. It’s not been a particularly hectic week at work, so I’m not dying to get there… but, as always, the prospect of a surf and sun vacation has my mind drifting ahead in time.
Back in real life, Sharaun returned home from her weekend away with girlfriends in Florida (must be hard for her, going from a Gulf beach to a Pacific one over the course of a week). I managed to keep Keaton clean, fed, and happy while she was gone… single-handedly dispelling literally hundreds of dad ineptitude stereotypes in the process. She was greeted home by a clean house, empty laundry hampers, and a very thankful husband and daughter. And, while we had fun just Keaton and I, it was a welcome homecoming for us too. Moms do a lot, y'know?
It's nighttime on Tuesday now, Keaton and I are watching Alice In Wonderland... the smoking caterpillar is on. Keaton thinks Alice's name is Alison Wonderland, first and last just like that. A pretty reasonable misconception if you ask me. After I put her to bed (which I just did) I plan to put some music on (which I also just did) and listen to it while I write (which I am doing right now; time and tenses get really messed up as I write in bits over the course of the evening).
Anyway, I've got the newish record by Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros on. I grabbed it a month or so ago on the band name alone (I do this somewhat often), and, at the time, ended up digging about 50% of the tracks and filing it away as something with prospect. For whatever reason I spun it again yesterday and was pleasantly surprised to hear it aged very well, and I think I may have judged it kinda low originally. Been listening with gusto today, and I like what I hear. After looking up the band (which is one of hose Polyphonic Spree style two-digit member cult kinda hippie collectives) I found out that the lead singer is a dude from a band Ben and I used to like called Ima Robot. Small world, this LA indie music biz... small world.
At work the other day I booked a coming trip to China and Taiwan. My first travel to the Orient in nearly two years. Not sure how I've managed to not be there in all that time, but I guess I tend to offer the international trips to the troops moreso than take them myself these days. Will be good to get back to Shanghai and Taipei though, I do miss the frequency at which I used to visit both those fun cities. And it'll be good for me to re-invest in my work network while over there. Oh and of course there's the excellent food. November comes the day I'll take off; and I'm sure I'll go into the whole pre-trip "I don't wanna gos" here on the old blog about one week prior to travel... look for it.
Goodnight folks. I wrote.
aside from deemsters and amps
Happy Thursday friends. I'm writing as the clock closes in on midnight; a time when I, arguably, should be in bed. But no, I has some words come... so I'm gonna make it happen. Here goes.
Sometimes, when I find out that a friend I didn't know has a blog keeps a blog I get really excited. I've been known to go and read everything they've ever posted in one sitting. Occasionally, this is impossible because they've been posting for a long time or with insane frequency. More often, they posted a lot for a little while and then dried up. Still, it's interested to read what people write... old, new, sparse, thick... interesting either way.
Blogging, in this form at least, feels somewhat antiquated these days. With the Tweeter and the Facebooks and whatever else the kids are using these days (I mean aside from deemsters and amps), the old page-form long-post kinda blog is becoming a fossil of the Gen-X internet crowd. The new thing is real-time, always-writing updates. Bursts, call-and-response volleys, that's the way to go. I can see the charm, and excitement, that back-and-forth mini-conversations can offer, particularly if they are enhanced with real-time media like pictures or videos. And despite being a cooler-than-thou Facebook holdout, I am attracted to the notion of perhaps one day "signing up."
Even if I do, one day some day, sign up for the Facebooks... I intend to continue posting here. I love this medium... the long-entry medium, the "blog" medium. I like writing in paragraph form; like being able to develop thoughts over the course of rambling. Recently, I installed a fancy statistics plugin looking for some insight into my posting habits. It tells me that I've made 1,191 posts in all. That's over the course of about six years. Apparently, I tend to post most often on Tuesdays, and more in the months of January and October than the others. And, despite the fact that it seems to me like I go through some significant dry-spells and downtime (as I've felt lately), the overall averages say that I've pretty much posted with the same frequency all a long (calculated as total posts over total time sounds familiar has been around).
So, the blog remains. I continue to work at it and continue to want to. Goodnight.
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