Campus Martius

Music Sunday

2012-01-22T23:59:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine just pointed me at this cover, which is amazing:

Art

2011-10-27T21:54:00.000-07:00

Ever since Laura moved out, this home has seemed empty. I'm making a start to address this by looking for cool art to put around the house. Anyone have any suggestions? Yes, I'm going to get kitties to fill the void of the missing two, although none can replace them. Laura, if you ever want to give me either one of them, they're welcome here. In fact, I'm going to pray that Zooey starts pooping on your bed again, although to what or whom I'm going to pray, I have no idea.

P.S. Thanks to DGNY for reminding me via comment that I still have a blog!

Social Niceties

2011-07-20T23:26:00.000-07:00

Tonight we went out to a "Drinking Skeptically" get-together. I didn't learn much about the local skeptics, and I didn't make any friends, but I did come up with a list of things to consider if you're a considering going out to a group meetup of some kind.

Hate isn't attractive. If you are arriving with an agenda to rant about, perhaps you might like to reconsider.
Ego is boring. Nobody wants to hear about how proud you are of yourself. Seriously, I'm glad that you've supported yourself from the age of 18, without an education, but you're not special.
Anecdotes are cool, if they're on topic. If not--especially if they take five minutes to relate--they're irritating.
Being mean to people is NOT cool. When you tell me all about how you shamed a person in front of others, I don't see it as some kind of victory for you.
Being kind to people IS cool. When you ridicule that, I think less of you.
Just listen a bit, perhaps?
And ask people about themselves, rather than ranting about your own life. Is that hard? When you engage them, they'll respond and ask about you. It's a simple formula.

Garlic, How do I love Thee?

2011-07-19T17:58:00.000-07:00

Sweet baby Jesus*, do I love me some garlic twelve ways from sunday. I'll eat three raw crushed gloves in a plate of pasta and not bat an eye (a habit that basically turns me into the equivalent of a federal Superfund Cleanup site for the next four hours), and a half dozen cloves go into most things that I preserve. (Peppers, pickles, etc.) Also, sautéed garlic is a staple that deserves to be on the lowest rung of the now-defunct food pyramid, in my humble opinion: eight or more helpings a day!

Okay, I'm exaggerating, but I really do love the stuff. It's good for you, it's delicious raw or cooked or pickled, and it's truly the easiest plant to grow. You poke a clove into the ground in October, and then come back the next July and scoop out the matured bulb. At least around here, I never bother to water or feed it--I just make sure that the bed that it's in is richly amended with compost, and let the rains do the rest. My grandfather used to keep a jar of pickled garlic cloves by his bedside (from bulbs that he grew himself, of course), and whenever he would feel heart pains, he'd eat a couple; he claimed that the pains would go away quickly. Raw garlic is also, in my experience, a hangover prevention: if you've enjoyed the new year's celebration too much, swallow three cloves of garlic and you'll wake up tired and stinky, but not hurting.

Half of the 2011 garlic crop, drying

The first year that I was serious about gardening (2008), I planted about twelve softneck garlics in unamended heavy clay soil. My reward for that excessive inattention was a crop of bean-sized bulbs with no flavor. So last year, I devoted a 4'x4' bed to garlic, ordered hardneck porcelain seed garlic from Filaree Farm, and made sure that the soil was fluffy and rich. As a result, I have almost 100 fat bulbs, each 2" across and sporting six or seven large cloves each. I also enjoyed the benefit of ~100 delicious garlic scapes in the spring!

Nice 2" bulbs

For 2012, I have lost my mind. Having just harvested the bounty above, I realized that I have more than enough garlic to save for seed and store for cooking over the next year, but alas, I've already ordered more seed garlic from Filaree. Approximately three times more than I planted this year, enough to fill a 4'x12' raised bed. This means that next year, I am going to witness the Garlic Apocaplyse. Is it possible to have too much garlic? We shall see. Whatever the answer, I am never going to have to order seed garlic again....

And now a gratuitous picture of Finn with a dab of yellow paint on his kitten snout:

Just because

UPDATE: The garlic has been drying in the garage for a couple of hours now, and OH MY GOD does the garage smell amazing!

*Did you know that, strictly speaking, uttering the name "Jesus" is not "taking the lord's name in vain", according to christian texts and history? His name in aramaic was "Yeshua", which translates in english to "Joshua".

Facebook Sucks

2011-07-14T20:19:00.000-07:00

I don't use it very much anymore, mostly because of concerns about privacy issues. And now it's gotten worse: the "chat" feature seems to automatically log you in, and there's no way to disable that. You have to explicitly take yourself offline.

That being said, social networking is useful. I don't want to dump the networking aspect, just the facebook aspect. Does anyone have a google+ invite that they can send me?

Eight Wednesday Things

2011-07-13T23:32:00.000-07:00

TREES!

This new greenhouse ROCKS. That's a coffee bean tree and a bay laurel tree (as in, "bay leaves" or "roman laurel wreath") above. They are loving the 80ºF temps in there, as are the peppers. Next year, tomatoes and eggplant!
Getting people hooked on something you love is really awesome. I've turned Laura into a gardener!
I have too many Lego
Funny quote from tonight: "No punishment is too draconian. A good thrashing with the town eel, perhaps. Then, a written letter of apology to the eel."
Finn has slept for 23.5 hours today. I envy that cat.
Twitter is the most ridiculously silly thing ever
I don't have enough Lego
Honey badger don't give a shit!

On the relentless march of time

2011-07-06T23:52:00.000-07:00

A treat from the garden

The strawberries are coming on strong now. I only have a few plants, and the slugs get most of the fruit, but this was a handfull that was unharmed and perfectly ripe. I trimmed off the stems and halved them, and we shared the tiny bounty.

It's wednesday night, and I spent the sunset carving up cardboard boxes and tying the pieces up, because thursday morning is when the recycling guys come around.

Garlic!

The garlics are mostly huge and full of fat bulbs, and July 4 reminds me that I need to reorder seed garlic. So I did.

My peppers are doing well in the greenhouse: they love the 90F temps. I took my cell phone out there, and the wireless signal was strong--so this autumn, I shall be working with my laptop in the greenhouse.

Life's rhythms go on. Most of the things that I considered important when I was 18 just aren't anymore. In fact, even five years ago, I was a totally different person. I remember how my 80-year-old grandmother used to laugh at things that I would say, responding "darlin', none of that grows a garden".

I was confused at the time, but I understand now.

On the incredible thickness of privilege

2011-07-05T00:16:00.000-07:00

Richard Dawkins, who is someone that I normally admire, recently stepped into it. What do you think?

Relevant link

On Tomatoes

2011-07-02T20:01:00.000-07:00

Freshly pruned and caged Russian Black tomatoes

It's hard to grow tomatoes here. Really hard. The average last freeze in April 15, which is long after the southern USA states have already planted out--so seedlings must be started indoors, on heat mats, when there is still snow on the ground outside. By June, usually, the rains have stopped, but that's far too late to have the plants in the ground, so they must be planted out in late april underneath plastic, to keep the wet from giving them blight. This year, it rained all June, so it's even harder than normal. July and August are usually pretty dry, with September starting to threaten rain again---so late august and September is when we start to be able to harvest vine-ripened tomatoes, if we've done everything else right (see above).

This is why I built a greenhouse this year.

New Greenhouse! The automatic vents have opened in this picture, making a chimney effect and cooling the plants inside

It's too late this year, but next year I plan to have a crop of strong tomatoes in there. The Russian Blacks that I'm growing now have proven to be the most vigorous, beautiful tomato plants that I've ever started--I hope that they set fruit, and that it's good. If so, I'll be growing them in the warmth next year. Without the greenhouse, I have to cover them if there is a chance of rain, which I just did now. Don't take a vacation if you want tomatoes in the Northwest.

Feeding and watering is an issue, too. You can't feed tomatoes too much, or else they don't flower. But you can't underfeed them, or else the fruits are small. Moreover, they need specific minerals to avoid blossom end-rot and leaf yellowing.

But all that work and worry is worth it, even if I only get one tomato. Even just one. Why? Because those round red things in the supermarkets are hybrid atrocities---without flavor, and grown without care or purpose other than profit.

I'd rather live in a world where I can enjoy one real tomato that I've nourished from seed in my garden each summer, than a pile of hybrids grown anonymously and shipped 500 miles. I'm a locavore, an atheist, a scientist, and a fool: give me good things nearby, the truth, and silliness, and I'll be just fine.

Thursday Squash

2011-06-30T20:42:00.000-07:00

A Red Kuri Squash in the Garden

This is my first year growing winter squash, and rather than the traditional butternut, a Red Kuri is what I chose to try out. Apparently they are like small red pumpkins, or sometimes they stay yellow, with a very tasty nutty flavor. Trying oddball things like this is one of the aspects of home gardening that really appeals to me: I'm not limited to what the markets choose to sell.

Another excellent example of that is garlic. There are two kinds of garlic in the brand-name stores here, and maybe another five more at the farmer's market, but this year I planted four totally oddball varieties in my search for the perfect garlic--and I think I may have found it: Romanian Red. My RR's are producing large bulbs right now, enough to make it possible for me to save the largest cloves and replant them without buying new seed stock. An additional bonus is the garlic scapes that I just harvested and pickled--I had no idea what a scape was until I grew my own garlic, and now I wonder how I lived this long without them. They're only in season for a brief period in the spring, and each hardneck garlic plant produces only one--so they're relatively rare. But oh my god, how delicious with scrambled eggs, or pickled!

I laugh, with a smile, at how tame my life has become. Tomorrow I am going to go to the local food bank to see about volunteering possibilities. Since I stopped with the Mountain Rescue gig, I've been sort of aimlessly looking around for ways to give back to the community again. My tendency to overplant and the obviously huge amount of Red Kuri squashes that I'm going to have made me consider ways to give the produce away--and the food bank accepts gardener's donations. And that made me wonder if perhaps I could do more than just that.

And now I'm googling ways to become a certified master gardener...

Greenhouse

2011-06-26T00:46:00.000-07:00

My new greenhouse (and a bit of the garden)

My garden makes me happy. :) The greenhouse is this one, if you are interested. It was a bit pricey, but I really wanted a local, wood, long-term greenhouse with low maintenance, and it was the only one that fit the bill.

I've now stocked it with peppers, and Laura has put some tomatoes in there for her volunteer gig.

A small, unfocussed blur; a standing chill

2011-06-20T21:24:00.000-07:00

A squash blossom in my garden

With rue my heart is laden
For golden friends I had,
For many a rose-lipt maiden
And many a lightfoot lad.

By brooks too broad for leaping
The lightfoot boys are laid
The rose-lipt girls are sleeping
In fields where roses fade.

I worked in the garden tonight. Vines tied upwards, new dark driplines run through beds, raspberries picked and thinned; twine around black currants to restrain their rowdy growth, eggshells at the foot of the tomato plants, garlic scapes snipped and quickly sautéed in oil with freshly cut broccoli.

A riot of carrots

There is a robin nest just behind the garden fence. From 6:00am until 9:00:pm, the little chicks cry for food. "meep meep meep meep meep meep meep meep meep meep meep....."

I exulted when the dripline timer turned on right on schedule, and reveled in the focussed water on my plants, which have suffered so much in this cold spring. But tomorrow the pieces of the greenhouse arrive, and I'll put it together and know again that special greenhouse smell that I recall so well. I would find my grandfather would asleep in his, surrounded by tomatoes. At the age of 45, exactly how old I am as of last saturday, he uprooted his family and they fled for their lives to a country where neither he nor they spoke the language; he went from a job as a harbor master of a busy port to a field laborer, picking fruit. It was a familiar job: he had grown up helping my great grandfather tend the gardens of an imperial estate. He didn't complain, he was thankful for a second chance at life that many like him did not get.

I can't believe I'm fucking 45 years old! I will take a page from my grandfather's book of life, and not complain.

Secret Meeting

2011-06-19T22:13:00.000-07:00

As I get older, I yearn more for more alone-time. I've always kind of been this way, but lately it has been getting stronger. Before my father died, I remember going crabbing in Puget Sound with him and his best friend; as we sat on the boat after dropping the pots, the two of them got to talking about wives. "Yes, it can be difficult to be married", said his friend, "but just imagine how lonely it would be without them". My dad nodded in agreement.

This is completely opposite to the way I am, and I'm not certain why. I am perfectly satisfied not seeing anyone at all and having no human contact for a month or more. Perhaps this makes me a bit of a hermit... if so, I don't really have a problem with that.

There is an older woman who lives on my street who, I believe, lives alone. She walks up the sidewalk in the evening, seemingly with great purpose, but the sidewalk ends just a few hundred meters on where the street itself terminates in an explosion of weeds. So she turns around, and comes back down with the same intensity. I once greeted her, but she ignored me, effortlessly. She doesn't look at me as she passes by.

My neighbors are an older couple. They spend little time together, and when they do, it seems pro forma. He mows, she gardens. He calls out to me occasionally, when I'm pulling clover out of my raised beds. "Hey neighbor!" he says, like Ned Flanders. I think he's forgotten my name, since I only introduced myself to him once. "How goes it?" he asks. I say something mildly despairing about slugs, and then ask him what they're growing in their own two raised garden beds. "Fuck, I don't know. That's Carolyn's shit, I don't care what it is, I just water the shit, she does whatever she does with it", he answers.

I don't have any issues with being alone. But I never, ever, want to be with someone that I treat like that.

Unschooling

2011-06-07T15:57:00.000-07:00

An interim post while I get used to blogging again...

Here is a very interesting story about a teenager who has never been to school. I heard it on NPR last night as I was driving home with a carload of compost for the garden. At first I scoffed at the idea, but the more I think about it, the more I have concluded that it's a pretty inspired way to teach. The only thing that I think might be hard would be the transition from no structure to university classes, but that's about it. Just think about never going through the typical high school experience, and instead growing up and learning at your own rate, and in your own style.

So Much to Say

2011-05-25T00:11:00.000-07:00

May this be enough for now:

Woah

2011-05-22T22:32:00.000-07:00

I'm still alive! Film at 11:00.

In Which I ♥ Richard Feynman

2010-11-05T20:08:00.000-07:00

If it's wet and cold outside, an enjoyable way to pass some hours is to watch Feynman videos. He's got to be one of my heroes - smart, funny, and full of exuberance. I love the above video because not only does it show his quirkiness, it shows how a trained scientific mind works.

I'm still on my quantum mechanics kick. It's some seriously cool stuff, Maynard. I should have taken more physics as a university student. I'm now trying to wrap my head around Bell's Theorem, which (in a nutshell) states that either things don't have an objective existence when they're not interacting with other things, or faster than light interactions are possible. One of the two is truth, but not both, and it's been experimentally verified.

Einstein was horrified by the possibility of the latter (faster than light interactions), because of course it appears to contradict general relativity. It doesn't really, since no information can be transmitted -- but the very idea of faster than light quantum entanglement disturbed him. He called it spukhafte Fernwirkung, or spooky action at a distance.

The possibility of no objective existence bothered him even more. "I refuse to believe," he wrote, "that the moon does not exist when I am not looking at it." That's a simplification and exaggeration of the concept, but it demonstrates the weirdness of it.

Fallen

2010-09-27T22:03:00.000-07:00

Fallen from Sascha Geddert on Vimeo.

One of my favorite little videos in a long time, that one. As someone else put it, "When people ask me how I can be at peace without belief in god or an afterlife, now I can just show them Fallen and save myself a lot of time and effort." I love the way the meteor shakes his little butt with anticipation when he first learns to have fun with his situation, just like Finn wiggles his butt before attacking a fake rattle-mouse on the floor.

