in 1985 the ithaca college choir began to work on a new piece that had been commissioned for us. it was weird, and modern- sounding, on a text that was famous, but not to us. it was called "Convergence of the Twain" and it was by Iain Hamilton.
we didn't think much of it at first, but as we began to understand it, we began to see its scope and awesomeness. i wish i had a recording of it for you to listen to, but i can't find one.
often, when we were working music with dense poetry as its text, larry would sit us down to discuss the poetry and its meaning, or meanings. we were free to create alternate meanings, if we could support them.
this particular text was opaque to us, couched in language of seventy years before, and we were not yet interested enough to look very deep.
hubris of youth.
and sitting on the risers, my friend janis shrugged her shoulders, thinking herself very, very funny (usually she was) and said "I think it's about the sinking of the titanic!"
and we all laughed.
until we looked carefully at the poem in that light. it wasn't so easy to see, hidden in the lines of music. but found the poem standing on its own, with its stanzas intact and its subtitle.
and we understood.
and the piece was AWESOME.
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Saturday, April 14, 2012
road ride
so yesterday i got out on my road bike, because i felt like it. my favorite bike, mostly, is whichever one i happen to be riding. except the black trek, which only achieves favoriteness through sentimental value and lendability.
anyway, it was significant (to me) that i felt like riding my road bike because i haven't felt like it since that day i went out on a short ride and got a flat three miles from my car and had to walk back in road shoes and got blisters.
and all of a sudden road riding seemed scary and unsafe to me, which is odd, because when i got run over on route 2 nothing about road riding seemed scary and unsafe. it was just a thing, you know?
i still get shivers when i ride that section of road or when something reminds me of the moments just before i was looking up at the front axle of a dodge durango, but it still seemed totally safe to me, nevermind the crushed helmet, the three layers of clothing ground off, and the ambulance ride.
but getting this flat tire made it scary.
you may ask why i didn't have tools, and rightly so.
i used to be in the habit of carrying every tool i might ever need, and never needing them. i could change a flat, break a chain, and repair the brakes. but it had been YEARS since my last flat and brain damage had erased from me the knowledge of HOW to change a flat and besides, it was a short ride.
and i got a flat.
and had to walk.
in road shoes.
and hadn't ridden my road bike since.
so yesterday i bit down and did it because i felt like it. i used to be a lot faster on a bike, but no matter how you slice it, on a bike i am much faster than i am on foot. not just if you compare my speed on foot to my speed on a bike, but compared to other humans similarly equipped. on foot i can't keep up with anyone. on a bike, i'm one of the crowd. i am graceful and strong and i can MOVE.
everybody should be able to feel that way sometimes.
and it was an awesome ride, too, even though i gave up without even trying going up the little climbs in big gears; i just don't have the legs.
but i rode in big gears more than i thought i would, and i hit the light just perfect in richomnd.
richmond is fun because if you do the loop counter-clock, you come down the hill and if you get that right you are egregiously in violation of the speed limit, which is tonic to the soul of every road cyclist.
but then you have to think about when to take the lane if you're turning left at the light because it can get ugly if the auto traffic thinks you're holding it up. if you're a cyclist, you know that when you come down past the firehouse if the light is green, it will turn red and you will have just enough time to catch the next green without having to stop at the intersection.
if you get there too early, you have to foot down and wait for thru traffic before you can turn left and if you get there too late you miss the light and have to foot down AND wait for thru traffic in the next cycle.
timing it right is a matter of three or four seconds, and you have to gauge both the traffic behind you and traffic oncoming AND watch for pedestrians in the crosswalks and cars backing out of the diagonal parking.
it's only a two-street town, but it's hoppin'.
yesterday i got the lights just PERFECT and sailed down onto bridge street in total style and as i came around the corner there were people n a white minivan honking and waving at me.
now, i don't recognize faces well, but richmond is a town where i am not a stranger, so i looked at them, pretended to recognize the people, was genuinely happy to see them (i am assuming that i know them), and waved before heading down to the red/green bridge.
i was gonna tear that off with some style, too, but the pavement is so bad that my left foot got bounced right out of the pedal, but it was all good and i made my left turn at cochran road perfectly meshed with the traffic and went happily on my way.
anyway, it was significant (to me) that i felt like riding my road bike because i haven't felt like it since that day i went out on a short ride and got a flat three miles from my car and had to walk back in road shoes and got blisters.
and all of a sudden road riding seemed scary and unsafe to me, which is odd, because when i got run over on route 2 nothing about road riding seemed scary and unsafe. it was just a thing, you know?
i still get shivers when i ride that section of road or when something reminds me of the moments just before i was looking up at the front axle of a dodge durango, but it still seemed totally safe to me, nevermind the crushed helmet, the three layers of clothing ground off, and the ambulance ride.
but getting this flat tire made it scary.
you may ask why i didn't have tools, and rightly so.
i used to be in the habit of carrying every tool i might ever need, and never needing them. i could change a flat, break a chain, and repair the brakes. but it had been YEARS since my last flat and brain damage had erased from me the knowledge of HOW to change a flat and besides, it was a short ride.
and i got a flat.
and had to walk.
in road shoes.
and hadn't ridden my road bike since.
so yesterday i bit down and did it because i felt like it. i used to be a lot faster on a bike, but no matter how you slice it, on a bike i am much faster than i am on foot. not just if you compare my speed on foot to my speed on a bike, but compared to other humans similarly equipped. on foot i can't keep up with anyone. on a bike, i'm one of the crowd. i am graceful and strong and i can MOVE.
everybody should be able to feel that way sometimes.
and it was an awesome ride, too, even though i gave up without even trying going up the little climbs in big gears; i just don't have the legs.
but i rode in big gears more than i thought i would, and i hit the light just perfect in richomnd.
richmond is fun because if you do the loop counter-clock, you come down the hill and if you get that right you are egregiously in violation of the speed limit, which is tonic to the soul of every road cyclist.
but then you have to think about when to take the lane if you're turning left at the light because it can get ugly if the auto traffic thinks you're holding it up. if you're a cyclist, you know that when you come down past the firehouse if the light is green, it will turn red and you will have just enough time to catch the next green without having to stop at the intersection.
if you get there too early, you have to foot down and wait for thru traffic before you can turn left and if you get there too late you miss the light and have to foot down AND wait for thru traffic in the next cycle.
timing it right is a matter of three or four seconds, and you have to gauge both the traffic behind you and traffic oncoming AND watch for pedestrians in the crosswalks and cars backing out of the diagonal parking.
it's only a two-street town, but it's hoppin'.
yesterday i got the lights just PERFECT and sailed down onto bridge street in total style and as i came around the corner there were people n a white minivan honking and waving at me.
now, i don't recognize faces well, but richmond is a town where i am not a stranger, so i looked at them, pretended to recognize the people, was genuinely happy to see them (i am assuming that i know them), and waved before heading down to the red/green bridge.
i was gonna tear that off with some style, too, but the pavement is so bad that my left foot got bounced right out of the pedal, but it was all good and i made my left turn at cochran road perfectly meshed with the traffic and went happily on my way.
Friday, April 13, 2012
Month of MAYhem Blogging Challenge™
well, people seem to like being told what to write on their blogs. here's my whack at it. if you don't like my challenge, why don't you write your own ideas on your own blog every. damn. day?
all righty. so for those of you looking for guidance, you can either follow the steps in the order they are given, or you can print out the schedule, cut each day out into a little slip of paper and put them in a hat from which you can draw randomly.
wouldn't that be fun?
prologue: blog every day about how the Month of MAYhem Blogging Challenge™ is coming up. be sure to encourage everybody you know to join. some of the exercises require advance preparation, so be sure to read the whole list ahead of time!
day 1: announce with great fanfare that you are taking part in Month of MAYhem Blogging Challenge™, that it is a rigorous challenge, and that you are committed to sticking with it faithfully. invite everyone to do the same and check back often.
day 2: do not post anything. nothing. not one word or picture.
day 3: take a close-up picture of a body part belonging to you or someone you know. the picture should be in focus, but at such close range that it is difficult to guess which body part it actually is. invite readers to guess. bonus points if the photo is of one of your co-workers, especially your supervisor.
day 4: tell us ten things about yourself that we don't already know. since you are a blogger, you have probably already told us everything you're willing to tell us, so dig deep. and be sure to cross-check your post with everything you've ever written online to be sure you are not recycling material.
day 5: leave your house. bring your camera and a megaphone or a bullhorn. when you get to the end of your driveway, turn left. turn left at the next opportunity. go through the next three intersections, then turn left again and take your first right. when you come to the next intersection stop and set up your camera. take video of yourself making a rambling political-sounding rant at whichever street corner you find yourself. post the video to your blog.
day 6: post a picture of a housepet. anyone's housepet. do not identify or explain it.
day 7: do not post anything except the words "taken with instagram at (place)" and for place, insert any location to which you have never been. please be specific.
day 8: write that the Month of MAYhem Blogging Challenge™ says you're supposed to cook something in which the ingredients all begin with the letter "d", but then make anything you like and put the word "delicious" in front of it.
day 9: for "FOTO FRIDAY" (because if you are doing this day-by-day it is wednesday) draw something in a cheap paint program and post a screenshot. if for some reason you are choosing to have day nine on an actual friday, post a recipe instead. be sure to say it's for FOTO FRIDAY. do not apologize or explain.
day 10: pick a random commercial product and endorse it, but pretend you are REALLY, REALLY EXCITED ABOUT IT. write your post with plenty of links and testimonials for the product but try to keep a tone that suggests to the reader that you're trying WAY TOO HARD to appear like you're not getting paid .02 cents for every clickthrough.
day 11: ramble on about how much better things were in the old days. if you are over 50, talk about how everything has been spoiled ever since stores are allowed to remain open on sundays, because you hate shopping on sundays. if you are under 50, go on a tearful nostalgic rant about how much life has changed for the worse ever since (event) happened. for your event, pick something that happened in the last two weeks.
day 12: call up every hardware store within a twelve mile radius of your house and ask them if they have duck tape in the OSU buckeye pattern. if you live in ohio, ask for texas A&M. keep an elaborate record of those calls and tell us about it.
day 13: complain about someone with annoying or even downright illegal behavior. make sure to mention the person's race, ethnicity, religion, or perceived sexual orientation. because, you know, those things are all causative.
days 14 and 15: confess to a pattern of illegal behavior, vent your outrage at the inconvenience of being caught, and then complain about how hard it is for you to get a job as either a bank teller or a schoolteacher.
day 16: make six different posts, but don't actually say anything.
day 17: thank people for giving you awards that they didn't actually give you. bonus points if you can get them to give you the awards retroactively.
day 18: make up awards and give them to people. award yourself points if you can get them to pass the bogus awards on to other chumps. double your bonus points if you can get them to thank you for giving them any award that implies they should write less.
day 19: MORE AWARDS! as part of the Month of MAYhem Blogging Challenge™, design and give out an award that carries with it a long list of odious conditions, e.g., "to accept this award post a video of you hopping up and down on one foot while reciting ten sunshiny things about you and thanking the person who nominated you". make sure it is like a chain letter and must be passed on to several more people. give it a pretty graphic. if you are too lazy to make a fun graphic, you can use mine:
day 20: visit 20 random blogs and make comments that look like they ought to make sense, but do not. one handy way to do this is to save your comment for the first blog and write it, as if it belongs there, on the second.
day 21: go to some popular websites and leave incendiary comments designed to get people to follow links back to your blog and leave angry comments there. for this day, post the results. if there are any live backlinks, leave them in.
day 22: announce that you are taking an online writing course. have everything you write for the rest of the month become progressively worse.
day 23: start posting free-form poetry.
be
asbolutely certain
that it illustrates the concept
that you do not
know
anything about poetry or line
breaks
other than it has
narrower
columns.
