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
ah, a new month. a crisp, clean new month. the weather is finally getting cool in the mornings, the days yellow rapidly and long shadows show up by mid afternoon. what a great time of year. maybe it is time for me to join the myspace rush, second only to the great ipod rush. you can find me here. i don't think i'll blog much there, maybe toss up some photos at times, but at least i'm cool and i can check out everyone elses goodies.
on my late night ride home yesterday, i was slowed by a huge accident. nobody was allowed forward so we all had to turn off on side streets. it was a little spooky for me as there were no street lights [and me without my headlamp or taillight]. on my ride in this morning, there was a taped outline of one of the cars in the intersection. i've had cars die on me before, but it was never outlined. crazy stuff.
a week or two ago we were all in costco and i found one of my christmas presents: the complete works of calvin and hobbes. all 3 volumes for $80, which is a fantastic deal. they are stored away in their shrink wrap, waiting for unwrapping during christmas.
what else would i want for christmas [other than that, wink wink]: how about a pulaski axe? sure, it is for firefighters [the outdoorsy kind] but what a great tool for landscaping. you've got your hoe/trencher as well as an axe, which would be great for roots and all that. if i kept it underneath the bed, it could probably do some damage to an intruder. i just wish they came with curved handles, though i don't think they would work well with the dual purpose heads.
trevorisms:
i don't want to wear my whacky pants to school.
[he meant khaki]
my bike enjoys cold weather much more than warm. the indexed shifters - i mean friction shifters - are worn out so the cold weather keeps them locked in place better. during the warmer weather, it'll skip around and annoy the crap out of me. time for a new bike, eh?
cool weather also helped me find this old clipping from march of 03. i'm not sure who wrote it, but it still makes me laugh.
Bitter after being snubbed for membership in the “Axis of Evil”, Libya, China and Syria today announced that they had formed the “Axis of Just as Evil”, which they said would be more evil than the stupid Iran-Iraq-North Korea Axis President Bush warned of in his State of the Union address. Axis of Evil members, however, immediately dismissed the new Axis as having, for starters, a really dumb name. “Right, they are just as evil - in their dreams!” declared North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. “Everybody knows we’re the best evils... best at being evil... we’re the best.” Diplomats from Syria denied they were jealous over being excluded, although they conceded they did ask if they could join the Axis of Evil. “They told us it was full”, said Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. “An axis can’t have more than three countries”, explained Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. “This is not my rule, it is tradition. In World War II you had Germany, Italy and Japan in the evil Axis. So you can only have three, and a secret handshake. Ours is wickedly cool.” International reaction to Bush’s Axis of Evil declaration was swift, as within minutes, France surrendered. Elsewhere, peer-conscious nations rushed to gain triumvirate status in what has become a game of geopolitical chairs. Cuba, Sudan and Serbia announced that they had formed the “Axis of Somewhat Evil”, forcing Somalia to join with Uganda and Myanmar in the “Axis of Occasionally Evil”, while Bulgaria, Indonesia and Russia established the “Axis of Not So Much Evil as Just Generally Disagreeable”. With the criteria suddenly expanded and all the desirable clubs filling up, Sierra Leone, El Salvador and Rwanda applied to be called the “Axis of Countries That Aren’t the Worst but Certainly Won’t be Asked to Host the Olympics”. Canada, Mexico and Australia formed the “Axis of Nations That Are Actually Quite Nice but Secretly Have Some Nasty Thoughts About America”, while Scotland, New Zealand and Spain established the “Axis of Countries That Want Sheep to Wear Lipstick”. “That’s not a threat, really, just something we like to do”, said Scottish Executive First Minister Jack McConnell. While wondering if the other nations of the world weren’t perhaps making fun of him, a cautious Bush granted approval for most axis, although he rejected the establishment of the “Axis of Countries Whose Names End in ‘Guay”, accusing one of its members of filing a false application. Officials from Paraguay, Uruguay and Chadguay denied the charges. Israel meanwhile, insisted it didn’t want to join any axis but privately world leaders said that’s only because no one asked them.
chadguay. i still laugh at that country.
i had fun with a bunch of friends at plush, checking out metric. they were good, but a whole lot more thrash than i was expecting. marco got whacked for taking a lot of photos and then she leaned her keyboard on him [i think to make up for taking a semi-playful whack at him]. the funny thing was meeting a guy there that must have been 6'10". i rarely feel small but wow, i was pretty teeny next to him. here is a shot of the bunch of us and emily haines, the lead singer. notice how mark has that good «dude, i'm wasted» look, evader has been up past her bedtime and really has no clue what is going on, and i'm a big dutch guy. it was late, though, and my first words this morning were «who put the extra freak in freaking early?»