I've been reading a lot of physics, lately, particularly quantum mechanics and the various interpretations. The basic theory makes sense, but the interpretations seem to be stretching credulity. For example, there's the Many Worlds interpretation of QM, which says that every time there's a quantum decision to be made, the universe splits in two. Apparently Stephen Hawking believes in that one.

And then there's the Copenhagen Interpretation, which says that faster than light signaling is possible between entangled particles. Niels Bohr (my personal hero) believed that one; in fact, he was its primary author.

I dunno, I think trying to interpret beyond what the simple equations are telling you is probably a futile exercise, unless there is something that you can actually experimentally verify, and for now there's nothing like that. There is something to be said for not fighting the situation that you're in.

Fuck Me!

2010-08-21T00:50:00.000-07:00

This has been making the rounds, it came to me courtesy of my lovely friend Maria the librarian:

ORLY?

2010-08-10T00:48:00.000-07:00

I've been away, because I've gotten sucked back into IRC. I never thought it could happen again, but it did. And, well... there I am. I have some amusing things to say about it all, which I will try to mention later. Among the most amusing is that I was made a channel op tonight, for no real reason other than that I seem to have a sense of humor that one of the other ops likes. Granted, not on the most wild-western network, but still.

Finn Returns

2010-07-31T20:52:00.000-07:00

Sleepy man in my office

Finn finally came home tonight, ten days after he'd left. Today it had been overcast and raining for the first time in a month, and I'm guessing that that's what drove him back home. He didn't appear to be hurt at all -- just missing his collar and quite a bit thinner than when he left, but otherwise obviously happy to be home: chatty and hungry. He's purring on my leg at the moment. His amazing new skill is the ability to fall into REM sleep after about 90 seconds of immobility, and to wake up to full alertness in about the same amount of time.

Laura said "I'm as happy now tonight as I was inconsolable last night."

Finn is now grounded. As much as we believe in letting him live his life as he wants to, he's only a year old, and one day out of ten is not enough, especially if he's going to be losing a $20 collar and tag every time he goes on walkabout.

Ugh

2010-07-31T00:11:00.000-07:00

Things that I'm up to tonight (or was):

1. Packaging the Cherokee Purple seeds from their fermentation.

2. Pondering one-way functions.

3. Shopping for a dream oscilloscope.

4. Starting to reread the classic of classics.

5. Comforting a very sad woman about the apparent loss of Finn.

6. Realizing how much unresolved shit I have in the back of my head that is holding me back from actually being a whole human being, still, even at this point in my life, and wondering what the hell I have to do to move past this.*

7. Laughing at how absurd that is.

8. Pouring a drink.

9. Understanding that that's not a long term solution, but telling the world to go fuck itself anyway.

10. Big sigh.

*Crying women seem to stir shit up in me.

R.I.P. Zapho

2010-07-29T20:39:00.000-07:00

Several years ago, back when I was struggling through graduate school, I lived in the basement of a very fine house owned by a good friend of mine. His sister lived in the room next to mine. The three of us (and later four, when a younger brother moved in) made a kind of impromptu family, and we all became very close.

Shortly before I graduated and moved out, the sister got a couple of small kittens. Oh my god, they were adorable! We played with them for hours and hours.

Time rolled on, and the kittens became cats. She called the all-black one Alexander, for some reason, but the rest of us called him Zapho. If you ever watched Sifl & Olly, that will make sense. He was a good cat with a sweet personality -- he would friendly right up to you, given even half a chance. Eventually the second brother would move in some other animals (a pit bull and a ferocious alley cat) who beat the living crap out of Zapho for several years, but that was after my time in that household.

Eventually, the sister moved out, and she took her cats with her. By that time, Zapho was permanently traumatized by years of abuse from the other animals -- which was not her fault at all, since she couldn't afford to live anywhere else. It was what it was. He ate a lot, since it was his consolation. But after a while, he gained a LOT of weight. And today, she wrote me that his heavy weight had led to liver failure, and that she had put him down as a result. She was really sad, and I can only imagine (from miles and miles and miles away) the tears she must have cried while writing to me.

As it turns out, I'm the only one with any pictures of Zapho. And he looked a lot like Finn. Who is still missing, and today was a week.

Young Zapho

The Nightshades

2010-07-28T22:40:00.000-07:00

My tomatoes have begun to develop something that is either early blight, or else a magnesium deficiency. It's too early to tell, but I've dosed them with dolomite lime and an epsom salt dilution, and I'm always regular about watering, so the next week or so should tell. Here's the evidence:

Note the yellow tinges between the leaf veins. Here's to hoping that it's not blight! I have a bit more evidence to support that it isn't, namely the upper leaf-curl:

That is definitely not a sign of blight, but it does speak to either another disease or to nutrient deficiencies. Whoever said that tomatoes are the easiest garden plant to grow was an idiot.

In other news, I dumped one of the 30-gallon potato pots today. It had been ravaged by deer and was not doing well, so I put it out of its misery. Here are before, during, and after shots:

Before, with tarp at the ready to catch the dirt

Right after dumping the pot -- you can see some potatoes peeking out

The tiny harvest

These were german butterballs again. The harvest was far below what I expect out of a 30-gallon pot: only about 3-4 lbs of potatoes. Normally there should be more like 10. But the deer really cut this pot's season short -- the other pots have at least another month, maybe two, of good tuber growing.

Finn is still gone. My neighbor tonight said that he saw a coyote in his yard early one morning recently. Things are not looking good for the little man. Laura is making "lost cat" flyers to put in our neighbors' mailboxes. But it's been a week now, and I'm starting to think that the little dude is really gone.

Godless Heathens Muster

2010-07-27T22:56:00.000-07:00

Pharyngula readers meetup, Pike Brewery, Seattle, 7/27/2010

So, we ended up heading down to Seattle to meet PZ Meyers, principal over at pharyngula, and a fine time was had by all. PZ is the fella in the green shirt on the left, about 2nd or 3rd from the far end of the table. He is much the way I expected him to be: gracious and down to earth, but clearly nobody's fool. The rest of the folks were an amusing mix of overeducated scientists (an epidemiologist sat across from me, and a university professor beside me), geeks & nerds, free spirited near-hippies, and young radicals with agendas. In short, my kinda people. And everyone was friendly and garrulous. I quickly got locked into a fascinating conversation with a biology grad student, the epidemiologist, and the professor, and the four of us ended up talking animatedly for two and a half hours. Partway through, PZ came around and introduced himself, and stayed to chat for 30 minutes or so, before moving on around the table to talk to the rest. Also about that time, a UW undergraduate appeared who had the biggest smile I think I've ever seen on a human being that was not the result of Photoshop manipulation, and he turned out to be an extremely thoughtful and good-natured guy who jumped right in to the debate over how to define ourselves ("atheist? nontheist? empiricist? agnostic?").

All in all, a very good evening, and it makes me want to find a local skeptics group. Unfortunately, I wasn't thinking and didn't get a picture of the Lyndon LaRouche supporters outside the pub holding signs of the president and shouting "IMPEACH THE ONE!".... sigh. I love visiting Seattle. The Crazy™ there is palpable. Here in Bellingham the best that we can really muster is the guy looking like a santa-in-flannel who walks up and down Railroad Ave. with an eye patch and a parrot on his shoulder, but that's just endearing, not truly loony.

In the end, we all exchanged business cards with emails and phone numbers, and I might actually keep in touch with some of these folks, since they all actually live within a couple hours' drive of me.

I will end with a shout-out to the wait staff at the Pike Brewery: those folks were awesome. Professional, fast, courteous, and cheery, even after it got FRICKIN' CROWDED. I can't recommend the beer in general (although the stout is passable and the Monk's Uncle Trippel is, as I mentioned, stellar), but the wait staff make it a worthy destination.

Monday LOLcat

2010-07-26T21:53:00.000-07:00

Laura may kill me if she sees this, but it's hilarious. Zooey jumped up on the roof and couldn't figure out how to get back down. Life is made up of small moments, mostly. NB: Zooey normally never meows. To get a meow out of her means that something is important. To get repeated meows like this means that she is FREAKED OUT.

Please ignore my talk-to-Zooey voice because yes, I know that I sound like an idiot.

(I got her down just fine. She retreated to my office and stretched out like a tube.)

On Facebook and the Paradigm of Social Networking

2010-07-26T19:36:00.000-07:00

Besides the truly horrible privacy issues* (or lack-of-privacy, that is), this perfectly summarizes why I no longer use facebook. I have long disliked it, and a couple of months ago I locked down my facebook account and stopped posting to it or logging in to read updates from anyone else, but I didn't really bother to analyze why beyond citing my usual knee-jerk introversion complaints. Just something about it vaguely bothered me. But that article really seems to have resonated with me.

This line of thought is interesting because I had thought that my aversion was to facebook, not to social networking in general. In fact, I had been looking forward to the release of the diaspora project because its premise seemed completely at odds with the facebook approach, which I appreciated. But so now, it seems that for me, at least, the problem is bigger than a particular software system.

I've been struggling to live my life more consciously, so perhaps that has something to do with it. To know where the food I eat comes from, and how it was grown. To patronize local merchants. To identify and codify the principles by which I live my life, or want to live my life, and to stick by those principles, rather than letting life happen to me. To treat people with at least the respect that they are due, and hopefully more. To value each personal relationship as a thing unique, worthy of my time and atttention. To sideline distractions and to silence my inner dialogue. To appreciate the moment. To portray myself in an honest way, without bragging or hiding. To celebrate my friends' and family members' successes, and downplay the occasional failure.

Facebook seems to provide a platform for behaviors and attitudes that I don't want to have in my life anymore, even if it doesn't encourage them. A close friend of mine called me one day and asked, "what's the deal with you and Laura? Neither one of you has the other listed as even 'in a relationship' on facebook." I was really at a loss for words. Are we to broadcast every intimate detail of our lives now? Apparently so. And even worse, when those details are shattered -- say, by a breakup or divorce -- now all of our facebook friends can comment on the event with their personal point of view, and it can turn into a dicussion, and even a debate. That sort of thing is hard enough for an adult to handle; I can only imagine the impact on, say, a high school student.

At least here, I can say as little or as much as I want about myself. Blogging is (for me) a socially introspective activity whose great value comes from the fact not only that we can work through ideas, but also form connections with truly like-minded people. Who may remain forever anonymous. Or not. But we get to choose.

I still have a facebook account and occasionally I log in to it to contact those people I know who seem to only be reachable that way, like the personal trainer with whom I work out. He never answers his phone, and his email is a black hole -- but send him a facebook message and he'll answer within an hour. And, as it turns out, you can't actually delete your facebook profile: all the data you've ever uploaded is retained forever, awaiting your inevitable return and reactivation. You can deactivate your profile, but you can never remove it, and you can never wipe yourself from the facebook servers.

*Mark Zuckerberg, the 26-year-old child-CEO of facebook, is on record as having stated that he believes the future of online social interaction to be more sharing, not less. As in, less privacy, by default. And in fact the evolution of privacy settings on facebook has demonstrated that he is putting that philosophy into action. Given that not many people bother to change defaults, this is troubling, to say the least. A network intrusion specialist who is a friend of mine "in real life" has stated: be afraid of facebook -- very afraid.

Sunday Night in the Garden

2010-07-25T20:36:00.000-07:00

Finn is still AWOL, but not for want of my presence outside to trigger his chuminess instinct. I went into the forest this morning to look for him, and walked a few miles in either direction up and down the closest trail, but there was no sign of him. Water still running in the creek, lots of little critters, and warm temperatures, so I'm still holding out hope that he's just on walkabout and is taking care of himself just fine.

Anyway, as I hinted, I spent the day in the garden. Here are the fruits of today's efforts:

New 4'x4' raised garden bed

A new garden bed! I spent the day today sawing out the notches by hand, and then drilling holes to accomodate 3/8" rebar that I will hammer down on the corners to hold it all together. This is the first of many that I am going to put in place along the south side of the house, which I have identified as being the primo garden real estate on my lot. Here's how it looks now:

The barren waste land

As you can see, I haven't done much with that side of the house. That's compost that I'm starting to spread out over the clay, and I do have a row of various plants along the house proper, and they're doing quite well. Which is how I know that this strip of land is the best that I have for gardening, because I come out in the early morning to water and there is already beaming sunshine all along there. The reason I haven't done much with it is because, in the dark of winter, I mistakenly thought that my main back yard area would be the best -- and it is, but only for things that need shade. Anyway, along the house I have:

Vigorous tomato plants (this one is 5.5' tall)

The variety that I planted this year is Early Girl, an F1 hybrid. I didn't want to go with hybrids, but this being the first year that I tried gardening for real, I figured that I should go with something straightforward. And man, are they growing like crazy. There are about 30 young tomatoes getting bigger on the vines, and the vines themselves grow 3-4" every day.

Slicer Cucumbers

The cucumbers got off to a slow start, but they are now growing like crazy in the 75ºF days. As small as those guys are, there are about 25-30 little cucumbers growing on them, already. I'm weaving them through the tines of a trellis that I've got leaning up against the house.

A tiny ear of corn (you can see the tassels!)

I decided to try my hand at sweet corn, too. Hell, I planted about one of everything, to see how it would go. The corn is really doing well, with big, beautiful, strong plants, and now finally some ears starting to develop. About two months behind the rest of the country, but hey, that's the pacific northwest for you.

Russian Mammoth sunflowers

I've always loved sunflowers. I love the way that they follow the sun -- I remember taking the commuter train to Munich in the morning and passing fields of sunflowers, their heads all facing east, and coming back in the evening and seeing the same flowers looking in the opposite direction. Mine do the same thing, although they have yet to flower. Those glacier wands (the sticks with the orange flags) are there to give the flowers support when it gets windy -- the flower on the left was 3" shorter than the top of the wand that it is tied to, only four days ago. It's growing like mad! Also, around the bases of the flowers are my patented (well, not really) slug deterents. Anyone who has ever tried to grow sunflowers in slug country knows how much slugs love to devour small sunflower seedlings. But not with my system! (Basically just a liter soda bottle with top and bottom cut off.)

Anyway, these babies are supposed to grow to 9' tall, with enormous seed heads. In their own way, they're my favorite plants in the garden. I am happily anticipating some beautiful flowers.

Here's a sample of what's going on in the "main" part of the garden:

Thirty-gallon potato pots getting close to harvest

Everyone laughs at me for growing potatoes here, because you can buy a metric ton of potatoes for less than what it costs to drive them back home, it seems. But you can't buy the varieties that I'm growing. German Butterball alone is so very much worth the effort -- an amazing potato, delicious and buttery, but delicate. It wouldn't hold up well to commercial production.

Tender lettuce heads

I seeded these guys a while back and I totally forget what they are, but I need to remember because they are vigorous and the slugs don't seem to like them. All I remember is that the seeds came from Uprising Seeds, inc.

Black Beans!

Seriously, life would not be worth living if it were not for black beans. I adore them. So I planted a handful, and look'it'em go. That giant lettuce in the background is one that I'm letting go to seed, just to see if it produces anything worth propogating.

Anyway. There are a ton of things happening right now that make me not so happy, not the least of which is Finn being gone for nearly a week, so I'm glad that I have this little oasis of mine to tend. Who knows, maybe he'll come back soon. Maybe some favorite voices that have gone quiet will be heard again. Maybe my sister's marriage won't fall apart. Maybe all the other ridiculous things that seem to be off the rails at the moment will right themselves. But, well, if they don't, at least I'll have a lot of beans.

