Tokamak A-Knock You Out, Jackalope Knock You Out

Morning weigh-in: 174#, 10% BF

 

Imagine: RIP John Lennon, killed on this date in 1980.

 

Amazingly beautiful sunrise on the way in this morning, all pink solar towers and such, and the undersides of the clouds -- the sky mostly had a roof of cloud, except just over where the sun was coming up -- were lit up with orange and pink. The show did not last long though, when the sun got as high as the clouds the day went gray. But it was good while it lasted.

 

Oh Noes! This is the kind of reporting that hits you right in the, ah...

 

Medical Taylorism: Sure it will save lives, but how will it be received?

 

Yesterday was mostly hanging out and playing with the computer (though I also managed to replace the rear brake pads on the Turner and also find I need new parts for the front brakes): I managed to find and install qCAD, which looks enough like AutoCAD to make it worth trying out I hope, and I also installed Gnuplot and a few other things that make octave work better. Tonight is yoga.

 

 

 

 

 

Drama!

Did a lot of chores and errands yesterday, including some house cleanup and some clothes buying, but that wasn't the dramatic part of the day...

We were down on Main Street at Wired Cafe yesterday afternoon when we noticed sirens and commotion outside. A few minutes later a wave of people came into the (already crowded) cafe, with the news that the Bethlehem Brew Works, where they'd been eating, was on fire and they had all just been evacuated. Anne bumped into a friend, one of the bartenders; she said that it was a kitchen fire, and that no one was hurt or anything, probably just smoke damage. The jinx has struck again, one of our favorite places will probably be closed for a while, hopefully they (and the other businesses in their building) won't be out of commission for too long.

Our plan was to go from Wired to Easton, to meet up with Sally & Joe, and with Judy, who were all at the various art openings going on. We went to the Colonial for dinner, but first we had to get from Bethlehem to Easton in the first real snowfall of the year: lots of slipping and sliding, crashes; we couldn't take US22 because of some huge accident so it was all back roads but we made it.

Dinner at the Colonial was filling but that's about it, supposedly they're under new ownership but the menu (and recipes, and limited beer selection) are the same -- a decidedly mediocre experience thought the place is nice enough.

We got one more blast of drama though, when a domestic dispute erupted at a nearby table: father, mother, adult daughter, the father started dropping some f-bombs, trying (and failing) to keep himself under control; he then vowed to kick some guy's ass and stormed out. Uncomfortable silence, then the mother/daughter left. We saw them through the window saying goodbye; after the daughter walked off the father, still in "berate" mode, came from nowhere to join the mother and they walked off in another direction, tension between them visible from 50 yards away.

After dinner we went to the bar downstairs, where we met Judy and Ed and a bunch of Easton's art people, and Joe & Sally came down from dinner at Porters. There was a band, but the band was about the same level of quality as everything else there and we left.

Anne houseguests last night, as her sister and brother-in-law were trapped in Bethlehem by the snow -- they sell stuff at Christkindlemarkt but live in Tamaqua and couldn't make it home.

So that was a very full Saturday!

The Good Old Days

picture41
Originally uploaded by which_brew.

Believe it or not, this is me. That was my costume for the 2003 Halloween party at Which Brew, my personal best effort and not a bad job if I do say so myself, even if Doug did the makeup for me...

I saw some of the old Which Brew crew last night, Kirk had a party and quite a few people I know showed up -- we travel in at least two of the same circles (roughly, pubs/nightlife and yoga/bike/organic), so there were several groups of people that I knew there.

Linux Voyager: Leaving A Landmark

I have the day off, so I'm sitting in the Caffeine Cafe typing away... Actually, I'm now at Anne's house, got my car inspected in Bethlehem and just picked it up.

One of the reasons I got the laptop was so I could have a computer of my own when I was over here, instead of always using hers. Then I got this, with Ubuntu installed like a good little ideologue, and I found I couldn't connect to her wireless network, and in fact couldn't connect to any encrypted network. D'oh!

