just finished giving newt his teefie-brushies.
He got so much loving, he fell into the drool-snore level of purr-dom… he didn’t mind at all that I was giving his dental hygiene. what a good boy!
Now my teef are brushied too… and I’m ready to tuck in… I have the champa burning, lights down low, and a happy kitty… I think I’ll tell him a bedtime story.
I’m looking to pick up a mountain bike or hybrid for tooling around sometime soon… maybe even as part of my commute to work, depending on weather. a “sitting-up” bike for city and beach traffic.
Stuff I have to make a point of getting –
Where I live, a bike is legally defined as a vehicle. Same rights to the roadway and must obey the same traffic laws as operators of other vehicles, including stopping for stop signs and traffic lights, riding with the flow of traffic, using lights at night, and yielding right-of-way when entering a roadway.
I may not get the apartment next door to my bro…. it needs a *lot* of work, and I don’t know if the landlord is interested in getting all that needs doing taken care of by the time I’m ready to move in.
I have a few new alternate places lined up… going to give one a look-see tomorrow morning at 9… all new kitchen/bath/tile/doors/appliances, and about $50 more a month than the one near the bro. At this rate, I’m beginning to suspect that one of the alternates is where I’ll end up. Brother rode around his neighborhood, and collected a few excellent phone numbers of places near him… I’ll call them again tomorrow during normal business hours. One sounds especially good.
Argh! why is my lj in read only mode, *now*? (9pm)
Today, I make a point of packing at least one box a day. two, or more if possible. I’d like to have everything ready to roll comfortably by a week from Saturday.
First thing to attack – my books.
Also, it’s time to decide if some of those things I haven’t used in the year since I moved here get purged, or retained. I’m a terrible pack-rat. I think that the Atari ST will be trashed… I have an emulator for the PC now… and I really haven’t booted the machine since it arrived.
The reel to reel recorder can go to goodwill, along with many of the clothes I’ve not made use of.
I’m keeping the Godzilla slippers.
I’m keeping my ties, in case of a court date, funeral or a wedding. (Unless the wedding is very lax, I won’t wear my Godzilla slippies there)
Old stereo… I’ll probably toss, but will keep a few of the albums. (real albums… even if I don’t have a turntable… the nostalgia is great.)
Free-flow thought…re:walkies to the mall of the dead
Who has left this golden day,
I don’t know, but I have found it…
Beautiful morning, remember me?
Who sat here once in days of spring…not all too long ago
Flowers were everywhere here… even in the doorway…
These ruins… the Parthenons of Pompano
weeds and cans and broken bricks… and I am a child again,
across the blowing fields
On this spot three years ago in pouring rain I leapt a puddle to help a crying baby… shortly his mother retrieved him and thanked me.
strange soft day… I think now of the time when I’ll be somewhere else, and the land will still be here.
I look up and see trails in the sky , a silver plane so silent… the airships will remain here, too. I’ll miss the blimps.
Leaves blow.
Old telephone pole covered in staples…there must be thousands.
Only on a day like today do I remember to notice such obscure treats.
Walking, wandering like a breath of air… floating like a cloud.
So many old places here.
Heavens have rolled by
many seasons
oceans of pavement
long gray lines of time…
since I last really looked at this spot.
they were supposed to tear down the mall years ago
no one knows why they never did.
look at the windows
like eyes frozen half closed, in the moment before sleep.
look at the drain pipe hanging half off
look at me standing here looking at it and talking to myself.
remember blowing soap bubbles in ’96… waiting for a ride.
cross-legged and smiling
in the parking lot
unspoken words
like cheap toys
fall from my lips
footprints echo from the past,
skies stare out from my shielded eyes
daytime wear on the heels of my shoes
I am here now,
wandering in and out of myself
my mind makes invisible phone calls to parties who don’t need to answer.
it’s enough that I reach to them.
life seems to be in slow motion
and the laughter sounds like angels
shadows move before I can look at them
and reaching out of the dark
behind my back
barely touching…
ghosts of moments gone and done.
memories
barely just alive
like tingled vertebrae
scamper through the rattled junk
I may not return to this place again
even if I do… it won’t seem the same.
How to make a really nifty smoke bomb – (make sure you’re in an open area, and get proper zoning permission if needed)
Combine four parts sugar to six parts saltpeter (potassium nitrate). Heat this mixture over a very low flame until it starts to blend into a plastic substance. When it begins to gel, remove it from the heat and allow it to cool. I suggest that you stick a few wooden match heads into the mass while it’s still pliable. You also add a fuse at this point. The smoke device is non-explosive and nonflammable. A pound of this mixture will produce enough thick smoke to cover a city block. Assorted coloring agents can be added for red, gold, green or darker black smoke….probably others that I don’t know of.
Watch which way the wind blows.
Whatever you call that “instinct of awareness”, I feel that there’s no reasonable denying that such though processes exist and work for some people in varying degrees.
I’ve always had pretty good fortune with them, myself… going with a “gut feeling” or acting on some cues that can’t really be explained more thoroughly than just saying “it feels right” or “it feels wrong”. When torn between matters of the heart and head I’ve found that the first instinct is usually a good one to run with… but far better is taking that instinct and tempering it with logic and a little thought if the time and brainpower is available.
Having a gut feeling is like a security blanket for me… probably much like that of being very opinionated. There are some things that I have no intuition for, and those things create in me a small sense of confusion… not really discomfort, but it does set off a desire to research facts about whatever it is that is eluding my gizzard. I think that’s part of why I like a lot of esoteric trivia… looking into something that I don’t have the first inkling about.
