NvEoUlMkAeNrN

Marzipan

Ok, this is kind of mundane, Disculpame, but it’s also the little things that make life worth living. Appreciate them :)

The soap in the dispensers here at work smells like Marzipan, mmmmh, Marzipan, my favorite. I have the feeling I’ll just randomly get up and wash my hands from time to time just to get an olfactory fix.

International Crowd

I was riding BART to Tim and Rui’s house in Oakland when I overheard a couple across the train from me having a conversation in German. It was cool hearing my mother/father tongue being spoken. A Spanish conversation ensued somewhere else on the train. Some Asian looking people at the end of the train were speaking what I was guessing as Korean.

I was facing the other way when I heard anoher language behind me, I couldn’t make it out. I listened for probably a few minutes and only figured out what was going on when I heard the “Yea, you still my nigga tho.”

I felt like a damn fool.

About The Flowers

Check out About the flowers, a flyer i found in boston last year.

Wow, they really liked that picture, wish they could leave more than 10 comments, would be a nice ego boost.

Hmm, I just posted louis, he’s quite popular as well.

Eeerie

So when you close the door you don’t notice it but if I’m taking a pee at the office here at my new job there’s negative pressure in the bathroom - the door whistles when it’s not completely closed, it’s eery. Feels like the bathroom should be a germ-warfare biohazard lab. Maybe sometimes it is.

Anyway, better to have negative pressure than positive pressure in the john.

Archive.org Yay

So most of you already know about archive.org and the thousands of live shows that they have available for download. While I was in South America they started converting some content to mp3 and ogg vorbis and now it’s possible to select a show and start it streaming. This is gonna great for the long days of coding I may have in my near future.

THIS HERE shows all the artists that have their shows up in streaming format. Checking out some Grand Theft Bus that a Canadian told be about a few months back.

I know somebody out there would dig on the two thousand and eighty-six Grateful Dead shows…

Thigh Loin?

So there’s an area in San Francisco called the Tenderloin. Strip clubs and seedy corners. I’ve been through it 3 times in the past 2 days, all by car.

Tonight I was riding back from Tim and Rui’s taco night in Oakland with Kasey who had just moved out here as well but had his truck with him. He did it right. He took three weeks riding out, camping along the way, taking everything but Interstates. Once again Zen And The Art of Motocycle Maintenance comes to mind as it tends to do a lot.

We were riding through that sketchy area - I couldn’t remember the word Tenderloin, maybe that PBR hit me harder than usual, so I said

“I think this part of town is called the Thigh Bone.”

“Tenderloin,” Drea corrects me.

“Thigh Loin?”

“Hmm”

“Tender Bone?”

10:16 am

Listening to Chandler Travis Bob What’s Is Name.
(lyrics at the bottom…)
Bags packed. Must shut off laptop.

Adios for now, East Coast.

More Digging (Don't Squat)

Digging through my stuff trying to figure out what I’m bringing with me on the plane tomorrow is a trip. There are so many random things. Shirts that I’m finally comfortable parting with, I mean, yeah - High School Programming Competitions, I guess I did get a $50.00 savings bond that matures only 17 years from now. Does anyone else hold onto their high school math club shirts? I don’t think I ever wore mine once except for the day that we got it. These things can all go. Maybe I’ll turn them into digital baggage - a 2 megapixel photos for memories, and that’s all. Another 500 kilobytes on my hard drive.

I didn’t find my bike pump. I’m giving up now. That’s when I usually find things anyway. I had given up on my flippers and diving mask years ago and waddayaknow? There they are, hanging out in the old suitcase that’s open but I can’t close it because I don’t remember the combination. Maybe tonight I’ll go through the 1000 number combinations — or I can just take the brown monstrosity that I found in the schoolbus with so many other discarded and forgotten things. One day I’ll have to write about the school buses on the land here.

What I did find that inspired me to jump on the computer on such a busy day is a sticker that my dad presented to me with so much glee a few years back. I know he wasw probably dying with anticipation before he gave it to me, he knew I’d love it. I did. I forget about all these things that I have lying around - anyway, here’s another one from the vaults… Word is he spent a good deal of time trying to cleanly separate it from a toilet on a plane somewhere over Indonesia:

A Candle Warmer

3am. I head to the kitchen to make a yummy toast topped with butter and honey. In my opinion the bread machine was one of my mom’s best aquisitions ever. She makes a rockin-hearty bread only a German could love.

