8.12 — swimmerling

i've been working on a logo and flyers for a friends wife who was and olympic silver medalist who also happened to be featured on npr recently. i'm still playing with the logo.

as a kid i remember a 4 man bobsled guy from germany and his name was dietmar. he always wore a little beany and he looked hilarous. my entire family remembers him. that is another reason why i enjoy the olympics — all these foriegn names. this guy should think about changing his last name. at least it isn’t pastycock or something.

8.13 — hot, then crazy

another strange rainstorm last night. it was crazy muggy out [i helped old man ken move all his furniture into a pod so that he could have his wooden floors refinished] and then some lightning in the mountains. an hour later it was a huge storm attacking us, knocking power out twice and pummeling our home. the photos below are rather poor and the lightning came out badly in the video [at least the stills did]. we got 2 inches in the first half hour, 3+ inches total, and our vents and roof leaked again. someday i'll find the leak.

it was totally black outside and the light was from a lightning flash elsewhere. note that the rain has blown up under the eaves onto the top of the window.

8.15 — kick my ass

i have no idea who gave me the song, but i have garbage’s cover of «kick my ass». i catch some of the words, but the sound is great, just like most of their songs. stuff like «dog new tricks». i wish youtube had better sound. supposedly they are recording this year. they better hurry up [manson is 42?]

thinking of their song for romeo + juliet, «#1 crush», reminded me of a recent conversation with kramer. we were talking music and he said to petrovich «oh, yeah, dann doesn't hear lyrics as words. it sucks. i would send him great music and he'd reply 'nah, i don’t like it'» which was okay. i brought up how i don’t know if there are swear words in the songs and i have to look the lyrics up and he replied «yeah, me and beau would always laugh when you would play music and the gat and there'd be a 'yup, dann doesn’t know they are swearing'». great. the start of #1 crush, yeah, i forgot about that one time. radiohead's «myxomatosis» was another, but i'm not sure if i played that at the gat.

i love sounds.

i was waiting for our trees out front to get zapped.

8.16 — i almost forgot

i was talking to someone about glenn [who happens to be leading a church] and she said of him:

«I see that Glenn honestly wants everyone in the world to know Jesus...and he wants to tell them all...and it breaks his heart.»

you'd have to know him to understand this — it isn't like he is out sharing tracts or doing other «good» things. he cares about people from his very core. it isn’t a game or good behavior. he really cares, and yes, it kills him that he can’t share the most important person in his life with everyone.

8.16 — fresh prince of the hospital

petrovich went under the knife to check out a tumor on his thyroid. he asked the doc if he could make a really jagged scar as it was going clear across the neck like the motion you make when you pretend to slit your throat. the doc declined. peter then tried to fight of the anesthesia by singing «the fresh prince of bel air» as loud as he could while they wheeled him down the hall. i'm sure it became more amusing when his singing started slipping.

8.17 — women’s volleyball

saturday was really really long [ran, biked, swam, drywalled, sawzalled, etc] and then allergies kicked in. sunday i watched the us beat poland in indoor volleyball. i’m not all that fond of tall women [maybe i felt challenged during my years playing volleyball?] but all of the polish team were attractive. i think they fall in the high jumper/javelin type category of tall and thin, but still really really strong. one pole that dominted was Katarzyna Skowrońska-Dolata and she was all over the court.

i really do miss jumping out of the backrow and crushing the ball, or running any sort of quick [1up/down, a/b, 3-1 and all the fakes] but really, getting a shot at a back row attack was always a rush — the big approach going after what was usually a passing flaw and then launching into a monster jump that carried you forward 5+ feet before hitting the ball. i miss that stuff. maybe if i run and drop some weight [still] and all that, maybe some rec leagues with the kids someday. other polish links are here and then i think this is for a fundraiser[?]. there are links to shots in the polish playboy, but we won't go there. i'm thinking that the way to support yourself in your olympic endeavor is to go mostly nekkid, at least maxxim. gotta be careful on how you google.

and check out the size of this guys legs. his left leg [hidden beneath his arm] might help show the size even more. nutty huge.

