Welcome to California and my first earthquake. It’s like being on a big boat.
So my man Jacob in Boston sent me an email on Friday that there was gonna be a Peace Festival in Golden Gate Park this weekend. Speedway Meadow, same place the 9/11 Fest was held, same place where next week’s bluegrass is gonna be. Shane just moved out from the NE so we decided to meet up there.
I got there and it was a bit cold and overcast as it tends to be in that part of the city. I wander amongst all the healers and crystalists and dancers and good-vibers, feeling a little lost.
Off in the distance I see some people throwing a frisbee. Yay, maybe I’ll go toss for a bit. Yeah, that’ll give me a nice lift. So I go over and one guy recognizes me - his name’s Javier, we can’t quite place where we’ve met. Ultimate for sure (Turns out he and I both played with His and Hers at Poultry Days in 200…1? maybe?)
Those guys were there waiting for their game of Sloshball to come together. Filling the tub with Ice. Dumping the guiness cans and the pbr cans into the ice. Keepin’ ‘em cool. Beer is an essential ingredient. Sloshball is kickball with beer in hand. There was a great crew out playing. Many of them ultimate players. Why am I not surprised. I ran into a few people that I had met before or knew, Margo from Blacksburg was there, Coco whom I met at Paganello in 2001 was there, many faces looked familiar. I had a damn fine time, threw out my knee on a strike but got to end the game with a brilliant single-handed double play on first base.
That evening I went to hang out with Shane’s crew, we headed up to Fairfax to see some music. Lots of happy people dancing big. A good scene all in all.
Sunday was chill in comparison. An errands day that was in part spent gawking at hairy butts.
Accumulating again.
Bought a DSL Modem off of craigslist on Saturday morning. Found a computer desk and a nice rug 2 blocks from home that night.
Bought a coffee maker and a toaster oven and bluetooth pcmcia card at a yard sale on Sunday morning. Went to best buy and bought a computer and an LCD display. Now I just need to get some networking together and some P.O.S. machine to throw linux on and I’ll be up and running again.
Both Golden Gate Park.
Different Meadows.
Same Weekend.
What’s a boy to do?
O yeah, new housemates.
Came home to a note on my bed last night, it read something along the lines of:
Hi Volker,
We know you’re probably trying to save on the water bill or could you please flush the pee in the toilet in the morning ‘cause it’s gonna get flushed anyway.
— the girls
I wrote something like:
Sorry it’s hard to shake the hippie in me. I could care less about the bill. It’s damming up places like Hetch Hetchy that bothers me.
— volker
After I got back from dinner I took my note off the table. I don’t think it was seen by anyone. Maybe need to be more confrontational. Is this the kind of a place where I’m gonna be pulling bottles and cans out of the trash and recycling them instead of just insisting that the roomates do it. Often I’d rather just do the work than confronting. I’ve done that before for about a year. My sister is more of the “they need to learn” kind of person. I’m thinking the 2 girls are leaving in about a month so I can just deal until then. I’m not exatly part of the solution…
I mean, does the water come back up and splash their ass when they take a dump in the morning? Does pee really hurt you anyway. It wasn’t even all that concentrated. Maybe I’m just a hippie.
Maybe we should dam up Yosemite for some more water.
Maybe we should take over the Middle East for oil.
Maybe we should buy that H2.
It’s not the goddamn water bill. It’s our own sense of sustainability and survival.
Then again the girls who left the message smoke cigarettes.
Surprised?
I guess I’ll flush the yellow until further notice.
Yesterday I was peeing on the blue tablet in the urinal and it was almost gone. I was really looking forward to coming into work today and finishing it off. It feels like such teamwork with me and the guys here. We were all so pumped about our impending victory.
Some janitor must have replaced it overnight.
I guess we have to start over. Scrapple our way up from the bottom once again.
Drink! Boys, Drink!