did i forget to mention that i am growing hair again? as of this past monday, i'm also working on dropping 20 pounds, too.
yes, i am going backwards in time, but this one is funny and non-sequential. i'm not really sure what day it was - it may have been friday night. sarah and i were both totally tuckered out and i had rented i heart huckabees. if you've seen it, you know it is constantly jumping around and the direction of the characters are constantly changing. i believe we both watched the first 20 minutes and then we took turns falling asleep. each time we woke up, we'd be more confused until three-quarters of the way through i turned it off. after watching it a few days later [fully awake] it is all jumbled in my brain. there you go, how NOT to watch a movie.
thinking about it, we didn't learn much from before. we kept falling asleep during «hero» and we'd wake up and the color theme would be changed, signifying them retelling the story in a different way. yeah, that messed us up too.
be warned - do not read if you have a weak stomach
sick sick sick. everyone in the family has been sick except for one, and she is holding out. allie had it first, complaining of a distended stomach and she was writing in bed in pain. she soon threw up [which the dog enjoyed] and then again later that night. later on, it was the other end that got into the action and she spackled one of the toilets. friday night spencer threw up twice in bed while we were still up, and at 1am i woke up with a tinge of pressure in my belly with a "hey honey, i think i'm getting sick!"
it wasn't like i had won the lottery, but more like finally understanding a science problem, discovering how it all went together. and it did. i got up to wait out the heaving and read a magazine for all of 10 minutes. i didn't hurl yet - i ended up curled on the floor sweating to death.
here comes the gross part
the kids barf was more like dinty moore beef stew with the beef, potatoes and carrots gone. mine was not like that. mine was like pizza cheese slowly oozing out of my mouth with chunks of meatballs from dinner taking a ride [though they felt like lumps of coal]. it was all gravity fed, no force behind it. oh, it was miserable. after that, i went to sleep and felt lousy for the next several day, finally eating some decent food monday night. to take a line from trevor, either «my butt is throwing up» or «my poops melted». even sprite was unattractive. on saturday night i went to pf changs and was dying sitting there [i even got pale] and had nothing but sprite. i'm still powered by natural gas.
sarah is sick too, but hasn't lost anything, just a massive fever that gives her chills and aches and a gurgly stomach [mine sounds like a thunderstorm or an espresso machine]. good old 'm came over and took the kids from sarah so that she could rest, taking them and the dog to reid park, eegee's and subway.
our house has some unique smells now, so we must have missed something somewhere. ah well.
the last few weeks have really sucked. just last month a friend's mom had fallen and busted a leg but [i forget the story] somewhere along the line she had a lot of brain damage and was on her way out. she was now blind, not really there, but everytime they adjusted her at the hospital [every half hour i think] she would wince with pain. long story short, my friend makes the choice to stop her dialysis so she'll fade out but even after her internal organs fail, she keeps going. weeks pass. sitting next to his mom, he talks to her and she responds with a smile. turns out she is still there, and through rudimentary communication discovers that she can see straight ahead. together they decide to take out her breathing tube, knowing that she will quickly die. on the decided day, they do, and she doesn't. she fights and then fades, no pulse. 30 minutes later color returns and she still fights. this happens every hour. for days. it can't get worse, but it does. heart wrenching convulsions. my friend stays up two days with her, protecting her tongue from her teeth when the convulsions come [every 30 minutes]. finally, 21 days later, after firmly being told to go, that it is her time, she goes.
that story killed me, to sit there and watch your mom die and be in on the decisions but having it go as far from «as planned» as possible.
two weeks ago, another set of friends had a child 9 weeks early, and the doctors kept pouring out gloom and doom. other friends in our group quickly jumped in and took care of their other kids, hanging out at the hospital, etc. after a week of tests, she wasn't there either. they took her off the ventilator and she slowly faded out over the next few hours. that sucks. she was perfect on the outside, too.
just before this, a great guy at church, the head of the tech crew, dies in his sleep at 48. wife, kids, grandkids - too many to leave behind at just 48. he was the greatest tech guy, too - he'd work the hardest to make sure everything was just right, and helping was never an inconvenience.
then a friend of my oldest calls her up and says that while playing jump rope, a teacher and principal pulled another little girl aside to tell her that her mom was just killed in a car wreck. my daughter then looks to us and says, «you know how you are always worried we'll be hurt or killed or taken? we kids have to worry about our parents, too.» great.
