nearby trees [kith]
abrupt lee
lil’ flower tracer
b’land
sheerpanicbarbie
kn29
sister of a friend’s spouse
wush [tafka bish]
olive
spenglar
shwan
susanity
chinicity
after some reading, i really have no clue how i want to build this site with clean css - i'm not even following on the float item. if you have no clue what i'm talking about, good.
there is nothing like a good doodle by a 6 year old to start off the month.

this weekend made possible through the innocence mission, nick drake, and laura cantrell [why her, i don't know. i don't listen to words all that much]
the friend
i think i'm emotionally baked, but i'm not exactly sure what that means. i come from rather emotionally truncated family, so i don't know if i'm baked or singed or, compared to my wife, barely warm. i'm not sure, but i wouldn't say it is bad, just hard. i've been chatting with a friend who is going through a break up and she thinks things through quite a bit like i do. here is the community/hard part: i feel like the big inmate from "the green mile" where he inhales the bad and helps heal the other person, but i'm having a hard time exhaling [the flies?] from what i can tell. as well as i see it, community is also like a big shin guard, where one person gets hit hard, but the shin guard [community] also takes a lot of the shock of the hit and spreads it out. or maybe better is a bunch of people in the water, all connected somehow. when someone close gets hit or pulled down [sharks? time to move away from florida] those nearby get pulled down too, and those next to them get pulled down some, but not as much, and so on. everyone holds tight and though the people closest are also gasping for breath on the surface [and the person at the center has lost a leg - hopefully not], everyone gets bouyed back up and after some ripples/after shocks. it isn't easy getting involved with pain but i think that is part of what we are supposed to be about. we are also supposed to be involved with the joy of others, too. i've very much enjoyed listening and chatting with my friend, seeing how she is changing for the better/healthier as well as both remembering when i thought the same or being reintroduced to my current self. but it is more than that, it is knowing i get to come alongside someone and help, to be there. this is rather new to me. i'd willingly do it again, though, and i don't believe i would do much different. i don't know if i even could do anything different. no one ever said this would be easy.
the flies
as for the stomach full of flies, though - i would nominate my wife for the nobel prize for breathing in the bad/breathing out the good. i, on the other hand, think i'm out of the league that plays after school, but i really don't know where [start adding in feelings of inadequacy]. up until the last 2 years or so, i've never been much the person that people share a lot with. i'd say i've gotten a lot better at listening, but i have a hard time telling how i'm different or if i'm any good at it. my wife calls from chicago, and she knows right away that something is up with me, but it is over the phone and she's is pretty busy so i choose to wait. i finally understand what she means when she asks to just be held. i don't want to talk, i don't want to have to say anything, i just want to be held [more feelings of inadequacy and lameness for all the years i've failed to understand what she has needed all these years]. my wife is quick to emote, be it cry or laugh or hug or mourn. i often come by and my wife is crying with someone so i'll playfully step in and tell them to knock it off - quit making her cry. at least i thought it was playfull until this past week[more feelings of "crap, that is such the wrong thing to do"] as i don't feel playful at the least.
it started to make me wonder what was up with me, why i'm so very different about this compared to my wife [though getting better]. on sunday morning as i saw a ton of my friends, i noticed how hard it was to open up. not for the lack of wanting to say something, just how so many people don't seem to be able to notice or listen [something i think my wife has special powers on picking up on]. maybe they aren't used to this different side of me, and quite frankly, neither am i. this is not what one would normally expect from me, i'd assume. after a while, one person did ask me how i was doing, as a noticable afterthought on asking how sarah was doing in chicago. she knew something was up. i think i may have burped up a fly or two, but it really wasn't the right time nor place to talk much - and seriously, i'm still in the "just hold me" phase, which seems SO very new and different for me.
it is both hard to share as well as be open to being shared with - i think that is what i'm saying [yes, wait for my thoughts on my inadequacy of hugging. argh, more things that are bugging me right now - it doesn't help my gut full of flies.] i think it gets easier, it is just hard to be open and honest and frank, to know what you are feeling and how to express it in a healthy way. nobody wants to be blasted, though i know i want to share in the good and the bad with my friends.