(Scrapple? Hey, it sounds good)
I remember going to the Hillsville Flea Market back in the day. What excitement. Shopping for junk all day long. Comic books. Guns, Clothes. Crafts. Redneck culture like you wouldn’t believe. All good times. The Drive-Thru line at the Hardee’s was always packed.
I was just entertained to see this link in my random perusals of the web, wow, SW Virginia making the front page on the Christian Science Monitor. Who’da thunk it?
I finally got a place to live and moved in on Friday night after a long day at work. I think I rolled in at about midnight and dropped off my suitcase and backpack, drove Steve’s MINI back to his house and hopped on my bike to get to Firger’s party.
I got there really late. 3am-ish. Almost everyone was gone. I was glad to get there at all just to check in and get my name made fun of by some drunk guy who was trying to pass this chick that was clutching onto him off to me. It was nice when they left. I got to borrow a Richard Brautigan book from Dan. That made me happy. I can’t wait to re-read A Confederate General from Big Sur.
This weekend I spent running around exploring. Biking, rather.
There was the 9-11 Power to the Peaceful Festival in Golden Gate Park with Spearhead headlining. Very fun. Footbag. Good peoples. All the freaks definitely came out to that. Some people were still on Burning Man highs, I think.
Sunday there was a big bike race in downtown to I checked that out and then went for my own little bike ride across the Golden Gate Bridge. So pretty. So windy.
It’s nice to have a room to sleep in. A room to sleep in in. A kitten to wake me up in the morning. I need to get some speakers in my room. I think I’ll just try to haul these computer speakers from work home until I can get my good computer speakers from [tmo] ( 11 days of tofu ) who’s been kindly caring for them.
Rocking to some King Sunny Ade right now, I bought JuJu Music on cd on Sat. night - I have it on Vinyl already. Peace all, work work work.
So wow, I just got this email. It was sent to me at feedback@massrmvwait.com. MassRmvWait is a little project I did before I left for S. America. I don’t know if I understand this email really. Is one of you messing with me or is it for real. Help…
Would you guys help coach me through what I reply to this person? I’m so lost…
Here’s the message:
From: <removed>@aol.com
To: feedback@massrmvwait.com
Subject: (no subject)
if my dad don’t pay child support you take his license? how long if he never pd after IM 18 or 21 or fore life in a day?or ten years after im 18 or 20? he tried to harm him self over this 3 weeks a go. just let me know
thanks.
It’s been a while since my last geek-categorized post.
So my friend was getting an error posting comments on my Gallery. He was getting this error.
Fatal error: Call to a member function on a non-object in /homepages/34/d89863282/htdocs/dirtmine/gallery/classes/User.php on line 263
Turns out his cookies were turned off and Gallery failed kind of uncleanly. So the solution, make your friends accept cookies from your gallery site.
( keywords for people searching: gallery broken php solution help gallery v.1.4.2 )
Uhm, I wanna be like this guy. Not. He’s probably 16. I’ll forgive him. Maybe if we all get together we can buy the poor kid a shirt.
in his house i pointed at the car door that was in the hallway.
whose is it?
he said it’s kind of a sore point in the house.
he wants to do art with it.
i suggest he hangs it from the ceiling in the kitchen.
his roomate scoffed.
she said all the boys who come over suggest that.
she wants it out.
kidding about dan paying people to say the car door
could be used for art.
it was white.
he found it on the street.
Something to try at home, call it a test of coordination, of brain-remapping,…
Get on a bike, ride around for a few minutes then cross your arms and hold onto the left handle with youre right hand and the right handle with your left hand.
Steer.
Forgive me for suggesting this if you jack yourself. It fared very poorly at this exercise. Maybe with patience I can perfect this skill but don’t hold your breaths, it’s not high on my priority list.
I rented a car yesterday. I didn’t really register that it was Labor Day weekend until I showed up at the airport rental room at 1pm and saw crazy lines. I was finally driving an Impala toward Santa Cruz at about 2:20pm. I forgot to bring a book - the time passed very slowly.
