Productivity

This day has seen a new gasket between the exhaust manifold and the tailpipe of the BMW. This replaces the nothing that was there this morning. The day has also cut all the grasses within reach of my extension cord. I need a longer one. Also Sunday is baking a loaf of bread of a kind never tryed before. Not only bread is baking, but muffins, too. Blueberry muffins. Dinner was a nice plate of sausage scrambled into a few eggs. The living room managed to get vacuumed, though the kitchen still needs to be finished. An email message that needed sending was sent. Ashes were shoveled out of the stove and spread in the overly tall weeds of my garden. (anyone with suggestions of good, safe, legal ways to rid me of the grass is welcome) The day was good and productive, but not long enough. There was a concert that I am sad to have missed. The day was too short for me to find a way to get the wheelhorse into the garden for to weed. The rototiller is still in the barn not being used. Video games were not played. The hall bathroom is still filthy. Dishes are still sitting in the sink. More time in the day would have been nice. A book was also read. Or rather, part of it.

Evidence, for those of you who doubt

This is a picture of the second of the two trial runs in the newly running Metropolitan. The passenger is none other than rLog. You will note that you cannot really see him, thus reinforcing the common belief that he does not, in fact, exist. This picture was taken by a combination of rLog's phone, and the jFrog,
without whose help we would not have gotten this far. Though, really, the phone did not contribute much to the work.

It's alive! ALIVE!!!

Not only does my Metropolitan run, it bleeds oil, coughs, and smokes like a demon. If you ignore all these minor problems, you could say that it is alive. In fact, you could say that it is drivable. More to the point, it did drive. Twice. There are witnesses. Two witnesses in fact. One for each trip. Both of whom seemed concerned with the lack of seat belts. I am told that seatbelts keep a person from flying through or cracking a persons head on the windshield. As my met has no windshield, there was little problem. The speedometer sticks, the fuel guage needs to be attached properly, a windshield is needful, the brakes give the impression of stopping if not the reality, the trunk has no hinges to keep it down, the tires are rotting off, there are rust holes in the doors, the inside door handles are missing, the temp guage is crap, oil is bubbling through the head gasket, and my timing is off, but besides those, I have a working car. Upon further reflection though, maybe my car is not so much alive as it is undead. I am not bothered by that. You can't kill something that is already dead.

Huh?

The rain is falling sweetly, and the fields are running streams. The trees are talking softly, murmuring, twisting, green. Light is silvery shadow, beckoning, calming, clean. The winds are blowing slowly, and the streets are paved with dreams.

I think it is time for bed.

Peanuts

Manny mentioned peanuts the other day in a conversation that I can't remember. Since then I've wanted peanuts. I just bought a tin of the honey roasted variety and noted that the lid says "Planters taste famously fresh." You notice of course that they never directly say that the peanuts are fresh. They just taste that way. Makes me wonder. Peanuts in turn make me think of elephants, and elephants in turn remind me of elephant jokes.

How can you tell the difference between a plum and an elephant?
Plums are purple.

Why do elephants paint the bottoms of their feet yellow?
So they can hide upside-down in bowls of custard.

Why do elephants wear pink shoes?
The white ones show grass stains too easily.

Why do elephants purchase their pink shoes by the crate?
They are cheaper in bulk.

How can you tell if there is an elephant in your icebox?
There are foot-prints in your peanut butter.

Stupid door, I'm better than you!

I walked out the front door of the shop today. Or rather, I tried to walk out the front door. It was locked. After the door didn't open I noticed a large sign on the door that said "please use other door." Somehow I didn't notice it. It is a wonderful thing to realize that literacy has risen to a point that it is so common we do not even notice warning signs in a plethora of other writing. We are surrounded by so much that we don't read it all. It is a fine time to be alive in a society that is educated to the extent that literacy becomes mundane.

I'm having a thought

I heard a person once say they had an "Irish accent." I like a nice Irish accent. Then the thought crossed my mind that one cannot say they have an accent due to a problem in persepective. An accent is only something one notices on another person. It is a way of saying "that person is different than I." We ourselves can only look out from the place we happen to be standing to see things different outside us. From within, all is as we expect it to be, as we know ourselves best. I think that we as individuals look out on the world through a lense made of our own essence. We take ourselves as a base and look out from there, using our own experiences to color what we see. If that is indeed true, then we cannot speak with an accent if our own accent is the way we think of language. Only people foreign to us speak with an accent, and we cannot be foreign to ourselves. We are the centers of our own private universes and our worlds are built to orbit around us. Many people claim that their interest and focus is outside their own person. Honestly, I think that belief only serves to make them more comfortable in their own skin. To think of ourselves first is greedy; to think of others first is noble. But noble to whom? Ultimately, from our own most basic perspective, we think of ourselves first, then expand our world out from there. It pleases us to do so, even if we don't admit it.

...than a well digger's bum...

It is just ten minutes since Jeremy left my place, or just past 1:15am and it is snowing outside. Either that or the rain is wearing white fluffy pajamas.

Pick-n-pull, more than you think

Beyond being a grand place to find the needful parts for an old car, it is also a place for music. After cracking a BMW open and removing all the wonderful things that fell out, Manny and I were on the way out to the parking lot, when we heard a piano. It sounded very good for any sound system one might ordinarily find in a muddy hole in the ground filled with the rusty old relics of a more poluted time. I looked around and discovered it was coming from a truck, rather than the shed or building I had expected. In fact, it was coming from an upright piano sitting in the back of a beat up old japanese pick-up. The driver was sitting in the back of the truck playing what might have been Bach. In a truck. In a mud puddle. In the middle of no-where.