Luckily, there were plenty of open wireless access points, and I spent time researching the problem -- it turns out that "WEP Passphrase" is not supported by the Network Manager applet, because passphrases are not supported by the underlying program (iwconfig).

For various coffeehouses the password is their phone number, so instead of putting that into the default "WEP Passphrase" dialogue box -- and why does Network Manager even have such a dialog box, if the option is unsupported? -- I put that into the hex key option dialog box and it worked fine. Tried it at Anne's and it worked there too. Voila!

I ran into a lot of information about wireless driver issues etc, which seemed to be problems from a few months/years ago, and which didn't really help me. I thought I'd write this in case someone has a similar problem (really, just a misunderstanding on my part how this stuff works), this might come up in a google search and save them some time.

Anyway: I hit the gym last night, then then went to Porter's to meet Anne and Judy; I also saw Lou and some other people from the McSorley's trip, and also Mike (the Lafayette network guy from Which Brew), who earned his first mug last night. Tonight is a towpath ride, followed by a "reggae party" at Kirk's house. Tomorrow is the yoga/coffee/gym-and-maybe-bike thing.

Do You See What I See?

Just kicking back, eating some turkey soup...

 

Really interesting skies the last few days: this morning was an incredible sunset while driving in (and also a rainbow), while yesterday's drive home was just after sunset -- with a perfectly clear, beautiful evening sky, with crescent Moon, Venus, and Jupiter all prominently on display -- this has been the early-evening show all week, but last night was especially good. It's raining now, but the weekend, which starts tonight, should be fine.

 

(Almost) All Caught Up: I still have to give them titles, but I uploaded my photos from the Thanksgiving Day ride, which means I am now caught up on all my recent photos. Go check them out!

 

Tonight is the gym, and I am back to full workouts after going easy for a few weeks. Last night was a monster yoga class, followed by a hamburger at the Brew Works.

Family Folklore

Morning weigh-in (Monday): 174#, 11% BF

 

A Thanksgiving Interlude: We were at Anne's mom's house for Thanksgiving, and over dessert conversation one of her teenage nephews was admonished by his mother, who thought he was about to say a bad word -- she wouldn't say what bad word was about to be uttered, so we tried to guess, using hints:

 

Guesser #1: Hmmmm... Starts with "B?"

Guesser #2: Hmmmm... And rhymes with "witch?"

 

Then five-year-old Brian, who was learning about rhymes in kindergarten, put two and two together and announced into a lull in the conversation: "Bitch!"

 

He had no idea what it meant or even if it was a word, it was just a lucky guess...

 

The room exploded variously into either laughter or consternation, upsetting Brian, and he ran from the room -- he was fine again in a minute, and will no doubt be repeating his discovery today on the playground, but I'm also sure he'll be hearing about this Thanksgiving well into middle age.

 

"The Itch:" We visited my parents Sunday, and somehow the conversation came around to the unusual nicknames endemic to my dad's childhood. (He, as the younger brother of "Shorty," was cursed with the moniker "Little Shorty.") My dad ran off a few names ("Ole Salty" Murphy, etc), and then brought up Teddy Bentbelly, the long-suffering usher at the ancient, and decidedly downscale, local movie theater in his old neighborhood -- it had a real name, but the local kids called it "The Itch" because it was so dirty that if you leaned your head back onto the chair you'd get lice or scabies or something. I remember hearing stories about "The Itch" when I was a kid... my dad told one Sunday about the ticket lady, who also doubled as a sort of babysitter for the youngest kids: instead of taking them to the bathroom, she would pass a sort of chamber pot along the aisle for all the kids to use.

 

A Quote From My Hero: "Invention is the mother of necessity." -- Thorstein Veblen, courtesy of Google's Quote of the Day.

 

Yesterday was yoga, then dinner at Anne's followed by more playing with the laptop, my new toy, er, I mean, necessity. Still fiddling with the "WEP Passphrase" issue, but I also uploaded the rest of our New England vacation photos. Check them out, yo.

 

Tonight is the gym, followed by a trip to Porter's.

