new

the end approaches
at the usual speed
perfectly on time

so many memories
stirred by the passing
sweet and bitter mixed

time serves to add distance
and distance perspective
and perspective wisdom

wiser now I await
my new days to come
enticing
profound
mundane

days made by me
in my vision
to my benefit
for my satisfaction

In her majesty's secret service

Preparations continue atwitter for several parties. New Years, Naughty French Postcards, and Other Books, all about two weeks apart. We started by cleaning the floors in the family room, dining room, and kitchen. It wasn't pretty. Some furniture re-arranging, and some more vacuuming is still to go. Perhaps we'll even fix a few things and paint the kid's bathroom (but not tomorrow).

I worked on training Amy to drive a manual transmission car. Nobody died. We're likely going to loan her our spare car while she gets a new one since her old one done died.

Actually did some yard work today, walked the doggies, and all that other stuff.

I kinda took the week off from looking for a job since so many people are off work, but I did have a great phone interview which will lead to some in person interviews next week. It would be at Siemens Medical Systems Ultrasound Division (yeah, a little company) in Mountain View. The position is for precisely what I do, and they sound like they really need my skills. I'm hopeful.

See you all soon.

Just had to get this out there

I like the boobs and I can not lie
You other brothers can't deny
That when a girl walks in with an itty bitty grin
And those round things in your face
You get sprung, wanna pull up tough
'Cause you notice that top was stuffed
Deep in the bra she's wearing
I'm hooked and I can't stop staring

etc...

terrain

as I look over my cup
into your eyes
I am arrested

deep pools of color
flecks of gold
window from which you survey

expressions heave from your skin
cutting through filaments
strings binding my mind to its wandering

the ground at our feet
racing in all directions
all possibilities illuminated at once

we hurry together
to tarry
to love our chosen one

sleep closes our eyes
extinguishing our vision
dreaming of love's gift

Six Weird Things About Me

Grace (that hot Asian imp) fairly forced me to write this. OK she really just suggested it and I'm just so self centered that I wrote it.

1. I'm colorblind and that makes colors look different to me. It's about as common as left handedness just not as visible. For me and most people like me, deuteranomolous trichromats, two of the three receptor groups have roughly equal sensitivity to light at their respective part of the spectrum. The other one is not as sensitive. (Almost all people have receptors sensitive to three peaks in the color spectrum. The mutation that does not produces an individual with four peaks of spectral sensitivity called a tetrachromat.) Green and brown look mostly alike to me, blue and purple too, and red and orange. It is difficult for me to tell the difference between the green and orange indicator lights that are so common on battery chargers.

2. For me, colors and the numerals from zero to nine, have very distinct and unchanging genders and personalities. So do knives, forks, and spoons. Don't as me how or why, but a fork is female and so are the numerals 4, 5, 6, 7, & 9, and the colors red, and yellow. 4 and 6 are passive, 5 is assertive, and 7 is aggressive, etc., etc.. As far back as I can remember I have thought this way.

3. I am an atheist, which is somewhat less common, here in the USA, than left handedness. For me there is no god(s), and when you die, that's the end. When I go to church events like funerals and such, I think about the religion of the other people as an interesting way of looking at the world around us. When people say they have asked their god for forgiveness or guidance or some support, I think to myself that they have really asked themselves for these things and to the extent that they "received" it, they have helped themselves by the power of their own thoughts. If the mental construct of a god helps them to achieve this, that's great.

4. When my brother and I (maybe it was just me?) got caught looking at dad's Playboy magazines (for the articles!) mom pulled out a bunch of centerfolds and put them up around the house. She thought perhaps this would desensitize us to the sight of naked women and reduce the taboo curiosity that drove us to look. It didn't work at all, but it was quite a conversation starter for guests.

4.a. I still like looking at boobs. (OK, not so weird eh?)

5. I cry when I try to tell people about playing the part of Boo Radley in To Kill A Mockingbird. There were only eight words in the one line that I had to speak, but I had to convey my love for the Finch children and my desire to keep them safe, and I had to demonstrate that I was terribly afraid of people and the world outside my house. Every night the performance moved the audience to a verbal reaction when I delivered my one line, "Miss Jean Louise, will you take me home?" I cannot tell or write about this story without choking up. Sometimes I can't finish the story.

6. When I write poetry I start with the title and write until the poem is done. Other than a feeling that is represented by the title (which is almost always one word), I don't know what the poem is going to be about when I start, or what the words are going to be. When I read the poem later, I am usually surprised at what I find there. Some of my best poetry (OK that's my opinion) was written when I was very sad.

One more time

So it's my Birthday. Here are my Big Plans:

• Deposit unemployment check
• Walk dogs (done)
• Look for job (procrastinating more than a little here)
• Sleep in (done)
• Happy hour (very nicely done)
• Check up on all my internets buddies (done)
  
• Dinner with the family
• Festive beverage

So wish me luck on all the un-done stuff and maybe for another year too. Ladies, if you're feeling frisky you can flash your bubbies at your computer monitor in my honor. Extra credit if you are at work.

In which I relate the events of the future

I was talking with some folks today and I realized that I have been unemployed for three months. I've gotten a lot of stuff done around the house but I'd rather be at work. I'm certainly not desperate but I am becoming more "focused" lately.

Focus point one: Physical space. My desk (where I try to find a job from) was a total cluster fuck wreck. It was located right by the front door in the midst of the full chaos of the house. I moved my work area and improved the whole lot by building a new desk. There's even a place for the dogs to sleep underneath it so we could get them out of the back porch. I even have a view now. See?










Focus point two: Process. I committed to my Zip Team that I would do the first thing that was necessary in my marketing plan: identify target companies. I have been promising to do this for an embarrassing length of time. I finally got off the dime and started. Goal is to finish the list Friday night.

Focus point three: Commitment. I have been half-assing (Yeah, I made up that word. You got a problem with that?) the job search process by only working on it a few hours a week. NO MORE. Full time on the project is my new plan. I may even keep track of my hours to keep myself on target.

Focus point four: It's pushing midnight. SLEEP!

Celebrity Bob

I am so cool such a geek.

Smashing!

What a great opening weekend of fair!

• Lots of patrons on Saturday and Sunday, and many fewer on Friday which allowed us to practice in front of a smaller but still "live"audience. I had a great time showing new patrons around fair.
  
• The Postcards shows are really fun even though each one is a blur of dimly lit activity interspersed with a few seconds of silence, stillness, and light. And yeah, all the naked ladies are alright too. (Read: postcards = booby heaven) Mostly I help people down off the riser that is onstage so they don't fall down, but it's still great fun. FYI, about half of the cast appears nude, the other half are dressed to some degree. I'm in the dressed half.
  
• The backstage party starts at like 9 in the morning and goes till about 8 PM. I have figured out that Dickens Fair is really just a very large party where you go out onstage for much of the day to act so you can justify all the fun you are having. Best part is that the party happens over and over again.
• The Oliver Twist scenes are fun as well, if a little too familiar at this point. The last Brownlow scene is being played by Matthew, the fellow who played Bill Sykes last year, because I'm off cavorting onstage with naked people.
• I saw several of you friends there this weekend. Thanks for supporting my hobby!
  

Only seven more days of fair to go! Wheee!

merrynewhallowthanksmus

merrynewhallowthanksmus n. The holiday which officially begins on October 31 and ends on January 1 of the following year. In the United States of America this holiday takes on epic proportions of indulgence of all kinds. Sufferers can be seen milling about malls and craft fairs, eating and drinking to excess, and blogging about minutiae of the craft project and/or holiday themed theatrical production that they are devoting ALL their time to, for no pay.

Don't forget to come to the Dickens Fair.

Sweet Huts or Nuts?

Yes I know, just a couple of weeks ago it was all about sweet huts. Now it is about the sweet nuts (at Dickens Christmas Fair). I saw this sign today and it just said, "Take my picture!"

So DCF dress rehearsal weekend starts in a few hours. Today I spent a few blissful hours at the palace de moo putting stuff together. What fun. Tomorrow should be better yet with about 500 people on site and chaos all around. Whee!!

at great personal risk

Sorry, I just had to pollute the blogosphere with this trashy news commentary:

K-Fed threatens to sell honeymoon tapes

OK, so FedEx is essentially threatening blackmail against his former wife to force her into giving him lotsa money and custody of their kids. I'm sorry to appear to have sympathy for she who shall not be named, I just think that her white trash ex has gone over the top here.