the bear
it also didn't help that a lot of what was talked about with my friend snuck in and inflammed my pocket of fears of inadequacy. it is this big bear i've lulled to sleep, and now it is woken up again and chasing me around. by myself, the bear is pretty freaky. it solely focuses on me and is chasing me around and around and all i've got time to do is run. if there was a way to escape it on my own, i'm sure i've already run past it several times. i've spent the last two days, mind racing [heh, and you thought it was quick already], with the back of my neck repeatedly going through hot flashes. i really don't like seeing how i suck, really. i know i don't suck completely, but i'm getting a glimpse of how sarah lives her life. even though i know i'm not going to be like her, i see how much i'm missing in my idea of a healthy life. and no, i'm not as poor in all this as i make it sound [i sure hope not, or I'LL be the one needing to hand over my shoelaces and belt] but it sure doesn't feel good. add a few sharp pokes with a sharp stick to the parts of the bear that really shouldn't be poked with a stick and i'm a nice piece of work right now. aye, there goes the hot back of the neck again.
all in all, a deep sadness and internalized pain, some from the outside but a lot of it magnified by my own problems, or at least things i view as problems. maybe that is it - the things that are shaky for me, the weakest things, are once again out in plain sight [at least for me] like an awakened bear - and i don't like it. i'm embarassed. the things i see my friend talking about in a failed relationship show me up in many ways, pointing out with a huge spotlight where i believe i'm failing myself, my wife, and my friends. after all this chatting with people, hard chatting, listening and breathing in the bad, i can see where i've been uncool with my wife. after she explains to me her exhaustion from talking with friends that are hurting, i just need to listen to her. i think i'm pretty good at just listening and not offering advice and/or trying to fix things, but this is different - i need to support her, mourn and take the pain she is carrying and help dissipate it, just like she was doing for someone else. listening and back/hand/foot/neck massages are probably on order. i want to be better, healthier, and i hate having to look at them while they get worked over. i want it to be more than correct with my wife, but also with my friends, the nearby trees. i don't know if i'm pretending to work on myself or just trying nail the bear on the run with a tranquilizer dart so that i can get a good nights rest myself.
have i been retarded up until the last few years? has our marriage, which i like more and more, been held back by me all along? has my life been held back? did i finally reach adult hood at 34 instead of earlier? if sarah is supposed to be a reflection of me, what have i been, and have i been tossing mud on the mirror? all this makes me feel a bit sick to my stomach, that life was living me and i was rarely involved. every year goes so much slower now, so jam packed full of stuff, but i would love to have been engaged earlier. i'm not really beating myself up - it is something different i can't explain. there is a kind of sadness of knowing their was something poor back there that can't be touched and all i can do is continue to move forward. i'd like to have my history be something to look back and smile at, not something to be used as a good example of a poor example. insecurities and inadequacies flying around now. sarah comes home tuesday night - good.
and another [note the shading]. i'm thinking it is a lioness, but who knows. this comes from the same boy that draws 50 different sharks - i'll try to find a drawing he gave me of a dusky shark.

we've had a rather odd odor in our home starting last friday, but it is finally gone. the week before that, our speedster hamster «dash» got out of his cage. yes, you may put those together. we don't believe he is going to be found, and if found, probably not in «let's play with him!» shape. maybe when we move we'll find a little dusty shell of a hamster in the couch. by then, maybe we'll have forgotten his name. he might have been a great retirement as he had easily one the local hamster race near our house. we, his pit crew, all received t-shirts as well as a 25$ gift certificate. poor little guy went out at the top of his game. dash, undefeated.
so my insecurities have now messed with sarah's insecurities, and though i believe i make all this sound real bad, it really isn't. working on anything is hard, and relationships take a large investment. i think we've got a great marriage, and one that is getting greater. all these changes are good things, as noted by some comments from friends:
it is so neat to hear what I've been seeing. like the change in you and Sarah from when I first met y'all. the more caring Dann.