I scan around for something to read while chewing on the yum yum. The Floyd Press, nah, I don’t know any of the kids in the Engagements section anyway, all the kids in my high school class that would put that stuff in the local paper are long ago married. Ok, what else to read. What’s the Lakeside Collection? Flip Flip Flip…

Oh, how darling, a CANDLE WARMER.

A Candle Warmer?

Don’t they have a hard enogh time dumping these things for $0.25 at the thrift store last time I checked. I guess we can all be lucky it’s not monthly installments of $5.95. As I push the catalog away I mumble under my breath “Only in the United States.”

Candle Warmer

Simply place your favorite scented candle on this warmer, and enjoy the aroma as the wax heats up. You don�t ever have to worry whether or not you blew out your candle! The warmer can be left on all day. Features an on/off switch with indicator light and a UL Listed, 53” cord. Use a wax candle with a ceramic, glass or metal container (candle not included). Perfect for your office, homes with small children, dorms and more! Measures 5-�” x 5” x �”.

$5.95 each

Oh The Distractions...

gotta love IM:

[02:15] leo: hey man
[02:15] leo: ests alli
[02:15] volker: si
[02:15] leo: cool
[02:15] leo: estoy muy borracho con clos
[02:16] leo: sabe la dicco es ok pero clos es mejor en la calle
[02:17] volker: oy, quiero clos ahora.
[02:17] leo: si lo se
[02:17] volker: es muy barato. aqui vino no es tan barato.
[02:17] leo: ven a peru amigo
[02:18] leo: lo se

and on and on and on…
oh the clos makes a funny Leo.

Random Paper Notes To Self

Taking a quick break from helping to seal the outside basement walls on my mom and Rick’s house I was digging through my storage things looking for my bike pump. I really want to find my bike pump. This is ridiculous.

Looking for the pump I found a little piece of paper that I’ve been holding onto for about three years, trying to figure out what to do with silly little things that happen out on the street, quirky little conversations, that kinda stuff. Well now I have this blog. Time to get rid of the paper notes. Make it digital less physical baggage. More digital baggage.

I was reading on the bench outside of 1369 Coffee in Central Square, Cambride MA - waiting for te Cantab Lounge Bluegrass Night to start up when one of the homeless regulars sat down on the bench facing me, observing me…

“Are you relaxing under the stars?” He asked.

“What?”

“Are you relaxing under the stars?”

“Can’t really see the stars.”

“If you knew what’s up there you wouldn’t be reading that book.”

July 17, 2001

Editorial Note: I think there’s some kinda deeper meaning to what he said. It’s amazing what slips out of the mouth of these folks that we so often write off as being ‘crazies.’

Also before I throw away the note I should check out Mollie O’Brien’s Bluegrass and transfer the titles of books on Himalayan adventures to my little Moleskine that keeps that kind of information more permanent

DJ Ben

I just stopped by my childhood buddy Ben’s house and kicked him a few records. He’s gotten into DJing and playing around with some production. I kicked him the vinyl of Star Wars & Other Galactic Funk, that I bought in Sao Paulo. I kinda wanted to keep that for myself. I guess that’s what makes it a good gift. He’ll play it for people more that I would anyway. He’ll put it to better use.

I also brought over the 45’s of Cumbia, Salsa, and Huayno that I bought in Cusco and challenged him to try to mix some beats in with it. It was a challenge. He got some things synched up with it but it was hard to find anything that really fits. It’s fun to push him into working with new musical styles - he’s all about that. I let him borrow those 45’s to play with. I shall check back in on him later and see how he’s done :)

How Cool

I keep realizing that more of my friends or aquaintances are living out in San Francisco. I totally forgot about Brandon and Margo. Merrit is out there as well. It’s pretty cool. Pretty cool. I’m so damn casual about getting things packed up and all that. Living out of a backpack for a half a year, I’l feeling like I can just do it again for another bit - I’ll be lightweight - biggest thing I’m bringing is my bicycle and then just trying to max out the baggage weight allowance. (2×50lbs+my carry-on laptop and buttpack) Oh so casual feeling. I’ll probably start feeling frenzy come Saturday night, but hey, in a frenzy is when I get the most work done.

Ugh, I still have to do my taxes.

a hat?

This was on the tag on a shirt that a friend gave me in Pimentel, Peru.

