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2.1my intp personaility says that i like to become «just okay» with what i do, not wanting to delve into continual practice and understanding. that is probably fair, except that i do like to work at some things to get better. but will i push it up a notch? probably not. i'll just work to get better than most people and call it a day. fortunately for me i seem to be «okay» with a fair amout of things. have i read the last 3 manuals to photoshop/illustrator/indesign? no. do i get up and ride extra miles every day to get in good race shape? no. and so it goes. i used to draw a lot, but i never moved beyond «okay» or more than my classmates. i never got to a point to having a style. in one of my first drawing classes [while i was still in the engineering college] one teacher addressed the whole class with, «each of us teachers gets to nominate one student for blah blah blah so i did and guess what? i got egg on my face for nominating a student that isn't even studying art.» i soon changed my major, but art is so ambigous. yes, there is a basis for critique, but there is not a single correct answer in the end [like how much weight will this bridge hold]. it is gray, subjective, but altogether very very cool. i can breathe life into my work, impress people with subtlety. [un]fortunately it is mostly more designy that illustratey. i would like to doodle more [just like i would like to learn css and stop being a hack web designer that can reach the status of «okay»], so maybe i will give it a shot. maybe i'll read the manuals, too. comment | comments 4.1i’m back to wondering about what i am doing. for one, i get some free reign at work and we don't have a massive amount of nitpickly clients. but we also tend to do a lot more production than creative stuff. i tend to do more creative stuff for friends and clients i personally work with [which is fun]. could i get a job somewhere else? probably. would i need a degree? unfortunately yes as some people are still a wee bit retro. ah, i don’t know, and yes, i’m condensing this all down so much that it probably doesn’t make much sense to read. i am a great short order cook in the graphic design world. i can bust out most anything in a short time and make it look good. can i do more than just put shapes together? not so much anymore. could i do these massively creative jobs? maybe not. but do i want to be a great chef like that, or stay where i am at and continue to get better [though this job doesn’t push so i must push myself. i need to learn css [and maybe flash]. i need to learn a lot of things, though my old skills still carry me very well. sense of balance and color, attention to detail, expression — i do those pretty good. maybe i just need to push myself, maybe do freelance at night. i don’t think i’ll look back on my life in 20 years and think that i was doing the high jump with the bar set to 3 feet. there is more to life than just the bar, yet there is still the need to provide. i would think i make more than my parents ever did [though their health care cost a lot less], but i’ve got plenty of friends who make far more for not doing much. wonder wonder wonder. 5.2i totally forgot to mention that on 5.2 [the day after i mentioned how i don’t doodle anymore] that superB had found a large art set in the house he just bought [or something like that]. he gived it to me! woohoo! now i are a good drawer! comment | comments 7.1this morning we got to walk to mass to see a friends daughter recieve her first communion. we got to walk — how nice is that? it wasn’t even much of a distance. 
so that was cool, as was seeing the first communion. i rather like the service with all the up-down-up-down — i feel as if i am a part of what is going on instead of watching a show. i’m sure people punch out, though, as i saw many doing just that. the topic was fun, too, as it was the 4th sunday of easter and on the good shephard. oh, i need a subpost real quick. a good talk — i don’t know if that impresses me much anymore. i can’t tell if they are saying who they are or who they want to make themselves out to be. i trust glenn/rajah/darin when they talk to a big group as i know them, i know who they are. but elsewhere, i don’t know. could i get their notes and give the same talk, even on things i am totally against? i’d like to go see prince, mj, etc etc — all those great shows, but i wouldn’t trust what they say because i don’t know them. so someone can come in and share great stuff — maybe their material is the only good stuff. but it was a good talk, and none of it was the kind of catholicness that most people i know seem to fear. no swinging balls of fire, and anyone with a little thinking can pick up on much of the symbolism. i liked it, what i got to be there for until spencer wanted to go play helicopter in the bushes outside. he made lots of keys out of branches to start them up. what is the deal about people getting all bent out of shape over the catholic church? why can’t we just be glad they are here along with us, like the different miltary groups that serve together. so they don’t wear shoes or something — we eat food out of cans. i’d almost say it is similar to the grief i get when i reference the «message» [you know, the hippie bible]. people ask «what is that from?» and i say the message, you know, the bible. what is up with us if we can only recognize it if it is word for word in the version we know? can we not recoginize parts of the story if it is told differently? i swear that we don’t understand the story if we can only tell it the way someone else wrote it. enough of all that, mass was cool. comment | comments 8.1scary and damaged — what a great phrase from last nights grey’s anatomy. i’m thinking the writing has gone downhill a bit and somehow they are trying to make the characters a little more scary and damaged, yet i still enjoy their funky relationships. i usually say that we are all procupines or dinosaurs with huge razor blades attached to our tails, unknowingly slicing up people around us as we trundle along. scary and damaged is less imageryish but still very good. we ARE scary and damaged, and we fear that people will run away if they