day 24: be sure to mention that you are using a writing prompt from the Month of MAYhem Blogging Challenge™, because inclusion of the words "writing prompt" always signals a quality post. and then in your post, write about any incident from your life, but use the words "innertube", "mayonnaise", "postmodern", and "cephalopod".
day 25: begin to write about your activities for the summer solstice. be sure to write in such a way as to suggest it is today and not some date next month.
day 26: visit a handful of random mommy blogs and give internet psychiatric diagnoses to either the author or the commenters. make popcorn. some popular diagnoses to throw around include bipolar illness, borderline personality disorder, and trichotillomania. sound all knowing and ominous. sit back and enjoy the aftermath.
day 27: find a box of junk you don't want and present it as a fun giveaway in honor of Month of MAYhem Blogging Challenge™. offer to mail it to the person who writes the MOST comments on a secret, randomly selected post from this month.
day 28: write a long-winded post apologizing for having nothing to say. be sure to title it "wordless wednesday." even better if today is monday.
day 29: in today's post, make sure you use at least five words you aren't sure how to spell and of which you do not really understand the meaning. do not under any circumstances look them up.
day 30: pretend you do not know how many days are in the month of may, and declare a successful conclusion to the Month of MAYhem Blogging Challenge™.
i know i have helped you.
all righty. so for those of you looking for guidance, you can either follow the steps in the order they are given, or you can print out the schedule, cut each day out into a little slip of paper and put them in a hat from which you can draw randomly.
wouldn't that be fun?
prologue: blog every day about how the Month of MAYhem Blogging Challenge™ is coming up. be sure to encourage everybody you know to join. some of the exercises require advance preparation, so be sure to read the whole list ahead of time!
day 1: announce with great fanfare that you are taking part in Month of MAYhem Blogging Challenge™, that it is a rigorous challenge, and that you are committed to sticking with it faithfully. invite everyone to do the same and check back often.
day 2: do not post anything. nothing. not one word or picture.
day 3: take a close-up picture of a body part belonging to you or someone you know. the picture should be in focus, but at such close range that it is difficult to guess which body part it actually is. invite readers to guess. bonus points if the photo is of one of your co-workers, especially your supervisor.
day 4: tell us ten things about yourself that we don't already know. since you are a blogger, you have probably already told us everything you're willing to tell us, so dig deep. and be sure to cross-check your post with everything you've ever written online to be sure you are not recycling material.
day 5: leave your house. bring your camera and a megaphone or a bullhorn. when you get to the end of your driveway, turn left. turn left at the next opportunity. go through the next three intersections, then turn left again and take your first right. when you come to the next intersection stop and set up your camera. take video of yourself making a rambling political-sounding rant at whichever street corner you find yourself. post the video to your blog.
day 6: post a picture of a housepet. anyone's housepet. do not identify or explain it.
day 7: do not post anything except the words "taken with instagram at (place)" and for place, insert any location to which you have never been. please be specific.
day 8: write that the Month of MAYhem Blogging Challenge™ says you're supposed to cook something in which the ingredients all begin with the letter "d", but then make anything you like and put the word "delicious" in front of it.
day 9: for "FOTO FRIDAY" (because if you are doing this day-by-day it is wednesday) draw something in a cheap paint program and post a screenshot. if for some reason you are choosing to have day nine on an actual friday, post a recipe instead. be sure to say it's for FOTO FRIDAY. do not apologize or explain.
day 10: pick a random commercial product and endorse it, but pretend you are REALLY, REALLY EXCITED ABOUT IT. write your post with plenty of links and testimonials for the product but try to keep a tone that suggests to the reader that you're trying WAY TOO HARD to appear like you're not getting paid .02 cents for every clickthrough.
day 11: ramble on about how much better things were in the old days. if you are over 50, talk about how everything has been spoiled ever since stores are allowed to remain open on sundays, because you hate shopping on sundays. if you are under 50, go on a tearful nostalgic rant about how much life has changed for the worse ever since (event) happened. for your event, pick something that happened in the last two weeks.
day 12: call up every hardware store within a twelve mile radius of your house and ask them if they have duck tape in the OSU buckeye pattern. if you live in ohio, ask for texas A&M. keep an elaborate record of those calls and tell us about it.
day 13: complain about someone with annoying or even downright illegal behavior. make sure to mention the person's race, ethnicity, religion, or perceived sexual orientation. because, you know, those things are all causative.
days 14 and 15: confess to a pattern of illegal behavior, vent your outrage at the inconvenience of being caught, and then complain about how hard it is for you to get a job as either a bank teller or a schoolteacher.
day 16: make six different posts, but don't actually say anything.
day 17: thank people for giving you awards that they didn't actually give you. bonus points if you can get them to give you the awards retroactively.
day 18: make up awards and give them to people. award yourself points if you can get them to pass the bogus awards on to other chumps. double your bonus points if you can get them to thank you for giving them any award that implies they should write less.
day 19: MORE AWARDS! as part of the Month of MAYhem Blogging Challenge™, design and give out an award that carries with it a long list of odious conditions, e.g., "to accept this award post a video of you hopping up and down on one foot while reciting ten sunshiny things about you and thanking the person who nominated you". make sure it is like a chain letter and must be passed on to several more people. give it a pretty graphic. if you are too lazy to make a fun graphic, you can use mine:day 20: visit 20 random blogs and make comments that look like they ought to make sense, but do not. one handy way to do this is to save your comment for the first blog and write it, as if it belongs there, on the second.
day 21: go to some popular websites and leave incendiary comments designed to get people to follow links back to your blog and leave angry comments there. for this day, post the results. if there are any live backlinks, leave them in.
day 22: announce that you are taking an online writing course. have everything you write for the rest of the month become progressively worse.
day 23: start posting free-form poetry.
be
asbolutely certain
that it illustrates the concept
that you do not
know
anything about poetry or line
breaks
other than it has
narrower
columns.
day 24: be sure to mention that you are using a writing prompt from the Month of MAYhem Blogging Challenge™, because inclusion of the words "writing prompt" always signals a quality post. and then in your post, write about any incident from your life, but use the words "innertube", "mayonnaise", "postmodern", and "cephalopod".
day 25: begin to write about your activities for the summer solstice. be sure to write in such a way as to suggest it is today and not some date next month.
day 26: visit a handful of random mommy blogs and give internet psychiatric diagnoses to either the author or the commenters. make popcorn. some popular diagnoses to throw around include bipolar illness, borderline personality disorder, and trichotillomania. sound all knowing and ominous. sit back and enjoy the aftermath.
day 27: find a box of junk you don't want and present it as a fun giveaway in honor of Month of MAYhem Blogging Challenge™. offer to mail it to the person who writes the MOST comments on a secret, randomly selected post from this month.
day 28: write a long-winded post apologizing for having nothing to say. be sure to title it "wordless wednesday." even better if today is monday.
day 29: in today's post, make sure you use at least five words you aren't sure how to spell and of which you do not really understand the meaning. do not under any circumstances look them up.
day 30: pretend you do not know how many days are in the month of may, and declare a successful conclusion to the Month of MAYhem Blogging Challenge™.
i know i have helped you.
Thursday, April 12, 2012
banner day
well, i'm too blasted lazy to post what i was going to post, so instead i'm going to show you a picture of a thing i made a little while ago.
i keep thinking it should be all secret and stuff, but the truth is that very few people who know me in real life read this blog, mostly because people who know me in real life have a pretty good idea what's on my worktable and in my kitchen without needing to go to a webpage to read about it.
so even though this little baby is still technically secret, the chances that the person who should not see it yet will come here and look at the photo are pretty close to nil.
actually, i am betting that this person's birthday gift can be left almost in plain sight in her home and she will not see it for upwards of five weeks, nevermind the frozen birthday cake at the back of her freezer that i have carefully labeled
VEGETARIAN LASAGNA - CRUNCHY (XTRA PEPPERS)
WHOLE WHEAT
SOY CHEESE
hehehehehe.
i keep thinking it should be all secret and stuff, but the truth is that very few people who know me in real life read this blog, mostly because people who know me in real life have a pretty good idea what's on my worktable and in my kitchen without needing to go to a webpage to read about it.so even though this little baby is still technically secret, the chances that the person who should not see it yet will come here and look at the photo are pretty close to nil.
actually, i am betting that this person's birthday gift can be left almost in plain sight in her home and she will not see it for upwards of five weeks, nevermind the frozen birthday cake at the back of her freezer that i have carefully labeled
VEGETARIAN LASAGNA - CRUNCHY (XTRA PEPPERS)
WHOLE WHEAT
SOY CHEESE
hehehehehe.
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
listserve
today i signed up for the listserve.
it sounds like a fascinating experiment. i cannot wait to read what people would say to everybody, given the chance.
i wonder what i would say.
what would you say?
it sounds like a fascinating experiment. i cannot wait to read what people would say to everybody, given the chance.
i wonder what i would say.
what would you say?
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
houseplants
i'm a softie.if a thing is trying to grow, i feel bad not letting it.
that's why i have a planter with onions and garlic growing in my living room.
Monday, April 09, 2012
home for the hunter
you might think that it's not so hard to get a 2012 penny in mid-april of 2012.
you might think it.
you'd be wrong.
i was expecting to have difficulty finding the oldest pennies in the set, but after searching a lot of people's penny jars and making calls to both my bank and my grocery store and putting up a sign in my neighborhood, i found myself running out of time and still no 2012 penny.
so i decided to hit my local businesses.
i live somewhere between jericho and richmond, and even though the jericho center store is the closest store to my house, it's not on my way to anything most of the time, but a couple of miles in the wrong direction so i usually go into richmond for what i can get there and williston for things such as need buying at big stores.
but today i decided to go to the jericho center store.
when the woman behind the counter looked to me, i stepped up and said "hi, your day isn't weird enough yet, so i'm here."
"bring it on!", she said, laughing.
so i explained what i wanted and she was only too happy to go through he register drawer, but there was no 2012 penny. there were some collection jars for causes on the counter and she said she'd be happy to look in those after she waited on the people that had come to the counter.
so i kind of hung out, looking at a thing i might want to purchase.
no, i'm not telling what.
but after a few minutes i heard a shout.
"is the lady who wanted the penny still here?"
and another shout: "we have the penny!"
"BINGO!", i hollered, from the back of the store.
the woman behind the counter was holding it like a trophy.
apparently, one of the other customers had heard the exchange and either found one in her car or asked another customer, but the upshot was that the right penny had just materialized and there was much rejoicing by a group of strangers over one penny.
i went ahead and bought the thing i was looking at, and skipped happily out.
i gave you the link for the store above, but i'm going to give it to you again.
the jericho center country store is an interesting place in its own right, and mildly famous. if you are ever passing through here, you should stop in. they are friendly and often they have just what you need.
you might think it.
you'd be wrong.
i was expecting to have difficulty finding the oldest pennies in the set, but after searching a lot of people's penny jars and making calls to both my bank and my grocery store and putting up a sign in my neighborhood, i found myself running out of time and still no 2012 penny.
so i decided to hit my local businesses.
i live somewhere between jericho and richmond, and even though the jericho center store is the closest store to my house, it's not on my way to anything most of the time, but a couple of miles in the wrong direction so i usually go into richmond for what i can get there and williston for things such as need buying at big stores.
but today i decided to go to the jericho center store.
when the woman behind the counter looked to me, i stepped up and said "hi, your day isn't weird enough yet, so i'm here."
"bring it on!", she said, laughing.
so i explained what i wanted and she was only too happy to go through he register drawer, but there was no 2012 penny. there were some collection jars for causes on the counter and she said she'd be happy to look in those after she waited on the people that had come to the counter.
so i kind of hung out, looking at a thing i might want to purchase.
no, i'm not telling what.
but after a few minutes i heard a shout.
"is the lady who wanted the penny still here?"
and another shout: "we have the penny!"