like no way in the world would I have ever thought I could talk to you about me...but you have become such a huge help in my life as much as sarah...[before it was] just a feeling like maybe you wouldn't really care about what was going on...not in a bad way...but alot of that had to do with me then. like it was hard for me to talk in the first place...so why in the heck would I open up to a guy - hah
and
you would have never written some of this stuff when i first met you
and no, i wouldn't have written this stuff - i wasn't even close to this. it would have been like writting about a unified germany years before the wall came down. who could see what the change would be?
looking back from where i've come from and how much i've changed [as well as become more deeply intertwined with sarah, my family and friends], i very much look forward to meeting myself in 30 years. i hope to be unrecognizable. all this doesn't just come from me, but from everyone else messing with me in a good way. i was talking to a friend about how another couple's relationship was affecting us and said friend replied «oh, well, that is just between them». hah. what, do we live in a vacuum? it would be a rather sad life [as far as i can tell] to keep everyone at arms length and not allow anyone into our lives. beautiful tapestries are not made by just laying colored thread next to each other. beautiful tapestries are made by twisting and weaving and tying threads together. we don't notice the strength or support until a corner is tugged - then we all feel it, and we stay together. how sad to be a loose thread, or even a loose couple of threads. of course, this all takes time and willingness to be a thread next to other threads, even ones you clash with.
joy. not only has my understanding been widened and i've moved from thinking i was doing okay to seeing how i've been failing, sharing my insecurities with my wife have taken her to the same place. seeing how we both see ourselves to be failing, it looks like we'll both be dropping out of school and joining up with some gypsys.
anyone who thinks, «hey, let's just get married and everything will be grand» is an idjit. work/focus/purposefulness never stops.
our girls finally came back from a 15 day, 3,600+ mile trip to arkansas and then all around chicago/wisconsin and back to arkansas and home. trevs said a few hours before they returned that «i don't like them gone. i don't like being half a family». neither do we. it felt so «right» to have them all sleeping under our roof again, the girls room finally finished and them loving it. they met up with their cousins, rode horses pretty much wherever they stayed, went to the american girl store for a show and allie got her very own felicity [the story behind american girl is kinda cool, the anti-barbie] - you name it, they did it. plenty of photos to come.
to have feelings of gentleness, one must experience gentle bodily comfort. as my nervous system learned to tolerate the soothing pressure from my squeeze machine, i discovered that the comforting feeling made me a kinder and gentler person. it was difficult for me to understand the idea of kindness until i had been soothed myself. it wasn't until after i had used the modified squeeze machine that i learned how to pet our cat gently. he used to run away from me because i held him to tightly. many autistic children hold pets too tightly, and they have a disproportionate sense of how to approach other people or be approached. after i experienced the soothing feeling of being held, i was able to transfer that good feeling to the cat. as i became gentler, the cat began to stay with me, and this helped me understand the ideas of reciprocity and gentleness.
from temple grandin's «thinking in pictures and other reports from my life with autism»
i grew up in a loving family [yes, that can be defined a lot of different ways], but not one much for emotion or touch. after being married a dozen plus to someone that has her emotions engaged and tons of empathy and touches everyone, i've slowly changed [yes, read the above 4th of july entries]. i was never one to hug or be hugged, noticably pointed out as we have a bunch of people over to our house every tuesday and on they way out, they all hug sarah. me, i just stand there. one day good ol' keem said, «hey, why do we just hug sarah?» and i got hugged. for the longest time i thought i was messed up, like a social leper of sorts [okay, not that bad] but it still kinda hurt/bothered me [more insecurites, maybe just a small bear]. i'm finding it easier reach outside the boundaries of myself and to give people a squeeze. it is still mighty awkward for me, like trying to run and having an extra leg joint just beneath your knee [yeah, that image makes me laugh]. but when i do hug or am hugged, it feels very right, and it feels very right back. but still awkward. if i happen to hug you, you better appreciate it - it isn't flippant or just one more cheerio in the big box of cheerios - it is a big deal to me.
