Category: general

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

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global… or something


Today I sent out a pretty informal e-mail to a group of friends, inviting them to join Sharaun and her sister and brother-in-law and I for a weekend camping trip later this month. One of the responses I got was from a friend of ours who works for a major shipping company. Unfortunately, he relayed, the weekend I had chosen was the very weekend that the new, and presumably series-ending, Harry Potter book is released. Due to this, he had to work Saturday and would not be able to make it.

It struck me, then, how things effect other things. Because a British author wrote a wildly popular series of young-adult novels, demand for the final installment is unprecedented. This means that a friend of mine here in Northern California has to pull extra hours to manage the glut of book shipments to various outlets, presumably for both one-off private and bulk point-of-sale. Funny how that whole cause-and-effect things works, and how second, third, and even latter-order effects impact the daily routines of regular peoples I know. Kinda cool… global… or something.

We got together with some friends tonight for a leisurely walk over to the local ice cream parlour and some post-ice cream beers. At some point, Kerry, one of said friends, mentioned that she’d read the blog today (which is, as you read this, yesterday’s entry here) – and had a suggestion for my ongoing problem with birds in my garden. Backing up, I came home today to find two more tomatoes ruined – cherry this time, something they’ve previously not gone after. You can see them as the inline-image associated with this post. Anyway, Kerry suggested I offer the birds an alternative – an actual bird-food alternative. Now, I can immediately see this in two lights: 1) Having “real” bird food out for these beasts may sate them and ultimately keep them from my fruit, or, 2) Having “real” bird food out may invite even more hungry beasts into the yard – making me a regular avian all-you-can-eat buffet.

In the end, I decided to go ahead and give it a shot – as it seemed infinitely more implementable, not to mention humane, than my impulse-idea: A massively-charged “bird zapper” designed in the spirit of a “bug light.” Something that would find me coming home to piles of dead birds heaped around my planter box, all killed instantly the moment the dared flutter near my yummy tomatoes. I had also seriously planned to wall the entire thing via with some large-scale fine mesh box, but wasn’t going to be able to expend the time and effort until this weekend – which, at the current bird loss-rate, would cost me four to six more pieces of fruit. So, anyway, I’ll hang the seed-block thing early tomorrow morning… and see what happens. Wish me luck.

Goodnight.

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bloggin’ on the move


Happy Tuesday folks, I’m just gonna get right into it.

Blogging from among the masses in the general admission section on the lawn at the Gwen Stefani show (from my phone, no less).

The youth is in full “social gathering” regalia, young men with their baseball caps twisted sideways and half-cocked over tightly freshened-up crew-cuts, young ladies squeezed into skin-tight bits of cloth they’re trying to pass as clothes. Oh, it’s on (it’s not really “on,” I actually feel pretty old, to tell the truth).

I’m pretty much transfixed watching the chaperoning moms, the way they nonchalantly watch their pre-teen daughters “wind and grind.” I can’t tell if they’re really good at pretending not to care, all the while squirming on the inside, or if they truly don’t mind the statutory-inviting junior-stripper antics. Tell you what though, some of these girls are dancing like they have body parts that they haven’t even grown yet. Were we this bad when we were kids?

I’m actually petty amazed I’m able to blog from my phone right now; believe it or not, it’s the first time I’ve ever done it. This new BlackBerry predictive text keyboard is pretty functional, as should be evidenced by the fact that I totally wasted time typing about typing. Anyway, moving on.

Y’know, being here, seeing these kids, and, more importantly seeing these adults doing their best to look like kids, I’m actually happy to be all ‘grow’d up.” I’d hate to be “that guy:” Forty-something years old, all tatted up wearing a 13lbs silver herring-bone chain with spiked bleached-blonde hair ala “I’m thirteen and I just discovered Sid Vicious.” Hey, if I’m ever that guy, sit me down and lay it on me, OK? (The truth that is, lay the truth on me, OK?)

Well, the it’s nigh on midnight and we’re on our way home. The battery on this thing is almost gone, and I’m fresh out of things to say anyway. I know I’m totally gonna be disappointed with the length of this post when I see it on a real screen, but it looks huge squanched up on this tiny thing, so I’m calling it good.