Floydfest III

I was out at the festival all weekend. I always love it. I get a chance to see all the friends that are still around, people that come back into town, and random kids from highschool and other connection that I haven’t even thought about in close to 10 years. Damn, little Abe G. is 21 years old now. Damn. Kamal C. is married and somewhere in upstate NY. Woah.

Aside from the standard kicking around the hack, throwing the disc, and being an all yellow-garb posterchild there are a few nice stories that came out of the weekend:

Story 1 Sitting around the drum circle campfire on Friday night the redneck contingent was present among all the heady kids and all the burnouts and all the groovy dancers and the bangin’ drummers. The 3 rednecks, away from the fire were semi-obscured by darkness, were hitting the moonshine pretty hard. Next thing I know there’s a shout in the night “DANCE, HIPPIE, DANCE,” they get a few giggles at their stupidity and take this as a greenlight to yell the same line on and off for the next hour. Finally one got so drunk he got up there and danced as well. Oh boy. “DANCE HIPPIE DANCE.”

Story 2 Many many years ago, 9 more or less there was a girl I was hanging out with at Black Mountain Festival in North Carolina. She was the one and only person I’ve known to tuck a stick of incense behind her ear while sitting around the fire, walking thought the wooded paths, whatever. I still do that every now and then. I think it’s a great idea. Floydfest was another nice time to pull this little stunt. I got some food, went to dance to Culture at the main stage and after the band was done my incense was burned down to the last little glowing diamond of orange. Holding it between my thumb and pointer some guy walking past told me to “watch out and keep it on the down-low.” So I was holding the incense as one might hold a joint. I jokingly brought my hand up to my mouth and took a big drag of incense stick. The guy grinned and walked away… I felt a hand on my shoulder, a big hand, an authoritative hand. A security guy.

“You can’t smoke that here. Come with me”
“Oh, sorry if I misled you, I was pretending this burned out incense was a roach”
“Sure thing, buddy. Whatever. You better come with me.”
“Ok, where we going?”

I gave him the remains of my incense, a yellow-orange-ish Nag Champa butt. He put it in his fingers, scrutinized it, smelled it, and asked me what it was.

“Incense I said” as I pulled out my toothbrush container containing a dozen more sticks.

“What is this?” he asked.

“Incense” I said, “It smells good. You burn it”

“Never heard of anything like that.”

“Ok, well, let’s go find Chris and Erika (the festival organizers), maybe they can explain it to you. There’s probably an incense vendor here. Wanna go find them? In fact, go ask any impartial person standing around here, they’ll tell you. “

“Sure smells like marijuana, boy.”

“Listen,” I said, smiling “I have nothing to hide. Incense is legit. Let’s go wherever you wanna go, you talk to whomever you want to, just make sure you keep that stick as evidence, OK”

“You know what, I’m gonna let you go. Just don’t be doing any more of that at THIS festival.”

Walking away I pretty much kept my cool.

I’d never done a front-handspring before - but right then I felt like I could - I was so energized from the encounter. I didn’t do it though. I prefer to have Ultimate send me to the wheelchair.

(Of course I’m paraphrasing the whole conversation for effect - but I don’t think it’s too far from reality.)

Story 3 Not really a story, but I sure love my sleeveless red hoodie.

ducky

From when we first got our webcam at interdim. Low-Fi fun. Lomorific.

Hate Hate Hate

Trying to do some absolute positioning for my mom’s website. Firefox is beautiful. Internet Explorer can go suck it. I want to kill someone. This design would be so clean and elegant if Microsoft just got off their ass and complied with some standards.

This developer blog says they’re getting on it, but please. They haven’t changed anything in years.

Everyone, if you’re still using IE. STOP.

Later On That Evening

Had a good time - footbag and all - Got to read about how they put the 1st down and 10 yard lines on football fields in Scientific American and the Rainbow Guide 2004, a National Geographic, a Trycicle, and The Sun Magazine made some nice perusing of the coffee table.

Driving back I was driving real mellow like they tend to do, I spotted 2 sets of eyes up on a hill next to a road. I slowed down a bit and saw that they were just camped out and not moving so i stopped braking and coasted past at about 40mph.

I had already stopped watching the eyes when a cat came into my field of vision and continued running full speed in front of the car. I barely had time to react. there wasn’t much I could do. It was right there in front of me - my only option was to try to get the car centered over it and maybe pass over. No such luck.

