existential fashion disaster » YMCA

‘tween-season coming soon

John V — Mon, 11 May 2009 02:23:42 +0000

I am looking forward to sleeping in more than one day a week… and being able to take some mini-vacations. There’s still all the season wrap stuff to get through, first, though. It seems an impossible task, right now, as I’m feeling completely exhausted. I guess that’s to be expected after an overnight for work, followed immediately by the wedding of our friends Jessica and Jason. This week shouldn’t be too bad. At some point, though, I need to start helping mom with her quilting shop web site.

Right now, sitting at the desk at the Y, all I can really think about is seeing Star Trek. I’ve heard so many good things about it… sure, some classic trek fans have their issues, but it’s trying to reboot the Star Trek world, not continue it. With a bunch of the Fringe team behind the writing and production, it has to be good.
update: Star Trek didn’t happen tonight, but we did a lot of research into how to set up a clothesline for Patti for Mother’s Day. Hopefully we’ll fit Star Trek in, tomorrow.

Good things coming up: more days off, mini-vacations, new Fable II downloadable content, macbook

In the bummer zone: Garmin announced more delays for the Nuvifone. The android phones are looking more and more attractive, even though they don’t have turn-by-turn directions, yet. Unfortunately, the only android phone even rumored for Verizon has a crappy-looking keyboard. If I didn’t think I’d miss the real keyboard, I’d already have broken down and gone with the iPhone. In the meantime, my phone is surviving… only shutting itself off once or twice a day.

march marches on! February was long.

John V — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 03:00:44 +0000

Sundays at the front desk are really boring. Common activities include: Reading a week’s worth of Boing Boing and BBGadgets. Checking the balances on all the gift cards in my wallet. Trying to update my wishlists. Posting a twitter message, if I remember. Browsing old friends’ social networking profiles to see if anything awesome is going on… Today, an old friend called and told me they were A) married B) quitting their job C) moving to NYC and D) moving to China sometime around September. They had to call, for me to find out, because their intricate web of friends and past lovers requires them to constantly delete their online profiles and such.

So… I had a fun birthday. We hit Olive Garden on Thursday and had some friends over on Friday for dinner. I prepped my Puerco Pibil on Wednesday and Sarah and her mom cooked it all. I think everyone liked it. Sarah also made some awesome little banana cupcakes with yummy honey-cinnamon frosting. I also got a couple more Apple gift cards. I want to resist the urge to replace the Dell with a Macbook… at least until the end of June, when I’ll almost definitely be in tax-free New Hampshire. The Dell is still running, but it’s loud again, and blowing out the dust doesn’t seem to help… it also takes forever to boot, and weighs about ten pounds… which is too much to carry to work, four days a week.

I slept in, yesterday, for the first time in who-knows-how-long… and will get to sleep in again tomorrow. Unfortunately, I don’t think I have another day off until March 23rd… unless I request another weekend day off. I was going to do that when I was at work, today, but I forgot. Maybe I’ll call them tomorrow and put in the request.

ok, enough.

John V — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 18:32:45 +0000

In conversations with my coworkers, I said/predicted that we’d be having a snow-heavy winter. I had no basis for this prediction, other than I thought it was likely and I like to be right. I almost hoped that we’d have a lot of snow, so I’d be correct. We’ve had enough snow, now. Even if it didn’t snow again until next winter, I’d still be right… so I’m putting in my request to end the snow. I don’t mind shoveling our little driveway. I do get pretty exhausted shoveling the sidewalks at the YMCA on the weekends. I don’t get paid enough to be doing it, but no one else will. It’s not boring here, today.

longevity

John V — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 17:08:40 +0000

Sarah’s mom reminded us that we passed the two year anniversary of our first date. She then started to ask me whether this was my longest relationship and I had to think about it. It turns out that it definitely is. The longest possible definition for my last long relationship was from November 1992 to September 1994… and it was a long distance relationship, only seeing each other on weekends and school breaks, and, for at least one year, it wasn’t an exclusive relationship… and it was in high school… so really, does it count at all? While I was sitting here, bored at work, I figured out that Sarah might also be a record holder for the longest “friendship that turned into a serious relationship,” since we started talking back in 2003, on photoSIG… as long as I don’t count the weird girls who I had relationships with in high school, lost touch with, off and on, for 5-10 years and then had another relationship with. All those years of non-contact don’t count, right? I dunno the rules for these kind of things. I wouldn’t say that two years flew by, but it doesn’t feel like it’s been two years. I know time flies when you’re having fun… but what do you call it when you’re happy and in love and two years doesn’t feel like two years? I guess it’s the same thing, fun just seems like too general a word to sum up the last two years. It’s been wonderful.

