Category: general

Where I put something when I’m too lazy to categorize it.

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live bees in the grocery store?

It’s Friday.  Huzzah.

Listening to Nirvana’s In Utero, a kind of underrated record if you ask me.  I think when it came out I had already decided Nirvana was passe, being all cool and hip and sixteen and driving.  I bought the cassette, probably from good old Omni music in the mall (where just a few years later I’d be assistant manager), and listened to it in my read Nissan Sentra.  Aww crap, now you guys can verify you’re really me when logging into my bank account.  You just need to know what highschool I went to and where my dad was born.

Sharaun bought this little baggie of candied pecans from the bulk section at the local supermarket.  She put them into a salad with dried cranberries and some raspberry vinaigrette dressing.  Normally I would turn up my nose at such a sweet, feminine concoction.  Who can expect a man to eat something like this?  Fruit and nuts to complement a salad?  No thanks.  But I tell you internet, that salad was delicious.  And those candied pecans?  Those were the icing on the cake.  The bulk aisle done good.

Speaking of the bulk aisle, that place is awesome.  Bulk anything.  Why buy anything in packaging anymore?  Fill a plastic bag with flour or dogfood or steel-cut-oats or trail mix or candy.  Heck they even have bulk honey.  No, I’m serious.  You know those white beehive-box things you see in fields?  Like the picture accompanying this post.  They have a row of those very things right there in the store, with freakin’ taps on them.  Three kinds, clover honey and some other stuff I can’t remember.  You walk right up to these beehives, twist the lever on the tap, and out flows a slow stream of awesome honey.

I was marveling over these things on a rare joint-shopping trip with Sharaun when I noticed large signs posted on each: “Warning – Do Not Lift Lid.  Live Bees Inside.”  Wait… what?  The bees are actually in the thing making honey?  Right there inside the store?  I had to ask Sharaun, “Hey babe, do you think there are really bees in there?!”  “Of course,” she answered, as if it were obvious, “It says so right on the sign.”  Still though, I was tempted to not buy it… I mean there were no locks or straps or catches or anything on those wooden lids.  From what I could tell I could’ve just lifted one up and been attacked by a hivefull of bees.  Seems like a liability.  I thought it must be for the effect… because… live bees in the grocery store?  (I’m not the only one.)

Write some kind of witty wrap-up here.  Goodnight.

 

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days and videos

Hey what’s up internet somehow it got to be Thursday and I need more days before it’s the weekend OK?  How about we make some kind of deal.  You give me a day between today and Friday, or even between Friday and Saturday.  I need this extra day because I still want, and furthermore feel I deserve, two days of weekend yet need another day of work.  We could compromise, call it Tweenday or Foreday or something like that.  Just another eight hours.  But don’t really do it, because I want Friday to be here.  OK thanks.

Tonight I wanted to shoot a practice video to test out both the new point-and-shoot camera as well as the ease-of-use of the new Windows 7 updated Movie Maker software.  Since I’m planning to try upload video content during our trip, specifically a video diary series featuring Keaton’s road-trip commentary, I was hoping that the new version of Movie Maker was as easy to use as the previous one.  Turns out it’s easier and faster, and I threw together a montage in short order.  After uploading to YouTube and linking to Keaton’s webpage, I’m super happy with the results.  You can check it out here.  Best case is we can upload videos like these as our travels bring us to places where we’ll have connectivity (most proper RV places now have wireless, and I’ll be serving IPs from the phone’s connection wherever we have data service, so I feel the chances are good).

I am going to go now.  Give me a break; I did a video.  Goodnight.

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barrier to entry

This evening I looked up how much the people who walk around Disneyland dressed in-character make per hour.

It’s a mite.  A pittance.

Not only that, but the “audition” process involves learning a small bit of choreography before you can move on to the improvisation scene.  If the peanuts for pay wasn’t a barrier to entry, the dancing likely would be.

Guides on the internet suggest taking an introductory dance class and working on your “flexibility” before auditioning.  Not the kind of “flexibility” I put on my resume, either; the literal kind which might’ve enabled me to touch my toes back in 7th grade.  Might’ve.

I don’t think a man could support a family as Goofy.

Guess I’ll continue the computer engineer gig for a while.

Goodnight.

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stupid weekends

Stupid weekends are never long enough.  I needed this one to deliver, too, as I couldn’t quite push work out of my head in the alloted 48hrs.

