Category: general

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

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a different kind of work


Happy Friday friends, relatives, and lurkers. Thanks for stopping by before the weekend. I managed to get a little bit of stuff typed out for you today, hopefully you’ll enjoy it.

All you guys and your photo-rich blogs, making photos the centerpiece of your writing, or forgoing writing completely for photos… you’re making me look bad. There was a time when I was uploading a new batch of pictures to Keaton’s gallery every Sunday night. Sometime, that slipped to every other week, then once a month, and has now settled into something like every month-and-a-half to two months. I think part of it is that we just simply don’t take the volume of snapshots we did in those first months, and the other part is likely my own laziness. Either way, I don’t expect it’ll change much… but, I did manage to get an update posted today, and you can check it out by hovering your pointy thing here and pressing the button on your mouse with your finger. OK, done looking? Let’s move on then.

I came home early today to work on the fence, work was light.

Oh, hey, that reminds me… did you guys know that, when you’re putting up a fence and you want to re-use the main between-posts sections from your old fence, it’s not a good idea to just assume that each section is the same is the rest? I mean, just because nine out of ten of your between-post sections are 91″ long, you better measure them all instead of just blindly setting all your posts, each in its own 100lbs of concrete, at 91″ apart. I’m just saying… it’s probably a good idea.

I mean, for instance, what if, for some ridiculously dumbass reason, the people who built your fence originally made 48 of your 50 between-post sections 91″ long, and, purely for the shit of it, made the other two sections 96″? What then? Know what? You’d be, like, 6″ off on your last post. Yeah, you totally would. Know what you’d have to do then? You’d have to cut down one section of fence, and somehow extend another. I’m not sure, but I bet that whole “extension” process would result in some pretty ghetto-lookin’ fencing when it was all said and done.

I mean, it’d probably be structurally sound and all… but, like I said, you should really measure each section you want to re-hang and then use those measurements to determine your between-post distances. Then, and only then, should you mark out where you want your posts and set them in concrete. Now, you can do whatever you want, you’re the boss here… I’m just sayin’.

Dunno if you guys managed to read my blog yesterday or not, but if not, I’ll give you a minute or two to scroll down and do so. Back yet? No? OK… Now? Good. Like almost all my entries, that one automatically posted at midnight last night. This morning, when I woke up and was getting ready for work, my BlackBerry made the “new personal e-mail” chime and I plopped down in front of the laptop to check it there.

Turns out an old friend from waaaay yonder back in high school had read the entry, sympathized with me (to the point of commenting), and decided help me out. In her mail, she attached some play money images she’d made, in what I can only assume were the few extra hours afforded to her by virtue of timezone differences. What’s so cool about them is that she actually cut and pasted Keaton’s happy mug right over the boring old dead presidents who normally grace our dosh. I just thought that was a totally cool thing to do.

Thanks again Maggie, Keaton’s gonna love her personalized money.

And with that, I’m outta here. Hope you have a good Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I know I plan to. Goodnight and goodweek.

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wheating, or wheated, or whatever


Monday night. Two glasses of wine into the evening alone, and fresh off a late burst of cleaning to recline sweaty on the couch and tackle a blog for the day. Think I have it? I do. Let’s go.

Just last week, my frustrations with the state of my little postage-stamp of Northern California real estate had reached a pinnacle, and I was ready to pay hired labor to get things in order. On my list: fix the fence, do some landscaping to a small patch of front-yard land which has lain barren and weed-ridden for four years now, and re-plant the slope above our retaining wall in the backyard. I had become so fed up with it all that I actually began making phone calls and leaving voicemails requesting free estimates.

The Lord, however, deigned that this was not to be the road He’d have me take. No, instead, the work I reluctantly began on Saturday fixing the fence was meant to invigorate me anew, to stoke the coals within me and make me remember that, when somewhat motivated, my own hands work just as well as a paid laborers (albeit more slowly and less confidently). . The relative ease of the task has inspired me, and I’m once again motivated to do some work on my own behalf – starting with that landscaping in the front sideyeard. Time to order up some dirt and rocks (I still refuse to believe I actually pay for dirt and rocks) and get started. Maybe my house won’t be referred to be neighbors as “that blight on the corner” anymore… well, maybe.