 

 

Little Willy Won't Go Home!

Morning weigh-in (Saturday, unofficial): 172.5#, 10.5% BF

Lotsa stuff to talk about, but I don't really have the time... Thanksgiving in Jim Thorpe with Anne's family, then Friday we went back to see more of her family visiting (she has a big family), preceded by a ride on Pisgah Mountain to get the appetite running again. Yesterday was yoga/errands/coffee shop/gym, then Porter's for dinner, a big chunk of the old "supper club" crew. Today we're just hanging out waiting for some baking to be done; we're leaving to visit the folks in a little while.

Listening: While we're waiting, we're listening to a mix some grade school friend of Anne's gave her at a reunion -- we just heard "Little Willy!" I remember playing that in the backyard with my brothers -- us as a band, not the radio or anything, and long before we actually learned to play instruments -- when we were kids. (Thinking about the backyard and being kids kinds of reminds me of this.) We were talking about those kinds of songs back then, and I mentioned Bruce Lee, and "The Night Chicago Died," and the way the 5th-grade girls would all do "The Locomotion" at lunchtime, like a total spontaneous dance craze.

Hansel & Gretel, Bloody Mary, "Hark the herald angels sing/ Mrs. Simpson's pinched our King," children's folklore tapping into some more primal, tribal self... I think I'll start a rumor that the kid in H.R. Pufnstuff is Jack White's dad.

Meantime, many photos got uploaded recently. Enjoy!

An Ocean Refuses No River

Morning weigh-in: 174#, 9.5% BF

 

You Can't Fight City Hall! Instead of going to work yesterday afternoon, I decided to blow it off in favor of a haircut, and some quality time with my laptop. Off to Eskandalo in Southside Bethlehem, where I had to use metered parking but the meter was broken -- I only found this out after putting in two quarters. I said "screw it," and went in for my haircut (which was lovely), and sure enough, when I got back to the car there was a parking ticket waiting for me on the windshield. D'oh! I called the number and complained, and got a phone call that the Bethlehem Parking Authority had verified my claim of a broken meter, and I was off the hook.

 

So I went off to Wired Cafe with the laptop after all that, parking in a metered space once again, over by the Brew Works. Did a few things (including posting more photos, check them out), came out, and found another ticket. I had a good run but I guess my Parking Karma had caught up to me: this one was legitimate.

 

(By the way, the laptop is still not 100% un-cranky. Still working on it.)

 

Listening: I told a friend I liked some of her music, and she got me a copy; turns out that it's the soundtrack to a prenatal yoga class. I guess my belly has been getting bigger lately, but still... (The title to this post is from one of the songs. In case you were wondering.)

 

Now I'm Somebody! Check out this article, especially the photos -- like, who took them.

 

"...the unimaginable Pacific... the hole left by the Moon's tearing-free and monument to her exile; you could not hear or even smell this but it was there, something tidal began to reach feelers in past eyes and eardrums..." -- Thomas Pynchon

 

 

Missions Accomplished!

I took off this morning to get my dryer repaired (done: it was a burned-out wire, not the heater element), then called a trash hauler and had the other one removed (done), and finally I made an appointment to have my car inspected (still to do, but I have the appointment). I am now doing laundry -- and drying it! -- uploading some pictures, and then I'll be heading back into work for the day. Excelsior!

(Anne and Judy just stopped by. They were at Rachel's dad's funeral, which was held at the place around the block from here, and were on their way to Doylestown -- they were carpooling so Anne dropped her car off here rather than leave it at the funeral home.)

Meantime, on the SS Linux: I managed to totally lock up the laptop, still not sure how but it's OK now, and updated over 1000 programs (but the wireless connection is still funky when it comes to WEP encryption) plus added a few others. My next task is to use it to upload pictures -- my new photo program comes with a feature to do this automatically, so I want to give it a try. More missions getting accomplished there every day.

Anyway, last night was yoga, where I felt stiff and unwieldy, I've been away so long, and tonight is the gym which will no doubt also hurt. Dinner tonight will probably be making pasta & tuna with wilted greens.