"BINGO!", i hollered, from the back of the store.
the woman behind the counter was holding it like a trophy.
apparently, one of the other customers had heard the exchange and either found one in her car or asked another customer, but the upshot was that the right penny had just materialized and there was much rejoicing by a group of strangers over one penny.
i went ahead and bought the thing i was looking at, and skipped happily out.
i gave you the link for the store above, but i'm going to give it to you again.
the jericho center country store is an interesting place in its own right, and mildly famous. if you are ever passing through here, you should stop in. they are friendly and often they have just what you need.
Sunday, April 08, 2012
Saturday, April 07, 2012
Friday, April 06, 2012
party hats
i have written about my little round hats before.
these are not them.
they are little, and they are round, but not the same.
these are not them.
they are little, and they are round, but not the same.
Thursday, April 05, 2012
virus
yesterday i got a shady phone call from some boilermaker call room and a guy telling me that my windows machine is sending error messages that indicate i am infected with a very, very bad virus.
am i online now? he wants to know.
now, i know that reputable companies do. not. ever. ask for information over the phone.
wow, i say. that's awesome. please tell me what company you work for and give me your contact information so i can verify you and get back to you on that.
it is a very urgent matter, he tells me. my computer could crash any second.
oh, well, then. that's another matter! i should go right away and take it to the IT department at the university.
it's very sophisticated, he tells me. undetectable. my computer guys will not be able to help me.
oh, that might be true if i were just taking it to a computer store, i agree cheerfully, but i'm pretty sure our IT guys in the computer science department at the university can put things to right.
the reason i am still on the phone with this dipstick is because the longer he is on the phone with me, the harder he is working and the less time he is spending scamming someone else.
i kept him on the phone maybe fifteen minutes before he slammed his phone down.
i already know that if my machine is sending error messages, the recipient already KNOWS the information this guy is trying to ask.
and anyway, even though i have a windows machine for use in the car, i run a mac.
which is what made today's news so unsettling.
so of course after i painted a party hat and made cracker dough and a batch of soup i ran right upstairs to find out if my machine is clean.
it is.
yay.
am i online now? he wants to know.
now, i know that reputable companies do. not. ever. ask for information over the phone.
wow, i say. that's awesome. please tell me what company you work for and give me your contact information so i can verify you and get back to you on that.
it is a very urgent matter, he tells me. my computer could crash any second.
oh, well, then. that's another matter! i should go right away and take it to the IT department at the university.
it's very sophisticated, he tells me. undetectable. my computer guys will not be able to help me.
oh, that might be true if i were just taking it to a computer store, i agree cheerfully, but i'm pretty sure our IT guys in the computer science department at the university can put things to right.
the reason i am still on the phone with this dipstick is because the longer he is on the phone with me, the harder he is working and the less time he is spending scamming someone else.
i kept him on the phone maybe fifteen minutes before he slammed his phone down.
i already know that if my machine is sending error messages, the recipient already KNOWS the information this guy is trying to ask.
and anyway, even though i have a windows machine for use in the car, i run a mac.
which is what made today's news so unsettling.
so of course after i painted a party hat and made cracker dough and a batch of soup i ran right upstairs to find out if my machine is clean.
it is.
yay.
Wednesday, April 04, 2012
pennies
people born in 1956 are 56 this year.
i have a friend having a birthday soon and i thought it would be nice to give her one penny for each of her years.
at the time of this writing i am still missing pennies for 1956, 1958, 1959, 1963, and 2012.
56 is also divisible by 14, which is my friend's favorite number, so i'm playing with that a little.
later on i will show you my hats.
i have a friend having a birthday soon and i thought it would be nice to give her one penny for each of her years.
at the time of this writing i am still missing pennies for 1956, 1958, 1959, 1963, and 2012.
56 is also divisible by 14, which is my friend's favorite number, so i'm playing with that a little.
later on i will show you my hats.
Tuesday, April 03, 2012
eggs
a while ago i quit buying grocery store eggs because even when you pay extra to get cage-free eggs, you still aren't getting the product of humanely treated animals. all cage-free means is that the hens are warehoused on a floor and it can be a crowded, unpleasant floor.
i'm by no means an extremist; i happily eat red meat, although i very much prefer locally raised grass-fed beef. not grass-fed corn-finished, as is on so many labels these days, since the general population seems to think grass-fed is good, but haven't taken the trouble to learn anything about it.
it is getting harder and harder to learn anything about it, too, because a number of states are passing laws making it illegal to take pictures of farming operations because farmers (read: big business) are afraid that if people saw where their food comes from, they might start buying food from local farms (read: farmers).
anyway, they pasture beef on my road and every time i drive by those boys i sing out : have a good day, boys! be delicious!
so it made me happy when i found a friend with chickens and a surplus of eggs. i could eat eggs and be happy about it again! so it was a sad thing when my chicken guy told me he was sending the herd out to his sons.
but then yesterday afternoon i found a family who lives ON THE WAY TO THE GROCERY STORE who has a handsome flock of chickens wandering around the yard.
i went to buy eggs and she showed me the chickens and talked about their habits and the problem they've had lately with hawks coming down and eating them. turns out hawks like free range chickens, too.
but when you get a dozen eggs from a small flock of birds, you're getting nonstandard eggs. because the birds are diverse, their eggs are, too. and because nobody sizes and grades them, they come in many more shapes and sizes than from the grocery store.
here's the dozen i bought yesterday. one is so big the box won't close.
i'm by no means an extremist; i happily eat red meat, although i very much prefer locally raised grass-fed beef. not grass-fed corn-finished, as is on so many labels these days, since the general population seems to think grass-fed is good, but haven't taken the trouble to learn anything about it.
it is getting harder and harder to learn anything about it, too, because a number of states are passing laws making it illegal to take pictures of farming operations because farmers (read: big business) are afraid that if people saw where their food comes from, they might start buying food from local farms (read: farmers).
anyway, they pasture beef on my road and every time i drive by those boys i sing out : have a good day, boys! be delicious!
so it made me happy when i found a friend with chickens and a surplus of eggs. i could eat eggs and be happy about it again! so it was a sad thing when my chicken guy told me he was sending the herd out to his sons.
but then yesterday afternoon i found a family who lives ON THE WAY TO THE GROCERY STORE who has a handsome flock of chickens wandering around the yard.
i went to buy eggs and she showed me the chickens and talked about their habits and the problem they've had lately with hawks coming down and eating them. turns out hawks like free range chickens, too.
but when you get a dozen eggs from a small flock of birds, you're getting nonstandard eggs. because the birds are diverse, their eggs are, too. and because nobody sizes and grades them, they come in many more shapes and sizes than from the grocery store.
here's the dozen i bought yesterday. one is so big the box won't close.
Monday, April 02, 2012
beer
once a year or so i buy beer.
it's not a secret here that i went to ithaca college, and when i go back to ithaca i sometimes pick up some beer for crashco, because he likes small breweries.
and the ithaca beer company makes some fine beers, and they have a nice variety twelve pack.
so i'm in the checkout lane with my groceries and the cashier asks me for my driver's license. at first i'm really confused, because i have never been asked for my driver's license when i get groceries before.
and then it dawns on me.
oh. you're carding me? really?
so i show her my driver's license and i giggle the whole time, because i'm a lot closer to 50 than i am to 21 and really if we're going to be up front about it, i'm a lot closer to 50 than i am to 40.
made my day.
it's not a secret here that i went to ithaca college, and when i go back to ithaca i sometimes pick up some beer for crashco, because he likes small breweries.
and the ithaca beer company makes some fine beers, and they have a nice variety twelve pack.
so i'm in the checkout lane with my groceries and the cashier asks me for my driver's license. at first i'm really confused, because i have never been asked for my driver's license when i get groceries before.
and then it dawns on me.
oh. you're carding me? really?
so i show her my driver's license and i giggle the whole time, because i'm a lot closer to 50 than i am to 21 and really if we're going to be up front about it, i'm a lot closer to 50 than i am to 40.
made my day.
Sunday, April 01, 2012
whatever happened to red?
do you remember when duct tape was just duct tape? and people didn't make wallets and bracelets and from gowns from it? when duct tape came in ubiquitous silver, like ductwork? it was the dominant decorative motif in my grandfather's house.
and if you wanted other colors, you got elecrtical tape (black) or florist's tape (green) or gaffer's tape (still the most awesome), which came in fancy colors. and then there were other, utilitarian colors for duct tape.
and then it became a crafting thing.
fine.
granted, i was looking for it for a craft project, but i just wanted red. red and green.
simple.
except the packages say "cha cha cherry", "clover", and "merlot".
merlot?!?
apparently it also comes in jayhawk.
and if you wanted other colors, you got elecrtical tape (black) or florist's tape (green) or gaffer's tape (still the most awesome), which came in fancy colors. and then there were other, utilitarian colors for duct tape.
and then it became a crafting thing.
fine.
granted, i was looking for it for a craft project, but i just wanted red. red and green.
simple.
except the packages say "cha cha cherry", "clover", and "merlot".
apparently it also comes in jayhawk.
Saturday, March 31, 2012
they do!
a few weeks ago i read on a kitchen blog (i forget which) that instead of buying scallions, you should cut them off and put the bottoms in water and they will just regrow.they do!
Friday, March 30, 2012
i owe it a push
last friday at five in the afternoon just outside utica, NY, my car turned 100,000 miles.
i should probably push it a mile, just out of respect.
i should probably push it a mile, just out of respect.
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
too busy to work out, eh?
i have a wii fit. it's actually a good fitness tool, if not terribly advanced. it won't take the place of running every other day or riding or putting on the real miles, but it's good for some things.
but you get the part where i run every other day, right? outside? and sometimes ride my bike or something else?
so when you get on a wii fit every other day, the little wii avatar thingie asks you "too busy to work out yesterday, eh?"
maybe i'm just testy, but today i shouted "no, i'm not too busy to work out, you self-righteous little prick!"
somebody missed the boat when they designed this thing. software that tracks every fluctuation of weight over three years and keeps track of when you use the blasted thing might -just might- have included a feature that notices a stable pattern and just shuts up about it.
but you get the part where i run every other day, right? outside? and sometimes ride my bike or something else?
so when you get on a wii fit every other day, the little wii avatar thingie asks you "too busy to work out yesterday, eh?"
maybe i'm just testy, but today i shouted "no, i'm not too busy to work out, you self-righteous little prick!"
somebody missed the boat when they designed this thing. software that tracks every fluctuation of weight over three years and keeps track of when you use the blasted thing might -just might- have included a feature that notices a stable pattern and just shuts up about it.
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
speed
today i went for my run and i was not expecting much out of it since the last three times i ran that distance my times were nearly identical at over 27 minutes.
and i was away all weekend and eating away food, so i wasn't really surprised not to have lost any weight last week. not an ounce did i gain or lose, despite all the running and stuff.
but today i came in under 25 minutes, which is an astounding 14.7 minute mile.
you know.
astounding for me.
because when i was in good shape i didn't run faster than a fifteen minute mile, not ever.
sweet. maybe next week i will add to my distance or something.
and from my desk, here's a little project.
to break up the trip a little, while i was on the road i took a picture every fifteen minutes and made a cute little video montage.
and i was away all weekend and eating away food, so i wasn't really surprised not to have lost any weight last week. not an ounce did i gain or lose, despite all the running and stuff.
but today i came in under 25 minutes, which is an astounding 14.7 minute mile.
you know.
astounding for me.
because when i was in good shape i didn't run faster than a fifteen minute mile, not ever.
sweet. maybe next week i will add to my distance or something.
and from my desk, here's a little project.
to break up the trip a little, while i was on the road i took a picture every fifteen minutes and made a cute little video montage.
Monday, March 26, 2012
down on the inlet
it was not all that early in the morning, but i heard all this noise and shouting and thought one thing: maybe i should set my camera to video.
Sunday, March 25, 2012
i get to say it every year.
sadly, each year it is only a matter of when and not if i will post this poem.
Elegy
Syracuse lost
the ball game last night.
It made me think
of the last time i was in Syracuse
and found myself
pushing a car
on a street
where someone i once loved lives.