In other news, my phone started doing weird things and “rebooting” itself, so I brought it to a Verizon store and got its software/firmware updated. It seemed to help. Apparently, I’m eligible for $100 towards a new phone at the end of August. I looked at what’s available, now and wasn’t overly excited by anything. And I’m certainly not going to double my bill [to get unlimited calling to anyone on any service] just so I’m eligible for the new iPhone rip-off. I may not do anything in the phone department until I find out what carriers the Nuviphone will be on. That would satisfy my new GPS urges and hopefully quash any iPhone urges. I don’t really want to rearrange the family phone plan, though, so if it can’t work with Verizon, it probably won’t happen. What’s nice is that my current phone has been pretty good to me for almost two years. My current little laptop with GPS has been adequate, for a little over two years, but it’s not nearly as convenient or nice as those little portable units. It’d be cool to do some one-stop shopping, but I have to be patient and let the cool new devices hit the marketplace.

Now, I’ve just gotta survive through the rest of the boring front desk gig at the Y… not that I’m complaining – boring work on the weekends is fine with me, but relaxing at home is nicer.

maintenance

John V — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 14:08:22 +0000

I tried out a different Mazda dealership when I needed to replace my headlight, a couple weeks ago, and I liked them, so I’m at their place, now, using their free wireless connection while my car gets a full inspection/fluid change and gets the seat belt retractors replaced. I mentioned the dimming lights when operating windows and the wind noise from the door/post right behind my head, but I doubt much can really be done about either. I’m still considering buffing the paint off from where the ground wire meets the body. One of the fitness instructors at the Y is trying out a Mazda5 for a couple days and I told her about how much I like my car. I guess she’s having troubles convincing her husband that the 5 is the car for them. I did my part, to help, I feel.

I’m back on a normal schedule, this week, at work. Last week was daytrip week. We did three in a row, and had good weather for the first, but rainy/snowy freezing temps on the second and a cold start on the last one. It tired me out pretty good.Â We’re moving on to bigger and better problem solving initiatives. The boss is throwing some weird rules at us, that I really feel are hindering the natural progression of the groups… but apparently, we’re all about skills this season, not teams. Yet, we’re still experiential… so wouldn’t building a good team and forming naturally and working together in the best team possible be the best way to experience the skills needed in a community or team? Whatever. The daytrips were a great environment, but I’m glad that I’m back to the schedule that I’ve sort of grown accustomed to. I do have to start getting the stats from the initial surveys entered this week, but it shouldn’t take too much extra time.

I also made some eMail changes this week. I was playing around with Google Apps, and it really made me realize the superiority of GMail. I now have GMail retrieving (and then deleting from the server, thus solidifying my committment) all my POP accounts AND I’ve got the old HoTMaiL (I like to pretend that Microsoft didn’t take it over and ruin it, and therefore still spell it with the, admittedly obnoxious, capitalization that it originally debuted with) account forwarding there. Right now, I have them filtering into separate labels for each account, but I’m sure I’ll make up a set of labels and filters like the folders I have in Thunderbird now. I also enabled IMAP for the whole GMail account, so I can still use Thunderbird and see all my old mail and my new mail in one program, though in separate inboxes. I’m happy with it so far. Next web project: upgrade this blog to WordPress 2.5.

Now that Michigan is behind us, we’re rapidly approaching our Seattle trip. Sarah and her mom are all about having a good plan, so they’ve started asking around and researching attractions “not to miss” in the Seattle, Victoria & Vancouver areas. My first thought, when Seattle is mentioned, is Kurt Cobain. While I appreciated him as a songwriter and musician, I’m not enough of a fanatic to go seeking out any of his old hangouts or the house he died in or anything creepy/weird like that. We’ve got a week there, so I guess one of my goals is to find some great places to eat. I’ll definitely be using Yelp to see what the locals think.

I’d come upon reviews on Yelp while searching, but never realized what a big and active site it was, until Friendfeed tempted me to sign up for my own account. If you’ve got an account on Digg, Google Reader, Reddit, del.icio.us, Furl, Google Shared Stuff, Ma.gnolia, StumbleUpon, Gmail/Google Talk, Jaiku, Pownce, Twitter, Seesmic, Vimeo, YouTube, Goodreads, LibraryThing, Flickr, Picasa Web Albums, SmugMug, Zooomr, Tumblr, iLike, Last.fm, Pandora, Amazon Wishlists, Disqus, LinkedIn, Netflix, SlideShare, Upcoming, Yelp or a blog with an RSS feed, you should sign up for friendfeed. Then we can be friends and I can get updates about your stuff without having to make up an “imaginary friend” feed for you… and you can see updates from all your friends’ stuff on one page. I think it’s a brilliant use of RSS technology.

change of time, change of scenery?

John V — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 19:22:57 +0000

Next week, not this week, is Spring break for Chicago public schools. Sarah has just given notice at her job (seems like a sinking ship, doing what it can to cut costs by cutting hours). We think we should take another road-trip/vacation… last year was our trek across Missouri. Where should we go this time? Sarah wants to go somewhere “green,”Â so I guess maybe we need to head somewhat South-ish? At some point, we want to go see Mom, with Sarah’s mom, but that’ll wait until we all make some time at the same time and Mom has her guest room ready… and New England is probably no more green than it is here.

I walked around the Y and changed all the clocks, again, today. Last time the time changed, I was late for work when my clock changed on the wrong weekend. It was too smart for its own good. My new clock has a daylight savings time mode, so I got there with no problem… and I think we only had one guy show up late because he hadn’t changed his clocks.