thinking about this, my parents have a friend [that has since become my friend too] that i think i would want to grow up to be like. he cries easily, he gets excited for everyone, and is just the most soft and gentle person you could meet. he hides his offense during coarse joking to a certain point, and he says things which seem naive but are just really authentic. eg, at a birthday party for a friend a tall hot blonde was a fantastic dancer, moving around the whole time and making most of us think «sheesh, i must look so much like elaine dancing right now». at the end of the party my friend says «i really enjoyed watching you all night». there was the first response of «wha? dude, your wife is right next to you» and then it came back - he is just being sincere and honest, not being a letch of any kind, but just recognized something [someone?] beautiful. he holds life so delicately, seeing the world more for what it is than what he wants it to be, as well as being able to gracefully walk in and say «gosh, that's great» while everyone else shies away. there is a tenderness and a gentleness that is very attractive in him, no pretention or pride or showiness - he is just who he is.
yes, i'd like to grow up to be like him. more compassion, more encouragement, yes. this is a far cry from my kind of normal encouragement which means that if you are doing well, good for you - that is what to be expected and there is no need to talk about it. i'll just throw that in with the pile of things to work on and be worked on. joy. as always, it'll be good.
i've got a friend who builds custom bike frames, and we've always talked about building me a cool frame, maybe for time trials or just to migrate the components from my current bike over to the new frame. my current bike is just one generation removed from being made of wood. it is a great bike, a museum piece of sorts, kinda like a 1970s mercedes. sure, it has nothing electronic it in but headlights and there isn't a single part labeled «composite», but it is still a great car. so is my bike.
as he was measuring me, calculating all the lengths and angles for all the tubing, spencer tried to help by measuring me alongside him, and my oldest daughter just watched. one measurement is to stand against a wall, spread your feet as far apart as the pedals normally are, take a tube and pull it up tight in your crotch and hold it level from both the front and the back. one may then measure the distance of the inseam as if one was on a bike. it is rather awkward looking in real life. the measurements were made, numbers written down, and my friend leans the tube against the wall. my giggling daughter barely squeaks out these words, "hey, i'd suggest washing that before you use it again."
yes, she'll be paying her own way through college.
there has been so many times that my wife has said that i'm not protecting her, and so many times i ask what she means and she doesn't know. i think i might have experienced the past few days. i'm finding myself far more fragile, like i've stepped out of some crudely built space suit that offers great technological advantages but everytime i try to pick up an egg, i crush it. i'm not in that suit so much [maybe hanging out of it halfway?] and i feel exposed, not protected. i'm not sure from what, maybe it is security or feeling loved - they seem to be close to the same as i write that out. my skin is quickly chaffed, but i can tell the difference between a feather and an orange. but i think that may be the unprotected feeling that i don't like, but i don't want the old kind of post-soviet protection, thick and unfeeling concrete and rebar. that is a very poor and rudimentary protection, one that isn't flexible and keeps everyone out. i also need to learn how to better protect my wife. add that to the pile of insecurities about not being the person she has needed all those times during the past dozen+ years. it would be nice if at some point this bucket of dumbtarded things i have would empty, things i didn't know i was doing.
i've finally received the latest issue of beyond. woohoo! i feel like charlie [and said factory] with his bar of chocolate, not wanting to consume it rapidly but savoring it. i have yet to take it out of the mailing envelope. if you don't subscribe, er, i don't know. maybe i can build a java script to see if you subscribe and if not, send you to a site that will get you in trouble at work.
my scraggy goattee is about to leave my face. i originally grew it because not only was i finally able to grow some semblance of facial hair, but because advil was going to grow his out, too. he was headed off to china and i thought what better way to be constantly reminded of him over there than to have hair on my face. everyone points it out [eg, hey, since when can you grow hair?] and i constantly am bumping into it. advil has since returned from china and i keep thinking i'll shave it off, but i've got this crazy idea that i'll grow it out like johnny depp in pirates and have two long braids with beads. no, that would never do. instead, i'm waiting until my parents leave our house and i'll release my hair to the wind at that time. they've been with us 6 months, and i think that was at least 4 months too long. 4 adults with 4 kids - the kids are a little tired of it, too. there just isn't enough room in our house to ever feel alone and the introvert in me keeps whispering to me, «stay home from work and clean the guns». we'll see what happens tomorrow, if they plane actually leaves the states. shall i put my goattee up on ebay?