Everything was cold and grey,
encased in ice
as we tried so hard
to keep the car from slipping
out of control,
down the hill, because
Everything
slides, too easily,
down.
i'm going to go watch the jayhawks game now.
Elegy
Syracuse lost
the ball game last night.
It made me think
of the last time i was in Syracuse
and found myself
pushing a car
on a street
where someone i once loved lives.
Everything was cold and grey,
encased in ice
as we tried so hard
to keep the car from slipping
out of control,
down the hill, because
Everything
slides, too easily,
down.
i'm going to go watch the jayhawks game now.
Friday, March 23, 2012
blast from the past
i don't have anything to tell you. not yet, not today.
except that being in the town where i went to college in the springtime feels very much like being 20 years old again, when everything was fresh and urgent and the whole world was laid out in possibility and only the vaguest hint that the future contained not triumph, but illness and sorrow.
but i am here, on the ground in the one town i could be homesick for that is not my home.
oddly, my first blog post ever was about being here.
go ahead, read it.
except that being in the town where i went to college in the springtime feels very much like being 20 years old again, when everything was fresh and urgent and the whole world was laid out in possibility and only the vaguest hint that the future contained not triumph, but illness and sorrow.
but i am here, on the ground in the one town i could be homesick for that is not my home.
oddly, my first blog post ever was about being here.
go ahead, read it.
Thursday, March 22, 2012
mailman's mad mod
my mailman drvies a right hand drive subaru.
this is pretty common for rural carriers, and subaru makes a model especially for this purpose.
my mailman, however, does his own modding so that when he wears out one car he can just take out the unit and put it in the new car, which saves him a lot of money.
i asked if it made any difference in how the car gets inspected, and he said it doesn't.
this is pretty common for rural carriers, and subaru makes a model especially for this purpose.
my mailman, however, does his own modding so that when he wears out one car he can just take out the unit and put it in the new car, which saves him a lot of money.
i asked if it made any difference in how the car gets inspected, and he said it doesn't.
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
first day of spring
the speed limit on my road is 35, which these days only amounts to madcap optimism. mud season is often a lot worse than this, and i can't say as other than the road there's much mud season at all. come to think of it, winter never really got here. usually on the first day of spring the skiing is still fine and there are still feet of snow outside my door. this time last year i was still sledding down into snohaus.
yesterday i peed outside, standing up, and although it wasn't as neat an affair as i'd hoped, it was a lot tidier than i'd feared and i managed not to get any on my shoes or clothing, which i count as pretty much a sucessful first run.
i had been noticing a degree of saddle soreness yesterday while at my desk. i always forget that those first few days of riding mean getting into condition where butt meets saddle and even though i ride what are known as "relief saddles", it takes a little getting used to every season.
if i thought i noticed some saddle soreness at my desk yesterday, it was a whole other kettle of trees when i got on my bike today for a short climb up notch road until you can't go up any farther and a little bit past that and for sure i was NOTICING those contact points.
road condition was kind of a drag, too. mud suck away your energy and even on a flat or a slight downhill you still feel like you're climbing.
and then on the way back down (first day on the blue rocky) i thought i had some brake failure in my front brake, and downhill on a dirt road approaching a T going a little over 30 MPH is kind of a bad time to discover that.
tuns out it just needs a little adjusting and it's fine, but when you're going that fast downhill on dirt coming to the stop sign you need to be thinking about evasive moves and scrubbing that speed and getting your weight back in case there's a sudden need and you're thinking about what you're going to do if you have to go barrelling through the stop sign at the top of the half-blind curve.
in short, you don't have a lot of time to think: "is there really a problem with my front brake, or is it just pulling unusually high?"
by the time you realize there's no actual problem it's kind of anticlimactic.
here's a picture of a crocus i took today.
yesterday i peed outside, standing up, and although it wasn't as neat an affair as i'd hoped, it was a lot tidier than i'd feared and i managed not to get any on my shoes or clothing, which i count as pretty much a sucessful first run.
i had been noticing a degree of saddle soreness yesterday while at my desk. i always forget that those first few days of riding mean getting into condition where butt meets saddle and even though i ride what are known as "relief saddles", it takes a little getting used to every season.
if i thought i noticed some saddle soreness at my desk yesterday, it was a whole other kettle of trees when i got on my bike today for a short climb up notch road until you can't go up any farther and a little bit past that and for sure i was NOTICING those contact points.
road condition was kind of a drag, too. mud suck away your energy and even on a flat or a slight downhill you still feel like you're climbing.
and then on the way back down (first day on the blue rocky) i thought i had some brake failure in my front brake, and downhill on a dirt road approaching a T going a little over 30 MPH is kind of a bad time to discover that.
tuns out it just needs a little adjusting and it's fine, but when you're going that fast downhill on dirt coming to the stop sign you need to be thinking about evasive moves and scrubbing that speed and getting your weight back in case there's a sudden need and you're thinking about what you're going to do if you have to go barrelling through the stop sign at the top of the half-blind curve.
in short, you don't have a lot of time to think: "is there really a problem with my front brake, or is it just pulling unusually high?"
by the time you realize there's no actual problem it's kind of anticlimactic.
here's a picture of a crocus i took today.
Monday, March 19, 2012
some discomfort
speaking of discomfort, did you see the kansas/purdue game last night?
i did.
a lot of the time when i am watching sporting events i am doing crafts or making soup or something. not this game. i was rooting for the jayhawks (q.v. cr, below) and things didn't look good. not good at all.
jayhawks didn't manage to tie up the game or even take the lead, not ONCE until they had about three minutes left in the game and squeaked out a one point lead which they lost immediately on the next turnover and things were looking very grim indeed until they managed to get that slim one point lead with nineteen seconds left on the clock.
nineteen seconds is a LONG time to defend a one point lead with purdue hitting long threes all night.
but they managed to do it, and sink one more basket besides. the purdue team and fans looked something just past disgusted and i'm sure there's a lot of moaning about "should'a'" and "deserving", but the ball falls where it does and there's a REASON kansas was seeded higher than them, anyway.
it was pretty exciting. i stood up most of the time, right in front of my tv.
today i went to the house i'm modeling to take measurements and pictures. while the homeowner is very happy to see the model and will love having it done, i do not think she gives much thought to the idea that i am necessarily in her house poking into corners and taking pictures of things like baseboards (what rooms are they in? along what walls?) and plumbing fixtures and closets. i think she would be appalled to know that i have seven hundred pictures of her house, and very few of them are pretty arty shots. they are mostly of things like the underside of the stairs.
and i went to a friend's house and did some light yard work and house chores. never mind why. and if anyone asks, i wasn't there. i only bring it up because when i got home after having done a good piece of work already and already "enjoying" some discomfort, i went for my run at the new distance.
it did not suck as bad as i thought it would. i started out in moderate pain, but it was localized pain, so not so bad. and i didn't reach the level of "hurts pretty much bad" (which is not as good as "significant pain" but not as bad as "extreme pain") until i had only about two tenths of a mile left, so it almost doesn't count.
i timed it, just so you could have an idea of exactly how slow a runner i am. even when i am in peak form (and by peak form i mean a year in which i might win some cycling trophies) i am a very poor runner. in my present condition i ran the whole 1.66 miles in just twenty-seven minutes.
that is very nearly a sixteen minute mile, my friends.
i have never run better than a fifteen minute mile. not even in a year when i considered and sixty-mile bike ride to be no big thing and did it a couple of times a week and got trophies and stuff.
so.
there's hope.
i did.
a lot of the time when i am watching sporting events i am doing crafts or making soup or something. not this game. i was rooting for the jayhawks (q.v. cr, below) and things didn't look good. not good at all.
jayhawks didn't manage to tie up the game or even take the lead, not ONCE until they had about three minutes left in the game and squeaked out a one point lead which they lost immediately on the next turnover and things were looking very grim indeed until they managed to get that slim one point lead with nineteen seconds left on the clock.
nineteen seconds is a LONG time to defend a one point lead with purdue hitting long threes all night.
but they managed to do it, and sink one more basket besides. the purdue team and fans looked something just past disgusted and i'm sure there's a lot of moaning about "should'a'" and "deserving", but the ball falls where it does and there's a REASON kansas was seeded higher than them, anyway.
it was pretty exciting. i stood up most of the time, right in front of my tv.
today i went to the house i'm modeling to take measurements and pictures. while the homeowner is very happy to see the model and will love having it done, i do not think she gives much thought to the idea that i am necessarily in her house poking into corners and taking pictures of things like baseboards (what rooms are they in? along what walls?) and plumbing fixtures and closets. i think she would be appalled to know that i have seven hundred pictures of her house, and very few of them are pretty arty shots. they are mostly of things like the underside of the stairs.
and i went to a friend's house and did some light yard work and house chores. never mind why. and if anyone asks, i wasn't there. i only bring it up because when i got home after having done a good piece of work already and already "enjoying" some discomfort, i went for my run at the new distance.
it did not suck as bad as i thought it would. i started out in moderate pain, but it was localized pain, so not so bad. and i didn't reach the level of "hurts pretty much bad" (which is not as good as "significant pain" but not as bad as "extreme pain") until i had only about two tenths of a mile left, so it almost doesn't count.
i timed it, just so you could have an idea of exactly how slow a runner i am. even when i am in peak form (and by peak form i mean a year in which i might win some cycling trophies) i am a very poor runner. in my present condition i ran the whole 1.66 miles in just twenty-seven minutes.
that is very nearly a sixteen minute mile, my friends.
i have never run better than a fifteen minute mile. not even in a year when i considered and sixty-mile bike ride to be no big thing and did it a couple of times a week and got trophies and stuff.
so.
there's hope.
Sunday, March 18, 2012
running right along
i'm still working on that model, and some things i am not telling you about.
like the penny hunt. you have to sort of know me in person to have current news on a thing like that, although i am finding it interesting.
the model is coming along well, but it is right now such a huge file that i can't get nice video of it because of all the nice photorealistic textures and stuff.
yesterday when i went for my run i graduated up to 1.6 miles, which is about half the distance i need, but it's early yet. i'm getting faster to to the point that other people might actually recognize what i'm doing as running, as opposed to my trademark slow lope.
and today i went for my first bike ride of the season.
here's my handy dandy profile of yesterday's run.
i made it at geocontext.org but it is not dynamic or live linked because while i'm pretty free about telling you about where i live, i am not comfortable posting a map that goes directly to my front door. i'm just not.
notice that it has a bigger elevation gain, though. and the pain never started. oh, sure, it hurt. but by "pain" i've come to mean "subsuming pain" because anything less is hardly worth noticing these days.
like the penny hunt. you have to sort of know me in person to have current news on a thing like that, although i am finding it interesting.
the model is coming along well, but it is right now such a huge file that i can't get nice video of it because of all the nice photorealistic textures and stuff.
yesterday when i went for my run i graduated up to 1.6 miles, which is about half the distance i need, but it's early yet. i'm getting faster to to the point that other people might actually recognize what i'm doing as running, as opposed to my trademark slow lope.
and today i went for my first bike ride of the season.
here's my handy dandy profile of yesterday's run.
i made it at geocontext.org but it is not dynamic or live linked because while i'm pretty free about telling you about where i live, i am not comfortable posting a map that goes directly to my front door. i'm just not.