And yes, the amp and equipment and stuff all still seems to be working great, I’ve got a couple opportunities to go play with some people in the city this week… to try some stuff out, see if there’s a good fit. I plugged my bass into my computer and played along with some tracks yesterday. It was fun. Looking forward to playing with people… hoping something comes together.

COOKIEpalooza 2007

John V — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 06:02:49 +0000

Cookie week has come to a close. The cookies are being packed into boxes to be sent to friends and family across the country. I need to bring them to the post office tomorrow, after work, I guess, and get them all in the mail. Round three included chocolate covered pretzel rods, in white and semi-sweet chocolate, with lots of fun decorations like itty bitty snowflakes and candy cane pieces, icing and putting sparkly sugar on the gingerbread snowflakes and the chocolate and almond slivers to finish off the Czech bear paws. The bear paws only called for a little bit of choclate, but we decided that more chocolate is always better. They turned out adorable and delicious. It was a mostly decorative day and quite a fun one. I put more pictures up yesterday and today, and you can see all of Sarah’s pics together with mine, since we tagged them all COOKIEpalooza 2007. Most of mine are wider shots with many, many cookies in them and Sarah’s are detail shots on a couple cookies. Peanut watched the whole thing, but had no comment.

Kinda sad that I have to actually go to work in the morning. It’s been a fun week of being a total bum. Not that I did nothing… we did plenty …but I’ve totally pushed off all the other work-related stuff I should’ve been doing. Adventure Ed stats aren’t done yet; gotta finish those this weekend and make a nice presentable summary file. I definitely blew off a staff holiday party tonight, probably gonna blow off one, if not both, tomorrow night as well. Might work one long day in the city, on Monday. I need to turn in the stats and help pass out t-shirts.

I had a couple little geek triumphs this week when I successfully added reCAPTCHA and tinyMCE to the simple blog script running Sarah’s site. Technically, I just got reCAPTCHA working and displaying the simplest of custom themes, we haven’t tweaked it to the way we actually want it to look yet… and the tinyMCE is running on my testing site until I get a chance to add it to Sarah’s code. It truly makes me appreciate all the work that goes into a CMS package, when I try to integrate a seemingly simple feature… meanwhile, my old friend and bandmate, Shana, is putting my web adventures to shame with her new site, Stylastic. It’s kind of like Hot or Not for style. I signed up. Those rating sites are a guilty pleasure, always have been. I know what your thinking… shouldn’t an existential fashion disaster be the arch-nemesis of such a site? Well… maybe … but we all know that’s just a witty name for my blog and it has nothing to do with fashion or clothes (of which I have a lot) or style (of which I have only a little). My Threadless obsession doesn’t count.

Work early tomorrow… should be sleeping. Off I go.

time for another list(s)

John V — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 04:17:45 +0000

a to do list, for my upcoming trip back east… or maybe a hopefully do, or should do, but might not get to it. We shall see:

âˆš Dinner @ Mom’s (Monday night)
âˆš Go to Hava Java (on the way back from the airport, with Mark)
âˆš Go to Java Hut (for the last time … ::sniff::)
âˆš Get remaining gifts for people in the area
~~_ visit the teen center~~
hang out with:
âˆš Mark (ride home from airport, no Raianne or Scrabble, though)
âˆš Kristin
âˆš Drew (at Numark party)
âˆš Sara (at Numark party, no Tyler visit)
~~_ Jess and Erika~~
âˆš Karen and Cousin Mark

I guess I also need a packing list. A things not to forget list:

~~_ Tim Horton’s coffee mug~~ didn’t fit, not important
âˆš laptop (little one)
âˆš camera
âˆš ipod and mount (maybe cupholder-mount)
âˆš stocking stuffers for Mom’s house
âˆš phone and charger (both car and home)
âˆš sunglasses
âˆš gloves

Ooh, and a things to not forget to bring/ship home list:

âˆš stocking stuff from Mom’s and other gifts
âˆš hard drives that need rescuing (out of the barn and shipped to Gillware)
âˆš Just For Sundae CD (haven’t found it yet)
~~_ Peggy Lawton cookies, Devil Dogs and other local foods~~ (not this time, I can always get stuff shipped)

I may be adding to this.

edited on 12/25

training at the Y

John V — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 14:52:53 +0000

I don’t get paid enough to train people. I don’t get paid enough to empty trash and walk the building, either… I barely get paid enough to sit here and stare at a computer, though that really isn’t my job. There’s supposedly a new girl coming in this morning, who has never been here, and who I need to train. She’ll be sitting over at courtesy desk, so there isn’t a whole lot to explain to her. That half of the job is pretty simple, watch the check-in screen for notes, greet people, refill coffee pots, hand out towels, start loads of towels in the washer, file guest sheets. I almost get paid enough to do that job… but I’m not here for the money, I’m here so I don’t lose the retirement fund I’ve contributed to for the past however many years.

