Category: general

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

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green again

Off into the sun.
Yeah, we’re back to the good old sickly green layout. Hope you didn’t get too attached to the pink. Likely gonna be a short entry tonight, I’ve got lots to do before I’m ready to split tomorrow. So let’s get on with it.

Picking up prescriptions and getting haircuts and doing laundry: must be the eve of international travel. And, it is; tomorrow (today as you read) I’ll be taking wing en route to popping my Shanghai cherry (can I say that?). Dunno if I mentioned it, but I’m not staying at a hotel while there. Our group rents an apartment there, since we often have travelers on-site. It’ll be me and two of my closer work buddies crashing there this coming week. I fully anticipate some college-esque late-night tipsy chat sessions – and am looking forward to a week of unbridled maleisms: objectifying women, taking about bowel movements, ragging on each other, and being generally female-repellent. It should be fun. Hopefully the work part will end at the appointed time each day, and I’ll have my evenings to enjoy some of the city.

Tomorrow, on the way to the airport, I have an appointment to call the work travel folks and arrange my early December trip to India. Yeah, making reservations for an international trip while on another international trip. India. Now there’s something different. It’ll be my last trip of the year, and not just by virtue of the year being nearly over by the time I get back. I’m excited about it, and I’m also looking forward to it being one of the last big trips before Lil’ Chino comes. Sidetrack: Oh, and yes – we’re still calling the little girl in my wife’s belly “Lil’ Chino.” I don’t care if it’s not a girl’s name… it’s a great name for a fetus. So there. OK, back to… whatever. I’m planning to cut down on travel starting next year. God sometimes this stupid thing sounds so boring and self-serving. So many sentences starting with “I” and a body starts to get tired of talking about himself.

Until Monday in China. Goodnight.

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slaying giants

Sprung forth.
I made a pink blog and a blue one; was ready with either. That’s how much I care about this stupid thing …

Well, we had Lil’ Chino’s sexy test yesterday. We didn’t see a penis, so that either means we’re having a girl or there’s gonna be six more months of winter. A girl! Wow, I was dead-sure that we were gonna have a boy. When they told us, I was actually surprised… I had fully expected to hear “I think this baby is a boy.” Not disappointed, mind you, just surprised. Being honest, the prospect of having a girl scares me more than that of having a boy. I know that may sound silly, but I think of girls as such delicate or fragile little things… and boys being a little more rugged. I’m worried that I’m not gentle enough or something. I guess you know by now that this isn’t a “real” concern of mine, not truly a “worry” at all – just my first thoughts knowing we’ll soon have a little girl.

Sharaun and I both took the day off for the event; well, the sonogram and to get some time to hang out before I leave for a week. After the sonogram, we headed out to an artery-clogging breakfast at the local greasy spoon, and then proceeded to the Babies R Us to look at all the incredibly overpriced and somewhat doubtfully necessary baby merch. My lord y’all, babies need a lot of stuff! She needs a crib to sleep in, a bassinet to sleep in, a car seat to ride in, and a portable crib/playpen thing to sleep in. I think I can accomplish quite the same with an empty Xerox box – a perfect universal carry/sleep thing. Sharaun did not like this idea.

Hey… it’s been a while; let’s talk God a bit, shall we?

If the Catholic church can really pull this off, it may be the single biggest sea-change in the history of modern-day Christianity. Shock and horror, the Biblical tale of creation and the flood are similar to countless other cultures’ creation and flood stories – and are likely myth, not literal history. I think the majority of “young” believers know, in their “heart of hearts,” that the Bible is not 100% literal. But, in some cases, those thoughts are squashed as blasphemy and tickets to Hell by their chosen faith. So, to see the world’s major faith stand up and tell its adherents that perhaps Jonah really didn’t live inside a fish’s belly is refreshing.

Oh sure, TBN will say this is simply Satan’s toehold in the eventual complete degradation of God’s perfect message. But get real folks. In my opinion, in order to survive, hard-line, legalistic, over-literal interpretations of Christianity will need to recognize that times are changing and the masses are no longer satisfied with “magic” as an explanation for things they don’t understand. They’ll need to embrace this and adapt, or settle for a following of unbalanced extremists. Don’t worry TBN, you can still keep your message and you offering plates – just give up and admit Methuselah, while he may well have looked hundreds of years old, probably never really made it past 75.

