Jen has been running all over creation this weekend in preparation for the wedding. Her sisters have been air-dropping in like the Special Forces since Thursday, getting their bridesmaid’s dresses fitted and altered, which is not unlike keeping control of a flock of third-grade students—their attention span is about as long. Hopefully, all will go well this morning, they will say their goodbyes, and she will be able to sit quietly in the backyard with a tall vodka tonic.
Meanwhile, I’m preparing for Ben the electrician, who will be hooking up all four thousand of the outlets I installed upstairs and wiring them into the panel. If all goes well, by lunchtime we’ll have electricity in three of the four bedrooms. This afternoon, depending on how my neck feels, I’m planning on resurrecting the lawnmower and taking a swipe at our yard, which looks like a science experiment gone wrong.
So it’s about 55 degrees outside and raining. With the exception of last Friday (or, Let’s Throw Our Back Out Day) and a little on Saturday, the weather has been for crap lately. As a result, I’ve not been writing very well, or taking pretty pictures, or being creative in any fashion. So right now I have to take time out, slap myself around a little, and think about all the positives that are currently happening:
- The office and blue room, which are awaiting the attentions of Ben, the friendly helpful electrician, tomorrow night;
- Moving two people’s worth of living upstairs, and beginning to use the other half of our house;
- The waves of daffodils, tulips, and other bulbs blooming in the side garden;
- The Patron Saint of Dysfunctional Weddings, whose birthday is today, and who is fashioning the headpiece for Jen (shout-outs to you);
- Jen’s sudden promotion from a two-week freelance gig to part time work two miles from our house;
- Five weeks to the wedding and no dead bodies;
- The Federal Government, whose loan came due just in time to pay for half our honeymoon to Italy.
The weather is clearing up this weekend, by all accounts, and hopefully so will my creative block.
A brilliant waste of time: Annotated Beastie Boys. Puzzling over the opening drum riff on the second cut of Paul’s Boutique? Wonder where the “Graffiti Guys” sample came from on Professor Booty? Chances are, this site can tell you. (The mashed potatoes sample still has no known attribution.) (via metafilter)
We have reservations made for an eight-night stay in Rome at the Palace Hotel, a short walk away from the Trevi Fountain and the Spanish Steps. I am alternately nervous and excited about going to Europe for the first time in my life. This is going to be great!
Bring Out The Gimp. Jen drove me in to work this morning, as my range of motion is still severely limited and turning my head still brings tears to my eyes. (It’s actually much better today—I’m just shamefully soliciting sympathy and cash donations.) I kinda look like Frankenstein, keeping my head squarely on top of my shoulders (the afflicted muscles are between my shoulderblades, the ones that branch out into all the others in my back) and trying not to look down too much. Which makes bathroom breaks interesting, let me tell you.
Meanwhile, downtime on my current project at work means I’ve been switched off to another one, which at first glance is the worst “game” I’ve ever seen. Making something work out of this mess will require either a stroke of genius or a frontal lobotomy, and I know which one of these I can attempt with a cordless drill and some gauze.
Resolution. If I get some time tonight, I’m going to finish cleaning up an HTML divelog I started but never finished last year after returning from Bimini—#153 in the long list of uncompleted web projects. Stay tuned!
Here’s a link to a do-it-yourself steadicam project—for $14 you can build a pretty professional camera stabilization rig and shoot DV like the pros. (via boing boing)
Whiplash. So much for moving furniture today. My neck, which was giving me aches and pains yesterday, feels like it’s going to give way completely and let the rest of my head fall off the back of my shoulders. This morning we moved the doctor’s oak desk, one file cabinet, and my IKEA table into the office before Jen (the Voice Of Reason) told me we were stopping. I don’t know what I did to myself, or why it feels so friggin’ bad right now, but I can’t turn my head in any direction without the sensation of having a ballpeen hammer hitting directly on my spine. Just great.
Flashback. One year ago today, I was on a boat bobbing in the Bahamas, diving on coral reefs for a project at work that has since been cancelled and will most likely never come back.
