this time i earned it.

so it's race day at about four-thirty in the afternoon and i get an email from my little friend cr asking me to promise not to get hurt, so i send her an email containing this text


tonight the course will be wet, but i'll run my tires a little soft. (grippy)

i have ridden this course and practiced it. it rides beautifully and is super fun, like dancing. i can ride it all without footing down on a good day, and there are no technical elements that scare me. it is the safest of the courses, the fastest, and my favorite.

my shifters are all working smoothly and are adjusted well for this course.

i have no choice about riding slower next week, since that course has been described as "climb-y".

while i can't promise not to hurt myself, i CAN promise not to tell you about it, and since you only see me clothed (and nearly always long sleeves), you'll never know the difference.

besides, a few bruises and scratches are what happen when you ride tough. if you're going really fast and taking a few chances you often graze a tree or something. no serious harm, but nobody goes super fast by not taking any chances.

the key is not to take STUPID chances. a fast ride is worth a few bruises. it is NOT worth broken bones, and part of riding smart is knowing the difference.

and i even go so far as to make what i think is a snappy little graph:

and i'm joking about it with my friends and i go warm up and i come to the start and they're talking about the trail conditions (slippery; it has rained all day) and there are some women on my start talking about a rooty section of trail right above the oven and i tell them the best way to go through is to pick a good line, close your eyes, and go fast.

i have had a lot of experience with those roots over the years. i know what i'm talking about.

so i go out of the start all fast and everything and i'm leading the pack which is a sucky place for me to be because i never know how to pace myself and one guy goes ahead of me, so i get on his tail and there's another guy coming up behind me and i want him to pass now or else wait until after those roots because i have BUSINESS to tend to and i'm thinking about what cr said and the next thing i know i am thinking "cr is gonna be mad about this" and then i have no memory about what happens next except that i'm lying facedown on the ground telling racers behind me to jump over me and keep racing.

one guy stops to very gingerly unclip my right foot and remove my bike from on top of me, and i assure him that i can still feel my fingers and toes and i'm all right.

but i can't move.

it's not a surprise, exactly. usually when i get hit hard i just pass out, or i get this weird temporary paralysis that i can only explain as my body's way of telling me to sit right there for a few moments while it takes stock of the situation. i have hit the ground sufficiently hard to have peed myself.

i explain to the guy that it's going to be a few minutes before i can move at all, and therefore a few minutes before i will know if i'm hurt and that other riders will be along soon, so he should go.

and he does.

and i'm lying there thinking: "(proper name) will be coming along soon. i'd better get up if i want to stay ahead of her."

and i still can't move the left side of my body, but i at least drag myself off the trail. apparently i have flown headlong over my handlebars, managing to keep my arms and legs and head free of the crash, which means i have landed at a pretty good speed with my full weight (and i'm heavy) on my belly.

and then suddenly i get up and get on my bike. i don't remember it, but the next memory i have is me coming around the next corner and barreling down the straightaway at the oven and i'm passing a woman at a pretty good clip and i'm thinking: "all right. this is gonna be AWESOME. i'll go super fast and i'll make up my lost time!"

and then at the corner where it's not downhill anymore i simply don't have the strength to carry my speed through. i can't breathe so well. and i don't have any power in my legs. and i think: "well, i got the wind knocked out of me. i'll take it easy going up this and then i'll be AWESOME."

so the course turns right and goes over the top of ridge run (not down it) and across and down little ridge run, which is fun and twisty and fast and one of my favorite parts of the course but i can't control my steering because my arms are shaking too much and i overshoot EVERY corner and have to foot down and every time i foot down it hurts so much i think i'm going to puke and i'm thinking: "well, this would be the post-fall adrenaline rush. i'll just get down this and onto the woods road and i'll calm down and then i'll be AWESOME."

so the shaking stops mostly and i turn off of the woods road onto the next singletrack but i still haven't got the strength to control properly the front end of my bike and i'm thinking: "well, apparently you need you abs for a lot of these things. i'll just stay loose and try to compensate with other muscles and i'll be AWESOME."

and by some miracle i make the next turn and i make it over the rock wall just fine but i'm out on that fabulous singletrack that rides so nice and i can't steer well enough to go fast, and i'm not going fast enough to carry momentum, and by now the truth sets in: THIS IS NOT GOING TO BE AWESOME.

i can barely turn granny gears and when i get off to walk, i can barely do that, but by this time i have passed up every opportunity to cut the course and come in DNF. i am now pretty far out from the end and the only way out is out so i grimly readjust my goals from "awesome" to "finish" and do my best with it.

so i come up the chute and lay in the grass, trying to find a position that doesn't hurt really, really bad because now the post-crash adrenaline (which i could have used to come in instead of finishing) has worn off and the pain is starting to set in pretty bad and i'm trying not only to position myself so that it's less painful, but so that if i vomit, i'm facing downhill.

because at this point i'm not certain i don't have internal injuries.

i'm pretty sure i haven't torn or broken anything skeletal, and that my organs are more or less un-ruptured, but i know that it's possible to bruise something so that a slow bleed is a bit of a problem later on.

so we wait a few minutes, and discuss our options and we're pretty sure after a little examination that i've only badly bruised all my abs, which is gonna hurt a lot, but that barring a sudden increase of sharp pains or a discharge of inappropriate color, i'm probably just fine.

so my friends take my shirt off for me. i had managed to wear one of my old shirts as part of my stroll down memory lane and it's a shirt that's hard to get off under good conditions and they put a clean shirt on me and racked my bike for me and drove me home.

it is not good when you some home stinking of urine and dressed in someone else's clothes.



so i had a hot shower and managed to fix myself some dinner and i put on some compression shorts which i pulled up high over my belly for a little more support and put on a tight shirt and it's painful but i'm getting along ok if i remember to lie down for a little while every so often.

choir practice tonight is going to suck.

about that picture...

the thing about bruises is that we get them. we race mountain bikes. we get used to them, but they're super fun to show off.

the problem for me is that i have that ultra-white blue-tinged pearlescent skin and there is NO chance i can use a flash to photograph it. so it's natural light for me, and that means taking the picture in my front room, at the window, facing the street.

that's where the light is.

and on top of that all of you who have ever tried to get a really good picture of your own butt know this: it's on the back side of you and you can't easily get the shot in focus because the camera controls are JUST out of easy reach and nevermind being able to look at the little monitor, even if you have one of those cameras that has one on both sides.

