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
starting almost a year ago, spencer began drawing helicopters, or a «buzz» as he says, often times with hand motions. he draws them all the time, sometimes with wheels, other times with two sets of rotors like the big military helicopters. he'll draw them in sand, he'll lay them out with blocks, he has even done it with food. any concrete surface is quickly colored by him with sidewalk chalk. if you come close enough to him, he'll run up to you, press some chalk into your hand and drag you outside while exclaiming «buzz!»
yesterday he came home with his drawing to the left, helicopters surrounding the church. i think it is probably biblical. if a helicopter flies over, he'll put down whatever he is working on/eating and run outside and look for it. if they are low enough [like the medical copters - we live less than a mile from a landing pad] he'll wave to them. thanks to spencer, this month will be the month of buzz, in all their many forms.
i've never liked going through drive-throughs. i can enter one myself [pretty much] but with a group, no, unless i'm just a passenger. i really don't like sitting there waiting to relay orders, especially when the others don't know what they want. i don't know what it is - do i not want to make people wait [i don't mind waiting myself], do i find the interface odd, or do i dislike the indecision? it may be a bit of all three.
i don't mind wasting my own time - i'm quite good at it. i'm not all that fond of others wasting my time, especially under a deadline. it used to be anything someone did that slowed me down was annoying, especially if they had me doing something i had to redo or was the wrong direction. i'm not much of a repetitive person, so doing things more than once often bore me. i used to be far more cold and impersonal, only caring about the task and not about the person, which now seems a very spooky place to be, though i default to that when i'm exhausted. you would not have wanted to work with me before - i was a brutal eccentric.
another quirk of mine is that when i come home from work, i want the house to be my home. i don't want people over. i can handle good friends over because i don't need to host/entertain. if there is a new person over, i still may hide in the bedroom until they leave. you can't get me to come out - i may as well be a scared cow or something. once the house returns to the familiar, i'll become okay. note: if i come home and you are over and i disappear for the duration of your stay, it isn't that i don't like you, it is that you are a stranger to me and are freaking me out.
i've been working on an international conference's artwork the last 5 weeks, and i am pooped. i've been focusing so hard and producing so hard it is as if i've been doing delicate brain surgery 9 hours a day. i could really go for a simple exam or a bandaid solution right now. it ended up being 24GB+ or so, and one file ended up at just over a gig in size.
on a previous file for either a poster or a cover i ran the scratch disk up to 12.9GB and my machine handled it wonderfully, though i should have given photoshop 3.5GB to start with.
no, i'm not a moron - i work very intelligently. 3' x 24' posters with a gob of layers that need to remain editable are just large by nature [as i never know when i'll be asked to nudge a part of the image to the left 10 inches]. i don't think i'd work out as a designer for an inhouse firm as i'm tired of repurposing the same imagery - «what, mickey mouse ears AGAIN? good golly, can't we do something different?»
it was good stuff, though, i think one of the better conferences i've done in regards to ambiance. i was able to attend 3 grand dinners at the conference, the opening ceremonies and some other things, and all the work fit in really well. even so, it seemed like i didn't do all that much. 7 or 8 weeks of work and that was all? it always seems that way, and that is how design seems to work. logo, name badges, tickets, powerpoint slides, banners, posters, website artwork, binder covers - it seems like a lot at the time, but you go past them so quickly. as always, i just want to make what i touch beautiful, so even though it was seen for a very short time, it was still good stuff.
i was given 2 nights at the resort, the first sarah new about and the second i surprised her. during the day we played with the kids in the large pool and the huge slide. i tossed the kids for what seemed like hours, trevor in a tight little tuck doing a flip and hitting the water as a cannon ball. he would make a huge «whump!» sound like a big rock thrown into a lake. i taught the kids how to race down the slide on just your shoulder blades and the heel of one foot, keeping your back arched so that your suit and skin wouldn't slow you down. i have good bruises to show for it.
i'm now destressing and not fully ready to work again, but i'll get around to it and those other projects i couldn't touch. i'm feeling normal again.
yesterday i looked at the national weather service's radar and the area just a mile or two north of us was getting pounded. i wandered outside and everything north of my work was black. sarah im's me and says it just went dark, and then the rain started. work got nothing at all, of course, but as i remembered to check the rain guage this morning i was pleased to discover we had gotten 1.5" of rain. that means we recieved over 7,000 gallons of water on our property, and though some does run off with all that concrete we have in our yard, most of the edges of our yard are built up to retain water. i love not having to water our yard. our trees have got to be happy, the soil must be saturated, and the square of grass in our backyard that we never water is lush like arkansas.