Saturday, March 17, 2012
my bad
syracuse is playing kansas STATE.
it comes from not caring very much, i guess.
meanitime, i'm working on my model and making duct tape roses.
later i will sort pennies.
never mind why.
it comes from not caring very much, i guess.
meanitime, i'm working on my model and making duct tape roses.
later i will sort pennies.
never mind why.
outcomes
today syracuse (goooOOOOOO orange) is playing KU (rock chalk jayhawk KU) since i like both teams, there's not really a bad outcome for me. i would be happy to see either team advance. i'd be happier if they BOTH advanced, but that's not how tourneys work.
the last time a thing like this happened to me it was syracuse getting beat by UVM and i got teased about it by someone who ought to have known better.
it was sad, though, because that year syracuse was hosting a bracket, and i was in syracuse the morning after the game and (as often happens in syracuse) is was grey and cold and raining. it was like the whoel town had dolled up for a party they were having but then at the last minute all the guests arrived and the host was suddenly, inexplicably uninvited but the guests stayed on anyway even though the house was covered in mourning crepe.
but what i'm REALLY (and predictably) excited about is and awesome interactive chart that you can find here.
go on, go. don't waste your time here.
the last time a thing like this happened to me it was syracuse getting beat by UVM and i got teased about it by someone who ought to have known better.
it was sad, though, because that year syracuse was hosting a bracket, and i was in syracuse the morning after the game and (as often happens in syracuse) is was grey and cold and raining. it was like the whoel town had dolled up for a party they were having but then at the last minute all the guests arrived and the host was suddenly, inexplicably uninvited but the guests stayed on anyway even though the house was covered in mourning crepe.
but what i'm REALLY (and predictably) excited about is and awesome interactive chart that you can find here.
go on, go. don't waste your time here.
Friday, March 16, 2012
Thursday, March 15, 2012
march meh-ness
it's the NCAA men's roundball tourney! yay!
it's not that i'm truly indifferent; i'm uh, limited in my fandom. i am wildly interested if syracuse is playing. i am a big syracuse fan (but only for men's basketball and no other sport) (no, i am not trying to explain that to you.).
i am moderately interested if UVM is playing, because i live near burlington, VT and grew up in that particular college town.
i am casually interested if KU is doing really, really well, because cr went to school there and while she cares litte for sports of any kind, she remembers some of the boys that used to play them and has some vestigial fondness. cr useta be friendly with the cheerleaders and had a close call with being little jay. (YOU look it up if you want.)
in other sports, i only care about baseball if the red sox are playing. my enthusiasm for the sox does not extend even so far as to give me the energy to hate the yankees, which is what you do around here: you love one and hate the other.
not me.
i hate american football of every kind, regionality, and age level. i extend my antipathy to football players, cheerleaders, and the entire superbore weekend.
i have a passing interest in soccer (or football, as it's called nearly everywhere else), especially if the revolution are playing.
WWF extreme fighting is the gayest thing i have ever seen.
bear in mind that i have no objection to gay things and am entirely gay friendly. i can see gay male porn with equanimity but mixed martial arts cagefighting embarrasses me with its intimacy. every time i see it on tv it feels vaguely and uncomfortably like i have walked into some couple's bedroom at an awkward time.
i adore watching canadian curling when i can find it on tv, and i will watch the tour de france obsessively, every day it's on, every year, no matter who is riding. the tour is the whole reason i have satellite tv in the first place. if you want to know where i am in the entire month of july, i am at home watching bicycle racing.
i'm willing to watch other races too, but they just don't give the other big classics or even newer races much full coverage and televised bicycle racing is weird: it is stunningly boring to watch unless you watch the WHOLE THING, in which case your glacial attention span is rewarded by amazing awareness of subtle drama and breathtaking courage.
and golf? i watch a lot of golf, but not on tv and only on one particular hole. i wouldn't bother, but i can see the 7th green from my sofa.
btw, i cannot find proper attribution for this comic. i am still looking.
it's not that i'm truly indifferent; i'm uh, limited in my fandom. i am wildly interested if syracuse is playing. i am a big syracuse fan (but only for men's basketball and no other sport) (no, i am not trying to explain that to you.).
i am moderately interested if UVM is playing, because i live near burlington, VT and grew up in that particular college town.
i am casually interested if KU is doing really, really well, because cr went to school there and while she cares litte for sports of any kind, she remembers some of the boys that used to play them and has some vestigial fondness. cr useta be friendly with the cheerleaders and had a close call with being little jay. (YOU look it up if you want.)
in other sports, i only care about baseball if the red sox are playing. my enthusiasm for the sox does not extend even so far as to give me the energy to hate the yankees, which is what you do around here: you love one and hate the other.
not me.
i hate american football of every kind, regionality, and age level. i extend my antipathy to football players, cheerleaders, and the entire superbore weekend.
i have a passing interest in soccer (or football, as it's called nearly everywhere else), especially if the revolution are playing.
WWF extreme fighting is the gayest thing i have ever seen.
bear in mind that i have no objection to gay things and am entirely gay friendly. i can see gay male porn with equanimity but mixed martial arts cagefighting embarrasses me with its intimacy. every time i see it on tv it feels vaguely and uncomfortably like i have walked into some couple's bedroom at an awkward time.
i adore watching canadian curling when i can find it on tv, and i will watch the tour de france obsessively, every day it's on, every year, no matter who is riding. the tour is the whole reason i have satellite tv in the first place. if you want to know where i am in the entire month of july, i am at home watching bicycle racing.
i'm willing to watch other races too, but they just don't give the other big classics or even newer races much full coverage and televised bicycle racing is weird: it is stunningly boring to watch unless you watch the WHOLE THING, in which case your glacial attention span is rewarded by amazing awareness of subtle drama and breathtaking courage.
and golf? i watch a lot of golf, but not on tv and only on one particular hole. i wouldn't bother, but i can see the 7th green from my sofa.
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
eat more pi
today is pi day.
if you are paying attention to the world of mathematics at all, you know that this is an increasingly controversial day.
there seem to be fewere and fewer holidays that don't involve controversy of some sort.
the opposition on this one comes from proponents of tau, which makes sense to me, except this morning i was laying in bed (not snoozing, mind you, these were my first thoughts on waking) and i do not think i have seen the arguably more convenient tau used to describe the area of a circle. seems like that's not a simplification, but i haven't hadtime energy to really think about it.
instead, i'm going to provide you with some little links about pi and tau and let you sort things out for yourself.
i was going to say that i'm simply going to retire to the sofa, but today some men came to take it away for reupholstery.
if you are paying attention to the world of mathematics at all, you know that this is an increasingly controversial day.
there seem to be fewere and fewer holidays that don't involve controversy of some sort.
the opposition on this one comes from proponents of tau, which makes sense to me, except this morning i was laying in bed (not snoozing, mind you, these were my first thoughts on waking) and i do not think i have seen the arguably more convenient tau used to describe the area of a circle. seems like that's not a simplification, but i haven't had
instead, i'm going to provide you with some little links about pi and tau and let you sort things out for yourself.
i was going to say that i'm simply going to retire to the sofa, but today some men came to take it away for reupholstery.
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
be sure to check back
i have decided to learn to pee standing up.
at its fundamental level, this isn't too hard. all of you who never pee in the shower, please raise your hands.
thought so.
anyway, a friend of ours swears she has a friend who can do this with accuracy about as well as the boys and that was at the back of my head a week or so ago when i read an article about river rafting and it mentioned that on these trips women learn to pee standing up, since you can't pee on the shore because of environmental concerns and you can't get in the water to pee because of safety concerns.
i wish i could remember the article so i could link you to it, but someone asserted that if you took a picture of a line of pee-ers from the back, you wouldn't be able to tell from the streams who was male and who was female.
so i thought that would be a handy skill to acquire. i don't imagine it will ever be quite as handy as having point and shoot apparatus that one can just pull out of a conveniently placed portal in the clothing, but it's supposed to be an improvement over simply squatting in the woods.
while i won't be reporting in any great detail (you're welcome), i'll keep you posted.
at its fundamental level, this isn't too hard. all of you who never pee in the shower, please raise your hands.
thought so.
anyway, a friend of ours swears she has a friend who can do this with accuracy about as well as the boys and that was at the back of my head a week or so ago when i read an article about river rafting and it mentioned that on these trips women learn to pee standing up, since you can't pee on the shore because of environmental concerns and you can't get in the water to pee because of safety concerns.
i wish i could remember the article so i could link you to it, but someone asserted that if you took a picture of a line of pee-ers from the back, you wouldn't be able to tell from the streams who was male and who was female.
so i thought that would be a handy skill to acquire. i don't imagine it will ever be quite as handy as having point and shoot apparatus that one can just pull out of a conveniently placed portal in the clothing, but it's supposed to be an improvement over simply squatting in the woods.
while i won't be reporting in any great detail (you're welcome), i'll keep you posted.
Sunday, March 11, 2012
three days running
it turns out to be six calendar days, since i can't run two days in a row.
i just can't. one little mile at this point brings on an asthma attack of the proportion that makes me think suddenly about reconsidering my attitude that asthma isn't all that serious.
even with the inhaler, it starts an hour or so after the run and doesn't let up entirely for two days. that's ok. i don't like running enough to do it every day.
i have some other issues with what your dentist calls "discomfort", and if you've been following the story you already know about my feet and knees and my point isn't to whine about how much they hurt, but to marvel at how progressively less they hurt.
the first day i started out in "discomfort" and the real pain -the kind where you grind your teeth and start to cry came on even before i was to the top of the "hill"... and i use quotation marks with the word "hill" because even though i live out here in the mountains, my road runs pretty level along the bottom of the mountain and although there are some elevation changes, it's pretty flat.
i estimated the elevation gain might be all of 20 feet, but i went and made a handy chart of the profile of my half-mile out-and-back and it turns out the elevation gain is twice that!
woo-hoo.
anyway, the second day the real pain didn't show up until i was nearly at the turnaround and today i kept waiting for the real pain to show up so i could tell you about it comparatively, but it just wasn't there.
soon, i hope, i will graduate up to a three mile run. that would be nice, because when race season starts i hope to be in better shape. today the sun was at just the right angle so that i could see the shadow of my massive thighs jiggle with each stride.
hey, at least i'm moving fast enough to jiggle them.
here's my handy chart:
i just can't. one little mile at this point brings on an asthma attack of the proportion that makes me think suddenly about reconsidering my attitude that asthma isn't all that serious.
even with the inhaler, it starts an hour or so after the run and doesn't let up entirely for two days. that's ok. i don't like running enough to do it every day.
i have some other issues with what your dentist calls "discomfort", and if you've been following the story you already know about my feet and knees and my point isn't to whine about how much they hurt, but to marvel at how progressively less they hurt.
the first day i started out in "discomfort" and the real pain -the kind where you grind your teeth and start to cry came on even before i was to the top of the "hill"... and i use quotation marks with the word "hill" because even though i live out here in the mountains, my road runs pretty level along the bottom of the mountain and although there are some elevation changes, it's pretty flat.
i estimated the elevation gain might be all of 20 feet, but i went and made a handy chart of the profile of my half-mile out-and-back and it turns out the elevation gain is twice that!
woo-hoo.
anyway, the second day the real pain didn't show up until i was nearly at the turnaround and today i kept waiting for the real pain to show up so i could tell you about it comparatively, but it just wasn't there.
soon, i hope, i will graduate up to a three mile run. that would be nice, because when race season starts i hope to be in better shape. today the sun was at just the right angle so that i could see the shadow of my massive thighs jiggle with each stride.
hey, at least i'm moving fast enough to jiggle them.
here's my handy chart:
Friday, March 09, 2012
pain in the neck
i do not remember when it started. it was unremarkable. it happens often enough: you move wrong and something catches in your neck and for a few days you can't turn your head all the way, and maybe your shoulder hurts but after a few days it gets worked out.
over years i learned that it will come out in a big fat hurry if i have a ski or biking crash, but also (and more helpfully) i have learned that a dose of muscle relaxants at bedtime on that first night usually sorts the whole thing out and no harm done.
because this i'm prone to muscle spasms in my neck and in my back and because one night of muscle relaxants usually sorts it out, i have script written for them. i'm written for one a day, but when things are good 30 last me three or four months.
in a rough ski or bike season or when i'm sleeping in my car i might take one every three or four days or sometimes two nights in a row. a beer or two would probably do the same for me, but i don't drink.
so all i remember about when this started was that it was two sundays ago, and i remember that it had been going on for more than a day or two and i heard somebody two pews back complaining of exactly the same thing.