My headache disappeared sometime shortly after I got home yesterday. We put the tree up. The stand is a bazillion times better than those old overgrown ashtray with a retaining ring stands I remember from my childhood. Got a little tree sap on my arms and a lot on my hands. Getting it off my arms reminded me of the days at Camp when I was climbing evergreens for ropes course work almost everyday. I stopped wearing shorts and started wearing a long sleeve work shirt to avoid getting that stuff in the hair… it takes so much effort and/or so much really abrasive cleaners to remove it. Getting it off my hands was easy, but I’ve still got a couple little marks on my arm that I didn’t put enough effort into. The tree smells nice, though. I hope it lasts until Christmas, it doesn’t seem to be taking up as much water as I expected for the first day. It could just be a different kind of tree than I’m used to. Obviously, my “lottery tree” didn’t need water, and that’s all I’ve really dealt with for the past 6 years or so.

Back to the boring.

ouch

John V — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 18:31:29 +0000

Mornings at the Y are especially boring when the basketball league takes the weekend off. The height of activity, so far, was selling a 24″ wreath. We’re pretty sure that our tree grew while it was up on the roof, on the ride home. I think we’ll be pushing furniture around this afternoon and putting it up. If my headache goes away, that is. I woke up with a little headache, and it has grown into a ridiculously painful mess. I tried drinking a bunch of water, thinking that I might just be dehydrated. When that had no effect, I tried some coffee. I don’t think it’s working, either. I’m in the home stretch, now, though.

automagically

John V — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 13:21:34 +0000

I was late for work this morning. My Emerson “SmartSet” alarm clock still believes that this is the weekend that we change the clocks… as does this computer, here at work, along with about half of the electronics of the members here at the YMCA that I’ve talked to. This automagical technology starts to lose its charm when it’s just plain wrong.Â Added a new clock to my amazon wishlist.

I want to start writing more. I used to use this as a journal, of sorts, and I kind of miss writing in a journal, but don’t want to actually carry one around with me. So there may be a whole lot more entries, here. And there may be some really short ones… which I may or may not try to designate as more of a note than an entry.

I’m also considering phasing out the existing photo gallery and going completely Flickr. I’ll have to move a few photos over, but I hesitate to move any that I don’t actually have the original, full-sized files for… or maybe I’ll put them in a special set – “Lost Originals” or something like that. Here’s my first attempt at flickr integration . There were a couple more snazzy plugins, but the server needs libcurl installed to use them, and apparently, it’s not installed.

back east trip journal; entry no. 1

John V — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 20:45:51 +0000

Managed to avoid the rain on the whole drive out. It took 15.45 hours total and about 35 gallons of gas. I listened to the audiobook version of Clash of Kings for the entire ride. Hopped off the highway to avoid traffic with little detours (guided by the GPS) around Buffalo, NY and Erie, PA. Stopped at the first Tim Horton’s I saw along the highway (somewhere in NY state before Buffalo, I think) and grabbed a coffee milk and a devil dog at the first rest stop in Massachusetts. Got in to Dudley at around 11-something.

Yesterday, I visited Camp Foskett and Camp Elmwood and the Hockomock Teen Center. I’ll probably make some time to go out to Hockomock again next week, since Dawn and Rebecca were out at Leader’s School. It was good to see some old familiar faces still hanging around Foskett and nice to get a warm welcome from a lot of the staff and kids at Elmwood.

When I got home, Mom pointed out all the yard sale stuff and what her goals were for pre-sale day set up (after a small distraction by some local raccoons) and then we showed each other pictures of our recent adventures.

Today, with the help of Mark, we tore through a bunch of stuff in the garages and got a few aisles full of sellable stuff and tables to display it all on. We also went to Jimmy’s Pizza for lunch.

Trip and ToDo Lists

John V — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 16:26:26 +0000

Things that I’d like to accomplish back east:

~~help Mom with stuff for the Yard Sale~~
~~visit Camp Foskett~~
~~visit the Hock Teen Center & Camp Elmwood~~
catch The Bangles @ the Woodstock Fair (sweet)
take pictures @ the Woodstock Fair (hopefully better than theirs)
see some Wormtown music (maybe a Wormtown Wednesday)
hang out with whoever says they miss me

Northeast Stuff to acquire and bring home:

~~Devil Dogs~~
~~Peggy Lawton Cookies~~
~~Coffee Syrup~~
~~Moxie & other Polar Sodas~~

Find and bring home:

folding chair with footrest
last year’s Nalgene bottle with the good lid

Before I leave:

~~make sure I have coverage at the Y~~
~~get new sneakers~~
~~load up iPod with audiobooks/new music~~
~~get new iPod mount for car~~

What’d I forget?

Wee… rollercoasters!

John V — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 19:21:17 +0000

Picked up a new camera last week: Panasonic DMC-FZ50K 10MP Digital Camera with 12x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom (Black), haven’t uploaded anything from it to any galleries yet, maybe this afternoon. I’m getting used to it; it’s a pretty good replacement for the UZi. I’ve taken a LOT of camp photos with it. I spent most of today putting together a posterboard’s worth of prints and a slideshow to be presented at Parent’s Night, tonight.