‘Night.

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teenage freerange


I had planned on doing absolutely nothing Sunday in celebration of Father’s Day, but I ended up going on a do-nothing bender and wasting the whole weekend on the couch. The iPod stayed on shuffle, and I napped when Keaton napped – it was pure bliss. Saturday night we pondered renting a movie, and ended up downloading a pirated cam-copy of the new “Knocked Up,” kinda like a parent’s night out – but in. Y’know, we’d’ve paid $10 to watch it on-demand, I think – if the cable and movie industry teamed up to do first-run in the home. Could be a viable business model for young parents, older folks, and the generally shut-in or social-phobic. Duh.

But anyway, Sunday morning I woke to Sharaun carrying Keaton into the room with a card in her hand. “Can you give the card to daddy?,” she asked, and Keaton dutifully handed it over. Then, I was asked what I’d like for breakfast (I requested banana-walnut pancakes, since I was asked), and it was whipped up for me while I got ready. Sounds nice, right? ‘Twas. So, let’s keep going.

Really enjoyed reading this short article online the other day, reminded me of all the roaming I used to do as a kid. Sometimes, when I recall to Sharaun some of the journeys my pre-teen friends and I underwent, she’s amazed that our parents let us be as freerange as we were. As pre-driving kids – we were borderline feral. We’d range across the town on foot and by bike, at all hours – sometimes with parental blessing, sometimes without. I don’t think the level of paranoia was there like it is today, and that was only eighteen or so years ago. I can remember being in 7th grade, which would make me about thirteen years old, riding our bikes from our sleepy little riverside burg over the the causeway onto “the island” – a long ride even by my adult brain’s standards today. Once there, we were far enough removed from our own stomping grounds to feel independent and important. Plus, there was a fireworks store there that not only flaunted Florida law by selling the good stuff (firecrackers, bottlerockets, etc.) out of small room in back, but that also had no qualms selling to kids, as long as the money was green. We’d ride the eight or so miles in the moist-furnace of Florida heat, stop at Wendys for a Frosty, pick up a bundle of ladyfingers from the secret stash in back (all you had to do was ask), and take them over to the mall across the street to light a run of ’em and toss ’em in the womens’ bathroom.

Sometimes when we’re home visiting Sharaun’s family and we drive over that causeway, I’ll look to the skinny little strip of paint-cordoned concrete on our right where we used to ride and wonder at not getting killed. Not only did we ride, we walked. I can remember, one day, having walked up to the store for kicks. While there, we’d sneakily swithed the stick-on pircetag (before UPC) from a cheap piece of beef jerky to cover the pricier tag of a “10ft beefstick,” effectively stealing it for pennies on the dollar. As we walked home, we split into groups of two on either side of the narrow lane, each holding (and occasionally gnawing on) one end of the massive meat-rope as we stretched it across the road. Seeing a car approaching in the distance, we waited until the last minute to yank our snack-slash-toy out of harm’s way. Turned out that, in that car was my dad. Here we were, four thirteen year old boys, miles from home and on foot, trying to clothesline automobiles with a few yards of spun beef – and my dad didn’t bat an eye. He slowed, said hello, and was on his way, allowing us to find whatever trouble we could as we trudged the remaining miles homeward. The independence that we felt was liberating, and allowed us to get mixed up in all sorts of shady goings-on – and I consider that independence as a key part of my youth.

Today, though, my initial tendency is to keep my kid close. I’m going to do my best, though, to afford her the freedom she’ll need to get the same kind of independent growth that my friends and I did (minus the beer, pyromania, and weed, of course).

Goodnight.