8.18 — the mausoleum room

my analogies often have something to do with a home such as living inside a house and one day discovering you can go out in the yard and think it is real neat. too bad you don't realize their is a whole world out there.

i've thought of a new one that is sort of old, discovering a new room in the house. usually it is just a surprise, finding out that there was more to yourself and life than you knew. that usually seems to be a maturity thing, but i think there can be rooms that are mausoleums, full of dead and dying stuff, possibly old bodies. these are the rooms you open and yell and expletive and shut the door real fast. you don’t want to deal with that room. i'm thinking a lot of this is stuff we get closed off on, even numb. things that somehow damaged us and killed off a part of us. entering the room and working on it depends on the severity of the room and your own emotional health. the worse the room and your health, the harder it is. i also offer up the idea that many times that door gets slammed and people try to pretend that room doesn't exist, but for anyone else out there, they know something is up and they can smell it too. we know homes are more than a studio — we’ve all gots lots of rooms, we just don't get to see all of them. i think with healthy people, it can be more of an open house.

8.18 — oh man

google Matt Emmons and look for his 2008 olympic results. poor guy — that is just miserable. 4 years ago he shoots the wrong target and loses the gold. this time the gun misfires and he loses the gold.

On Sunday's last shot, "As I was starting to get on the trigger, the gun just went off," he said.

"I was like, 'Uh, that's not going to be good.'"

The most points a shooter can earn for a shot is 10.9; anything below 8.0 is considered unusually bad. A 4.4? That doesn't happen unless something goes terribly wrong.

Katerina was there for him, as she was four years ago. She held her face close to his and offered a few words of comfort.

"It's just not meant to be," said Katerina Emmons, laughing. "He's definitely the best standing shooter out there. If he can still end up fourth with a 4.4 on the last shot, that's a hell of a shooter."

8.19 — running +

i went running this morning instead of riding. 2 miles in 15 minutes i believe. not bad for feeling like poop while running and not having any snap in my legs. i felt like i was plodding along at below an 8 minute mile pace. i will try to run twice a week to get back some running strength as well as for jumping. let me see if i can get back to those old cross country and volleyball days where i could run around all day and had a lot of quickness.

this is a handy little route mapper. i believe in some locations you can get elevation, too. i know my brother did in san diego.

8.19 — the junior high in me

this follows up on liam tancock in the olympics. how about this for a first name?

i looked it up and it means «son». even so, that does seem a little rough on the kid. it is also carried out to be jiménez in spanish. i wish someone at work had that last name. i really do wonder about the subtle changes below — what exactly do they mean?

would naming a kid «semen semenov» be nutty?

[i will not post all the jokes my friends are sending me]

8.19 — neighbors

clay and erica just finished remodeling their bathroom, and their photoblog is quite funny and the resulting project is beautiful. i made the blog too, though i wasn’t credited for sewing the shower curtain [clay helped with it too].

8.19 — conversation

a little converstion between corey and i:

lé taco bar: hey, you remember how i hurt myself in november of 04? 02 was my teeth, 06 was my finger

stickpusher2: yeah

lé taco bar: so what was 04?

stickpusher2: i mean, no.

lé taco bar: i'm glad you are an elder. i feel more secure

8.20

while dragging ourselves off to bed after another late night of watching the olympics and falling asleep on the couch, sarah yawns «the olympics are totally ruining our sex life». totally.

8.20

the guys that only want a thin girl with big boobs are very similar to christians that want a candidate that is pro-life and anti-gay. let me say it again in another way: both groups are dumbing down something much more complex into two items. i'm sure those kinds of guys could think of other attributes they SHOULD find attractive in a woman, but maybe they would just be words they've heard and not really things they truly care about. i can think of plenty more things one should care about, and a lot of these sound like what women have been fighting for: intelligence, wit, compassion, compassionate, energetic, kind hearted, etc. i'd even throw in are they good with kids and do they have the energy and heart to run around with them. better yet, does she truly love me, and love me for who i am?

desiring a woman for just being thin and having big boobs, well, that just seems like there is only one thing in mind. anything more than arm candy sounds threatening, doesn't it? you would have to be a more mature person with some self esteem to be able to be with a woman that was more than just pleasing to look at. the guys that just want stick legs and boobs just seem... shallow. i'm not sure we can wholly blame society, but it sure does seem that is all we show and talk about.