Spent the night with the older campers at their big camp up North on Monday night. Did some normal camp stuff… lots of swimming, some archery, some s’mores, some staying up late and being obnoxious. It was a good time; bringing city kids out to the woods is always fun. The other male staff seemed more out of his element than any of the kids, though.

Last weekend was Six Flags with the discount from Sarah’s mom’s job, which was a lot of fun, even though we didn’t go for park completion by riding every big ride, like I’m used to doing. This coming weekend we’re going to a Renaissance Fair and I’ve got the whole weekend off from the Y… looking forward to a real day off.

My car went in yesterday for it’s 30k mile service, which was a tad expensive and forced me to take the train into the city for the first time. I had to catch a bus from the train station, and it took me some time to figure out that I’d gone completely the wrong way for my bus stop, but the experience was pretty good, overall. I could ride into the city if I had to. I still prefer driving, though.

I’ve got to do some decorating for the Parent’s night, but if I get some time off, some new photos might show up in the various online galleries.

different kind of camp/computer/movie

John V — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 13:39:58 +0000

Inner city camp is a new kind of experience. It’s still camp, it’s still summer, there’s still songs and activities and such but having no real home base means we take a lot of trips… some walks to parks and playgrounds and a lot of field trips (on school buses with seatbelts!) to interesting places around the city. It feels like an extreme version of those school-vacation-week camps that I’ve been part of in the past. It’s also a much more liberal and less restricted camp, in terms of contact with the kids; I’m finding it hard to break out of the mold of the Y camp no-unnecessary-touching behavior/style. Another mind-blowing difference is that we provide the lunches for the entire camp and staff, every day. The food’s not bad, either. I need to start bringing my camera every day, the camera-phone is probably not doing these scenes justice. Oh, and I went in Lake Michigan for the first time, on Tuesday, with the campers. It was cold.

Fish tank computer is going slowly. Booting off an external drive is proving more difficult than it seemed. It wouldn’t be an issue, except that I’m trying to preserve the Windows XP OS from the Gateway. I believe Linux would happily boot off a USB drive. I don’t think the machine is quite powerful enough to attempt OS X x86. I attempted a few portable XP installations, with no luck, and I think I’m going to give in and go eSATA instead. Otherwise, it’s in good shape. It runs, and the tray fits into the frame and acrylic piece that I cut to shape (which snapped into two pieces, but we’ll solve that with the silicone sealant). We decided that a blue light was necessary, so I picked one up, and then found that there are blue lights in one of the fans and the power button and the external hard drive enclosure. The machine might need a blue-themed name, when it gets finished.

The Serenity screening was very fun, it was definitely a different experience on a big screen. I knew the fan base was extreme and had obviously accomplished some great things, but the Done the Impossible documentary was pretty informative and really pointed out just how special they all are. We got a couple of Sarah’s friends hooked on the show and have been watching Firefly from the beginning with them.

tween seasons

John V — Tue, 29 May 2007 18:50:02 +0000

The Adventure Education season ended. The overnights went well, I put some pics up. Now I’m in my break between that and summer camp season. I decided to work for the camp run by my boss from adventure ed… not because there seems to be any team-building or teens or anything else I’m into, but simply to keep that connection alive. My other option was driving skate camp for the Y I’m working for, the ages would’ve been better, and that’s my only regret in turning it down.

So what have I been doing on my break?

Saw Mom over mother’s day weekend. She came out here and we toured her around Chicago for an afternoon, then relaxed for the most of the rest of the weekend. We got her to play some Wii bowling and we went to the glow in the dark mini-golf place. She was recovering from some sorta procedure, so the R&R was good for her.

Watching a lot of netflix movies and movies in the theaters. I watched From Dusk Till Dawn for the first time, and I think a couple other Robert Rodriguez flicks are in my queue. Saw Pirates 3 as well: not bad, but was lacking the cleverness of the first and the crazy chase scenes of the second.

Helping with Sarah’s little brother’s high school graduation and graduation party. Graduation ceremony was huge, almost 800 graduates. Went to Bennigan’s afterwards. It was my first time there. I got a sandwich called a Turkey O’Toole. It was on a pretzel bun. It was amazing. Lots of family came over the house on the next day. We got a lot of yummy food from a caterer. We still have lots of leftovers.

Playing a lot of Super Paper Mario. I keep dying in the flopside pit of 100 trials… got all the way to the end last time and freaked out at the boss battle and messed up.

On the family front, my Aunt Rosemarie died. She was my Dad’s older sister. I wasn’t terribly close to her. She always seemed pretty kooky to me. I’m pretty sure she’s the only aunt who ever fit into that crazy old relative who gives you weird sloppy kisses category. The family’s talking about spreading her ashes, along with her husband’s, on the East coast… maybe sometime this summer.

Not much else is going on. Lots of relaxing, which is good. Threadless is having another one of those week-long sales where they release new shirts every day. If you’ve been waiting for the sale to pick up that clever shirt, now is the time.