see what we really look like. i trust the scary and damaged that know it much more than those that are scary and damaged and hide it. they can’t be trusted — one never knows what direction they will take as it is based off masking their true selves. there is such a huge weight removed when you can just be who you are, like telling people that you’ve been having sex for a long time. it doesn’t make it right [for those that care] but at least people can see you [and now you aren’t a liar anymore, too]. i must admit that at times, being around people throwing up paintings of what they think i should see has annoyed me to no end, but lately it is getting easier. they just aren’t there to be themselves. yet. it should happen someday soon. comment | comments 8.3the new neighbors also ride their bikes to work. that puts us at 4 people on our block alone. i would think that is highly disproportionate compared to any average i could make up. i think it is pretty cool. they’ve got a car that they’ve put 20k on in 6 years. i’ve got friends that do that in 4 months. i still want to be first on my block to have a large rain collector for watering my plants. comment | comments 9.1girl groups i forget about: lucsious jackson and elastica. why do i forget about them? i am not knowing this. elastica’s car song is just too much fun to listen to, though i have no idea what they are saying. on top of that, some girls is releasing another album [are they still called albums?] so here is hoping they come through town again, if only to let abrupt lee stalk them a bit more [heehee]. i must play them both tonight at with me blokes tonight for our barbeque. mmm, more meat. all i feel like i have done is eat and eat and eat. friday was 15.5 pounds of carne asada [which means «grilled meat»] but was some prepared asado — so good. then friday night was 4 massive steaks with friends over, sunday brunch was breakfast burritos with more wonderful meat and dinner was hamburgers. i think i had a whole cow over the weekend. tonight will be fun having friends over [again] and chowing with them. it should happen more often. comment | comments 11.2gmail chat is the greatest thing this week. for starters, we are all chatting with individually, and then there is the status message [the best part]. we post short little phrases, poking fun at each other or ourselves, and these conversations are slow, like 3 quips a day, but all related. usually we know what they all mean. eg, one time a week ago i wrote «jenn=funny» and then brian wanted to be funny but he was lacking the extra N to make it happen. he wrote one thing which wasn’t funny but followed it up in his status message with «briann think he funny» which really was funny. today, briann hasn’t been funny [okay, he has, but it is funnier to say he isn’t] so it has become a reverse game of horse. jenn has been dropping letters off his name in her status message, and poor briann is down to just «bri».  these little sub-conversations are making the week pass by with a lot more laughter. comment | comments 12.1i fell in love with african music probably from a pbs show, and then later with ladysmith black mambazo. my sister treated our whole family to see ladysmith years ago. i wonder if the movie «the gods must be crazy» had any influence, but no, it was the music. for all the pep and energy, their seems to be something soft in the sound [remember, i don’t hear lyrics as words]. brenda fassie’s life was pretty nuts, but her music pumps me through the day at times. i could listen to «black president» over and over. miriam makeba is another, going way back to the 60s. «i will sing» is one of my faves. i’d love to be in a group where all i need to do is make noises and not words [sort of like the belle stars «iko iko» which became popular after the movie rain man]. here is the flip side: i dance like peter garrett from midnight oil [mmm, the «beds are burning» video. to quote: «I don't dance like that when I'm grooving in some club - actually I don't groove.» more on peter at 12.2], except he makes it look good [yeah]. i’ve never had much of any coordination. when i played volleyball for the university, i would go out to a playground on the off days and do footwork drills. i needed to go over and over the footsteps and body position to move properly. it isn’t that i’m clumsy as i used to be called «gazelle dann» in high school as i could run and float over obstacles, it is that the whole idea of moving my body in a pre-planned set of motions doesn’t work well with me. so now you must know that i love dancing. i feel as if i am trying to dodge bricks thrown by a large crowd — i’m all full of herky-jerky. BUT, when i make fun of dancing, i am told that i am very good. how does that work? i give dancing the finger and people appreciate it? [no, there is no sound — yet — but this is just here for good old dancing goofiness] so i can’t move well [coordination?] but there is the trinity of speed/power/strength that i always fail to understand the difference. i have speed [when rested]. it doesn’t mean i can out ride anyone, it just means that i can move my body quickly. jabba the hutt may have strength and power, but he doesn’t have speed. that means i can kill you in nerts and spoons. i can also be in two places at once. really. i'll go look up power and strength for a later post. comment | comments 12.3fun song of the moment [thought it repeatedly drops the f-bomb] is the murmurs «you suck». «underdog» comes a close second. why? i am not knowing this. [that last line reminds me of karl saying in a thick russian accent, «you may read bible, but here in mother russia, bible read you».] i am using a lot of links today. linkalicious. ooooh, i just realized one of the two from the murmurs is the short-dark-haired lady from the yoplait commercials where they one up each other. comment | comments 12.4i love my trees in my yard, even though i fear that one day tucson will clamp down on water usage and trees will be a distant memory [other than the native trees]. tucson’s water table drops 4 feet a year and is down 150 feet since the early 1900’s. until that water crunch time comes [even though we are already there - my opinion], i have great trees.