1. Here is FedEx explaining the custody to the kids after they get old enough to read the news. "Daddy threatened to show naked pictures of mommy eating daddy's hoo hoo so she would give you to me, because that proves I love you more than she does."
2. Does anybody REALLY need to see these two boffing? Does it help you get off to know that the money you paid to see them having animal sex is helping him to continue being an utter sleaze?
3. I'll send both of them a dollar if they promise to destroy the tape. If we can get 20 million more people to do this I think we're on to something. I never want to see FedEx naked, and as for her? Meh, so what. Personally I think her eyes are too far apart and the rest of her is just unremarkable.

automotive haiku

objects in mirror
are closer than they appear
it's so obvious

I like that one.

Please do yourself a favor and come to Dickens Christmas Fair. If you don't think that you can afford all the tickets give me a jingle because I have a few free tickets. I have found out that the Naughty French Postcard show will be admission by ticket only to avoid the LONG lines. Tickets will be available at the telegraph office which is next to the entrance to the theater where the show appears. If that's too confusing, ask at the front gate when you get there.

The other show, Oliver Twist, has a new Oliver Twist, Bill Sykes, Nancy, Rose Maylie, and several of Fagin's boys. Plus the "den" is in a new place (but we don't know where yet). Rehearsals are going good. Both Rose and Nancy are better actors than last year. (Nancy was actually Rose last year.)

Our little one is participating this year(!) which means no child care needed. He is really getting into his character, young David Copperfield. The eldest is Miss Amy Dorrit again. My beloved is reprising her role as Mrs Nickelby, though she would love to branch out to another role or two.

Oddly enough I don't have a job yet. My plan is to hit all my contacts again this coming week, especially those that are close to the hiring managers. Wish me luck with all of this.

the sun'll come up tomorrow

Well, I can now say that I am getting interviews since I've had three phone interviews so far with three different companies. No job yet, but this is progress as far as I can tell. There is still more that I can do to get more responses so I better make this brief and get back to that. Shiny Object Syndrome, beware.

Wow. Did you notice that the Democrats won back both houses of Congress, AND Don Rumsfeld took his boss's advice and "resigned". Maybe the shrub will rethink the "Stay the course" delusion and do something a little more practical. Ya think?

Bye for now.

change your ways or you are doomed

First, thank you to all of my friends and family that supported my art by coming out in the dark to see me onstage for about three minutes in Gilligan's Island. I made some new friends with whom I would like to stay in touch, and I enjoyed working with Carly and Dawn and Jeff from Mattress. The show was lots of fun and now, like all shows, it's over. After a long day of striking the Gilligan set after a rather late cast party, it is time to move on to the next shiny object; Dickens Christmas Fair.

Workshops for DCF started up on Saturday (one day overlap with GITM) and wow it was so great to see so many faces of friends I knew. The all cast meeting had about 500 people in it. I think I hugged most of them. There were many new faces too and I hope that at least a few turn into new friends to hug next year.

Tonight we attended a rosary for our friend Shirley. It was very emotional and there were quite a few people. Following that most of the people who attended the service walked the block and a half from the church to Shirley's house where her four children and their children had set up to entertain us all. On the way, we all carried candles and the sheriff sent a patrol car to hold traffic as we crossed Woodside Road. The irony of this was palpable.

I had a pretty good phone interview on Friday, but I'm still working on finding the new perfect job.

Halloween

Tonight is that holiday that keeps getting bigger; Halloween. This year it will be different. I'm in that show you may have heard about so I can't do the trick-or-treat thing.

But that isn't so important today.

Last night as I was depositing a check at the ATM I saw a bad pedestrian accident on the road. It looked very serious as they loaded the patient into the ambulance, with a great pile of medical debris on the pavement where the patient had just been. Traffic in that direction on the road was rerouted through the shopping center and there was a somber crowd scattered about. Four police cars, a pair of fire trucks and a lone ambulance with all their serious crews attended the scene.

Shortly after I got home we got the call from our friend. The pedestrian was her mom, our friend Shirley. She had died in the accident. I had known her as long as I have known Sharon, and Sharon knew her from when she was in grade school. She was Sharon's mom's best friend. They lived across the street from each other when their kids were little, and they were close ever since.

Shirley started out in the middle of the block, probably between cars. It was dark. She was crossing Woodside Road, a four lane road that is a main thoroughfare in Redwood City. She got as far as the first lane. She often said that she didn't want to waste the time that it took to walk to the crosswalk and wait for the light, even though her family told her is was foolishly dangerous. Not to be too dramatic here, but the shortcut cost her the rest of her life. She was 70 and in good health. Unfortunately the unlucky driver will now have to live with what must be a very terrible memory.

Today all that remains are some blue painted outlines on the pavement where the car, and Shirley, came to rest. It's very sad, in a crystal clear sort of way.

You hafta go

You MUST come to see my show because it is so incredibly entertaining and fun and stuff like that. What else do I have to say to convince you people?

1. You learn how to spell Hieroglyphics!
2. You get to see the Howells waltz!
3. Huts, sweet huts!
4. Ginger AND Mary Ann IN PERSON!
5. Gilligan drops fragile things
6. Rockets, two of them!
(Don't answer yet!)

7. The Skipper says, "I don't think I can get it up that high."
8. Which causes Ginger to say, "This sounds like a job for Ginger!"
9. The professor has degrees in things that haven't been invented yet!

10. Hello, DANCING ALIEN!!

Houston, the Minnow had landed.

The show opened last night. In the first few minutes it felt pretty electric. It went without any big goofs, was very well recieved by the audience, and we all had a great time doing it. The sound of the show changed with an audience and there were lots of laughs we knew were in there but we had never heard them before. That was really nice. Only 12 more to go. See you at the show!

Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale

You've all been waiting a long time since the announcement. Now your day has come. Tonight, Gilligan's Island The Musical opens, starring ME, and all the people in the picture here. Of course, since I am surprise in the middle of the show I was not in the picture.

Get you tickets and other info here. Remember the show is running for THREE WEEKENDS ONLY.

Here is the 20 page Wikipedia article on the TV show. It has facts you never knew you needed.

Let me tell you a little about the real castaways...

Top left in the picture is Mr. Thurston J. Howell III, or Ray as we call him. Ray was my drama teacher in High school about XXX (more Roman numerals) years ago. Ray is perhaps the wittiest person I know and has been that way for XXX years. His son Bill and I were close friends and we put the "you" in mis-spent youth.

To the right of Ray is Joanne, or Eunice "Lovey" Wentworth Howell. In real life Ray and Joanne are a couple as well. Joanne is just as sweet and wonderful and lovey as Ray. They are way cute together. She is also helping me in the job search thing. Hooray!

Top center of the picture is Ginger Grant, or Carly as we like to call her. Carly has a running humorous monologue of narration of her life. She also does the munchkin voice better than Maureen Graham, which is really saying something. She works for the Sunnyvale PD, so don't piss her off. Oh and she does a knockout Ginger. Seriously.

In the botton row on the left is Damien. I hate this guy. He's very attractive. He remembers a huge amount of lines. He sight reads music. He's a great singer, and dancer. And to top it all off he is a really pleasant and decent guy. He's even got a good sense of humor and to really top it all off, he is humble too. Sheesh. He plays Dr. Roy Hinkley (the professor).

Right next to Damien there is Andrew, or as the Skipper calls him, "Little Buddy". He is Carly's boyfriend's cousin and was cast as Gilligan after we started rehearsal. He has great comic timing and delivery, dances up a storm and is almost but not quite nicer than Damien (if that's possible). I'm glad he's playing Willy Gilligan and not me because he does it better than I ever could.

That big guy in the blue shirt is Robert. You may have guessed by now that he plays Skipper Jonas Grumby. Robert dances better than Damien, if that's possible, and sings like you wouldn't believe. He is also one more in a long line of really great guys named Robert.