ray was doing drywall in the back and had mud all over him, and one of our coworker's daughter [age 7] was touching it. ray said, "hey, don't touch that unless you want to turn out like me" - he meant all covered with mud but as i walked past as he was just saying that to her i didn't miss a beat by calmly saying "big and round". i'm the funniest person i know.
school has started for the 3 oldest, and though we put the middle two on a bus this morning and drove courtney to school as we didn't get her bus schedule, tomorrow they will all ride the same bus. sure, it will take a bit longer for them to get to and from school, but it will be a lot less driving for sarah and spencer - and spencer starts school on thursday. woohoo! school does them well.
we had to have a final week of summer vacation fun and i took friday off to head out to water world, a total hick kind of water park [and combination trailer park] but it is a blast. i swear, if i had a front loader, extra concrete, pipes, and water pumps, i'd very nearly make the same kind of water park. we played and played until we were beat. saturday we all went to see the fantastic four, and yesterday we went out to eat after church in a huge rain storm. later on we went to the river park and roller bladded and then went for a walk in the river - with water, too!
hopefully we will have a new van by christmas and maybe we can take some longer trips next summer [in comparison to our current van which we would barely trust to take us to phoenix]. with both my parents being teachers and having the summers off, we had a lot of fun during the summers.
through all this, and not having so much work [including personal projects] as well as having very good talks with sarah, i'm feeling more energized and fiesty, which is much more like me. i'm quick again.
i'm a sound person, not a lyrics person [i hear the voice as another sound]. very rarely do i pick up on lyircs, and i don't pick up names or foreign languages unless i see the words written down. it alwasys made for good fun during some events i helped work - the band leader would ask me if a certain song should be played somewhere and i couldn't recognize it by the title. he'd sing a bit of to me and my eyes would glaze over. someone else would describe what the slide background to the song would be [eg, «you know, the arctic lord of the rings slide»] and then i could remember it. i'd usually just remember the feel, that is, not what the song was about
this description of my personality type is quite correct, from intp.org:
Generally, INTPs are fascinated by atmospheres evoked by music. INTPs are usually fascinated by music and may have deep and wide-ranging tastes. Indeed, each of their three main functions (Ti, Ne, Si) plays a role in the enjoyment of music, and indeed music is a key interest for bringing out the feeling shadow of the INTP. Si itself brings a fascination for mood and atmosphere in music as well as for a strong sense of personal nostalgia
feeling, atmospheres, wide ranging tastes. that would be me, plus nostalgia. i used to post the track listings of the music we would play before those same events [from above] and while watching a show on pbs they played over a dozen songs from one mix as background music. i think i usually do okay at making mixes [other than a romantic one that did the exact opposite when my wife burst out crying, «it's so saaaaaad!». talk about your all time backfires] and every few weeks i make a new one for some friends. it turns out that some are well received.
miss lisa makes dinner and cleans to chixmix2, plays #9 while having people over and runs to #10 [or at least i think that is what she said]. several others run to #10 too, and there are plenty of other ones, too. i suppose it pays to listen to a lot of different music, but i don't listen to a lot of what many would call «quality music» as the songs, though fabulously written, sound far too familiar to me. according to my profile, i don't like 3-part [chord?] harmonies, so that gets rid of most of the current evangelical repeat the chorus songs. aw, shucks.
what is annoying me to no end is enjoying a band and chatting them up, and then one of their songs making it into a movie soundtrack or commercial and wham, everyone thinks i'm a wannabee. oh well, at least people are listening to more than the thin band of music they play on the radio. garden state is the worst offender by far. i'm glad the white stripes only allowed one song to be used, and that on napoleon dynamite. even so, i hear about plenty of new groups from digging up music from soundtracks.
the 3 mixes are to the right, just in case you were interested.
