existential fashion disaster

I found a plugin that’s supposed to crosspost from my wordpress blog to myspace. That would cut down on a lot of copying and pasting for each blog entry. There may be formatting issues. We shall see. This entry is mostly a test to see how well it works.
[Update: didn't work at all]

First, I should mention that I entered this shot of Penny into a photo contest with the extremely vague theme of “Black & White.” Sarah found the contest, she entered too - You should vote for us.

Sarah is working today. She went from no jobs to one retail job at Jo-Ann fabrics, one photojournalism gig at a local paper and one Promotions gig (web design, print newsletter design, photo slideshows, etc.) for a non-profit in Florida. It’s weird to be home while she’s not; that hasn’t happened in a while.

While she was in Florida, gathering photos for this job and meeting the people she’d be working for, I replaced the G4 with a G5. I grabbed a last-generation G5 (just before the intel switch) on eBay. It’s crazy fast, compared to the G4, and stable, so far. I got everyone’s accounts migrated onto it without too much trouble. The handles got a little bent in shipping, but that’s ok. The G4 has been a trusty computer for many years now, mostly as a backup, occasionally as Mark or Drew & Candace’s main machine in Woonsocket, but I think my constant hardware tweaking was finally too much for it. It was crashing at random. I mostly suspected the not-really-for-a-mac video card, but I didn’t want to go back to the one that was slowing the whole machine down. It’s downstairs and hooked up to that behemoth of a CRT monitor that Zombie is hooked up to. When I have time, I’ll mess with it and see if I can make it stable. Unfortunately, it never crashed on my watch, so I don’t know if I can duplicate the problem.

I’d like to be downstairs, now, playing with the other computers and catching up on my TV shows, but Frank’s friend Karol is sleeping on the couch down there. I’m trying to think of a way to make noise and wake him up but not give away the fact that I’m doing it just to wake him up.

Looking back, I could’ve used my time to do some cleaning around the house or do my paperwork for adventure ed or sort pictures from camp for the poster/collage or decide on pictures for a calendar. Let me recap some of the things that the boredom has made me accomplish instead of all those useful things:

I made all of my eMail go through Google Apps accounts, and then, instead of using POP to retrieve everything to my main gmail account, I’m having it forward there. Then, I made new labels for all of the mail. Then I went through my old labels (per account) and made filters for everything; All of my junkmail and advertisements go where they should and all my shopping related mail goes where it should and all my financial related mail goes where it should, etc. It is, essentially, the way I used to organize and filter my mail when I used Thunderbird to check all the POP accounts. I set up most of those filters as messages came in, though; For these, I went through my thousands of eMails and looked for any with no new labels on them, and, when appropriate, made a filter. Gmail is nice enough to find all the other existing eMails that match that filter and label them at the same time.

I also got rid of a superfluos account on the mac. My music was on a separate account (named itunes). I think I set up the account because I wanted to do simple ipod syncing and there was weird music in the itunes library of my actual account, not necessarily stuff I wanted on my ipod, stuff that past roommates had left on there. So I went through all of that music and threw away most of it, then exported the library from the itunes account, imported it into my account and deleted the itunes account. I also Restored my ipod. Maybe it’ll make that occasional error on start go away, maybe it won’t… but at least it’s a mac formatted ipod, now, so I can update its software, if there’s ever another update, from the computer I’m always hooking it up to.

Today, I started going through all my pictures on Flickr and assigning some of them to groups that I joined a long time ago and forgot about. This was a pretty futile excercise, though… it’s not streamlining the computer or making my eMail any easier to sort through, so I’ll probably just stop doing it, right now. I think it was just an attempt to kill the boredom while working at the front desk of the Y.

I hate the paperwork related to the every day operation of the adventure ed. program. It’s just like homework, when I was in school. I did the work already. The team is progressing. Why do I have to write about it? Boo homework. I don’t mind doing the survey result statistics, because the whole reason we do the surveys is for comparative statistics… but the journals don’t help the team at all. Boo homework.

In exciting/fun news, one of Sarah’s polaroids from our trip back east is shot of the day on Polanoid … she even gets a gift card! Woot!

