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on abundance

More lines than one!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.

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‘nother ‘ween gone

My chicks forever.Halloween has come and gone.

We had our usual party.  It was well attended and fun.  The costumes were great.  The next night, Halloween proper, we got together with a few close friends and took the kids trick-or-treating around the block.  I also fired up the fog machine, strobe light, and scary music while I handed out candy.  A neat story came of this, read on.

At one point, while I was out trick-or-treating with Keaton, a friend stayed back at the house to hand out candy in my stead.  While he was there, a young girl braved the path to our door.  As happens with some of our ‘treaters, they get a little scared and edgy by the time they’ve navigated around the pop-up coffin, an animated witch, and a hovering ghost – and by the time they get to the door it’s a testament of will that they’ve made it.  And then, just in time, a skeleton drops from the ceiling above their heads with a loud ooga-booga noise.  For this girl, it must have been to much.  Bill, the buddy covering candy-distribution while I was out, said she turned and ran as fast as she could into the house.  Too bad the screen door wasn’t open.  She ran right into it at full speed.  Man, why couldn’t that have happened while I was there?

I’m afraid that, tonight, I don’t have much for the blog.  I spent most of Saturday nursing a hangover and cleaning up the aftermath of Friday night’s party, and then after church Sunday I killed the afternoon taking down and storing the Halloween props for another year.  Both days were long and made busy with the work of the hands.  But, the house is back together and things are as much in order as the ever are.  So, not much writing… but, I did find time to upload the costumes from the Halloween Bash to get the voting started.  So head on over here and cast a vote for your favorites from the evening.

Yes, Halloween has come and gone; and now it’s time for Thanksgiving and beyond that, Christmas.  That

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run over by the wheel

I'll paint rainbows...When I was a kid, I used to hold my poo.

I thought of a bunch of different ways to start this entry… but that one above ended up winning out.  Simple, true, and gets right to the point.  But, to flesh out the statement with a little more info, let me expound.  ‘Round about the age of seven or so, and right through to the age of, oh, I don’t know, maybe as old as ten, I valued my no-pooping activity much more than the time that actually pooping stole from it.  What I mean is, instead of stopping what I was doing and going inside to use the toilet when nature told me to, I’d “hold it.”

This holding it amounted to, and I know, this is going to be funny, stopping what I was doing (yes), sitting down on the ground with my legs tucked underneath me, and physically holding in the bowel movement.  If I remember correctly, physiologically this meant I was going through the biological motions yet just not allowing my efforts to, ahh, bear fruit.  What I mean here, put a bit more coarsely, is that I would be sitting there and bearing down, but using my legs and feet to prevent anything from really happening.

I know this is disgusting, but I promise I’m telling you for a reason (if “setting up a blog” is a “reason” these days).  “Disgusting” would be word enough for just forcibly holding in poo, but I know that, certainly, this practice had to have some additional impact.  I mean, shunting your poo into a clenched and stopped-up bum can’t be a nice tidy way to delay a bowel movement.  I assume my underwear bore the brunt of this practice.  Thinking back, I can remember my mom complaining about my less-than-clean drawers.  To be clear, I wasn’t “having accidents” or anything… I just think I was leaving a bit more… residual… than a normal youngster might.  In the middle school locker room, we used to give guys with “skidmarks” a hard time – I imagine that my drawers during this time may have made good targets (I’d given up the practice long before middle school).

So why am I telling you this?  Well, because… the other day, in the middle of getting frustrated with Keaton for not wanting to go sit on the potty, I caught myself wondering, “What’s the deal with not wanting to go to the bathroom?  Why is this so hard?”  And then… as I was on about my third, “No, it doesn’t matter if you don’t want to, you’re going to try and use the potty before we leave!,” I remembered my old days of poo-holding.  How I never wanted to leave my friends or stop what I was doing to take a potty timeout; how I could get by with just a couple seconds sitting on the ground instead, and it all made sense.  Karma.  I’m being punished by the Wheel.

I still made her use the potty before we left, though.  She went, too.  Go figure.

Goodnight.

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prince charlie

Pod person.Well friends, it’s Sunday afternoon and I’m taking a bit of a break from doing some housework.  Keaton is dancing around in her Princess Araura costume as Animal Collective plays.  She keeps singing something about finding her “Prince Charlie.”