Mary Ann Summers is played ever so sweetly by Rena over there on the right end of the picture. Gosh she's sweet. She reminds me in so many ways of my beautiful daughter, and she tells me I remind her of her father. (All together now, "Awwwww") She sings so nice it makes you want to puke. She tells me the only thing that you should avoid with her is letting her get hungry because she turns really nasty then. Got it.

If you don't come see the show I'm gonna hunt you down and tell you that I am disappointed with you.

I'm ready for my closeup Mr. DeVille

Tonight is final dress rehearsal for GITM. Hell week has been going well with lots of progress being made onstage. Offstage there have been an increasing number of problems. Our stage manager is well intentioned but she is not assertive enough to require things to run according to plan. There is also a lack of effective planning that is holding back the production. Props have been late in appearing and we (the cast) have not been afforded the necessary time to practice with them.

The same is true for some of the set elements but to a lesser extent. I don't mind if something is there functionally but not painted or decorated, I do have a problem when a highly practical part of the set has never appeared until two rehearsals before opening night. In this case it is a hole into which two of us actors must "fall" into only to be rescued by the rest of the cast. It finally materialized last night, and not quite complete...

When I arrived last night Mike, our long suffering director, asked me if I could build something. This was just like the previous night when Mike asked me if I could properly rig the hammocks in the Skipper and Gilligan's hut. Which I did excellently I might add. Last night it was to make a handhold to help us to get into and out of the hole. So I did that too.

Don't get me wrong, I'm having a blast. I'm just complaining about things that I think should have been done already.

Don't get me started on the lack of necessary crew to run fly lines.

Oh hell

Tomorrow morning at 8AM Hell Week begins for GITM (Gilligan's Island The Musical). We move in the set, but only until noon since some other group is using the theatre. Then at 8PM we get to finish everything setwise up until midnight. Then Monday rolls around and we get going with our first tech run through with everything at like 7 or something. Then it's straight through to the matinee on Sunday. Opening night is Friday.

Don't forget to come see the show.

That is all.

One ringy dingy

Well, I finally got a response from one of the places where I sent my resume. It was like, I don't think you'll work for my job I am offering, but I have sent your resume to someone else here.

WOO HOO! This is much better than getting no response at all.

woof

There is a zoo in Tappahannock North Virginia that has a very ornate Victorian entrance with two huge lion statues, on either side of the massive iron gates. In the summer of 1973, this zoo had two very rare specimens of Ageless Porpoises, neophocaena psuedimmortia. They were housed in the marine mammal center, a huge construction in the new part of the zoo. They had been caught in a fishing net off the coast and rescued by kindly old Mel Finnerston. A male and female, they were believed to be a breeding pair as neophocaena psuedimmortia is one of the few species of porpoise that mate for life. Sadly the porpoises only lived for a few months after they arrived. The mystery of their demise is something they still talk about today in staff meetings at the Tappahannock Zoo.

Among the native people that were in North Virginia long before all those pesky English people arrived this species, Ageless Porpoise was known as Muqualada, or roughly translated; immortal bird fish. The legend was that if they were left alone and allowed to eat the young shore birds that would float in the harbor, that the porpoise would live forever. Of course this was nonsense.

In late June of 1973 the news of the rare find was in all the papers. Ted Pederson, a marine mammal researcher, was excited just like all the other cetacean fans in Port Royal, just up Interstate 17 from Tappahannock. Too bad Ted was a little too excited. Ted wanted the porpoises to live forever. Ted had a plan.

On Wednesday July 18th, Ted went to the shore and captured four baby seagulls. He put them in a cardboard cat carrier and got in his car and drove down Interstate 17 to Tappahannock. He parked a quarter mile from the zoo, ate his McDonalds cheeseburger and waited until it was good and dark. The baby gulls squawked in the cat carrier. They were hungry.

At 10:45 he took the cat carrier and started his fateful walk towards the zoo. Arriving at the gates he sized up the problem of getting in undetected. He noticed that the statues were very impressive but not really high security. He quickly found a path up the front then down the back of the lion on the left. He was in. He made his way to the marine mammal center. He had never been there before so he just followed the signs.

The marine mammal center was new and had a somewhat more sophisticated security system than the front gate. When Ted picked up a stray paving stone and threw it through the glass door it tripped a silent alarm. Back in the guard shack Bill Pederson (no relation to Ted) saw the alarm light. He called the Tappahannock police for backup and went to investigate.

Bill found the broken glass all over the lobby floor. He knew this was no false alarm. He checked on the backup. They were only two minutes away. Bill slowly walked into the main aquarium gallery. There was no one there. He passed through the doors up to the outdoor arena where bleachers surrounded the main observation pool, a four million gallon seawater pool where the orca would do tricks for zoo visitors. No one there either.

He walked towards the smaller pools just to the North of the main pool. He saw a figure in the half light provided by the security lighting on the fence. Backup had arrived and two of Tappahannock’s finest joined Bill. As they approached one of the officers circled around to the other side of the pool to prevent the escape of the intruder. Bill shined his flashlight on Ted and shouted, “Stop”. Ted released the other two seagulls onto the surface of the water. The porpoises gobbled them up too, just like the first two.

Ted was quickly cuffed and taken to the Tappahannock Jail, and booked on charges of transporting young gulls past stately lions for immortal porpoises.

Boca Grande

I need to make a drink that we can call a "Boca Grande". (big mouth) It will need to be tropical like with fruit and rum. It will be for the Gilligan's Island cast parties. Any ideas?

The show is going OK. Rehearsals are getting better and the number of times people say, "Line!" is going down steadily. The funny parts are actually getting funny and it appears that we may have a pretty darn fun show. So come see it please. Info here They tell me the ticket sales are going in big clumps so buy your ticket early.

Luckily I am still unemployed so I can continue my new most favorite activity; looking for a job. Oh my god it is so fun. What I do doesn't fall into a neat category so you get a lot of oblique leads. Every single web site that is set up to help you, like salary.com or monster.com or anymediumsizedcompany.com has their very own registration process in which you provide all the same information in new and different ways each time. You send out resumes to various companies and you get no response, save for the occasional automated one. You know you should be doing something more, or different, but you aren't quite sure what. There is hardly someone to ask about all of this junk, and you aren't really sure what to ask. Pretty soon some lucky company will take my up on my offer and I'll be forced to stop this fun.

At least I'm getting the maximum amount of unemployment available.

Upson Downs

Welcome to Upson Downs, the least known horse racing facility in the State of Bob. I've been up and down lately. Thanks to all of you who sent kind words. I think I had a few sky-is-falling sort of moments and I have helpfully decided that that is decidedly unhelpful so I'm just not going there anymore. If I accidentally get there again I'm turning right back around thank you.

SO Gilligan's Island is going pretty well. We staged one production number tonight. We sang the song about a jillion times. The people who can actually dance were taught the dance that goes with it. I valiantly tried to follow. Suffice to say my dancing won't be the highlight of anything but I'm going to give it my best. We are at the confluence-of-everything stage where it seems that all of the work that you did before was about 80% good and the cumulative effect of this is that when you put three things together you get 0.8 X 0.8 X 0.8 or exactly 51.2% of what you were trying to achieve. It is a wonder that the director can sit there and not throw things at you. I'm sure it will all come together in the end. It always does.

Oh yeah, the dates are on the flier. Yes there is a Halloween show.

No lucky company has stepped forward to claim their new prize employee, so I continue my job search. If you know people who know people who may have a job for me now's their chance to talk to me. I'll do them a favor and call them if you give me their contact information. I have lots of leads to run down already but I could always use 46 more.

That's Faire

I wrote a pretty personal and critical post this morning. I decided that I didn't want it up any more.

Suffice to say that I went to Faire and I didn't have the good time that I had hoped to. I really enjoyed being with my friends, and performing a play, but the rest I could have done without.

Nuff said.

Here kitty kitty

Our friend Lucy called us the other day. "Are you interested in a kitten. I can't keep her." or something like that. You get the idea. Since this is a blog, not USA TUDAY, I'll tell you the whole story.

Her daughter picked up the kitten after seeing/hearing her several days in a row. The little dear was hungry and shedding alot but otherwise OK. She was pretty frightened. Lucy calmed her down and started looking around for a better home since her old cat was distinctly negative on the "new kitten" thing.