the shining - badly drawn boy
round the bend - beck
an old sunday - the innocence mission
the boxer - carbon leaf
rush for a change - big audio dynamite II
bossa nova - pizzicato five
freedom fighter - bowery electric
oh daddy - adrian belew
three is a magic number - blind melon
do you ever think of me - laura cantrell
somebody is waiting for me - juliana hatfield
another first kiss - they might be giants
never grow old - the cranberries
sound of silence - emiliana torrini
comptine d'un autre ete: l"apres midi - yann tiersen
our harry - the innocence mission
falling at your feet - u2
beach song - true romance
we're going to be friends - the white stripes
across the universe - fiona apple
sea of doubts - azure ray
one note samba/surfboard - herbie mann, red hot + rio
emma's song - sinead o'connor
vuli ndela - brenda fassie
the boy from ipanema - crystal waters, red hot + rio
they - jem
open up your heart and let the sun shine in - frente!, satudary morning cartoons
hatun runas - wayanay
basketball freestyle beat - nike commercial
sweep down early - the innocence mission
characteristic beat - emergency broadcast network, red hot + offbeat
looking for the jackalope - laika, red hot + offbeat
heroin - u2 and sinead o'connor
gigantor - helmet, satudary morning cartoons
mambo italiano - [some italian techno song - no clue]
horn dog - overseer
hypnotist of ladies - they might be giants
nothing is wrong - fc kahuna
chocolate - snow patrol
monsters and angels - voice of the beehive
shazam - spiderbait
yen on a carousel - ocean's twelve soundtrack
aaj mera jee karda - monsoon wedding soundtrack
young james - kate rusby
run - snow patrol
black betty - spiderbait
go speed racer go - sponge, satudary morning cartoons
happy jack, the who [wasn't this an h2 commercial, too?]
if i had a boat - dave matthews band covering lyle lovette
see the constellation - they might be giants
bleep freak, fc kahuna
turn around - they might be giants
spiderbait - first on 10 reasons i hate you or whatever, then black betty is in every movie and tv preview. sheesh.
i get some great spam at work, and some i have to slog through as some is actually from clients [no, they send me work, not spam]. i got the great ad to the right yesterday morning.
i do enjoy «the same old bar scene» as well as it being about «HOT» girls and guys. of course, they will meet «YOUR high standards» which means looking for people online [which i'm sure works for some, but still...]
i'd be afraid to get screened and find out that i'm not hot enough, and especially more afraid as i'm sure God only likes hot people [heaven will be paved with gold and there will be stripper poles and chippendale pants everywhere]. by the looks of the ad above, hot xian girls put out on the first date - woohoo!
yeah, it is sad - is it too obvious to need to say that the whole premise seems to be counter to who they are marketing to, like selling steak seasonings and how to pick choice cuts of meat to a vegetarian group?
top it off with the choice verse below from their site [what is up with her left shoulder?] and enjoy the misspelling. seriously, someone try out the site and tell me what happens.
busing was a bit messed up and it took the middle 2 a whopping 2 hours and change to get home [a little over 2 miles]! they were not happy at all, and allie cried over and over that she hates the bus and wants me to take her to school. that won't happen. on the way back from the bus stop they did find a desert tortoise which should be fun to have around the backyard [sure beats the dog in my opinoin]. each time trevor would pick it up it would pee on him which was rather funny.
i always hated taking the bus - i never fit well with it, so i would read to and from school and most people would leave me alone. there were the wookies at our bus stop [their name was something close to that] and they were twice the normal allotted size for someone their age and they were a bit dumbtarded. you don't tell that to big dumbtarded wookies, though. they would kick me while waiting in line, once they pulled a huge knife out while riding home and followed me home as i gritted it out and they finally turned and went back towards their house. i was a pretty teeny kid, so i had no chance. fortunately i never really got beaten up, just kicked and rocks thrown at me. lovely. i do remember kids lighting up in the back, and there sure was a lot of pot being smoked. hopefully with our kids all riding the bus together, it won't be so bad. hopefully, that is.
last night we had two old friends [and slacker carl] come over for a nice steak dinner. it was good to talk to them and see where they are now, how they have changed, and how they view living. i promptly stepped on a bee, which made my night more enjoyable. the question kramer brought up was whether all that he was learning about church history and why we believe what we believe and how it came about was really worth the time spent. living a life for God may not involve that for everyone, as so much of it is loving God and loving others. but doesn't knowing a lot more about our history and all sorts of theology help? i likened it to a military leader that knows a ton about the history of war and weapons, or a firefighter that knows a ton about combustibles and burn rates - yes, we need people that know these things. maybe most of us won't have a great application for this stuff, but it sure doesn't hurt. kramer may also be anxious to get out of school and living this all out, too. i was tired of learing all about design and not doing it. xianity is a hands on experience.