Oh, I’ve been meaning to mention – my wheat finally started wheating, or wheated, or whatever. Yup. While I’d still be hesitant calling the experiment a smash success, at least I’ve got seedheads on a few stalks now. Seems they really did need the slightly warming weather and extra sun (which makes me wonder if I really did get “winter wheat” seed or not). But, with the thirty or so individual grains I should be able to harvest before I have to clear the soil for Spring planting, I figure I can make one heck of an oyster cracker or something. Maybe one really thin Wheat Thin? Eh, like I said when I started the whole thing, I can still just mill the seed I bought to plant in the first place – and I likely will do that as the base for this Spring’s attempt at a sourdough starter. It did make me happy though, that the thing wasn’t a complete failure (pretty close, but there’s still time for more seed to show I suppose).

Before I go, I wanted to pass along this awesome photo-essay (NSFW) I found linked from Fazed. Be warned, it’s very not safe for work – but I found it extremely… hard to stop looking at. As one commenter put it, “compelling and disturbing.” I know it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but I seriously found it brilliant, beautiful, and sad, in a I-am-human kinda way. Maybe bookmark and save for when you’re on your own internet dime… if you dare.

Chugga-chugga-ch-ch!! Goodnight!

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party’s over


Greetings from a sore-muscled Sunday evening… late evening, at that.

I attribute the sore muscles to the rather minuscule amount of manual labor I did over the weekend while working to repair the fence we lost in the storms over a month ago. Saturday, after my Spring-inaugural lawn mowing (first of the season), I tore down the four sections of fence hanging on busted posts. Erik and Pat stopped by for some assistance yanking those huge cement teeth out of the dirt, with some help from the Ford and a nylon tow-rope. Sunday I cleaned up the post-holes and set the new 4x4s (pressure treated this time, not like the cheap-out stuff the builders used) in cement, Sharaun helped hold the posts level while I cemented. And, while we still don’t have a fence at the moment, we’re on our way… sore muscles and all. Seems like I need to get a little bit more done with these muscles, their protests at such a tiny amount of work are fairly embarrassing.

Other than that, we had to cancel Keaton’s birthday party at the kiddie-gym place on Saturday because she’s sick. When I got home from work Friday (a little early, around 4:30pm) she was still down for her nap. The noise of the garage door and me coming in must’ve woke her, and she was babbling by the time I walked by her door. When I went in to get her she was just burning up, the thermometer showed 104°. We stripped her down and put her in a cool bath to try and make her a little more comfortable, and started the regimen of Tylenol she’s still on today. She kept the fever through the weekend, although never as high as that afternoon, and has a nasty cough, a horribly runny nose, and nice gooey eyes. Sharaun, having become quite good at armchair diagnoses, predicts the doctor will call it a double ear infection when she takes her in tomorrow. Poor little thing. Kids get sick a lot, it seems.

Getting right back on the horse-ishly though, Sharaun’s planning a do-over on the party for next Sunday, hopefully she can pull that off. And, we ended up having an OK evening anyway when some friends stopped by with their brood and I got to give the grill its first post-Winter workout (salmon and asparagus). So, despite the canceled party we ended up having an OK day, and since Keaton never really acts sick, even when she is, she appeared to have an OK time too.

Alas, I know, I’ve returned to the standard play-by-play, unable, for now, to get back to the weird-style phase of writing I went through last week. Maybe it was something about Sharaun and Keaton being gone… mind wandering and all… I’ll see what I can do, but only after tonight… because… for now…

I’m done. Goodnight friends and lovers, I love and friend you all.

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they weren’t that far off


Well, it’s 8pm on Wednesday night and I’ll be leaving for the airport in about 30min to retrieve my wife and daughter. At long last, our family reunited. Sharaun’s feeling better, but not 100%. She called from Chicago during her layover, and I heard Keaton in the background playing in a rocking chair. Taking a suggestion from a friend more thoughtful than I, I stopped off after getting a haircut today to pick up a mylar Backyardigans “Happy Birthday’ balloon which I’ll use as a welcome home prop for Keaton at the airport. I didn’t get anything for Sharaun, I hope that’s OK (that’s OK, right blog?). Anyway, I wrote just a tiny bit upon getting home from work today (I split a little early for lack of concentration). Here it is, be warned: I took license.

It’s been a thousand years or more since I bedded the woman under the sun.

I remember it fondly because our communal joy was used as the basis as a new religion, the point-infinity of zero-time in which the people of that world consider consciousness to have begun. As trees thrashed in the soil, our wrestling drove up mountains, broken and shattered peaks looming around us in the midst of our eternal ecstasy. Our fantastic perspiration dotted the firmament with a flood of salty oceans and seas. Living beings sprang forth from the union of our flesh, animals winged and legged sprouting where we brushed, budding from the rich loam of our combined corpus, pushing through that single-skin and living, breathing. The sound of our tryst established the pantheon of world-language, each rumbling low and trilling high adding depth and soul to spoken word, the genesis of communication.