UPDATE: PZ Meyers of Pharyngula is going to be in Seattle at the Pike Brewing Company on tuesday! I am sorely tempted to take the day off and drive down there to buy him a beer. In case you don't know, I am a big fan of PZ. He is a take-no-prisoners empiricist, which I admire, for I am not of the Dawkins breed of empiricists; no, I tend to be rather vehement, like PZ. But I don't have his fortitude under fire. I try for a while to keep up pointing out logical fallacies, but after a while a sustained approach of ad hominem attacks will beat me down. Not PZ, though.

And, I love the Pike Trippel, for it is one fine, fine beer. Finally, to complete the trifecta, I have been telling my friends for what seems like forever that I need to go visit the Pike brewery.

Friday Night Music: John Barleycorn

2010-07-23T23:30:00.000-07:00

I've listened to Traffic for years and years and.. years. This old folk tune adaptation of theirs has always appealed to me. It is a metaphor of learning to grow, and to brew.

Finn has been gone now for three days. If he doesn't come back soon, I will be hitting the wares of J. Barleycorn, I think.

BONUS! Arctic Monkeys!

She walked away, well her shoes were untied,
And the eyes were all red,
You could see that we've cried, and I watched and I waited,
'Till she was inside, forcing a smile and waving goodbye

A Moment in Time

2010-07-22T21:23:00.000-07:00

Zooey helps me harvest in the garden for the evening's scalloped potatoes.

Sometimes it's nicer to be alone, though, in a secluded spot.

Later, homemade corn tortillas for fish tacos, in the tortilla warmer.

Tuesday Insomniac Quote

2010-07-20T01:49:00.000-07:00

“Sometimes I think we’re alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we’re not. In either case the idea is quite staggering.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

2010-07-18T23:24:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting here tonight eating an enormous pile of sugar snap peas from my CSA share and feeling rather happy about my new alpine rock garden, which is entering its final stages of completeness:

If you click on that image, you'll spy down on the right-hand side a little example of artemesia absinthium. That's right, the hallucinogenic plant that was used to make Absinthe, which is now banned in the USA. I'm rather proud of that, because I grew it from seed. Neighborhood covenants are stupid things, and so although I am forced to comply with them, I'll do it my own way. Like, by planting psychoactive plants in my garden, for example.

At any rate, this rock garden is kind of cracking me up. Time was a few years ago that I was constantly driving myself to climb harder, and bigger, and more often. If I didn't get on a 6000m+ peak twice a year with numerous smaller training climbs added in, I considered the year to be a loss, and I still have many friends who think that way. One of them wrote to me recently to see what was up, and asked if I would be interested in a pedestrian climb, like maybe Mt. Adams. I laughed and told him that I wasn't sure that I remembered which end of the rope is the sharp end, anymore. And now my token bit of alpinism in this home are a few pictures of former-me in some daredevil situation, and a pretty alpine rock garden.

I've been systematically getting rid of arbitrary goals in my life, like those aforementioned climbing goals. So what if I don't climb a lot anymore? I like my rock garden. I like playing guitar in the evening. So that's what I do now. Some of my friends are beating themselves to pieces, thinking that they MUST be pushing new routes, climbing harder, being more whatever, and I think: would you feel this way if you were all alone, cast away on an island? Because so much of that stuff is ego, and just fuel for conversation. I mean, don't get me wrong, I sure do love that exhilaration of thousands of feet of exposure, of sunrise high up on a truly high peak, of doing something that is right off the pages of national geographic. But I don't like the inevitable sickness in the camps; nor the machismo of people (men and women both) who are driven to one-up each other, daily; nor the overall senselessness of a life in which one is always looking for the next thing. There are a lot of good things to be said for sitting in one's garden, planted and tended with one's own labor, as the sun sets.

Which is not to say that I won't climb and adventure again. Just that the focus on arbitrary isn't something that I think I'll care much about, anymore.

Thursday Poetry Quote

2010-07-15T00:29:00.000-07:00

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant --
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightening to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind

Tuesday Music

2010-07-14T00:11:00.000-07:00

It's been a long day and I need to relax, what between a stressed-out Laura, a feuding family, and work that is making me want to bite things, I just want some alone-time.

Look right.

Look left.

RAWRRRR!

Monday Night Geekazoid Bullets

2010-07-12T23:40:00.000-07:00

Some things that research in theoretical computer science teaches you:

To escape a garden maze, always turn left at any intersection. (Also known as depth-first search.)
Being a good Tetris player is exactly as hard as finding the shortest tour of a group of cities that visits each city exactly once. Well, in an asymptotic sense, anyway.
There is no such thing as intelligence, at least the way we commonly think of it. Over forty years ago, researchers wrote a computer program that arguably passed the Turing test for artificial intelligence, at least back then. Interestingly, that same program probably would not pass today, in our more machine-enlightened society. Besides factual knowledge, intelligence is also fundamentally biased by emotion and perception: there are varieties of intelligence, from bean counting to empathy, none of which is lesser than another. Most people have intuitively known this in some form for a long time, but it is starting to become formalized. This has deep implications for, e.g., communication with dolphins (who are possibly just as "intelligent" in some sense as we are).
Observations on the random motions of miniscule tea leaves led to the basis of modern financial market analysis. Not really computer science, per se, but we got our fingers in that pie in the end, and pretty deeply at that.
We can be paid to think about marriage, at least insofar as it is just a metaphor for scientifically interesting abstractions. Which is not to say that real human marriage doesn't fall in that category somewhere, just that computer science theorists wouldn't touch that reality with a million-foot pole. That's sociology.
An individual person can never comprehend all comprehensible scientific problems, but a group distributed over an infinite period of time can. Social cooperation, which seems to be encoded into our behavior, is the basis for all success. The question now becomes: is time infinite?
There exist infinitely many incomprehensible scientific problems. This is neither a refutation of science nor a support of mysticism, it is simply a numerical reality in the sense that neither an individual nor a group can survive for an uncountably infinite period of time since both are countable.
DNA is just a formal language. Its expression therefore becomes a computational problem, and so, say, the possible cure of all possible genetic diseases nothing more than a matter of computer time, at least in theory. And yet the bulk of our computer power is reserved for the NSA: breaking codes. One wonders if we 21st century humans are really that far removed from our ancestors in 10,000 BCE.

These are the things that I think about on a monday night. Perhaps we should have made fish tacos again, instead of turkey burgers; I have always found turkeys to be problematic animals. Anything that makes a loud noise directly before settling in for the night seems to me to be troubling in some sense.

And It's Cold in the Water Tonight

2010-07-11T22:49:00.000-07:00

Tonight I spent hours talking with my oldest sister, just the two of us on the patio as the sun set. "Hey, do you remember that time that that kid tried to beat you up?" "I remember once, you gave me some caramels when I was in kindergarten, and I was so proud of them, but the teacher took them." "Remember how mom and dad used to argue downstairs but we could hear them through the vents?" "Haha, yeah, I do, and remember the day that dad drove home his Scout for the first time?" "Oh, do I! He was so proud of it. Do you remember the trip that we had to do in it after that?" "OMG, yes!"

I pretty much didn't know what I was doing or where I was going after college, and a long time thereafter. What direction I have now, I credit my family to giving me. Not because they told me anything, or directed me anywhere, but just because they were there and constant and always willing to have me back when I returned from whatever crazy notion I'd adopted. Like a frame of reference, an anchor when all else seems lost. And adulthood is basically an extended narrative of loss, in many ways.

I'm lucky to have a sister -- not just one, but two.

Best Movie Finale Ever

2010-07-10T00:17:00.000-07:00

I've probably posted this in the past -- I am a forgetful creature of habit, after all -- but TGTB&TU is one of my favorite films, and very much a cinema classic, and I have it playing in the background, so I'm thinking of it. My dad and I would watch it, and he could name the make and model of every gun in use in the film -- usually pointing out how they got the year wrong, or the gun wrong, or something. Dad was a geek, only from a different time.

Amusingly, one of my coworkers looks exactly like Tuco (the Ugly). I call him that on a regular basis. He is not amused.

More Music

2010-07-09T01:20:00.000-07:00

I spent the afternoon cursing deer, and the evening chatting with Laura. Here's a favorite of mine for you.

Two AM and I'm awake? Seriously?

2010-07-07T02:03:00.000-07:00

Insomnia really sucks. I didn't deal with this in the past when I led a lifestyle that involved a lot of exercise, but now I'm in suckville. Perhaps it's time to reconsider lifestyles.

On another note, I've been debating probability again tonight. (Yeah, I know, I should go to bed.) Probability is so weird. Like this: say I flip a fair coin ten times, and it comes up HTHHTTHHTT. What are the odds of that sequence? Exactly the same as getting heads ten times in a row. About one out of 1024, to be exact.

Am I branded with the mark of the geek that I know all the powers of 2 up to 16? And does that age me?

Two, four, eight, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, ....

My research advisor of old would be proud to see that I wrote all the numbers under "10" in english, I'm sure. She sure docked me on that point a lot, back in the day. But bless her for her it. To this day I still get compliments on my proposal documents for clarity and style, thanks to her. Although I'm not certain that it works in this context.

Sigh.

On Chaos

2010-07-05T23:48:00.000-07:00

Postulate a model of a population of creatures that live a year, a model that could be used to predict what the population of those creatures will be next year, given this year's population and some lumped parameter that captures the combination of their ability to reproduce and the predatory influence upon them. One such model is:

x_n+1 = rx_n(1-x_n)

Here, x_n is the population at year n (ranging between 0, or no individuals, to 1, or the maximum number that the habitat can support), and r is that lumped parameter. This particular model has been used for (among other things) predicting populations of temperate latitude insects such as univoltine lepidoptera,
whose adults emerge in the spring, mate, lay their eggs, and die. The eggs in their turn hatch into caterpillars that feed during the summer and overwinter as pupae. Come the following spring, the cycle repeats.

This type of equation is called a map. This one in particular is called the logistic map. What this map basically says is: next year's population is proportional to three things, (1) the reproduction/predation constant for this year, (2) the current population, and (3) the remaining empty carrying capacity of the habitat to support new individuals. (Here a low value for r means that predation is high and reproduction low.)

Here's what the map looks like, when plotted in cartesian coordinates:

Simple, eh? A concave-down parabola. The maximum is at r/4, by the way. This is all pretty simple stuff -- basic first year algebra, the kind of stuff that we took in high school. But it starts to get interesting if you start putting real numbers into that map. Say you start with some value, x₁, and you crank through the map and compute x₂ (having chosen some arbitrary value for r). Now say you keep going, computing successively more iterations. What happens? Well, maybe this:

A bit of explanation. You see on the right the concave-down parabola, but there's also a diagonal line. This line is the line x_n+1 = x_n. That is, it's where the x-axis equals the y-axis: 1=1, 2=2, etc. The reason it's there is because this is a map: we choose an x₁, which maps to a point on the parabola, and that point becomes x₂, which maps to a new point on the parabola, ad infinitum. So the diagram on the right is showing this successive series of steps, in what is called a Cobweb Diagram. (The graph on the left is just illustrating the yearly change in population, how much x_n+1 differs from x_n.)

Why do we care about this? Well, if you look carefully, you can see that iterating this map with these values is causing it to collapse to a single point -- the very point where the diagonal line intercepts the parabola. If you enter that value into the map, you'll get the same value back out. In mathematical terms, this is called a stable attractor, and in biological terms, it means that the population has reached homeostatis -- predators and environment and reproduction are at a point of equalization, with the population regenerating itself each year (neither growing nor declining).

Now, here's the thing: if there are stable attractors, then there are also unstable attractors. Populations that grow and dwindle regularly. A boom, a bust, a boom, a bust, etc.

Nonlinear dynamicists such as myself call that sort of behavior a 2-cycle: there is a single attractor, with two orbits around it. Boom, bust, boom, bust. But there is nothing magical about the number two; the Logistic Map can exhibit 4-cycles, too. And 8-cycles. And 3-cycles: it doesn't have to be even. But here's the thing: as you change "r," the cycle changes happen regularly. First there's a single orbit. Then two. Then four. Then eight. In fact, it's so regular that you can even plot it the number of orbits as a function of "r," and it looks like this:

If you've read this far, then at this point, if I were you, I would be saying WHAT. THE. FUCK. Because, seriously, what the hell is that diagram, and how did it come from the simplest possible conic section formula known to mankind? As in, a parabola? The simplest thing that we learn in algebra? In HIGH SCHOOL?

Brief explanation: at approximately r=3.0, the Logistic Map enters a 2-cycle. Hence the branch there, and the two paths. At about r=3.45, it enters a 4-cycle. And so on. The interesting bits are the busy dark areas: that is Chaos.

In the simplest, we find the most complex.

Focus on what is important

2010-07-05T02:17:00.000-07:00

Zooey is our calico. Or, should I say, Laura's calico. But I've kind of claimed her as mine, too, since we have become boon companions. She tours the garden with me when I go outside, she sleeps on a cushion in my office when I work, and she grumbles and growls at me when I don't pay her enough attention.

Tonight, I just finished practicing some songs, and she came in the room to say this:

After she made herself known like this and was satisfied that she was the center of attention, she proceeded to deal with pressing cleanliness matters:

That being done, she wrote in that all was cool and I was free to do my thing, and that she would stretch herself out as a compliment to whatever the hell useless work it was that I was doing:

What really matters?

Nothing to see here, move along

2010-07-02T22:53:00.000-07:00

I took today off, which combined with the US holiday on monday gives me a four day weekend. Yup.

What to do on a gloriously sunny day off in the pacific northwest? Well, I met up with my buddy Jaime and we cycled down the Interurban Trail to Larrabee State Park. It's pretty great, and long enough so that the casual walker is left behind. Came home, watered the garden, ate dinner, watched Friday Night Lights and and episode of The Wire with Laura, and now I'm winding down for bed.

Tomorrow: U-pick strawberries (nearly the end of the season!), offload a financial monkey from my back, and then get stuff from Lowe's to deal with my rapidly deteriorating garden paths. I have beans and lettuces growing like mad, and even one small tomato! I know, everyone else is harvesting tomatoes now. But this is the pacific northwest. And I have eight sunflowers growing strong, despite the slugs.

Blueberry season starts soon, and I don't even bother with raspberries. There are just too many of them. But then comes blackberry season.... NOM. NOM. NOM. Wish that I could grow peppers.

Oh FFS!

2010-07-01T21:11:00.000-07:00

When I lived in Germany, I paid $80/year for health insurance. It sucked, sure: when I got sick, I had to wait in line at a local clinic starting at, like, 6:30am, in order to make sure that I was seen by a doctor before they closed at 1:00pm. But then, Germany's health care system is a real piece of work -- in the crap sense.

But now I'm back in the States, and for fuck's sake, can't we just have single payer already? Come on, Canadians, tell me it's worth it. You folks in BC: what do you think? I'm paying $300/mo now for the privilege of dealing with broken websites, piles of paperwork, and basically not getting my job (which I love) done.

All I know is that I've spent AN ENTIRE WORK DAY trying to weed through paperwork from my new employer about health plans in order to figure out the right plan, and this is just for me. FSM only knows what hell I'd be in if I had a wife and kids.

Oh, and I get to do this again in two months. Why? Because when you work for a company that hires an independent HR firm to run their payroll, you basically work for that HR firm. And when their fiscal year starts in September, you get to redo all the paperwork in September.