george hincapie stayed away in a break today and then while not working with the group, gutted it out and then zipped around the guy that was doing a huge amount of work. i'm rather glad that george got a stage win, but i wouldn't value it too highly - i'm much more on the side of working hard to get something. things fell into place nicely for him, but i wouldn't say he was the strongest of the day. still, good for him.
hot hot hot
we've had no rain, just heat. i do believe we are around 35 days of over 100°F heat in a row, and not just 100° - i believe the average is over 106° [sunday was 111°]. i'm sure we'll be paying a hefty electric bill to keep ourselves cool.
how did i enjoy the heat? i rode up mt. lemmon this morning, the southern-most sky island in the states. i met a guy at the base [i drove there as i knew i'd be pushing it for time] and we started up. my friend quickly took on the sounds of a steam locomotive, and at one point i asked him if he would be offended if i started whistling. don't get me wrong, it was hard for me, too. my bike is made for sprinting, so i felt as if i was starting off on the climb as if i was in a car in 3rd gear. my engine was barely turning over. once i worked up a good sweat [it was 85°F when we started] i played the «fuff» game where i'd breathe out a «fuff» and blow the sweat beads off the tip of my nose. i got 3 drops the first fuff, then 3, then another 3, and yet another 3. after 30 seconds of fuffing i gave up - it was always 3 drops of sweat.
after an hour of pain my friend told me to leave him and go on. i started chasing the lone cyclist that had just passed me and i brought my speed up a hair. once i came around windy point i could see tucson down below, now having climbed 3,500 feet or so. two miles later i was in tall pines and somewhat cool. unfortunately i was out of time, so 18+ miles up [6 from the top] i turned around and sped home. i took it easy - there was no real urgency. i still got up to 44mph which was so-so.
once i got home we all went to the zoo at 102°F, then swimming, then to a friend's house where i was outside at 108°F. i wasn't expecting all this heat, and it wiped me out.
the map above is from google, and i love to click and drag and see other cool places. take the road up and down from here - it is a lot of fun. too bad it doesn't have a contour map component. i turned around in the deep blue shadow on the right of the road, just short of the ranger station. have fun zooming in and out, too. i'll post a shot of mordor and a giant mexican worm soon enough.

my wife purchased some goggles for the kids to swim with, but they were pretty crappy. trevs loved his, loitering at the bottom of the pool as if he were a shark or a ray. it must look great down there as it is always cloudy. the previous owner was an old guy that did all kinds of odd things around the property. he had painted the pool a light blue [probably because it is rather stained and beat up] but the paint has been coming off the 7 years we've been there. the pool has the apperance of skim milk which usually keeps us from seeing the bottom. someday we'll replaster it, but until then, it is somewhere between a nice pool and a hole in the ground that is filled with water. none of us mind - we love swimming.
yesterday sarah purchased better goggles, trying them on for 15 minutes in the aisle at target. these are good goggles. i came home to the kids diving for rocks in the shallow end and was given the request to find the ones that slid into the deep end. i went down and grabbed them all, giving them back to sarah to toss back in. moments later i get hit on the back with a rock. «oops, sorry!» sure, sure, just don't do it again. less than a minute later i take a rock to the head, it ricochets and hits trevor and he starts bawling. once is funny, twice is, well, not so much. okay, it is funny in a distorted way, but i don't think my wife will be allowed to throw rocks anymore.
work happened to make a mistake on my commission, so i became the proud recipient of some money that we hadn't planned on having. i thought we could use a large portion of the extra cash to repopulate sarah's closet. instead of the hand me downs & across, as well as a good cross section of what target carries, getting better clothes that were more like sarah was going to happen, and happen soon. it needed to be a surprise.
i started off with keem graciously saying she'd watch our kids while we shopped, but if i just came home to take her out, chances are she woudn't be looking hot. keem was going to fib about needing sarah to come to something special for her new job and that she needed to dress up. right as this was going to happen, sarah tells me she is planning on going to coffee with her friends as she does every other wednesday. crap. now i just needed her friends to help me concoct a plan about needing to dress up and be ready early, and miss lisa came through very well. she took a bit to work up a good angle and sarah was sufficiently hoodwinked. i came home a bit early and i kept looking out the window to see if keem had arrived while sarah got ready. i had to make sarah wait just a bit to show her what i was making the kids just as i saw keem's car in our driveway. as sarah opened the door to go out, keem was there. yes, sarah was knocked a little off kilter.