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reeking of oaksmoke

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Wednesday night – I ran away from work today. Well, only in the physical sense, I suppose… as I actually did work-type activity, but from the comforts of my home rather than the cubicle. It was good, and I feel like, despite my Bush-when-he-was-in-the-Texas-National-Guard questionable work-ethic of late, I deserved and needed it. Now I sit here with the windows open, when they likely shouldn’t be – because the residual heat of the 100°+ day we had today here in brown Northern California hasn’t quite subsided yet – but I like them open, it makes me feel in tune with nature, or some such escapist notion. Yesterday I was at a conference in the city, and made the best of the hobknobbing time afforded me. I went to meet and greet, and both met and greeted to my satisfaction. I arrived home around midnight, and just didn’t feel like trudging into those oppressive aisles today.

Today I had planned on breaking in the new barbecue in a practice run, cooking a traditional meal for Sharaun and I the way I remember my grandpa doing it. My main goal was to figure out how to properly cook over the new grill, this being my first true woodfire barbecuing experience. But, the best laid plans… Anyway, we ended up supping with a good portion of our close friend base, and what had started as a “test meal” ended up more like my first official cook over the new contraption. Happily, things worked out fine. The meat was tasty, if just a tad more done than I’d like, and I could certainly taste the oak. I even cooked some pinquito beans to round out the authentic Santa Maria-ness of the whole thing. Overall, I was happy with the grill’s performance and the outcome – plus, it was totally fun tending the fire for hours prior to cooking (burned seven cuts of oak, more than I expected, but had a nice bed of cooking coals). In the end then: bravo.

I’m glad for the abbreviated week. Monday wasn’t busy at all, Tuesday was the conference, and Wednesday was today (you just read about it). Thursday is a regular day, and Friday we have a work-related getaway to the wine country for some good ol’ winesoaked camaraderie. Then, it’s Father’s Day and next weekend we’re off to Oregon to visit my folks again. After that, vacation while Sharaun’s parents visit one week, and again the next week as her sister and brother-in-law come calling. It’s all downhill until Labor Day folks, which is, you’ll soon find out, the much-anticipated beginning of my two-month paid “sabbatical” at work. Yes, the idea is autopilot from here on out.

Goodnight.

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santa maria style


Hey Monday night folks, or Tuesday morning folks – whatever the case may be. Pulled two tomatoes, one strawberry, and eight green beans from my garden yesterday. Ate the tomato and the strawberry, both were awesome, and am saving the beans until I can pick enough to make two tiny portions for Sharaun and I. There are plenty still on the bush, so I think by the end of the week we should have enough. More of the tomatoes are coloring-up though, and I just hope the things keep producing. Onward we go.

Anthony and I finished the Santa Maria style barbecue on Sunday, welding the final critical bits into place, giving it a once-over in high-temp black paint, and transporting it from his garage to my backyard. I still want to add on a few accouterments, like some hooks for fire-pokin’ tools, a raised grate for the wood/coals, some custom-fit cutting boards, and a “lid” kinda thing to place over the coals once I’m done cooking – but, it’s ready to cook on now.

Anxious to see it in action, Monday I picked up some oak at a local wood-gettin’-place. Santa Maria purists maintain that only Southern California native “red oak” produces the trademark Santa Maria barbecue flavor – but it’s just too hard to get up here. So, I instead went with a close relative, the so-called “interior” red oak of the Northern California foothills. It’s hard to judge exactly what you’re getting sometimes, as some folks refer to “mountain oak” as black oak, while some mean interior red. Things get more complicated because both the black and red interior oaks are all hybridized together in some cases. Either way, I stomped the woodyard until I found a sweet smelling reddish-colored wood called “mountain live oak,” which I think is about as close to Santa Maria Coastal Red as I’m gonna get easily here. Wow, a wood lesson.

Anyway, I set an inaugural two-log fire in the barbecue Tuesday afternoon to see how it burned, judge the heat and ventilation, and just get an idea of the smell of the particular wood I bought. Oh man, smelling that pungent smoke rise from the grill immediately took me back to my Grandfather’s back porch in Southern California. The barbecue seemed to function perfectly, and now I just have to break it in with a nice tri-tip. A

Here’s a couple pictures of the finished product. We did end up engineering a spring-tension mechanism on the crank so that the grilling surface stays put when you let go at a certain level (we even did an engineer-style nerd-test to see how much weight the springs could support before the crank was pulled into unwinding: ~30lbs). Check her out:



Sitting in the backyard.