Jesus H. on a raft, sometimes I wonder how americans manage to put their goddamn pants on in the morning.

Wednesday Night Music

2010-07-01T00:06:00.000-07:00

More Tarrega tonight. I actually spent a good amount of time looking for the best version of this tango, and the one I finally found was the first one that I saw. And it's not bad at all, although the user's name is... questionable:

But I kinda like how the dude is wearing a sport coat.

In other news, I have tomatoes growing, finally, and black beans too. Finn is chasing Zooey up and down the hallway as I write this, and Laura laughed and smiled as she went to bed.

True Love

2010-06-28T21:47:00.000-07:00

(Original here)

sunday, Sunday, SUNDAY

2010-06-27T19:50:00.000-07:00

Here it is, sunday and I should have been out mowing lawns or weeding potatoes, or something, but I've been inside playing guitar all day long. What I'm working on right now is a famous piece by a famous man, the Gran Vals by Francisco Tárrega. Never heard of it? Or him? Yeah, I know. But he's famous in the tight little circle that is classical guitar, and that waltz is famous there, too -- because it's fun to play, and has a catchy tune.

How catchy, you ask? Well, listen for yourself:

Did you hear it? At about 0:15? Here it is played on a piano. Recognize it now?*

Okay, to be fair, that snippet is just three measures out of Tárrega's whole waltz -- but it is still heard approximately 20,000 times a second, worldwide. Which makes Tárrega, at least in some small way, the most popular classical composer in all of history.

And it cracks me up. I used to play this waltz 15 years ago, and am now relearning it. Every time I get to those three measures, I smile a bit.

*Of course, Nokia left off the octave harmonic at the end, which is a shame.

On Atheism and the Acceptance of Religion (In Some Sense)

2010-06-26T23:47:00.000-07:00

I used to date a woman who was a devout catholic. Every day, come rain or shine, she attended mass. I went with her many times, because I was fascinated by the homilies. If you're not catholic, the homily is a commentary given by the priest after a reading of a bibilical passage -- an interpretation and explanation, if you will. I liked to hear the statement on morality, and then the priest's explanation, because it's really useful to hear this stuff. How else do you know what you believe, if you don't hear what is possible, and decide how you feel about it?

I laugh a bit now, when I think of her. We had sex, she wore leather, and she was an ardent supporter of the death penalty. And yet, she parroted the catholic teachings of abstinence-only education, she claimed to be a vegetarian, and she was a strong supporter of "life" in the sense of "abolition of abortion." I kind of wonder why I was ever with her, now.

Not that I demand absolute consistency from my friends and lovers, because I don't. Expecting that kind of thing out of a human would be setting oneself up for disappointment. But I do wonder how someone can espouse a philosophy publicly, and deny it privately, at least in some sense. I may be many things, but at least the face that I reveal publicly (in terms of my life philosophy) is the same one that I show to my closest friends and relatives. I wonder: how can one decry the use of animals for food, but yet wear leather pumps? It's okay to kill an animal for its skin, but not for its flesh? How can one tell teenagers to practice abstinence in public, but fuck like a bunny in private? Weird.

Finn didn't come back from the forest last night. He goes out almost every day, and spends hours in the woods before coming back, happily meowing, to chomp at his food bowl and then sleep in a tight curl at our feet. It's been predictable and familiar, all spring and summer long so far. But last night he didn't come back. We shook the treat jars outside, trying to call him back, over and over, until far after dark. At midnight it became apparent that he was not coming back that night, and my imagination turned towards the worst.

I woke up with the realization that I really had become attached to that small animal, and the thought of his permanent absence gave me pause. I woke up at 9:00am, somewhat depressed. I went through the motions of the day, going to the store and doing chores, but I just kept thinking: Finn, where are you?

Finally, I decided this: it was a great pleasure to have known that small animal. We gave him a good life, and he enjoyed his time in the forest to the fullest. I had no regrets about letting him roam free, even if it had ultimately resulted in him getting caught and eaten by some predator. He would have hated a life cooped up inside.

So I drove back home, thinking about how a little creature like that can give such companionship and satisfaction to one of us lumbering primates, and felt better. As I walked through the door later in the afternoon, the first thing that Laura said was: Guess who came home.

Finn was sound asleep on the chair next to her. He had apparently eaten a full bowl of food, and has now been sleeping on the spare chair in my office for close to nine hours, interrupted only by me or she as we come in to pet him and scold him for causing such worry. No one knows what he had been up to all night and half the day, but he had come home tired and hungry and was happy to be back.

In a way, I guess that I can see how people turn to religion sometimes. Feeling what I did about just a kitten, I can't imagine what it is like for someone to lose a child to a predator. And in a way, everyday life is a kind of constant beat-down. It makes sense that people turn to a source of hope like religion. I may disagree with its precepts completely, but I cannot deny that solace.

I am glad that Finn has returned. It means that I get to appreciate his company for a little while longer. As an atheist, I know that that is valuable -- having him here, well, that's a just a brief moment in time, and I need to enjoy it. But I also need to do right by him. Finn would not love his life if he were locked inside -- he needs to be free. So I will let him out into the forest again tomorrow.

2010-06-20T22:34:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite composers of all time is Fernando Sor, an 18th century guitarist who is justly famous for (among other things) a set of guitar studies that remain part of the classical guitar canon to this day. One of the reasons for that is because the studies not only vary in difficulty (as one would expect), but also because each of them is richly expressive. That is, even the easiest one -- a piece that could be read and played by someone with, say, a month's experience on the classical guitar -- has been performed in concert, by professional guitarists.

I'm currently working on this one:

Sor's Andantino in B Minor, Op. 22, nº3

(I'm not much of a fan of that guy's playing. Very wooden.)

That's actually not a study, but rather a real concert piece. It's got some tricky bits to it, so I've been preparing for it by reviewing some of Sor's studies, most notably "Study #5," an arpeggiated jewel in B minor. Here'sa dude playing it (and very well, I might add):

The great thing about this piece is that it is incredibly simple, musically, but allows an enormous range of interpretation and expression. I found years ago that with the temp doubled, it really takes on an entirely different (but interesting) character.

Eventually, I want to get back to playing Bach, especially BWV 997 (or, at least, the prelude and Fugue). That one could occupy me for days at a time, several years ago. Here's another random youtube dude playing the 997 prelude:

He made a few mistakes, but otherwise played fluidly and well -- and lemme tell you, this piece is pretty seriously difficult. Here's what appears to be a music recital with a fellow playing the fugue that follows the prelude, again very well:

I like one of the comments on that last one: "This is my favorite piece to play by Bach. If you haven't played it you can't fully appreciate it's richenss and density. I find most listeners eye's glaze over and are lost after the first 10 or so measures, which I don't mind cuz then I feel alone with the piece and enjoy it all the more. Again, great job, this one takes a lot of courage and force of will." I could have written that comment myself! (Although I haven't been able to play this for several years, since I laid down the guitar.)

Honestly, I love the fugue. I think that maybe I should travel back to Bach's time.

Oh, did I mention that I'm about to buy a new guitar? Yup. It was either a trip to Nepal or a new guitar, and really, sleeping in tents is way over-rated.

Vacation Needed, Plz

2010-06-19T23:35:00.000-07:00

So Laura is sitting in the kitchen, doing physics homework. All I can think is, HFS am I glad that I am done with formal education. I remember the hours and hours and hours of late night work, and the tests, and that was just classwork -- I think that my mind has blotted out the years of tedious lab work and fund proposals that comprised the rest of my graduate education. And here she is, doing undergraduate prerequisites for med school. Holy cow. Anyway, she is stressed out and frazzled.

So I got out into the garden, to work and to think. Today I pulled some weeds out of my garden beds, and admired my garlic and potatoes. They are very admirable, I must say. Tall, big, strong, and (at least in the potatoes' case) about to bloom. It was a better day than yesterday up to that point, because my birthday always kind of bums me out -- not because I've grown older, but just because it's a landmark and we tend to take stock at landmarks. And I expect more from myself than I generally achieve. Gah. So now I'm pulling weeds and thinking about all the things that I haven't gotten done. Stress on a stick. I had promised to visit my mom today, so that seemed like a good time to go.

But, bopping down the road to see mom, all seemed well. I set the cruise control to 60mph and just chilled out while the county cops pulled everyone else over. I pulled into mom's driveway, feeling pretty good, and went upstairs, but found her tired and sad. It appears that my sister is going to be divorced soon, and mom was worried and upset, as they had been emailing and calling back and forth for hours. Apparently my brother in law is a jackass, or something. (Duh. I didn't like the guy from day one. But no toldjaso's here.)

I seriously need a vacation from everyone in my life right now. I think a 3-4 day solo backpack would really do the trick. Get up into the high mountains, get AWAY from people, and just burn a lot of energy -- yeah, that would work.

Happy Birthday to Me

2010-06-18T00:48:00.000-07:00

Wish me well, if you want. I'm 44 years old today, and still don't really have much more of a clue than when I was 18.

In the words of one of my best friends, "if I'd known that I'd live this long, I would've taken a lot better care of myself."

Wednesday Night Music

2010-06-16T20:52:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite bands tonight, Calexico. I think that I must have some spanish genes hiding in my nordic/anglo bloodline, because this kind of stuff really turns my crank. Give me hot sun, cicadas droning, hard liquor, burning hot sauce, and I'm a happy man.

There is a distinct thread of loneliness running through Calexico's music, or perhaps it is just wistful isolation. I saw these guys in concert a couple of times -- although I hesitate to say "concert" since the first time was in a tiny bar that accommodated maybe 50 people (and it was not a busy night), and the second time was in a small theater that could accept all of 250. They're not getting rich doing this.

Laura is working hard tonight, linking vectors and taking cosines, and the kittens are lazy. Finn caught a bird and another squirrel today and extracted a bit of flavor out of both, and Zooey is feeling like a homebody and not doing much to hang out. So I'm on my own, more or less. My brain is moosh from a full day of code analysis, and this vodka & tonic is not helping in terms of clarity, so I'm guessing that I won't be finishing any of my Evil Scientist circuit designs tonight, hence no world domination.

At this point, I'm thinking that it's going to have to be another episode of The Wire, and then falling asleep to the sound of the forest night.

The sounds that come out of a pacific northwest forest at night are.. interesting. This time of year, it's rushing water and frogs -- very calming. Waking up is the same: birds calling and celebrating, the warm sun washing over the bed, and Zooey and Finn wrapped up together like the Yin/Yang symbol between the two of us, their eyes sleepy and throats purring. I wake up, stretch with the cats, start a pot of coffee, and then step out into the cool dew-ey morning with a steaming cup, to see how many inches the potato plants have grown since yesterday, or how many strawberries are now ripe, or whether I need to don my SlugKiller hat.

And the birds sing on, and the birds sing on, and the birds sing on, and the birds sing on, and the birds sing on.

Oh god, here we go again

2010-06-15T23:14:00.000-07:00

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able, and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able, nor willing? Then why call him God?

--Epicurus

Cool commentary on NPR tonight about the possibility of extraterrestrial life and its implications for terrestrial opinions. I couldn't help but wonder if the vatican had long ago commissioned some supersecret commission of scarlet-garbed clerics to ponder the philosophical implications of what that would mean and how they would deal with it.

But that got me thinking. Seriously, what would be the implications? I'm a committed empiricist now (I don't like the term atheist so much, since it implies a certain level of activism), so were life to be discovered on, say, Mars, I would just be thrilled. But what would it mean to Christianity? Or Islam? Or Judaism?

At least the latter doesn't have the notion of original sin and the fundamentally flawed nature of man (from what I have learned), since they don't put much stock in the Eden story. But christianity certainly does -- one could even say that Genesis is the very basis of christian belief. Without original sin, mankind doesn't need the sacrifice of the christ. And given that, how else could one interpret the passage that "God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth" as a kind of limit on a christian's dominion -- what about cattle creeping about on mars? And for that matter, does a christian have the right to step upon the "second light," the moon?

I'm sure that this kind of stuff was dispensed of long ago by religious academics. You know, in the same way that catholics dispense with questions like "if two catholics are stranded in the desert but neither is a priest, how do they perform the mass" question. I forget what the answer to that one is, but I do remember that it's a fairly stock question that has an easy answer.

Anyway. I think I'll go pop "Inherit the Wind" into the DVD player and fall asleep to it.

Perspective

2010-06-08T23:41:00.000-07:00

I was reading my blog archive from a couple of years ago, and man, yeah, things are a lot more interesting when life really fucking sucks. Why is that? Why do we connect to people so much when they are really hurting, but not so much when they're just okay or even happy?

I won't answer that now. I installed a rain barrel next to my house, and Finn came back before sunset after we were worried that he was lost somewhere. Progress and good news, then, for me. Screw drama and craziness, I'll just be a boring blogger. Now Zooey has walked into my office, growling and grumbling, and in a few minutes I'll go to bed to a warm woman who will sleepily wrap around me.

So no, I guess I won't be an interesting blogger anytime soon. At least in a trainwreck sense.

Ringtones

2010-06-07T21:15:00.000-07:00

I'm bored and making ringtones for my iPhone. So far I've made one from the Python theme, the Planet Unicorn theme, and a random Bean Song. What else should I make? Oh, and does anyone have a special request? I'm like a ringtone fountain of youth here.

Right now the Python theme is my active ringtone. Heh.

By the way, that Rancho Gordo bean video was pretty much spot on, and we had a damn good bean dinner because of it. Oh, and we were very jolly the entire time! Amusingly, I was in another room trying to read when Laura fired up that you tube video, and all that I heard was the music. I couldn't help thinking What In God's Name Is She Watching Out There? A video about beans was probably the last thing that I would have guessed.

On Worry

2010-06-03T22:57:00.000-07:00

Back in the day when this blog wasn't this blog and I was doing a lot more bitching than anything else, I used to quote the Hagakure a lot more than I do now, because it is a source of comfort. I've realized that it is still so, now, even though I don't need comfort as much as I did then. So I suppose I'll take that back up again (reading the Hagakure, not the bitching). For even if all is well, we can all use some words to hold on to, and to ponder. So here is one of my old favorites from the Hagakure.

"Among the maxims on Lord Naoshige's wall there was this one: ''Matters of great concern should be treated lightly.'' Master Ittei commented, ''Matters of small concern should be treated seriously.'' Among one's affairs there should not be more than two or three matters of what one could call great concern. If these are deliberated upon in ordinary times, they can be understood. Thinking about things previously and then handling them lightly when the time comes is what this is all about. To face an event and solve it lightly is difficult if you are not resolved beforehand, and there will always be uncertainty in hitting your mark. However, if the foundation is laid previously, you can think of the saying, "Matters of great concern should be treated lightly,'' as your own basis for action.

Monday night music

2010-05-31T22:39:00.000-07:00

Julian Bream plays BWV 1000

I'm getting back into playing classical guitar, after a long hiatus, so I'm enjoying videos of great players. Here is Bream playing a rather difficult fugue, courtesy of Bach, of course. I love me some Bach. Years ago I played and recorded this on my answering machine:

These days I think that I'd be lucky to remember how to read the music. However, it is coming back relatively quickly -- those neurons may be out of use, but they're not completely gone yet. My girlfriend back then called me up recently to say that she'd heard this piece and was reminded of my answering-machine piece, and that really took me back.