in the middle of all this, sarah and i watch «house of d», which probably isn't going to receive any critical reviews [maybe] and i cry all the way through it. the poor kid in the movie is living our past few weeks. i've listened to all the sad music i have, and today at the funeral i was fine until i had to see my two friends, minus their new daughter. i suck at crying. i don't cry attractively, and i sure can't talk while crying. i did all i could not to blubber and to keep my mouth in a shape that resembled a mouth. man, living is rough. good thing heaven will be just like this, without all the pain and crap. that'll be good stuff.
i filled my car up with gas yesterday, even though it could take another gallon and a half [yes, my gas guage is far from accurate]. it has been 37 days since i last put gas in my car, and i believe it cost me $5 less. on average, i believe i am riding to work more than 4 days out of the week, like 9 out of 10. it isn't a pompous, give the finger to those driving cars kind of thing that i know a lot of commuters have. i can't really explain it. if you loved sailing and had the opportunity to sail to work, even for a very short trip, wouldn't you do it? to be out on the water, being a part of the weather instead of inside something, somewhere - that is kinda how i feel about riding. hopefully it help give me a bit of a base for racing next year, too.
today i wore my tights, undershirt, sleeves, head wrap and fingered gloves. i'm sure they make them black to soak up whatever heat from the sun they can gather, and i noticed this as i turned along a wash with the sun at my back. the wash was probably 5 degrees cooler [cold air rolls down the mountains like water, going down the same rivers/washes] and the sun was at my back. my calves were warm, but the leading edge of my legs were now in shade. they got a little chilled. i do believe it was 43-45F during my ride, which wasn't bad. if you keep those clothes on for a minute indoors, you move beyond warming up to overheating. i'm quite toasty right now.
there you have it: sarah has pneumonia. she's probably been building it since last sunday, coming and going, but thursday it went bad again. what a way to go. i'll get to run allie's birthday party at the roller skating rink on my own tomorrow. hopefully she has a lot of little friends show up.
there is always a split of production vs creative work here [i try to hog the good design jobs - bwahahaha], but the last few days it has been a little lopsided. i must have printed out 80 plates for the press, printed a ton of posters [6 posters on canvas went for 1,200] and now i'm burning cds in the background [good money there, too]. but here's the rub: it is boring as all get out. pigs turn down the opportunity to do the same work. ah well, it comes with the territory, i suppose, and the good $$ helps support the whole shop. there is talk of getting a monthly postcard for a client next year, each uniquely designed which [1] will take a lot of design time, and [2] be fulfilling and challenging. 12 is a big number. often times i wonder if i could handle being 100% creative, but i don't know. it is like having to be funny all the time - it ain't easy.
so what does a freshly open stack of recordable cds smell like - celery or syrup?
riding home yesterday i finally saw it - dozens of cars with bikes on their racks, trucks with 2 or 3 tandems in their beds. it was el tour de tucson eve, and i was going to have no part of it. what a great day for riding it was, too. no wind that i noticed, and it stayed cool. so many people made it well under 5 hours. i wonder if it makes that big of a difference, the weather. i was #200 a few years ago, and this time i think if i had done the same time i would have been close to #400. i don't think i would have been as i would have benefitted from the good weather. that year was a pain. i'm sure i can talk myself into anything i want, but next year i'll be serious.
even so, it wasn't like i was missing out, it was more like i wasn't invited, and that hurts a bit more. next year.
ah, now the el tour winds show up. yesterday was 7 at the start, down to 3 and even calm for much of the ride. it must have been beautiful. i'll need to ask guyot about it - he finished 31st yesterday, which is rather impressive for an old hound dog. that gives me hope as he is 12 years my senior - averaging 25mph - hoo-ah! watch next years ride be in a swirling snowstorm and i won't keep my platinum card. ah well, next year is the year of dann. i woke up in the middle of the night and thought, «i need to start putting in hour rides during lunch» and i've already got some routes. when it gets warm enough, i'll switch it to the mornings. i can taste it already. now to get that new bike...
sarah and i had lunch with the pingrys today [i SO want to type his full name, but he is rather proud that his name doesn't exist on the internet]. it is good to see old friends that we only im with nowadays. someday they will get pregnant and move back to tucson. someday.
i got my first check for the childrens book i illustrated. it was for october, where 26 books were sold. november should be the same or more. i think i need to sell 400 books to make minimum wage plus the $150 i spent on the software upgrade for painter. we'll see how long that takes. right now it goes to my bike fund.