i also remembered playing volleyball and though i knew what i was to do/not to do, i didn't know the reasons for the rules or exactly what they all were - i just knew what i was striving for. there were a few guys on the team that were refs and really knew the rules - i would never be comfortable calling an infraction on anyone. maybe that is also where we need people that know a lot to help us all out. we also need people that can coach us to a better place as well as great players. fortunately for kramer and all of us, i believe he can do all 3 rather well.
i took friday off and went to the lake with ryan and his dad steve, beau, a kid john who is dating ryan's sister and dwight, a cycling national champion. it was great fun last year when i went even though i felt lousy, and this year was no different. i felt as if my muscles were all 5% shorter than they should be, not achy but just a bit of a pain. i decided to take it easy thinking that taking a hard fall while water skiing could actually do some damage to me, and i was fine with relaxing. waterskiing is playing hard, real hard. instead of working hard and then playing hard and never truly relaxing, i chose to relax. i was never pulled behind a boat, and though it was pretty toasty, the other guys were a ball to be around. john was a freaking nut on the water, staying out for almost an hour at a time and was picking up everything incredibly fast, beau made things look easy with his smooth wakeboarding, ryan took the most brutal falls, and dwight and steve took some decent turns. oh yes, with the first time slaloming for john, his 2nd time up he was jumping the wake, and steve swung him out so hard that his rear foot came out of the binding. john knew he was in trouble but he looked over at us with a big smile and toungue wagging, kicking his foot ahead with a «i'm going to die, but isn't this funny!» face. he was impressive. sometime last year steve started working out for ryan's wedding, and he has kept it up. i'm not sure who started it way back when, but beau keep calling him kronk from «the emperor's new groove». too funny. kronk also called dwight «duh-white» and didn't know it, and after joking around, beau kept calling dwight «duh-wayne». good stuff.
hopefully i'll be invited back as i was token observer, and it was a lot of fun to get out on the lake. as we brought the boat in, it began to rain and as we looked towards the setting sun across the lake, you could make out raindrops a quarter mile away, glowing from the back-lit sun. it was a very good way to end the day.
if part of the holy spirit's role is to help illuminate the bible [define that as you may] and if we drown our the holy spirit and don't hear his voice, is reading the bible just good reading, missing the part where we experience God? is it more info, not the "start my day off in the word with God" like people want? are we missing experiencing God? seriously, i'd say if you've been seriously chasing after God for a year or two and still can't recognize the holy spirit's voice [and actually go with it] then i'd say there is a problem. my opinion, of course, but i'd say everyone should adhere to it. the holy spirit has his hands in everything, and he isn't just a bit [from trom] that says yes or no to our actions, especially if we want to do something and want God to stamp his okay on things. that isn't cool.
rain rain and more rain. it started at 4.30 this morning, coming east across the city, then turned around and went back across and it is still raining. our poor airport rarely gets rain [which is probably good - if it was near us and recorded our rainfall, nobody would think tucson needs water restrictions] but it has already measured 2". i think our annual rainfall for tucson - i mean the airport - is 13". we are having some freaky weather.
i've been getting larger - with that large project in july i haven't ridden much in 6 weeks, so i'm back at training. too bad it was raining. i went out and ran instead, then i rode my bike to work. i believe it counts as a triathlon - running, riding, and soaked the whole time. i hit a puddle [aka a flooded dip] and both my pedals skipped across the water. a light on my car route to work was out and traffic was backed up over a mile both directions. i may have gotten to work faster on a bike today than in a car because of the light problem. i can get home faster than a car for sure, and today i'll try a faster route home, one on a larger street so i'll get more green lights. we'll see. i think my record home on my bike was 18.45 for 7 miles. it really isn't focused training, just spinning the legs around, which will be good for me.
one last thing: work is freezing with the rain and we've got our air conditioning set to as cold as possilbe. i'm near our new direct imaging press [all 5 tons of it] and it needs to be kept at 72F or below. [small side note before continuing: our group of 4 couples was at a very nice restaurant and an attractive waitress was taking our orders. nobody was paying attention to my friend stick pusher as he was asking for some water while looking directly at her and gently rubbing his nipple. she stayed professional, but after she left i gave him grief. turns out he has a sore rib he rubs, but that was not the message he was sending]. nonetheless, people keep bringing us water at work - due to an oddiity of where the air comes in and where the thermostat is positioned, the air is always on and my office is 62F.
this may sound arrogant, but it is more of an observation of how i am. let me know if i am wrong.