3+ hours of shopping later, we had hit most every store in the mall and were carrying a large amount of swag. it took a bit for sarah to get back in the shopping mode for herself [she said she hasn't shopped like this since high school] but by the end most of what she picked both fit well and were going to be coming home with us.
as we went out to the car and got in to drive home, we drove over to boston market and had some wonderful meatloaf on their huge plates. if only it had been raining it would have been perfect. we got back in the car to leave again but instead i headed over to starbucks. with some kind of something purchased for sarah [i have no love for the flavor leeched from the bean], once again we headed home, once again in the wrong direction. we saw «batman begins» starting at 10pm which was quite good but far too late.
sarah had to show a sleepy keem all her loot, slowly allowing herself to accept getting all the clothes [though she has recently said we should have gotten a shed instead]. a little after one am i thanked keem and headed off to bed, sarah and keem chatting for at least a half an hour longer. i was out cold, but it was a very, very good night with my wife.
in the morning i laid out all the clothes on the floor and took a photo of them, not knowing when we'll be in a place where we could ever do this again. somethings are worth not being practical about.
[yes this was very curt [kurt?] - work is kicking my butt]
while lance was smoking the competition on the final time trial of his career, i was off on my morning ride. today i was going to do a fast tempo ride, maybe going anerobic as i felt like it. my legs and body felt much better after doing mt. lemmon last saturday, so i thought i'd turn it on. right as i neared orange grove and skyline, another cyclist turned in front of me. he didn't have a helmet but wowzers his bike was some major bling. i didn't pay attention and motored up a hill, then turned it on and descended pretty hard. after two miles i noticed him behind me, and as we turned the corner, he crossed through the gas station and i could see his face was beet red. i kept it up, getting my heart rate close to my max. i've rarely had the mental ability to keep myself there for so long but my body was fine with it. a few miles later i've been anerobic for a while and starting to feel the affects when he jumped around me on a downhill. prior to this i was noticing that he would overlap my rear wheel, a very dangerous and novice thing to do. i doubted that he ever rode with anyone as when he jumped around me, he immediately noticed that he couldn't keep up that pace. duh, i was blocking the wind for him and he was resting back there. he tried twice more for all of 20 seconds until i passed him, then while in a construction zone i slowed and he pullled up next to me to comment on what he thought were flaws on my bike. i told him my bike was old and used to be wood, and after he was a bit haughty, i turned it on again. i believe he may have pulled off to throw up as after i turned around, changed a flat and then started up again, he was just getting to me. 2 miles in 10 minutes is not a good pace for him.
getting the flat took it out of me, though, and i had over extended myself. my ride home was far from speedy, but it was a good ride over all.
we've got a dog now. sarah and the kids have been dying to get one, and i said we would wait until my parents leave. they left, and we got a dog, a used one at that. he is about as mellow as a dog can get, as if he is loopy from carbon monoxide poisoning. the deal was that he was supposed to be an outside dog, but already he lives in the house and barks at the tv [i believe the dvd we were watching was mastered by cats and has «dogs are dumb. dogs are dumb.» being broadcast in the range that only dogs can hear]. it is irking me. i'm waiting for the dog [which i call «dog»] to have my spot in the bed. i really want nothing to do with the dog. i'm not sure if that is all correct, but i already slide things in front of my ability to spend time with the family - i don't need any more things to get in my way.
the funny part of the dog is that whatever mix it is makes him look like two animals stuck together. his front is furry orange dog, is back third could almost be a goat with long coarse hair and no tail. dog should be pretty easy for the kids to draw.