i'd say the same goes for many christians stuck with just abortion and gay rights issues. poverty, social justice, education, environment, genocide, civil rights and on and on — there sure are a lot of other things to care about. important things, too. i wonder if it is the lack of maturity that causes this or because that is what is repeatedly expressed to conservative christians as being the most important things. ever. to not be shallow and to engage in those other important things as well as be able to discuss what they believe instead of regurgitating what they have been told to believe — that would be exciting.

if we had to care about those other things instead of just telling people not to do those two things — yowtch! we might actually have to be ABOUT something, not against something.

do the ads below come across as proving my point — are christians twice as shallow?

an old post that goes with this is here

8.21

how did xians get the idea that their focus should be on changing the behavior of peope that don't share the same beliefs, such as their own? i don’t think that falls in the category of salt or light.

8.23-24 — weekend update

yesterday at lunch with some friends spencer referred to allie’s gerbil as «the devil gerbil» which is quite true. he bites everyone and hangs on.

that was not much of a story. how about this, one friend saying something along the lines of «you know, i'm much more conservative and think that yes, we should be helping the sick/poor/down and out, but i think that it should be us people doing it and not the government. it is good to say and those are my convictions, but i really don’t do anything».

i’ll say amen to that — i do some, but not a ton. maybe it’ll catch on like recycling, just taking 40 years to get there.

5 of us went running on saturday and then played in the water feature at brandi fenton park. it was rough and at one point my hip made me walk. a young girl passed jerms and i and i said «oh, must be in high school» and kidded that we could chase her down. fat chance on that. when we rounded the corner it was the university’s track team. maybe not so much. when jerms and i stopped at the end i felt my shirt and it was soaked clear through. rivers of sweat ran down my shorts like rain coming off the roof. gross, but kinda cool. that makes 4 runs in 3 days [tuesday was a 2miler to start and then another 2+ that evening, plus bike rides]. i'll get thin someday.

8.25 — russian plates

english russia has a page about american plates with russian phrases on them, and they had to have some with names. yes, that is right, it says «semen»

8.27 — cleanliness is next to funnyness

i've been cleaning out my office the past two days as the boss, my assistant and a sales rep have been gone. i’m doing all the work but it isn’t super busy. i've carted off 10 boxes of magazines, artwork and cds that i've slowly been collecting here for years. the boss had told me to take them home months ago. i've driven both days as sarah's laptop came yesterday and corcor's is coming today. it isn’t very easy to ride a bike and carry one of those on your back.

along with this clean up i have been backing up personal files that have filled up hard drives, such as stuff for church and illustration examples plus all sorts of screen shots and goofy things. they are making me laugh. i renamed markly [mark lee] to be »abrupt lee» on my chat client a few years ago and look at what happens when his connection is intermitent:

then there was a scan of the thank you card allie gave our neighbors. there are two parts to it:

the first is that she gives them grief for not signing their cats name to the gift tag. the second is giving them grief for not staying for the whole party. aye yi yi. the images below are the adobe crash reporter — i usually always add what song i am listening to. i think one time i even asked what kind of music each adobe likes as i think i am playing the wrong music for it. though i kid with them, i once crashed illustrator out 3 times in a row with the same problem and i got an email in about 5 minutes from an adobe tech, and then a phone call. they replicated the problem and i assume they fixed it.

i hope to continue to find more goodies that i've saved for myself.

8.28 — run, run, run, run, run, run, ouch, in that order

i’ve now added running to my schedule and it really does loosen up my tightness from cycling. the only problem is that i am really really tight as are most cyclists. body bent over and feet moving 14" ahead of each other doesn’t exactly sound like anything ever gets stretched.

i ran twice on tuesday, then thursday/saturday/tuesday again, with 7 people on tuesday which was fun. jerms is a nut and has a better running shape than me and he kicked my butt in the sprint. the sprint also happened to kick all my tightness and injuries and i was not a happy camper on wednesday. my hip hurt, my knee hurt, and so did my ankle. whoops. i was a bit worried. wednesday night i stretched for 30-40 minutes and did the same this morning [thursday]. i'm starting to feel pretty good. i concentrated on how well i turned my left ankle in my ride in today. i call my left foot stampy, named after the elephant in a simpson's episode. no rolling, just a big «WHAP» as it hits the ground. i may try to run on the balls of my feet more and see if that also helps my joints. i may be putting down a huge heel strike. we shall see.

8.31

reasons are for sissies