so there i am, gyrating about, trying to aim and shoot, catch the light, and GET THE BRUISE IN FOCUS, pants around my ankles, really hoping the neighbors don't decide that THIS would be an excellent time to come stand in the driveway and look around.


for the record, i now have dozens of pictures of my own butt, in various states of frame and focus and i STILL had to crop one in order to show enough butt that you get to see the size of the bruise, but not so much that you''ll need therapy.

one of my friends said it would have been funny to see that whole process. another friend ventured the opinion that anyone present would have been handed the camera and told "here. take a picture of my butt for me", so the comic value would have been lost.

in the end i think we decided that a smart person present to have seen that spectacle would have made a video and posted it on youtube.

if you don't want to see my butt, don't look over here!

among my mountain biking friends, this is what we shout when we are about to remove our pants. it is the polite warning for those who may wish to avert their eyes.

since this post contains a photo of my butt, you may wish to avert your eyes.

last wednesday i had a little spill on the racecourse. it was a stupid fall; i wasn't even moving at the time. i had gotten off my bike and didn't ride a little technical passsage and i was just standing still for a moment when -bam!- fall down, go boom.

i got a little bruisie on my butt. today is monday, and this is what it looks like today.

word cloud

i found this really cool web you called wordle and i have used it to make a graphic representation of my blog posts.

if i get ambitious, i'll update it from time to time and catalog the results.

what's with the change?

all right.

if you've been following along for long enough, you know that ever since i started this blog i have doggedly held on to the original layout and formatting that i started with, kind of like a badge of pride.

it says: "i have been keeping this blog since this layout was spiffy state-of-the-art", or at least that's what i thought i wanted it to say, and then i realized that i just didn't like the layout all that much anyway, and it's been a lot of trouble to keep and try to customize it instead of using the cool new templates that blogger always wants you to use when they bring out the new ones.

so ok, ok. i went with the new look and i think i've decided that i'll update the color scheme at least according to the seasons, which is kind of what i do on my website anyway. sort of.

over there i keep the photo albums updated and update the podcast when i have new music, but the general theme stays the same. what changes most regularly is the front page, where the photo changes according to what the view from my desk looks like.

yes, that really is the view from my desk. i crop it a little so you don't see the neighbor's garage, but i'm really only looking at the mountain anyway, unless my neighbors are doing something interesting in their garage.

either way, i'm happy.

what's really going on over here is that martin has picked a very ambitious piece for the church choir and i spend time practicing that, but it's not so much that the music is difficult but that it stretches my range and endurance, so i have to practice more in general.

i'm still working on new music, although not finishing any, so i don't have much to show you, and i meant to post the pictures and stuff from the bead project (now that i can tell you it was about beads)

but i got caught up in a little web design project for this artist friend of mine and although before i got sick i was starting to get very good with the rudimentary HTML they had back then, things have moved along pretty quickly without me and of course what i need to do is modify iWeb templates (have you TRIED to modify iWeb templates?) and i started to do internet searches about how to do that but most of the answers you get to that question is that it just can't be done but i found this ONE genius woman who not only knows it can be done, but will tell you HOW.

but her directions (view full article) break down a little near the end:

All of these sections are now handled by some simple HTML and CSS that’s embedded within the XML. If you know a little of both of those, you should be able to make your way around that stuff.

ok, before i got sick i had a pretty good grasp of HTML, but XML? all i know about it is that it's related to HTML, and i  understand the progress, but i'm nothing like caught up and CSS? i don't even know what that stands for, so i had a little reading to do.

and unfortunately most of what's written out there is either aimed at people who already have advanced skills, or it is aimed at people who have no skills, and some of what's out there is just plain wrong.

and then as the website is looking pretty good, i decide that it has to have its own favicon, so i had to learn to do that, which is a whole other kettle of fish.


i'd been kind of meaning to make me a favicon for my own sites, but it seemed too complicated, but as long as i was learning, i made one.

isn't it cute?

i have one for the artist friend, too, but i'm still figuring out how to place it properly in iWeb pages and it's really easy to bork ALL of your pages when you start messing with apple's templates.

so. it's time for noon prayer and then lunch and maybe some grocery shoping and a bike ride; grocery shopping for sure and maybe a bike ride. 

i hope i have the energy for a bike ride. the season is four weeks old and i pretty much suck. getting your conditioning back takes a LOT longer than losing it.

i'll talk to you later.

unsolicited advice

i read a lot of blogs.

a lot.

i do it because i'm interested in what people have to say. and today a woman whose blog i'm following expressed despair that according to her analytics, her readership has fallen off. this is, i guess, a crisis to her, because i think she has dreams of being a famous blogger or something, and she asks what she can do to increase her readership.

so maybe this isn't entirely unsolicited advice.

well, from where i'm sitting, i am wildly interested in ordinary people who have something to say. i am interested in your dog's agility trials, the blooming date of your daylilies, your recent cruise to alaska, the music on your ipod, your latest drawings, your rollerderby practice, your adjustment to changes in your relationship, your weekend at your lake house, and your backpacking trip across asia.

i am interested in your garden, what you had for lunch, your photos, your first triathlon, your move to san francisco, your volunteer work, your day job, and your cat.

i am interested (i'm talking about you, train wreck lady) in the way you manage to self-sabotage your entire life and self-destruct so completely, write about it so clearly, and yet seem to have no idea at all that you are making a series of very bad choices and i'm not sure you realize that a blog is a public outlet, at least if you don't check the little box to make it private.

i am even interested to see the latest in paper products from that woman whose blog is about selling paper products. she is a vendor of such items, she loves such items, and as such her blog is interesting because her ideas about it are original, and her purpose is clear.

i am NOT interested in the latest repetition of every internet meme, i do not care about what darling web promotion you are whoring about this week, and i am not in the least bit fooled when you ask questions (what do YOU think/do/love?) that are not really designed to open a conversation, but to elicit comments or -worse- give an appearance of caring what people think in order to suck in a readership.

many of us have read the same little treatises on increasing blog traffic and multi-level marketing. the difference between all of us here in group a and all of you over there in group b is that while we may read these things and even subscribe to a newsletter or two, it is only to see how you, the other half live and to explain to us why we see you endlessly re-blogging the same nonsense that wasn't all fresh and hot the first time it hit and sometimes i only think you loooooove this week's tripe because you think you're going to make a fraction of a penny on each of your gajillions of click-throughs.