Each coordinated push of our bodies establishing the regular cadence of time, the cradle of eternity, the friction of our motion warming the surface of the world and giving life to all manner of plant and flower. Beauty bloomed around us, tickling our ticklish bits as it pushed through to touch our flesh and bend to the sun of our union. The fluid results of our strained efforts being the Philosopher’s Stone, that golden egg from which all base and divine sprang and will one day return – Aqua Vitae. As breath filled the first lungs ever to breathe, some of those infant-beings glimpsed our culminating love and the imprint of that God-Union was burned red-hot into their consciousness, destined to be collectively passed down and re-interpreted throughout time, understood and misunderstood by the legacy human froth spilled foaming from our joy.

They called it the Big Bang, and they weren’t that far off.

How’s that for blasphemy? Goodnight and happy Lent.

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you can likely guess


Last day of my bachelor weekend. I didn’t clean anything, didn’t lift a finger. I’m not surprised at all. The motivation is weak with this one. I’m sitting here listening to some Steely Dan the iPod deigned to shuffle up, sounds good in the early evening of a lazy Sunday night. Seriously, when I say lazy, I mean lazy.

My entire day’s activities: Woke up, filled up the Ford on the way to church, church, home, put on the iPod and unsuccessfully fight napping for five hours before going over to Melissa’s for a fine meal. It was a shamefully unproductive day, with so much time wasted – I loved it. Sharaun and Keaton get home tomorrow, that is, unless she decides to push their flight back a day because she’s not feeling well – last time I talked to her she was battling a 102° fever. Not fun flying with a baby on your lap in those conditions, I’d think. We’ll see.

Today I figured I’d lead the week with a long-overdue update to my sixty-days-on-penis-pills adventure. I know it’s been a while since my last update (here, for those who’ve already forgotten or are new to the bit), but I just haven’t had the urge to do the all the ruler and GIMP work that’s necessary to make an entry. But, with a weekend home alone to kill and not spending my time doing anything productive, it seemed like a fruitful time. Now then, let’s catch up on what this whole thing is actually about: I’ve been taking the “natural male enhancement” pill Enzyte now for forty-five days.

For the full backstory, read about the original Enzyte idea here, and check out the first and second set of results I’ve already reported).

During this forty-five days many fun and wonderful things have happened in my life. Unsurprisingly, none of those many things has been measurable penile growth. Yeah, that’s right, absolutely nothing has changed… not a single centimeter. Not that I expected much. So, as I’m sure you already expected, here’s this update’s visual-aide graph of my growth. Showing all of nothing.

(Learn how to interpret this chart here.)

And, folks, you now know why I’m not so hot to update the progress every week. I decided a few weeks back that these pills are bunk, and don’t expect a thing in the world out of my last fifteen days. And, if the Enzyte industry tries to offer me another free thirty days… well… maybe I’d take that, you know, fo rth e skae of th bolg.

Goodnight.

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topic-jumping


Hi internet friends (and real life friends interacting with me through the internet at the moment). Feeling a bit on the mend today, I managed to bang out a few hundred words on the computer in between sleeping and going through the sweating/freezing cycles. Kind of a patchy entry today, with an iPod-only bit that I wrote split out and posted randomly yesterday between then and now (scroll down if you think you might be interested). Splitting that out is part of my new plan to optimize some parts of content for search results, I’ll talk more about that sometime later if I remember. Let’s do this.

I’ve told you guys here before about Sharaun’s recent involvement in this “teen moms” program. She volunteers one night a week to get a bunch of women together to cook dinner for young teen mothers. During the dinner, the moms get to drop their kids off with provided childcare, and then get a chance to visit with the older women – where they presumably teach them basic life-management skills like balancing a checkbook or getting whites their whitest (or, for you feminists, snaking a drain, changing the oil, or negotiating a hostile takeover). As I commented last time around, I see this as quite an admirable donation of time and effort, and I’m glad she’s the kind of person who wants to help like that (Lord knows it’s not my bag, at least not as a full-time thing).