So we said, "Why don't you just bring her over and we'll see how she reacts to the dogs." This is code for, "We would love a new kitten no matter what." So Lucy brought the kitty round to the casa.

What a nice kitten! Full bred Siamese, blue eyes, dark points. She was very mellow with the dogs. She hissed at them to ensure they knew who was boss, then settled down and didn't mind getting her ears licked by the big doggie. Well, not too much anyway.

We mused, "Is she chipped?" (RFID chip so the animal can be uniquely identified) Sure enough she was. You can feel the capsule under the skin near the shoulder. It feels like an oversized grain of rice made out of glass. So this morning Sharon took her to the vet to get her chip scanned so we could find the person associated with the chip.

Sharon called the lady. She had got two kittens from the same litter from the shelter one male one female. They had been spayed/neutered, had their first round of shots, and got chipped. She took them home and realized in a few days that she was really allergic to cats. Oops. Hello craigslist. She listed them online and gave them to what she thought was a worthy home in Redwood City.

She contacted the new owners about a month later and they said everything was OK. Then she was contacted by someone who had found the male and had his chip scanned just like we did. Then she contacted the people again, and they said everything was OK. She told them about the found male and they then admitted that they had actually "lost" (read dumped) both of the kittens.

So the nice allergic lady said we could keep her, and that she had named her Coco. Nice name except that the dog's name so we'll have to come up with something else, as if the cat really cares.

Cute huh?

My pirate name is:

Black Roger Cash

Like anyone confronted with the harshness of robbery on the high seas, you can be pessimistic at times. You're musical, and you've got a certain style if not flair. You'll do just fine. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from piratequiz.com.
part of the fidius.org network

Tis actually work

Who knew just doing research on prospective employers was difficult. Oy!

I can do a lot of things but the thing I like best is figuring out how to do things better, and the area I like to work in is business processes, not specifically manufacturing. The manufacturing part has a big focus on hardware and I like there to be more focus on the people part.

The jobs I have been looking into seem to scream "turn this crank just like this". I want to be the fellow that guides the decision as to whether a crank is needed, where it should go, and exactly how the crank should be turned, and maybe builds the crank, or at least designs it.

Alas, there are very few job desciptions that go: "must do what Bob especially likes to do".

Soon I will find my niche, perhaps it is on my radar and I just don't see it yet.

The Internets

I decided that I wanted a new domain for the career search email and possible consulting marketing. Plus I can use it for manifesto posting.

Upsides: Separation between personal stuff and professional stuff, non-goofy email address, a chance to try out the hosting and email service with GoDaddy. They say that the email service has sophisticated spam filtering and since collierfam.com gets about 60 spam messages every fricken day I think that would be worth $20 a year to get rid of.
Downsides: Another domain to manage. $55 bucks for the year.

The new schtick is: colliersystems.com

It is in the "Coming Soon" mode now. It'll be live in a day or so. Just don't expect to find any boob references there.

Happy September 11th

I suggest that we create a national holiday of sorts out of September 11th, wherein we thumb our noses at the puritanical fanatics that would have the whole world submit to their view of things. I'll have it my way thank you very much. If you want to have it your way (for you) please go right ahead. In my usual fashion I'm certain that I am oversimplifying but what else is new.

In that spirit, let me direct you to a celebration of the frankly irreverant. It IS NOT safe for work my friends and you have never seen anything like it I assure you, (otherwise you would have showed it to me).

PS I didn't find this, a friend of mine did.

Holy crap it's funny.

Fairly tired

Wow. Faire was pretty fun. Tiring but fun. I saw loads of people I knew and met boatloads more;
more names than I can remember, not surprising since I can hardly remember my name.

Our friends Danielle and Kurt had a handfasting ceremony today which was really sweet. There was a whole section of ladies there that were crying. Yes, a handfasting is like a country wedding without the legal meaning, and is infused with symbolism. I am led to believe that the ceremony was traditionally performed when no official was on hand to make a recognized marriage. Suffice to say they pledged their love and devotion to each other before a whole crowd of friends, and asked their friends to support them in their life together.

Aparrently standing onstage in the full sun in a head to toe black woolen costume with black hat and black gloves makes you REALLY HOT. I needed to drink lots of water and sit down in the shade after all that.

Once I get my bluetooth act in gear I'll post some pictures.

Tomorrow I get out the resume polish and see if I can make something of use out of all the nifty things I did at GMI.

Not a creature was stirring

It's 1:18 in the morning on Friday night before the Casa Faire opens. I like to call the night before any fair(e) opens, "Sewing Night". Yup, even I did a little sewing.

I also did some laundry, sewed up the loose bit on my pants, got all my stuff together and put it in the car, went to buy gas, made shortbread, and cleaned the kitchen. Mind you I did all of this after I finally finished building the gates in the front yard. Now they have bamboo as planned. They look fabulous if I do say so myself... see...










The ladies plus Amy sewed all manner of stuff starting with a new bum roll and ending with sewing lots of pearls on dresses. Whee!

Oh yeah, I also had lunch with my good friend Walter who is finally blogging. I also picked up some junk I forgot at work and told everyone that I'll come back periodically and give them all hugs. I also talked with my friend Pat who just happens to be a VP at the agency that GMI hires to help terminated (great way to put it) employees get back into the job market. I get started there on Tuesday. I also found out how much unemployment insurance benefits I'll be getting(!). It will really help.

See you all at faire!

What I did on my vacation

Slept in
Goofed off
Surfed for jobs
Organized some stuff
Looked at my sadly out of date resume
Talked to my recently ex boss who is also laid off
Called GMI and arranged to pick up some stuff I forgot
Called a bunch of friends (one even knew of three possible jobs!)
Off to rehearsal, sang the whole show and then drove home and practiced

A pretty good day overall.

Time for a movie and a martini. (. )( .)

But Just Remember This

Today I noticed that the president of my company was in his office, which is really weird because he hasn't been to the Sunnyvale office in months. Then the HR manager told me that I needed to speak with him. At that point it was pretty clear to me that I would soon be seeking a new position. I was right.

I had been at GMI for 19 years and my little footprints are all over the place (Like, I'm the voice on the voicemail). But times are hard in the capital printing equipment industry and with sales down a great deal from budgeted projections something had to give. I can't fault management, they are doing what is necessary to preserve core investments. My boss had to go as well. As it was, I was an expensive overhead position. Very helpful to the organization, but pure overhead. I hope the company does well. I still have some great friends there.

So now I have a chance to find a new place to make a cup of tea in the morning. If you know of some place that needs someone who can make difficult problems get better don't hesitate to drop me a note.

Looks like I don't have to take Friday afternoon off. It seems I'm free already.

butterscotch

I really like butterscotch pudding. I like it better than coffee ice cream, which I like a lot. I'm just pudding that fact out there for your consumption.

Over the weekend I was assigned a character for Casa Faire. Tonight I found enough dope on the fellow that I might be able to pretend to be Baron North.

I'm making slow but steady progress on the gates in the front yard, which as I'm sure you remember, are supposed to be filled in with bamboo. We got the bamboo, I cut the pieces to length, and filled in the ends. Sharon came up with a clever way to mount the bamboo, and of course I have overengineered the implementation making it take a lot longer to execute. Of course if I didn't it would keep me up nights.

I've been trying to learn my 13 lines for the Alien part. That's hard enough. I worked on it for an hour and a half and learned about five lines, most of which are short responses. Jeez, how do people learn all those dang lines for real parts! ... like I said, all the fun, half the work. Plus I get to sing harmony with the rest of the cast, all seven of them!

Short week then the opening of Faire... Maybe I'll take off early on Friday.

trio

just there by my toe
inside my shoe
a tiny rock

aged mineral lump
is this your last act
(to distract me)

once a mighty stone
formed in the crucible
beaten down by your creator
mother earth

just there by my side
in my bed
a partner

fully grown woman
is this your life's work
(to complete me)

once a tiny speck
formed in the womb
nurtured by your creator
mama

just there facing out
at the door
my child

barely grown up
is this your destiny
(to leave me)

once a twinkle
formed in love
nurtured by your creators
us

we rejoice in your honor
one purpose fulfilled
with beauty and grace

And the rest

The part of Gilligan is going to go to another actor. No matter, I get to play The Alien (the outer space kind) instead. This way I have almost as much fun with a lot fewer lines to remember. Gilligan has not been cast yet, but a promising fellow tried out tonight. We have yet to meet Mary Ann or the Skipper. Mr Howell is being played by my high school drama teacher Ray Doherty. His wife is playing Lovey.