I remember playing a lot of music when I lived in Germany, mostly because (1) living in Germany as an expatriot, without a job, is an extended lesson in Suck, and Suck is only really relieved by Art; and (2) it gave me a great excuse not to have to interact with people.

Meanwhile, back in this world, here is Finn being all cuddly and friendly next to my Bay Laurel tree seedling, wanting to get inside and have a snack:

And here is my proudest plant, an onion that was part of winter time salsa and whose foot got thrown out into the compost heap, only to come alive in the spring. I rescued it and gave it a place on the edge of the garden. It has now sprouted into a bunch of green onions, one of which is now sprouting a seed bulbil. I am just gonna let this little guy grow without interference, and maybe I'll get some seeds out of it!

And here we go again

2010-05-28T00:01:00.000-07:00

I shut down my facebook account today, and with it, instant updates with ~90 people that I've known. Some of them close friends, most of them not. It had begun to feel like a clique, and I've never been good with being a part of something. Once a group claimed me as a member, I always found a way to piss them off and be free, and that's just as true today as it was in the past.

I really don't get extroversion and group mentality. People that need to be around other people are foreign to me. People who are afraid of time alone, especially long periods of time alone, weird me out. I just don't get it. What better thing is there than an entire week to oneself, free of any interpersonal interaction whatsoever? That sounds like heaven to me.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a hermit. I need people around me. I just need them on my own schedule.

Think of it this way: when you go to the supermarket, there's probably music playing, right? If you're any kind of a patron of the arts, the music that is playing is probably not to your liking. You're in the market, and you need to be there, but after a while you just want to get the hell out because of the stress that that horrible background pop song is creating for you. You get away, you escape, and you relax away from the awful Britney Spears, or whatever it was. But eventually you need to go back to buy food again -- you need the market -- and what the hell, the braindead pop music is playing again.

That's how I feel about being around people, in general. I need social interaction to be happy, but something about it that I can't pin down quite as nicely as above -- something makes me just recoil and want to be alone. I really do appreciate entire weeks alone, and I really wish that they could be longer.

This sort of attitude is not conducive to a happy relationship.

Sigh.

Which is hard because everyone, no exception, seems to need love. Or at least companionship.

Poem of Next Week

2010-05-25T23:36:00.000-07:00

Just getting an early start on things.

As Douglas Adams might say, great things are afoot. Eddies in the space-time continuum. (Oh, is he?)

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

-- Yeats

Poem of the Week

2010-05-24T21:22:00.000-07:00

Long one of my favorites, and I have been recently reminded of it. Larkin was in some respects a despicable man, in many more a remarkable one. That description is a sort of archetype for each individual human, perhaps.

Loneliness and living alone is something that continues to absorb me. Curiously, I don't think that Larkin was lonely in the sense of not having close persons around him. But this poem speaks to a personality that detests what it has become, that practically longs for what horrifies, and which sees just a shallow, conventional existence in larger society.

I've been awake at four AM, and I've seen the curtain edges grow light. I know how night brings new moods. I have heard that most people in ER's die at night, and it makes sense to me. Have you ever awoken in the depth of night, and felt fear and loneliness that seemed almost laughable the next day, in the light of day?

I have a recurring dream of people breaking glass and running down the street outside my home, in the depth of the night. It wasn't until recently that I realized that it was a dream -- I thought that it was real. But I had ear plugs in, and my closed window was far from the street. What is it in my unconscious mind that dredged up the (very real, to me) sound of anarchy, in the dark of night?

The fear of darkness, both literal and figurative, is engrained deeply in our psyches, or so it would seem. Of course, this poem is about much more than night, but the opening is so evocative and so familiar to anyone who has awoken and stood up, just to stare outside and feel alone and afraid. This is a poem of fear and loneliness. It's this kind of feeling that drives people to matches that they don't really want, or as my dead father once said, "to be with someone, anyone, because the alternative is too unbearable."

I love the last lines of this poem. "In locked-up offices, all the uncaring intricate rented world begins to rise... Work has to be done."

Aubade†

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what's really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
- The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused - nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast, moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear - no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anasthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small, unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can't escape,
Yet can't accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

--Phillip Larkin, 1922-1985

† Aubade is french for "morning serenade." Traditionally, an aubade in english is a poem about lovers separating at dawn.

El amor en los tiempos del cólera

2010-05-15T23:03:00.000-07:00

I just finished watching a rather good movie, and now I'm winding down, sipping a nightcap, and pondering. Pondering the movie, that is, which was an adaptation of a Gabriel García Márquez novel.

I'm pondering it because I don't get the notion of idealized, romantic love. I just don't. It seems so medieval, this hollywoodesque longing and yearning, which is not centered in sanity in any way but rather upon an individual's single-minded obsession. And yet people seem to exist in this state.

Case in point, I once knew a blogger who told me that "for the right man, I would move anywhere in the world." So... how and when do you know that he's "right?" And what happens in ten years when he's a different person altogether? Because people change, and rarely together.

Now, "love" as "deep emotional attachment" I understand very well. I've got no beef with that. It's the pedestal and the blanket willingness to act that I don't get. I keep trying to figure it out, too. I mean, apart from my family, I have maybe five or six close friends, not a single one of whom is anyone to whom I necessarily felt any strong/close connection at first meeting, but all of whom I've known for many years. Some of them are thousands of miles away from me, and have been for a while.

Here's what I'm starting to suspect: that people live in a state of generalized loneliness, and they're willing to do almost anything to escape it. That feeling is what religion preys upon, for example. And cults. And not to equal religion and cults with love, but I do think that western peoples' idea of romantic companionship and love is really just a symptom of loneliness.

I'm starting to sound like a curmudgeon here, so I will end this by stating that I'm not some kind of bare-lightbulb, manifesto-writing loner here, and I don't discount not only that there are happy couples in the world but also that making that work does take effort. I just think that being alone is underrated. There is much to be discovered in oneself, almost none of which can be found in company, and certainly not while one has starry eyes for an unknown someone, somewhere, somehow.

Favorite Artists Series

2010-05-02T22:51:00.000-07:00

Joan Jett. She is WAY near the top of the list, if not on the top!

Woah

2010-04-29T21:46:00.000-07:00

Just noticed this today, a review of a civil war exhibit, from the Washington Post no less. Will wonders never cease? Money quote:

The show proceeds thematically rather than chronologically. It raises large questions -- What led to the secession of the South? Were there efforts to avoid war? -- and then offers documents that should help visitors form answers. Early in the exhibition, viewers confront what might be called the Southern-apologist listening station, where you can both read, and listen to, a document laying out South Carolina's reasons for secession. After some boilerplate language about the Constitution comes reason No. 1: The right to property, which for South Carolina included the right to human chattel, had been infringed.

There it is, in black and white, and coming at you through a very 1980s hand-held listening device: Slavery is the cause -- the essential, primary, undeniable first and sufficient cause for the war. While much of the exhibition aims at nuance and complexity, this should be sufficient to unmask the old masquerade about what the South was fighting for. Efforts to make it seem problematic and complex are all too often part of a nostalgia game, nostalgia for a time when every white Southern man had a God-given right to be a racist, if he so chose.

Ah-yup. Nice to see some reporting without the usual dog-whistle phrases.

I.6

2010-04-28T22:51:00.000-07:00

[What is this, you may wonder? Explanation and beginning of the series can be found here]

Knudsen

Knudsen was in a rage. In order to calm himself, he played a game of Patience*. The day before yesterday, Brägevoldt had visited him from Rostock and had appointed a Party instructor for today, after noon. Knudsen told Brägevoldt: the Party can lick my ass. The Party should have shot him, instead of sending an instructor now. But this new Five Person Group System, Brägevoldt had said, is very interesting, you'll see. Rubbish, Knudsen had answered, in Rerik there is only one Single Person Group, and that's me. Brägevoldt: and the others? Knudsen: shit scared. Brägevoldt: And you? Knudsen: no interest. Moreover, I have to get to the cod. Brägevoldt had said something about a shock effect as a result of the increase in terrorism that would subside, and then he shoved off after he had arranged the meeting betwen Knudsen and the instructor.

While Knudsen laid down the cards, he could think about it. Brägevoldt or the Party had put him in a difficult position. The other boats had already sailed the day before yesterday. Knudsen aroused suspicion if the "Pauline" stayed in the harbor much longer. Too, the youth was innocent. Quite apart from the income, the tide was ebbing. The pretty cod. Knudsen yearned for cod. His lost his Patience and flung the cards aside.

He went into the little garden that lay behind the house, a tiny space of dull, darkened greenness, in which a pair of white asters glowed. On one side stood a rabbit hutch; Knudsen heard the animals rustling. Bertha sat on the bench, knitting, despite the cold. Put on an overcoat, said Knudsen, if you must sit outside. Laughing happily, she went into the house and came back a few seconds later, wearing the coat. Knudsen watched her, how she returned to sit on the bench. She smiled. Knudsen glanced at the part in her blond hair; she was blond and gentle, a pretty young woman of forty. I must tell you a joke, she said. Anxiously, she looked up to him and asked: Listen? Yes, I will listen, said Knudsen, as he pondered about Brägevoldt and the Party instructions. In Machnow, related Bertha, a man once watched how the lunatics jumped from a diving board into the pool in the middle of winter. He said to them: there is absolutely no water in there! They called back to him: we're just training for the summer, as they rubbed their blue bruises. Why had she chosen this cruel joke, thought Knudsen, as Bertha expectfully watched him. He smiled and said: yes, yes, Bertha, it's a good joke. If I don't pay attention, he thought, they would take you to the lunatics also, even though you're not even crazy. She just had a little quirk, he reflected. It started a few years back, when she had begun to tell this joke of the lunatics who jump into the empty pool. Otherwise she was friendly and gentle, a good woman. He had never made out when and from whom she had heard this through-and-through bad joke. She told it everywhere, but she had been telling it for years, and after a while the city stopped gossiping about Bertha Knudsen. But a year ago one of the Others came to Knudsen and had said: your woman is mentally disturbed, we must put her in an institution. With help from Doctor Frerking, Knudsen had prevented them from taking her away. He knew what they did to the mentally disturbed when they put them in an institution for the first time, and he held on to Bertha. When he was out to sea with the trawler he was always afraid that he would not find Bertha upon his return. He had gotten the impression that they wanted to blackmail him with the threat of putting Bertha in an institution. They wanted him to keep quiet. They would use poor Bertha as a weapon against the Party.

Make my provisions ready, he said, I will sail later, and he saw her cheerful laugh, her perpetual and fatal laugh on her pretty, ever-youthful face, as he went back inside the house. He sat on the bench by the oven and lit a pipe.

He had to decide now, if he'd keep the meeting with the instructor. It was three o'clock in the afternoon, and he had one hour's time. The boat was ready for sea; the youth had been aboard for two hours; at four o'clock they could already be far outside the pilot island.

But it wasn't about the one hour. Knudsen thought harder. To meet the instructor meant to get involved. The others had grasped this faster than he: they had already cleared out. Elias had said it straight to his face: listen, we're not going to talk anymore about the Party. It had happened remarkably: two years of preparation for the illegalities, then two years of sticking together, afterwards stagnation. And now, in the year 1937, since no one was afraid anymore, the Others suddenly tightened the screws. One heard of arrests in Rostock, in Wismar, in Brunshaupten, on the entire coast. They smash the wood to pieces since it had begun to crumble. They are preparing for war, Knudsen had said to Elias. Elias just turned away. The comrades still all spoke to Knudsen, but not about politics.

This was preferred, though, for this way the Others don't discover who leads the Party. They knew that there were Knudsen, Mathiasson, Jenssen, Elias, Kröger, Bahnsen, and a few others more. But to arrest them all wouldn't do in such a small town as Rerik. The Others had to be able to depend on the fact that nothing more about the Party would be spoken. When no more is said about it, the Party exists no longer.

Naturally they knew that there was one -- at least one -- who led the Party further. Knudsen was convinced that they reckoned with that one. So it was dangerous for him that the "Pauline" lay still docked in the harbor while the entire fishing fleet had sailed. But it was not dangerous if he didn't meet the instructor. By the rules of the Party, the instructor didn't know Knudsen. If Knudsen didn't go to the meeting, the instructor could turn black from waiting. Then Knudsen was out. When the new instructors from the Central Committees of the Party didn't arrive in Rerik, then there was no more Party in Rerik. Then for Knudsen, just like for everyone else, there were just the cod and the herring. And Bertha. But if he went, then he involved himself in the measures that the Party took, thought Knudsen. He couldn't go and then not carry out the instructions of the Party. If he wanted, he really didn't need to go. Now I'm the fish, thought Knudsen, the fish before the angler. I can bite, or not. Can the fish decide? he asked himself. Of course it can, he thought with his ancient fisher's faith. And with his ancient fisher's contempt: the fish is stupid. But I've spent my entire life long biting at this bait, he remembered. And the hook has always hurt. Always has it yanked me into the air in which one could hear the screams of the fish. I'll be damned, thought Knudsen, full of rage, if I am to be a silent fish.

*"Patience" is a european name for what americans call "Solitaire." I decided not to change the name in translation here, because the subsequent play on words ("He lost his Patience") is a close and true approximation of the original, one of those rare instances where a translated phrase works really well. ("He lost his game of Solitaire" just doesn't have the same effect.)

I.5

2010-04-28T20:01:00.000-07:00

[What is this, you may wonder? Explanation and beginning of the series can be found here]

The Youth

Although he sat concealed under a curtain of willow branches, he could glimpse the tower from St. George and read the clock. Half past two. In a half hour I must be aboard the trawler, because Knudsen will want to sail away at five o'clock, he thought, and then the boring fishing will begin, the creeping about here and there with the boat at the Buksand and under the land, the monotonous work with seine nets, two or three days long, together with the sullen fisherman. Knudsen never sailed out onto the open sea like father, even though father's trawler wasn't bigger than Knudsen's. But then father was lost at sea. And so I must get away, thought the youth, because I heard people say that father had been stinking drunk again when he died. Huck Finn's father was a drunk, so Huck Finn had to run away, but I have to get away because my father wasn't a drunk, although they claim he was since they were jealous of him, for he was sometimes out on the open sea. Not even one tablet did they hang for him in the church, a tablet with with his name and the words "died in with his boots on" and his dates of birth and death, like they do for all those lost at sea. I hate them all, and that's the second reason why I have to get away from Rerik.

I.4

2010-04-28T19:56:00.000-07:00

[What is this, you may wonder? Explanation and beginning of the series can be found here]

Helander

Knudsen would help, thought Father Helander, Knudsen wasn't foolish. He bore no grudge. He'd help against the common enemy.

No sound or echo came from outside. There was nothing more empty than St. George Church Square in late autumn. Helander prayed intensely against the emptiness for a moment. Against the three already leafless lime trees in the corner between the transept* and the choir, against the mute dark redness of the brick wall, whose top he couldn't see from the window of his study: the southern transept of the St. George Church. The grounds of the square were a bit lighter than the brown-red bricks of the church and the parsonage and the humbler houses that were attached, older houses made from fired bricks, houses with small stepped gables and simple houses with glazed woodbrick roofs.

No one ever walks over this square, thought Helander, gazing down upon the cleanswept pavement. No one. It was an absurd thought. Of course people walked over this dead corner of the church square too, where the parsonage stood. The foreigners who came to the ocean spas in summer, in order to visit the church. Members of his parish. The sexton, father Helander himself. Nevertheless, thought Helander, the square was wholly lonely.

A place as dead as the church, thought the priest. Which is why only Knudsen could help.