Whelp, back to work.

Bike? What's That?

Pretty good weekend, finally did something I haven'tbeen able to do in a while: I biked!

I rode the towpath Friday night with Larry (below-freezing cold and windy), then yesterday Anne and I went up to Jacobsburg at the end of the afternoon, a fun ride with Spanky Greg, Robin (whom I don't know well, she's just starting out riding), and Rob L. (We also saw Joe G but didn't get to talk.)

Early this morning I went up to Sals by myself, though I did run into Greg, Eric B, and Joe & Cindy, then Anne and I did a road ride over to Emmaus for some coffee and breakfast. I guess I'm back in the saddle.

By the way, that's me, a photo I took through my laptop's webcam.

Killed -- To Make A Roman Holiday!

Here's a photo of my mom, yukkng it up with some kind of centurion or gladiator or something in Rome, where they're apparently not as stuffy as those British guards, no matter how much Beefeaters you try to give them...

This is from their cruise through Europe (the water part) and the Mediterranean. I saw a lot of the pictures already in album form, but Mom passed along a few of them along with the article she wrote up for her local newspaper. Pretty cool!

The Drama Continues, Abated

Morning weigh-in: 173#, 11% BF (that's what happens when you don't eat for 24 hours)

 

Whelp, back at work and feeling better, even if I'm not fully 100% yet. I basically slept from around 1:00 PM yesterday through to this morning, with a short wake-up (where I made some long-overdue uploads to flickr, answered email and in general played with the "old computer"). Tomorrow is a day off, and I think I'll be taking it easy tonight after the gym. Tomorrow's nightlife will hopefully be a different story, Brujos is playing at Pearly Baker's...

 

Take The Train: Two recent stories about rail transportation, here and here.

Gaaaa!

Morning weigh-in: 177.5#, no idea what the BF is because I jumped off the scale...

 

Hopefully I'll be able to turn over a new leaf, because that number is pretty scary. But... I haven't been to the gym in like two weeks, or yoga or bike or anything else -- one day of riding and one hike while on vacation, and that's pretty much it since the McSorley's trip, and there wasn't too much going on before that either. (Meantime, I've been eating out almost every night for months.) Tonight is the Chain Gang monthly meeting, no real chance to do anything beforehand, but I guess tomorrow I'll have to start getting my act together.

 

Anyway, here is a little something about my new laptop. Pretty sweet! I was up pretty late with that thing last night, or rather late compared to my more recent bedtimes, and am now paying the price but it was worth it.

UPDATE: I wrote all that at lunchtime today, but "the price" I was paying was not really related to the late night or whatever -- I got pretty sick and took the afternoon off. Spent the day sleeping, no appetite, headache, stomache ache, body aches...

Even More Mobility

Well, here I am in Porter's, wirelessly connected and typing away on my new laptop... had dinner here with Anne and her friend Donna, who are doing the knitting thing. Major hassle with Fed Ex picking it up today, but I do have my new toy: it's a Dell something or other, 15" screen, seems pretty fast, and it runs Ubuntu so I'm still kinda-sorta a Linux purist. More on all this later, gotta run and drink beer.

By the way, the end of last week's vacation was all rainy, so the pattern was: breakfast in a coffee shop (wireless and Anne's laptop), browsing the college town bookstores mid-day, and ending the day at the local brewpub. Life was good, and it still is...

Our Trip So Far

Well, here we are in Greenfield MA, at a coffee shop called the Koko Cafe. Our trip so far:

New Paltz: We hit town around 9:00 and went to the Gilded Otter Brewpub for dinner. Pretty nice, though I thought the beer was better than the food: my roast beef sandwich fell far short of the "Christian Springs Hotel roast beef standards" to which I had become accustomed, though Anne did like her meal. We asked about lodging, and ended up at some interstate motel, where a teenager asked me to rent him and his friends a room. Sorry, Bub... I was polite about it, but the last thing I needed was our sleep disturbed by a bunch of kids trashing the hotel on my credit card. They took off, and the rest of the evening was uneventful.