Tonight we started learning the songs, starting with the hardest one. Lots of harmonies and dialog in the middle of the songs. It will all sound good eventually but at this point it sounds like a bunch of people singing songs they don't know yet, i.e. it sounds bad.

Last weekend was the Colden Golden Gate renfaire, except it was a Tudor Faire really. That means that the ladies wear different hats mostly, and there is a Queen Jane, who gets dethroned and a Queen Mary who gets elected coronated throned made queen instead of a Queen Elizabeth. The coronation ceremony was something of a cluster fuck disorganized affair on Saturday, but Sunday was really pretty good. I took it upon myself to get up on the stage and yell project loudly out to the audience to remind them that they were about to witness the coronation of their new queen. That was fun. Nothing like improvisation at the top of your lungs.

The fair was socked in both days except for literally about thirty seconds of filtered sun on Sunday. This kept all the nobles (like me) from overheating in their heavy costumes. The park where the faire was held has grass instead of weedy dirt so it wasn't dusty either. After paying $15 to join the pub group I got to go into the pub garden and have ale at any time. They had a sign that said that if you are going to drink all day you actually have to start first thing in the morning. Good advice indeed. I was very comfortable all weekend.

The people show at faire is never ending and very diverse. I think I like the little kids the best; the ones to whom the whole thing is just an amazing awesome spectacle and they are at once afraid and excited to experience it all. That's pretty cool. I can do without the drunken louts that come up the queen's party who are obviously dining in character and ask, "Hey! What are you guys doing here!?" Um, duh. We're putting on a show you dork.

Faire takes a lot of time, but it's fun. In a couple of weeks, Casa faire opens. We are not sure how much we'll all be going.

Generic Haiku

First Five Syllables Here
Next Seven Syllables Here
Epiphany Here

In which I relate the events of the past

Bad movie night was a success, especially because the movie was so freakin bad. There was random sound effects, fishes popping out here and there, nudity where it hardly made sense, and a bad plot I can hardly remember, something about zombies I think.

We had a great time getting drunk ready for the movie, (thanks for the gin Carl!) and a certain guest brought the weirdest host gift of all time, wait for it... mammogram films. Apparently these are the pictures that didn't turn out and they get held for a month and then pitched. So I was gifted a few of them, because I am apparently a boob man. (Shocking I know.) That wasn't enough embarrassment, so she dug out some nipple markers (see illustration) out of her purse, much to the stark amazement of all the guests. These are round nipple sized pieces of tape with a little metal ball, about 1 mm attached. They get stuck on the nipple for the mammogram so the radiologist can determine the location of the nipple in the radiograph. There was much laughter about all of this, with one male guest covering his nipples with his hands and saying softly, "I'm invisible". Dude, you crack me up.

Seriously, mammograms are a good thing, even if as Danielle put it, "it's like having your boob slammed in the refrigerator door". I have a friend that works for a company called R2 that makes a device that scans a mammogram radiograph and highlights the points where the radiologist should take a good look. The scanner uses an algorithm that was developed by analyzing many radiographs and determining how to find the beginnings of tumors. He tells me that around their office they have seen thousands of radiographs and that he has seen some that were really bad cases where the cancer was advanced. In those cases the women had waited too long to get a mammogram and their first news was, "You have a bad case." That's pretty sad.

I mention all of this serious stuff because both my mother and father both waited too long to seek effective medical care for what turned out to be really bad diseases. In dad's case he ignored the pain until he couldn't walk any more. It turned out to be cancer and it had advanced quite a ways. He died two years later after enduring a lot of very unpleasant treatment and really bad days. If he had sought treatment earlier it might have been different. Mom failed to deal with her arterial disease, denying that it was a big enough problem, then had a massive stroke that could have been prevented. She will never fully recover. She lives in an assisted living home. She can't carry on a normal conversation because of the ephasia and short term memory loss; she can't speak very well and she can't remember enough of the conversation to continue it. The stroke took away an enormous amount of who she was at 62, and she'll probably have to live this way for a long time.

I love my mom and loved my dad. It really hurts that they could have avoided some really bad things if they had taken care of themselves earlier. Don't scrimp on the medical stuff. It really can matter a lot. Sorry to go all serious on you there.

So the audition for Gilligan went well, though I haven't heard back yet. I leaned and sang a song, did a few dance steps, and read a couple of scenes. It sounds like a fun show. You'll all be informed as soon as I know. I will expect you all to come see me, clap loudly, and gushingly praise my talent in glowing terms.

So we all (ok the majority of us) went to casa faire today to get our gate passes so we can go there and act like people who died a long time ago in a country far far away. We saw a lot of people we know and there was hugging all around. Then we built the stage which consists of legging up four platforms with varying height legs to make a flat level place on top of the up and down ground. Everyone cheered when it was done. That was nice. I'm excited to be able to be involved in faire because I can finally get in on all the fun that the ladies have been enjoying and I can be there with them instead of home alone. We just need to figure out the kid care.

We're all trying to figure out when exactly we'll be where and the schedule of everything. It seems that we'll all be busy from now until Christmas eve with renfaires then Dickens Fair. There may even be a musical comedy in there.

Really bad movie night

If you are within the sound of my keyboard consider joining us for Hot Wax Zombies On Wheels on Friday night. It promises to stink up the whole house so bad that we'll all need to hit the hot tub afterwards.

Grace, this one should be worth tickets out here for you and Barron.

Gilligan's Island

I got a call tonight from the director of Gilligan's Island, The Musical who was asking me if I wanted to come and read for the part of Gilligan. I'm intrigued, but it would be a big time committment and I'd have to learn far more lines than I ever have before... On the other hand, it would be great comedy fun.

I'll have to think it over.

I owe you one

Here is where the signage at Disneyland really appears. I know you don't give a rats ass care deeply.

• The picture of Anne Bonny and Mary Read is from the Pirates Of The Caribbean ride in New Orleans Square. It is painted on the wall in the lobby area in the right hand line right next to the boat .
• The laser box is on Tom Sawyer Island just below a tree house. I liked it because it had extremely out of place tek screws holding the sign in place on a plywood box. Plywood and tek screws weren't around in Tom Sawyer times.
• The mermaids are painted on the wall that faces the rider loading line in the Peter Pan ride in Fantasyland. They recall the mermaid statues at the end of the ride.
• The For Your Safety sign is on the boat in the Jungle Cruise in Adventureland. Similar signs appear on many rides. Jessamy calls the image on the right the "no disco" icon.
  
• The spiel button is (as described in the post) on the Monorail control panel on the platform in Tomorrowland. The driver for the monorail told us that they are getting new monorail cars and (I suppose) controls next year.
  

I got a new toy!

Just as I was beginning to complain about The Most Important Thing Of All, that the Blogger interface was um, limited; and just after I had tried out Microsoft's new Live Writer tool (which I liked a lot except for it didn't work)... wait for it...

The Googlers came out of the forest with a new management interface to Blogger. Color me ready Sergey. I took a few looks at the new stuff and the issues list, threw what little caution I usually exert to the wind and made the irreversible switch to New Blogger Beta. I'll soon find out if the people at Google really get the web thing or not. I suspect they do.



Here's me with Helen Parr (aka Elastigirl) at Disney's California Adventure last week.

The picture management is still clunky... but I'll try it with Picasa.
The template editing doesn't support editing the html yet so I can't substitute the flames picture for the star up there. I really don't like the star.
I'm having fun with all the widgets.
I like the labels.

Live Wire

Did you ever wish that the Blogger interface would be replaced with something that didn't suck so much? Me too. I'm trying Microsoft Live Writer. So far I like it.

Except for right now when I tried to publish this but it says that blogger does not support publishing the picture... I guess I need another method.

Sunday Drive

The rest of our Disneyland vacation went great. The last night was really fun. We watched the fireworks from right in front of the castle which was the perfect spot. They were awe inspiring. We managed to fit in four rides each in that last two hours, not bad considering the crushing Saturday night crowds.

