JBot Mania

What week is it now? Six? Yeah, that seems about right. How many more weeks? I’ll be conservative and say three. I’m learning the truth behind tip #2. So far 99% of the decking is down and 80% of the posts for the railing are up. We still need to add in the part of the deck that is by the door, some stairs, the horizontal pieces of the railing, and then the 9,000 or so vertical pieces to help retarded children avoid getting their heads caught when they start to do retarded things. On a good note, the railing will be made of 2 x 6 and therefore ample enough to hold any beer.
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It all began after some drinks in my backyard towards the end of a visit from Mom & Bill. After all the work that has happened in the last three weeks, I am struggling to even remember what that original visit was for… Read the rest of this entry »

I bought a little digital recorder with all sorts of plans for using it as a little task reminder, but even more exciting - using it for my ESL class!

My First Message

I’ll admit my first excuse is, I’ve been busy. Busy or maybe “lazy”, if you will. The real culprit is… my fucking camera. Well, cameras. I have a pretty nice Pentax ist D. For all the money I paid for it, I don’t use it nearly enough - a running theme in my life. My biggest impediment - ridiculouly shitty battery life. Can’t tell if it is the batteries or the camera. Read the rest of this entry »

Every now and again I run into a passage in a book or an article that says something just so. I have had two in my life that have stuck with me. Strangely, both deal with death and those left behind. One was from the Smith College quarterly, that I will have to find and quote, and then the other day while listening to Story Corps on NPR, I heard the second.

A woman was describing what it was like to live on after her child of 10 had been killed by a reckless motorist. Here is an excerpt:

And the worst part is when you realize you’re going to live, because you just want to die. I thought I wouldn’t live 10 minutes and I was astonished when I’d lived 10 days and mortified when I’d lived 10 months, and not even grateful yet when I had lived 10 years. I was just mostly surprised.

What I find so compelling is her use of the word “mortified” because it’s not what you would expect and yet, it’s quite possibly the perfect descriptor. It plays over and over in my mind and each time it touches something where I somehow understand. I hope I never understand, but just this little makes me know that I could.

Well, I’m hopped up on Paxil, Claritin D, and Excedrin Migraine. Everything’s FINE. (I’m picturing the “FINE” sounding like the “FINE” in Tracey Bonham’s “Mother, Mother” - which, by the way, I totally recommend as my brother’s anthem)

Excedrin Migraine should be classified as an amphetamine because every time I take it, my hands shake. Unfortunately, it’s the only thing that I have found that kicks migraine’s in the ass. My co-workers will notice soon how talkative I have suddenly become. “So what if we do this and this and this… and then that and this and that.”

Whew, I need to slow down….

I won’t expound upon who asks me this question. Just know that it has been several people over the last few years. They ask, “What do you do for fun” as we begin an investigation of one sort or another. It’s a very basic question, but until faced with it, I don’t realize how difficult the question really is.

I wonder whether the simple phrase “nothing” is acceptable. It’s not necessarily that I don’t have fun, but when I do, I’m not really paying attention. And I don’t seek it out. I don’t say, “I’m going to do THIS today and it’s going to be FUN.” Maybe other people are more purposeful about it.

The other day, the question came again after I was assured that I could lead a team of people to figure out what lies behind the great JBot. I declined the offer, but I did answer the question.

What do I do for fun? When am I having fun? Whenever I am wholly distracted. Movies, elaborately themed amusement parks; those are probably the two easiest sources of my fun. I am outside of time and outside of the mundane that is most days. It’s not that the rest is particularly bad, but it has alot to live up to for me to put it into my arsenal of ready-made answers or one day say, “I’m going to do THIS today and it’s going to be FUN.”

Hackers Bombard Epilepsy Site With Flashing Images

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