June 27, 2003

ARRRGHHHHH

(Sorry! But I feel better now.)

I had managed to get half an essay written in my scratch pad and then I ran across this. It just seems that any idea that occurs to me as being something neat and interesting has been done before. I mean my almost two year old son demonstrated how you can colour your hair with chocolate frogurt. Now, if I had thought of the idea, there would be a node here that I would find out about later that detailed effective frogurt hair dyes. Sort of like that pangram incident..

EXCUSE ME.

Erm. Yes? Why are you all in shining white and carrying a pointy object in one hand and thesaurus in the other?

I'm a content editor.

OH! Well, I didn't know. Please don't hurt me. I bow. I prostrate. Let me kiss your..

SHUT UP! This has been done before.

...feet. Umm, can I ask you a question? You know everyone keeps going on about how Poetry gets downvoted?

Yeah?

Well mine doesn't seem to.

Whoa, there are 2 things wrong there. First, only Star Trek Captains are allowed to prove the gods wrong. Second, stop nodevertising!

But I didn't even mention flanged control valves...

<Zot>

Ok, but can I mention other noders that live in proximity to me but who I don't actually know as a sad attempt to get upvotes?

No. Now get this write up deleted and stop spelling like a Canadian.

<ZOT>

*squeak*

Styrofoam boxes squeak when they open.

If you sit under a tree in a small circle of shade on a hot day with a box from the Kiwanis it will probably have this inside:

Dark brown pieces of fried chicken and big overcooked French fries. And a box that squeaks.

You will rip open a couple of small tubes of ketchup for the potatoes and wish you had remembered napkins. You will probably use your socks instead.

The music from the carnival hums in the background as you blow your bangs out of your face between bites. In the distance car wheels crunch in the gravel parking lots and kids whine as they are led away from the cotton candy booths. Filled with the scent of fried oil and cigar smoke, the late afternoon air is heavy. Balloons that have eloped from strollers slide above tents, but are too lazy to head skyward.

*squeak*

You close the box up and stretch. Maybe you need to go try some Skeeball

The weekly progress report:

My plan

• Weight: 248 lbs.


As you can see I lost an additional pound. Still on track.


• Exercise: 2 walks of 20 minutes each.


I haven't given up, but I had some trouble this last week. Getting up in the morning is tough and I started playing a massively multiplayer game lately (a tale in the desert), which didn't help at all. One thing that has been great is the support that various E₂ members have been providing. It's not something that I anticipated when I started this project. To all of you who have responded with words of encouragement I say thanks. It's really helped.


• Diet:


This is the one aspect of my life that is going more or less according to plan. Since I stopped the fast food for dinner, I've found that I actually enjoy cooking quite a bit. Shopping is a bit of a pain, but I've managed to eat breakfast and dinner every day execpt Tuesday. I just need to plan a little better for Tuesday, because I know I won't have time to cook.


• Changes:
  
  
There's a grassy area beside the parking lot at work and I'm thinking it might be perfect for some ultimate frisbee. I've been told that this is great exercise and also very fun.

This morning, my cat woke me up at 6 am to show me that she had killed her toy mouse on a string. She was all "Mom? Mom!! Look! Look what I brought you!" and then I petted her and told her what a good kitty she was and lavished attention on her and she purred and purred.

I want her to keep on playing and being frisky forever. My first girlfriend's cat was about 7 when we got Jesse, not that old, and she had already stopped playing with stuff. Like it was beneath her dignity. And she made my girlfriend carry her around on her back. And then we had finally gotten her to start playing again -- and then we got Jesse. And Lisa (the snobby queen cat) was all "You know what? Fuck you. Just. Fuck. You."

*dramatically* and she NEVER PLAYED AGAIN.

So far, my cat plays with things still. She went through a little phase of "If you're not moving it I ain't playing with it." But I think she dropped that when she realized that it didn't really get her any more attention from me. Cause I'm just like "Hey look! It's a toy! It's the gift wrap bow you like to mangle! Look at that! Look at it move! Woo! Get the bow!... Hey, is that the mail?" and then I wander off. To her utter disgust.

So she's started playing with stuff on her own again. But now her new thing is "The sofa is my territory! I will not leave the sofa to chase that piece of string!" If I try to move it off the sofa, she just looks at me. Like "Oh, yeah, that's TOTALLY worth going all the way over there for. It's a FAKE MOUSE." I'm like "But you wanted to disembowel it so bad a second ago!"

She's all, "Whatever. You are SO human."

i have too much fun with pipelinks....

