Last night, Jen and I took advantage of the warm weather and clear evening sky to take a long walk around the neighborhood, stopping to smell the last of the blooming plants, shrubs, and trees, say hello to the people we’ve met along our route, and finish the walk with a cone of chocolate ice cream. Sometimes the greatest pleasures in life really are the simple ones.
Sweet! Club-level Orioles tickets on Wednesday, and it’s supposed to be 65° and sunny!
We’re still working remotely from the local Panera because the crack Verizon repair team can’t get off their asses to fix our phone line until next Wednesday. Meanwhile, the clutch on our commuting vehicle blew up yesterday, stranding Jen on the side of the road. No word on the damage to the car or our bank account yet, but when the repair bill, taxes for 2007 and projected taxes for Q1 of 2008 are paid, we’re going to be left with pennies to rub together. Let us hope the news gets better the further we get into April.
Update: It’s only the shift linkage, which is a $500 repair and not a $2,000 repair, thank Jeebus. And, it was Wednesday, not Tuesday; this is what happens when I don’t have my internets.
This morning, waiting for coffee to brew, I was sleepily cleaning the dishes in the sink when I spied the first three dirty yellow male finches of the season on our thistle feeders, munching away. By the time I was able to get to my camera and put the long lens on, they were gone.
Where last week was a blur of focused energy and productive creativity, this week seems to be a shapeless, formless blob of fog. My attention span is scattered across several fronts and I’m finding it hard to concentrate. Perhaps more coffee will help.
I couldn’t wait for the full two weeks to pass, so I popped one of the beers in our basement and sampled the brew this evening. The result: A rich, medium hopped wheat beer with a sweet finish and a pleasant carbonation. Very tasty.
The site isn’t quite finished yet, but I’m writing here anyway. MT 3.3 is pretty slick. I’m now only two years behind the technology curve instead of four, which will provide things like better spam filtering, a refined editing space, and better plugins. After this exercise is finished, I’m going to take a long hard look at upgrading to 4.1 now that my puzzle-solving synapses have warmed up.
Other than that, things around Idiot Central are pretty quiet. On Saturday I stopped over to the Beerfather’s house to bottle the result of our efforts: two and a half cases of wheat beer, sitting neatly in the basement fermenting on the shelf where I stored the bin full of Scout parts. He and I are hatching plans to go wrenching on the truck this coming weekend, something that leaves me with a bittersweet taste in my mouth: I’m excited for him. His enthusiasm reminds me of myself ten years ago when I had a lot more money and big plans for my new truck, but it will admittedly be hard not to feel like I failed in my efforts to keep it in shape. So I’ll be bringing a box of tissues along with my socket sets on Sunday, and try to keep the blubbering to a minimum.
I’m also signed up for some photography this weekend—the paying kind, and it will have me dusting off the panoramic rig for the tripod I was testing out last spring. I have to buy some cheap spotlights this week, and I’ll have to spring for a copy of Stitcher to process the photos, but I’m excited to finally start working on this for real, and this time it’s all paid for.
My Mom’s new MacBook showed up last Friday, and I’ve played with it only enough to update the software. It’s a really nice little machine—it feels solid, it’s quick, and she’s going to get a kick out of the built-in camera as well as a fresh battery. I got her old Pismo in the mail yesterday, so I’m going to transfer her data over and set her up with a chat account so I can use screen sharing to troubleshoot any problems with her machine. Meanwhile, I’m helping Jen’s father work through problems with his wireless printer. Troubleshooting Vista over the phone has been like doing this year’s taxes while guiding a non-english speaker through a root canal on a CB radio. He will explain what he sees on his screen, and I will frantically Google whatever he can describe to figure out what to do (I don’t own a copy, and am trying to avoid buying one). Adding to the pain is the fact that his patch cords have all vanished, leaving him with no way to directly connect to his printer. Argh!
Guitar lessons have gone reasonably well; I missed last week’s lesson but got back in the groove this Tuesday. It’s to the point now where I miss playing it if I go too long without it, which I’m taking as a good sign. I also broke down and bought an electric tuner after consistently coming in for lessons out of tune.
Add to all of this the fact that it’s half past February and I’ve only done one illustration this year. I need to clone myself.
I don’t have a whole lot of money to throw around right now, but there’s a solid-state Acoustic 120 bass head for sale on Craigslist right now. We had one of these in high school, with a matching 2×15″ cabinet, and I remember it blowing the paint off the walls at volume 5 or so. Eventually I’d like to build a nice retro bass cabinet setup, but it gets further down on my list as time goes on. Besides, I’m more concerned about my acoustic guitar, which has developed a nasty buzz at the second fret on the two middle strings. It didn’t sound this way in practice on Tuesday, and it’s not like I’ve used it to drive railroad spikes since my lesson, so the phantom buzz is disturbing. I hope I haven’t broke my guitar.
I decided instead to go for a tax writeoff and buy a copy of Leopard, as well as brokering the purchase of a new MacBook for my Mom, who is limping along with an old Pismo and wondering why she’s out of room on the hard drive. 6 gigs won’t get very far these days. She’s getting a sweet little setup and I am gaining the ability to troubleshoot her machine remotely, which will save us many headaches down the road.
Two tentative forays into future technology have been accomplished here at Idiot Central, both involving radio. Regular readers will recall my annoyance and distaste with the stock Chrysler radio in my Jeep, which craps out after the temperature rises over 80° or when it passes a strong radio tower (I used to turn it off on my way to work every day, coming and going, at the Reisterstown exit for this very reason).
Well, Santa brought me a fancy new car stereo, one with a detachable face, a CD player, and most importantly, an auxilliary input on the front. And it’s not made out of candle wax and chewing gum, ensuring it will function at temperatures found most commonly in the dashboard of a black vehicle. I installed it this evening and it sounds fantastic.
Secondly, he brought a subscription card for the XM radio set we’ve had sitting in our closet since 2006. Hallelujah! Thank you, Santa.
In unrelated news, I was able to take advantage of 45 minutes outside in 69° weather yesterday to get the rest of the cabinet sanded down to bare wood, and one door heatgunned and sanded. There will be a lot more finish sanding to do with sheets of paper and elbow grease, but the big annoying work has been completed.
Making lists helps me keep my fractured brain organized, and I decided it was time to get off my ass and make a list of stuff I’ve been saying I want to do but haven’t actually begun. Here they are in no particular order:
- Update: Ride a unicycle.
- Learn how to ride a motorcycle properly, and get a license. Motorcycle Safety Foundation, Popular Mechanics article
- Learn how to clean and care for a revolver, automatic, and rifle.
- Take and pass a CPR class for certification.
- Play the guitar. – Lessons paid for
- Take a small engine repair course.
- Take a basic algebra class, in preparation for computer programming classes. – Home schooling started 3.7
- Get an illustration published in a national publication.
- Go back to figure drawing classes.
Become a father.success!Upgrade/redesign this website.- Learn about studio lighting and shooting medium-format film portraiture. – MICA spring courses?
This list will get added to and modified over the next year, so I added a link in the sidebar to remind and motivate myself. To start, I signed up for guitar lessons down the street at Appalachian Bluegrass this afternoon for the month of January. My goal is to be able to play passable rhythm guitar by the end of the year.