Turning again to the topic of the Halloween project. I had forgotten that the cylinder I ordered has a 1/8″NPTF inlet, and it seems that no store in the world carries anything but 1/4″ NPT and the occasionally 3/8″ NPT. So, I’m once again hindered by jumping the gun on the project ingredients. I do this every year, and swear every year I won’t order everything the next year until I’ve thoroughly planned out the whole project. And, turns out I was able to get a solenoid for even cheaper than the Ebay deal that feel through. The only drawback being that I now have to wait until halfway through October before I can even assemble and test the coffin prop. I usually like to get the decorations up at least a week-and-a-half in advance of the big night, which only gives me a week after coming back to ensure everything’s working right with all the props.

Tada.

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pulling up grass

Koff.
Today I got all developer and GIMP’d up a favorite/bookmark icon for the blog. If all works well, instead of the plain Firefox or IE page icon in your bookmarks, you should now see a little green thing that matches the page’s banner scheme. Ahh… so much work for something so few people care about.

I don’t know what’s wrong with me folks. I’m feeling supremely frustrated, or burdened, or something. I’ve got this strange sense of desperation, invoking my fight or flight response – which for me is nearly 100% flight – which leaves me with an overwhelming desire to run away, to drop out. I get like this sometimes, I don’t know what it is. I just get to feeling like I need to take off, mostly from work. Just take a vacation and get away… completely disconnect from everything that’s running around in my head. It’s times like these that I fall back on my fantasy of taking Sharaun and running away to some remote location, a desert island, perhaps, and just doing nothing – just enjoying each other. I’ve been like this since I was a kid, I guess you could call it temperamental or sensitive. In gradeschool, I used to just decide to spend an entire recess sitting alone in the far corner of the field on the playground. I would cross my legs and pull up grass and make chains from those little flowers (yeah, yeah, insert gay jokes here, it’s cool). In some ways, I did it because I knew it would draw some folks out to me… curious as to what I was doing. But, for the most part, I did it to just get away and sulk, or think, or not think, or… whatever. All my life, I’ve always loved being alone with things I enjoy. Listening to music alone, working in the yard alone, reading a book alone, being alone with Sharaun, etc. It’ll pass, but maybe I should consider some time off… just for the heck of it.

The other day in the airport, Tony and I happened to strike up a conversation with a girl who was studying to be a veterinarian. Our conversations turned to equine surgery and pet insurance and all other various nutty topics. At one point, she mentioned something about taking care of a cat with diabetes – giving it special food, insulin, taking it for regular checkups, etc. That’s when I made my mistake, as well as an enemy for life. I mentioned that, should my cat come down with kitty diabetes or feline AIDS or tore her tiny ACL – she’d be out of luck. That’s right, I like our cat – but not quite enough to spend multiple hundreds of dollars for kitty surgery. I’m sorry; you’re a cat – you’re pretty replaceable. You can get a new one of you for like $20 at the pound. When you’re born, people give you away – that should tell you something. Anyway, this girl was shocked at my callousness… that I would dare consider a cat expendable. Thankfully, our plane began boarding before she could report me to PETA. Honestly, sometimes I don’t know why I even try to write…

Sitting here on the couch when I should really be doing dishes instead, they’re up there taunting me, being dirty on purpose.

Goodnight.

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look timmy, a mountain! do you see the mountain?!

Hey man, is that Southern Rock man? Well.... tuuuurn it up man!!
I don’t even know if this entry makes sense… I’m delerious-tired.

Skirting Portland means a freakin’ maze of intertwined highways, crawling along on half of them with your foot on the brake. I’m pretty dang tired, 4am wake-up this morning and not much rest on the flight up. All-day meeting requiring my attention didn’t help. Now I’m back in the aeropuerto waiting for my “on time” flight to get here on time. I just want a nap, I’m tired.

The blog spam has been “shock and awe” style lately, over 100 items a day. I must say, though, WordPress stops nearly every single piece – every so often, a single piece gets through and I have to manually delete it. Most of the spam is for online hold’em, with viagra and phentermine running a close second. I tell you what, people must buy a whole heck of a lot of viagra and phentermine online… something’s making the marketing worth it.

The plane home was the flight from Hell. To my left, a young man, perhaps 21 or 22. Across the aisle to my right, a young mother with two young children, perhaps 3 and 4. I would soon come to find out that these two seemingly normal folks were, indeed, two of the most surreal people I could’ve possibly run into when I all I wanted to do was grab a nap on the way home.