He raised his gaze to the transept wall. Thirty thousand bricks, a naked board without perspective, two-dimensional, brown-red, slate-colored red, yellow-red, blue-red, and finally a single, darkly phosphorescent red one, without depth, hanging before Helander's window, his decades-long antithesis: the board upon which the writing that he awaited never appears, so that he paints it with his own fingers, always erasing the text and writing new words and characters. The grounds of the square waited upon steps that never sounded; the brick wall upon writing that never appeared.

In this way, Father Helander unjustly put the guilt upon the bricks, the dark bricks of the houses and the church. His ancestors had come with the journeying king from a land in which the houses were built from wood and colorfully painted. In that land, one's footsteps crunched cheerfully on the gravel in front of the wooden parsonages, and the Word of justice and peace was carved on the beams. Happy dreamers, his ancestors were, when they were tempted to venture to a land in which the thoughts were dark and intemperate like the stone walls of the church in which they began to preach the true Word. It wasn't heard, the true Word: the darkness remained stronger than the small Light that they had brought out from the friendly land.

The dark thoughts and the excessive brick churches were guilty for forcing him to go and seek help from Knudsen, thought the priest. His fierce, reddened, passionate face grew darker. His prosthesis creaked as he went to the desk to take the key to the parsonage out of the drawer, and he felt the pain in his stump that had for some time now had made itself noticed whenever he took a step too quickly. The pain was stabbing: it impaled him. The priest stood still and balled his fists. And after a while, when the spear had slowly retreated back, he had the feeling as if, behind him on the church wall from which he had turned away, the writing that he was waiting for, appeared. Carefully, he turned. But the wall was as empty as ever.

*Classically, churches were built in the shape of the cross. The nave is the long, "upright" bar of the cross, while the transept is the horizontal crossbar.

I.3

2010-04-28T19:53:00.000-07:00

[What is this, you may wonder? Explanation and beginning of the series can be found here]

The Youth

Running away inland made no sense either, thought the youth who sat under the willow by the river. Huckleberry Finn had had the choice either to go into the deep forest to live as a trapper or to disappear on the Mississippi, and he'd chosen the Mississippi. But he could've just as easily gone into the woods. But there were no woods here into which a guy could disappear, anyway -- just cities and villages and fields and plains of willows and so very little forest, as far as you could see. So it was all just nonsense, thought the youth, I'm not a child anymore, I've been out of school since Easter and I don't believe in Wild West stories anymore. But Huckleberry Finn was no Wild West story. A guy has got to do like Huckleberry Finn and get away.

There were three reasons why you had to get out of Rerik. The first went like this: because nothing ever happened in Rerik. There was really, totally, nothing. Nothing will ever happen to me here, thought the youth, as he pondered the autumn yellow, lance-shaped willow leaves on the Treene, drifting slowly away.

I.2

2010-04-28T17:16:00.000-07:00

[What is this, you may wonder? Explanation and beginning of the series can be found here]

This part was harder than I expected. I find Gregor's thoughts to be complex to the point of confusion sometimes. He speaks and thinks with detailed imagery, almost stream-of-consciousness at times. Translating his thoughts is an exercise in understanding.

Gregor

It's possible, thought Gregor, provided that one isn't in danger, to see the pale, standing pines as a curtain. Like this: an open assembly of lightly colored poles, from which matte green flags motionlessly fluttered under a gray sky until they united into a transparent green wall. The practically black, macadamed street seemed like a seam between the two halves of the curtain, and one undid it while bicycling along. After a few minutes, the curtain opens and reveals a scene of city and sea coast.

But since his life was in danger, thought Gregor, nothing was like anything else. The objects comprised themselves in their names, fully and completely. Outwardly, they revealed nothing of themselves.

So there were just solid things: forest, bicycle, street. Where the woods ended, one finds the city and the coast -- no backdrop for a game, but rather the stage for a menace that freezes over everything in inalterable reality. A house is a house, a wave a wave, neither more nor less.

Just on the other side of this menace, seven miles removed from the coast on a ship to Sweden -- if there should be a ship to Sweden -- would the sea, for example, be comparable to a bird wing, a wing of icy ultramarine that the late autumn scandanavians flew around. Until then the sea was nothing more than the sea, a turbulent mass that one had to see firsthand to know if it were suitable to allow an escape.

No, thought Gregor, whether or not I flee doesn't depend upon anything about the sea. The sea will allow passage. It depends upon sailors and captains, upon swedish and danish seafolk, upon their courage or their greed, and if there are no swedish or danish seafolk then it depends upon the comrades in Rerik--upon them with their fishing trawlers, it depends upon their looks and thoughts, namely that their looks aim for adventure, and their thoughts can manage an easy sail-setting motion.

It would be easier, thought Gregor, to be dependent upon the sea, instead of upon men.

A new project

2010-04-27T20:34:00.000-07:00

I'm going to start something new here, namely a serial translation of one of my favorite books: Sansibar oder der letzte Grund. It was written by Alfred Andersch in 1957, a german writer, and translated to english as "Flight to Afar" in 1961, but I don't own a copy of the latter, and I've been meaning to reread it for some time. A translation is a forcible way to thoroughly read and understand, and I'm a glutton for punishment, anyway, so....

The book is organized in chapters, each chapter subdivided in parts describing something about each of the main characters. The places (cities and regions) are real, as are many other things in the novel (such as the statue that will make an appearance). I will offer the spoiler that it is set in WWII-era Germany; this would become apparent after a while anyway, but it helps to know this from the start.

Like most post-war german novels, it is introspective of german society, but does so through the lens of each of the characters' personalities, and their struggles. Each one seeks something, sometimes desperately, and their efforts to prevail illuminate the oppression of the society. It's a timely novel for modern-era USA, I think. I have left in a lot of german notation and names in my translation. If you're like me, you read some passages aloud to yourself when you read as you go. Here is a quick german pronunciation primer for english speakers, for those bits that are still native:

Most letters "read how they look," if you have studied latin languages. If you haven't, may god have pity on your soul.
"ä" is pronounced as the letter 'a' in the english word "mate"
"ö" is pronounced roughly like the first sound in a kid saying "EWWW!" Just don't purse your lips.
"ü" is pronounced as if you were to say the letter 'i' the way it sounds in "hit," but through pursed lips
"ch," as in the pronoun "Ich," is not necessarily as gutteral and rough as american movies might make it. In the north, where this novel took place, it is often very soft, almost like "ish." (Listening to a dreamy blond Hamburg girl say "Ich liebe dich" is a rare pleasure.)
J = 'y'. Ja, ja, ja!
V = 'f'. "Von" sounds like "fon."
W = 'v'. "Woher" sounds like "vo hair."
In a word with a compound vowel (e.g., "erschien") the pronunciation is of the second vowel. So "erschien" sounds like "air sheen."

It's been ten years or more since I spoke or read german on a regular basis, so I'm sure to muck up the translation. Anyone who has read this and knows where I made a mistake: please tell me! That being said, it's really remarkable how fast it returns.

What follows is the first part and installment of this translation.

Zanzibar, or The Last Reason

And death shall have no dominion

Under the windings of the sea

They lying long shall not die windily;

Twisting on racks when sinews give way,

Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;

Faith in their hands shall snap in two,

And the unicorn evils run them through;

Split all ends up they shan't crack;

And death shall have no dominion.

Dylan Thomas

The Youth

The Mississippi would be the best, thought the youth. On the Mississippi a guy could just steal a canoe and get away, if it was true what was in Huckleberry Finn. On the Baltic Sea nobody could ever get very far, quite apart from the fact that there weren't any canoes anymore but rather just old beat-up rowboats. He looked up from his book to the brook, the Treene, flowing silently and slowly below; the willow under which he sat hung down into the water, and across the water in the old tannery nothing moved, like always. The Mississippi would be better than the storehouse in the old deserted tannery and the willow by the slow moving creek. Out on the Mississippi a guy could escape, while at the tannery and and under the willow you could only hide -- and only as long as it had leaves, and they had already begun to fall and turn yellow upon the brown water. Hiding wasn't the way, anyway, thought the youth -- you've got to get away.

A guy has to get away, but he has to end up somewhere. And you can't do it like dad, who wanted to escape, but who always just wandered aimlessly out on the open sea. When someone has no other goal than the open sea, they always come back. You've only really escaped, thought the youth, when you find landfall beyond the sea.

Systemic Failure

2010-04-26T23:11:00.000-07:00

Lotsa shit going down at the moment, and quite suddenly. I'm watching a decades-old marriage unravel. "It's working towards a resolution, one way or another," said L tonight, when I told her why I was ensconced in my office, awaiting email. And she's right. It's impossible to bottle oneself up forever. Eventually real feelings need to come out, one way or another. You can hold them back, but if unresolved, they WILL come back out, and with a vengeance. That appears to be what I'm seeing happening now.

It's sad, and nobody wins. Not the couple, not their kids, not their extended families, but the situation is even worse if they stay together.

Aside from that, how did you enjoy the show, Mrs. Lincoln?

Epistemic Failure

2010-04-23T18:41:00.000-07:00

Second crop of arugula getting bigger, 2/10/10

I just spent nine hours up to my armpits in the guts of SNMP agent code, which if you recognize what that is, means that you know the stench inside of my brain at the moment. Consider yourself a blessed child of the universe if that makes no sense.

To get the foul brain stench out, I spent a couple of hours ripping up my lawn. Yup, ripping that sucker right out. For some reason, the landscapers who put it in back when my home decided that a quarter inch of topsoil on top of this pacific northwest clay was just fine, lawnwise. Turns out, not so much. Turns out, rain on grass on a quarter inch of soil on top of clay just kind of pools up, pretty quicklike, and the moss and weeds move in. So I'm ripping that crap out, working ten yards of compost back into the clay, and then I'll put some native grasses on top. Seriously, Kentucky Bluegrass on clay in western Washington? Dare I call those landscapers morons?

So that is what it has come down to: me versus a lawn. And versus Finn, who seems to think that gardens are not for veggies, but rather for pooping. Everywhere. Three and a half years ago I helped forge a new route up one of the tallest peaks in the Andes, and today I'm digging up lawns in the rain and trying to catch our cat pooping in my tomatoes. Methinks I need to get a porch rocker, a knife, and some spare time to whittle.

But seriously, I'm enjoying the hell out of myself. One of my former associates, a woman who is somewhat well known for some solo first ascents up big wall routes ("big" meaning "you sleep on the wall for a few days since it takes that long to climb") and who was a technical assistant on some films in pakistan, climbing routes to run lines and support the camera crews as they hung suspended over voids, is one of my more frequent facebook commenters. About adventures? No. Climbing? No. Mountains? No. Naw, we chat back and forth about the best way to protect tomato plants from wind and cold, how to amend soil, etc. A little while ago, she gave birth to her first child, a little girl who today walked for the first time; no mention of future climbs in her happy announcement. And I was hilling up soil around my rampant potato plants when I took a break from work today, while Finn hunted mice twenty feet away.

I think that I'm beginning to sound somewhat repetitious. At this point, even I get it: yeah, it's nice to have a garden to hang out with, and no, I don't seem to do a whole lot of crazy adventures anymore.

I suppose that I keep coming back to it because I need to understand. This kind of life that I've got going here is not something that I would have pursued not too long ago, nor was it something that I thought I wanted. It's like how we keep dreaming the same dream, over and over, when something is bothering us. And so here I am, feeling pretty good about things overall, and wondering why that is.

I never used to wonder about things when I felt crappy. Seemed like that was status quo.

Taking It Too Far

2010-04-20T22:56:00.000-07:00

If you're wont to getting sucked into Internet fads, then you've seen this:

Well... you know how these memes evolve:

And yes, somebody went there:

Reevaluation

2010-04-16T21:19:00.000-07:00

I was thinking today about what it means to live an authentic life. By that I mean: to be living as an aware being, choosing a path, and not just blindly repeating the same motions day after day. Because that's what I've been doing the last few months: get up, eat breakfast, work at the computer for four hours, go work out, work four more hours, tend the garden, eat dinner, watch a film, read a book, sleep.

Repeat x120 days, modulo random variations.

This is not what I want my life to be. What I want more of:

Real interaction with people in my life, instead of screen time (computers and television)
To stop doing leisure time activities that I really don't like
More stop & quiet

For the first one, I want to push the keyboard away, and figure out how to fill the spare time with my people. Play backgammon with Laura, hike an evening trail, help mom haul some compost. This sitting in front of screens thing has got to stop. Really, it just has to. Facebook is stupid, and a $5 comcast movie is a waste of both money as well as time. I used to read a book a day, and I remember thinking and being challenged. Now, I feel like a lemming, waiting for the next round of entertainment.

For the second, this is harder. It means some real introspection. You know what? I really don't like the mountain rescue stuff. They consume my weekends and my weekdays, and honestly, there were only four callouts last year and I was unavailable for all of them. The guys in that group do it mostly to get away from their families for a night or a day. That's not the kind of dynamic I want to be a part of. I appreciate their efforts, but really, it's not fulfulling, and it's wasting my time. If I'm going to volunteer my time for a cause, I want it to feel right. I don't want to be a person who does things to get away from his life -- I want to do things to be a part of them.

For the last, it's the hardest of all. I'm so sick of supermarkets playing pop songs in the background, and radios in the car. Why must we always have noise? And why must we always be moving or doing? The best times of the last month that I can remember involve.. nothing that would make any headline. I remember Finn sitting beside me as I crouched by a garden bed, shivering as he does when the ground is cold and his foot pads get wet. I remember the warmth of Laura's skin as we stood together, watching the sun set in the forest. I remember waking up and then lying still, listening to the frogs croaking in the stream bed outside.

Well, tomorrow is the start of a new day. Let's see how it goes.

Beer Review

2010-04-13T22:40:00.000-07:00

Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.

Okay, here's the spring beer review, also known as "what I do after ten hours of work, not including time spent wandering around the garden to see what has sprouted or furminating Finn."

Seriously, before I moved to the pacific northwest, I thought that I understood beer. I am now properly chastened. Here are three (relatively) local ales that pretty much rock, limited to that number because after three bombers I am unable to know or care what I'm drinking:

Tricerahops, by Ninkasi. I am a mad fanatic for the IPA, and this is far and away the most consistent and hoppy IPA around -- and FSM knows, I've tried A LOT. Freshly tapped it's even better, but even in a bottle from the grocery store, it kicks ever-lovin' butt. This is some good stuff, folks. Oh sorry, if you're from a Blue Law state, there is no Ninkasi in the grocery store. Time to move, I guess.

Boundary Bay Brewing's Imperial IPA. This is even better than Tricerahops, but unfortunately it doesn't age well at all. As in, it loses a lot just a few days after they tap it. So you pretty much have to know when it's being brewed, when the tap is going in, and get yer butt up there to drink it. But trust me, it is so worth it if you make that window! Even after the window, it's still really good... I mean, I'm not going to stop drinking it just because it's not absolutely perfect anymore! I even have the Imperial IPA hoody from Boundary, even. Jealous? This beer just won an award at the beer festival, too -- and I bet that that was tapped, older stuff!

Chuckanut Strong Ale. On any given wednesday, you'll find me wandering down to the Boundary Bay Brewery with an empty growler to be filled with Imperial IPA, but you'll never see me doing that at the Chuckanut, because the bastards don't sell their Strong Ale in growlers, only in pints. Probably because the Strong keeps even worse than the Imperial, I'm guessing. But OMG is the Strong so good out of the tap! Besides, one pint is enough to make me need to spend some time down on the waterfront, chilling out.