Sunday we got up a bit later than Saturday and got all ready for a nice drive home. We did a little shopping and hopped in the 'burb. Everything was smooth sailing until we saw a couple of road signs telling us that highway 5 was closed. After getting stuck in the ensuing backup, we headed west through Ventura and then north via 101. We still got home on Sunday, but right at the very end of it. The closure and detour added 105 miles and three hours to our trip. We were on the road for about ten hours, mostly at 80 mph for the last half.

Needless to say, it's nice to be home.

Double Secret Probation

Well today's signage is really obscure, so I'll give you a hint: I found it near the fort that used to have shops but is now closed to the public.

Beyond the obvious we have been having a full and fun day. The highlight was the Aladdin show at DCA. It was fricken great. It is amazing what you can do with a huge budget and lots of talent.

We're heading back in now for the last four hours in the park. It should be just as much fun as the rest of the day.

House of Mouse Extended Dance Mix

Somewhat of a marathon today, fourteen and a half hours in the park. We are in training for tomorrow when we open the park at 7 AM and close it at Midnight, 17 hours. We are getting our money's worth here people. We did take a little break in the middle to go swimming here at the hotel.

Had a fabulous lunch at The Blue Bayou, rode all the rides we could get onto and basically had a really great day. We were right between the Dumbo ride and the carousel for the fireworks show, which is launched from two sites which we were in between! We kept swiveling our heads to see. It was really loud and close and awesome. The we waited more than 30 minutes to get onto Peter Pan then waited 0 minutes and 0 seconds to get onto Star Tours.

Here is today's picture. Tell me where it's from to get the prize.

My feet hurt

We did just about everything today including the character breakfast, the water slide at the pool, California Screamin, Soarin Over California, and this ride pictured here, plus many more. Tell me if you know what it is.

See you all soon!

House of Mouse

Well we made it here, Disneyland, in a record seven hours from our house. We checked in, hooked up with some friends in the park about 2PM and immediately spent $50 for lunch. We rode a few rides once or twice, the crowds being not too bad today, had dinner and closed the park. We boarded Pirates of the Carribbean for the second time at 10:55 PM five miutes before closing.

Here is today's picture, the "spiel" button on the Monorail control console at Tomorrowland station, being pressed by our dashing young ride operator cast member. I think her name was Christy or something. When you press the button it plays the spiel about getting in line.

After careful observation I can tell you that the dominant female fashion here in the park is a spaghetti strap camisole that is a bit too small with your bra peeking out here, there, and everywhere. Everyone who is anyone (like about 64% of the women folk) is wearing this number. The men all seem to be sporting backpacks with water bottles.

What a great day.

New Californian Workshop

Well, I'm not Norm Abrams but I did use a router on this project. This table started out as a kida funky weathered picnic table that we've had for like 20 years, most of it spent in the weather. I took off the criss-cross legs with wheels and made a proper pedestal and sanded the last 20 years worth of weather off the top. The pedestal is hollow inside so it holds up the umbrella. A little marine spar varnish and voila, (not quite so) instant pretty table.

Check out how HUGE the plants are getting. Cool.

Shabbat Shalom

(Peaceful Sabbath)

Today we went to a very moving ceremony to celebrate the Bar Mitzvah of the son of our friends Sylvia and Andre. He is their oldest child and his was the first Bar Mitzvah for quite some time on Andre's side of the family. The genuine love and affection in their extended family was abundantly obvious. Andre and Sylvia were quite visibly proud of their boy as he was passing into manhood in the eyes of their faith. Andre was so moved in the service that it took him a couple of tries to get through his blessing to his son.

The service itself was rich with symbolism and with many many repetitions of thanks for all that we are and of the devotion to God. Much of it was in Hebrew. There was the rabbi and a canter, a woman who recited prayers and led the congregation in song. She had a beautiful voice, and was clearly and tenderly helping Aaron get through all the recitations in Hebrew.

In the end Aaron read a several page long reflection on his life as a member of the reformed Jewish faith, and how he intended to integrate the teachings of the Torah in his life. It was a well written speech and delivered pretty well for a nervous thirteen year old. Is was clear that he put a great deal of thought into it.

I was moved by the whole thing and very proud for my friends who have obviously made their faith a real part of the fabric of their daily lives and that of their children. Mazel tov Aaron.

I'm still an atheist, but I have to say this was the best time I ever had in a place of worship. I had no idea what lots of things meant, and of course all the references to God were not meant for me. I don't/didn't pray or sing, but I did read along when I could and I tried to understand what was going on. There were some asides in the prayer book that made some explanations of some of the rituals, most of which was fascinating.

Near the end of the service there was a short request form one of the temple members for donations to help relief operations for people injured in the war in Israel. The political message was clear: Civilians were purposely attacked for political reasons by Hezbollah. I've never seen politics in a worship setting like that. It wasn't sugar coated or metaphorical at all. They read out the names of the soldiers and civilians that were killed this week. They used words like killed and dead.

I wish the everlasting conflict between the arabs and jews could be ended. I wish that moms and dads in that part of the world could wake up every day and raise their children in peace and teach them to tolerate and appreciate all of the others in the world, even if you didn't agree with their version of The Truth.

Tell me again, what is the purpose of all the terror and killing? Why do people talk of extermination of other people? What drives them to such hatred? Is the land that you stand on while you believe your beliefs so sacred that your god requires you to kill the others who stand on the same ground? Is the conflict really over specific plots of land, or is it that the arabs need to exterminate the jews so that... I don't even know.

It is all such an obscene waste. Money, lives, families, farms, all lost to war without end and for what? How much good could be done if all the effort and energy that went into the hatred and war and posturing and speeches and rockets and tanks and graves and coffins, could instead be put to some, ANY, constructive endeavor.

As an atheist, the conflict is especially troubling for me. I don't believe in anyone's god and that renders all their religious differences null in my mind. As far as I can tell it is senseless. I want reason to prevail, but I believe that the periodic armed conflict will continue well into the middle of the century and there will be no real peace before I die.

Shabbat Shalom, I wish.

Yeah, I did it. So what?

Last night I played another murder mystery gig, at the swanky Stanford Park Hotel. This time, for the first time, I didn't die. I played Mr. Capwell's flaming gay personal assistant Edward, a stereotype bitch. I made it clear to everyone that I hated Capwell for what he had done to my family by buying out their brewery in Kansas and ruining them financially. I also made up endless stories about how I hated all the other characters, and how I wanted to go and work for the PayPal (the client company). I said I wanted to be the one who wrote all those emails that ask you to update your personal information.

There's too much to tell here. It was great fun. Plus I got to eat a really nice dinner since I didn't die. Woo Hoo!

Self Portrait Tuesday

This man is testing new ways to scare little children. How's it workin?

Tuned to B&W with Picasa taken with my new phone cam. Once I figure out how to take better pictures with this thing the pix will be stunning. I've taken a few that are pretty good, but lots of them are not so stunning.

Parenthetical phone post

In the prehistoric era otherwise know as the 1980's there appeared a very catchy tune called New Toy from a singer called Lene Lovich. The first line of the chorus goes:

I get a New Toy (oh ay oh), to keep my head expandin

I know it sounds like a dumb song but it is what it is. (The song is about how the singer wants stuff like a car and a stero and a freezer so accepts a relationship that she didn't want in order to get the things, then she ends up falling in love with the fellow. How sweet.) So a couple of nights ago we all got New Toys replacement mobile phones for ours that were variously: Just fine, breaking, uncool, and adequate but staid.

So now we're all getting our act together to learn how to use the things cause they are so um... advanced. I thought my phone before had more menus and options than I could figure out. Now that one seems like a set of Lincoln Logs (for you youngsters out there like Jes and Grace, Lincoln Logs is a set of dowels that are cut like logs in a log cabin (Abraham Lincoln was born in a log cabin, get it?) that you can use to build an almost endless variety of some square or rectangular log cabin models. It could keep children busy for hours in the days before video games. Sales for these type of toys are down these days for some odd reason.) that is all worn out. The new one does everything but take out the recycling to the curb every other week. Most of it seems geared towards providing you with a way to use services that Cingular will happily add to your monthly bill, but I really like it even without all the added services.