I heard it smack the back right wheel. Boo, I turned back around a little ways down the road, came back and looked around - saw nothing. I guess I’ll never know if it made it. Been a while since I’ve hit a mammal.

Driving on it reminded me a lot of our old dog Daezeey (sp?) - my grandpa thought she was the cutest - who used to not jump up or walk and beg but just sit down on her butt and raise her front paws to beg. She was chill. There’s probably a video of her tucked away in the family stash.

My sister was away at Tufts, I was in school at Virginia Tech. D. wasn’t getting as much attention as she used to. Maybe getting older. Maybe getting arthritis. For some reason one day when the UPS truck that you can hear rumbling down the driveway for a third of a mile, D. just threw herself out in front of it. The driver had no choice in avoiding her. The driver even really liked D. a lot. Story has it he stopped, picked up the deceased, and showed up at the door crying - not knowing what to do. He had just run over our dog on the driveway.

It begs to be asked if animals do these things intentionally or are freaked out by our big noisy vehicles. Instinct or conscious.

We buried D. down by the pond and marked the gravesite with some rocks. A few years later D.’s grave ended up a fire pit.

I needed someone to talk to on my drive home.

Here’s a song for the occasion, warning it’s a bit sad so of course it’s a bit pretty too.

The Billys - Cristoffer - 6:33min

(Not sure about legality of posting this song, I consider it getting the word out on an excellent album. I hope Billy doesn’t mind too much. Buy it here or here.)

Now, back to The Waifs for me.

Update: 4:30am, walking down to the tent I see some more cat eyes. These ones I’m used to, it’s Shyler, our 17 or so year old cat who’s still out there hunting most nights. Yes, her name is from Dink the Little Dinosaur. I saw her eyes, she started walking toward me, I heard the rustling in the grass, when suddenly some animal struck my foot. Must have been a bunny. Just thought it was so odd that another animal should run into me like that in one night that I had to go back up here and write it down real quick.

Ticket(s)

Well then, I just bough a ticket from Greensboro, NC to San Francisco, CA for August 23. I’m gonna go lightwight on this first trip out there. Basically see what I can fit into the weight allowance plus I have to dtop $80 to fly with my bicycle. I really think that’s worth it in terms of flexibility that will give me later on.

I’m here breaking my head over how I want to architect my mom’s new website. I played around with Mambo for a while but I think it’s gonna confuse more than benefit. I think I’ll just go with a php/mysql solution, maybe some templating language and some of the code that I wrote for my Pinnacle contracting gig in Summer 2003 and of course the MassRmvWait.com code.

Much to do. Looking forward to Floydfest this weekend. I got to go in free the past few years because my mom was performing. Not so lucky this year, I have to be kid stage photographer. I’m not complaining. Last year I got a few nice kids pics without being comissioned.

Oh wait, that was of us playing in the kids tent.

I’m off to play some hacky sack with Jaques and Emily - always a huge pleasure.

cross

Moving On

So I got a call from some old co-workers the other day and it looks like I’m off to San Francisco in about two weeks to work with them. It accelerates my plans a little bit but I should be in good shape. I’ll get to be home in Virginia for a total of about a month. I got in on July 23 and will most likely ship out on August 23.

I’m looking forward to seeing all my friends who have moved to the bay area - and the ones that have always been there.

Clouds

They were doing 50.

I was doing 60.

I slowly passed out of their fluffy shadow
back into the warm warm sun.

Paganello 2001 Pics Back Online

I’m trying to get some of my old Interdimensions web content back up since that company closed its doors while I was on the road. The first installment shall be Paganello 2001.

My favorites are Ozzie, Deb, and Yusi with Peldi and Brad in the back, Ivana on the wall, the pier, the kid walking, limbo, the crazy Russians, and the girl in the hat.

One-Upping Taus

Tizzie has been pretty good at sharing what music he’s listening to at the time of his post. Now I’ve come to take all that a level further, I’ve been using the audioscrobbler plugin to submit all the tracks that I play here on my computer which is my primary source of music right now, my CD’s still being in Boston.

Anyway, try it out, we can all work together to compromise my privacy!

I also put a link to that page on my sidebar on this blog, I was getting errors trying to display the last few tracks using the rdf feed, maybe I’ll work those kinks out later.

Peace to you all.

About The Flowers

Going through the archives I found this fun one from Aug. 14, 2003. I thought the rough English was bad on signs in South America. Wrong.

I dig the message of this note thought it makes me laugh.