Prince Charlie… I LOL’d.

Oh and yes: housework.  As the sole proprietor of this here shop for another Mr. Mom weekend, I’ve busied myself tidying, laundering, and scullionry.  After church Keaton and I swung by the grocery store to pickup some foodstuffs for lunch (and I couldn’t resist a sixpack of Sam Adams Octoberfest brew, a cold bottle of that goes so well with housecleaning).  She got a turkey sandwich, some grapes the size of small eggs (which were on sale), and a glass of milk.  I had a few salt-and-pepper kettle chips (“send a man shopping,” they’ll say…), grapes, and a turkey sandwich of my own.  I heard they changed the food pyramid recently… wonder how I did?

Random topics today, if you hadn’t already figured it out…

Y’know, I’ve got to hand it to whoever does the new Scooby Doo cartoon on TV.  We caught an episode of it while in the hotel room down in Mexico, and I was pleasantly surprised at how true-to-formula it was (that formula being how I remember the show when I was a kid).  The voices are spot-on, the stories develop and play out as expected, and the jokes are still aimed at adults as often as they are kids.  Keaton seemed to dig it (she is my child, after all) so I was more than happy to setup a recurring recording for it on the DVR.  Watching it with her is like going back in time a little.  Good job Scooby people, good job.

I spent a good bit of time Saturday further tweaking all the props to get them perfectly dialed-in.  And, as expected, once I had things pretty much how I wanted them, two of the props suffered major breakdowns.  Always; always, always, always.  The stupid coffin popper appears to have popped his pneumatic frame right off the bottom of the coffin – that’s not going to be an easy fix; and I found the crank ghost as a sad crumpled mess of glowing cheesecloth, hanging by one arm and going up-and-down.  Ugh.  At first, I figured I’d just let ’em rot for a day or two… not wanting to see how badly things were broken and learn how long it’d take to fix it all.  But, I had some free time Sunday between loads of laundry so I took a look.  Happily, things were all fixed and back to working order in under thirty minutes.

Goodnight.

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eighteen apples

Keaton Appleseed.There was a storm here last week while we were in Mexico.  Apparently it was fairly violent, or so say our friends.

When we got home, I did a quick inspection to look for damage.  The newer trees were the most notable casualties.  I don’t think any of them are broken beyond repair, but several were bent nearly 90°.  Most alarming was seeing the apple tree I planted only this year, broken free from it’s stabilizing stake and doubled over under the weight of its own fruit.

Over the years I’ve had mixed luck with fruit trees, although lots of that is likely just my impatience during the early years when they just don’t produce much.  But this apple tree has surprised me; producing so much fruit I was amazed that the little sapling could even support it all (both weight-wise and nutrient-wise).  It’ll be interesting to see what it does next year, as I have a theory that I got so much fruit this year because it was cross-pollinated at the nursery amongst all the other trees before I even planted it.  Likely next year, unless I plant a sufficient cross-pollinator (don’t think my pears will do it), I won’t get as much.  The internet also says I did wrong by allowing so much fruit to grow this year, and that by not thinning it I may have ruined the tree’s crop for years to come… so we’ll see.

But anyway… this was about my poor tree all bent and broken after the stormwinds.  Since it was 1am when we got home, I only propped the thing back up against its stake, not re-tying it or anything.  Then, a day or so ago, Sharaun picked one of the largest apples, insisting it was ripe and looked “like the Fujis I buy in the store.”  Sure enough, it was ripe, and was totally delicious.  Today then, after work, I went ahead and picked the rest of the fruit.  Keep in mind, this tree is only about four feet tall and just over an inch around at the thickest part of trunk.  Even leaving a clump of four for a little more growing time, I pulled the bounty pictured above-right from the little tree, not bad!

Eighteen apples.  Word.

Goodnight blog.

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we’d smoke anything

Smoke 'em if ya got 'em.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.

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last day in mexico

Hi Internet.

Finally bothered to check for an open router near the condo side of the resort.

Found one.

Trip has been amazing, but it’s more fun doing nothing than blogging so I’m just here to say hello. And, goodbye.

See ya next week.