For me, the killer app was the 1.3M pixel camera and a very nice display. (I'm so visual) Now I'll be able to get pretty good snapshots of things when it was inconvenient to bring along my real camera.

I'm such a geek. I have a blog, AND I just posted about my new cellphone. Sheesh. I need to get a life.

poppy

orange fragile
nestled together for warmth
uncaring
shocking me with color

bent low to the wind
whispering a riot
beckon my gaze
like flaming velvet butterflies

sun comes and goes
you follow
ignorant
blind but seeing the sun

night comes
you rest
without sleep

Wow

It was FAR cooler today. What a relief. It was only 103.

We did some retail therapy, looked at a house our friends are selling, and floated in the pool. We had one of our Lisa friends over, had a little dinner, and generally did very little. I did manage to fix a screen door and trim back some rampaging bushes, but I skipped the foot-high "lawn". There's always tomorrow when it won't be so damn hot.

Note to all those pissed off people in the middle east, sub-Saharan Africa, Indonesia, and all those other fine places where moms and kids and dads are getting murdered for political gain:
Stop killing each other you fucking barbarians. Sit down and work it out. Just how fucking hard could it be, really? Need more land that some special deified person walked around on a really long time ago? Work out a fucking schedule already. Need more political power? Set up a transparent democracy so you can get a mandate from the people who really matter. Don't like it that other governments think you are hostile muderers? Suck it up until you change their minds. How many more decades are you going to keep pretending that your religious story trumps theirs? How many more thousands of your people have to live in fear and die in poverty to serve some ancient grudge? Make something useful. Do something positive. Give things away. Most of all: Stop Threatening Everyone you disagree with with unilateral death sentences just for getting up in the morning and having breakfast at home. NOBODY in their right mind thinks that's OK you fucktards.

I'm sure that will help a lot.

I'm hot

It's kinda warm here today, 105 this afternoon. Fortunately most of the afternoon was spent in San Francisco at the side of Stowe lake. We had all of our hot weather Victorian clothes on. We played croquet, ate, drank, boated, drank, had three legged races, drank, took pictures, drank a bit, and had lots of fun.

Then we drove home. When we opened the car door, hokey smokes it was hot. It was still 103.6. We got in the pool and ordered pizza.

Self Indulgence Thursday

This is my answer to that self portrait Tuesday thing I can never seem to remember to participate in.

So like about twice a year, just at this particular stage of getting over a cold, for a few hours, I can smell things just as well as normal people. It's kind of like putting on you glasses (for you laser radial keratotomy surgery type people glasses are the things you once spent all that money for so people would say , "cool glasses" but you not quite so secretly hated them so much you were willing to undergo unpleasant procedures to rid yourself of the damned things forever, FOREVER do you hear me!) (for those of you at the tender age of less than several decades and your perfect eyes have not begun to betray you just like your now luxurious non-grey hair also has not, glasses are something you wear over your eyes to make everything (except your body and hair) look like you were 15 again) (for the rest of you I wear contacts/glasses and my diopter numbers are both less than 1, so, "Nyah!") just for a few minutes so you can see all the beautiful and ugly things around you sharply, but then taking them off for six months at a time.

That's why I could smell doggies who needed a bath in the next room (!) this morning when I usually can't hardly smell them when they are in my lap. I'm not sure if my condition is good or bad but it sure seems permanent. I supppose it has prevented me from becoming a gourmet giving much thought to food. Sure enough by 10 am my uncaring nose was back to "normal".

Holy crap I'm dripping!

So I worked all day in the front yard today. It was roughly blast furnace temperature out there. (OK it was probably in the low eighties but I was in full sun most of the time.) Miraculously, it doesn't look different at all. I installed a two circuit drip system giving each and every plant its own little custom water supply.

I used a lot of 1/2 G/Hr drippers (like about 40), about 40 1 G/Hr, and a handful of 2 G/Hr. There's two kinds of tubing, wee little connectors, all the hardware you see in the picture and wires and PVC pipe and even little wire loop thingys to hold the tubing in one place. The valves and pipe I put in weeks ago, and I already had circuits left on the controller. If you plan to do this yourself remember: It is a really big project that no one will ever see and if it is successful no one will notice the system at all. Extreme gratification will be yours when you realize there are no weeds in your lush garden.

If you recall how many plants we planted please call me because I apparently can't count that high. All of the tubing is cleverly hidden under the mulch so all you can really see are the two automatic valves and the pressure regulators and the filter gizmos. I even set up a new schedule on the valve controller. (That was harder than it sounds.) As you can see from the picture, the next big project is to paint the house. This project will mostly involve writing a large check and choosing colors. Since I am colorblind I get a free pass on the color selection part.

Then I washed the Suburban. That thing has more surface area than all the supermodels in San Francisco.

Yesterday while Andy and I were making a superduper CB radio mount for the truck, a little tiny bug came to visit us and hung around on the wire fencing on the little gate. He(?) was pretty quiet and didn't *bug* us much.


Other than that it's been lonely without the ladies here this weekend. They headed to Renfaire in San Luis Obisbo for the weekend and half of Monday. I need to get myself into more of these things instead of standing around in the hot sun... Oh yeah, you do that at Renfaire too.

Bad movie night coming up on Friday. Don't say you weren't warned this time. We'll be watching The Warrior And The Sorceress with David Carradine. Grace, I'll save a seat for you on the couch.

Happy boy

Here's the middle child with his graduation present. Suffice to say he's fricken ecstatic.

sorry about that

Looks like I have left all of you faithful readers in the dark for a few days. Nothing much has been happening, except:

Deathstalker IV. Possibly the worst movie since time began, though I am sure that there are hundreds of other contenders. 80's hair, Bulgarian extras, random nudity, deadpan jokes in the "dialog", and a pretty stupid story. Add a couple of friends, some leftover Margaritas and you have a nice night. Sharon made curry with all the fixin's which was just wonderful. We're gonna do the deed again in a couple of weeks with a horrible looking David Carradine movie The Warrior and the Sorceress. It looks like it will be just awful.

New washing machine. If you do as much laundry as we do with five of us here and a pool to generate wet towels, replacing a washing machine is an actual event. The new one is really nice.

I died again. This time it was in Stockton where it was about 100 degrees on our arrival. My friend's company, Hit and Run Productions, does murder mystery dinner entertainment among other things. This time it was at a 40,000 square foot pizza and games place. The birthday boy Steve and his whole set of family and friends were bought by Capwell Industries to study their genetics in Pakistan for six months. Then I (Harvey Capwell) died and everyone in the birthday party spent the next couple of hours trying to figure out who of the other five people in the cast killed me. What fun.

Went to a nice party today. Lots of laughs.

Centaurs

Late in the evening they come from the hills to drink at the shimmering pools of crystal clear apple juice. The eat sugar cubes from the sucre trees and laugh at the unicorns. Little men with tails lounge at the shore watching the mermaids play in the waterfall. The baby centaurs romp behind the twinkling bushes. One tall nude woman strolls down the leafy path framed by aspen saplings. She carries a baby winged kitten, clutched to her bosom to shield it from the gathering drizzle. It is warm and getting warmer and the sunlight glints from the diamonds floating overhead in the breeze having broken through the cotton clouds. The light, broken and bent, makes a thousand rainbows in the mist. The kitten meows as they come into the clearing and jasmine flowers open up in response, perfuming the air. The woman laughs and lays down in the gossamer fur that grows on the shore. A little boat appears around the bend. The woman spies her love, strong and supple, graced with powerful hands and a soothing voice. She closes her eyes and imagines a world where she and her love can escape to become their true selves, a world unlike anything they have known before this day. At first her dream is beautiful, but then her nightmare begins. Unable to wake she sees her world crumble to be replaced by an alien place.

In her imagined world there are things called cars, and people talk on little boxes they hold in their hands as they race towards certain dissapointment in stone buildings. Much of the ground is strangely hard and gray. Walls of stone divide them from the others of their kind and they wear bulky coverings that obscure their forms. The old ones grow feeble and are cast out of the so called homes. Violent suffering is common, driven by jealousy, mistrust and fantastical beliefs in mythical other worlds ruled by hate filled gods. Babies go hungry while some live in dwellings so fanciful that few can imagine. There is sickness untended for want of paper of symbolic value. A pampered few preside over the masses, making rules no one can understand, making statements that embarrass even the children. Petty fights over long dead ancestors infect the progeny with hatred. Death is the prize for a square of sand in the hot sun.