i got all the kids up this morning just in time to watch the shuttle go up [except for spencer - he was already playing with the dog and building legos]. i'm always impressed by spaceflight, both the raw power and the precision necessary to be successful. i was a little tense as it went up, watching and waiting for something to go wrong - which of course i did not want to have happen. i was very impressed with the info panels they had on screen, displaying the speed, altitude, pitch/roll/yaw and so on. i did the math in my head and i told the kids that at that speed, we could get to san diego in less than 2 minutes. i didn't want to tell them that we couldn't actually go that fast as the start and stop would leave us in more of a liquid form than a solid, but that is a lesson for another day.
there was a camera on the external fuel tank this time, and the two struts that hold the tank and boosters to the shuttle seem so dainty. i'm so bad at understanding structural strength, but maybe that is what the two external boosters are for, to do most of the lifting for the fuel tank. either way, the power is impressive. i still want to know what kind of servos are used to help direct the thrusters for the shuttle - moving those around with the engines roaring makes me think of putting my hand in the water when a dam is letting off water through the turbines, shooting a few hundred feet before falling into the river below. now that i think about it, even the steel cables used on those massive cranes to move iron beams around while constructing a building impress me. so small, yet so strong.
what i do wish is that i could see the shuttle just as it is nearing the international space station - that would be cool. only once have i watched the iss fly over and have seen the sunlight reflect off the solar panels in a huge flash. if you are in tucson, check the times here. if not, check for your location here. it helps to not have clouds around, btw.
i do get very tired of people speaking over me and/or interrupting me. from a listening stand point, they don't care what i have to say, just what they have to say. there is very little, if any, listening involved. there is a section in james about being quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger. next time someone repeatedly interrupts i'm thinking of saying something like, «hey, you are neither being quick to listen or slow to speak. if you keep this up, i'm going to finish of the phrase and throw some smackdown on your booty, so knock it off.» we'll see if that works. everyone can lean to listen better, and another great book on listening.
i'm whupped. whupped whupped whupped. i've spent the last month focusing on one large job, consisting of all kinds of parts for a huge convention. i had painted a pony express rider for the western theme and now i do not like him. he is everywhere, on everything. it'll all look great, though, as the conference is only 4 days long and during that time, all the pieces will help form the western feel.
even so, i feel like i've either done 4 weeks in a row of 12 hour surgery, and not chop shop surgery but very delicate and focused work. i've done in my ability to focus. i can't sit up straight, i can't hear, i shuffle when i walk, i'm done. it makes me wonder if i would ever enjoy working for a design firm, where there could easily be this long focus [maybe not the intensity?] that leads to so many designers getting burnt out.
i did survive our oldest's 10th birthday party, with a gaggle of girls plus a few boys over for trevor. it was a beach party, and it was beautifully overcast. we were in the pool nearly the entire time. i would drop to the bottom of the pool [our water is milky so you can't see very far down] and swim on my back until i see the dark shadow of a kid above me on a pool toy. i crouch and sprint up, usually tossing the kid a meter into the air. we played that for close to an hour. one time i went down, then came up behind a big shamu and hid there against the side, all the girls squeeling about how i was under water for so long. so much fun. later i splashed a few inches of water out while repeatedly transforming our pool into a wave pool. all that is needed is a big ice chest and the ability to pounce on it in an even pattern and you'll get close waves over half a meter. i also made a «pin the surfer on the wave» game with our large format printer, each surfer die cut out on label stock. you gotta love the good toys.
the star wars battlefront game we rented for the xbox was long overdue from blockbuster. i think it sells in stores for 45-50$, so i was thinking that maybe it was easier to buy it now instead of pay 2 extra weeks of rentals. turns out there are no late fees on games now, and it would be $1.25 for some kind of penalty, so i again asked what it would cost if we just kept it. turns out it'll be $10. with the original rental fee, it'll be $18 or so. it just seems wrong, but we'll be keeping it for that price.
we also rented jumanji, and there were several good parts that i had forgotten. unfortunately, it scared the kids real good. who knew the little girl was kristen dunst? it was a vhs rental, too. that is some old stuff.
even with hitting a dozen+ lights, today's ride was at 21.0 mph. this is far better than 2+ months ago when 16.5 was good. it feels good to start getting sharp again, getting some snap going. i have yet to do any interval work - that'll really change me up.