I'm Sleepy, So Blog Post Will Be the Title of this Blog Post

It's freaking hot out. I spent the weekend at D.M.H's place, which thankfully has air conditioning. Saturday I took my car in to Meineke for an emissions recheck. I'd driven 702 miles since my last visit two weeks ago, so I crossed my fingers hoping the computers had gathered enough data.

A couple hours later I got a call. It hadn't. It still read as unable to provide emissions data. I've got an appointment to take it into a Ford dealership on Wednesday, which will be a pain to work out. Plus, god knows how much this will cost.

The rest of Saturday after that was fun, as we threw a surprise party for the D.M.H.'s roommate. Lots of fun and food and drink.

Today I took a ride back home. No Slim Jim this weekend, so my bathroom's in the same condition. Last Monday he was on his way when his serpentine belt broke. I can only assume more car troubles, though I don't know cause he never got back to me. At least I got the yard mowed, and my plants seem to be doing well.

Digging in the Dirt

Monday I slept in my own bed for the first time in eleven days. The bathroom is an empty shell save for a toilet that drains, but does not flush. The rest of the house is a mix of supplies, tools, and my own displaced clutter. The only room left untouched is my bedroom, which feels like a sanctuary away from craziness. Yesterday I spent a couple hours replacing the dryer belt, which broke a week ago. If I thought it would have been difficult, I be surprised at how easy it was. Instead, I thought it would be easy, so of course it kicked my ass.

Last Friday the girlfriend and I took a trip to her home for the holiday weekend. It was nice to see her family again. Actually, it was more than nice. The Mistress showed me about the leavings of her past, and there's little I revere more than our personal childhood mythologies. She also continued in her lessons on how to shoot an SLR camera. Like, you know, a real film camera. I had a blast, and I can't wait to get the pictures back.

We got in late Monday night, and I had taken Tuesday off so I could get my car inspected at the place around the corner from D.M.H.'s house. I knew the tires were iffy, but I was hoping that they might pass and I would have a bit of time to shop around for a new set of skins. If they didn't, I figured it'd be a "hey, go buy some tire and bring it back to get your sticker." Instead I got "you failed on tires, and we couldn't get an emissions reading because the computer says there's not enough data. You'll have to drive the car around for a while until it resets. When you bring it back we'll have to re-inspect the car. That'll be $90."

I had my Monday all planned. I would drop the car off, then enjoy a quiet day to sit and write. A day with nothing going on and no one around. A day unlike any I've had in longer than I can remember. Instead, I figured I'd better try to get my car legal, so I ended up at Wal-Mart, where the cheapest tires were $70. For $75 they had some discounted performance tires, so I went with those. Two hours in Wal-Mart, then Three in the Meineke up the street to get an alignment and another inspection. At least inspection and emissions only ran you $50 there. At one point the guy working on my car came in with a concerned look, the kind you don't want your mechanic to have, and asked me if I just got my car inspected recently. I told him my story up to this point, and he said they should have explained to me that I have 30 days to come back and get my emissions re-checked free of charge. The first place didn't tell me this, even though I explained that I moved from a county where emissions checks aren't required, so I therefore didn't know how things worked. Assholes.

My choice at that point was to drive around and bring the car back on Saturday, hoping the computer gathered enough data, or keep driving it after the inspection ran out to give it more time. I chose for the latter, not wanting to waste any more money. I've never been pulled over, and I don't intend to start now. I'll see if I can get in this Saturday or Monday, and until then, cross my fingers. I will cross them also in the hope that my car's computer's got all the emissions data it needs, and that I don't need to take my car to Ford to have the computer diagnosed at a presumably high cost. Or, that my car fails emissions, which would also suck tons.

Somewhere in there my upstairs computer, the one do all my writing and audio stuff on, crashed. Could not find the operating system. This means hard drive difficulties. I've rescued my writing, but one hard drive is down permanently and the other still won't boot. Props go to my Linux booting iMac for being able to grab my writing from my crippled Linux hard drive, albeit at a turtle's pace.

I feel I've lost the past two weeks. It's exhausting, and I'm overwhelmed. On the exciting side, mom gave me some flowers, three pepper plants, and a tomato plant. I put them in the ground Monday, and it was kind of crazy. I didn't expect to have such a powerful experience, and I still don't understand it, but there was something about seeing all the critters, all the roots, the rusted bolts and pieces of glass hidden buried and forgotten half a foot below my yard that made me feel connected to this place in a way I haven't known. Every morning and afternoon on my way in and out I stop and check on my plants, more excited than I should be.

Bathroom Report, Day 4

I was certain I'd published day two, but I guess I hadn't.

Tuesday night Slim Jim caught some plaster to the ear and I encouraged him to go to the hospital after I saw some ear meat. Nothing serious, just cosmetic. If he hadn't gone to get stiches he would have had some crazy cool ear scar. He was upset about all this though because of lost time.