I really meant to blog more from back east. I’ve had a draft sitting here since before Sarah and her mom joined me out there, but I don’t think I logged back in after they got there, and we came back right before I started work, so things have been fairly busy. Today is a real day off, though. There’s some sort of testing this week that throws off all the school schedules, so here I am, with some free time. Yesterday was a day off, too, but most of the day was occupied by the Mazda dealership and the crazy extended warranty people. I just finished preparing some pork for tomorrow’s dinner. It’s marinating, now… while I was cutting the meat, Sarah noticed that the marinade had separated. It reminds me of Jell-O 1-2-3. They don’t make that anymore, which is too bad. I remember liking it. Enjoy the picture. I’ve posted a few other pictures from the trip at Flickr in a set called Back East 2008.  I think we need to come up with more creative names for these trips. It was a good trip though, action-packed and fun-filled. Without further ado, here are some of my thoughts and reactions and recaps of it:

I did a lot of wandering around in between my grandfather’s funeral and the day Sarah and her Mom arrived. I didn’t make a checklist this time, I sort of winged it. I missed Putnam and Providence and Western Mass, as well as Sara and Drew, but I’ll try and make it up to them over the holidays or something. The most impressive changes were in Woonsocket. I drove around most of town on one of my first free days, while doing some errands.

Improvements since I lived in Woonsocket:

Starbucks: closed
Tim Hortons: opened a second location, with a drive-thru
Main St: more than half of the storefronts were occupied and open

Also, the Game Stop had a Wii Fit in stock.

I caught up with some people and did a little sightseeing around Worcester & Millbury and Webster & Dudley. I ate at Jimmy’s pizza, played Werewolves of London on the jukebox. I did some shopping for New England treats at a Market Basket (where I found the Coffee Milk on the same shelf as all the other milks). I helped Mom start to remake her living room and move beds around.

The girls arrived on Saturday night, right in the middle of what was left of the storm Hanna. They survived their long drive, though, and I was very proud of them. Sarah’s posted a pretty good recap of the first couple days at her livejournal. We saw some family, toured through Plymouth, hit King Richard’s Faire and then went to NYC and played tourist some more; visited the Statue of Liberty and ground zero and a good deli.

Tuesday, we had a little more rain, so we kept it local and did some indoor-type activities. We started with breakfast at Carl’s Diner in Oxford. The serving size has not gone down. We sat at the counter, for the maximum effect. I don’t believe we ate another real meal for the whole day. We did hit Friendly’s for some ice cream, that evening. I believe that was also the day we took in some Candlepin bowling at Mohegan in Webster. It’s still kind of a dive, but its charm is intact.

Wednesday, we met Mom in Worcester, after dropping my car off at the Mazda dealership for an oil change (and to look into the weirdness it went through on the drive out there). We headed to Lexington to visit the historic Battle Green, visited the cemetery where my Dad and my Grandfather are and then met up with Mom’s friend Joyce at Bruegger’s Bagels for lunch. I hadn’t had a Herbie Turkey in a long time, and it was very tasty. Then we drove downtown and walked around Quincy Market and Faneuil Hall, had some cream puffs and then went to my cousin Mark’s place, in Braintree, for dinner. Mark made us pick records to play, and then made us play his XBox 360 and his Playstation 3. He cooked his awesome mac & cheese and some amazing burgers for us.

Thursday, we took in Purgatory Chasm. We walked down the chasm and back up on the East side of it. It was very nice, good weather for it. We also went up to Dresser Hill and got some food and shakes. I don’t think the Dairy stuff is as good as it once was, but it’s still the only place I eat fried clams. That night, we went to the outskirts of Worcester and saw Mark’s group, The Accident that Led Me to the World, play in a barn attached to a huge farmhouse that about 20 people lived in. They call it a Collective (read: commune) and the show was a potluck. Lots of friendly modern hippie-types, nice big wood-burning stove in the kitchen, bunch of pretty good music. It was something I’d never expect from Worcester.

Friday, we decided to hit the Big E on opening day, as a stopping point on our way back home. It was fun to go down the avenue of states and expose Patti to all the local culture and flavors. We wandered through some of the vendors and a good chunk of the crafting section. We ate a little and walked a lot. Looking back, it wasn’t a good choice for a stop on the morning of a big drive. We were still pretty exhausted for the first few hours of the trip home, and we ran into torrential downpours and Tornado warnings, but we survived. I think I slept through most of Saturday.

Last weekend, we went to Wisconsin, partly to fulfill our yearly tradition of seeing a play an American Players Theater and partly as a weekend getaway in honor of Sarah’s birthday. We spent the whole weekend in the Mt Horeb and Spring Green area. On Friday, we stopped in at our favorite little chocolate shop and then got dinner at the adorable Italian place we ate at last year, before heading up to the theater to catch Widower’s Houses.