i’m not so sure the citrus will survive if we get any warmer and/or there are water restrictions. our grapefruit seems to do okay as it is shaded by a huge silk oak. it may stop producing fruit, though, and i wonder if we would have to get rid of our pool. our silk oaks [note that it is plural] will be good for us.
they don’t need watering and the one large one already shades much of our yard and most importantly our west wall. i’m hoping they are large enough now to save some energy for us. [note: there is a huge difference between trying to use less energy — even if it costs more — versus trying to find more source of energy].
the silk oaks drop a ton of leaves, but they also have these brilliant orange blossoms that are very long and sticky. it looks as if our trees are on fire. i am seriously thinking that i will be putting some kind of hanging treehouse in the largest, with some kind of gangplank that provides access into our yard over the wall. that should be a great place to go read. comment | comments 16.2the original flower that got traced. have at it.
comment | comments 19.1time for a family trip! soon it will be family, as my family will head out first and i’ll follow with my father in law tomorrow. to where? none other than the big brown starfish of texas: el paso. sarah’s foster cousin is getting married so we’ll also get to see some relatives [debbie & tim and each of their families]. they are both a lot of fun. sarah will probably go to juarez tonight for dinner [i'm not sold on it, but okay, she is an adult]. after we hook up with them tomorrow and then the wedding, i think we’ll hang out and we all leave sunday morning. «that will only be 24 hours!» you say, and that is correct, but i’ve got wiley plans. we won’t make it to the large array but there is the space museum [with a new imax theater] and then white sands national monument. 
i’m trying to decide the best way to get there as it is in the bermuda triangle of las cruces/alamogordo/el paso, and gas will run us 15¢ a mile [okay, that really is no big deal]. it is a juggling thing with the kids — do we head out before lunch, go to white sands and then eat in alamogordo/see the space museum? or the other way around? catch white sands on the way home? i’m beginning to lean towards hitting white sands on the way home. yes, that makes more sense. i went to both as a kid on our trip to wonderful carlsbad caverns. i want to take the kids there someday, too, as it is filled with incredible views [over 600 feet across]. since they all left me tonight, i think i may sleep in my hammock. 22.2ah, el paso [and better yet, new mexico]. things i noticed: el paso is on big rock and their interstate was red from the rock they used. their wals were beautiful, all large and colorful stones. the interstate is the core of their city and the frontage roads are as big as the interstate. those frontage roads were nuts, too, like a melting parking lot — it was all the cars on the road at once. i did enjoy the cluster of small bridges into downtown. i guess everyone wanted their own bridge into downtown. i ended up missing the wedding as spencer started howling when the bride marched in. i drove 300+ miles to el paso for a wedding where i played on the playground with spencer. i got him to come back in just as they were walking out and the crowd was clapping. i had to ask, «hey, what just happened?» visiting with relatives was good, but just not much time. with sarah going out a day early, she said she spent maybe 15 minutes more with them than i did. she also said spencer was on a crazy streak and he was — the whole trip.
we headed north out of el paso to alamogordo, the missle capital of the US. the museum was pretty cool and plenty of large missles out front. there was a rusted out v2 missle pulled from the range, a large rocket for space capsule abort testing, and then plenty more inside [positioning systems, flight suits, mission patches from EVERYWHERE, and a flight simulator where i landed the shuttle at white sands — which happened once]. we had arby’s at a huge outdoor play structure and then off to an imax movie about the military’s red flag games in vegas.
we headed home from there and stopped by white sands for a bit and that was pretty much the trip, other than driving. i was gone for 39 hours, 12 of that probably in the van and then another 8 hours asleep. it was quite a bit of fun, though.
i told the kids we weren’t allowed to take any of the white sand, we discovered allies rear pockets were full of it when we got to dinner 3 hours later. we now have some accidentally ill-gotten sand.