Apparently a group of our old friends were at the hospital due to someone else's finger injury and they all met up and hung out. Wednesday I got in early after having taken a half day to get my windshield fixed, and all those folks showed up at around five or six. It was nice to see them all, but I felt a little stressed making everyone dinner in addition to the fact that work stopped when they arrived.

Thursday the crew (Slim had recruited) tore out quite a bit. Demolition's pretty much done, so I'm pissing in jars for the time being. Check it out:






I'm off to the Mistresses' home town for the weekend, so we'll see what's next. Slim's going home tonight or tomorrow I think, so I'm guessing I'll be staying at the Mistresses' for a while.

Bathroom Report, Day 1

Slim Jim's been planning on remodeling the bathroom for some time now. He took the week off to work on the house, arriving late Sunday. He gave me the following options on the bathroom: do a little bit at a time to keep it functional/livable, or do it all at once to try to have as much done by the end of the week. Those weren't his words exactly. He thinks he can get it done in a week. Actually, I think he has to think that, or he will get discouraged. The week deadline gives him a finish line to run for. I, on the other hand, need to believe that he can't do it in the week. That way I'm mentally prepared when (if, but really when) it doesn't happen.

Yesterday marked the first day of work, and I came home to see the shower I bathed in just the previous night cut into pieces and stacked on my porch. By the end of the evening, the only thing left in the bathroom was a (thankfully) working toilet.

Starbuck was very good through all this. That is, until I came home. Me being in the room gave her permission under the cat code of conduct to explore, and she was very interested in the holes leading to the drop ceiling below. It had always been my plan to take her somewhere when Slim did heavy construction, so last night I packed her up and took her to my parent's house.

She doesn't like their cat. Big Orange, on the other hand, couldn't care less. He's just eating and napping as usual. Meanwhile Starbuck feels the need to hiss at his very presence. I feel bad for him, but so long as he keeps his whatever attitude, I think he'll be fine. She'll be fine, too. She strode out of her carrier like she owned the place.

I felt guilty leaving her, but dad said "you think that's bad? You just wait until you're dropping you kid off at daycare, or at the babysitter so you can go party."



Note the metal box on the right hand wall. That's Fussnpuss' medicine cabinet. I know it wouldn't happen, but every time I see it I imagine pushing on it and seeing it pop out on her side. I can't believe that's all that seperates our bathrooms though. No more maligning my neigbhor over the phone on the john.

Ain't it a Mother

I figured that, for Mother's day, I'd invite my folks over and cook dinner for them. You know, kind of a good faith role reversing thank you: a meal for all the years of meals and laundry and money and time and who knows what other parental sacrifices else. Hungover and running late, by the time I ran out of the house to buy groceries, my folks had already started their drive. Unfortunately, when I ran out, I was missing a crucial component to my plans: keys. I'm usually very good about this, and being of the paranoid sort, I had never considered leaving a spare set outside. Dark Mistress Hawthorne has keys to my house, but she was halfway across the state, driving out to visit her injured father. Slim Jim, my friend/landlord has keys, but he lives hours away. I gave my parents a set as well, but by the time I called them about it, they were practically around the corner. And besides that, they don't remember me giving them a set anyway.

The most obvious way into the house would have been through the bathroom window, which I'd left open. Because I like my stuff, I keep all the ground floor windows locked. The bathroom window sits right above the porch roof, which wasn't too far off the ground, but far enough to make me nervous. I considered how I could climb up there: the stack of miscellaneous lawn chairs, the plastic bins 'o' plenty, perhaps the carpet roll in conjunction with the unassembled bed loft kit. Have I mentioned that though I live in an urban area, I have a back porch fitting of any cunnerman shack? Oh, I could go on: Two old grills: gas and charcoal. Two antique sleds. Two old air conditioners. Two electric weed trimmers. It's like my porch is an a Noah's Arc for garage sale items.

I did not suffer for lack of stackable items. It was just that the thought of hoisting my frame up on that pitched roof was too much for my dizzy hangover addled constitution, so I set about a safer method of entry.

Now, the principle behind picking locks is simple, and the practice of doing so is less difficult than it is time consuming and kind of boring. I suppose with proper tools and a bit more experience it would become a more efficient ordeal, but lock picking is definitely more about the ends than the means. Now, if you were to ask me about lock picking, or if we happened to be hanging out and the topic came up, I would probably come across sounding like a bit of an expert. This is because I know vaguely how locks work, and I'm a bit of an ass who likes to sound smarter than he is. In reality, I've successfully picked locks two and a half times. Two counts come from the old metal office desk I have in the home whose drawers were stuck shut after I moved. I figured the locks had somehow engaged themselves with all the bumping and tipping and what not. Using a thumbtack and a bent paper clip I successfully got both locks to spin. I then realized that the drawers weren't locked, they just got jammed somehow, and I had just picked my locks closed.