Taking advantage of my day off, Jen and I lugged ten bags of mulch to the front yard ($34 delivered to our driveway, courtesy of the local middle school) and raked it around our sad-looking hedges in the hopes that we can bring them back from the dead in time for the wedding. Last year, we had a growth of stringy vines infest the west side of the hedge and expand its way down the street, threatening to engulf the holly tree, small children, and passing import cars on Frederick Road. I waded into the mess and hauled out about six bags worth of leaves, vines, and debris, uncovering three rose bushes and about twenty square feet of bare earth. After eating lunch, Jen peeled off to continue her freelance work and I put a final coat of polyurethane on the floor in the office and blue rooms. Tomorrow, if the floors look dry, we may be moving furniture…!
We also appear to be back in our neighbor’s good graces after the Christmas card fiasco; the Judge appeared on our doorstep this morning with a twinkle in his eye and a covered dish of hot cross buns. Perhaps we aren’t going to hell after all.
Fans of the Beatles, Metallica, and mash-ups will dig on this link: Beatallica. The lyrics are absolutely hysterical, and the impersonation of Hetfield’s voice is right on. Apologies to XLT for ignoring/forgetting his mention of this gem.
Sweet. In my pile of SCSI-compatible (and thusly extinct) mac peripherals, I have an Apple Pro keyboard, righteously regarded as the best keyboard ever made. Since the move to USB, Apple has been making junky keyboards without the tactile feel of the mechanical original. Now that Jen and I have a workstation, we’re going to need a good keyboard to go along with it. Here’s the answer.
The 300 or so bulbs we planted last fall have all made their way above ground, and are blooming in waves: first came the scouts, the daffodils, who braved the whipsaw temperature changes and grew tall and straight. Then came the tulips, spreading fat leaves and daring the deer with their bright red petals. (several of these soldiers have fallen to the hungry enemy, their headless stems at attention among the other troops.) Now we’re seeing the crocuses bloom, low to the ground, and the hyacinths, which are taller and fat with the promise of purple blooms. On the side of the house, the tiger lilies are sending their shoots over the dead leaves, and the tulip tree is in full bloom over the front sidewalk. Even Jen’s amaryllis is about to bloom, still in gulag over the back porch.
Forward Progress, or: When Technology Actually Works. I’m using the new version of Eudora, which features a spam filter for incoming mail. You “train” the application by marking junk mail, and it “learns” what your preferences are over the course of a few weeks. I was averaging about 100 spam emails a day (having my address on the website didn’t help) and going through the inbox for one good message among the 99 bad ones was getting to be a drag. Currently, I’m seeing about 30 in my inbox, and the number keeps decreasing each day. Let us all praise the gods of software.
Check it Out. An all-percussion version of Paranoid Android by the UMASS Front Percussion Ensemble. (via Pitchfork)
Some bean counter at Kinko’s decided that it just doesn’t make sense to support Macs as part of their in-house systems. So they’re phasing them all out. Which means you gotta bring a Powerbook if you need to print something in color. Ain’t that just great?
Some early thoughts about Panther: God, this thing is so much faster. It’s a pleasure to use this laptop again- something I thought I’d never say after I left OS9 by the side of the road. The redraw and UI feedback are almost as quick as OS9 used to be, which is saying a lot. I’m usually about three steps ahead of the UI in terms of what I’m trying to do with the computer, so when Jaguar got slowed down figuring out how to draw this fancy transition or make that button blink, I got stuck waiting for the machine to catch up to me. Very annoying. Command-Tab for the applications menu is a fantastic addition—something from Windows that I miss on the Mac. Expose is OK but I haven’t found a real need for it just yet. (Designing on a laptop screen means you get real picky about workspace organization.) Overall, I’m impressed and very happy that I can squeeze another year out of ol’ reliable here.
Whupped. This weekend was a blur of nothing but work, work, work on the house. Pictures are here and here. That is all.