i've got a small.txt in my head about scars, which now i think i am teaching some sunday morning. i was looking down at my palm and i've got this really cool pair of scars. i got them while putting up a gate at our old duplex so that we could sell it, and it was pretty bad. i looked down at my toe at that huge red gash from the shovel, then thought about all the other scars i have, most of which no one would really notice unless i pointed them out [and often times we try to cover up]. then i thought of all the internal scars, the ones where i've done damage to my body through bike wrecks and volleyball, how my body is twisted out of shape and i'm a little disfigured. even deeper are the emotional hurts, the places where i've been cut deeply and may not have ever healed. i might have just grown a huge callous/cyst over it to protect myself. there was [is?] this system called rolfing where 10 weeks would be spent breaking up all the scar tissue in your body and getting you back to normal. living a spiritual life requires that too, but it is far harder. spiritual/emotional scars are a lot harder to work through, but wow, to be healthy[er] is a great place to head towards and see the ensuing results.
but does anyone want to admit they have scars/damage?
emily haines from metric moves like a robot, a military robot.
man we are cold today. saturday was great, sunday never warmed up [we flat lines] and then it got cold. i was out wrapping all our citrus trees in the hope of saving both the fruit and their tender branches. i also watered them as that retains heat, and strung christmas lights inside them, which i suppose offered minimal heat. i don't spend all year watering them and taking care of them just to let 28°F come along and maim them. i've got close to 10 oranges on one tree that is all of 18 inches tall. i'll post photos tomorrow as i'm leaving the covering on.
the 48 hour chart makes a mean downhill slope, sunday being a precursor to the cold. all this made for a cool bike ride - i left at 28°F and got to work at 31°F. it was a little chilly, and my legs lost their elasticity. the rest of me had a little chill, but my core was fine. i even wore my polypropelene booties which everyone says is overkill [no slush here] but they sure do block the wind. i was fine as long as i kept it under 20mph, 18 being pretty good. anything more and the wind i generated cut right through my legs.
crap, i just read that roberto heras tested positive for EPO, so he'll lose his veulta a españa tour victory. looks like he'll be out riding with tyler hamilton. maybe that is how heras made up for a really sucky tour de france [again].
i had taken last friday off so that sarah could head off to scottsdale with 3 friends and hang out for 3 days. sarah wasn't feeling so hot so i kept her home and we took it easy with the kids. we walked down to the theater and watched wallace and grommit and the freaking huge rabbit. the first half was good, the second not so hot. there were little gems sprinkled throughout, but never a complete package. sarah slept through much of it. yes, she was sick.
saturday we piled the kids in the van early and dropped sarah off in scottsdale and then i went off with the kids to the phoenix zoo. spencer asks to go to the zoo more often than target, and boy, was he excited. we tromped around for quite some time and then he started to get tired and wanted to leave. i wasn't totally impressed by the zoo, but it was still a lot of fun. we left around 2pm and went a parking lot away to climb up to the hole-in-the-rock at papago park which i remember doing as a kid. it is really small now, and i did let the 3 oldest scramble into a another area [i was beat].
they look like they should be on some kids album cover from the 70s. after that we headed out the long arm of the 202 to mesa to see some old friends and play with their kids. it was fun to just chat as if we had never been apart.
lastly, i bought some of those crest whitening strips and have been using them since thanksgiving. i've got friends with molds that do their own teeth, but i kinda think it can be like cologne/parfum - you find that it is never enough. some people's teeth have gone so white that their mouths have gone from a warm white to a cold white, which i find mildly eerie. i just want to get some of the dinginess off my teeth. it probably matters just a little bit as i've got the dead tooth and the black gum thing going on, but the commercials say i'll be more popular and be a new person with a whiter smile. i believe them, i really do.
so there you have it for a trivia filled blog. i'm a little too tired to think, though i keep mulling over my vocation [not my job, but my vocation].
spencer brought home his class picture [with corner conveniently removed] and he is pretty funny [third from the right]. if you say a classmates name he'll point them out, but according to the teacher he is being a bit of a stinker. he still has a hang up with the clock on the wall so they had to cover it. he gets preoccupied with some of the funniest things. right now he just wants to «go», either to the «zoo» or target [he doesn't say target, he finds a target ad or pulls sarah's target card out of her wallet].
he does say «yjesh» in a very adorable way, though. little nutty spenglar. some day he'll have a sentence with more than one word. we can wait.