The half count comes from college, when my friend, Slim Jim actually, had explained to me how locks work and, in turn, how they could be picked. I was studying at the Humanities Center where they have old, nice, wooden desks. I got bored and saw there was a lock for the desk drawer right in front of me. Using, again, a thumb tack and a paper clip, I fidgeted with the thing until I got the lock to close. Luckily I had sense enough to have the drawer open at the time, because I was never able to pick the lock back open. To this day, if you try to close the drawer flush, it stops against that stuck lock tab.

But that was then, and I felt pretty confident in my ability to tackle this lock. All I needed was the proper tools. Unfortunately, I was far away from my office supplies, so I had to settle for whatever I could find in the junkyard of my porch. My first try involved an antique pair of scissors, some copper wire, and a metal tooth broken from a rake. Even though I was excited at how easy it was to use these black weathered scissors to cut and strip the copper wire, that method was fruitless. The wire proved to soft, no matter how I bent and twisted. My next try involved cutting a square of aluminum from a soda can, which I folded and pressed into a bar. This might have worked, but when I made them small enough to fit the lock, they were too weak and bent.

Finally my parents arrived. I had hoped to have dinner going by the time they got there and here I was, filthy, trying to break into my own house. We decided the bathroom window really was the way to go, but I could only get as far as standing on the trash can before I lost my nerve. Dad jumped up there easy, crawled inside, and unlocked the door.

Mom stayed behind as we went grocery shopping. He helped me pick out the ground beef, he picked out the cole slaw. He picked out the onion rolls that mom likes. By the time we got back, mom was there washing the last of my large pile plastic containers. I hate washing those, and I had a few month collection stacked in one half of the sink. I yelled at her for it, but she said she just couldn't stand it.

Dad made cocktails, showed me his hamburger making technique while mom made the instant pasta salad. It all turned out delicious, even if it wasn't really the reversal I'd planned. It wasn't the fancy dinner I had in mind from the start, it wasn't ready by the time they got there, they ended up doing most of the work, and that was after they came to the rescue and got me into my own damn house. We all had a good time though, and at least I got this dumb blog post out of it.

Tidbits

When I was a young'n, I loved, this snack called Do-Dads! That's not excitement, I think there was an exclamation point in the title. It was like Chex Mix, only better. Much, much better. This is coming from someone who will eat Chex Mix until he bleeds from is salt numbed mouth.

On the back of the box there was a list of the individual snacks included in the mix, such as pretzel rods or peanuts, each with a picture and a description of the item. Being the type of child who would go on to organize his Legos by into bins by size, shape, and color, this itemized snacking list was right up my alley. With the visuals and descriptions I was able to get a better understanding of the snack's constituent parts, which allowed me to better understand my unique bond with each of them. Most, like the peanuts and pretzel rods already mentioned, could be snacks on their own, easily had elsewhere. The one snack I've never seen outside a box of Do-Dads! was Tidbits, which were cylindrical cheese crackers about the shape and size of capsule pills. Do-Dads, sadly, disappeared right around the time I was old enough to go to the store and buy them for myself. The point of this story?

Two years ago today I bought my first car with the help of a co-signing father (who also put some money down - thanks dad!). I had an incredible sense of pride knowing that this was my car, in my name, on my dime. It's been mostly good since then. I've only had one major issue since I bought it: a $20 part in the transmission that limited me to first and second gear. That's another story though.

Car's up for inspection at the end of the month, and as it is, I knew it won't pass. For one, the windshield has cracks running nearly its entire length. It happened from the inside, is my fault, and again, is another story. The brakes were also bad. They felt off the day I test drove it, pulsating when applied at any speed, but I didn't know enough then and figured that it was an irregularity that would work itself out. Two years later and believe it or not, the pulsating only got worse. New brakes, new winshield, lots of money. Thank goodness the economy tanked and we all got $600 sent to us in hopes we'd put a down on new plasma TV's or some such nonsense. For me: easy come, easy go. Thank you, sub-prime lending crisis. Without you, I'd never be able to afford to fix my car.

I started with the brakes, figuring I could do them myself. I'd changed front brake rotors and pads once before, and it's not too complicated. Sunday the Mistress and I drove around, picking up the parts and tools I'd need. Brake pads and rotors came out to about 100, maybe 120 total. I forget off the top of my head. The original plan was, if I had time, to do it Sunday. Time ran out, so I decided to change D.M.H.'s tail light, marker light, and headlight assembly, which took all of 20 minutes, and to check and properly inflate our tires.

Monday after work I got started a bit late because I realized I never lifted the car onto jack stands before, so I needed to search for safe jacking points. I got the car up on stands easily enough, though when you haven't done it in a while, it's downright scary. I pulled the front wheels and just about got into pulling the right brake caliper when I hit a snag.