we are very much glad to be home, and we only have 3 more days of school. oh yes, i did make the mistake of buying spencer a space shuttle as the museum. i thought it was a die cast toy for him to assemble/disassemble. it was a snap together model that wouldn’t snap [and screws, too]. the whole ride home he tried and tried to get it to work and he just couldn’t do it. he was so sad [and obsessed]. i started gluing it together this morning.
spencer found the hills a little hard going so he would take the long route around. it was beautiful out there, with rain clouds in the distance. white sands is in a large basin, so the gypsum sand will never wash away. comment | comments 26.2years ago i was at a friend’s house and he was proudly showing me his garden. it was dense with growth, vegetables bursting out of a small patch in his backyard. it was a great garden, and then he pointed out these tomatoes that wouldn’t rippen. they would flower, turn and grow in that great green tomato color and start to ripen — almost. they would turn yellow and after a few weeks turn rotten. stupid tomatoes. «that was annoying», i said, «if you were expecting red tomatoes. you are growing yellow tomatoes. you’ve been throwing away lovely ripe fruit the whole time.» i’ve thrown plenty of yellow tomatoes away in my short lifetime, plenty of good and perfect things that i wasn’t able to see at the time, for plenty of reasons. i wasn’t mature enough, i wasn’t listening, i couldn’t see the parts i was missing [no receptors?], and so on. now i listen better, trying to hear what they are saying and not what i think they are saying, along with trusting those around me to point out what i can’t see [yet]. i don’t want to discard something wonderful. it is suprising how large life is once i quit looking at is as a very thin slice. comment | comments 30.1this is going to be long, but it is good. i’ll break it into smaller chunks. [saturday] sarah and i headed over to a friend’s house saturday night, a couple we hadn’t seen in years. two other couples came along and it was so very refreshing sitting around and sharing our hopes and dreams and what place we have now arrived. i’d count jeff as one of those larger trees that protected me from the wind as well as gave me a great example of what a mature tree is and does. the other two couples have arrived at the same place as ourselves, becoming healthy adult trees that are doing what big trees should do. we could go for plenty more nights like that. [sunday] sunday night our neighbors came over and we played cards and had margaritas. clay and i had gone to the comic book store the day before and the girls had to pull us out from our tree house where we were reading and eating otter pops. it was rather funny that we played cards but we really didn't play cards. good times a second day in a row. [monday] after a morning of swimming and cleaning the house and backyard [i threw away so much junk that we don’t need, like spare tires my dad gave me 10 years ago. i don’t believe i’ll be using them], we went to my parents temporary house with some friends and swam and ate [swimming and eating are good things]. the other couple spent some time correcting our kids and their chicken dance with «no, i wouldn’t use the word butt. maybe heiney or tuckus, or....» and after an evening of correcting our kids, allie had gone inside and not taken in her plate. the lady said «i’ll go in and get allie» and sarah said she would do it which earned her a «sarah, sarah...» good grief. so much for 3 good days in a row. i find it rather sad that this couple could only see correct behavior and have failed at understanding relationships — those don’t factor in. correcting the behavior of other kids even though you have none of your own is foolish — having kids is like nothing you’ll have experienced, and even now, 10 years into it, i still see how i have so much to learn. all they were doing was crushing our kids spirits, even though our kids were just dying to spend time with them. «here kid, have a spear to the heart». the part about being condescending/patronizing to sarah was too much, and i had to say «come on now, just two parents per kid» which probably didn’t make sense. this couple have been alone trees for quite some time, never learning how to lay down roots with people and get their roots tangled up. they are potted trees, trees with wheels and once someone starts to get too close, they scoot off elsewhere. they have a long history of this, a fear of intimacy and they are great at exclusion [it may come as no surprise that they had nobody stand up in their wedding — people would comment that it made sense as they have never allowed anyone close enough to themselves to have good friends like that]. obviously sarah wasn’t being a good parent as allie’s behavior needed work. heck, i think allie should have put her plate away and then gave the van an oil change and then gotten back to reading war and peace. what is missing is the understanding and ability to have a good relationship. understanding the correct behavior and the correct beliefs is bunk without good relationships. that adds grace to the picture, which was lacking [and joy, for that part]. if there was relational understanding, you wouldn’t correct other people’s kids over simple things like that, and if there was a clue, this might have changed the whole picture: for the wedding shower on saturday allie set up all the vegetable trays, poured all the drinks [25 people?], helped served and so on, all without being asked. allie was wonderful all weekend, wanting to play with trevor and was the one helping pick up all of rex’s hair as we clipped it off to help cool him down. she did all this even though she stayed up far too late all weekend. she didn’t need to be told to go pick up her plate — she had been fantastic all weekend. the other part of this couple is that as they spent plenty of time as solitary trees, keeping everyone at a distance, that they grew branches oddly, ones that normally would have been snapped off if they had been near other trees. that is the great part about being in a forrest, that you get pruned and corrected so easily when you are near other trees, and those other trees help break up the soil beneath you and pull out toxins and retain water for you. we need other trees. but this couple has several stunted branches and a few unhealthy branches