Saturday, we spent the whole day in Mt Horeb, starting with breakfast at a great little place called Schubert’s. Then we took in the activities and sights of National Mustard Day. We didn’t actually participate in the activities or eat any mustard or mustard-themed food (Culver’s Mustard Custard?). But we did wander and take pictures and shop all the cute stores, including the gift-shop half of the Mustard Museum. Then we popped back into Schubert’s for milkshakes and rosettes. We also did some quick visits to the gift-shops of Little Norway and Cave of the Mounds. We bought some geodes. I’m not sure if we cracked them open yet. Then, after a little chillin’ at the motel, we got some yummy dinner at a place with a HUGE menu.

Sunday, we used the third part of our tickets to the House on the Rock tour. We did the other two parts last year. This was definitely the darkest part of the tour, but it was very cool… it started at the huge carousel and included the doll carousels, lots and lots of dollhouses and the amazing organ room. On the way home, we picked up some cheese and meat and ate at a Panera Bread rip-off called Atlanta Bread.

Pictures Here

It was nice to do a little road trip. I’ve been doing public transportation to work most of the summer and I’ve missed driving. I had kind of forgotten about the phenomenon that, back in high school, in the music groups that went on many trips, we called “bus head.” The theory was that sometime after two hours being enclosed in the same vehicle, something in your brain shut off. We found that it didn’t matter if it was a school bus or a nice comfy chartered bus or a van or even a car. Once you hit that point, you had “bus head.” We discussed it with our band director; It takes a long time to recover from “bus head.” We didn’t want to plan any trips with long rides and immediate performing, even if it meant leaving in the early morning. We needed at least two hours. We could unload equipment during those two hours, but we definitely couldn’t do any rehearsing or make any decisions or be expected to engage in any activities that involved a lot of thought.

Luckily, my drive to work usually stays just short of “bus head” inducing length, and the public transportation route involves changing from train to bus or “El” about halfway through. I actually drove a couple times this week. Wednesday, I got together with a couple guys, after camp, and played some music. I think it went pretty well, if it turns into something I will definitely let you all know. Thursday, we had our family night (that 60 inch TV was what my camp photos slideshow was being displayed on) and then some of the staff went to Whirlyball. I had no idea what Whirlyball was until I saw it. It’s kind of like like Jai Alai or Lacrosse, in bumper cars. It was fun.

One more week of camp left. This week includes a sleepover, possibly another trip to Eli’s cheesecake world, a visit to Independence grove and another cookout… so lots of excitement.

60 inches is big!

updates on recent trips and stuff, soon, I promise!

Camp is a much easier than adventure ed, but the hours are longer. We (the adventure ed facilitators) complained amongst ourselves about not being paid for all the time between classes, but those hours were nice, relaxing breaks. Breaks just don’t happen in the summer. I don’t have to think nearly as much; I’m barely doing any programming at all, only running or playing games a couple times a week. But all the running around and gathering supplies, moving lunches, taking pictures, etc. keeps me busy all day and makes me exhausted by the time I get home. I should be taking more days off, especially these weekend days doing front desk at the Y. I took next Sunday off, since it’s the day after Can’t Stop the Serenity in Chicago… and I’ve got the the first weekend in August, including the Friday, all blocked out for our theater / trolls / house on the rock weekend. No more 15 days in a row, this summer.

In other news, I’ve found a new feed aggregator that I like: Swurl. It has a much more blog-like design, and the timeline feature is really neat. Here’s my swurl. I also got a new camera bag. The one that came with the Pentax owed me nothing, since it was, essentially, free… it finally got too beat up to be used, so I got a Crumpler 6 Million Dollar Home and it fits a lot of stuff.

They’re like duck boats for your feet… that’s what they make me think of anyway. I picked up a pair of the “off-road” variety at the REI, that we spent hours trying to find, yesterday. They’re comfortable. The strap button is irritating me a little, but nothing out of the ordinary for a new-shoe kinda thing. We went there to look at camera bags, since mine is dying and so is Sarah’s. They’re supposed to have some Crumpler bags, but they didn’t have anything except a couple gadget pouches. By the way, when did REI start putting its “co-op” status in the limelight? I have this member card, which I thought was just another store rewards program… but it turns out that I’m a member of the REI Co-op. I even had a “dividend” that I got to put towards my purchase.

Getting utterly lost on the way there, due to our complete reliance on the unerring accuracy of printed out Google directions, made me realize that I really do benefit from the GPS. It’s time to get a unit in the car that’s mountable, unlike the cheesy little laptop. I added one with a good traffic system and a big screen to my Amazon wishlist. I’m unimpressed with MSN’s traffic system, on the laptop, but I’ve heard there are a couple new traffic monitoring systems coming out soon. We did chance upon a Cosi, though, so it wasn’t a total waste.