When I was buying parts, I almost bought a set of allen wrenches, which would be needed to loosen and remove the caliper guide bolts. I knew Slim Jim had some in the basement, and figured "don't go overboard, just get what you need." Well there I am, car on jacks, needing a 7mm allen wrech, holding in my hand a set that goes 10-8-6...

Knowing I didn't have the time or heart to put everything back together so I could run to the hardware store so I could try again, I figured that since I had her all apart, I'd rotate the tires. Now, I know it's important to rotate your tires every... so often. But I also grew up in a house where I don't remember anyone rotating the tires on our cars in any sort of a hurry, and we all turned out fine. The tires on my car are a year and a half old. I should have rotated them a couple times, but I never got around to it, being cheap/poor and busy/distracted. Hey, better late then never, right?

I pulled the rear drivers side tire and saw something I hadn't previously known was possible. The tread on the rear tires was pretty damn good, or so I thought until I saw the diagonal grooves that ran across the face on half the tire, down to the low tread indicators.

Held at the right angle, they made the tire look like a polygon instead of a circle.

Stumped, and not sure I should even bother rotating the tires, I called my old man, who was also pretty stumped. I put her all back together, just the way she was when I started two hours prior, and started researching what in blazes could cause diagonal wear patterns on a rear wheel.

Turns out that incorrect toe can. What is toe? Flatten your hands and put them side by side on the table in front of you, as if you were making an imaginary hallway and your hands were the walls running parallel. Got it? Now cock your wrist a bit so your left hand points diagonally inward, as if the hallway were narrowing. If your hands were tires, their toe would be incorrectly adjusted.

Tuesday I tried again, packing a new set of wrenches. Though there were a few snags, I eventually got the brakes switched out and the car back on the ground in about an hour forty five. I test drove it and didn't drive into any walls, so I'd call the whole operation a success.

Oddly enough, while the old brake rotors were scored to hell, with groves up to a quarter inch wide and clearly visible from a distance, the pads weren't in too bad of a shape. It's eerie to drive on these new brakes, as I've never driven this car without it vibrating when I'm stopping. It was a mental cue, so I constantly feel like I'm not actually braking when I try to stop.

I guess the next steps are to have the windshield replaced (I'm not tackling that one without experience), to buy four new tires, to have the alignment fixed all around, and then to cross my fingers and hope that my struts aren't bad because that could also be a factor in accelerated tire wear.

This entry was titled Tidbits because I was going to write about a whole bunch of stuff in one big post, but you know what?

Me either.

What the Bread, Man?

As I walked through my yard to my car on Tuesday, something on the fence caught my eye. It was bread. More specifically, about a third or a half of a hot dog bun, either bitten or torn off and crumbled up. It was pressed on top of one of the chain link fence posts that separates my yard from my parking spots, and the back alley behind. I swatted it off the fence, not having time to throw it in my trash. I swatted it off because I now have a theory. A paranoid theory, perhaps, and one based on wild speculation. Really though, aren't those the most fun?

This is the fourth time I've found fragments of foodstuffs left around the exterior of my house. When I moved in, there was a half eaten cupcake on top of my mailbox. At the time I simply chalked this up to the weirdass menagerie of previous tenants. The same menagerie that left closets full of clothes, half eaten calzones to bake for months in garbage bag ovens warmed by the sun, and pins stuck through the miniblind strings so that when I drew them I was rewarded with a constellation of bloody spots across my palm.

The mailbox half cupcake was the only non bread item I've found. A few months later there was another baked good on my mailbox; this time a piece of hot dog bun. I promptly threw it away. Then, this winter while shoveling the sidewalk between my house and the neighbors', I found another piece of bun balanced on my windowsill. This was the one that made me wonder.

I mentioned it to Slim Jim, and he said “yeah, the neighborhood kids are always leaving treats around.” I live in a semi urban area. Post industrial, with row-homes galore. Most of my street is duplexes or row-homes build a hundred years ago or more from brick. The population here is a mix of Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, old White people, and White undergraduate college students. As you could imagine, there are some tensions. Pretty much between the college students and everyone else.

I used to live in the house next door back in my college days. I remember the thing back then was the neighborhood kids, mostly not yet high school age, would congregate on someone's porch hang out there for hours. The porch would almost always belong to a house full of college students, such as ourselves. I remember I would hear them on the porch and I'd feel uncomfortable. I had to go to class, or out to the store. What should I say? What did they want? I decided on “hey, what's up”, and kept walking, otherwise ignoring them.

One day I brought home a tray of leftover cookies from my work study job. Shortly thereafter, Johnny Blue Jeans, who lived there as well, came home from class and mentioned the kids were out there. He took the tray of cookies out and offered them, and they accepted. A little after that they stopped coming back. A month or two later there was an editorial in the school paper about student-community relations written by a young man whose house was also on our street. Neighborhood kids, he said, were always hanging out on their porch, and no about of pleading, yelling, or badgering would get them to leave.