I know that the publishing gods, in their infinite wisdom, saw fit to categorize some books as oversized; bound newspapers, reproductions of art, etc. This, though. This is utterly ridiculous.

Three feet tall. Two feet wide. four inches thick. Easily weighs 10 pounds. This is not a book; this is a monstrosity, not for any reason other than its totaly impracticality. When this thing was printed 50 years ago I'm sure the most modern page preparation and binding techniques were utilised to make sure it'd last forever. Times have changed, however; the covers are deteriorating, the pages are slowly turning to dust, the binding glue is slowly evaporating into the ether. This is a book you'd be insane to actually open because who knows what will blow away in the wind once the cover is lifted. I have become quite gifted at judging a book by its cover, it seems. I should also note that this volume was designed to be archived - it hasn't been touched in decades, wasn't anywhere near the circulating stacks. Instead it was kept in a hot, stuffy, humid warehouse. In conditions like those it doesn't matter how well the thing is bound, it'll still fall apart much sooner than if the damn thing had been taken care of in the first place. So now it's up to me to get this thing into a somewhat stabile condition.

I stare at it, and its ninety-nine identical siblings. Why isn't it tomorrow yet?

My Jenn is in the hospital again. This time they figured out what is wrong with her. She was admitted Tuesday morning, her symptoms were passing out and not breathing, she was then transported to the hospitals downtown (the world renowned ones), there they ran a whole bunch of tests including MRI's, CAT's, echocardiograms, etc. They finally made two conclusions, the first being that she had/has a blood clot that was making her pass out and stop breathing, she is on blood thinners and they are doing sonograms to make sure it's all gone. Secondly, that she has a rare condition where her skull is too small for her brain, and subsequently brain fluid is drained into her spinal cord. This condition leads to paralysis or death if not treated. What they are going to do when she is off the blood thinners (in about a month) is somehow make her skull bigger. I haven't heard how they are going to do this, but it sounds painful. Jenn is 16, and in school but luckily it's summer break and she won't miss much class… though she will miss her summer and spend most of it in the hospital. She has to be under 24-hour supervision because if something happens to her, the doctors want to make sure she gets immediate care. Luckily her parent's insurance is willing to cover this (I think they have to since it is life threatening if left untreated). My dad and his girlfriend haven't told me what kind of risks there are, there are always risks; so I suppose I am expecting the worst.

Poor Jenn.

On a farther note…on learning what your friendship really means

Lesson: You Cannot Hitch Rides with Postal Trucks in New York State

(For reference purposes, QuietLight is a 16 year old male sophmore with only 2 days left of school)

Now, of course you're wondering "Who would ever even want to?" Well, me. I have to walk to school for my Regents exams (Regents are NY's name for state testing), because our school district does not hire buses for less-than-full days of school. Whoopie. For me, the walk is not that bad; about a half hour walking, 15 minutes at full throttle.

I was about half way there, when I saw a string of 6 postal trucks coming down the street in a row in the other lane. As a joke, I put out a thumbs up, the symbol for someone that wants to hitch a ride, as the first one began to pass. They went by...
the first...
the second...
the third...
the fourth...
the fifth...
the... Oh no. This is bad. Really bad. The sixth one stopped. Aaugh! This was not supposed to happen! Either I was in trouble, or I was now going to have to get a ride from a mailman that is heading in the opposite direction and be late for the test. PANIC!

Luckily, he was laughing, meaning that he had a sense of humor. He pulled over, got out and walked across the street to me.

Mailman: "You looking for a ride, kid?"
Me: "Um...well-"
Mailman: "Your a funny kid, you know that? Sorry though. Those vans only have one seat. Here, lemme show you..." and he motions me over to the van across the street. I follow. Why? I dont know. Why not...
When I get over, I notice that the other seat in the van is ripped out, and it's replaced with a large set of divided boxes with mail in them.
Me: "Oh, darn... ok, I guess I have to walk then. Thanks anyway!"
Mailman: "S'ok, we get people tryin' to hitch from us often."

I didn't think much of it at the moment, but about when I arrived at school it hit me. "We get people tryin' to hitch from us often"? Meaning that there were more fools than I that have tried to flag down a mailman? I laughed to myself, and returned to contemplating chemistry for my test.

Moral: Do not, under any circumstances, attempt to flag down a United States Postal Truck in an attempt to gain free transportation. It does not work.

Then again, it gives a bored mailman a laugh. Well, try it if you want to, but don't say I didn't warn you.