The other night, when Danny and I went out and about, we were driving through the rich area of Deerfield by the beach, looking for a place to eat. With Rose Red on my mind these last few days, I queried him about his feelings about an afterlife… anything ranging from the existence of souls, haunted houses, or reincarnation… something that he and I have never really discussed much. His response was a little disconcerting to me… along the lines of “I don’t know, and I prefer not to think about it”. I didn’t quite know what to make of that reply. It was honest, anyway. I suspect that he doesn’t like to think about it because he might think that it may reflect on his faith, somehow. That said though, had us change discussion topics to something else.
I don’t get how that mindset works, though. How do you opt not to think about something? Is it like changing the topic of conversation? If I don’t know something, I like to ponder it at least a little bit, do a little research and form an opinion or hypothesis if possible. I can’t say as there’s any topic that I’m not wanting to learn more about, in some way.
listening to old episodes of the shadow radio program… blue coal had a special “trial offer” of just one ton of coal for your furnace.
How long did a ton of coal last back then, in an average-sized coal-burning home? a week? a month? I really haven’t got a clue, being an adult Floridian in the 21st century.
Kitty-foot-snuggles makes it *very* hard to get up.
So I won’t, for the moment…. instead, I’ll play a little happy pill.
Happy Birthday, ly!
This morning’s walk was pleasant… stopped at the grove and got some OJ for the return trip home. I’ll miss Mack’s being so nearby… I’d wager that there’s some little mom & pop place where I can get juice or a bagel in the morning within walking distance of my next place… there always is.
I should know tonight if the place by my brother’s is mine. Odds are really good that I’ll get it… I’d say… 80% or greater?
They’re taking out the carpet, and tiling it… I think it’s just a question of lighting a fire under ’em to get it done in time for me to move in.
I woke craving those little chocolate-covered doughnuts… I haven’t had ’em in years, but something set that off….I suspect that I’ll have to buy a little roll of them the next time I pass a gas station or a 7-11… or at least a real doughnut somewhere else. Maybe even the gigantic Entenmann’s version… but if I do that, I’ll need milk too.
I send my love a kiss on the wind… The next breeze she feels will also contain my caress.
Nigh nigh, dear journal.
And only when the invasion was well under way did the sinister truth become known. If only the significance of the floating silver ball had been understood . . . See the Associated Press story.
Off to work, dear journal… have some Homer MMMmmms… hope today is a good ‘n.
Up and have Newtie and myself holed up in the bedroom while the maintenance man replaces the front door. It didn’t really need replacing, but the new owner wants them all to match. I got my quiz wrong the other day… Dan was offered the chance to have a bit of cadaver bone added, or to have the bone taken from himself. no mention of plastic was made.
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/animals/Animalbabies.shtml
Talked to Doug & Cathy Wu online tonight… weird hearing from them both after all this time, but nice, too. They want to do some online gaming… 40’s supers, I told ’em I’d give it a try… it might be like old times. I wonder what Ray and Kathleen are up to… I hope that they’re doing well and are happy. Kind of a shame how we parted ways, but that year was a weird and stressful time for everyone. A pity that Dan isn’t more online.. he’d probably dig chatting with the Wu’s, too. He and Cathy were big buddies, and Doug and I always got along better.
Of that gaming group, I think that Ray and I were of the most similar minds… same stripe of weirdness and dark humor. Kathleen I admired too, because she was probably the first girl gamer I met that didn’t always play the skulky assassin-thief hybrid… plus, she actually role-played was just *nice*. I think I liked her even more because she and Ray were such a great couple… you could see that they really were in love. They offset each other… quite complimentarily, too. When it came down to my teaming up with another player or two, they would certainly be at the top of my list at that time. I could bounce banter off of either of them, and it worked out well. Kat’s Dr. Mid-nite and my Green Lantern, Kyoko & Trism, Blare & Khudrin, Spring & Zero, Ghost & Minimax. Great team-ups, all, under Ray’s GMing. probably some of the best times I had in role-play. We could team up as one group, the Wu’s could pair off as a second. I never could effectively run for Ray and Kathleen as a duo, though… Ray liked to get himself killed (it’s nigh impossible to have gotten one of the other GMs at the time to allow a killing blow), and my storytelling skills at that time weren’t the best.
The Colinas… I really liked them a lot. It’s too bad about how things worked out at the end. I’d like to rewrite that last three months or so, if I could.
Rik Landis… he, I still see online now and then… a swell guy, and I’m glad he found a nice wife and has his world in order. I gamed with him a few times after the main group broke up, but he was doing D&D 2nd ed… not my thing. I still like to see him yearly at the RenFaire, though. He’s my favorite monopod. A good hammy actor, well suited for boisterousness and such. Does a good wookie growl, too. A good-natured fellow.
Dan’s characters were always Dan’s. The Weasel… Zircon, Jasper… Man of Iron. Just nuts. Entertainingly so, usually… fortunately. I never really got into his epic fantasy school of GMing, but he did a good job with the cooperative cyberpunk universe, and his props were really nice. His NPCs were not the best, and stuff could drag on, but he was well prepared, and social banter at the table made things go pretty nicely.
Doug’s games I liked for the pure nostalgia side of it… he knows *everything* about the silver age of comics, and a heck of a lot about most everything else, too.
I haven’t thought much about those games in a little while.. those were some really good times.
In other news, Dan’s dad’s going in to have a whipple procedure done, and I hope everything turns out ok. I know Danny is quite concerned about it.
ugh, I’m drowsing here. Nigh nigh, dear journal.