The young man was a devout Seventh Day Adventist, he told me, out of the blue. He was also a “plane talker.” You know, those people who, for whatever reason, feel like they have to talk to you every second of the flight. He regaled me from the moment he sat down. “So, what about gas prices?” “Can you believe this hurricane?” He went on to tell me that he was coming home from college, to visit his folks for a while. He was double-majoring in Theology and Fitness Management, with a minor in Piano. He said he didn’t want to be “tied down” to one job. Yeah, because the market’s wide-open for Christian school PE teachers who play piano. Obviously intelligent by some of his comments, his unfortunately baritone, droning, and slow, stinted speech made him sound like the vulture from the cartoons: “Duhhh, which we did he go, George? Which way did he go?”

The woman with the kids was worse. Her voice went to eleven. She was a full two decibels louder than anyone else on the plane, and she was one of those people who is her kids’ best friend. “Get ready Jessie, we’re about to pull out on the runway! We’re about to go fast! Hang on!! Are you ready to go fast?! Get ready, we’re about to go. Watch the wheels, here we go!” “Look at the clouds! Do you see the clouds? Sit still, do you feel those bumps? That’s called ‘turbulence.’ Feel it? Look at the mountains! Can you see the wing? Isn’t this fun?!” Oh. My. God. This woman never shut up, never took a breath, every annoying pointless bit of childlike banter seemingly screamed through a megaphone. This back and forth went on for the entire flight, her children talking as loud as her – following her example.

At one point, while feigning sleep to avoid dealing with it all – I realized how insane the stereo picture between my two ears was. Babbling loud mom on my right, and babbling spiritual Adventist on my left. That’s when it hit me, no one would ever believe this – I was obligated to record it to prove my story. So, I snuck out my cellphone and, against FAA regulations, began recording as the two loonies’ ranting crescendoed. And here, folks, I present the audio proof of my flight from Hades, complete with my own transcripts lest you have a hard time understanding what’s going on. Keep in mind, I sat my phone on my lap while recording this – so this is the level I would hear if my ears were on my hips… helps to establish the levels we’re dealing with.

[audio:Record011.mp3]
Seriously, listen to this guy ramble (with absolutely no response from me, completely unsolicited):

… But umm… yeah… I have a hard time… ahh… being able to listen to… something that just, is the same four chords forty times, literally forty times in a song. It’s like, man do something else. This is an insult to human intelligence to say, that, it’d be like saying – and they say it the same way to – for me, y’know, repetition is OK but, they [add it?] a different way.. with your innuendo, and even when you’re talking you don’t talk like that. Over and over again, y’know, just talk in a monotonic way [Howdy Doody?] and all that. So, I don’t know, I think… some… I mean repetition is an essential element of music, but it’s not… it… uhh.. it has to be done right; or I mean it has to be done in a real… it needs to be done with thought, as well as emotion. All the songs really are too… just… uhh… what; most everyone’s been to church and heard hymns played in a lifeless way, y’know, and so I can see different extremes to somewhere where all their years – it’s, umm, there’s all, it’s all emotion but no.. [??] y’know. And then you have… thought but no feeling, so. … Different songs are gonna have different amplitudes and different elements… It’s so amazing because it’s a holistic language. It’s, umm, it effects the body and the mind and the spirit, y’know, it effects every facet, y’know.

[audio:Record012.mp3]
Here’s a good idea of the stereo effect I was getting.. with the Monotone Saint on one side and Cheerleader Mom on the other. There’s something about the “animal kingdom” in there… I swear. What a flight.

I feel like I wrote this thing so fast, I’m sure it’s full of typos – and I’m not going back to proofread.

Goodnight.

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five months and counting

Babies...
Sunday night on the eve of a busy Monday. Landscapers coming to quote me some damage for a helping-hand in the backyard, a many-times-rescheduled appointment at the dentist, and sometime to squeeze in a bit of work if I’m careful. My day and a half vacation did me well, especially in the beauty and solitude of the Californian high desert… sleeping under the stars and not taking showers. With another long weekend coming up, I’m looking forward to a continuing recharge.