if you are reading this, you probably have a blog of your own somewhere. if you're giving me an authentic slice of life whether you do it for free or whether you make a living at it, i will not only read you over when i see your new post pop up in subscription, but i will actually click over to your site because i like to see your formatting!

if you bother to give me real content, i may even read the comments left by other people and join in a conversation! if you are interesting enough, i will even follow links!

so, lady-who-can't-understand-why-her-readership-has-dropped-off, consider this: you used to write more about regular stuff. you used to write more about your life and your projects, even if it meant you didn't write every day.

then you started writing about things that can be marketed through adsense and about blogging itself and sometimes you just re-blog some other lame thing that somebody else already blogged, and you started posting two and sometimes three times a day, but saying less.

do you see where i'm going?

still catching up.

well, i'm feeling kind of scattered, so don't expect this to have much in the way of organization.

ok, so i just saw the results from last night's run and i didn't need to see them to know that i am still on my awesome streak: i hold the all-time record in this race series for most consecutive last-place finishes. the hard thing about holding a record like that is that it only means something if you go out there every week and do your best NOT to come in last.

it's about never giving up. it's a badge of honor.

and tonight we'll go out and race the same course, only on bikes.

you know what?

i go a lot faster on wednesdays if i don't run on tuesday. go figure.

but it's an attendance thing. among my family and friends it is well-known that if you wish for me to attend your funeral or your wedding, you will not hold it on a wednesday evening during the summer.

aside from that, i'm still workin' on the old projects and some new ones, clearing my desk bit by bit.

if you'd like to see the photos from my may roadtrip or my memorial day weekend, you can find those here and here. some of them are very pretty.

right now i'm working on a website for an artist friend of mine. it's not yet available for your view, but rest assured that when i get it done, i'll give you links for it so you can go look at her work.

and even though NOW i can tell you about that project i wasn't telling you about before, it's kind of moved to the back burner and will have to wait for a slow day.

i still haven't even begun to assemble the leaf out project, and at this rate it will probably be autumn before i do that. it's all fine and dandy if you decide to take several hundred photos of the exact same scene just to show the change in light and the progress of the leaves, but i think it seems like a cooler project while you're planning it and when you've got it finished, and when you're faced with figuring out how to compile and edit the photos, maybe not so much.

and i'm working on some new music for piano, but i'm too scattered (does it show?) to really develop it thematically which maybe isn't such a disaster since the original concept is kind of a set of miniatures anyway and i have to practice a clarinet sonata i'd hoped to be ready to play soon and i need to rehearse some things for upcoming performances...

...and instead i'm blogging about it.

so i hope you won't mind if i just leave it be without making any deep observations and just get back to work, ok?

thirteen- may

all right, so bit by bit i'm catching up.

i still haven't told you about that project i wasn't telling you about (soon), and i haven't put together the leaf out project, but at least i have the may thirteen project done.

if you came in late, i take a picture every thirteen hours, no matter what i'm doing, no matter where i am. yes, i do set an alarm, and yes, i do get up in the night to take those pictures.

in answer to karen, yes, that is my music. i'm a composer, and it doesn't make sense to wrestle dubious permissions when i have that resource. if you want your own recordings of my music, you can subscribe to my podcast.

anyway, here's the month of may:

stopgap

well, no, i haven't written all week.

it's not that i have nothing to say, but i was away for the weekend and if you REALLY wanted to follow me there you coud have used the handy "find flask on the road" page, which i stopped updating monday when i came home.

right now i'm finishing up the laundry, processing the pictures, and in general catching up.

there are a lot of pictures to process, because while i wasn't paying attention all of may slipped by and i have to clock all those photos and then edit the video, plus i have to put together the photo albums from the trips, and do something with all the leaf out photos and log the geocaches and there's music to practice and music to write and there was a little art project and a thing about unpacking and in general gearing up for race season at which i'm going to suck, but the only way out is through.

so.

more as i have it for you; i'll keep you posted.

97 rides again

well, the times are in from last night.

i'll save you the trouble and tell you that this season i bumped up to the two-lap category, which was my race before i got sick and started sandbagging.

...except i guess it's really not sandbagging if you're, you know, too sick or too being out of shape from being sick to go the whole distance but you'd rather die than not take your start or even not make your finish, so you go out anyway in a shorter race.

at least that's what i did.

so i got out on the course last night entered in my proper division and it was maybe my slowest time EVER, but at least i was on the course. the wreck of the old 97.

there's only one way to get your conditioning back tough, and that's to take it by force.

so that's what i'm doing.

there was a little crisis yesterday afternoon; usually lucy sets aside my number so i can pick it up, but this year i showed up and they had just given it to someone else.


who is he? i asked. how much does he want for it? that last thing was silly, because i don't have the money to buy my number back.

but i know the guy, so i called him up and asked him if he'd trade, which you still can do before the opener, and he was willing, so i got my number. you know, the one i've had ever since my very first race?

if i didn't get my number, i was going to cry. right there in the shop. i may be all tough and sleep in my car in remote locations and race mountain bikes and stuff, but if i can't get my number, i will cry. right out in the open.

today i'm packing my bags and tomorrow morning i'm going out on the road again.

this time it's a vacation. it was maybe going to be the end of peregrination, but last week i came in from that and my campsite's paid for, so i might as well go back out. the weather will be moderately nice and the area pretty and come church sunday i'll be among friends.

it's hard to beat that.

if you want to follow me, you can come along with this spiffy little number.

where i was

i know you're dying to find out exactly where i was while i was out on the road.

i got started on this little project because cr asked for an itinerary and maybe a map, which only made me giggle, since i never know where i'm going until i get there, but i vary gamely figured out how to work a google map well enough to at least mark where i'd been, so if you want to follow along and look at the pictures, you can:


View may 2010 in a larger map

a little late

hey, i know we're already most of the way through may, but i've been kind of busy being out on the road.

and it takes time to organize all those pictures.

but here's april from my thirteen project. i can't believe it's already time to start clocking may!

accidental witness

have you ever been an accidental witness to a big moment in someone else's life?

maybe the worst moment of their life?

a moment in which you really hope this is the worst moment, because if they've lived anything worse you're not sure you want to know about it?

two days ago, sunday afternoon, i went out to look for a geocache and i stopped to take a picture of a pretty field with dandelions. i only mention it because i was looking up in an area of the sky that would become very interesting a few minutes later, when a little farther down the road i noticed billows of black smoke rising up in that same clear patch of sky.

