I've been reading up a bit on future EU expansion and think it's excellent on many levels. This is also pretty cool.
I added two new photo albums recently. The first is an album showing a few highlights of the creek trails I sometimes refer to. The second album is some of the better scans from pictures I took at this year's Burning Man.
Well, we're still learning things about life in the new neighborhood. Tonight I went and got 5 heaping bags of candy for Halloween, expecting tons of kids to come marching by into the wee hours of the morning. This was not so. We ended up using about 1 bag, so the great race to dispose (AKA, sicken one's self by ingesting excessive amounts) of the candy has begun.
My shelf thing from my cabinetry class is coming along nicely. I sanded one side too much, and there are several bumps and gouges that have mysteriously appeared... otherwise it's pretty snappy. I decided to do a clear lacquer finish with silver hardware. There will be pix later on when its all done.
Later on I went for a short ride downtown to see the new "greenway" the city is building around the neglected creek that passes through downtown. It'd be really nice if the city would extend the bike paths that follow the creek eastward to match up with the other creek paths across town, but I have yet to think of a sure-fire way of helping push this idea to city hall. Any suggestions? While I was admiring the work of the project engineers I was confronted by a vagrant woman who posed the universal question, "Hey, are you with that skank-ass bitch.. (insert forgettable name here)?" My reply, "No, I'm just a guy riding a bike." This was met with a question of what the time was, followed by a request for a cigarette. I was able to satisfy the former.
Last night I was finally able to occupy Sweden and Finland, in addition to the entire balkan region. Tonight, however, I pushed up the bar when I occupied the entire balkan region, Spain, Portugal, Vichy France, Switzerland, Gibraltar, and got close to nabbing Sweden as well. Undoubtedly, this means that I'll try to better the triple-front strategy in the near future.
My sister came to visit just as I was coming back from my ride, but she didn't stay long. Later on I layed down to watch some of the big H and unintentionally ended up taking a nap for almost 2 hours. After prevailing over the usual post-nap waves of jetlag-like incoherency and woozyness I made an excellent fried chicken dinner with stuffing and asparagus.
This is quite hilarious, thanks Jess.
Today was apparently the day of idiot drivers. During the several times I was out doing things today, I had the displeasure of sharing the road with an unusually high number of complete idiots. Some of the more memorable ones were: The guy in the mall parking lot looking off into space that almost slammed into my passenger door, the two old fogey cars driving side-by-side at 30 mph down a 45 mph road, the 3 drivers totally confused as to how to use an intersection with a 4-way stop, the van that blocked my exit from the full parking lot at the Post Office, and the asshole that zipped around me while I was backing out at Yardbirds. Thanks, jerks.
My computer has been crashing a lot lately, and I'm not sure why. I'm hoping there won't have to be an FDISK #4 in the near future, as it feels like I did the last one not more than a few months ago. In reality, it's been about a year... who knows. I did a defrag, maybe that'll help.
In this fast food era where musclebound marketeers spew forth hyperactive diatribes about how one must keep fit, I couldn't care less. However, I do think I'd probably feel more energized if I was a bit more "in shape," so I've decided to kickstart my old regimen of push-ups and sit-ups.
A bizarre thing happened on my way to work yesterday evening. As I was pulling off a side street onto a main boulevard, I thought I saw a fast-moving car coming of the corner of my eye. I pulled out quickly and sped ahead to match my speed with what I thought I saw, but instead I was somewhat shocked to see a motorcycle cop riding my bumper. I was all ready to give him a smile and apologize for pulling out in front of him when he pulled up beside me at a red light. Before I had a chance to work past the smile on my face, he started saying how he was going to give me a ticket for running a stop sign, but that he was on his way to a crash. I was immediately confused halfway to hell, mainly because I didn't recall running any stop sign and I was still trying to figure out how he appeared out of nowhere. I apologized to him and then kept driving to work, thinking the whole time, "what in the hell..?"
Last night I managed to finally defeat the Turks. This is pretty cool. This is just hilariously wrong... thanks for the link Luke. On a final note, the time has come for mankind to answer the singular question, "Mommy, why does my popsicle taste like arm?"