I’ve been watching a lot of old episodes of The Rifleman with Chuck Connors lately.  One of the original western serials, AMC has been playing it, in its original airing order, in fantastic-looking HD at like 3am on Sundays or something.  I’ve been DVRing each episode as it runs, and Keaton and I have started to enjoy watching them together.  Sharaun, at first not too happy with how “appropriate” Western shoot-’em-ups are for kids, has relented after watching part of one with us and realizing how awesome they are.

There is a lot of shooting though, she’s right about that.  Like a any five year-old kid back in 1958 could, though, she’s able to tell the “bad guys” from the “good guys” and she doesn’t seem too disturbed when Lucas and Micah have to off some bandits for the good of North Fork.  One thing about the show that I find curious is how if often ends with McCain killing the bad guys.  You’ll get twenty-eight minutes invested into the show, Lucas will shoot three or four scruffy-looking ne’er-do-wells, their bodies will laying strewn about the street at the center of town, and he’ll clap hands with the marshal, smile, and offer some show-capping comment.  Despite the fact that there are people just feet away bleeding to death and full of lead, the show never fails to end “happily.”

Let’s hope that the gunfights of my last couple weeks, and the corpses left in the sawdust to be dragged away, tie-up just as nice and tidy as those days in the New Mexico territory.  I could use a neatly-resolving ending where I ride back to the ranch and live to fight another day.

‘Night.

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8 of 10 agree

Friday finds me feeling excited for the weekend.

As usual, Saturday and Sunday are scheduled to the hilt, much like the work week.  Mind you, the weekend schedule is full of sport and leisure (well OK, leisure at least) while the week is filled with sweat and toil – so it’s a more welcomed allotment of time.  Despite my midweek pep-soliloquy, I still found my daytime thoughts drifting too often to the coming RV odyssey.  In one of my more out-there daydreams, I imagined finding a plot of land somewhere on the cheap.  Buying it and getting the government to pay me to not grow corn.  My conscious would get used to it, perhaps.

Tomorrow Sharaun is running/biking in a duathlon.  If Cohen’s fever stays away I plan to take the kids down and cheer her along Tour de France style.  I admire her for doing this, and hope she’s happy with her finish.  Me, I’ve fallen completely off the wagon.  Haven’t been to the gym in weeks, gave up caring about what I dump down my gullet, and am hovering around where my metabolism thinks my “stasis” is (which, unfortunately, is not anywhere near where the AMA thinks my weight should be).  Eight out of ten doctors agree: I’m fat again.

Goodnight.

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i’m sorry but i killed your hops

Hey Pat I’m sorry, but I killed your hops.

I know you entrusted them to me while you’re overseas for a couple years, and I’ll admit the task really wasn’t that hard.  Two big buckets of dirt that need water and sunshine so the hops growing in them don’t die.  Well I gave them a prominent spot on the sunny-side of my backyard, you know the side I plant the garden on?  Yeah, and they are also within reach of the sprinkler’s throw so I know they got enough hydration.  I even weeded them regularly to ensure they weren’t being choked out.

Heck, for the entire first year you were gone the actually grew like gangbusters (whatever that analogy is supposed to mean, I have some doubts about “gangbusters'” potential for growth myself (look close, there’s a plural possessive mixed into those quotes, it makes sense but it’s hard to see)).  They climbed out of their buckets and found the twine I’d strung upward to the fencepost and trained around it.  They wound up all green and leafy (but never actually flowered, so their viability for brewing was questionable even before the matter was finally settled upon their brown and desiccated death).  They made it to the top of the fence and struck out for freedom; ran out to the sideyard and entangled with the decorative shrubs out there, all harmonious-like.  I kept checking them for flowers, thinking maybe I could “harvest” a couple for you and freeze them or something… as a lark.

Sometime after that first year one of the pots was colonized by ants.  I knew it had happened, but not only was there not much I could do about it but I actually figured it might be beneficial for the root system. I’m not saying this ant manifest destiny is what did that one pot in, but I guess they could’ve been feasting on the roots and I’d have been none the wiser.  The anted pot did seem to turn first, though.  It never grew as vigorously, was less leafy and overall healthy-looking than its partner.  Were I one of those vegan connected-to-the-earth types I might think that the vibrant one missed his runty friend and simply wasted away in despair after its loss.