black smoke is nearly always a structure fire or a big trash burn. wood burns clean, mostly. plastics and such burn black.

and i remember hoping -real hard- that it was a big trash burn.

please, oh please, please, please, don't let it be a structure fire.


and then about ten minutes later i started to hear all the sirens. right off i saw seven engines from two towns, and then more engines, and a lot of guys in pickups and SUVs driving the way only firemen do.

that has to be a structure fire.

well, part of what i'm doing is looking for a geocache but also part of what i'm doing is sitting in prayer, because i have a friend who's doing important and difficult work at this time and i want to be with her in that, and ask blessings on that.

so now i have this fire to add to that mountain of prayer. somebody just over the hill is having a very bad day.

i still hope it's a trash burn.

and then i'm on my way out and i can see the fire from the ridge, and all along the road cars are parked watching the fire and engines are still coming from surrounding towns. there's a lot of flame and i can see in my scope that it's a house. a nice one.

at this point i'm hoping that it's just an outbuilding, but it looks like the house is going up.

this morning, tuesday, i was back over there looking for an earthcache and i went by hoping to see a charred outbuilding and a standing house.

instead i saw the still burning ashpile, nothing left standing but the narrow chimney.

and the guy (i assume it's the homeowner) is sitting beside the smoking rubble in a lawn chair, reading the paper. his mailbox is still standing, and i guess they still deliver his paper.

it is so sad my heart will maybe break.

let me clarify...

i kept having dreams in which i have to go to princeton, maine.

so i packed up my car -for real- and went to princeton, maine. now i am travelling without itinerary or plan, and maine is a very big place. for the last two days i was up in the deboullie unit, which was recommended to me by four park rangers and three employees of north maine woods.

i woke up in ashland and noticed that the regional office for maine parks and recreation is there, so i thought i'd just drop by and ask them some questions. they were very sweet.

so i went up to deboullie.

it's very remote up there.

very.

i'm kind of relieved to be back in a town, even if that town is fort kent.

never, not once in my life, did i ever think i would be approaching caribou, ME from the NORTH.

still, i'm having an interesting time.

here's a view of my campsite first thing in the morning.

in dreams

weeks ago  i started having dreams in which i have to go to princeton, ME.

i have no idea why i am here, but i am in princeton, ME. i have found a campsite somewhere nearby and this afternoon in calais i found a place that served up a pizza so good that all i could do was thank God for a creation in which such a thing could exist and a life in which i might be present to eat it.

it was a fourteen inch pie (i have some left over) with garlic sausage and onions, so good that it boggles your mind and under twelve dollars.

it is not my habit to endorse products or businesses here, but a pizza that good and that cheap deserves mention, you know?

key

i was too busy being dead to have any heart for cleaning up the mess.


but last week i finally went through my key ring and took off the keys i know i'll never use again: the key to an apartment that my last ex sold years ago, the keys from my job. my file cabinet, the storage locker from two classrooms ago, the outside key that only worked on that one door, the elevator key and the 10 key i had to fight so hard for.

funny, but when i left i turned in my 19 key (the first one given to me) and my key card, but nobody asked for the rest of them.

life's like that sometimes, i guess.

soup

i just like to say it: soup. i like the way it feels in my mouth.

...the word. soup itself is pretty good, too.

sunday afternoon i made some soup. it wasn't a classic hot-and-sour, but it resembled a hot-and-sour, only with more vegetables and stuff thrown in for a heartier kind of meal.

soup.

what happened?

yesterday the view from my window looked like this.

today it looks like this.
 













i'm kind of too depressed to talk about it.

red light, green light, 1, 2, 3!

View river road intersection in a larger map

i use this intersection a lot. sometimes i turn left here and get on the interstate, but most of the time i turn right and go along route two into williston, either to the church or to my preferred mountain biking venue.

used to be you could wait a looooooong time to turn onto route two there, and eventually they put in a traffic light which was very nice if you were turning OFF of river road, but now if you're turning ONTO river road from route two heading east, you could wait through two rotations of the light before you get a chance to break through, and while you're waiting, traffic is backing up behind you.

just wait, i said to myself. they will put in a protected green for turning left. they have to.

and then another small voice said nah, they won't do that. that would be too smart.

and guess what?

this morning i was on my way back from the church and noticed they've put up a second light, so when they get it connected, there's going to be a protected green! hooray!

dirty hands, dirty pants.

i still won't tell you what i'm working on, but i will tell you that today it involved some sandpaper, a disc loom, and a heat source. tomorrow there will be some power tools, maybe.

power tools are a girl's best friend, nevermind what they say about diamonds.

reeds

i have all this stuff that i can't show you yet or can't tell you about yet.

here's a thing, though: i'm working some new reeds. this wouldn't raise an eyebrow from anyone except that i don't think i've worked any reeds since -i don't know- 2001? it might have been earlier, but not much. i remember it because i was working in that room on the back side of the building, and 2001 was the last year i worked there.

i used to work reeds a lot. it's what i did. but a lot of things happened, including a broken right hand and the slow death of my soul and nothing felt right, not even the sweet and chunky feel of the pads of my fingers on that lower stack, and i kind of gave it up.

did you ever come to life after a long death?

last week joan's sermon was all about second chances. bit by bit i think i am returning to life.

and today i opened up that case and i played a little. i don't have the chops anymore, but i can build those muscles again.

do i even dare hope it?

and i had a moment or two of panic.

where are all my reeds? in the early 80's there was a fire in the cane fields in france and before the price of reeds went up, i bought cases and cases and i KNEW i still had them somewhere.

would my mom have thrown them out while i was sick? would i have left them back at the job i lost? would anyone have known they were mine? that they were important?

reed cane improves with age. it mellows if stored right.

so for the first time in years i opened a new box, familiar, purple.

and i set them to soak. just two, just for a start. sweet and beautiful and balanced. they have nice grain to them. they look like they'll play beautifully.

tomorrow i'll soak them again and try them for that first few minutes before i put them out for drying. you have to break reeds in. it's like a courtship. push them too fast and they won't bloom, won't last. take care of them and they'll take care of you.

sweet.

bow and balance

this is one of the things i've been working on, hot off the press.

you can listen to it here.

of course it sounds a lot better when connie plays it, but you'll get the idea.

catching up

i know easter was two weeks ago, but i've been busy.  you know, with projects.

i think at some point i threatened to update you with the candle project once i got them all finished.