A brewery that I haven't mentioned that is also (relatively) local is the Standing Stone Brewery in Ashland, Oregon. I stopped off there for dinner over New Year's and was out-and-out stunned by how good their beer was, so much so that I bought a growler for the trip home. Even makes me want to go back south again.

All this being said, I will still always love New Belgium for their marvelous philosophy (no other company looks after their employees as well!), their fantastic beer, and the fact that they're a Colorado home-grown native. But alas, I am no longer a Coloradan.

What a day in the garden does to my thoughts

2010-04-11T23:45:00.000-07:00

I spent this saturday helping to man a first aid tent for the local MS Walk. I am a certified wilderness first responder, so the theory is that since I (theoretically) know how to deal with an open femur fracture more than an hour away from definitive medical care, that I should be able to put a band-aid on a knee.

Both of the above assumptions are wrong. On the one hand, although I was taught in a twelve-day course how to apply traction and a splint to a femur fracture, I'm not at all certain how I would handle it for real. And it was a year and a half ago that I took the course, so things are a bit fuzzy now.

On the other hand, it's really wrong to assume that just simple scrapes will happen with a community benefit walk. The people who are doing this stuff are not in good shape, almost by definition. And some of their relatives are REALLY not in good shape. The whole day I had visions of needing to do CPR, and I hoarded free oranges and water bottles for possible diabetics since our supplied med kit had no glucose. One old dude sat down in our patient chair and said "whew! I made it a mile this year. Double what I did last year, when I lost my sight since I'd forgotten my insulin!"

Whew, that was saturday. And then sunday: all day in the garden. I put up a third raised garden bed, and cleaned a bunch of rocks out of the yard. Interspersed with a lot of just sitting and listening to the creek, the wind in the trees, and birds calling back and forth. Finn was out with me most of the day, Zooey occasionally. Finn caught a mole and a mouse. Zooey sniffed them, but mostly she stayed close to me, wary of the wider world. Sometimes I just had to stop, and sit, and be. Occasionally Laura would open the door, come out, and come stand next to me. She has her own battles, but the garden is good for both of us. We stand, she listens, I listen. After ten minutes, she nuzzles me and goes back inside to finish what she was doing.

It's weird. Where I am now, I would not have thought I would ever be, just 3-ish years ago. Which is an example of hope, I guess. Plenty of things go wrong, but time passes, and we go on.

A new page is just a day away. Well, if we let it be, it seems.

What's Not Up (or what is)

2010-04-08T22:17:00.000-07:00

Spring is here, finally and certainly. We awake to songbirds through open windows and fall asleep to frogs chorusing in the creek bed of the forest just behind the back yard; the radishes are bulbing out and will be ready for salad in just a few days, the spinach and arugula throw out more leaves every day, and the afternoon sun beams lean long and warm.

Finn has taken to catching moles, about one a day. He doesn't really know what to do with them: they're obviously not food, to his mind, since they look and taste nothing like kibble, but in his attempts to figure them out he inevitably kills them. I feel a bit sorry for them, but then it's his nature to hunt. Death is a part of the rebirth of spring, after all.

Tomorrow I plant my red cabbage starts (fish tacos!), and prepare for my saturday of administering band-aids, moleskin, and aspirin to the participants of the MS Walk here in town as one of the medical volunteers.

Overall, a boring update. Because life is good for me right now, and boring -- such as it is -- after years of strife and uncertainty -- is just fine.

MINE

2010-04-05T22:20:00.000-07:00

So, I'm a member of a mountain rescue group, yada yada yada. It's a interesting way to maintain mountaineering skills and to learn rescue techniques, which are pretty far and away different from standard mountaineering geekery. Also, there are helicopter rides, sometimes. And free bratwurst at the summer picnic!

Anyway, there are a number of women in the group, which is not unusual. It doesn't stop all manner of sexist joking, like the lead rigger screaming that the mainline raise team is "HAULING LIKE A BUNCH OF GIRLS!" or another rigger delicately quoting lines from "Forty Year Old Virgin" as he helped haul a 3:1 leverage system on a belay line, and I quote him, "SUCKER MOTHERFUCKER! IN THE ASSHOLE! COCKSUCKER MOTHERFUCKER!"

(Yarding on haul lines is hard work.)

They're a pretty tight group, these guys. And morbidly funny. We'll have a membership meeting and be going over points: recent donations, upcoming trainings, blah blah blah. Then the president will close the meeting with an offhand remark like, "and oh yeah, don't forget that spring is here now and we've still got a couple up in the freezer who are going to thaw out soon, so stay ready." As in, two corpses somewhere up on the glaciers that are going to surprise some tourist hikers soon and necessitate a quick body recovery. (Or two.)

So last week, Laura asked me if it would be okay by me*, if she joined the group. She said that one of her previous SO's used to rigidly partition "his activities" and "their activities." As in, he didn't want her doing "his stuff." So he refused to take her camping, for example**.

I can sympathize with that attitude to a very small degree, because I know I like to carve out my own bit of the world that I can call my own. But seriously? It's really pretty childish to declare that someone can't do something because you need your space. You gotta make your space, not deny space to other people, I think.

Plus, I really can't wait to see what happens when a bunch of good-natured he-men are exposed to a feminist who won't back down, and who can probably out-perform (athletically) most of them. She'll swear up a blue streak right next to them, and turn those "bunch of girls" remarks right back on their heads.

Yeah, this is going to be pretty amusing. Hell YEAH she should join!

*Obviously, we still are getting to know each other. I can't imagine Laura asking the same question of anyone that she knew well. She'd just say "fuck it, I'm joining this thing!"

**Which is just patently stupid because skinny dipping with a hot girl in a mountain lake is the best thing ever. Just saying.

HA!

2010-04-03T02:28:00.000-07:00

"I just think that it's funny that you fart in your sleep and then blame it on Finn*, aloud, also while you're still asleep."

*Finn is our kitten

Yeah, I got my ass kicked by Topology. Yes I did.

2010-03-30T22:23:00.000-07:00

This post at Futility Closet caught my eye:

Here is a book lying on a table. Open it. Look at the first page. Measure its thickness. It is very thick indeed for a single sheet of paper — one half inch thick. Now turn to the second page of the book. How thick is this second sheet of paper? One fourth inch thick. And the third page of the book, how thick is this third sheet of paper? One eighth inch thick, etc. ad infinitum. We are to posit not only that each page of the book is followed by an immediate successor the thickness of which is one half that of the immediately preceding page but also (and this is not unimportant) that each page is separated from page 1 by a finite number of pages. These two conditions are logically compatible: there is no certifiable contradiction in their joint assertion. But they mutually entail that there is no last page in the book. Close the book. Turn it over so that the front cover of the book is now lying face down upon the table. Now, slowly lift the back cover of the book with the aim of exposing to view the stack of pages lying beneath it. There is nothing to see. For there is no last page in the book to meet our gaze.

An interesting (and very cool) twist on the nature of infinity. Or, should I say, infinities, for there is not just one.

There are a lot of curious things about allowing the existence of infinite things, which is one of the primary reasons why I do the kind of work that I do. I was fascinated by the notions that crop up. Like the fact that once you formalize the concept of a "problem" that can be solved and go on to formalize its difficulty, then in very short order you come to realize how tiny our intellect is. (Viz., as I have said too often, there are not only infinitely more problems that we cannot solve, there are infinitely many that we can't even adequately describe. This is very easy to prove, definitively, with easy math.)

But infinities have been bugging people for ages. Aristotle, that most famous of misguided philosophers, once wrote a version of Zeno's Paradox thusly: "In a race, the quickest runner can never overtake the slowest, since the pursuer must first reach the point whence the pursued started, so that the slower must always hold a lead."

Obviously untrue, yes? Put in more familiar terms, you can never leave the room that you're in because you must first walk half the distance to the door. And then half again, and so on. But half of a finite quantity is always another finite quantity. Nevertheless, I still somehow manage to walk from my office to the coffee maker every morning, and the Boston Marathon is still run every year despite the algebraic obviousness that it can't actually happen at all.

Things like this have confounded scientists for centuries. There was a time when nobody could comprehend the idea of empty space, since they already knew of radio waves. As a result, they tried to prove (without success) of the existence of a material "ether" that transmitted the wave effects. And when confronted with proof that light is neither wave nor particle, but rather both, their minds rebelled.

And yet today, we're comfortable with the dual nature of matter (both waves as well as particles), and given proof that the ether cannot exist we now simply accept the fact that electromagnetic radiation propogates through empty space without any other medium, and the mathematical notion of limits has long since dispensed with any curiosity about the answer to Zeno.

Dare I say that there is an element of faith involved here?

Snapoutofit

2010-03-29T21:33:00.000-07:00

It has been something of a rough weekend and a rough start of a week for me. Some things that are pretty important to me and my own sense of self-worth kind of imploded, and I've been thoughtful ever since.

I'm reminded of a quote by Joseph Campbell:

Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.

That is, where we fail is where we have the chance to learn what our shortcomings are and eventually succeed in overcoming them. Without the knowledge of what we lack, we can't become better. I get that, and I'm trying to put it into action.

It's just that the colossal failure in the first place is a serious bummer.

And now a followup video that never fails to make me smile no matter how bummed out I get:

Fun Facts I & II, and a bit of Political Ranting

2010-03-22T22:33:00.000-07:00

The actual full moon is smaller than a dime held at arm's length. All those photos showing an enormous moon rising over a landscape are.... well, they're fake.

I realize that this fact isn't so fun. We like to be thrilled and awed, and small pictures of a little moon don't do that. Awe-inspiring fake pictures do. But truth matters to me. More than awe, even.

Along those lines, I once got in major trouble over this:

Why? Because an acquaintance thought it was real. Snopes said otherwise, and I just gave her the link. She actually unfriended me on facebook and stopped talking to me after that. I mean, woah!

I seem to keep running into this, and it confuses me anew every time. As a scientist, I'm trained to reassess my world view when empirical facts contradict it. It's hard to be taken seriously if you insist that the moon is made of cheese when a sample of the moon comes back showing distinctly non-cheese elements.

But in personal lives, people seem to cling to the wildest notions, and with a fury approaching manic obsession. As if the core of their existence depends upon that thing being true. This happens in politics all the time, as most of us here in the USA have witnessed (again) in the last few weeks. And as I well know, it happens very easily in personal lives.

For that former acquaintance of mine, I think that she felt really badly about the general direction that her life was taking, especially in her workplace, which was dominated by a couple of drunken asshole guys. Misogynists, in fact. She compensated by clinging to things like that video, which purported to show a girl doing something effortlessly that the Big Strong Baseball Man couldn't. And me coming along and shooting it down -- well, that just made me part of the problem. Multiply that by 10 years and I suppose that she had had enough. Which is okay for me, since we were never close.

But back in my world, I have to wonder if it's really worth celebrating something that is false. Give me reality, any day. Give me the first female Speaker of the House and the first black President passing historic legislation that 100 years of white men could not -- THAT is inspiring. Not that I'm denigrating white men -- I am one, after all. More that I'm celebrating our collective spirit and abilities.

Say what you will about the recent bill, but seriously, you have to recognize the awesomeness of this historic moment. It says far more about us as a country and a culture than anything else. I'm sure that politicians will fuck things up again as usual as quickly as possible, but we have still now seen an aggressive and competent woman out-maneuver a house full of men who swore that they would defeat her, and a black man prove that he can out-politic and play the long game better than anyone else. If this doesn't prove once and for all that we, as humans, are all generally equal in abilities and natural talent, I don't know what would.

Image from here.

Geek Jokes I

2010-03-19T22:01:00.000-07:00

Q: What is a polar bear?
A: A cartesian bear after a change in coordinates.

Screw Computers

2010-03-18T21:41:00.000-07:00

So Laura is yacking on the phone with someone about her chemistry class and so I paused our episode of Friday Night Lights and am trying to add a link to Hark, A Vagrant! which is seriously one of the best webcomics ever made (and so clearly I need to marry Kate Beaton toot sweet), but apparently I just keep screwing it up. I mean, seriously, why can't I just add this website? It keeps getting translated to the site RSS feed.

Oooooh, I see. Butsoactually, I'm not screwing up anything, it's just that blogger's bloglist interface sucks worse than Journey, or maybe worse than Poison. OOH! I got it: worse than Nickelback!

But no... no, that's just stupid. Nickelback is really horrible, I grant you that, but they aren't the worst ever, it's got to be someone else.

*OH*.

Yes, yes. Blogger's link system is worse than CREED.

Imagery I

2010-03-16T22:40:00.000-07:00

All of these words, they are smoke
They are hanging so thick in the air
Between your face and mine
And they curl and they twist and they change without warning
And I'm never sure if it's what you said
Or what I think you said

Perú

2010-03-12T23:56:00.000-08:00

Tocllaraju, Ishinca Valley, Peru

My friend Danielle is all hot and bothered about doing a climb in Peru. Specifically, she wants to climb in the Ishinca Valley, where I have done all of one trip. Danielle is a hot-ass climber: daring, confident, and strong -- but without the standard climbers' baggage of ego. In fact, she's self-deprecating and fun, someone who laughs at herself as hard or harder than anyone else can, always optimistic in the face of adversity, and her smile is freaky in how it takes over her face with its array of teeth. In fact, her smile has been known to light small fires from 300 yards away. In short, a really great person to have around on a high mountain, and honestly a really good person all around. She doesn't bemoan adversity; she celebrates being alive, all the time, even when that means saying that yeah, We're Wet and Miserable, But Seriously I'm Glad I'm Not In Class.

I taught Danielle to climb. Or, I should say, I provided the conditions, as a teacher, under which she had the chance to excel, which she did. Something about her unbounded optimism resounded with me and she always poked me on a regular basis to go on a climb here or there, and so we've always kept in touch. She came out to visit me a a couple of years ago, and then again last year with our mutual friend Darin, and both times we were blocked from a serious climb of Mt. Baker by conditions but we still had a great time together.

But so she wrote to me this week about climbing in Peru, and I was instantly ready to go. What could be better than doing something that you love with good people? Now we're in the planning stages.

I haven't been on a real mountain in three years now.

It's time.

This Kind of Freaks Me Out

2010-03-05T17:41:00.000-08:00

This Will Not End Well

2010-03-02T23:30:00.000-08:00

PC-E NIKKOR 24mm f/3.5D ED lens

So, I bought my birthday present: a Nikon wide angle, tilt/shift lens. Okay, so my birthday is in four months, whatever. I've been lusting after one of these things forever. I mean, FOREVER. What is so great about them, you ask?

Well, for one, there's the tilt: you can tilt the objective lens relative to the sensor plane. Why is that useful? Well, because as you remember from your college physics course, a lens focuses a focal plane to a focal point, so everything within the focal plane appears to be in focus at that point, and tilting the objective tilts the focal plane at an angle to the sensor. By tilting like that, part of the sensor stays in focus, but the rest goes out of focus, resulting in seriously cool shots like this. Stills are cool... but how about time lapses?

And then there's the shift. Ever taken a picture of a tall building? You point up at it, and the finished product looks like the thing is falling away from you. So you back waaaaaaaaay up in order to not point up but rather keep the lens perpendicular to the sides of the building, and then it looks okay.... but at the expense of half the frame filled with hot dog stands, parking lots, and god knows what else. Sure would be nice to be able to shift the building's image into the full frame at that point, eh? Yep, you got it.