I read through quite a bit of the written material on my buddy Luke's website tonight... good stuff. Also earlier this evening, I developed an immediate liking for Coldplay's new album, "A Rush of Blood to the Head" after putting it in the cd player for a few rotations. I've taken a particular liking for the song "Clocks." It's a great album, I absolutely recommend it.
In other news, I've been seriously considering setting up a Beefpile/Axis Ost store through Cafepress for folks to get t-shirts, coffee mugs, and other useless crap. Would you be interested in a fine robot-crafted Axis Ost tea mug? No, not a coffee mug, a tea mug.
Oh, and I came to a fairly weighty decision today while I was in my chamber of spirituality and life reflection, the shower. You'll have to wait until this winter to find out what it was though.
Well that was random, I just had a vision of a snow-covered field with a road nearby.
Tonight I watched Conspiracy Theory... twice. It's a good movie.
When I got back I passed out for an hour or so and then went upstairs to shop online for T-shirts. Alas, after numerous bleachings because of an insidious blue blanket, my Robot Frank and Mauna Kea Beach Hotel t-shirts have finally decided to disintegrate to a point that I'm not comfortable wearing them in public. After browsing through Cafepress.com's massive database, I finally found a couple that were worthy of my hard-earned cash. In other news, my dog has another damn ear infection... and this one looks pretty bad. I'm taking the poor pup to the Vet tomorrow first thing.
This is pretty bad ass. This is quite entertaining.
When making drawers, I've learned that if there is even 1/32 of an inch of difference in the length of two parallel sides, your drawer will become horribly misaligned when you clamp it up to let the glue dry. Oh yes, and use clamps on all 4 sides... and weigh the top down with books or something.
I exercised the awesome opportunity to see the Space Shuttle and International Space Station fly over this evening. Their orbits were almost to 90 degrees in the sky, so I was able to watch each fly over for a couple minutes apiece. There was a gap of about 5 minutes between them, and the space shuttle was quite a bit brighter. My damn camera died just as I was getting the night exposure set, so I only got a shot of the ISS.
In other news, I bought a tin of English Breakfast tea the other day and have been experimenting with methods that produce acceptable infusion. Last but not least, my sister is indeed going to buy my "old" bike from me. Tomorrow, if I don't forget (and I can get my digital camera working for night shots), I'll try to take some photos of the ISS and Shuttle flying overhead at 7:12 and 7:19 pm. Should be cool...
I've been experimenting with my morning tea lately. Normally I take a somewhat unconventional route and only boil whole milk, to which I add a tea bag or two and possibly some honey. I've found this to be particularly tasty, unfortunately the thickness of the milk sometimes hinders the tea bag powder from leeching out. The more traditional method I've been trying lately is boiling water, then adding a tea bag, then mixing in a 1/4 cup of whole milk. To me, it tastes a bit watery, but the tea is stronger. This has to be the dumbest thing I've written about on here...
If I ever find who the telemarketers are that call at 9:30 and 10:00 every morning, I swear to god they will wake up without their heads.
Some rather sad news, acclaimed historian and author Stephen Ambrose died today, he was 66. I watched the last 2 hours of an encore interview with him in 2000 on CSPAN2 this evening, he'll be sorely missed. (salute)
Since today is the only full day I have off a week from work, class, and "other," I went for a ride out at Spring Lake this afternoon. I took a few more digital photos, so, with the ones I took on my last ride out there, I now have a moderately comprehensive photo album for folks to browse through... not that anybody actually visits my site, you understand.
Why do I unknowingly put too much damn chocolate syrup on my ice cream? Because I'm a megalomaniac.
Listen to NPR folks; it'll make you smarter, healthier, and more likely to be a bourgeoisie if radical socialists take over. It will not embutter you, however. Mmm.. embutter.
I nabbed some candy a co-worker left behind in the filing cabinet (she said I could have some). Those chewy jolly ranchers were a bit sinister, as I kept having short coughing fits while attempting to consume them.
A couple days ago I was inspired to write my congresswoman and let her know how I felt about war with Iraq (her opinions are similar to my own). I strongly urge everyone to find out who your representative is and do the same, regardless of your opinion. I was partially inspired by Bono's website (of U2 fame), Data. Here's an article related to the Bush administration that I thought was interesting, though I don't agree on several of the points made.