the idea was that was making some lovely decorated candles (process described here) for people to take home at easter. i made up some of these little slips and put them in random hymnals so that when people opened to the first hymn, they might find that they'd gotten a surprise gift.

i've photographed this year's candles and posted the pictures here.

please, sir, may i have some more?

ok, ok, so i post a lot about custard here.

but i haven't said anything really about custard for DAYS and you can't yet see what's on my work table, and you can't yet see the photo project, and i'm not ready to post the new music i'm working on (nevermind some demure photos that i'm NOT talking about, but you know who you are), and not only is custard easy to make, but it's easy to talk about.

last week i was thinking of making a little dark chocolate mocha number, pure and simple, but then got the bright idea to reserve some of the chocolate base (pre-mocha), mix it with a little caramel milk, whip in an extra egg white and lay that in on top of the heavier, darker mix for a two layer custard thing.

so i did.

lightly sweet in the top layer; dark, rich, and not sweet on the bottom.

good all around.

brasshole.

for easter i polished the candlesticks and the plates at the church, which amazed people in how shiny they were and (i hear) prompted someone to ask if we'd gotten new plates.

no, just cleaned the old ones.

i also cleaned up the baptismal bowl, which nobody will notice but me and God, because it's pewter and therefore not all shiny when it's clean, but what was on it couldn't be described under any circumstances as "patina" but instead grotty filth. and pewter's soft, so the finish damages easily and it had acquired some bad scratches.

now when you're working with antique pieces you don't want to clean them up too much because that diminishes the value of them, but this is a contemporary piece and if someone doesn't clean it up and buff out those scratches now, it isn't going to develop a nice finish over time, you know?

the thing is that the "stuff" of the church should be kept beautiful and shiny. the things in and of themselves aren't important, but what we use in services to worship the Lord should be kept beautiful. it is part of our offering. we do not bring second best.

yesterday i took home the candle snuffers. they needed some polishing. they're not perfect, but now that i've taken on the job (and i told myself i wasn't going to do this) i'll just take home some of the pieces every week or so to maintain them and over time the last of the staining will come out and nobody will remember that they ever were nasty-looking.

ninety.

today we all trooped out to my grandmother's 90th birthday party.

the old girl looks pretty good, eh?

yeah, she does.

cattin' about

neighborcat is a friend of mine.


i used to think she was a stray in need of a place to crash, but it turns out she not only has a home, but she has a very busy social calendar, as well. she comes to my house, gets stoned, does a little light mousing, and has a nap.

and then she leaves.

she has never accepted food from me, although if i put down a saucer of milk, she will drink that.

i know from talking to the neighbors that she eats at some of their houses, and that she hangs out in over a half dozen homes; there are probably more. these days she's very busy cozying up the the men in my neighborhood; as i'm sitting at my desk i see her waiting for guys to come home in the afternoons and when they do, she puts on her pretty face and gets all touchy-feely, way more friendly than she usually is and they bend down and scratch her belly and she happily trots behind them and waits at their front doors for them to let her in.

i'm pretty sure that yesterday i saw her look back and wink at me.

today she was out in the driveway hunting and i couldn't see what she was stalking (she's not very good at it), but there was this moment in which she looked up and saw me watching her and i almost swear i heard her think "do NOT screw this up for me", so i moved quietly behind the window and didn't open it up to get a really clear picture.

ok, got yer back.

basket case

ok, so instead of giving you all the latest pictures of views from my desk -and there are a lot of them, since the fog is burning off and i've been taking pictures all morning- i think i threatened to write about last week's picnic baskets.

see, i have a lot of friends who are artists. and i was with one of them out in her studio recently and i was thinking about some things i've heard artists say about the basket lunches at the macdowell colony and i thought it would be a brilliant idea to make some picnic lunches and bring them to my artist friends when they're working.

and i have this friend who's trying really hard to do a lot of work in a hurry for a showing that's about six weeks away and she's kind of stressed about it. so when she said she was going to retreat to her workroom for a few days, i thought: basket time!

one thing you need to know about me, a thing you might already have guessed, is that one thing i can do (and there are a lot of things i can't do) is pack a picnic lunch. if you're ever road tripping with me, you would be smart to let me handle a lot of the refreshments.

and this artist friend of mine would have been happy enough (all right, overjoyed and overwhelmed) with a nice sandwich, but for the kind of money i'd spend on really nice cold cuts and a few amenities, i could "whip up a little something" that not only would give her several meals, but myself as well.

granted, it's time intensive, but one thing i have a lot of is time and if a thing is worth doing, it's worth overdoing.

one really great thing about chinese cooking is that a lot of the prep can be done way ahead of time, and aside from dishes that must be served NOW, fresh, there are a bazillion little side dishes and picnic foods that are simple to make (if you've got time, see above) and keep well for several days under refrigeration.

and they're only properly served as a collection of little dishes and not, say,  a big bowl of radishes, so when you make them, you have to make a lot of them, even if you're only serving up small portions of each thing. that's where the festivity is: the riot of tastes and colors and textures.

so i got to work.


if you can't follow the sequence of foods in the slideshow, bear in mind that in order to bring all the dishes off at once, there's a considerable amount of multitasking that needs to be done.

so.

start three days ahead of time.

cut the cabbage and salt it, leaving it in the bowl overnight. same with the radishes.
partway peel and slice cucumber, salt it, and set it aside. salting may or may not include sugar. it's a verb.
cut the carrots, and simmer them for hours in that lovely rich master sauce that just happens to be around.
drain cabbage. squeeeeze out as much water as possible!
add the remaining ingredients to the cabbage, put it in a sealed container, and set it aside.
make radish seasoning. set it aside to develop.
unpack and drain tofu. it needs to be pressed before it goes in the soup.
add seasoning to radishes. seal them and set them aside in with the cabbage, in the fridge.
remove carrots from sauce. put 'em away. you know, in the fridge.
strain sauce.
turn right around and simmer the mushrooms in the sauce. let them steep a loooooong time.
squeeze the excess water out of the cucumber slices. sauce them. put them away.
boil and cool eggs.
periodically return to the fridge and toss any dish sitting in a sauce to distribute the liquid evenly.
put the mushrooms away, strain the sauce, and return that to the freezer. you can use it again later.
crack eggshells; let eggs simmer three hours in tea mixture.
make the sesame peanut sauce. put it away to develop overnight.
make two kinds of custard (detailed elsewhere). let it set overnight in the fridge.
put tea eggs away to steep. eighteen hours, two days. whatever.
it's time to get going on the soup!
soak daylilly blooms
cut tofu, mushrooms, cabbage, whatever's going in.
soup is a process; some things go in sooner than others, but they all go in.
beat eggs, cut green onion (these are added to the soup last)
cook noodles. still warm, they go under the peanut sesame sauce.
assemble bean buns.
pack the cold dishes for transport.
simultaneously put the finishing touches on the soup and steam the buns.
pack it all up and out the door with you!