so it's around three weeks now. for sure this spasm has pinched something in my neck because i have pain and swelling and numbness all the way down my left arm and back into my shoulderblade and ribcage.
there isn't a comfortable position to sit or stand in, but the worst of it is when i'm lying down, partly because i do not have a complete rotator cuff in either shoulder. i have no huge deficiencies, no gigantic tears ro missing bits, but just enough so that i don't have full support of my shoulders, so lying down is a challenge.
i found a position in which the pain passed relatively quickly, but it only aggravates my reflux so that's unpleasant.
i know from the number of podcasts i am listening to each night that it takes on average and hour an a half for the pain to subside enough to sleep. it's an interesting meditative exercise. i know that the positional change alone is hard, and i have taken to lying down for short bursts during the day just to get used to it. i also know that while i am moving there is less pain, but when i am still the throbbing, pounding, aching starts and i have an interval of subsuming pain.
yoga helps. the exercises from physical therapy help. i've taken three of the muscle relaxants, but i don't like to take too many in case there's something worse around the corner.
but i needed a refill.
and i called my doctor's office and left my message on the refill line.
they called me back a day or two later with some questions. then they called back a couple hours later. and again about an hour later, to tell me i need to come in for an office visit to get my refill.
ok, fine.
their first available opening is may 5.
seriously?!?
over years i learned that it will come out in a big fat hurry if i have a ski or biking crash, but also (and more helpfully) i have learned that a dose of muscle relaxants at bedtime on that first night usually sorts the whole thing out and no harm done.
because this i'm prone to muscle spasms in my neck and in my back and because one night of muscle relaxants usually sorts it out, i have script written for them. i'm written for one a day, but when things are good 30 last me three or four months.
in a rough ski or bike season or when i'm sleeping in my car i might take one every three or four days or sometimes two nights in a row. a beer or two would probably do the same for me, but i don't drink.
so all i remember about when this started was that it was two sundays ago, and i remember that it had been going on for more than a day or two and i heard somebody two pews back complaining of exactly the same thing.
so it's around three weeks now. for sure this spasm has pinched something in my neck because i have pain and swelling and numbness all the way down my left arm and back into my shoulderblade and ribcage.
there isn't a comfortable position to sit or stand in, but the worst of it is when i'm lying down, partly because i do not have a complete rotator cuff in either shoulder. i have no huge deficiencies, no gigantic tears ro missing bits, but just enough so that i don't have full support of my shoulders, so lying down is a challenge.
i found a position in which the pain passed relatively quickly, but it only aggravates my reflux so that's unpleasant.
i know from the number of podcasts i am listening to each night that it takes on average and hour an a half for the pain to subside enough to sleep. it's an interesting meditative exercise. i know that the positional change alone is hard, and i have taken to lying down for short bursts during the day just to get used to it. i also know that while i am moving there is less pain, but when i am still the throbbing, pounding, aching starts and i have an interval of subsuming pain.
yoga helps. the exercises from physical therapy help. i've taken three of the muscle relaxants, but i don't like to take too many in case there's something worse around the corner.
but i needed a refill.
and i called my doctor's office and left my message on the refill line.
they called me back a day or two later with some questions. then they called back a couple hours later. and again about an hour later, to tell me i need to come in for an office visit to get my refill.
ok, fine.
their first available opening is may 5.
seriously?!?
Thursday, March 08, 2012
model citizen
oh, right, that.
i was keeping a blog and it's not like it would be so hard to just write down what i'm working on.
right now (read: for the last three weeks or so) i am working kind of obsessively on what barbara is calling my snowfort, since this year there isn't enough snow to make a fort and this fits the pattern of doing SOMETHING obsessively at this time of year.
-did i even show you all of last year's snohaus pictures, or did i shelve them until i processed all the pictures? eh, probably that second thing.
anyway, i'm making a little sketchup model of a friend's house and it is a challenging project. most houses are basically a box or two with some sticky-out bits but my friend lives in a house that's five boxes with a slightly asymmetric T and a quarter-round room and some sticky-out bits. add to that the challenges of the original builder having been the original homeowner who was an engineer but not an architect or a building professional and what appears to be his natural predilection for dividing spaces by threes or fives and it gets interesting, never mind that for some reason no roof anywhere on the house is a standard common pitch.
and there are places in the house where everything goes fine until you draw that line out to its logical conclusion and - uh-oh! - the basic geometry of those things do not form intersecting planes in any universe, but a multitude of rough edges (up to two inches!) can be covered over with putty and tape before painting.
the upshot is that as i work my little model, i am having to make a lot of guesses as to what the actual framing of the house might be and i'm just drawing most things to standard lumber dimensions, nevermind the siding or sheetrock.
idiosyncrasies aside, it is a very pleasing house to the eye, lovely and gracious, even if you know that the stringers were inexpertly cut.
if you want to see the progress on the model as i go along, i'm posting the dailies here.
i was keeping a blog and it's not like it would be so hard to just write down what i'm working on.
right now (read: for the last three weeks or so) i am working kind of obsessively on what barbara is calling my snowfort, since this year there isn't enough snow to make a fort and this fits the pattern of doing SOMETHING obsessively at this time of year.
-did i even show you all of last year's snohaus pictures, or did i shelve them until i processed all the pictures? eh, probably that second thing.
anyway, i'm making a little sketchup model of a friend's house and it is a challenging project. most houses are basically a box or two with some sticky-out bits but my friend lives in a house that's five boxes with a slightly asymmetric T and a quarter-round room and some sticky-out bits. add to that the challenges of the original builder having been the original homeowner who was an engineer but not an architect or a building professional and what appears to be his natural predilection for dividing spaces by threes or fives and it gets interesting, never mind that for some reason no roof anywhere on the house is a standard common pitch.and there are places in the house where everything goes fine until you draw that line out to its logical conclusion and - uh-oh! - the basic geometry of those things do not form intersecting planes in any universe, but a multitude of rough edges (up to two inches!) can be covered over with putty and tape before painting.
the upshot is that as i work my little model, i am having to make a lot of guesses as to what the actual framing of the house might be and i'm just drawing most things to standard lumber dimensions, nevermind the siding or sheetrock.
idiosyncrasies aside, it is a very pleasing house to the eye, lovely and gracious, even if you know that the stringers were inexpertly cut.
if you want to see the progress on the model as i go along, i'm posting the dailies here.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
gentlemen:
while i am in favor of love and enjoy expression of same, rest assured that nothing you can say or do on that day or even the week preceding is going to buy you my favor in the bedroom.
trust me, if i wish to have your companionship there, you will already know about it and you are already a frequent traveler to that land of delights.
i am sick to death of the mass marketing and raised unrealistic expectations about this one fraught holiday and its assumptions about gender normative behaviors, the spiraling cycle of profit from the hopes and disappointments of both men and women, and the underlying subtext of sex in exchange for gifts.
THAT said, i am not against romance. life is too shot not to throw yourself into lavish romance EVERY. DAMN. DAY. and not just on my birthday or for some holiday manufactured by the greeting card and jewelery industries for the exploitation of your insecurities about us.
i do not presume to speak for all women when i say this, but television has us wrong. you do not have to spend piles of money to make us feel loved and respected, and you do not have to come up with something special for the day, especially since (this is true if i have given you a second thought) you often come up with something special just because it's tuesday.
so here's my handy gift guide to help you guys out.
flowers:
- unless you have noticed that i keep cut flowers around the house, don't bother.
- same with potted plants.
- try these: duct tape roses.
chocolate:
- do not pester me with those horrid little boxes of filled chocolates. if you insist on buying me chocolates, GO TO A REPUTABLE CHOCLATIER and buy me something they make. if you are wealthy, buy me a lot of them. if you are an average joe, two or three will be fine.
- even bar chocolate is acceptable, if you know how to find good bar chocolate. what i'm saying here is that i know chocolate and if you're going to bother with chocolate, make the effort to find chocolate that i will want to eat.
- don't bother going to jared. i don't kare how you spell "kiss", and no matter what jane symour says, mass produced bling is NOT a personal statement of love. it is not a personal statement of love unless you designed or made it yourself. some guys do this. props to them.
- you know those little earring backs? the little doodads that keep post earrings from falling off? i'm always losing mine. if you were an observant intimate companion of mine, you would know this and you might stop off at the craft store and buy me a bag of spares for something like $5.
- i'm pretty happy with an evening at home. if you have the skills and inclinaton, we could make something special together.
- if you really want to take me out, it doesn't have to be expensive. a really good hotdog is just as good to me as anything a chef will send from the kitchen. what will matter to me is that you took the trouble to take me somewhere to have me taste something AWESOME.
- take me to a contradance.
sporting goods:
- yes, sporting goods. you have to know which sports though. some of my favorite gifts are sporting goods.
tl;dr:
BAD: anything that looks like you're trying to impress, fulfill a social obligation, or get into my bed.
GOOD: anything that shows you care about me, not just today, but EVERY. DAMN. DAY.
Monday, February 13, 2012
music of the spheres
today i spent a lot of time making a little model in sketchup. you know how i love toys.
i did a little bit of clocking on june 2011, but mostly i was just playing with my model. then i thought i might go back into my pictures and see what i have waiting around for processing to show you, and i came up with some very pretty windchimes that john has in his yard.
the video doesn't come close to doing them justice. when you stand near them, your whole body vibrates.
plus john went to some trouble to get the brook to babble just so.
they're from a company called "music of the spheres", and they deal in precision tuned chimes.
i did a little bit of clocking on june 2011, but mostly i was just playing with my model. then i thought i might go back into my pictures and see what i have waiting around for processing to show you, and i came up with some very pretty windchimes that john has in his yard.
the video doesn't come close to doing them justice. when you stand near them, your whole body vibrates.
plus john went to some trouble to get the brook to babble just so.
they're from a company called "music of the spheres", and they deal in precision tuned chimes.
Sunday, February 12, 2012
not current, not funny
yes, i do have that many fingers but yet i am afraid to count how many months i am behind in the thirteen project.
when i first started it, i thought: i will do this for a year.
we are now firmly into year three and i am not sure where this is going exactly and yet i can't quite stop.
here's last may.
when i first started it, i thought: i will do this for a year.
we are now firmly into year three and i am not sure where this is going exactly and yet i can't quite stop.
here's last may.
Saturday, February 11, 2012
in the unlikely event of a water landing
if you know me at all (and i'm assuming you do, if you are proposing marriage), you already know that i will prefer a quiet, private ceremony followed by a quiet, private dinner and while i may wear nylons and pretty dress and everything, don't expect much in the way of floral arrangements or jewelry.
or manageable hair.
and heaven help you if you think valentine's day would be a good time to propose!
as far as i'm concerned, valentine's day is just one more advertising campaign designed to make you buy me stuff i don't want. a diamond will not tell me how much you love me; only your commitment over time and your treatment of me in general will tell me that.
if i do not feel special to you just because it's raining or it happens to be tuesday afternoon, i will not feel special to you if you buy me something expensive for valentine's day.
diamonds! chocolate! wine! the advertising all shouts. if you spend your money on these things the girl will love you forever!
because it's not about caring or loading the dishwasher or having common interests or not noticing that i stole your favorite sweater.
it's about making you feel bad if you don't measure up to some imaginary standard and it's about making me feel unwanted unless you buy me things.
a lot of things.
expensive things.
if you were really paying attention you'd know that my favorite gifts from you are rocks you found in a parking lot and that what i REALLY want is to make your damn dinner and get to see the look on your face when dessert is THAT good.
so pardon me if i ignore valentine's day.