Sarah’s got an interview at Calumet, this week. Think good thoughts, send her the good vibes, wish her luck… whatever your style is … much appreciated.

ho hum

John V — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 02:43:11 +0000

The rest of the road trip, the second day in St Louis and our trip home, including detour to Lamberts, was great. The City Museum was amazing. It was almost indescribable, but the best way I could sum it up is this: Three or Four stories of the coolest jungle-gym, playground, art exhibit, cafe and aquarium ever built. I don’t know how they get away with it, so many things to climb up and in and so much metal and wood and rock… I wouldn’t want to pay their insurance bill. Hopefully the pictures give you a sense of how awesome it is. And, yes, they really throw rolls at you at Lamberts. It was yummy and well worth the detour. The super 8 motel was ok, but I think the best western was better… even though the super 8 room was ginormous and they had donuts in their continental breakfast choices. Got up early and drove home, and had to go into work early, almost immediately after getting home… so it’s a good thing we left as early as we did.

Upcoming events and changes: Weekend work at the Y is switching to mornings. More hours, about three times the hours, but mornings are supposed to be busier… we’ll see how it goes. We’re going to Sarah’s friends’ wedding next weekend, I dunno what I’m gonna wear, we’ll have to go shopping tomorrow, I guess. Starting to prepare for the big overnight trip for adventure ed. It’s creating some pressure; it’s only a few weeks away and these groups stil have some work to do before any of them are really ready for it. Mom is coming out here for Mother’s Day weekend.

Ooh, and I joined Sarah’s Netflix account, lemme know if you have one and we can be “Friends.”

Also, yesterday, Kurt Vonnegut died. So it goes. He’s the only author I’ve ever really enjoyed thoroughly and completely. I think I was more sad to find out I’d read his last novel than to find out he was dead. I’ve re-read several of his books, and I added a couple of the movies that were based on his books to my Netflix queue.

new vision, again

John V — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 16:31:59 +0000

My Lenscrafters visit didn’t go as smoothly as I’d hoped. They would not put lenses into either of my old frames. The black plastic ones were “too dry” and might snap, or something like that… and the older ones were “too hard to trace.” I find this one harder to believe, since I had the lenses in those replaced a couple weeks after buying them, due to a giant scratch from a car door to the face. I’m gonna do a little research and see if this is some sort of scam by Lenscrafters. After shelling out the big bucks, I have some new frames. I’ll try to get some pictures up, soon. They’re all metal, so I shouldn’t get that “too dry” line again, and there’s no wire/nylon, the frame goes all the way around, so the “tracing” shouldn’t cause a problem, either. Of course I’m concerned about breaking them, since I broke just about every other pair of all metal frames I’ve ever owned, even that pair that felt heavy and unbreakable. I also keep getting the nose pads stuck in my hair when I pop the glasses up onto my head for a sec. I got too used to the plastic frames, I guess.

Digging into the moneys for glasses didn’t hurt too bad, since the money right now is constant. It’s only like this for about another month and a half, though. It’s March, almost April, and I don’t have a summer plan yet. The last time I waited this long was when I left the Woonsocket Y for Hockomock. That was a great switch, but was only possible because Bill Lawrence was a kind and generous camp director who saw a guy with 6 years of camp counselor experience and decided to give him a chance. I did find a Y to work for out here, so I don’t lose the retirement fund money… but I don’t know if their camp offerings really have a good fit for me, and they haven’t begged me fill one of their slots, yet. I’m pretty much a legal Illinois driver, now, though, so I could offer myself to the climbing or skate camps. My boss at Adventure Ed runs some sort of camp in the summer, too. It probably pays better than the Y, and almost definitely pays better than the resident camp up north with the Outdoor Ed Director position, simply because it’s a residence situation. I also haven’t heard anything back from them. Another co-worker mentioned working for him with Kayaks and Canoes… it’s different, but he’s a cool guy and I wouldn’t mind that kind of work, even if it’s just to broaden my horizons a bit.

Life otherwise is good! I saw Body Worlds 2 yesterday, at the Museum of Science and Industry. It was a little creepy, but pretty interesting. I was intrigued by the weird back muscles that seemed to overlap each other. We found it funny that there was a lot of intact genitalia, especially on some of the people put into very strange [and very revealing] poses. There was a lot of stuff written on the walls on the way in about confronting death and accepting it and not making it taboo… perhaps there should’ve been a panel dedicated to being ready to see a lot of genitalia, as well. The rest of the museum was pretty cool, and fairly genitalia-free. Our tickets included an OMNIMAX film. While we were waiting to get in, we talked about how much better than IMAX those three little letters could possibly make the experience. We were fairly awestruck by the theater itself, which was like a cross between an IMAX and a planetarium, the screen was rounded and went up over our heads and out about as far anybody’s range of straight-ahead vision. When the first full-screen image came up, there were a lot of whoahs and ooohs.

Flea Market tomorrow… and maybe a picnic if the weather is good? Looking forward to it.

squeak

John V — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 07:22:18 +0000

On mom’s advice, I officially added a shaver to my Amazon list. She said that my Uncle and Grandfather have been using a Norelco tripleheads with no complaints and that my dad had a Braun self-cleaning that was a disaster. I looked into the Norelcos, and found the ones that dispense gel or lotion the most appealing. So I added one.