menu:

hot and sour cabbage
soy-dipped radish fans
salt cucumbers
carnelian carrot coins
master sauce mushrooms

peanut-sesame noodles
marbleized tea eggs

hot and sour soup

steamed red bean buns
banana custard with carmelized molasses sauce
dark chocolate coconut custard

black lichee tea

same day, three views

so, like, it's a riot of color out there. you know, if you have an eye for it.

i like the view from my desk, and i keep a gallery of that view over here, but i haven't decided yet if i'm going to post all three of today's pictures.

still, it's a nice view to have from one's desk. it really facilitates the staring-out-the-window-not-doing-anything process.

maybe if you're very nice to me, tomorrow i'll post my latest custard news, or the dispatch from the picnic baskets.

meltdown

i'm always working on something, even if i have little to say here.

ever since snohaus fell in, i've been taking a picture every day of the melt of the last of this year's snow.

no surprise: i took the liberty of stringing them together into a video.

Lumen Christi

today i left my darkened house and went up into the woods. i stopped and was very still for a long time before moving again, up and up into the notch and then back down. coming to a living body of water i stopped again to pray, and to wash my face and hands.

i don't know about the rest of you, but i'm a small soul in need of a lot of scrubbing up.

and then down and down and down, off the trail and onto the road, fast and faster, mud kicking up and we always say you know you've had a good day if you come home covered with dirt, smelling bad, and bleeding just a little.

so apparently i'd had a good day even though i was feeling kind of wrung out. but the sun was just sinking beyond the horizon as i racked my bike and i thought i had just enough time to take my new candle and catch the first star.

i had a while to wait yet, but it was warm and sunny here and the breeze blowing was warmer than the standing air because here at the foot of the mountain there's a temperature inversion.

so i'm outside, leaning back on the grass and then standing, waiting, craning my neck to see those first stars, waiting for that one moment, as if i did not know, could not comprehend that Christ will rise, has risen, that one night and this night now and always.

when you're looking for the first stars to appear, you never quite know when or where. for sure you ought to look in the darkest parts of the sky, and out of the sides of your field of vision, where you have the most light receptors, but atmospheric conditions have a lot to do with it, so you never quite know.

where will it be?

and you scan the darkening sky, over and over and there's nothing; nothing and more nothing and then suddenly, as if a great switch had been thrown, you see that one first star. you almost don't believe it; you maybe look away and then look back. but there it is!

and while you're double checking, a second star blinks on. how did you not see it before? and now there are three, four, and they're all coming out, clean and bright and you know the new day has come.


i lit the one new candle i'd brought out with me, raised it up and sang lumen Christi, Christ, the light of the world!

and i carried the new flame into my darkened house and lit new candles in every room.

today i have three things to offer you:

a fanfare for orchestra brass for which i am only giving you an audio link even though sheet music does exist for it if you want it, and two new songs.

cliffs at brandon   listen
Deo gratias           listen    preview sheet music
heal me up            listen    preview sheet music

good friday

my Lord has died.
and after we lay him down,
after the weeping
there's nothing we can do
but return to his house
his father's house
and because it seems impossible
that we will not see him again
because he would want his home well-ordered
i can only go,
fold his tablecloths,
clean his plates,
straighten his candlesticks,
and fish that paperclip out from under the cushion.

i cannot speak, cannot sing, cannot sigh
i am weak
i cannot think, cannot believe that he is gone
gone for good
and i clutch to my heart
the things of his house
as if by the work of my hands
i could make this right.

i would listen to music
or birds
or sing
or something
but instead i strain my ear to hear
is that him?
is that him on the stair?

and i try to remember his face, his voice
every word he said
and later, when i'm done working here
i will go out into the street
looking for him
in every face
of every person that i meet
in every place
for signs of grace
and i will ask:
did you see him?
can you remember what he said?
can you tell me?
can you tell me that he isn't gone?
can you tell me that he isn't dead?

he will come, he will come
i know he will;
i know he must
i've things to polish
and things to dust
i'll make this clean; i'll make this bright
but there's no power in my small hands
to turn a bit of this to right
and yet i'll put things in their place
his dishes clean, my heart made still
his table set, awaiting grace
my Lord will rise;
i know he will.

my mistress' face

well, it's april.


...which means i've clocked the march photos and edited them into a short movie documenting my life at thirteen hour intervals.

more about custard

the thing about custard is that it's  good to eat and so easy to make, if you've the time to let it bake and set.

one thing i have a lot of is time, and cr likes it a lot, so i'm kind of experimenting with custard. hey, if cr's coming for sunday lunch, there might as well be custard along with whatever i rummage from the cupboards.

basically, it's just two cups of milk and three eggs along with a sweetener and maybe a flavoring. you mix it together, toss it in the cups (ok, maybe pour is a better verb), put the cups in a water bath, and bake 'em at about 320° until you can stick in a knife or toothpick in and it comes out clean, somewhere between forty minutes and an hour.

it's not at all fussy about the time of baking, because of the water bath, and it's not very fussy about oven temperature. and you can vary the amount of eggs, or the proportion of  yolk to white; more yolk makes a tenderer, richer custard, and more white will make it stiffer.

this week i made two experimentals.

the first is a banana number with a caramelized molasses sauce.

i happened to have had a perfectly ripe banana and it turns out that cr likes banana cream, so into the freezer with the banana.

i've never worked with a frozen banana before; i knew that it would never again recover a state suitable for eating, but i was surprised about what the freeze/thaw did to it!

first of all, i had to keep taking it out of the freezer to play with it, because a frozen banana has an interesting, fun feel to it that i found irresistible.

but then when i set it out to thaw so i could USE it, what i had was basically a long thin black bag of smoosh and i was wondering what the most practical method for opening the container and pouring out the smoosh would be.

aha! i thought, glancing around me. scissors!

so i cut it open at one end, and simply poured the smoosh into the blender. from there is was business as usual, except that instead of caramelizing just the sugar, i put molasses in with that.