that are so large that they won’t be easily snapped off. they’ll do more damage to nearby trees, and they are. it is so hard for me not to grab a chainsaw and carve them up, or blast them or bulldoze them, but they don’t see it yet as the relational part of them is dormant. they live in one room in the world, not realizing there is also not only a whole house but a whole world. maybe i’ll start calling them the 10%ers, or maybe their black and whiteness, blindness, and ability to only value correctness and correct behavior makes them closer to that ancient group the phraisees. so there you go, what a way to end a weekend. the first two days were great, the second, mostly great. comment | comments [frequent depictions of Pharisees as self-righteous rule-followers, the word "pharisee" (and its derivatives: "pharisaical", etc.) has come into semi-common usage in English to describe a hypocritical and arrogant person who places the letter of the law above its spirit.] |
2.2cinco de mayo [when is that? heeehee] is coming up and i had to prove to most everyone in my shop that it wasn’t mexico’s independance day but just a battle they won. but what a battle: The battle between the French and Mexican armies occurred on May 5 when Zaragoza's ill-equipped militia of 4,500 men encountered the better armed French force. However, Zaragoza's small and nimble cavalry units were able to prevent French dragoons from taking the field and overwhelming the Mexican infantry. With the dragoons removed from the main attack, the Mexicans routed the remaining French soldiers with a combination of their tenacity, inhospitable terrain, and a stampede of cattle set off by local peasants. The invasion was stopped and crushed. oh yea, a stampede of cattle. that is what every good battle needs. i may spend my cinco de mayo in mexico being the copilot in a friends baja. i’m not sure, though, as it’ll be 100°F+ and i’ll spend hours and hours getting banged around. his front shocks have 24 inches of travel built in. you can hit 2 foot tall mounds at 60mph. i may stay home even though i have been telling him all along that i would love to go race with him. comment | comments 3.1flying like this impresses me. who thinks of flying backwards? 4.2fun times with spencer. he just typed in his on IM [twice] and yesterday at the doctor he got 2 shots in each arm. as i held him for each, he would loudly say «ouchie!» but that was it. well, until after his third and he said no more. silly little guy. he also can’t say «grapefruit» as it comes out more like «great poop» or «grape poop». talking about silly, check out the necklace below that trevor made. THAT is funny and cute. i find it a bit hard to read, but his little mind is working hard.
5.1i was laying on the couch last night with sarah watching some show where people disappear and get shot and that kind of stuff. one lady has a very thick accent and told another cop it was the «dead scissors». i asked sarah what she said and as i repeated it outloud in my not so accenty voice i realized she had said «dad’s sister». i will never learn a foreign language — i have to see it written out as sounds just float around in my head. if someone tells me their name and it isn’t one i’ve seen before, i can’t remember it unless it rhymes with something. sounds are just that, sounds. they do not have any basis in written language for me — they are not connected. i do know that when spenglar asks for «chopit nilk» that he would like some chocolate milk, but it doesn’t go much further. dead scissors galore. don’t get me started about how i once heard «kenyan pickle raffle». to this day i don’t know what was really said. 7.2i have plenty of memories of tucson summers. we always had the evaporative coolers which gave this great musty smell out of the vents. the choice spot was the top bunk bed, 2 feet from the vent. there were plenty of bike rides out in the heat and when you would come back indoors, the change in lighting would make you blind for a short while. reading books, then having a bolagna sandwich with plain chips and orange soda, maybe playing cards during lunch or my dad and brother would play cribbage. we’d play in our big chinaberry tree, dig holes in the ground and shoot bb guns in the washes. there was always plenty of drawing, more bike riding, and once it got dark, we would play huge games of hide and go seek in our neighborhood. some nights i remember grilling outside and we would pull up dried grass and lighting the tip. we would take this delicate flame and go around the volcanic rock that the grill was made out of and burn out all the other grass and spider webs. burgers, potato chips and pork and beans. i can still taste the goodness. when the cicadas came out in july or so, we would sneak up behind them and grab their wings, either throwing them against the ground to stop their incessant buzzing or putting them in a large jar to die. after a few years, we didn’t have many cicadas to worry about. on some sundays we would go to our local pool for family swim from 5 to 7pm, one of the few times we got to swim with our dad and he would throw us around. oh, we had popsicles, too. hopefully our kids have good memories of summer. yesterday as they played inside, i went to the hardware store with spencer to get some line and little metal parts. spenglar spent his time there in the fan aisle, staring up at all the fans and saying «that one» and «buy it». i ended up talking him down to just a floating ring. after i set up the hammock under my grapefruit tree [MY grapefruit tree, which i also started juicing this weekend] we went swimming. once we got out [it is still a bit chilly — the trees shade it too much. by 3pm the pool is in shade again] the kids played in the hammock and then i suggested reading out there. that is where i took the two photos below. i swear the temperature is 15°F less under the tree, and not just because it is shade but because of the moisture. the leaves form a nice frame in the photo, and who know what trevs is reading to garner that face — i think he was reading a junie b book. allie wisely chose harry potter. it isn’t even summer yet. oh yes, our new library within walking distance won’t open until late summer. next year... [this was from the woodcut filter in painter, as i really haven’t taken any time to draw. i need to draw] click on each for something larger than just the rollover.
