two views

some weeks ago i had the opportunity to be wandering the streets at night far from my home.

there's no point not telling you where i was; certainly you know.

alone on a cold night, with no plan or direction. fantastic.

the thing is, i am in love.

off in the corner? the one with the grey sweater, that's me.

and i can't remember how to get back home, because even though i know where i am (steps of the public library), all i remember is that the place i am going is on seventh OR eighth, and that the cross street has a four in it. or a three.

i thought: this would be an incredible place to go out of my head. easy to do. almost tempting. but bad, you know?

i wandered a long time and finally the street furniture looked familiar.

i went inside.

modren

no, it's not a typo. it's a family thing. my mother always says she wants to me a "modren girl".

a log time ago i needed an external drive to read and write cds and dvds. it seemed exotic and fancy then.

and expensive.

and then i had those drives IN all my machines, but of course my new desktop machine does not have one.

and i thought: no problem! i have an old cd.dvd drive that's working just fine!! but no. of course it has to be cabled with firewire, which has been deprecated. seriously. it has two firewire jacks and RCA plugs. THAT'S how old it is.

anyway, i had to by a new drive, which it turns out you can do now for under $25. and it's uh, smaller.

so yay.

two drives

this thing is good.

last week i had to make mashed potatoes for something and i made way more than i needed so i could use up the potatoes while they were still good.

and i didn't just make mashed potatoes. i made MASHED POTATOES. with butter and heavy cream and cream cheese, because i also had some heavy cream and cream cheese that needed using.

there are a lot of things you can do with leftover mashed potatoes.

what i did on the first day was take a slice of my brick-o'-potatoes and pan fry it on one side in butter (a lot of butter), flip it when it was browned, toss cheese on top of it, and then fry a pair of eggs next to it in the pan.

i tossed it in the dish, potatoes on the bottom, eggs on top.

it was SO good.

SO good.

the second day, there was really nothing to do but make that thing again. repeat until all the potatoes are gone.

you know, just in case you cholesterol levels are not high enough.

...which is a thing i joked about until at the end of the week i went to see my doctor for a regular type appointment and she said my cholesterol levels, blood sugar, and blood pressure were all significantly better than they've been in years.

she didn't really want to hear about the eggs, potatoes and cheese.

but you do.

and no, that's not an arty presentation. i ate lunch at my desk. because, you know, i'm a composer. so i guess, yeah, it's arty. but really i couldn't be arsed to clean off my desk to take the picture.

don't come to my door.

i'm kind of an asshole sometimes.

some people came and left a little piece of religious crap in my door yesterday, so i took a red marker to it and taped it up to my door at eye level, where it can be seen from the street.

sign of spring

this is how you know it's spring here: these signs go up all over.

actually, they go up on every dirt road and at the town line on any dirt road.

up to the tower

the bolton valley ski resort is not on bolton mountain. if you're on the chairlift, bolton mountain is the one behind you. the skiing happens on ricker mountain, although not right at the summit but off the shoulders.

vista peak looks like a summit, but it's not. i don't know how they decide what is and is not a whole mountain.





anyway, i went on a little hike up to the tower so that MB and the others could see it.

here's my video:

good morning, mud season!

in mud season, in the afternoons, all the dirt roads and driveways are soft. overnight sometimes they stiffen up.

last thursday afternoon it was very warm and things were very soft and in the early hours of friday the temperatures plunged back below zero, so friday morning the most dsitinctive sound around the neighborhood was the sound of tires spinning.

i came out of the house to go skiing and a neighbor couple was trying to push one of their cars out of the ice in which it was stuck so he could go to work.

i offered to help.

you know, because it's what you do.

since i was about to go skiing, i was already wearing my gopro on a chest harness and the guy said "are you going to gopro this for us?" and i said that i hadn't been going to, but i could.




if you're looking at that video, all the things that look like puddles? they are solid ice. they WERE puddles thursday afternoon, but not so much after the freeze.

so then after we got the car loose and they went inside, i discovered my transmission had frozen.

this is a problem that requires a little push.

*knock knock*

"hey, guess what?"
"your car needs a push?"
"bingo."
"be right out."

so we got that sorted and i went skiing.

mud season.

look inside!

nearly a year ago i had to go to the nice doctor and let him have a little look at the inside of my stomach and esophagus because i have a little reflux problem and while a reflux problem isn't in and of itself so terrible, if you're doing damage in there, it can be Very Bad.

despite the reflux, i am healthy and pink.

so yay.

and i have nice pictures. maybe i will use them for my christmas card.

GE junction

pyloric antrum

bulb

duodenum

stomach, reflexed view

bonus pay

so i was cleaning up, because occasionally i pick up my shit and put it away.

and for some reason i decided to actually go THROUGH a pile of papers instead of throwing them out wholesale.

good thing, too.