In the morning we got biking advice and breakfast at a crunchy coffee shop in town, then went over to Lake Winnemaska to ride the carriage roads. I hadn't been there in years but it was the same as ever: still scenic, still reasonably easy/aerobic riding. Cold and breezy but beautiful, we got in about 12 miles over maybe 3 hours, then took off for Vermont via the Champlain Bridge.

Burlington: This was Anne's birthday, and we hit the Vermont Brew Pub to celebrate but it was a fairly early night. Motel outside of town, breakfast next day in town, and then we headed up to Stowe for some hiking -- snow was already on the ground, and when we got up to higher elevations it got to be 4"-6" deep, then icy, and so we turned around, and got pizza in Stowe. We didn't get as far as we wanted, but we were out for a good chunk of the day -- it was beautiful up there.

Back in Burlington, dinner was a nap but then we went out to catch some night life. We went to Ri Ra for a few pints and Irish atmosphere, then caught a good blues band at Red Square. (I'd heard a few years ago that they were going out of business, but they seemed to be going strong that night.) Rain started to fall, mostly just drizzle, and hasn't stopped since... 

Yesterday was browsing Burlington, then we traveled here with a dinner stop: friends of Anne live near a brewpub outside Springfield VT, and we met them there. Tonight were meeting her son in Northampton.

Leaf Mold And A Head Cold

The leaf mold finally got to me. It's worst year I can remember, and I've been suffering after every time out in the woods -- even worse than the May "tree pollen rides." It was really bad the other day, and must have opened a door for some germ because I am now colonized: sinuses, chest congestion, the usual.

It hasn't slowed me down (yet): we went to McSorley's in Manhattan yesterday, with dinner at Carmine's afterward, and both were awesome, as was the other little bar we stopped in (for a break from the McSorley's scene). It was the 3rd annual Which Brew / Porters bus trip into the city, the usual suspects but with a more Porter's-oriented crowd.

Today I'm on vacation for real, and in about four hours (after laundry & housecleaning) I'm picking up Anne and we're heading North. No real plans, but we'll probably be stopping near New Paltz tonight, hiking the Gunks tomorrow, and then heading for Burlington; the eventual goal is to visit her son Ben, going to school near Amherst, later in the week. Lots of hiking, biking, reading, coffee & beer in the meantime...

To get ready we went to that semi-new (me) sporting goods store, Cabella's. What a nightmare, a total big-box store dedicated to mostly hunting -- they even had a furniture section, the kid of stuff that would go well with the elk on the wall... I got a couple of pairs of hiking pants, she got boots, and then we got the hell out of Dodge.

Anyway, that's it for a couple of days. Stay tuned for pictures -- I have about a hundred from yesterday, plus a bunch of earlier ones, various events, that I still didn't get to. But, later...

Well!

Our first Muslim Socialist President!

 

I went to Brew Works last night after a bit of housework, to watch the election returns. The Obama Campaign victory party was there as well, but the bar at least was still open to the public, and the place was packed. (You could still get into the party-controlled dining room or downstairs to the Steel Gaarden, if you wanted to check out the big-screen TV's and the excitement, but if anything it was even more crowded than out front: the bar was fine.) Anne got there around 10:00 or so, after being at the polls from 6:30 AM on. Some burgers, and beer, and some nail-biting (the networks seemed to drag things out, to make it less lopsided & more interesting), and then at 11:03 or so, almost immediately after the West Coast polls closed, they called California for Obama and that was all she wrote. The place erupted in cheers, people were hugging and shaking hands, wiping tears from their eyes...

 

We stuck around for McCain's concession speech (well done and well received) and Obama's awesome acceptance speech, and then went home around 1:00. What a night! Whatever comes next -- and the real hard part isn't even on the horizon yet -- last night we were a part of history.