comment | comments 8.2we’ve got new neighbors and their new puppy maggie is confused on which house it moved in to. she and rex have been having fun playing with each other [and the kids love her too]. rex is gentle with her as she is much smaller, and sometimes he even lays down so that she can pounce on him. now rex has a friend close by. neither want to swim, though. maybe when it gets warmer. rex can fetch, but maggie can bark. who decides what skill sets dogs get? i also need to keep track of when things happen, so here is a list that may mostly be for myself for april: grapefruit, silk oak, and palo verde trees all bloom/swap out their leaves. the citrus really start to show their new growth. the grapefruit are ready by march 1st, and some will start falling off the tree by the end of april. april is also super windy but the weather is pretty much perfect. i think allergies are in april, too, but we had very little rain so i’m not sure. clouds also dissappear by the end of april. i had more little tidbits but know i’ve forgotten them all. more later, i suppose. [has anyone noticed that i haven’t put up the month menu on this page yet?] comment | comments 11.1note to self: when having a barbeque late at night AND expecting people to stay awake to talk, don’t do it. we were in a food coma for far too long. before that, keem and flower tracer were dancing with sarah and the kids, which somehow seemed to tire them all out. 
after that we milled around and jermany united worked hard on prepping the meat and grilling all the veggies. i guess chicken has a lot of fat in it as i came back out to flames shooting out of the sides of the grill and now several branches of leaves have been «autumnized». oops.
nobody ever drank the grape kool-aid, but there was good trader joes natural root beer as well as true spirits. people should eat together more often. no, i think people should prepare food together more often — i think that is where the fun lies. we spent much of the night coaxing the habitual lil’ flower tracing swagger jacker to talk, as well as markly. it is mildy amusing that they can talk great online and in writing, but in the real world, sometimes they handle words as beautifully as offensive lineman [the ones hired on their corn-feddedness, not the rhodes scholar ones]. 
again, though, it took me years to make sense, even though most people say i don’t. i’m rather envious of where most of the tuesday people are at, far beyond where i was at the same age. two more photos here and here. comment | comments 12.2i’ve enjoyed midnight oil, too, maybe because when i was thinner and bald i looked a bit more like him, but i’ll never have that bone structure [some have referred to him as a giant skeletor]. he is one big kid, too, even though many say he has now sold out in his politics, but maybe they’ve just become practical. i could listen to «one country» and «earth and sun and moon» all day.