So I have to wonder: has a new group of children seen my parking tag and taken to setting these gifts about my house in an attempt to rile me? Are the pieces left behind as markers of some sort, and if so, for what intent? Are they part of a test to see how often I'm home or how frequently I check the exterior of my house? Is there a drunk old man who buys a pack of hot dog rolls and eats them while wandering past my house? Is it one of my old college friends playing a sort of long term prank/participating in a sort of personal flux art performance, the very kind of thing I delight in doing to others?

I propose a Thursday toast: to mystery.

A New Toy! Joy!

The place where I work has a board for classifieds that I check regularly for both amusement (people trying to sell their apartment in overpriced piecemeal) and the occasional deal ($20 iMac, anyone?). Early this week I checked and saw an ad that read "Organ for Sale", which went on to list a working Hammond organ without a price. I did some quick research, quickly became enamored with the notion of owning one, and shot an email asking the price. She replied "It's yours if you want it." Let it not be said that I'm one to pass on some free organ.

The only problem is that, being an honest to god non-transistor, tonewheel organ, I found it was likely to weight between three and four hundred pounds. I emailed Slim Jim to ask if he were coming around this weekend, if he'd be able to bring the trailer for his car. Plans came together frantically on Friday night to pick it up on Saturday. Of course, Saturday, it was raining, hard. I bought a dolly and a couple tarps from the hardware store as D.M.H. waited at my place for Slim Jim. I was fretting over whether to move it or not, since I doubted that rain would be friendly to a complex electromechanical machine, moving a heavy awkward object would only be more difficult with tarps hanging from it, and to top it off, the Mistress wasn't feeling well. Sunday was out though, and when the sun broke through the clouds, we decided to go for it.

The woman giving it away was very nice and accommodating as we invaded her home with tarps, duct tape, and a dolly. We just had gotten the organ to the door when rain started coming down sideways. She invited us to take our time and tarp the organ up, and by the time we were finished it was only raining lightly. It took us an hour, maybe more to get from the house to being situated on the trailer. The sun finally broke again just as we finished tying it down, and I enjoyed a moment of satisfaction before the stress of making sure it stayed on the trailer during the drive home. Getting it in my house was much easier than getting it out of hers, and we were all happy to find out when we unwrapped it in my kitchen like an overgrown redneck Christmas gift that everything had remained dry. It turned right on (as right on as old organs turn) and played! Behold:





It came with a bunch of song books, but they're hard for me to use, as I don't know what note each key is (I can find middle C and extrapolate from there), and I don't know my treble clef well (Every Good Boy Does Fine!). Instead I've been trying to learn songs by ear. My first goal is a song from the Battlestar Galactica soundtrack called Roslin and Adama (NERD!). It is a beautiful, moving piece that I will inevitably suck every last ounce of subtlety and grace from. In the mean time, I can wait for the Dark Mistress to come over and then pretend I'm scoring a soap opera while she tries to have a conversation with me.

Yes, It was I who ate all the ice cream. (MINOR CHORD!) And you know what? It was damn good.

Holiday Vacation SuperPost!

Back to work with me. I started yesterday, though I had a retreat to attend Monday. At first I thought it wasn’t too bad. I thought that if I could clear my head and stay aware of who I was and why I was here, I could better handle the stresses of work. That plan worked until I got on the phone with my boss. She’s high strung, and understandably so, but the moment I heard her voice darting from crisis to crisis I felt my blood pressure rise. Other people’s problems becomes her crisis which then I have to adopt. Week in, week out, until summer. Assessment: work is going to continue to blow.

I’ve wanted to post all during break, but it felt too daunting of a task, as each day brought more to share. Last post I wrote before break I mentioned I wanted to do something creative each day. What I had in mind was to write each day, if just for a little bit. No dice. I wrote word zero all break. What really sucks was I was working on a longer story on which I was making quite a bit of progress back in October, but in November something happened and I stopped making time to write. When I went to try during break, nothing was coming to me because I became foreign to that world I created. I got frustrated, bowed to the page, and gave up. I didn’t have time to mull on that for long as Christmas was coming and Santa had some business to attend to.

Back before the Dark Mistress and I were a “thing”, she once asked me, upon my mention of previous electronics experience, if I would be able to build a Theremin. I replied that yes, it’d be possible to purchase and build a Theremin kit, I imagine. The topic came up again a month or two ago, and apparently she’s always wanted one.

I remembered this six days before Christmas, and thus began my five day obsession with building my love a Theremin.


A quick google search revealed several kits online, but they were all fairly expensive. Then I came across a site that promised I could build my own for about $75, which was still more than I was willing to spend, but I couldn’t resist how awesome a project it could be.


Now what is a Theremin? If Wikipedia hasn’t told you by now, it’s a music instrument that is played without touching it. Traditionally there is a vertical antenna and a horizontal loop antenna. The distance between your right hand and the vertical antenna controls pitch, the distance between your left hand and the horizontal antenna controls volume.