And now it’s just one big sad funeral scene out there.  We had some bad wind last week when a storm blew through and it toppled the pot of what used to be the stronger of the two.  It’s now laying on its side halfway down the slope, threatening to spill its contents, which probably didn’t happen only because the roots of the weeds growing within held the stuff together.  Later today I’m planning to go out there and right the poor thing, say some benediction and get on with the grieving period so I don’t feel too bad reclaiming the soil for other purposes.  Like the Bible says – dust to dust.

I’m shrugging.  It happens.  I owe you some hops.

Goodnight.

 

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can’t really avoid airplanes

I’ve been taken by this vision, fantasy really, of one imagined morning on our coming RV odyssey.

We’re in Yellowstone and the morning is cool.  Or maybe we’re in the grand canyon and it’s warm and the dust hasn’t yet been kicked up into the morning air.  Come to think of it, it doesn’t matter where we are.  Maybe it’s better in Yellowstone because we’re there so early in the season and we’re posting up at such out of the way campgrounds that there’s a good chance we’ll be the only ones there.  Maybe not, but I see it that way in this daydream.  It’s just us parked in the middle of some sprawling wilderness.  The kind of place where there’s a stream and maybe you see a moose wandering around in the morning mist.  But it’s just us.  Three or four little parking skirts on dirt loops, no hookups no wifi not even vault toilets.  It’s true, we’re staying two nights at places like this.  The ranger I called and spoke to said there’s a good chance we’ll be lonesome out there, since the spots only open that same week we arrive.  Maybe that’s what planted this seed.

Anyway it’s early morning and I’m awake and the family is awake and maybe I’m standing outside the RV smoking my pipe.  The scenery is enveloping and the silence is like when my buddies and I used to wake in the morning while camping – not a modern city sound to be heard.  Birds and condensation dripping and a stream rushing and maybe the rustle of a breeze.  But no engines and no sirens and no airplanes.  Can’t really avoid airplanes these days I suppose, even period-piece movies get shots fouled by airplanes missed in the editing room.  You’ve got Sir Gawain on his steed charging up a pastoral green hillock and real faint way off in the background the contrail of 747 bound for LaGuardia.  The bored passengers have no thought for their unintentional anachronistic cameo.  Some jerk on the internet first noticed it in the theater and then someone screencapped it from the Blu-ray.  So maybe there’s a plane; you can’t get away from them as well as you can everything else, but it doesn’t really matter.

I’m standing outside, the door to the RV is open and the family is knocking around inside.  Their close and I’m glad we’re here together but I’m having what they call a “personal moment.”  Gazing out into God’s country and thinking about how small I am how the stuff I worry most about in the world is some of the most insignificant in the world.  E-mail and human resources; paltry compared to the glacier-cut granite slopes hemming in our private campsite.  I’m out there marveling and puffing my pipe and – listen this is the important part, the part that makes the fantasy, the daydream capstone  – from out of the RV’s front-cab windows pours the Grateful Dead.  Yeah I said no noise but in this case it’s not noise it’s all compliment.

It’s not just any Dead.  It’s the 1976 New Year’s Eve show from the Cow Palace.  It’s one of my personal favorite shows; the band was so hot, 100% on and soaring.  I think it’s an underrated show.  If you haven’t heard it, you should go listen to it.  Sharaun says she finds the Dead repetitive; it’s actually a pretty fair criticism as criticism goes so I can’t really fault her.  But in the morning of this fantasy maybe “Eyes of the World” is blaring and it’s just blending perfect with my morning in the middle of everything and nowhere.  Tobacco always makes me salivate, so I’d be spitting on the very landscape I’d be adoring – maybe that seems contrary but it has some sort of old-country charm in my head.  Anyway, the Dead are just burning with a fever through the cab’s windows and for those ten minutes everything is about as perfect as things get.

It’s me and the family and God and the wildness and the Dead.  Oh man how silly.  But that’s the fantasy, that’s it to a tee.  I see it all the time and I’m the kind of foolish that’ll try and make it happen when that morning comes.  I’ll put on the Dead and light my pipe and stroll around and it’ll be good.  Kind of silly to pre-see it like that, though.  The best mornings will be the ones I haven’t pre-seen.  Those, those’ll be the knockouts.  I sometimes think I have too much time to think about this trip; that I better cool it with all the daydreaming or I’ll ruin the thing for what it can actually deliver. We’ll see.

No proofread; go.  Goodnight.