i've decided that i'm really not so far «outside the box» as everyone likes to think. i used to think that the people that thought inside the box were just thinking about what has already been covered [for themselves and others] so it really isn't thinking at all, just remembering and keeping their status quo going. now i'm wondering if i just see everything as touchable [to a point]. i'm not going to do the socially stupid things, but in the same sense, everything is open and able to be looked at and scrutinized. i still have boundaries, but the *gosh!* untouchables really aren't that untouchable. maybe i needed to get to a point where i fear God more than i fear everyone else, so much so that i'd rather be looking at what God would have me to look at vs thinking that i need to stay safe in the middle. it might be like a sandwich wrapped in paper. eating the paper would be the boundary [okay, technically one could eat the paper] but there is such a fear of even getting close to the edge that only the grinder parts are eaten, stopping at the mayonnaise. there is still 2 inches of bread on all sides, but that is SO close to the wrapper that it never gets sampled. so no, i'm not outside the box, i'm just not as afraid as most other people. hmmm, maybe afraid is not the right word, but how do i say «i want to enjoy the full experience of God, not just the parts that are close to me»? i can't live with just a thin slice of God-dom, he is immensely vast and exciting. we live with our own boundaries [and often impose them on others] and we fail to realize that they are our boundaries, not God's.
maybe that is why people seem to say that i'm against the bible, which i'm not. i'm just shooting for a much larger part of the "experiencing God" piece of the pie. if i just stuck with the bible, i'd be selling God short. but to them, the bible is 100% of their experiencing of God - anything less to them is heresy. as bish once said:
«let the bible help with your GOD encounters, not have God help you with your BIBLE encounters»
since this is more of a faux blog, all hand done, i'll probably never post on a weekend. saturday night sarah and i went out with our group of 4 [ourselves and 3 other couples]. one set didn't show but we had a great time at oregano's and laughed as stick pusher was talking about music and said he really likes "a beautiful man" which caught rin-tin's ear and we burst out laughing. next time he'll need to say he likes THE SONG "a beautiful man."
later that night sarah and i were talking about how it is very refreshing and safe and enjoyable to have good friends with whom we can be very vulnerable with. we brought up conversations that we remembered with other people, about them sharing the "big things" and both thinking, "what, that isn't a that big." i think we've come to a great place where we share things freely, that we are authentic and our good friends reciprocate the same feelings and friendship is not black and white. it is more than that, something intermingled and deep, correct in the way it is lived out. it is rather unexplainable, as i think most people will drop it back to what they've experienced [i know i sure would]. the same goes for my relationship with sarah - i'd say it is the best it has ever been, but it sure takes work. i'm sure we started out with a relatively lame relationship [especially in comparison with where we are now] but how hard is to maintain a poor relationship? not hard at all. but a good relationship is like becoming a world class athlete - it takes a lot of time and energy. i'm very glad with where have gotten to, and i intend to keep it there as well as continuing to work on it. at a place where we are now, i can't believe how anyone could ever cheat on their spouse. i can only imagine how unfullfilled and unsafe one must feel to seek out someone else. i'd put communication [or the lack of it] at the top of the list. our marriage kicks ass, and i expect it to get even better.
but back to the dinner - we talked about all of us going to hawaii in 2007 and then started making a lot more lists of what we want to do together, some of them including the kids like camping or staying on the beach in san diego. las vegas might be a trip sometime soon. the destination is not exactly the point, though. sure, it'll be fun with friends there but it will actually be fun because our friends are there. we get along very well, and adding other people into it hasn't worked well, it does something to how we share/interact. it is not that other people are bad, just that with the 4 of us, it is so incredibly good.
i feel bad for people that aren't there yet, that are still unknowingly guarded and whatever else that would be. i feel like i'm curled up near the window keeping the rain outside, covered with a warm blanket and escaping into a beautiful book. my insides are completely content and fulfilled.
two great videos, plus a few other tidbits:
i find this guys animation very expressive and delicate, while having a great sense of humor. AND a wonderfully limited color pallette, so incredibly rich while still very muted. this one about a jcb [i'm lazy and won't look it up but i assume it is some kind of british backhoe] is good stuff with the blurred foreground/background plus the choice items in the back that go along with the song.
then there is this from the artists site from long ago, a video for radiohead's "creep".
you'll also find a lot of good office clips in the section on the left. good stuff. makes me envious of both his skills and his stylized drawings. i want a style.