and then last night i made a little dark chocolate coconut number; i substituted a can of coconut milk for some of the regular milk. you have to melt the chocolate into whatever you're using for your base, so that takes a little extra time and care. you don't want it to scald, but you do want the chocolate completely melted and mixed in.

use good chocolate. it always pays in the end.

once the chocolate was melted and mixed and a little vanilla and a tiny bit of honey (gives it a little fruity tang) added, i had to wait for the thing to be cool enough to add the eggs, because if you add eggs into a mixture that's too hot they just cook, and that'd be no good.

so. into the water bath, and into the oven.

waitwaitwaitwaitwait.

the house smells divine. it smells divine because of all the lunch basket cooking, but i'm not talking about that yet.

but add the smell of chocolate custard baking to all that, and -whoa, nellie!-

this right here is what heaven must smell like.

start to finish

a few weeks ago cr gave me this candle for my project and i don't think she really meant for me to return it to her finished, but sometimes that's how things turn out, you know?

i know that when i hand it back to her tomorrow or monday or some other day she'll tell me that it's not what she meant, but i'm pretty sure this is how it's supposed to go.

some of you have mentioned to me that the process is interesting to you, so i've included here a slideshow of this candle from start to finish, and also an animated gif showing it all the way around.

signs and miracles

miraculous sign of the coming of the King?



no, it's just where i left my fork on the plate.

true miracle:

down and back

so i know it's been a week, but here are my road pictures from my quick jaunt to virginia and back.

stranger in a strange land

i felt so out of place on the jersey turnpike. i mean, i know how to change lanes aggressively in heavy traffic and all that, but where i'm from we customarily use the directional signal to indicate intent of a future action.

on the jersey turnpike (and in new jersey in general, apparently) there are two common practices regarding the directional, used with roughly equal frequency.

the first and easiest to perform is that the directional is simply not used, not ever, unless it is accidentally switched on while texting and then it is not turned off until the driver crosses over into pennsylvania.

the second and more entertaining form is that in which the driver uses the directional signal to announce a fait accompli. "hello", they seem to say. "i have just gotten in front of you."

i wonder if perhaps culturally one does not use the directional to signal intent because this represents a challenge to other drivers who perceive that defensive action must be taken in order to prevent you from changing lanes.

maybe it's unfair to even speculate on that, because the whole time i was in new jersey people just went ahead and let me change lanes even though i had signaled that i wished to do so. of course, i think i mentioned that i'm perfectly capable of driving aggressively in heavy traffic.

another thing that marks me as a foreigner on that road (aside from my car, which is um, less common in new jersey than it is at home, and my plates, which are definitely from away) is that i cheerfully let people into my lane if it appears to me that they wish to come over.

"foreigner", they will perhaps say. but i was born in new jersey and they can't take that away from me.

i wonder, though, how fast one has to be going to get pulled over for speeding on the new jersey turnpike? the whole time i was on it, the flow of densely-packed traffic was scooting along at about 85 MPH, except for when passing a state trooper, in which case the speed across all four lanes instantly decreased to 60 for about two seconds.

who, exactly, is going to be fooled by that?

and yet incredible as it seems, people WERE getting stopped for speeding. maybe the officers just pick drivers at random from the huge crowd going by? or maybe they set their sights on that one guy trying to go even faster than that by weaving from lane to lane?

i didn't see a lot of those guys; it was pretty much wall-to-wall cars.

there's a beauty in it, though: kind of an organic flow. packed traffic, nearly bumper to bumper and moving along smoothly like some huge and dangerous ballet.

intermission

i have a few things to say about the trip out and back, but for now:

promise

twenty-five years ago i made a promise to the god-in-whom-i-did-not-yet-believe.

as far as i'm concerned if you make a promise, you keep it whether or not the person to whom you made it exists.

if you are making promises to people who in your mind don't exist that's your lookout and maybe you ought to have a nice long talk with yourself or whomever you talk to about such things, but if you're going to make promises, you should keep them.

in order for me to keep my promise this year AND for me to be where i wish to be -at home- on palm sunday, it leaves me with no real choice except to toss my bags in the car tomorrow and drive to washington, DC, a city that while very beautiful gives me the heebie-jeebies.

and then on wednesday having discharged my obligation i will put my bags back in the car and drive home. ten hours' drive each way.

it'll be fun, i'm sure.

fall of the house

if you've been following the story, you know that i've spent a lot of time this winter building first the snow cave:

invasion of the mole people
into the hole
into the hole again
keep digging

and then, after the thaw, building snohaus, which took a lot of hours over a lot of days.

the thing about building anything out of snow is that it's ephemeral. you can work and work and make it beautiful and smooth and square your lines and then one day the sun will come out and you know you've seen the last of winter; there will be no more snow for the year.

it's kind of a nice way to mark the coming of spring, but it's not for the faint of heart. you have to be willing to watch your beautiful creation melt and collapse.

not very bright

i'm sure i wasn't the only one to receive this unusually well-written comment from "mike":

Hello. My wife and I bought our house about 6 months ago. It was a foreclosure and we were able to get a great deal on it. We also took advantage of the 8K tax credit so that definitely helped. We did an extensive remodeling job and now I want to refinance to cut the term to a 20 or 15 year loan. Does anyone know any good sites for mortgage information? Thanks!

well, "mike", you might could visit your banker and talk about refinancing options, or maybe you could google that. it seems to me there's no shortage of websites clamoring for attention on this topic.

what's interesting to me about your spam-of-non-sequitur is that you don't seem to provide me with any links of your own, so i have to assume your goal is to casually wander into people's blogs with that golly-gee-and-what's-all-this shiny baby face you have and get people to go google it for themselves.

maybe you're testing to see which of your spams produce hits on google, and maybe you're trying to create buzz for your "legitimate" "business", but by your friendly and personal tone i can just tell that you, regular guy, really think highly of our financially astute blogging and need our advice.

of course we want to jump in for you and run searches that match your "needs" and report back to you in our blogs which sites we recommend! of course we all want to be friendly and helpful and we'll all rush right out to do your googling for you and then post links and talk amongst ourselves about what sites we would definitely recommend to you and your lovely "wife".

so.

since i'm so kind-hearted, "mike", i've come up with a few things that i think you and your "wife" will find useful:

use your tax credit!
foreclosure deals!
refinance now!

"mike", the possibilities are nearly endless! there's so much good "information" out there, but i've really given it a lot of thought and come up with my three best options for you.