I can’t wait until Sharaun’s belly begins to show. At this point, the notion that we’re pregnant has pretty much sunk in – but there’s not much in the way of outward signs to confirm it for me. I think, when I can see her belly swollen with this new thing that’s living and breathing and growing… that’s what will really get me. I really shouldn’t have to wait much longer, a month maybe, and I’ll get this visual reward. Somewhere in one of the baby books we have, it talked about the child being able to hear inside the womb. I don’t think it’s until much later, but the thought of that blows me away. Lil’ Chino can hear us talking and laughing and singing and everything. And to round out the baby paragraph, another of our high school friends just had their 1st baby. That makes a uncountable number of people my age that I used to know that are new parents. I guess it’s that time or something, the babies-before-thirty thing perhaps.

This weekend most of the regular and extended friend/acquaintance collective packed it up and headed down south for Erik & Kristi’s wedding. Ceremony and reception were held on her ranch, which has been worked by their family for five generations, since the late 1800s. Surely this was one of the grandest affairs I’ve ever been to. Planned to a tee, and the whole thing going down in the most amazing of locations. Just walking through the tall pasture grass on the property, you get a feeling of history and hard-won homesteader success – the fruits of early westward settlers’ labor. Most of the “young kids” opted to camp on the ranch, in a makeshift shanty village dubbed “tent city.” We had a rock-rung firepit, babbling brook running through, and even a porta-john to relieve ourselves in. If you’ve ever read the Lord of the Rings, the chapter about Bilbo’s party – right in the first few pages – that’s what this thing reminded me of. An amazing outdoor celebration, abundant with food, song, drink and dance… lights on trees and candles on tables. The sounds of kids running around and champagne bottles popping. It was an affair to remember; and on top of it all we got to camp and stare into a fire each night – a universally enjoyed spectator sport which I’m convinced is hardcoded in human DNA.

‘Nite.

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dreams

Verdant.
Don’t know if anyone else managed to catch the National Geographic Channel’s Inside 9/11 documentary, but man was it excellent. Crammed with interesting details, the first of two two-hour installments details the events leading up to the terrorist attacks on America. The forming of the cells, flight training, etc. The second installment chronicles the events on the day of the attacks. Masterfully put together and chock full of emotional firsthand stories and tons of amazing footage and audio – it’s by far the best telling of the events I’ve ever seen.

Sunday the backyard beat me again. I’m about at the level of frustration where I’m ready to call in a landscaping crew and just hand the task off to them. I really don’t know what else to do. Every time I put on my work clothes and get all motivated, I only end up pacing around the edge of the pavers wondering what to do. Soon enough, I’m so confused and frustrated by not being able to see the solution – I give up and come inside, take off my workclothes, and sit down on the couch in defeat. I really just don’t know what to do. Moving the sprinklers back is such a chore… and then there’s still the problem of actually placing a border around the porch. Sharaun suggested I call a landscaper, have them come take a look, and then pay them to fix it. Problem is – I know that’ll be thousands of dollars… and I begin to wonder about my priorities, spending thousands on a backyard when we’ve got a baby on the way and aren’t really sitting on a pile of money. My pure frustration and this extended (more than a year) stalemate have me nearly convinced that I’ll never actually get around to do anything – and paid help may be the only option. In fact, I think I kind of silently made the decision today… that I’m going to call on Monday, and have them come out this week to evaluate it and draw up some plans. At least at that point, I could still say I did most of the yard. Bottom line is: I just want this dang thing done.

I’m sure someone else, somewhere, at some point, has written about this before, but I’m gonna go ahead with it. I’m not sure how many of you out there used to (or perhaps still do, I’m not judgin’) indulge in a little recreational drug use. Me, I gave up the weed years ago – but my smokin’ years left me with a question that I still think about every so often. Maybe you’re not too familiar with the world of drugs, that’s good, you’re likely better of for it. But, I’m sure you’ve seen an episode of COPS or Law and Order where they show some kind of drugs (pot or cocaine, maybe) packaged for street sale in those little tiny ziplock baggies. There are varying sizes, but when I was in high school you could buy a dimebag ($10 baggie) if you only wanted a joint’s worth of stuff. Most bigger dealers won’t mess with dimes, since they are a pain to package – but the profit margin is higher the smaller you breakup the brick. Anyway, kids are poor, and dimebags are cheap and easy – so that’s what we bought when we were weaning onto the stuff.