It’s nice to have my car back. I had to pay my deductible, but the Progressive dude seemed pretty sure that once he heard back from State Farm, that I’d get reimbursed pretty quickly. I got a nifty little keychain. It’s one of those classic, flat, rubbery ones. It’s a nice addition to my growing keychain collection. The place also did some serious cleaning of the interior. I was amazed.

I’m strongly considering using public transportation for camp this summer. I don’t need to carry a whole lot of equipment to camp everyday, and I’ve got my iPod and Nintendo DS for train/bus entertainment. I did some searching through transitchicago.com for routes from a couple of the Metra stations. The system is pretty darn cool, goes through Google maps and gives you alternate routes with approximate arrival times. Maybe I’ll try out a route or two next week, during camp training.

Spent most of the day going through pictures from the trip. I picked out about 150 of them and put them up on flickr. My flickr “uploadr” sucks pretty bad… I had to retry the upload on some of these sets two or three times. Sometimes it gives up and keeps track of what didn’t get uploaded. Sometimes it’ll try to finish it’s upload, sometimes it won’t. Sometimes it’ll fail to upload at all and not even tell me. Sometimes it’ll get glitchy and upload the ones it missed twice. It’s pretty buggy. You can see all the picturesfrom the newest sets in my Vacations collection or by searching the tag “Knopf Northwest Vacation”

In other news, someone drove into my car in the YMCA parking lot on Saturday. It apparently happened just before I was going to leave. I didn’t notice, since all the damage was around the front passenger-side wheel. I was in my car, and had turned it on and was ready to drive off… when a kid came running up with a note in his hand and apologized for scratching my car. I got out and looked at it, and it seemed to look like a bunch of scratches, so I was hoping we could take care of it without going through insurance companies. I got his contact info. But then I put the car in drive and it would not go. Upon closer inspection, I noticed that the wheel was not going straight, like the driver-side. So, I found the kid, in the Y, and we exchanged insurance info and called the police and I called my insurance company and set up all the towing, repairs and rental car stuff. It was supposed to be towed on Monday, so I went back to the Y on Sunday afternoon, after picking up the rental car, to take some pictures, and it was already gone. My rental is a Dodge Magnum, which is really fun to drive and very comfortable.

Our trip to St Louis was fantastic. There was almost as much driving time as time spent there, but we threw a great plan together at the last minute, and stuck to it, and it was great. We checked in around 3 and then headed downtown and directly to the yummy place in the riverfront district that we liked so much from our last visit to St Louis, Hannegan’s. It was delicious… again. The toasted raviolis were super yummy, their fries were amazing and the dessert was as great as I remembered.

From there, we headed right over to City Museum and got a parking spot so close that there was an airplane visible through the sunroof. The party was mostly chaos, but it was definitely a good time. The place is really amazing. It was mostly teenagers and older, so we didn’t have to watch little kids crawl through all the tight spots and feel super jealous. There was free Monster energy drinks (which, after two sips, I decided are too gross for consumption) available the whole time that we were there and some other free foods became available later, but we were still pretty full from Hannegan’s. We could’ve used some water or something, but that wasn’t an option. Free admission and free food and free generic sodas is pretty good, though. I did buy a Ball Pit shirt, because mine smelled funny. We took a lot of pictures. I experimented with my new semi fish eye for the first time. I posted a bunch.

After a few hours, we took off and got some much needed rest at our hotel. The bathroom door(s) were like closet doors, with no lock. It was strange, but otherwise, the hotel was ok. We watched the silver surfer movie when it came on HBO and I think it might’ve been worse than the first fantastic 4 movie, which is saying a lot.

In the morning, we headed back downtown to get breakfast at a place called Rooster. We chose it based on Yelp ratings. I should really go review it (and Hannegan’s and City Museum), but I think I’ll save that for the morning. I had a Finnish Pancake and it was really delicious… Sarah got monstrous crepe filled with egg and bacon and Vermont Cheddar cheese. I tried some, it was awesome. She also got a side of Breakfast Potatoes of which I probably ate the most. They had a little hot pepper or something on them and it was really delicious.

We started home from there, stopping at every antique mall that we saw along the way and a restaurant that Sarah’s mom frequented when she was in school called Avanti’s, in Normal, IL. The antiques were fun, the food was decent and we missed all the bad Chicago traffic.

Gotta prepare a little for next week’s trip to Seattle, but it was great to get out of town for a day or two. It really makes me look forward to the longer trip.

And now, the sleep.