september 2006
september 30 2006 22:34 pdt she went to the gym. i put in the new kitchen faucet. she came home before i was done, so the surprise didn't work out the way i planned... but it works, and it doesn't leak (yet) so i guess i shouldn't complain.
for whatever reason, none of the camerawork i tried to accomplish on friday came out to be very interesting, so i'm not posting anything. there is a tiny green treefrog who lives in our backyard, but i couldn't get my cheapo camera to focus on him, so i'll have to go and find him again tomorrow when the sun comes out.
september 26 2006 23:47 pdt time sure flies when every minute is scheduled. i don't know where the end of last week went! but i finally hooked up with the water polo team here, and i've been going to practice. it's a bunch of kids and they're all really fast. i'm going to have to take a day off to recharge or else i'm liable to hurt myself.
i looked at flickr tonight, and i realized that i haven't posted any new photos in the last three weeks. not that i haven't done anything photo-worthy, but i did forget the camera when we took that little weekend jaunt to socal, and i've been pretty much holed up at home ever since then. i'm sure that if i had a camera that was more functional than this little snapshot job, i would have tried to take some more artsy photos of the surroundings here in eugene before the weather turns. it's been sunny and 80 again this week, you'd never know that the rains last week ever happened except that our backyard is looking a little bit greener.
today is too late, it's dark already. tomorrow i've sworn that i will take the camera along for the ride and try to shoot at least one interesting shot.
september 23 2006 22:39 pdt what illegal immigrants? we have no illegal immigrants in california.
september 23 2006 21:57 pdt a warning. the post below this one ends with a couple of links. the last link is to an australian page hosting graphic photos of iraqi people being tortured by americans. if you're easily offended, you probably shouldn't vote for republicans, becuase unless bush and cheney and gonzales are all convicted and punished for their war crimes, they're just going to keep doing it until someone makes them stop. with camera-phones everywhere, someone is bound to take pictures. sooner or later you're going to see it no matter how deeply your head is buried in the sand.
september 23 2006 21:41 pdt this has been a tough week. making up for the missed weekend days cost me a lot of sleep on monday, tuesday, and wednesday night. but last night we went to sleep early- thanks for the calls, mike and trevor, sorry i wasn't awake to take them.
well, that's not strictly true. trevor, your 2:30 am pdt call woke me from a terrifying nightmare featuring dick 'torture' cheney in a leading role, and i owe you much thanks for cutting it short. the dream was this: we were flying somewhere, and the tsa guys cut me out of the regular security line and made me go stand off to the side. then dick came over, and the tsa guys started to pull books out of my luggage. dick was like, "oh, this book is banned becuase it doesn't support the official story about iran, so we'll just have to take that." they found three or four books, and dick took them all and burned them right there in front of me on his side of the counter. they were talking about whether or not to shove bamboo slivers under my fingernails when the phone woke me up. my first thought was that it was somoene calling to tell me that a family member had died. imagine my relief when it turned out to be a drunk-dial from someone on the other side of town! normally, i would have been all bent out of shape over a late night call, but in this case, i couldn't have been happier.
of course, it was just a nightmare. i only wish that i was dreaming about current us foreign policy and the american rule of law. unfortunately, that particular nightmare is all too real.
september 17 2006 21:35 pdt we flew to los angeles this weekend to see some of our friends who live there. spending time with people i care about was the best birthday present ever.
september 9 2006 23:44 pdt ran some moulding tonight. i'm not totally convinced that i did a good job. various books and chairs and things are stacked up on top of the T-joint in between the dining room and the tv area. i think that it's positioned properly, but all i can do now is wait for the glue to set and then decide whether it's good enough or if i need to rip it out and start all over.
since we moved up here, there hasn't been much of an opportunity to play water polo. i was playing 2 or 3 times a week for most of the last 2 years, so it's been kind of a shock to not have access to a pool. instead we've been trying to run a couple of times a week. i run like a water polo player, which is to say poorly. imagine a fish on the sidewalk and you'll have a pretty accurate mental picture.
but that's going to change. my biggest beef with running is that it's not fun- in my survival-mode mindset, there is no reason to run if you're not either chasing someone or being chased. if i want to see the sights, i'll walk... if i need to get somewhere in a hurry, i can bike or drive. in most cases, running doesn't serve any useful purpose that can't be eliminated through judicious application of either the telephone or the wheel.
none of that matters if you're running because it's part of a game. last thursday i played in a pick-up soccer game for what must be the first time in at least 8 years. it was super fun. i'm still very very sore in lots of places. yesterday, we played sand court volleyball. last night all the soreness went away, but this morning it was back at double strength. i guess the only way i can do this sort of stuff on a regular basis and not spend the next couple of days limping around is to get back in shape and start running more often so that my body gets used to doing it and i don't have such a hard time afterwards.
so that's a new goal. i want to be able to play soccer for 90 minutes without paying for it by limping everywhere i go for the next three days.
september 5 2006 20:31 pdt i bet you could spend hours doing this.
september 5 2006 08:25 pdt i still firmly believe that 7 am is much too early to engage in any activity that requires thinking. 8 is right out too, and 9 is just borderline. civilized people don't shedule anything before 10 am.
september 4 2006 20:22 pdt we went to the beach today. drove west for about 90 minutes until we hit the 101 and then we turned north. the dunes and cliffs are pretty amazing. we walked for a couple of hours on a wide, clean, flat stretch of beach about 10 miles north of florence. the fog made distances deceptive... when we first walked out onto the beach, we looked left, and looked right, and decided that left (south) looked more interesting because of the cliffs that seemed so close. an hour later, we finally reached the end of the strand and found some small tidepools in among the rocks. lots of starfish and cnidarians but no octopus that i could see.
anyhow. new pics up at flickr (on the right), and maybe some new pics for the headline section at the top of this page as well.