Work has been going well! The initial meeting/training for the Adventure Ed position went great. I’m working with a few cool people and the way the day(s) work is much clearer to me, now. More trainings for that on Monday and Tuesday, and then it really begins the following week. I had my first official day as desk staff at the Y, tonight, and I learned a bit of the other desk-related jobs from the night’s facility manager. We also talked a lot about other programs, team-building, teen center type stuff, and she turned out to be a very like-minded individual. So that made the night fun. Clean-up took a little longer than expected, but otherwise, not a bad gig. Looking forward to picking up a few extra hours at their rock wall and possibly in that community service program.

In other news, on Monday, I am expecting a shipment of parts from Dell. These include a motherboard, fans, and video card replacement for my laptop. I have no idea how this super dude, Neil, found my site, but apparently this is an amazing case of the squeaky wheel getting the grease. I’ve talked quite a bit about my poor Dell laptop over the past few years, all its ups and downs, and after my last post about it and the idea of replacing it with a macbook pro, I got an eMail from Neil from Dell. After a conversation and some research by him, he agreed that the situation was never truly resolved and put in an order for a bunch of parts. So I get to take apart my Dell and give it some fresh hardware. I’ll let y’all know how it goes.

The Romans had it right

John V — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 04:14:41 +0000

I was lying down in bed the other night, when I thought bout the fact that I’ll be turning twenty-nine. The number hadn’t occurred to me, yet. It’s a big number… a close-to-thirty number. Somehow, the fact that the numbers use less characters makes it seem like the worst is over. XXIX. That’s way better than. XXVIIII. It’s the difference between, almost to something cool and fuck, that’s a big number. We just don’t do cool things to our numbers anymore. I’ve never worried about getting old, and I certainly don’t feel old. I just don’t like how big twenty-nine feels.

Speaking of my birthday [I told you I'd think of more], I thought of something else I could use:

a brightly colored case for my glasses/sunglasses. In my car, with it’s mostly black interior, I often can’t find my glasses until I’ve stopped and dug around the back for a while. If it’s got some cool feature that makes it stick or mount or clip somewhere, making it even harder to lose, that’d be great, too… and if it’s even a little more sturdy than the crappy cases Lenscrafters gives out with their glasses, I won’t worry so much.

And now, because it has been requested (via mom, from several family members, at the very least), I’m going to attempt to write up some captions/stories/explanations to go along with the images in my calendars. This sort of reminds me of a website I used to contribute to called Themestream. I could put photos up there and get critiques from people, but they had to be accompanied by 500 words of text, since it was originally a writing based site. Adding those descriptions seemed like a lot of work at first, but it was sort of fun by then end. I hope that goes this way, since I’m about to write 26 such descriptions. Anyway… here they are. And the calendars are both still available at Cafepress, i you didn’t get one (or wanted the other one).

Cover (Original Calendar): Worn. Taken in Olivia’s parents’ backyard in Newtown, PA. I thought these flowers, even with their obvious imperfections had some sort of strength. I put it on the cover because that’s how I feel about a lot of my photography. It may not be a beauty in the obvious and traditional manner, but there’s something about it that’s likable.

January: Drip. Taken after a particularly treacherous adventure in my van, to a show at a VFW hall in Grafton, MA. The roads were about as frozen as everything looks in this shot. Chosen for January for weather reasons.

February: Baby. Taken at a restaurant in Blackstone, MA, the day I met this Baby. Her name is Diamond, and she’s no longer a baby. She’s the oldest daughter of my old friend Sarah Green, who I had lost touch with for several years, before randomly finding out that she lived 5 minutes from me… this restaurant was about halfway between us and we met there for breakfast.

March: Cover. This was taken while driving, somewhat dangerous, I know. I think I was on the way to work in Marlboro at Telecomnow… or perhaps that’s just a subconscious association I put with it after the fact. I was amused at the logo of Sherwin-Williams, so blatantly ego-maniacal and full of undertones of manifest destiny. The fact that it was red, white and blue just made it irresistible to me. Such a glowing example of american corporate ideology… ‘we’re a paint company and our goal is to paint the whole world. GAH!. Probably chosen for March because it was taken in March. (sorry to say that I no longer have the original or any copies of this photo anywhere except on Cafepress.

April: Eggs. Taken at MaryBeth’s house in Webster, MA, on the weekend of Easter, probably, because we were definitely about to dye those eggs. There was a pretty large group of us there, mostly friends from high school, a good four or five years after we graduated. Chose for April due to Easter ties.

May: Road. Taken from a dam in Connecticut (the name escapes me), overlooking an abandoned road with a large section that’s gone… flooded, washed out, former bridge… I dunno. It was a favorite spot for me and Mark to go take pictures. Chosen for May because it was probably taken in May.

June: Shadow. Taken at a park in Pennsylvania, somewhere near Olivia’s parents’ house. The dog’s name is shadow. I have a similar image to this one, but not the exact one, in my gallery. I don’t remember if this was taken on the first trip down there or the second. We got stuck down there for an extra week or so, due to car trouble, so we had lots of time to hang out and take photos of dogs and dams. Chosen for June because I think it was taken in June.