Anyway, she told me a “funny” story about her last session. Apparently, two new teen moms showed up for the evening, and she was directing them to where they drop off the babies prior to dinner. I guess some of the young mothers sometimes bring nothing but their kids, meaning no bottles, no diapers, no nothing. Just a baby and themselves. These girls, however, had both brought diaper bags and left them with the nursery workers, mentioning that there were snacks inside for the two and three year-old kids should they get hungry. When Sharaun heard that, she said she gave some silent applause in her head for a couple younger moms who were thinking ahead and prepared, unlike some of the others. Turns out though, that she later learned that the “snacks” the moms brought were a bag of Cheetos and a baby bottle full of soda. Yeah, that’s right. Cheetos and soda. Oh dear lord, it almost made me wanna cry. Hopefully this support group reviews the FDA pyramid at some point…

Gonna be a topic-jumper tonight, here we go.

I hate the unpredictability of male urination. What happens 95% of the time when I pee isn’t necessarily what will happen the other 5% at all. Most of the time everything goes OK. But, there’s the element of the unknown that you’re always up against. Will something, seen or unseen, somehow deflect your flow? If so, will your compensation fail when that same something, seen or unseen, disappears mid-act, returning your flow to it’s normal trajectory? God forbid that some something, again seen or again unseen, actually bifurcates your flow into multiple sub-flows, each one as unmanageable as the other and no one safe place to aim the distribution. Women seem to have this a lot easier, sitting down, apparatus entirely contained… Maybe it’s the Lord’s way of making up for the whole childbearing thing. Wouldn’t want to have to do that…

And now I’m done. But…

Before I go, I wanted to pass along a couple links I stumbled on while infirmed on the sickbed in our living room. First, remember my old fascination with the “pizza bomber” case? Well, I’d heard there was some break and that the whole thing would be tied up nice and tight soon, but this MSNBC article whet my appetite for those closing details. I’m sure someone like 48 Hours or Dateline has their episode dedicated to this bizarre crime all written and shot but for the ending. C’mon March. Next, and last, this list of humorous children’s science fair projects had Sharaun and I laughing today. Funny stuff.

Well, I’m spent. Time to hit the hay and hope for better feelings in the morning, because I’ve got to go to work one way or another. Goodnight.

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a nice way to start the day


As the doors of the elevator slid closed this morning at work, entombing me momentarily with four strangers, I had a head-snapping moment: I got a waft of the large blob of a woman who had taken position next to me.

Globular and short, she appeared to be experiencing much higher G-forces than the other passengers and I, for she seemed to be smooshed down into herself, her neck all but disappeared and her legs compressed to stubs. As I pondered the dimensional aberration she must have unwittingly stepped into, wondering just how much more gravity weighted her down inside that anomalous hole in the astrophysical norms of the universe, her scent brutalized my nose.

Now, here, I’m sure you’re expecting me to make a crack on this poor woman’s odor as somehow related to her size – not so, though, dear readers. The scent that tickled my nose was not objectionable in the least. In fact, she stank ripe and sweet of some familiar perfume – the perfume of a girl I used to think I was in love with. It was such an olfactory revelation to smell that scent again, a tug on the lapels from times past, flooding thoughts of the present with old memories instead. So powerful is that tie in my psyche that I actually had to take another look at the woman beside me. Nope; still large and largely unattractive; bummer. And anyway, the lumbering cables hoisted us to where we were going and we parted ways.

Was a nice way to start the day.

Transition.

Today we traveled.

After two hours of delay in California, including a repaired hydraulic line, boarding and a taxi out, finding out the repair introduced air in the line and trashed the pump, and a taxi back in to move everyone to a new plane, we’re finally in the air and on our way to Oregon. Keaton held up well considering the long wait and lack of nap, her spirits buoyed by an ad-hoc dinner of chicken nuggets and a lot of walking around in the terminal. She’s restless now in the empty seat between Sharaun and I, but at least she’s behaving. At this point, I just want to be there (Keaton and Sharaun too, I’m sure.)

Back in California, the warm sunny weather is making me shamefully aware of the sad state of my yard. Winter weeds, fed by constant rains, have completely overrun my planter strips and any other patch of bare ground capable of sprouting seed. My grass is coming out of its cold weather hibernation and brownly awaits some Spring fertilizer, and my downed fence is still ghetto-propped with 2x4s. Plus, that the 10′ x 10′ patch in my front yard that’s gone unplanted since I had to drive machinery over it while building our retaining wall is really starting to get to me. I’ve decided, then, that I’m going to spend some money and fix it all. Gotta get things in shape for summer… Beer. Beef. Summer.

Goodnight from the North friends, think of me tomorrow in your sunshine as I’ll be mired in the rainy gray of Oregon.