Her nightmare is broken as the kitten licks her nose. She rouses slowly as her love comes ashore. He rises from the boat, rainbows glistening off his taut flesh. He walks towards her and she rises to embrace him. As their arms close round each other, she nestles her face into the warm corner between his neck and shoulder. The press together and sigh in delight. They walk into the pool embracing each other as they float. She speaks first.

I had the most terrifying dream...

got wood?

I do.




































This is the little gate that is done... Two more to go. The wider gates are going to be fancier, with doweled corners and bamboo panels. It'll be very highbrow 'n stuff.

woodworking

Woodworking is just like knitting except there are spinning blades that can take off your finger in an instant, lots of sawdust to choke your lungs, and things are put together with glue instead of yarn. There are also no DPN's, or clapotis (whatever that is). I'm sure knitting can be dangerous, I just am not aware of how. Maybe there are lots of eye injuries from those pesky needle thingys.

So today in shop class I:
Made a big washer shaped item and brazed (that's molten metal ladies) the connecting pieces from a lamp harp onto it. Then I brazed the handle onto an iris assembly from a theatrical spotlight (it broke up at Danny's school and I foolishly said something like, "I can fix that!"). Then I made an eight hook hanger for swimsuits (not that I use them much).

Illustration #1




















Then I made a rabbeting sled (See illustration #1) (that's a tool for making rabbet cuts) so I could make the 24 cuts in the ends of redwood 2x4's to make rabbeted corner joints in my gates. I'm making three gates for the front yard project, AKA the most beautiful front yard ever.

So I did all that and glued up the three gates after figuring out exactly how big to cut the pieces, which is a critical step if you already have the posts in place in concrete.

(insert two festive beverages (G&T) here)

Tomorrow I'm gonna make 48 dowels and drill 48 holes for them and glue all them in place. Once all the glue cures (polyurethane no less) I'll sand and stain the lot of them and hang them up and put on the bamboo and... ... ...

I'll post pictures.

Woo Hoo!

Mouse is back!

Plus the flowers are really coming out all over the place! Here are a few pix.


























The yard is getting even more done. We put some canna plants around the Buddah. We got the bamboo things from Ikea thinking that spending $35 on those would be far easier and cheaper than building a half round planter. I'll be building gates this weekend out of a large pile of wood. Today we got a couple of flagstones and moved two of the ferns. I also put in a post. (exciting, I know)

Crikey!!

The true purpose of the Internet has now been found. For your enlightenment I most strongly suggest you follow this link, just not at work. It isn't p0rn, but you probably won't be sending the link to your boss.

Almost perfik

Now this is my kind of web page.
NSFW unless you work someplace where there are nekkid boobs all the time.

Getting there

Oooohhh. Ahhhhhh.









The yard continues to get better bit by bit. This weekend we got some cool chairs and a virry restful fountain to make purdy noises while we relaxify. That's the elephant I mentioned earlier there on the left.

We also went to see a host of theatrical extravaganzas like Mame (for the cape thingy) and Hamlet and Lion in Winter and Comedy of Errors. We saw lots of friendly faces.


Early this month a fellow we knew well enough to call a friend suffered enough mental pain to cause him to suddenly take his own life. Everyone was fairly shocked as this was quite unexpected. We attended a memorial to Dave on Saturday and the church was full. I was moved by what his family and friends had to say about him. He was a devoted father and husband, and he left behind quite a few people that really loved him a great deal. Dave was a man with a very unusual sense of humor and way of expressing himself. He was always genuine and a pleasure to be with. It was the most difficult memorial I had ever attended. I can't imagine how bad Dave must have felt to leave behind what he did.

OUAM

Earlier this year you may remember that I was in a little show called Once Upon a Mattress. I won the Captain's Cape for being an extra special good chorus member. Of course this meant that I had to come up with a show themed decoration to sew onto the cape. Here's what I made. A little tiny mattress with "once" upon it. I think it's so clever, don't you too?

On Saturday I give the whole dang thing to the next winner.

101

I was informed earlier today (while in my air conditioned cubicle) that it was 101 degrees at home. It's 87 now and that's still too hot. Wearing just cargo shorts is too much... I think I need to go in the pool. Naked. Shield your eyes.

At least I have a truly bad movie to amuse me, a double feature: The Horror of Party Beach / The Curse of the Living Corpse from 1963.

happy father's day!

What a nice day indeed. It started well since we had a nifty party to celebrate our super nice front yard and the party lasted till after midnight, so that counts officially. We all watched a terribly bad movie, Quest of the Delta Knights filmed at Black Point Forest where the "real"renfaire used to be. It was an MSTK3 thing with the talking robots and all that. Deathstalker proved to be too much for most everyone.

We had plentiful drinkies and numerous humorous guests. Rydell almost got violent when I tried to give him a martini in a pink glass. He said, "Pink! Pink!" pointing to the glass. I quickly handed him a martini in a clear glass and he calmed right down. We also pajabbered our way through a big Costco jar of cashews, which Pete noted were Indian and he told us all about it in his best Indian accent. The laughter lasted till after midnight. We have some pretty nice friends. (thanks all)

Today dawned with a headache, oddly.

A few Many handfuls of glassware got cleaned up, I had some toast and a cup of coffee and I was ready for a big shopping trip. We got a bunch of regular stuff and an elephant, which was on sale and marked down for a chipped corner (score!). We also picked up some MORE plants (can you believe it people!?) which we promptly planted to grow into the wire fencing that I put in on Saturday.

The yard looks so good now we are fairly pinching ourselves. We had casual dinner for the second night in a row in our newest "room" of the house surrounded by our little jungle.

I had a few beautiful moments as well, my little one telling me I was the best dad in the world, and Sharon telling me precisely why I was the best father of all for her children. It's good to be me, especially today.

reflection

in a rush
I've overlooked
so much in life

now I see it all
in glimpses
in light

if I concentrate
reflect
consider
vision comes clear

in this moment
I see how life
has brought me here

in this moment
I am surrounded
by my life
supported
by my memories

sweet pleasance
relief, gratitude and grace
comfort and ease

OMG pr0n!

Well, Curse of the Erotic Tiki was FAR too porntastic to show at a genteel bad movie night. There was lots of simulated lovin' and black bras overflowin' with silicone. Everybody in the cast did everybody else except for the guys didn't do each other cause it wasn't that kind of a thing. And there were NO naughty bits (except for the pnuematic nipples) in sight, even though the nice actors pretended there were. All in all, not so spring fresh, and not NEARLY "bad" enough.

So, Deathstalker it is instead. As one reviewer said, "You have to see Deathstalker just so you can say, 'Yeah, but was it as bad as Deathstalker?' when your friend tries to tell you about a bad movie they saw..."

Come on over on Saturday and help us celebrate bad cinema.

stuff and nonsense

Well, the ladies went to Valhalla and had lots of fun after the graduation thingy. Two down, one to go for the public school thing.






Before they left we went out to lunch with to celebrate Andy's graduation. Here are the boys celebrating. That's Sharon's little brother Scott (or Uncle Sock to the kids).




So during the weekend I put in a few plants, went to Home Despot and bought a bunch of man stuff, dug two three-foot deep holes and planted some pressure treated posts to hold up the gate I still have to build. I made a fairly elegant (if I do say so myself) mailbox holder upper.

Then I put in a bunch of metal fence posts to hold up the wire fencing that the plants we still have to buy and plant will grow into. There was painting and staining and a few festive beverages in there.

The yard is really starting to look like Charlie Dimmock and her friends came by and visited, except there isn't a nifty water feature except for the little fountain we have.

We even squeezed in a movie that wasn't nearly bad enough to qualify as a bad movie. (Bloodrayne) I plan to make up for that by hosting my friends to watch The Curse of The Erotic Tiki. Wanna come over for that? (I'll preview it first and find out if it is too much skin to be funny. If so we'll see something else.)