 

Vote Early, Vote Often

Morning weigh-in: 173.5#, 10.5% BF

 

So I voted this morning before coming in to work. I arrived at exactly 7:00 when the polls opened, and there was already a line; it took me about a half hour to vote, and the line was the same length when I left as when I got there... I don't always vote early, so this may be more common than I think in the morning, but that was the longest I ever had to wait to vote. I was joking with the woman behind me, that the situation was like before a snowstorm when everyone stocks up on the bread and milk that they don't even need: we all heard about possible long lines so we went early, and created our own. All in all the process went rather smoothly, even if I was a bit late for work.

 

I think people are expecting trouble though. A cop car cruised by once, people had their ID ready (normally it's not necessary to show ID), and the ACORN vs voter suppression shenanigans has people kind of hopped up. Anne is volunteering in Allentown today, to help protect the rights of voters who might get challenged.

 

Tonight I'll be skipping the gym to do chores at home (mostly laundry-type stuff), then I'm joining Anne somewhere for the post-election nail-biting.

 

 

The Oil Fields At First Light

No morning weigh-in, but last I looked I was 172#.

 

On the ride in this morning I finally spotted the pattern: every Monday at about 7:30 AM, they play U2's "Beautiful Day" on the local station. The song really puts me in a good mood, and presumably does it for the rest of the Monday morning commuter demographic as well. It usually is a beautiful ride in too, in that "advanced nature appreciation" way you have to do it, gleaning what beauty you can, from the sky and the Interstate... Filled the tank on the way in, prices really have dropped.

 

Backwards:

 

Yesterday I went for breakfast with Anne, walking over to Southside to Blue Sky with her and her dog. Langston had a banner day, which started with him tearing into the garbage (he's on anti-seizure medication, which makes him hungry) and strewing it around the kitchen -- Anne said he looked quite pleased with himself. He was pretty agitated, tied outside Blue Sky, and he got into a fight with another dog, he was wound up for most of the rest of the day... Anyway, we also went for a mountain bike ride at Jordan later on. That was pretty nice, and I think a few things clicked into place for her there. If the learning curve is a wave, like body surfing at the beach, Jordan's easy enough that she was able to catch the wave and move forward . Kind of fun to watch, actually.

 

Saturday was an Allamuchy ride, with the usual Gang: Bob & Karen leading the ride, plus Doug, Eric B, Eric R, Greg, Butch & Mindy, and Nelson, but also Joe & Jon G, Keith, and Claude in a slightly faster group out front. We got in about 13 miles, maybe 2 hours ride time between 10:30 and 2:30 -- hard to believe we stood around for two hours, but there were a lot of blown-down trees & branches that we cleared as we came upon them. Leaf mold or something, had allergy problems which persisted through the rest of the day and into Judy's party.

 

The party was nice though, almost an Obama campaign meeting or something, except for the occasional Halloween costume (I was Franken-pimp, whatever that might be, while Anne was Joe The Plumber, complete with gigantic fake butt crack showing above her pants).

 

Friday night started with Frank P's daughter hosting an "urban fun ride" through Bethlehem, in costume for Halloween of course (except for me, d'oh), and after that we all went to Greg H's for a Halloween party -- I wore a mullet wig and that fake butt. Riding there through the Bethlehem trick-or-treaters with my butt hanging out was a total hoot, a moving wave of gut-busting laughter followed us as we rode up the street.

 

Tonight is yoga, followed by chores/laundry, and tomorrow is the election; we'll probably watch the returns at a friend's house. (I remember watching the 2000 returns at Weyerbacher -- it seems so long ago now! -- and the 2004 returns at Democratic Party headquarters in Bethlehem.)

 

 

And Another One

Leopard Suits You
Originally uploaded by donXfive.

This photo, my third-most popular one based on views -- wonder why? -- just passed the 300-view mark. This was from last year's Halloween party at Which Brew. This year was the first time in five years that there was no a Which Brew Halloween party. Sigh, but I went to Greg's party last night (we rode there, after I rode the CAT Halloween Fun Ride), and we're hitting Judy's party tonight. Yo later.