quotes by peter garrett of the oils: I don't dance like that when I'm grooving in some club - actually I don't groove. I believe the divine is part of the world, not in a pantheistic way but by way of the movement of the Spirit. You don't want to spend your life explaining yourself. As far as the gospels are concerned the challenge is to get past the years of formulations, hairsplitting and pinpricking that goes on at a theological level and just be able to see the bold, very stark, very uncomplicated, but often mysterious power that is exerted by Jesus. quote by someone else watching one of their shows: «Peter Garrett jerks his lanky body in those trademark dances, so unique, so alive, and you can't stop watching. Everything about this performance makes you pay attention.» i’ll keep looking for a video of him dancing. their rendition of «the band played waltzing matilda» is haunting, and the story behind the song is worth the time to read. [a quick version: the crazy battle of gallipoli where the troops were pretty much exposed and just pummeled, but the key was that the aussies and kiwis were led by their own officers for the very first time — not the brits. it is popularized as the time when they finally earned their own independence, but still a horrible story.] comment | comments 15.1oh, to start of the week, this should be for abrupt lee. saturday night [and the end of a very very long day] i went to a friend’s grad party from the university and al foul was playing. i had heard of him, never actually been anywhere to see him. good rockabilly with a hint of punk. he plays at plush on may 30th. we’ll be there. comment | comments 15.2on saturday afternoon our whole family [parents came in from romania, brother & co from la jolla, sis & co from here] minus a few of the male folk went down the street for allie’s piano recital. this was her first as well as mine, and we filled up the living room quite well plus the majority of the chairs in the kitchen [50+ people or so]. two beautiful grands were set side by side [i was a piano mover the first year out of high school] and the first kid was fantastic. very crisp. after that, a lot of decent playing but as sarah said, sloppy play. it was a great time, lots of wonderful pieces, including allie’s little one handed piece that she would look to her teacher with a big grin when she messed up. everyone left once it was over but allie wanted to stay. it was her day, she could hang out with the few remaining kids. i’m looking forward to my second recital. comment | comments 15.3i wonder what it is about russia that has made them close themselves off from the rest of the world — is it pride or is it fear? with chernobyl, the soviet union didn’t tell anyone what had happened until other countries picked up radiation themselves. thousands died and they did a pretty funky fix to begin with, declining help from other countries. the same with the soviet sub kursk, sinking and then waving off all the other countries that offered help. what makes a country not accept help when it could use it? if i got shot or had some crazy disease, you bet i would let someone with better skills attend to me. if i have a problem, i let it be known and ask for help/suggestions. to be «big», i let everyone know my smallness. the truth is, i AM small. i don’t do well without the people around me. i can’t do this on my own [nor would i want to]. it took time to get to this point, though, and i’ll never go back. it is similar to being honest, taking responsibility, believing what i say and saying what i believe. i like it. i like me being part of an us. comment | comments 16.1a follow up to the above [15.3] blurb: could it be the lack of a relationship with other countries? yes, there are some basic relationships, but not a whole lot beyond the border interactions. i would think that not having a relationship with other countries would rightly make one fearful of others and not trust them, as well as things going not-so-well within your own borders would make a country try to protect its image. i suppose if russia wanted to be the world unto itself [china too? korea?], that would be the route to go. keep everyone at arms length and don’t get close to anyone, that’ll make things work. hardly. comment | comments 17.1those that were over last night [for and after corcor’s band concert that was 70% trumpets] got to hear spenglar say «fire truck» and «bridge». kinda. they sound really close except for a few sounds, so they sound much more like «fire fuk» and «bitch». it was very exciting in our van when he exclaimed «fire fuk on bitch! fire fuk on bitch!» such fun with kids. he is talking so much now that i really need to video tape him speaking, as well as him playing a toy story video game. he squeals and throws his hands over his head and face. he also loves the magic school bus [the lone video we have where they go to space]. he’ll be kept in rapt attention and talk along with it «too cold, no air» and «too hot, no air». that pretty much sums all the other planets up. the solar system for dummies. comment | comments 19.2a bunch of friends are off to china and someday i’d like to go somewhere abroad [more than just mexico]. i looked up the time difference [15 hours ahead] and guess what, china is its own time zone [i’m not surprised]. how crazy must that be. if you are in the east, the sun comes up at 6am. if you are in the west, the sun comes up at 10am. maybe you don’t go by the time so much as the daylight, and they most likely aren’t as caught up with the silliness of time as we are here in the west. i don’t wear a watch, and i doubt i ever will. comment | comments 19.3one more peter garrett video [midnight oil] — marcomoso had not seen it so we laughed and laughed. there is one part where it looks like he is climbing out of himself. the poor video director must have thought «how do i show him in the video but not show his, er, dancing skills? comment | comments 22.1last friday courtney had an egg dropping [okay, protecting] project with her class. her idea was to use a lot of helium balloons to bouy her egg package [a light plastic cup with cotton balls. spencer and trevor promptly popped the balloons sarah had purchased and courtney wisely went down to trader joe’s and got a pair of free balloons. i checked in the morning and i think we would have needed a lot more balloons, though they might have caused a lot of drag and slowed it down. i went to the store to see if some of the graduation balloons would have some good lifting power. they did, but we couldn’t afford that many balloons. i went home with nothing. the two balloons sparked an idea — could we build some kind of canopy between the two? a thin stick structure was too heavy for the pair so we went with cling-wrap only, anchored by two bits of tape onto each balloon. it created a canopy about a foot wide between the balloons. the hope then became that for whomever dropped the package, they wouldn’t mess up the canopy. courtney proudly informed me later that her egg survived and it worked out well. it spun a ton, but it dropped and lived. plenty of other projects did too, and courtney said it was odd that the projects that looked to have succeeded, didn’t. the ones that looked to have failed were the ones that succeeded, too. woohoo for courtney! comment | comments 24.1it is too early in the morning to think, but it is the kids last day of school [spencer not only says «sunny day!» but «summertime-summertime-summertime!»]. trevs brought home some papers and one had this sentence: have you ever seen a dog ksena cat? you need to say it out loud to discover that the mystery word is «kissing a» —very good sounding out. they have inherited my language problems. the funny thing of the morning is this photo, which i thought was a «get dressed up like we were mugged and go out» bachelorette party gag, but it wasn’t. go read the whole story.