What I’m wondering is, where the heck do people get those miniature baggies? And, under what guise are they sold? I would argue that bags of those size are used almost exclusively for the resale of illicit drugs. You never see them in stores, although I have seen them for sale at a head shop or two before. If I’m a soldier in the war on drugs, I’m gonna start tracking customers of these little baggies. Because I’ll tell you what, the guy that buys 10,000 of them isn’t using them to store buttons. Honestly, what else can you do with a 3/4″ by 3/4″ ziplock baggie? You’re not storing screws or beads in there… you’re hawking crack or coke or something on the streetcorner.

Lately I’ve been remembering my dreams when I wake in the morning, which is unusual for me. Some of them were so strange, I wanted to write them down and try my hand at “interpreting” them. Here goes. Wednesday night: I crap my pants at work. I’m running down the aisle trying to make it to the bathroom, but I don’t make it. Interpretation: I’m afraid of messing up at work. Thursday night: I witness the murder of a young girl on a school playground, Ben and I are chased by the killer. Interpretation: I’m afraid of something, and I’m trying to avoid it. Friday night: Anthony is too drunk to drive, so I’ll do it for him. But, he’s towing a boat and I can’t back it up. He agrees to backup the boat and then I can drive away. However, he backs up over a fire hydrant, overturning the boat and killing two kids who were sitting in it. Interpretation: To me this implies I have guilt of some kind, feeling bad for letting those girls get crushed. Saturday night: I’m back working at Omni Music & Video in Florida, but my coworkers are my coworkers from my current job. Interpretation: Work’s got me stressed, and I’m casting thought back to the simpler days of working at the record store. There’s an underlying theme here… one of work and fear. New job, new responsibilities, new fears.

I don’t know how I missed the fact that the Arcade Fire put out a 7" single with two new tracks, but I did. Consisting of one original and one cover, which are simply gorgeous and OK-for-a-B-side, respectively. The A-side, Cold Wind, is a haunting tune that was supposedly done exclusively for some show on HBO I’ve never seen because we don’t have HBO. Who cares, it’s new Arcade Fire… and it’s lovely. Please, our Father who art in Heaven, please allow this band to continue producing music of this quality. Too bad their September show at the Warfield is sold out. I think we paid ~$10 to see them the 1st time at the Bottom of the Hill… oh how they’ve come along, fetching a cold $25 per ticket now.

‘Night.

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happy birthday sharaun!

Lil' Chino?
Didn’t write last night because I had nothing to say. Went out for some beer and “networking” after work, ended up staying out late and talking shop with some other work-folk. Nearly Wednesday now… or at least Tuesday night, the week is flying by again. Time for another post, so here goes.

Tonight, Sharaun and I watched some show on the Discovery channel that documented the conception-to-birth process through a mixture of following actual pregnant women and some pretty decent CG animations of the baby’s journey from egg and sperm to birth. It was a pretty cool show, documenting the fetus’s development throughout the pregnancy (do you know I had to look up how to make “fetus” possessive? The whole s-apostrophe/apostrophe-s thing is one grammar concept that I still get confused on). Anyway, the show of course culminated with video of the women who’s pregnancies were followed finally giving birth. At several points during the show, I had to stiff-face back some tears, lest Sharaun realize that the whole thing was so blindingly amazing to me. Crying isn’t something I’m accustomed to, but seeing some of that stuff and thinking about it going on in my wife’s belly at that very moment was just too much.

Oh man, I want this so bad. Honestly, I could watch the Andy Griffith Show every day – I always revert to the TiVo’d episodes when there’s nothing else on. These are even better though, because they’re restored and uncut, containing scenes that even TV Land doesn’t air, and as a bonus have the promo-spots that Andy did for products. DVDs are funny because, for the most part, I don’t care about them. The few I own (less than ten), I never watch. So, I don’t normally desire to “own” movies or DVDs of TV shows. However, with things like this set – and the Land of the Lost set I ordered on impulse – the obsessive collector in me takes over. For the completist, these “season” compilations with full uncut scenes and bonus items are like the Holy Grail. Now if they’d only come out with an authorized version of the Wonder Years… because this one is bootleg as hell.

No visible results yet from the deadly poison I administered to my ailing lawn last week, but I’m still encouraged by stories on the ‘net that mention at least a week timeframe for results, and some at two weeks with a couple applications. Hopefully the death will be widespread and completely unexpected by the weedgrass – I’m thinking shock and awe.

Goodnight.