Behind me in the line was one of the most negative people I have in remembrance. Every word that came out of her mouth was negative. Whining, relf-righteous, putting-down, I wanted to slap some sense into her but she would have probably just made fun of my dissheveled hair and I would have been without a reply - sometimes the attacks are just too moronic. I get in trouble when I laugh at people like that sometimes. It offends them more than any witty comeback. What’s so funny? What are you laughing at? I almost had some guy lunge across a porch at me with a punch at a party that the girls downstairs were having at 12 Curtis in Somerville. The kid was blowing off his friend and was unwilling to give him directions to the party and he had one of the worst Boston accents I’ve ever heard. I started laughing at his blowing off his friend like that and he took serious offense. I left. Later on he and some other kid got into a fight. ‘Tards. I digress…
So I drove down to Santa Cruz where I found the Ultimate tourney. Cool drive through some Redwood forests. Pretty stuff. I pulled up to the fields and walked up to where my sister was playing, we hugged and talked for a while — it was only a few minutes later that I turned around and my jaw dropped at the amazing scenery that was Santa Cruz, nestled on the corner of the Montery Bay - we were up high and had a spectacular view from the fields. One of the coolest places to play frisbee that I’ve been to. Waimanalo Polo Fields on Oahu are up there as well.
I didn’t know what I was doing that night - just kinda drove down, worst case I’d drive back to SF and try for hours to find parking because the rental office was most likely closed at the time I’d be getting back. Luckily I ran into an old teammate who had moved close to Santa Cruz and I suggested that it would be an amazing help if I could crash at his place. Arrangements were made and after a great Italian dinner with my dear sis I headed to Sven’s and got some sleep, Tuzo and Gibson, the cats darting all over the place. What a saving grace to have run into him. I like when things work out like that. Now I just need them to work out with apartment hunting.
In the am I decided to drive up Highway 1, up the coast. A bit of a longer drive but I’m soooo glad I stayed the night and got do to that drive. It was stunningly beautiful. Cliffs descending into the water, the occasional beach, Redwoods just up on the other side. I stopped the car in so many places just to hop out and wander around a bit. Pretty Pretty Pretty stuff, and so close to the city. So many bikes out. So many surfers out. I was impressed.
Later today I went exploring San Fran on my bike on this here Labor Day Sunday. That was after some so-so Ultimate pickup. Got me moving a bit I guess. Exlporing ranged from street musicians to drum and hack circles to shameless commercialism to a guy offering to rent my bike. It was an entertaining night. I sure do love to explore.
Do I have a point, not really. It was good to not be working and have some experiences. That’s all.
Wow, I was grabbing some form of lunch at the Safeway and today and eating it outside. Ok, the lunch was a bad idea - I was kinda worn out from thinking too much and working too late and then I’m still in Travel South America Save Money mode and went to the deli counter and got a heap of the $4.00 chicken chow mein with the hot and spicy chicken entree bit. When I sat down outside I realized that that hot and spicy chicken was pure fat and gristle and I didn’t really feel like stomaching that. Where was the dog to feed it to? None to be seen.
The employees have their smoke breaks in the picnic area outside the store. I saw the silliest hair I ever recall seeing today. Easily sillier than the girls with the hair spray poof from high schoo. Easier sillier than Coolio at his baddest. Easier sillier than the guys with te shaved heads and the little strip of styled hair pretending to be bangs.
This guy had a shaved head except for a ring of about the same size ring you get when you touch thumb to thumb and pointer to pointer. It was styled, gelled, sprayed, moussed, I don’t know to spike up in the air, about a half an inch long. It was a little bit like a crown… but, well, is he for real? I couldn’t think about it too much or I would have started snickering.
For those of you who read German, my cousin Peter is leaving soon to go study in St. Petersburg and he’s keeping a blog to keep in touch with friends/family.