The principle involves two oscillators, which are circuits that produce a waveform. (think of ripples in water… a rolling up and down wave like that) A Theremin uses two oscillators built and fine tuned to create identical waveforms. They are attached to the pitch antenna in such a way that the distortion of the electromagnetic field put out by the antenna by your hand throws the oscillators out of sync. If one oscillator is oscillating at 1100khz, and the other is oscillating at 1540khz, the difference between the two would create a tone at 440hz, which would be an A.

I knew very little of this going in. I had to start from scratch. I started Thursday when I etched my own pc board by printing his track layout on glossy photo paper and ironing it on, then soaking it in a mixture of hydrogen peroxide and hydrochloric acid. It was messier than I expected, and I didn’t feel quite right the rest of the night. By Saturday I had the first set of components in and tested.

The circuit is built so it oscillates around the frequencies of AM radio, so each oscillator it is tested by tapping on the coils and tuning the radio until you can hear it. This happened for me on Friday night, I believe, and was cause for much celebration. I'm pretty sure I ate a whole box of Runts. It was around this time Slim Jim stopped by.

I told Slim Jim of my Christmas Theremin project, and he ended up being a huge help. Though he wasn't able to directly solve any of my problems, he knows a thing or two about electronics, and just being able to explain a problem to someone is enough sometimes to clear a mental blockage. One of the problems I was running into in trying to get it working was there are a few parts that dangle loose whose position is essential cool noise production, so I set about mounting the project in a case before I went any further.

I recognized in one of the examples on dude's site a DVD shelf in which he mounted one of his Theremins. I happen to have two of those exact shelves: one in use, one in the basement. (One used to be Leggolamb's. Random Fact!) In the name of Love and Science, I cut into that mother. It was then that my long term vision crystallized: not just to build a working Theremin, but to build a case it could be packed up into and transported. What's the point in building this cool as hell thing if you can't take it to parties, right? Would I seriously give her a mess of boards and wires, when I could give her a hinged plywood masterpiece? It's without Slim Jim that I would have failed here, as he showed me some wood working basics needed so as not to look like a damn chimp tossing around Samsonite.

Once mounted to the shelf, it “came to life” for the first time. (Okay, once I mounted it to the shelf, realized I reversed polarity on a component or two, then remounted it. I was under the gun!) What had been a faint whistle earlier became a full bodied... louder whistle. Again, I was giddy. If I had another box of Runts...

It is just about one of the coolest things to experience for the first time. I have no idea why. Perhaps there's something fundamentally spooky about a speaker's whistling in response to how close I slip my hand towards and antenna. The interaction becomes intuitive very quickly, and every time I hook it up, twenty minutes of my life inexplicably disappears.

If Christmas is anything, it's a chance for those of us who get off on withholding to taunt and torture the hell out of our loved ones. In this case, it was the Mistress, who knew I was doing something related to a gift for her. By some miracle, she had no clue what was keeping me up nights and exposing me to Chlorine gas. My lie became “playing Half-Life”, which of course didn't hold water, but didn't tell her anything either. I never managed to finish the doors for the case, the wiring for the panel, or the volume control circuitry, yet it was all more than worth it to see the look on her face when she pushed her hand into the sweet field of radiation and heard a sweeping whistle come through a pair of computer speakers.


Christmas for me was a little strange. On one hand, it's the first time I've had to drive any distance to my folks place for Christmas. (Last year was the first time I wasn't staying there for some extended period of time, and that was disturbing enough.) It just made things feel different, more adult. On the other hand, my folks got me an XBOX 360, which I did not see coming at all. It was the first time in a long time I felt like a kid at Christmas: barely being able to wait to pry into my new toys. I'd wanted one for two years now, but I would probably never buy one. I could never justify it, and by the time I could, the next generation of consoles would already be out.

This is the first video game console I've ever had during the prime of it's run. I was given a Playstation year after the PS2 came out, and an Atari 2600 at the dawn of the age of Nintendo. Not that I'm complaining. I think it's for the best, as I know my attention span and I needed all the focus I could get. I'm just trying to express how much I enjoy its presence.

The time between Christmas and New Years is, frankly, a blur. D.M.H. and I hung out almost all the time and it was wonderful. I didn't get to play 360 as much as I wanted to, say, Christmas day, but D.M.H. was very accommodating. We were both really spoiled by seeing each other every day though.

For New Years, we stopped by Spanky and Zanzibar's place for some Taboo, then some Scene-It. Dark Mistress Hawthorne was billed as top seed against a mysterious figure with ties to the past. Named Skidmark. We played in teams, and D.M.H. was my (drunk) partner. I was so proud of myself when she didn't know the first question we were asked but I did. (Trading Spaces, thank you.) I, however, did not answer one answer correctly for the remainder of the three games we played, while our team went on to win every one. I have to say, we had Skidmark uncomfortably close to our tails most of the time. The Dark Mistress is, apparently, a half crazed movie trivia machine.