i’ve never gotten any good crash photos. even my massive bruise was one that i really couldn’t take a photo of nor should i have shared the photo because of the location of the bruise. but if you saw me in person, sure, i’d show you. comment | comments 25.1i like where i am, very much other than the lack of bike riding and my fear of losing my design skills [they may already be fat and saggy]. but one thing that used to bug me [and still does, just a smidge] is being relegated to the «watered down» crowd. so i don’t use the phrases or wording, or quote things and throw them around like rocks, or say things in a way that people would recognize as churchianity. it is more than just a won’t, it is a can’t. i'm not that way. i don’t need to use all the ghetto language to make myself feel like i am part of all this, to let it wear me. i own it. it is a part of me. it won’t go away. with all that, though, it is soft, gently held and not smothered. it is as if the chains and signs and actions that used to say «hey, little christ guy over here» have all been busted down and dismantled and something attractive has taken its place. i am not watered down — i am just not full of additives and hamburger helper, cheap plastic extenders in my head that flush right through the system. extra crap to make it seem like more than it is, stuff to fill your gut. this other stuff is not meat, which for years has bugged me. sitting around and sharing our lives, knowing and being known — that is far from being watered down. does it really matter is someone can quote something if it doesn’t show in who they are? skim milk is not meat. so no, i’m not watered down, i just believe i’ve landed somewhere a bit more pure and all those identifiers that let people think that i am part of the clique have fallen away. i feel bad for those people, not realizing they are chasing useless things and calling them golden. honestly, it feels so good, so right. [’tis funny that olive just had a similar conversation with a friend. i’ll see if i can post any of it] comment | comments 26.1i thought about 25.1 a bit more and i think i could embelish a bit more [though maybe i shouldn’t]. i’m thinking that i don’t have those identifiers that say «hey, he is with us» kind of like seeing a cyclist on a chair wearing jeans. nothing says «i’m a cyclist». the cyclist would need to wear the clothes and maybe have a bike nearby, that would help, right? maybe be reading a bike magazine, yeah, that would do it. but does he really ride that bike? i'm sure he could talk all about training and history and facts, but does that mean anything? seeing a cyclist on a bike is part of what makes one a participant instead of an enthusiast [there is a big difference]. maybe i’ve moved on to no longer wanting to be an enthusiast and do what i need to do so that people can see that i’m all about it. the only thing they’ll see is change over time, and only if they are looking at the right parts. a new bike, new clothes, new magazines, memorizing the action from the latest rage — all the rage for the enthusiasts. i don't know if i get any boxes marked on the enthusiasts checklist. i thought about the wiry little guy that could wing rocks around, being prepped for battle with armor that didn’t fit him. it wasn’t how he worked — he didn’t need that for battle. he was running light and lean, and of course, he konked someone twice his size. i won’t allow you to dress me up. i won’t be playing dress up with you, thank you very much. comment | comments 26.3neighborclay sent me a conversation that sounds too funny to be true, but these happen all the time [like making a letter size sheet into a 2'x2' poster — it just don’t work]: Client:Oh Hi I need a mailer. comment | comments 31.1this will be my last post in the real may, but i’ll post one more as an addendum — it is a nasty photo that i must first explain in detail. yesterday our sewer line got clogged and that isn’t a good thing [though spencer did drop a loaf out by the hammock the day before]. i knocked off some more work and got home close to 2 and me and pa ran off to rent a sewer snake. while cleaning it out the spinning snake gave me blisters through one glove and then the other hand, too. not only did it give blisters but it burst them. when i went inside my gloves were soaked through [mostly oil, i think] and i needed to scrub my hands clean as well for health reasons. oh, comet burns burns burns! after that, me mum suggested hydorgen peroxide and i mentioned that it would burn. «nah, it won’t.» it felt like bad burns on all my fingers as i danced in the bathroom. now i have these massive holes in my hands that don’t even look real. i’ll post photos soon enough. comment | comments 32.1my finger [one of the 4 holes].
comment | comments feb 09 nearby trees [kith] |
