i am still messing with css [seriously, i am i am] as 2009 is the year i catch up and make a complete site in css while using dreamweaver instead of my trusted GoLive. at the end of each month i will cap the css file and leave it for that month and continue playing with it for the next month. by the end of the year i should have a css flip book.
to get to the rest of the blog, go to the home page, go to the index page, or just crack the bit in the url of /YY-MM.html where YY is the year and mm is the month, just as you see it now
august.1 — tp is not for fun
when i was in grade school our house was tp'd by some of my dad's students [he was a high school teacher at the time]. we thought it was fantastic. later that day my brother and i were wrapping crepe paper throughout our large chinaberry tree in the back. my parents were not all that thrilled but we found it beautiful. we obviously missed the point. or maybe my parents did.
august.2 — grape soda & lightning
my neighbors and i have purchased old barrels from the good guys at kalil for US$13 each. if we purchase some of the lidless ones, they may toss in a few free as they don't sell very well. as clay and i drove back with 4 barrells in the van, the smell of concentrated grape syrup was overpowering. not only was it overpowering, but it is also a class 3 flammable liquid. i love grape soda and i think that means it has a flash point of over 100°F, which isn't much. we may be getting some more to store rain water.
on the 5th i watered our lime tree as the leaves on it were curling up. later i took courtney and cyprus on a bike ride to their high school. we needed to scout out the route and courtney's tire was slowly failing. we stopped as it started to sprinkle and i called home. 20 minutes later of hiding from the rain against walls [the rain kept changing direction] the girls were picked up by clay in the van [sounds to me like he might need a set of keys]. i tried to ride a bit but it really poured so i hung out in a strip mall — next to a strip club. there were so many close lightning strikes i lost count, and clay came back and picked me up. our part of town was getting hammered.
at home i rain over with clay to check his rain barrel and the overflow was peeing into the bushes like a little boy. there was a close lightning strike and i headed home, just to find out that last strike had hit our pool.
the question is, if lightning doesn't strike twice, may i now swim in the pool during lightning storms?
august.3 — my dream train derailed
and had to take a dirt road
my dream of norway wasn’t enough. there were two sets of tracks on a curve and a train came along and was unable to navigate the twisted mess at the end. it really was that bad of a mess, tighter turns than a miniature golf course and about as large. the train rumbled off into the dirt for a while until it was guided back onto the tracks. one engine and 4 or 5 cars, and some kid on a huge skateboard behind it. in the mess of tracks he lost his board but he kicked it out and it acted like a caboose, trundling behind the last car.
as we watched the train move on, it made a u-turn and headed back to our left behind a berm. as we look over into the pool of water, the train is floating along. it was clearly not on the tracks but floating along a path of some sort. lots of floating debris and dead trees sticking out. there was plenty more that are wisps in my head and i cannot remember fully.
august.4 — hands across arcadia
we had a violent dust storm at the house and some very large rain drops. it rained for 15 minutes at most and i headed off to walgreens. something was wrong, but i couldn’t pinpoint it. once i stepped out of the van i realized that walgreens was dry. it hadn’t rained there. i drove home through the neighborhood and the street north of us was completely dry while our street had water running along the side. if our family had stood in the north/south road and made «hands across arcadia», some of us would have been soaked while the others dry. i can hear the kids squealing.
august.5 — too bad it never gets cold here, or even very cool
i was looking into the russian paratrooper shirts [horizontal lines alternating blue and white] and no, i would never get one. i don't think many people could wear them, and with my cyclist farmer tan, i doubt many people would let me wear one.
as i dug around i found other items of clothing that seem kind of fun in my head until i think of wearing them. sure, they would be great for camping. how about running the kids to school in the morning, or waiting at the bus stop with them? rarely cool enough to warrant the big jacket but maybe twice a year. still, they are calling my name. we shall see. totally cool for camping or hiking in the woods, if i ever did that. maybe skiing? i get mistaken for a russian or pole enough as it is, though i look a whole lot more dutch or german.
would it be too «evil russian operative» looking, as if i was trying to get a bit part in a bond film?
you have to admit, this would be pretty snazzy looking out hiking. i would look serious. i do believe some sort of newly fangled material would be much better at handling the winter temps as i believe it is not made of much of anything grand. i can always wish.
as for wishing, i may get a pulaski from a friend who is a crew chief for the forest service. he has a lot of old worn out equipment and he says they only give them to the green guys. they have better, more specialized equipment to use.
things i must write about soon:
spencer got a big map at costco.
late night swimming
surprise 40th
beating up salespeople
repeated weekend trips
spencer «gotta squirt water out of my penis»
spencer saying «never»
time trial
calvin & hobbes books
rex jumping into the pool
jerms fight in the parking lot, every man's dream
ukraine