Last but not least... I had the pleasure of recently corresponding with Cherz's friend, Tracy. She's the fine soul who lent us the bike rack for Burning Man. Her website now has a prestigious slot in my links section. Thanks for the link swap!
Due to my sister's recent "letting go" from her workplace of 2 1/2 years, she has decided to move back in with my folks until she can get back on her feet financially. We'll see how long it lasts... On a side note, my sister has shown a definite interest to buy my old bike from me, which makes me happy since I know she would take good care of it.
I spent part of this morning going through the jars of pennies I've accumulated over the years again, but this time I was looking for pennies from the beginning of the "Lincoln" era (1959-present). After a considerable search, I was able to nab a penny from every year since the beginning of the design of the current penny series, plus an extra one from the year I was born. If you guess what year that was from this photo, you get a cookie. No, not really.
Naturally, now I must continue the cookie theme. The other day I made a half-batch of my famous oatmeal chocolate-chip cookies, but for various reasons they turned out slightly inedible. Today I set out to right that wrong and succeeded beyond my wildest dreams. Driven by my usual obsessive determination, I made possibly one of the top 3 best batches of cookies I've ever made. Yes, Gnarler can cook.
This evening, thanks to the almighty History Channel, I learned quite a bit about Arminius (Hermann der Cherusker) and the famous Battle of The Teutoburg Forest (Teutoburgerwald). Oddly enough, my favorite inch-thick book on German history makes only a single vague reference to Arminius (it's on the right, and yes, that's Chris Tucker and Bono in Africa). Otherwise, it's an excellent book. Even more strange, this same book has the odd property of never collecting dust.
This entry is already way too long... the political crap I was going to mention here will have to wait. Until then, all I can say is that Wil Wheaton is an excellent example of humanity, and I'm not kidding. Obey Giant. Also, check out this website that our FŸrher, err.. President.. doesn't want you to see. I enjoyed all 3 of their sample letters, they were quite comprehensive.
My damn lip sore is apparently getting worse. I'm going to start brushing my teeth 3 times a day to see if that helps. The pain is starting to spread to my jaw and tongue now... yeah, I'm whining.
This morning I finally forced myself to put together a little website composed of all the lists and miscellaneous crap I wrote down after coming back from Burning Man this year with Cherz. Check it out.
In other news, I think my damn mouth sore is finally healing. A canine tooth tore my inner lip when I was eating last week and it's taken forever to heal. No, I don't smoke or chew tobacco. Today the History Channel further enlightened me on the Peloponnesian War, as well as the sinking of the Scharnhorst... nothing beats the big H. I tried making a half-batch of my famous oatmeal cookies tonight, but due to several factors in and beyond my control they didn't turn out so well. I'd also like to formally thank Nerdygirl for finally linking back to my site from hers. The world can exhale now.
Hey deer. This door exhibits unmistakable signs of evil. Esperanto?
Cherz told me about an interesting little bit of news earlier. I think they should use maces or battleaxes for weapons... $5 on Saddam.
I had my best campaign thus far against the Soviets this evening. I captured Kiev, Minsk, Smolensk, Rostov, and enough of their natural resources to cut their war production by almost 2/3. If I would've had a couple more months I easily could've taken Odessa, Leningrad, Moscow, Kharkov, and Stalingrad as well.
Luke, a buddy up in Eugene, is starting his own website. Be on the lookout, it's www.sweatybutcher.com.
Tomorrow I'm going way up north to pick up my recently-discovered bike from the local police. My sister is coming along for the ride, hopefully we won't argue about music too much. If I go to bed now, I'll get 6 hours of sleep... time for bed.
We're getting the house repainted. Therefore, I was woken up this morning after 6 hours of sleep to loud stomping and hammering noises outside my bedroom window. I have few guesses as to why one would need to hammer anything in order to paint a house... can anyone explain this to me? Also this morning, I got word back regarding my bike from the police up the coast. Apparently it's in good condition, so I'm going to drive up Thursday to pick it up.