Fired up as a test run.

That’s really all I had today. Wednesday I’m off to San Francisco for a day-long visit to a work-type conference – probably be back too late too blog.

Goodnight.

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you see the balls on that thing?


Oh man it’s great having a blog that works. Or, I should rather say, it’s great having a host that works. I can write with ease, I can preview with ease, and, hopefully, you can enjoy the end result with ease (or, at least you could not-enjoy the end result… but still with ease).

A long, long time ago, I wrote a blog wondering about how penguins “do it.” This was a genuine question on my part, albeit passed off for laughs for the blog. The question had stemmed from a curiosity that I’ve had since I was younger: Where are birds’ naughty bits? I just took it to the extreme form of bird in an extreme environment for the sake of the blog because I thought it’d be funnier. Actually, I looked it up, and it’s a pretty decent entry – you can read it too, if you want. Anyway, this is a relevant opener for my blog today – because I finally figured it out.

Today, folks – today I saw a bird with huge balls.

I got home from work around five. Stopped on the way home to see the Saigon Turtle (I love this guy now, every time he cuts my hair I just sit there and marvel silently at his backstory). And, of course, my slight OCD requires that I must take a shower post-haircutting, lest those little unseen bits of shorn mane find a way to burrow into my skin and sprout more of the evil stuff I’m cursed with (which I clearly do not need). Anyway, my dome’s tightened-up, I’m home, and I’m showered – that’s where we were.

Fresh from the shower, I step into the living room to Keaton smiling as she toddles towards me chanting, “Dada!, Dada!” My heart melts, and I scoop her up and whirl her around a bit. Then, I ask her, “Wanna go outside and check on Daddy’s garden?” Not really giving her much time to answer, I assume she does, and crook her in my arm to head outside.

And now, I’d like to switch the narrative voice here to Sharaun, and write the next sentence as I like to imagine she would recount the tale:

Then I heard, “Oh my God! Quick, get the camera!”

There. Done. Now back to me.

As I turned the corner to inspect my garden, I could hardly believe my eyes. There, inside my less-than-twenty-four-hours-old “Fort Knox for Strawberries,” was my arch-enemy: the dang bird. One ripe strawberry, folks… one dang berry. I had intended to pick it today, and was happy that the dang bird hadn’t even touched it yesterday (must have been full from eating the one that prompted Fort Knox or something). And here, flapping madly, I had my quarry penned. Keaton “oohed” and “ahhed” as we approached the increasingly frantic berry whore. I still couldn’t quite believe it, it was almost too good to be true – and my mind immediately went to how fun it would be to write this very entry. “But, it’ll be nothing without pictures,” I thought as I once again hollered to Sharaun for the camera.

A full thirty seconds went by while Keaton and I examined the trapped beastie… fruitlessly (well, depending on the definition) flapping around looking for a way out. I laughed. Sharaun finally arrived with the camera, and I edged in to get a good shot. As I did, Mr. Berrybeaks became even more agitated – obviously sensing his impending doom. He threw his winged body wildly against the confines of For Knox for Strawberries. I snapped one picture:

As I reviewed the image, I was unhappy with it, and moved closer for a better shot. Then, out of luck, Berrbeaks found a weak seam in Fort Knox and was free. You’d think, harried from such a terrifying experience, he would immediately fly fast and far away. Oh no, not that bastard Berrybeaks – that bastard has an image to maintain.

He instead flew to the fence, alighted there, glanced down at me, shat, and then casually took wing.

OK, so I made up the part about him crapping – but I bet he tried and just couldn’t make, knowing him. Alas, I only have the one picture. But, I’ve gone to the trouble to go extreme-closeup for you:

I don’t really know what I was going to do had he really been trapped and at my mercy. I’d like to think I would’ve wrung his little bird neck. But, then again, I am the guy growing delicious berries outside in full view. So, feeling incredibly defeated, I set about fortifying Fort Knox for Strawberries. I think I found my flaw, a weak front-flap opening I designed specifically for picking access. After being so handily beaten though, I doubt it will work. I guess I’m just not meant to have strawberries… dang bird.