Shortly after that, she went back to work, and I turned my focus on the house. And the XBOX. Well, first the XBOX, then the house. Two weekends ago we visited Slim Jim and got to catch up with one of my favorite people from college, The Blue Zipper, whom I hadn't seen in over a year. It was fantastic to see her again. It was also super cool to visit Slim Jim for once and to see what it's like where he lives. Before we left, he gave us a video projector to try hooking up to the iMac. He'd picked it up at some point but had no use for it at the time.

So the remainder of my break was spent on three projects: cleaning the laundry room, turning the kitchen out, and setting up this projector. And wouldn't you know it, I somehow got all three done! My clothes are off the floor for the first time in months, for the first time since I've moved in I know what is in every drawer and every cupboard in my kitchen, and finally, I have to say there's no joy greater than getting lost in the mountainous crags of Commander Adama's four foot high cheek.

I'd post you some wonderful pictures, but at the moment I am sans camera, which isn't nearly as cool as being Santana, but you gotta go with what you know.

Weekendery

As I said, Bixby and The Tzar were in town to visit. Not me specifically, but to make their way around town in general. Friday night, another college friend and former housemate Leggolamb was in town. She was meeting up with friends and wanted to see who was around and if we were interested in going out.

I got out of work early and just in time to welcome Bixby and The Tzar. We got them set up in the attic suite. The were understandably tired and went to bed shortly thereafter. I was feeling bad about leaving Starbuck, and I was feeling tired, so I called up Leggo and declined her offer. Then I poured myself a stiff Soy Russian (because my real milk expired) and watched 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Next day I woke up at noon, missing my company but catching up on much needed sleep I'd gypped myself on all week. Went to work, which sucked almost all around. Got out late, again missing my company. Leggolamb's plans fell through though, so she, Slim Jim, and I stayed up talking for a bit. Then we all went to sleep.

I only slept till 11:30 or so this morning, which again, was glorious. However, I missed the departure of Bixby and The Tzar, which made me feel like a bit of a jerk. If I hadn't stayed up late cleaning all week, I might have seen more of them. But then I'd have been embarrassed about the house.

There's a lesson in here somewhere. Unfortunately the genius of Kubrick is sucking up my reflective energies, so shrugs all around.

When Leggolamb's ride came I saw that it was snowing! The first snow of the year! This always excites me. Way more than it should.

Stankfoot came to town and he, Slim Jim, and I went to Taco Bell and kicked around. It was lovely.

While waiting for Stankfoot, Slim Jim and I tracked down and fixed some electrical gremlins. The light at the top of the basement stairs was out and it wasn't the bulb. Turned out to be a weak wire nut in the box the switch was in. Then, the plug my computer's getting power from has no ground. Plus, it was really touchy. Slim replaced the outlet and we tracked down the open ground to a box in the basement. There were five or six ground wires not really touching each other.

The guy who wired this place wasn't very thorough. As I said, all the smoke alarms have fresh batteries.

The big downer is there's blood on Starbuck's stiches. It could be from when I took her cone off and started biting at them. I stopped her right away but she still got at them a few times. Or, maybe it's from when she was playing and jumping around yesterday. She's getting awful punchy, being so full of energy but confined to one room. If only I had a door to the upstairs or something, so I could at least give her a whole floor.

I can't wait for this to be over and her to be all healed up.

The Dark Mistress just walked in! With a cornbread muffin! She's been away all weekend, helping her friend on a school project. I am off to eat this muffin.

Delicious.

A Post That's Not About My Cat?!

This week I've gone through several stages of tired. If I felt I could rely on my current state of mind, I would classify this list as comprehensive. I've been damn tired. I've been stupid mistakes tired. I've been cranky tired. I've been angry tired. I've been confused tired. I've been hopeless tired. I've been giggly tired.

This weekend my friends Bixby, her boyfriend The Tzar, and Slim Jim will all take up lodging here. Bixby reserved two spaces way back in August. So of course I forgot. Even though I wrote it down in my calendar. It was there, in my brain, in some form or capacity. Certainly not a useful one. It occurred to me in a very real way this Tuesday that I would actually have people in my house this weekend. This necessitated some emergency cleaning like nobody's dirty business.

So Tuesday I was up until 2:30 after work cleaning the bathroom, which I haven't done since I moved in. Wednesday I put in 15 hours, so I didn't do much of anything house related. Yesterday was laundry, and this morning was more laundry, straightening up my creativity room, sweeping the creativity room, installing new batteries in all the smoke alarms, straightening up the living room, vacuuming the living room, vacuuming the upstairs hall and stairs, doing dishes, making two chicken, cheddar cheese, mayo, and Cholula burritos, eating two chicken, cheddar cheese, mayo, and Cholula burritos, and petting my cat.

