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.
Sunday, February 12, 2012
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.
Wednesday, September 07, 2011
open letter to my neighbors
hey, neighbors!
i like what you've done with the place. and your weekend parties look awesome when i go by and i don't mind having all those cars on the road because you all look like you're having a pantload of fun.
i think it's super cool that you have a live band and i actually enjoy your practices and i enjoy it when just the drummer practices even though it's plenty loud here at my house, across the road and back a ways.
i even like the idea that when your band is between sets you let the children play with your drums.
but you cross the line when you DON'T TURN OFF THE SOUND SYSTEM between sets. i don't mind hearing your party, or your practices even though it's quite loud even with my windows closed.
i DO mind open mike for six-year-olds.
for the sake of all things kind and decent, when you let the children play with the equipment, KILL THE AMP.
those four kids who want to sing into the mike wouldn't be enjoyable for us out here even if they knew more songs than the first two bars of the star spangled banner, repeated over and over and over while that kid on the drums plays bah-bah BOOM, bah, bah BOOM uninterrupted for ten minutes.
so please. just KILL THE POWER BETWEEN SETS.
PLEASE.
i like what you've done with the place. and your weekend parties look awesome when i go by and i don't mind having all those cars on the road because you all look like you're having a pantload of fun.
i think it's super cool that you have a live band and i actually enjoy your practices and i enjoy it when just the drummer practices even though it's plenty loud here at my house, across the road and back a ways.
i even like the idea that when your band is between sets you let the children play with your drums.
but you cross the line when you DON'T TURN OFF THE SOUND SYSTEM between sets. i don't mind hearing your party, or your practices even though it's quite loud even with my windows closed.
i DO mind open mike for six-year-olds.
for the sake of all things kind and decent, when you let the children play with the equipment, KILL THE AMP.
those four kids who want to sing into the mike wouldn't be enjoyable for us out here even if they knew more songs than the first two bars of the star spangled banner, repeated over and over and over while that kid on the drums plays bah-bah BOOM, bah, bah BOOM uninterrupted for ten minutes.
so please. just KILL THE POWER BETWEEN SETS.
PLEASE.
Monday, September 05, 2011
prybar
last week i went into waterbury to work on flood cleanup.
it's good to see how many people are coming to shovel muck and strip carpets and whatever work needs doing just "because we're neighbors", with "neighbor" apparently a word that means "you live in my state".
i didn't take any pictures and there's not much to tell you about except that pretty typical of it was a bunch of us in a room of a destroyed trailer in a trailer park. there are five of us in that room, and we are trying to scoop up the mess and maybe save out a few personal items that aren't destroyed. so two people are scooping, one is boxing, one is gently removing keepsakes from a waterlogged wall, and one is using a chainsaw to cut up the furniture.
later in the day we are leaving big pieces of things that don't go around corners easily "until we knock out the drywall".
it's hard work, and i had never done demolition, but a worker is a worker and they take everyone and now i'm pretty good with a prybar and a mat knife.
yesterday at church our pastor got up and said she hoped we'd forgive her for not having prepared a sermon; she had been cleaning up in moretown. and then she turned to us and asked what we did this week.
and i am so proud to have been in that room, a church where we were not flooded, but where nearly every person had either gone to work on cleanup, or rounded up supplies or raised money or in some way had worked support.
a little girl in the second row was making cookies to feed the volunteers.
last night there was more flooding. not as widespread, but there was still flooding.
today it's raining.
it's good to see how many people are coming to shovel muck and strip carpets and whatever work needs doing just "because we're neighbors", with "neighbor" apparently a word that means "you live in my state".
i didn't take any pictures and there's not much to tell you about except that pretty typical of it was a bunch of us in a room of a destroyed trailer in a trailer park. there are five of us in that room, and we are trying to scoop up the mess and maybe save out a few personal items that aren't destroyed. so two people are scooping, one is boxing, one is gently removing keepsakes from a waterlogged wall, and one is using a chainsaw to cut up the furniture.
later in the day we are leaving big pieces of things that don't go around corners easily "until we knock out the drywall".
it's hard work, and i had never done demolition, but a worker is a worker and they take everyone and now i'm pretty good with a prybar and a mat knife.
yesterday at church our pastor got up and said she hoped we'd forgive her for not having prepared a sermon; she had been cleaning up in moretown. and then she turned to us and asked what we did this week.
and i am so proud to have been in that room, a church where we were not flooded, but where nearly every person had either gone to work on cleanup, or rounded up supplies or raised money or in some way had worked support.
a little girl in the second row was making cookies to feed the volunteers.
last night there was more flooding. not as widespread, but there was still flooding.
today it's raining.
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