Sure, you can fake the tilt effect (partially) in Photoshop. But you can't do it all without the real lens. The artistic possibilities are endless! I want to do a time lapse of my city with Mats Bergström's "Fratres" as the music, so I'm scoping out locales right now.

Sigh.

Gadgets are pretty cool, but I still have an enormous conversation to have soon.

But tilt/shift! TILT/SHIFT!!

Garden Porn Redux

2010-02-28T00:03:00.000-08:00

5¢ Sammiches Back In the Day

I'm continuing to go nutballs with my garden. For whatever reason, despite the fact that it's the winter wrath of god in the rest of north america, out here in the pacific northwest it's actually pretty nice, from a gardening perspective. That is, some sunny days, soil warm enough to germinate seeds, bulbs sprouting.

My mom has taught me most of what I know, when it comes to gardening. Toss dill seeds out in the fall. Garlic cloves planted in september. Beans should be planted down to the first knuckle in one's finger. That sort of stuff.

But fundamentally, growing things is really easy. Life wants to happen. If you keep it moist and keep it in contact with soil, and keep it at a temperature that it likes, then it will probably start to grow. I.e., plant the seed, water it enough so that it soaks and cracks open, and keep it in contact with nutrients at a warm enough temp to live. Pretty simple, right?

For whatever reason, most of my friends can't grok that. "It's simple," I say. "Press the radish seed into the soil. Cover it. Press soil down on top of it. Water enough to keep it moist but not soaking. Repeat." Seriously, is that hard? No, it's not. But somehow I am the one with the "green thumb."

Okay, granted, radishes are easy. But every climate has its easy plants. Find'em. Grow'em. Enjoy. Radishes like cool. So does spinach, lettuce, and most every green. Peppers and their kind like warmth. Corn is a freak that shouldn't be grown. Tomatoes are just weird and bitchy, and you're going to punish yourself if you try. Carrots are nifty. Collards make me laugh. And stinging nettles make me smile.

I'm going to have WAY too many red onions this year, if things work out. If you're within driving range in august, then I can hook you up!

Wild blueberries next to a Washington trail

Garden Porn

2010-02-26T00:31:00.000-08:00

Things are hopping in the the garden! I've got one raised bed fully sprouting with radishes, spinach, lettuce, kale, endives, and more. I suppose that's basically the salad bed, eh? The second bed is planted with more radishes (what can I say, I love them), arugula (Laura calls it "Obama Spinach"), spinach, and onions. So... another salad bed. Geesh. Perhaps I need to plan this better for next year. Anyway, some pics so far:

Some of my radioactive-green chives

Raspberry floricanes starting to bud leaves next to my fence.

Wormwood seedlings

Leek starts hardening off next to the house

Finn trotting around the back yard. (He doesn't wear the leash anymore, since he's shown that he won't run out into the street and get killed.)

Also, my dill is sprouting heartily, the garlics are going crazy, and the peppermint is coming back from the abuse which I dealt it last winter.

I'm also going to plant a weed garden: things that are nutritious and delicious but denigrated as weeds. Dandelion, lambs quarter, sorrel, orach, burnet, purslane, and some calendula flowers thrown in for color!

As I write this, Finn is sitting my lap, purring, his chin on my right arm, little claws kneading my leg. Good Beethoven playing on the iTunes.

Apparently at this stage of my life, late night porn is good music, warm purring kittens, gardening, and a glass of wine. Did I mention the wine?

Big Ideas

2010-02-23T23:57:00.000-08:00

So, I'm taking this basic mountaineering course. It's kind of weird to have people telling me things that I know by rote. It's weirder still to try to explain to people why I'm taking the course. "Wait," they say, "you've climbed that shit, on your own, and you're taking this class?"

Years ago, I did a series of leadership seminars. Things that were intended to teach group dynamics, how to lead, what it means to lead, the downfalls thereof, etc. etc. An interesting concept that I picked up from that was what they called (if I recall correctly) the chain of failure. Namely, that after disaster or accident, be it major or minor, you can trace back the bad decisions that led to it, sometimes for years. A chain of one bad decision after another. The idea was to be able to identify, in the future, when you were starting to make bad decisions, and to see where they were leading you.

Personally, I'm a big believer in reading the signs of what the world is saying to you. I feel like there's a reason why people experience strings of bad luck in their lives. It has everything to do with how we lead our lives, and the decisions that we make on a daily basis. If we start to notice things going downhill, it's time to stop and reevaluate.

But similarly, if all is well and we feel like we're in control, I think that it's time to stop and reassess the fundamentals. Overconfidence has killed more than one person, or dream. Sometimes the world helps out with that by kicking us with bad luck just as we think we've got it made, just to press the point home.

So I'm taking a fundamental climbing course after years of climbing solo on steep rock and in high mountains; after making expeditions up big peaks and new lines; after having taught this very stuff for years to rank beginners. And each time I go, I find myself astonished that I'm learning something new. I learn about technique that has changed since I started; I learn about the area, to which I recently moved; I learn about the ethics and style of my community; I learn about leadership in ways that I had not previously considered.

And I learn about teaching. I taught this very type of course for years and years back in Colorado. But now, from the students' perspective, I see people teaching it to me. They're very good, and I appreciate that. But there is a constant and pervasive message of .... something. Clanishness? Entitlement? I dunno. I see the teaching staff treating the newbies as... something less.

That really resounds with me. I think back, and I can remember doing the same thing. I was full of accomplishments when I started teaching, full of daring, full of bravado. I still am. But now I'm on the other side of the bench. I'm learning so much more than they intended to teach. I'm learning what it means to be a teacher. I can see and understand my fellow students' struggles, and I see where the teachers' curriculum is frankly absurd and doesn't advance the program. But much more than that, I am starting to see how the sociology of groups plays such a huge part in learning. When people feel that they are a part of something, and accepted, they can excel. And if rejected... failure is a likely option for most.

That's a huge lesson, and it's not at all limited to my narrow little example.

Ich bau dir ein Haus aus Schweinskopfsülze

2010-02-11T22:56:00.000-08:00

Goldfrapp, Lovely Head (cut short)

I seem to be struggling with an idea. Ideas are funny things. They can take a prominent role at one moment, but then fade into obscurity when reconsidered.

It was a cold night

2010-02-10T00:29:00.000-08:00

Black currants will arrive soon! I actually have a shitload to say, but that's all for now. Mountains are coming up, and relationships are ... interesting for me, but what am I thinking about? Planting my black currant bushes that will be here soon, that's what.

Avoidance is not altogether bad if it yields fruit. I mean, literally.

Which is not to say that I'm forever avoiding, just displacing.

Sunshine, Go Away Today

2010-02-07T23:55:00.000-08:00

impluvious: adj. wet with rain

The Radium Release Hitch

2010-01-28T23:55:00.000-08:00

Start by tying a figure-8 on a bight on one end of a 33 foot, 8mm static cord. Clip that into a locking carabiner with the loop next to the spine. Next, loop through the second carabiner, back through the first, and then up again to the second, finishing with a Münter hitch next to the gate of the second carabiner. Tie off the Münter hitch with a half hitch on a bight around the three strands and as close as possible to the Münter, and secure the half hitch with an overhand on a bight (again, around the three strands). Tie off the end with another figure-8 on a bight and clip to an anchor, if desired.

There. You now know how to tie a load-releasable 3:1 hitch that you can use between a pulley (if raising) or a brake bar (if lowering) that can be used to unload the line if you have a locked prussik hitch.

The things a guy learns in Mountain Rescue training....

Garden Mania

2010-01-21T23:23:00.000-08:00

Fifteen cubic yards of topsoil

This is starting to get out of hand. I've known for some time that I have a tendency towards addictions, so I have to watch what I get excited about. But this gardening thing is truly beyond my control. I spend hours and hours planting, amending, fixing, planning... you name it. When I really get going, Laura laughs and says "oh, you have SUCH a gardening boner right now."

It's really like the first time that I felt that adrenaline rush from climbing. I still remember the first climb that I ever did, on toprope, inside on a gym wall, and I still remember the first time on real rock. And the first time leading a trad rock route (all two pitches of it).

Or mountaineering. I remember the rush of seeing "15,000'" on my altimeter for the first time. And "17,000'" and "19,000'" and "20,000'"! And seeing the conical shadow of the mountain at sunrise for the first time. And skiing off an insane cornice, hoping that the ton of snow wouldn't follow me down.

Or riding a motorcyle really fast up a mountain road. By which I mean, really fast. I remember the first time that I ditched, too, watching the bike spin away from me, motor still running as the asphalt ground through my leather jacket.

But those things are nothing compared to gardening. Seriously. I think I go out to check my garlics about four or five times a day, and I'm now looking at greenhouses because I can't stand the thought of not being able to bring my eggplant seedlings to fruit.

All this is not to say that I've stopped mountaineering, or rock climbing, or riding fast motorcycles. Those things are still fun. But when you're done climbing a mountain, or leading a rock route, or zooming up a twisty road, it's really, really nice to come home to a quiet garden of herbs and vegetables, to listen to the sound of the wind in the trees and the creek and the frogs, and to know in a really visceral way that setting roots is right and good.

Return to your porch rocker and resume whittling

2010-01-20T00:13:00.000-08:00

I graduated from high school in 1984, and I remember thinking what dinosaurs the alumni from 1964 must be. So now here I am, older than they were, when I thought that. Woah.

So is it just me, or do only the people that we really don't want to keep in touch with post their vitals on the alumni web pages? All the people I am really interested in are missing, but yup, right there are the people who never moved away from Colorado Springs (where I grew up), posting the pointers to their web pages and blogs. I would note that my own info is also missing on that alumni page... but at least I'm google-able. Googlable? Googleable?

On an entirely different but very related note (tease those apart, I dare you), how is it that I can remember the phone number of my parent's house that I grew up in (598-2384), but I don't know my own mother's phone number today? Cell phones are a bit of a curse, I would posit. I'm sure that the answer involves a variety of jokes about alzheimers and old age.

INFP

2010-01-18T00:15:00.000-08:00

Gardening circa 1/13/2010

So, it turns out that dirt is heavy stuff. It also turns out that tilling up clay soils it backbreaking work. Finally, I will note that living with a masseuse is one thing, but that getting her to use her talents on you after a day of moving wheelbarrows of dirt and tilling it into the clay to amend the soil is, in fact, a completely different thing. Not that I asked, mind you -- that would be far too gauche. She should be able to tell from my subtle moaning, exactly what was needed!

I kid, of course. But the larger issue about being honest is on my mind tonight. I'm not a demonstrative sort of person, so talking about wants and needs is never high on my priority list. Maybe it's easier for demonstrative people, for extroverts and their kin. Hell, tonight I went to the facebook page of a colorado climber who died recently, and it was awash in awkward sentiments from strangers. On the one hand, I'm really, really, REALLY creeped out by the whole facebook phenomenon and people airing private stuff in public. On the other, it impresses me that people are able to be so honest, so publicly, not only to the person they are addressing but also to the entire world. That just isn't me.

I'm good with that.

Squeaky Wheels

2010-01-15T23:56:00.000-08:00

Last night we tried to go to a lecture by Michael Pollan at the Performing Arts Center on the campus of WWU. We arrived in time, but forgot the cardinal rule about universities: parking S U C K S. After 30 minutes, we had finally found a spot and managed to get to the venue, only to find that they'd resold our seats since we had not shown up in time. (Aside: WTF?!) The same thing had happened to roughly 1/4 of those who had tickets.

It was frustrating. I love the message that MP is putting out there, and I really wanted to see him. Plus it had been raining for six straight days, and I was kind of ready for a night out. And so I understand the disappointment that comes with being turned away in that fashion.

But seriously, is it really necessary to start screaming and verbally savaging the people in the box office? They didn't make the policy.

This is something that I've never really understood: making a lot of noise to try to get something. I have friends who are really proud of the fact that when they complain loudly and often about something, they are usually rewarded. Want a free coffee? Raise a stink at the minimum-wage girl behind the counter about how your last skinny double latté was made wrong. Want free tickets? Bitch loudly about, well, anything. Eventually they'll give them to you just to get rid of you.

But you know what? I've been on the other side of that counter, and I know what it's like. They can't change what happened, and a lot of times what the complainers get for free comes out of their take-home. So we missed the show -- big whup. I'll see Michael the next time around, and I'll be sure to be an hour early instead of 15 minutes early.

As we left the venue, the box office manager stopped us. We'd already gotten a refund for our tickets, but she also now handed us a certificate granting us two free tickets to any show at the WWU/PAC that we wanted to see. We didn't ask for it, and she didn't give it to anyone else. I dunno what that means. I just looked at her and said "thank you," and she nodded.

We were the only ones who didn't give her shit. So thanks, Jessie. You rock!

Stupidity

2010-01-12T23:36:00.000-08:00

Uh Huh.

So I've got this huge train of thought going about free will and automata and what constitutes independent thought, free of biological or environmental imperatives, as I should, being an overeducated AI researcher -- a train of thought that I've been fermenting on trips to the store and back, while skiing, when pulling rocks out of the garden beds, and....

Well, and then I come inside and the cats look at me like I'm a goddamn idiot. "We're in front of the fire sleeping, my man," they seem to say. "Do not disturb."

Being human seems to mean being an idiot. I got an email that read "So guess what Venus is up to," and I read it. The cats, at this point, would roll their eyes and say "idiot writes, idiot reads."

What is it about us that leads us to follow those toxic people in our past that we have left behind? Seriously, what is it? That's something that will never make sense from a neurological model.

In Which I Return to My Porch Rocker to Resume Whittling

2010-01-05T23:01:00.001-08:00

Photo Credit

So, apparently sometime in the last two years I have become a gardening aficionado. Since about last september, I've been hoarding seed catalogs, reading gardening blogs, collecting free seeds from friends, building raised garden beds, tilling random parts of my back yard, and basically being the opposite of what one expects out of a self-proclaimed "outdoors sports and travel lover," which I am.

This evening while L very kindly made a heaping pile of something approximating eggplant parmesan with quinoa and chopped squash and a mustard green salad on the side ("approximating" because we didn't have all the ingredients, but she did a fine job nonetheless, as usual), I busied myself with cobbling together an indoor light frame out of PVC tubing, a pair of multispectrum LED light bars, and a seedling heat pad. I've got this notion, see, of starting some pepper and eggplant seeds now, and then moving them to coldframes on the south side of my house. And, you know, being awash in peppery/eggplantery goodness in a few months. Or something.

So the question is: at what point did I stop being the no-discernible-credit-score wandering slackass with a backpack and a gear rack that I was ten years ago (and a good ten years before that, too, sadly), and start being a homeowner eating healthy meals cooked by someone who cooks better than I do while I Putter About The Rumpus Room? Christ on a freaking raft, I've become my grandparents.

I mean, not that that I'm trying to denigrate the latter, or anything. I'd just like to remember having chosen to take this path.

Gotta hit the sack now. Dill and Calendula planting next week, and the pepper seeds go into the starter pots tomorrow. If I develop any notable signs of rheumatism or gout, you can be assured that I will let you know -- unless it cuts into the 4:30pm buffet that I clearly need to begin patronizing, or into my 7:00pm bedtime that I will no doubt be adopting in the coming days. On a serious and geeky note, though, I am going to time-lapse photo my peppers as they start. Yep. You read that right.

Wait, What?

2010-01-03T22:16:00.000-08:00

Mt. Shasta 12/30/2009, Avalanche Gully:

Snowshoe/Skin up (right), Ski back down (left)

(note sea of clouds below)

Okay, I'm back. What'd I miss?