Friday, February 10, 2012
orange
although it was beautiful on the mountain today, it was photographically uninteresting, so i have nothing to show you. instead of taking pretty pictures from the lift, i played with camera setting experiments with and without gloves, which will come in handy on colder days.
of course i have a picture of the elbow of peggy dow's, because i take a picture there every day i go up there, but you probably do not need to see it since it looks a lot like it does every other day when it's sunny with light clouds coming in, which is often.
i'm still working on codeyear, and i am even clocking photos from the thirteen project, although i am monumentally behind.
the day before yesterday i went to buy a springform pan (how did i get to be in my late forties and have no springform pan?) and nearly got run over in the parking lot. happily, i saw the woman start to back and began taking evasive measures early on.
i was on her passenger side and in retrospect the smart choice would have been to turn and run in the OPPOSITE direction, but i didn't realize she would be backing so fast and usually it's enough to just swing out and give them a wide berth.
not so much this one. by the time it was finished, i'd had to run three-quarters of the way around the back of her huge SUV and jump her left rear bumper, which landed me right next to the driver's side door, which was the first time she noticed i was there at all.
do NOT ask me how she missed me in three windows and three mirrors, but she did.
anyway, i'm thinking i might could share with you some of the things i've been saving up to share with you, so i went back only a couple of weeks in my photos before i found something.
i saw a little posting last week about candles made from orange peels at about the same time i saw a recipe for an orange cake, so it seemed a good fit, plus cr loves candles of all types and we were talking briefly a few weeks ago about primitive oil lamps so there was no excuse NOT to try them.
my first couple of tries went pretty well and my second one burned for about four hours, but the peels i make ahead of time so i could show them to cr didn't start up at all well, which was disappointing.
and the cake was pretty good, but i wasn't completely happy with it.
maybe i just need more practice.
come to think of it, i still have oranges...
of course i have a picture of the elbow of peggy dow's, because i take a picture there every day i go up there, but you probably do not need to see it since it looks a lot like it does every other day when it's sunny with light clouds coming in, which is often.
i'm still working on codeyear, and i am even clocking photos from the thirteen project, although i am monumentally behind.
the day before yesterday i went to buy a springform pan (how did i get to be in my late forties and have no springform pan?) and nearly got run over in the parking lot. happily, i saw the woman start to back and began taking evasive measures early on.
i was on her passenger side and in retrospect the smart choice would have been to turn and run in the OPPOSITE direction, but i didn't realize she would be backing so fast and usually it's enough to just swing out and give them a wide berth.
not so much this one. by the time it was finished, i'd had to run three-quarters of the way around the back of her huge SUV and jump her left rear bumper, which landed me right next to the driver's side door, which was the first time she noticed i was there at all.
do NOT ask me how she missed me in three windows and three mirrors, but she did.
i saw a little posting last week about candles made from orange peels at about the same time i saw a recipe for an orange cake, so it seemed a good fit, plus cr loves candles of all types and we were talking briefly a few weeks ago about primitive oil lamps so there was no excuse NOT to try them.
my first couple of tries went pretty well and my second one burned for about four hours, but the peels i make ahead of time so i could show them to cr didn't start up at all well, which was disappointing.and the cake was pretty good, but i wasn't completely happy with it.
maybe i just need more practice.
come to think of it, i still have oranges...
Thursday, February 09, 2012
two shorts
here are two short open letters:
to americans who can't understand why everyone hates us:
here's a good start figuring it out. please do better in the future.
love, flask.
to all the bloggers participating in this month's tedious blog challenges:
see you in march when you return to saying something original.
love, flask.
to americans who can't understand why everyone hates us:
here's a good start figuring it out. please do better in the future.
love, flask.
to all the bloggers participating in this month's tedious blog challenges:
see you in march when you return to saying something original.
love, flask.
Wednesday, February 08, 2012
Monday, February 06, 2012
open letter to domino's and frito-lay
dear huge corporations,
i notice that you are marketing products as "artisan" recipes.
i realize that legally there is no defined meaning of "artisan" and its related words in terms of food packaging, but there is actually a definition of the word "artisan" that is generally accepted and a meaning of "artisan" as it applies to foods and while i guess you're free to declare oxygen not just visible but mauve in color, it doesn't make these things so and shame on you for trying.
according to dictionary.com, here's the definition of "artisan":
i notice that you are marketing products as "artisan" recipes.
i realize that legally there is no defined meaning of "artisan" and its related words in terms of food packaging, but there is actually a definition of the word "artisan" that is generally accepted and a meaning of "artisan" as it applies to foods and while i guess you're free to declare oxygen not just visible but mauve in color, it doesn't make these things so and shame on you for trying.
according to dictionary.com, here's the definition of "artisan":
1. a person skilled in an applied art; a craftsperson.
2. a person or company that makes a high-quality, distinctive product in small quantities, usually by hand and using traditional methods: food artisans.
artisanal foods are made in small batches by skilled craftspeople. these are pizzas, cheeses, breads, beers, and what-have-you made in small batches by real people with care and attention. even if you take a recipe used by an actual artisan maker, the second you scale it up and mass produce it in a factory, it isn't artisanal anymore.
"artisanal" is not a term that means "we put a buncha stuff on this and expect you to pay more for a longer ingredient list". it isn't even a term that means "we'd like to call to your mind what you'd be getting if you were eating real food instead of this crap".
if you're going to call your products artisanal, i'm going to redefine words, too.
here's my definition of "visible": it goes in and out of the lungs.
as you see, oxygen can most certainly be made to fit my definition. i am also defining "mauve" as "the color of anything that can be put into a balloon".
as you see, oxygen can most certainly be made to fit my definition. i am also defining "mauve" as "the color of anything that can be put into a balloon".
now that you and i have paused to redefine words to suit our whims, let's invite everyone to do the same and soon nobody will have any idea what anyone else is talking about and maybe we'll all just be reduced to eating foods that taste good and can be easily identified without marketing.
one can hope.
Sunday, February 05, 2012
Saturday, February 04, 2012
calling audaria
yes, i miss you, too. for some reason my formspring thingy isn't working reliably, but at or near the time your question came in, i was thinking: i miss audaria, and do not know how to contact her.
so. if you like, you can make a comment with your email address in it, and i will write to you.
i don't publish comments i get with emails in them.
for the record, i also do not publish spam comments and for the both of you who are probably wondering, although i WILL publish hostile comments, i will not publish anonymous hostile comments. if you want to disagree politely, you may do so anonymously. if you want to be unpleasant, you have to do it under an identity of some sort.
those are my rules.
today i was going to write an open letter to some corporations, but i decided instead to try to talk to audaria and -oh, look, a squirrel!- ended up outlining my (until now) unwritten rules about which comments get published and which do not.
maybe i will go now and organize some photos from october or something.
so. if you like, you can make a comment with your email address in it, and i will write to you.
i don't publish comments i get with emails in them.
for the record, i also do not publish spam comments and for the both of you who are probably wondering, although i WILL publish hostile comments, i will not publish anonymous hostile comments. if you want to disagree politely, you may do so anonymously. if you want to be unpleasant, you have to do it under an identity of some sort.
those are my rules.
today i was going to write an open letter to some corporations, but i decided instead to try to talk to audaria and -oh, look, a squirrel!- ended up outlining my (until now) unwritten rules about which comments get published and which do not.
maybe i will go now and organize some photos from october or something.
Friday, February 03, 2012
today on the mountain
it was beautiful this morning on the mountain, all dark and broody under the morning clouds but with the sun coming out and over the mountain.
it was all light and hoarfrost and the snow was surprisingly good, too, given the weather lately in which we have two days of really cold temps and then a day of rain. i wasn't even going to go, but these days they're pretty good about putting out a ski report that actually TELLS you what the conditions on the mountain are so you can decide if it's going to be worth it before you leave home.
so it was a couple of inches of light freshies on top of reasonably nice corduroy and temperatures approaching 20 and the sun coming out. and the thing about it is they were spinning the number one chair, which they often don't do on a weekday, but that's my favorite chair (otherwise known as the wilderness chair) and it's the only way to get to my favorite view at the elbow of peggy dow's unless you want to walk.
i love the view at the elbow of peggy dow's so much that i take a picture of it every day i am there and i even wrote a song about it, which you can see here.
while i was up there, i took a few other pictures, which are in a little album over here. they're pretty; go look.
it was all light and hoarfrost and the snow was surprisingly good, too, given the weather lately in which we have two days of really cold temps and then a day of rain. i wasn't even going to go, but these days they're pretty good about putting out a ski report that actually TELLS you what the conditions on the mountain are so you can decide if it's going to be worth it before you leave home.
so it was a couple of inches of light freshies on top of reasonably nice corduroy and temperatures approaching 20 and the sun coming out. and the thing about it is they were spinning the number one chair, which they often don't do on a weekday, but that's my favorite chair (otherwise known as the wilderness chair) and it's the only way to get to my favorite view at the elbow of peggy dow's unless you want to walk.
i love the view at the elbow of peggy dow's so much that i take a picture of it every day i am there and i even wrote a song about it, which you can see here.
while i was up there, i took a few other pictures, which are in a little album over here. they're pretty; go look.
Thursday, February 02, 2012
pinking shears
a while ago i was on a tear about this: those blasted pink ribbons are all over the place, and i have a low opinion of them. the more i listened, the more i realized that i'm not alone.
this week there's more to be irritated about.
pz meyers wrote this excellent post on it this week, in the wake of the outrageous decision by the susan g. komen people to cut funding to planned parenthood because, let's face it: women's health care (which is most of their work) is a lot less important than satisfying the christian conservative moneygivers over preventing abortions (which isn't really what planned parenthood is about, any more than your north american GP is about treating you for malaria. she WILL provide that service, but it's not her primary function, you know?).
in related news, janet howell is one of my new heroes. her excellent amendment didn't get passed, but it came close, and it made a point. it cheers me up every time someone brings out a clever amendment to an idiotic bill, kind of like what happened recently indiana.
ah, indiana, that shining star of legislative brilliance!
this week there's more to be irritated about.
pz meyers wrote this excellent post on it this week, in the wake of the outrageous decision by the susan g. komen people to cut funding to planned parenthood because, let's face it: women's health care (which is most of their work) is a lot less important than satisfying the christian conservative moneygivers over preventing abortions (which isn't really what planned parenthood is about, any more than your north american GP is about treating you for malaria. she WILL provide that service, but it's not her primary function, you know?).
in related news, janet howell is one of my new heroes. her excellent amendment didn't get passed, but it came close, and it made a point. it cheers me up every time someone brings out a clever amendment to an idiotic bill, kind of like what happened recently indiana.
ah, indiana, that shining star of legislative brilliance!