Moving on.

Sharaun lost her keys again today, she called me as I was sitting down for lunch at home. Called while performing a CSI-style grid-search of the local grocery store where she and Keaton were now stranded. I asked her if she checked with the counter to see if someone may have turned them in – she had, and no one did. I asked if she’d checked the parking lot between her car and the store – she had, and they weren’t there. “OK,” I said, “I’ll be right there.” I hastily finished my food and jumped in the car. As I pulled into the parking lot I spotted her and Keaton standing around. I parked, used my key to open her trunk and loaded her bags, then lifted Keaton from her buggy-seat for a hug. Eventually, when I got to opening her driver’s side door, I ended up finding her keys there on the floorboard.

Something wrong with that girl… but man do I love her.

Wow, I’m quite proud of all the linking I did in today’s blog – I have back-references galore, huh? To me, if I was a reader, that’d be key. It’d be like getting several more paragraphs than there actually are (y’know, by virtue of the old stuff you can go back and read?). Yeah, well, I liked it.

Goodnight.

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home alone


Today Sharaun and I reached a parenting milestone, although, we admittedly reached it long before I thought we would. See, today, we left Keaton at home alone for the first time. Now, before you go calling up CPS, let me elaborate. Sharaun usually heads to the gym early in the morning for an early morning “spin” class (not being a gym kinda guy myself, I imagine this is a Grateful Dead concert style dance class for women in long flowy bohemian skirts). Also important to let you know: Sharaun locks her keys in the car all the time.

Now, with those two pieces of knowledge, you can better appreciate my story. So, Sharaun leaves the house around 5:30am or something for spin class, I’m merrily sleeping – dreaming Natalie Portman is feeding me Pizza Rolls in her underwear (a.k.a. foreplay). ‘Round about quarter-to-seven, my foggy brain thinks it’s hearing a knock-knock-knock at the front door – I groggily dismiss as an auditory hallucination. Couple seconds later and the knocking is back, now loud and unmistakable. I climb out of bed and peer through the peephole: Sharaun. I open the door and retreat behind it so as to hide my unbridled magnificence from the world at large.

“Hey,” I say. “Hey,” she says. “What happened,” I ask. “I’m screwed,” she replies, “I locked my keys in my car.” “Mmm… and you’ve been using your spare key, so you really are screwed,” I concur. “Yeah,” she says, “I’m totally screwed.” “How’d you get here,” I ask. “Susie dropped me off.” “Huh, that was nice,” I say. I then head off to the shower, while Sharaun makes an audible vow to redouble her key-finding efforts. Over the past couple weeks, she’s dumped out and sorted, archaeologist style, through Keaton’s toy bin multiple times. She’s pulled off all the couch cushions twice, poked around under couches and even ruled out odd locations like the garage, bathrooms, and the fridge – all with no results. At this point I’m not too worried. Worst case, I figure as I shower, she puts Keaton in the stroller and walks several miles to the gym to call AAA (on a payphone, because her cellphone is also locked in her car.. with her keys) to come open the door.

But, it never got to worst case – Sharaun walked into the bathroom before I could even hit the showers proudly holding out her found keys in front of her, beaming. “Where were they?,” I asked. “In the couch, where I’ve looked a hundred times,” she replied, “But deep in the crack, way up in there.” “That’s good,” I say. All’s right with the world, right?

“How am I going to get to my car?,” she asks. “We’ll have to leave Keaton here,” I say. At the time, Keaton is still sound asleep in her bed – probably dreaming about Job feeding her Cheerios, or something. “Can we do that?,” she asked. “Well, what else can we do, she’s still asleep,” I say.

And so, I threw on some shorts and a t-shirt and grabbed my wallet and keys and we took off. And, for about five minutes, Keaton ruled the roost – manned the castle. Now, I don’t know if this makes us bad parents… or if I could get in trouble for writing it here, but she seemed to survive OK without us.

And, in the end Sharaun found her lost keys.

Oh hey, check this neato little “invention” out.

Goodnight.