July: Playground. Taken at a playground in Woonsocket, RI. This was a day when I drove down to Woonsocket with Mark and met Candace and Drew in the park. I think Drew and Candace lived in Woonsocket at this point, but I might not have moved in yet. Chosen for July because it was probably taken in July.

August: Swim. Taken at one end of that closed/fooded road that the Sunset/may photo was taken. I liked his puzzled body language and the obvious problem. Chosen for August because it was probably taken in August.

September: Red-handed. Taken at the after-school day care program I worked at in Woonsocket. This was our activity on 9/11, the year after it happened. This little girl was a trouble maker, and I couldn’t resist the Irony of catching her red-handed. Chosen for September because it was probably taken in September, and because it seemed patriotic enough that I wouldn’t draw anyone’s wrath for dismissing 9/11.

October: Playground. Taken on the street I lived on in Woonsocket (though possibly in North Smithfield, that far down). I remember wandering around and trying to get some good foliage photos one of the first years I lived in Woonsocket. I might’ve gotten a couple, but my weakness for arrows drew me to this. Definitely taken in October.

November: Pumpkin. Taken in Mom’s backyard. This pumpkin had grown out of her compost pile from “last year’s seeds.” I think she wanted a picture of it, and I really liked how it came out. This is in November because Cafepress messed up the original November image, and I have no record of what it was. I did find the original list of who was going to get copies of this calendar, though, and my friend Erika was on it, so that might mean it was going to be this one of her, but I don’t remember.

December: Mug. Taken in the Kenmore Diner in Worcester, MA. All I truly remember about taking this photo is that I was incredibly tired at the time (this is a diner that is specifically open after last-call, for that sobering-up crowd. I remember that my head was actually at this angle, and I was staring at my coffee mug for some time before I pulled out my camera and took the shot.

Cover (New Calendar): Bridge of photographers. Taken in Yosemite. You had a pretty good view of ElCapitan from the bridge, and that’s why all the photographers are squished over to that side… including Sarah. Put it on the cover to show off my girlfriend and for the irony of a bunch of photographers on the cover of something full of a bunch of photography.

January: lsda. Taken in the camp office of one of the YMCAs I worked for. This brand of lock seemed to be on everything at that Y, I’d seen them all over, but this one ws very striking… posing in the bright sunny spot on the desk.

February: Taken on the way to work in North Attleboro, MA. The sagging half of the barn is gone, now. I actually took this with a friend in mind who needed to make a jigsaw puzzle out of a photo to demonstrate the capabilities of the photo lab she worked for.

March: three. Taken at Roger Williams Park Zoo. These are radiated turtles. I was at the zoo with Olivia for her visit, for some good photography subjects. Chosen for March because there are three of them.

April: Stepped out of my apartment door one day (in April)… immediately ran back upstairs, grabbed the camera, ran back downstairs and shot lots of pictures of the pretty flowering trees. The winds had blown most of these petals away in a matter of 24 hours. I might have been late for work that day… but it was worth it.

May: Waterfall just off the road in Yosemite. Very easy to miss, I just happen to be looking that way on the way out to our goal. Sarah missed it, so I took her back to it and surprised her on the way back.

June: Taken at the zoo that Sarah brought me to when I visited her in Chicago for the first time. The kids and the exhibits were moving pretty fast for such a low light condition, but I managed to come away with something that looked okay. Chosen for June because it was taken in June.

July: Taken at a beach at Big Sur during our southern road trip from San Francisco. Wish I could’ve taken more pictures on the Pacific Coast Highway, but in order to get to this beach in time for sunset shots, we couldn’t really stop too many times. Chosen for July because it was taken in July.

August: Moon Bear at the Roger Williams Park Zoo in Providence, RI. There were a lot of foggy, plastic windows to view the animals through, but the rocks were ow enough and I was tall enough to grab this shot without the blurry plastic between us. Chosen for June because it was taken in June.

September: Former mill/factory in Putnam, CT (or somewhere between N Grosvenordale and Putnam). It was quite a landmark, as route 12 had to zig zag around it. Definitely a place where I had stopped and snapped off shots when I was in high school… but then I drove by it again, after not having traveled route 12 for a while… and all that was left of the mill was the smokestack and the tower… and a lot of nice lue sky in between.

October: The Sutro Baths ruins, in San Francisco were such an interesting place to wander around with a camera. None of the pictures really captured the huge feeling that place left you with, but some of them were pretty neat, anyway.

November: Crunchy. While Olivia was in Woonsocket, we were lucky enough to get breakfast at the “shiny diner.” One of their specialties was this yummy dish, called Crunchy French Toast. Essentially, just french toast with cornflakes all over it… but so good. I grabbed Olivia’s camera to take this shot, as I didn’t have mine with me.

December: Taken at the teen center in North Attleboro, MA. These cookies, made from Nutter Butters and melted white chocolate, with mini chocolate chips, mini m&ms, red sprinkles and white chocolate chips, were a popular holiday project for the kids. Everyone who helped out took a small plateful home with them to contribute to their family’s after dinner treats.