Wednesday, February 01, 2012
a few little things
i'm still working on web-ish things.
it is week four of codeyear, which means i'm starting to have a clue. just one, mind you, but it is a clue.
i'm trying to work with the half-functional site i mentioned last time and although it doesn't have much to offer in terms of ease-of-use, with a good FTP client it becomes almost manageable.
i'm using two nice free tools: a simple editor called textwrangler (mac) and an FTP client called filezilla (mac and windows).
you can do a lot with those if you've a mind to. so far i'm not doing a lot with them, but if you want to see the little half-formed site built from scratch, it's here. please bear in mind that it isn't functional at all; it's just a little scaffolding on which to hang a little html and css. i'd like for it to do nothing a little more smoothly, but right now at the host site i'm getting a lot of "read-only file system" error messages both through filezilla and through the super slow and ungainly online file manager.
in the meantime, how 'bout i close some tabs?
i totally adore this poem and it makes me giggle every time i read it, which is a more impressive statement now than it was a couple of months ago when i first left it open on my desktop meaning to tell you about it.
curvy is a lovely little html5 game you can play, but be prepared to spend a number of hours at it.
and if you've ever wanted a unicode character to represent whatever little image is in your mind you need this tool, and you need it NOW.
and for no good reason and with absolutely no explanation, here's a little picture of khalil:
it is week four of codeyear, which means i'm starting to have a clue. just one, mind you, but it is a clue.
i'm trying to work with the half-functional site i mentioned last time and although it doesn't have much to offer in terms of ease-of-use, with a good FTP client it becomes almost manageable.
i'm using two nice free tools: a simple editor called textwrangler (mac) and an FTP client called filezilla (mac and windows).
you can do a lot with those if you've a mind to. so far i'm not doing a lot with them, but if you want to see the little half-formed site built from scratch, it's here. please bear in mind that it isn't functional at all; it's just a little scaffolding on which to hang a little html and css. i'd like for it to do nothing a little more smoothly, but right now at the host site i'm getting a lot of "read-only file system" error messages both through filezilla and through the super slow and ungainly online file manager.
in the meantime, how 'bout i close some tabs?
i totally adore this poem and it makes me giggle every time i read it, which is a more impressive statement now than it was a couple of months ago when i first left it open on my desktop meaning to tell you about it.
curvy is a lovely little html5 game you can play, but be prepared to spend a number of hours at it.
and if you've ever wanted a unicode character to represent whatever little image is in your mind you need this tool, and you need it NOW.
and for no good reason and with absolutely no explanation, here's a little picture of khalil:
Monday, January 30, 2012
web things.
news first, i guess.
i have still been trying to figure out how to do what i want to do on the web, which is pretty simple, if not super common.
i want to have a little blog for my own enjoyment and maybe the two dozen or so people who sporadically read it. i also want to be able to post my photo albums and the occasional podcast and give the infrequent visitor the ability to download selected mp3s and sheet music.
i would like to link all these these things together in a nice clean stylish way without ads or banners and i sorta used to have what i wanted with the server space i was renting through the apple servers and it was fairly expensive but as of june they're taking the parts of the service i used (webhosting) and discontinuing them while taking the parts of the service i DIDN'T use and making them available cheaper.
fine. i can find cheaper alternatives.
but it's a pain in the butt, yo.
i have found a SEA of cheap or free services that really push expensive useless upgrades hard.
for instance, i thought this service was promising, because it purports to allow you to augment its pitiful array of cheap templates if you can hand install platforms like wordpress and joomla, but it turns out that the installing doesn't go so easily unless you have advanced skills or you have purchased an expensive upgrade.
the thing is that if their service had been usable at the free level, i would have shelled out bucks already because i need a host.
and i spent a couple of days looking at joomla! and maybe it is a very nice web editing tool, but i see a lot of modules and extensions and while it's very flexible drag-and-drop maybe, what i really WANT is to just build a little something myself.
same thing with wordpress, which REALLY doesn't want you to go into those templates and mess with them. not as hideously unmodifiable as google sites (are those things still running?), but still not a happy place for making your own little template and working with that.
do you miss geocities? i do.
sure, it was a place where you saw some of the greatest atrocities of very, very bad design and clip collections of useless animated GIFs and autoplay midi files, but it was also a place where you could just build a site from scratch without advanced skills and it was really super for learning basics if you wanted a nice little lab.
...which i did.
...and do.
i am getting happier and happier with blogger, because even though they make it hard for you to get under the hood and drop in all your own design, they do not make it impossible. and if you can wade through the source code for the page and manage to sort out what the mandatory blogger components are, you can change EVERYTHING else, which is a thing i am beginning to appreciate.
just so i don't leave you hanging, i think i have a line on a very practical hosting solution, but i think i'm still going to keep this blog at blogger, just because the more i see of how its running, the happier i am with it.
i have still been trying to figure out how to do what i want to do on the web, which is pretty simple, if not super common.
i want to have a little blog for my own enjoyment and maybe the two dozen or so people who sporadically read it. i also want to be able to post my photo albums and the occasional podcast and give the infrequent visitor the ability to download selected mp3s and sheet music.
i would like to link all these these things together in a nice clean stylish way without ads or banners and i sorta used to have what i wanted with the server space i was renting through the apple servers and it was fairly expensive but as of june they're taking the parts of the service i used (webhosting) and discontinuing them while taking the parts of the service i DIDN'T use and making them available cheaper.
fine. i can find cheaper alternatives.
but it's a pain in the butt, yo.
i have found a SEA of cheap or free services that really push expensive useless upgrades hard.
for instance, i thought this service was promising, because it purports to allow you to augment its pitiful array of cheap templates if you can hand install platforms like wordpress and joomla, but it turns out that the installing doesn't go so easily unless you have advanced skills or you have purchased an expensive upgrade.
the thing is that if their service had been usable at the free level, i would have shelled out bucks already because i need a host.
and i spent a couple of days looking at joomla! and maybe it is a very nice web editing tool, but i see a lot of modules and extensions and while it's very flexible drag-and-drop maybe, what i really WANT is to just build a little something myself.
same thing with wordpress, which REALLY doesn't want you to go into those templates and mess with them. not as hideously unmodifiable as google sites (are those things still running?), but still not a happy place for making your own little template and working with that.
do you miss geocities? i do.
sure, it was a place where you saw some of the greatest atrocities of very, very bad design and clip collections of useless animated GIFs and autoplay midi files, but it was also a place where you could just build a site from scratch without advanced skills and it was really super for learning basics if you wanted a nice little lab.
...which i did.
...and do.
i am getting happier and happier with blogger, because even though they make it hard for you to get under the hood and drop in all your own design, they do not make it impossible. and if you can wade through the source code for the page and manage to sort out what the mandatory blogger components are, you can change EVERYTHING else, which is a thing i am beginning to appreciate.
just so i don't leave you hanging, i think i have a line on a very practical hosting solution, but i think i'm still going to keep this blog at blogger, just because the more i see of how its running, the happier i am with it.
Thursday, January 26, 2012
counterweight
i'm in week three of codeyear, and it's a challenge. additionally, i have updated my photogallery and my audioblog. if you want to follow any updates in audio, you should probably follow that one on its own, since while the link IS in the sidebar here, it will not give you any warnings, and that kind of goes for the photo gallery. i still may end up doing and independent website so i can configure everything more to my liking.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
a marriage of sorts
well, it wasn't all that hard.
i now have two blogs melded to look like one, which means i can keep my audio entries separate and cataloged and still be part of a unified whole AND i've got my photo gallery which isn't as smooth as i want because i have to farm out the images to photobucket (or any other host, just because of storage limitations), but otherwise you can get it all HERE.
and i'm learning so much!
helpful hint: download your blogger templates and modify them in a good text editor and then stick them back up. it will save you HOURS of sadness.
i now have two blogs melded to look like one, which means i can keep my audio entries separate and cataloged and still be part of a unified whole AND i've got my photo gallery which isn't as smooth as i want because i have to farm out the images to photobucket (or any other host, just because of storage limitations), but otherwise you can get it all HERE.
and i'm learning so much!
helpful hint: download your blogger templates and modify them in a good text editor and then stick them back up. it will save you HOURS of sadness.
Monday, January 23, 2012
adventures in templates
anyone who makes a habit of scanning this blog for minute changes (not me; i have better things to do) will have noticed that in the right sidebar i have added a photo gallery.
i had to do this because my web server is drying up in june and i'm looking to create pretty much the same package, only using free services and linking them together.
but will blogger (or wordpress, for that matter) let you use multiple templates on the same blog?
no.
wordpress will, but only if you're using their software ON YOUR OWN SERVER, so the answer is still basically no.
the good news is that if you know a little CSS you can modify templates to read as you want.
do i know CSS?
no. but by the time i'm done, i will. and while we're at it, i'm taking a little time to learn to code using codeacademy's codeyear. if you want to join in the hilarity, it is only week three and you still have time to catch up.
i had to do this because my web server is drying up in june and i'm looking to create pretty much the same package, only using free services and linking them together.
but will blogger (or wordpress, for that matter) let you use multiple templates on the same blog?
no.
wordpress will, but only if you're using their software ON YOUR OWN SERVER, so the answer is still basically no.
the good news is that if you know a little CSS you can modify templates to read as you want.
do i know CSS?
no. but by the time i'm done, i will. and while we're at it, i'm taking a little time to learn to code using codeacademy's codeyear. if you want to join in the hilarity, it is only week three and you still have time to catch up.
Saturday, December 24, 2011
daily downloads
tonight at church joan preached a thing she called "everybody goes to bethlehem". if you really want to know, you can wait until martin posts it over at steeple.org.
it was beautiful, though, and if you stand where i stand in the church when the candles are lit, you look out facing the whole congregation, and people are mostly wearing red: red vest, red sweaters, red jackets, and you don't notice it so much until you see it in the sea of candle flames and they are all so beautiful that i almost can't stand up.
anyway, i've been posting racks from my christmas album over at soundcloud.com and you can download them until january 6 if you like. here is tonight's posting; you can find the others from there if you're inclined.
http://soundcloud.com/eflask/24-o-little-town-of-bethlehem
peace be with you, tonight and every night.
it was beautiful, though, and if you stand where i stand in the church when the candles are lit, you look out facing the whole congregation, and people are mostly wearing red: red vest, red sweaters, red jackets, and you don't notice it so much until you see it in the sea of candle flames and they are all so beautiful that i almost can't stand up.
anyway, i've been posting racks from my christmas album over at soundcloud.com and you can download them until january 6 if you like. here is tonight's posting; you can find the others from there if you're inclined.
http://soundcloud.com/eflask/24-o-little-town-of-bethlehem
peace be with you, tonight and every night.
Friday, December 16, 2011
songs from an alternate reality
there's a lot to tell.
right now i'm just going to say that i am still out here and i'm doing pretty well, considering. i have a ton of projects, and i have pictures to show you later but for right now i'm just going to give you two sound clips.
i'm still playing glitch a lot, and that little imaginative world sparks a little imagination.
a while ago i was trying to get currants in the game (the currant-sy. hehe) to buy my precious little house in groddle meadow but it was going to mean a long haul down in the ilmenskie mines, which only made me think of the traditional groddle song that the miners used to sing on their way down into the mines:
ilmenskie miners
of course, as time goes on the traditional songs of groddle are being uncovered, and it turns out the people of groddle are a cheeky bunch. there's much more expensive real estate to be had in alakol or salatu and often peopel will work to buy very expensive houses in alakol only to realize they'd rather live in groddle.
of course the meadow dwellers have a song about that, too.
i live in groddle meadow
the most famous song of groddle, though, is immortalized in the GNG musicblock and you should go listen to it.
good night, groddle.
right now i'm just going to say that i am still out here and i'm doing pretty well, considering. i have a ton of projects, and i have pictures to show you later but for right now i'm just going to give you two sound clips.
i'm still playing glitch a lot, and that little imaginative world sparks a little imagination.
a while ago i was trying to get currants in the game (the currant-sy. hehe) to buy my precious little house in groddle meadow but it was going to mean a long haul down in the ilmenskie mines, which only made me think of the traditional groddle song that the miners used to sing on their way down into the mines:
ilmenskie miners
of course, as time goes on the traditional songs of groddle are being uncovered, and it turns out the people of groddle are a cheeky bunch. there's much more expensive real estate to be had in alakol or salatu and often peopel will work to buy very expensive houses in alakol only to realize they'd rather live in groddle.
of course the meadow dwellers have a song about that, too.
i live in groddle meadow
the most famous song of groddle, though, is immortalized in the GNG musicblock and you should go listen to it.
good night, groddle.
Monday, December 12, 2011
hey, hi.
i've been playing glitch kind of obsessively, or at least playing it in most of my computer time.
things have not been going so well for me, and it's nice to be in an alternate world where things ARE going well for me and life is simpler.
outside of that i'm still taking pictures and making foods and sooner or later i hope to have something for you about that. for right now, though, i'm thinking about what i will do with my afternoon, what i will make in my kitchen, and my advent project.
i'm not feeling so well. i have to keep busy.
things have not been going so well for me, and it's nice to be in an alternate world where things ARE going well for me and life is simpler.
outside of that i'm still taking pictures and making foods and sooner or later i hope to have something for you about that. for right now, though, i'm thinking about what i will do with my afternoon, what i will make in my kitchen, and my advent project.
i'm not feeling so well. i have to keep busy.
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