It was a very stressful week. What's nice though is when people visit, it's like a kick in the ass to get all these I've wanted to do done. Check it out: for the first time since moving in, I have an honest to god living room:


Also, I finally set up something I've wanted to have since I knew I was moving here:

What Do I Know About Partying or Anything?

I suppose the first post ought be a statement of intent.  Why a blog?  Why now?

It's been terrible at keeping up with friends and family lately.  I figured this would be an easy way to let them know I'm still alive  That's pretty much it.

So, family, friends, what have I been up to?

Little background: the latest era of my life consists of me living in a new town, alone, for the first time in my life.  This started back around July/August.  It was a hectic time, with me being busy/out of the state one third of the month of July.  My plan was this: move all I could in July, finish up in August, and be set to live the way I want starting in September. 

That "living the way I want" part involved time to play, write, and possibly record music, and time to read and write prose and poetry.  I recently discovered how important these things are to me, and decided that, for me, a life without them is a life not worth living.  Not at the moment, anyway.

Two things changed those plans: the house, and the lady friend.  In August, I started dating/going out/whatever label makes sense, with a wonderful young woman we'll name, for the sake of e-anonymity, Dark Mistress Hawthorne.  I hadn't dated in three years and I hadn't been in a relationship for four, so I feel a bit unsettled in how natural it's felt as I now reflect on it.  You'll be hearing more about her, but what's to note is, while I don't regret time spent with her one bit, time spent with her isn't time spent alone, and time spent alone is the only time I can create.  In short, she wasn't a part of the plan.

Thing two is the monster of a project that is my house.  For those not in the know on my deal, one of my best friends from college, whom I shall call from here out Slim Jim, bought a house on the cheap from the county.  It was a mess when he bought it.  He cleaned it up, made it livable, and started renting to students in the area.  He soon grew tired of being an enforcer when it came to cash, so he offered me a sweet deal on living there.  The rent is below what I'd pay for similar in the area, and it's a whole four bedroom one bath half duplex, all to my damn self.  I jumped all over it.

Part of the deal turned out that I inherited a house of other people's crap.  This is both good and bad.  I inherited a fancy Cuisinart coffee maker, an assortment of teas and canned goods, moth infested rice, a basement full of wet clothes and sweet ass power tools (the tools are all Slim Jim's, but I have his blessing to use them), two irons (look ma, both hands!), more pots and pans than I can shake two irons at (because irons are heavy), and... let's just say it's a lot.

I never had the chance to really move in and make the space my own from the get go.  Instead, I've adapted to living off of what others left behind, filling in with my stuff when necessary.  I've felt a bit like a long term squatter, and in all but the three bedrooms I've cleaned out, there are remainders everywhere of the lives once lived in this house. 

What do I still have left to do?  I have a living room full of boxes that need to get put away.  I have a kitchen full of random kitchen... stuff that needs to be organized.  I'm talking, pull everything out of every cupboard, keep or throw it, then reorganize.  Those are really the last two big projects, but they're humdingers.

So when do I get to do all of this?  A normal work week for me is Tuesday through Saturday, 2pm-11pm.  My sleep schedule, ideally, is 12am-8am, and in practice, 2 or 3am - 9 or 10am.  This means the majority of my free time is in the morning, before work.  I planned it this way because every other week I have meetings at 10am.  If I got up at 1pm for work at 2, and stayed up into the morning, I would probably get more done, a 10am meeting would be equivalent to a meeting at 4am for someone who went to work at 8.  Imagine that, would you?

Friday and Saturday nights Dark Mistress Hawthorne keeps me company, staying in through the morning.  Sundays we usually hang out, visit people, go on trips, or hit animals with her car.  Not on purpose.  Mondays she goes to work, and I usually visit my friends and family in my hometown.  Finally, one day a week I'll usually go visit the residence of Dark Mistress Hawthorne.  This means all my unassigned free time really takes place from when I wake up to when I go to work, three days out of the week.  Unless, of course, I have one of those meetings that happens every other week.  Then it's only two days. 

What do I do with that time?  Assuming I wake at 8am, (It's happened!), I get up, entertain Starbuck (my cat), make some tea, and go work on something creative until 11am.  At 11, or if I'm truly stuck, I begin working on something productive around the house.  For example: today I put weather stripping around the back door, which was leaking like a cheesecloth balloon.  If I have to cook something to eat for the week (I pack my dinners), I do so at Noon.  Otherwise I keep working.  At 1 is when I have to start getting ready for work, though sometimes I slack and get involved in a video game for a half hour or so, causing me to rush in a frenzy.

I'm not sure why, but in all this, I've felt a little stressed and worn thin.  I wish I had more time to spend with the lady, with my writing, and with my cat.  Not to mention my folks and my friends.  But, for now, this is what it is, I am what I am, you are what you are, and tautologies remain an excellent method ending conversations in a fatalistic, yet positive tone.