"mike", i hope this "helps".

Is being found as hard as being lost?

it can be.

in one sense, it's easier to get lost and often harder to find your way back, and harder to manage to be found by the rescue team.

in another sense, you kind of relinquish control when you get lost, or sometimes you're really, really lost and don't entirely want to be found, in which case it is much harder to be found than it is to be lost.

i've been lost in the woods, lost in my life, lost metaphorically, lost in the discussion, lost in thought, and sometimes what's hard is not the being found, but adjusting to the aftermath.

lost can resonate in your soul for years.

the last time i was lost it was two days ago and i still haven't gotten my legs under me fully.

Ask me anything

you shouldn't drink it.

i swear, i'm going to move this off of my desk, take it downstairs and clean it out. i keep reaching for it like it's a beverage because it's sitting in a glass i might drink out of, and it's in the place on my desk where i often keep a tertiary beverage. to my mind it looks a little like prune juice, which i like.

but yesterday i was working on a piece, something that required pens with actual ink and i tried out a couple of nibs and that glass is where i dropped nibs i wasn't particularly using. you know, as a prelimiary to cleaning them and putting them away.

i keep picking it up, distracted by other things, and i keep putting it down without drinking it. i wonder how close i will get before i take it down and wash it out?

old tale

in january 1998 (and for some time after that) i was a music teacher.  i had a big concert, a complicated one, scheduled in the second week of that month.

and on january 8th we had that ice storm. the really big one. and it canceled four days of school just before my concert, four days of rehearsal that i NEEDED. unlike a lot of people around here, i lived in a pocket of rain instead of ice, and therefore had no damage to my home, and my electricity barely even flickered.

but fifty feet higher up and fifty feet lower down it was all ice, so there was no going in or out even if the roads hadn't been closed by order of the state police.

and all i could do was sit and watch, waiting each day for the call that came to tell me to stay home another day. watching all my rehearsal time slip away, hour by hour.

it was an ambitious program, one that required skill and attention. and even though i was given every possible minute in which to practice and every flexibility, i was not happy with the way things looked on that day going into the concert. i was just going to slink off and never be heard from again rather than face the humiliation of it.


but when i got home i found floating in my downstairs toilet (and don't ask me what i was doing in that bathroom; i never use it) a tiny little mouse, shivering and on the brink of death. it appeared to me that she'd been trapped in there for days, treading water.

i have no idea how she got in there.

but i fished her out, the poor thing, dried her off and put her under a lamp to warm up. i put a dish of water near her, a block of rat chow, and some peanut butter. and i watched her. and in a couple of hours she had dragged her tiny little form over and had begun eating.

what a little miracle she was!

and i decided that if she was going to make a recovery against those odds, so was i. and back at school i had just about released the horde of kids into the ramp leading down to the hall and i got up on a chair in the middle of that crowd and told the story of the mouse.

and the kids were so whipped up, they charged down the chute and somehow pulled off the performance i'd intended for it to be.

when i got home, i put the little mouse in a cage i had handy, with food and water and fresh bedding, and although i did not name her (a wild creature), i called her "miss mouse".

...until a few days later -did i mention that the mouse was teeny?- his one testicle descended and i started calling him "mister". i kept him for a while, having decided to nurse him to full health and then release him on the first warm day but when that day arrived and i left his cage outside with the door open, i watched from a window as he poked his head out, put his little paws onto the cold ground, and quickly retreated to the warmth of his nest, pulling the bedding down over himself as if to declare emphatically that he did not wish to go.

twice more, on warmer days, he declined to leave my house and although he never was a tame pet, he was a perfectly acceptable mouseguest and he stayed with me until he died.

How are you?

well, thanks for asking. it's hard to know exactly how to answer this question when it's being asked anonymously. it's ok; it's just a little weird and i'm not quite used to it.

i'm having kind of a hard day; i've had a lot of mood swings and last night i felt a crash coming on, and probably a bad one, too, and it arrived this morning shortly after oh-four-hundred, and that's a bad way to wake up.

but i got myself to church and things are going about as good as they can be, i guess.

i'm feeling bad, but not as bad as i could be feeling, and that's something to be grateful for.

i'm hungry, so i think i'll go get some lunch.

i hope you are well and blessed.

Ask me anything

What is formspring?

apparently it's a doohickey that allows people to ask me any question they want.

you could do it too, i guess.

it seems like it has interesting possibilities.

i don't promise i'll answer everything that gets asked, but i promise to tell the truth.

Ask me anything

snohaus

i plan to keep building obsessively until i run out of snow, but i've been meaning to give you pictures of the snohaus.

here are some pretty nighttime shots; the rest of the pictures can be found in the usual place.

can't hold a candle to it...

so the candle project is going slower than i might have thought, but still progressing. i'll have some pretty little pieces to show for it.

of course, even though you know that i'm making them, i'm still pretending that it's a secret because i won't claim authorship on easter morning when they get given away to random people.

i like random gifts, random prizes.

i've always thought the world would be a nicer place if there were random gifts; things of beauty or usefulness or humor given to people just because they happened to show up.

i guess if you want to live in a world like that, you have to create it.

a friend of mine asked if i was really going to give these things away to unknown people.

yes. i did, and i will. when you do it in this way, they become gifts of place rather than gifts of person. and it isn't about me, funny little artist; it's about an environment of surprise and delight, a place of generosity.

so.

i'm posting the gallery of the candles over here where i keep such things, and i'll update those photos as i have more candles finished.

formspring.me

is this thing on?

yes, it is.

Ask me anything

round two

the january thaw destroyed my snowcave but then when we got all that snow a couple of weeks ago i thought i'd rebuild it and that would have worked, too, except for the three days' rain.

there was more snow (never enough if you ask me, or even if you don't), so i decided to try an alternate construction style: instead of digging the cave out of a mound, i am now building upward with snow blocks held together with ig-glue.

sorry. i know you deserved better than that, but i am a weak, weak woman and i couldn't resist.

later on there will be more pictures over where i keep my photo galleries, but for now here's what it looked like when i started to rebuild, and a picture from yesterday just before i started zipping the front together.

it's amazing to see the wall go up,and really gratifying to get to the point where i have to use the stepladder, but the really cool moment is the one in which the walls join and all of a sudden you've got ROOF.

at its highest point, the interior is about seven feet tall.

snapshot life

february is over, which means i've photographed it in thirteen hour intervals, and i've even clocked it, so here's the video.