Chris Hunter's Friends

Our ghost roommate Jim is moving out, to West Seattle. This was troublesome, as he's "lived" here for five years. I say "lived" because he's not often here, at most a couple nights a week, and it's barely been more during the whole time he's been here. But he's steady with rent and bills, and according to most, this makes him the ideal roommmate. In any case, we haven't had to look for anybody new in a great long while.

So it was a bit daunting to have to, as one might guess.

It fortunately turned out that we know people who need places. Some said it wasn't what they were looking for. But fortunately, Annie and Kevin, who are to be wed in not too long, live on a boat with about 65 square feet of actual living space. This is not a joke. That's it. So, although Ballard isn't quite as convenient for them as many places might be, they're moving in next month.

Hurray. Roommate crisis averted. No need to use Craigslist. All is well.

Expect a sort of housewarming or housecooling or both or something at least.

My experiment with shade structures is definitely a learning experience. I've tried scaling back the complexity of the design, but that introduces other issues... mostly these issues have to do with trying to raise something that's supposed to be 30 feet across. Aaaaahhh!. It's one thing to look at it on paper, and another thing entirely to spread out a 30x50 ft. tarp and see how big things are going to be... AAAAaaaahhh!!!

On the other hand, my experience with the juicer are going well. You just would not BELIEVE how good fresh pineapple juice is, or how much food coloring goes into store-bought tomato juice.

I'm sure I'll be better able to cope with shade structure madness once I can find some vodka to go with these juices...

but perhaps not by that much:

"I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf. I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.” -- George W. Bush

I'm so glad he's sacrificing so much to support this war.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0508/10314.html

I alternate between three modes:

Flipside? Oh yeah, that's coming up soon, isn't it?
Flipside? I'm tired. Thinking about FS makes me more tired. Maybe we can sell our tickets and run off and have quiet time in a B&B instead.
Flipside? Can't WAIT! Oh boy! I need to do this and this and this and this...

I fired up the new 2KW generator tonight to do some benchmarking, to get a better estimate of fuel usage at Flipside. It's puttering away on the back patio. I can't hear it from inside the house, so I need to keep going outside to check on it.

These things are really quiet. I'm impressed.

Now if only my hands didn't smell like gasoline. Pthhhh.

Friday night I FINALLY got to eat at the Brazilian place people rave about: Sampaio's. My friend Leslie treated me for my birthday, and we both had yummy mahi mahi cooked in banana leaves. So tender! The spices were so tasty and the coconut milk so rich! I also like their little rice yeast rolls, which don't set off my wheat allergies. Even though I was stuffed, I still did a creme brulee. Hey, I was celebrating!

Leslie eats there at least 2x a week, and when I remarked how awful the service was (it was friendly and sweet, but rarely there), she said it was always like that. The previous crew had been let go and the new crew had a better attitude but was scarce too. I think the management of the place must have the problem in that they don't schedule enough coverage. It wasn't crowded, and with food that tasty it should be. I think they've burned too many customers by ignoring them...

Then Leslie showered me with cool b'day gifts -- neat and unusual yard art and bird feeders, an cool tea cup with a ceramic strainer built in. Belgian chocolates! And then amazingly, an LCD TV! She really loves her 40" Sharp Aquos, so she got me a 20" one. I'm not a two-TV household, but I now plan to be! (Growing up, my dad was TV repairman on the side, so we had one in every bedroom and a big TV in the den.) I haven't decided yet where it'll go -- I need to discover my cable connections...

Saturday night, J4 took me back to the same part of town where we had dinner next to Sampaio's at Blue Star Cafeteria. She got a fun-looking basket of fried oysters and homemade potato chips. I had a Waldorf salad made with apples and oranges -- delicious! Then I had to try their coconut chess pie. J4 also got me a book about life changes (Finding Your Own North Star) and got herself the same book so we can workshop together. While we were there, a squall blew in and dropped big ol' honking pieces of hail onto the metal roof of the Cafe. It sounded like a war zone! Customers were dropping their plates and jumping out of their skins! Once it was clear, I rushed to my new (relatively, only 1.5 years old) Prius to look for dents, but found none. Whew!

My actual birthday was yesterday, same day as Mother's Day. My mom arranged for my family to drive north from South Austin, where they all live, so we could go to the Cheesecake Factory, where I'd pick up the bill and Mom would pay the tip. It's always a big deal to get them on this side of town, but my dizzy old mother munged up the arrangements. Result: two cars of family members showed up, each thinking the other had picked up Mom. But nope. And oh, they were steamed and frazzled because it was all arranged so confusingly. So we drove back to South Austin, I picked up Mom since I was the least huffy, and we ate catfish. Mom got me a large, cool flower pot for my patio. My sibs, who have no money, got me cards but did contribute $$ each toward paying the dinner. From me, Mom got organic truffles and a Mount Vernon black iron trivet.

Also got calls and emails from friends, so thank y'all all!

The Vet called with the update from the lab. Looks like what has been bothering Toby is a bacterial infection, possibly exacerbated by other factors.

A battery of drugs have gone into him today, with many more going in over the next 2 weeks. We should see some kind of improvement by Friday at the latest.

Good news: Can be fought with drugs and should see improvement really soon.
Bad news: The circumstances that allowed him to get to this state to begin with.

My main computer is down, and I've been away from LJ for several days. Also have no access to my mail. If you are trying to reach me, Try the phone. *yes, I actually just said that*

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I have decided I need an <a href="http://www.ubi.com/US/Games/Info.aspx?pId=6068"<Nintendo DS</a>.

Spanish too!

An Austin Roller Girls friend of mine, is in a competition to
have her awesome Dr. Marten boot design win and be
produced. She has been leading, but just dropped to
#2--please take a second to help out, no signing up is
needed, you only need to click to vote :-)p.

Here is the current # 1 Link so you can vote 'Hate
It':

http://www.dmbootdesign.com/designs/view/1919

Then go to this link for Tyleah's rollergirl boot and
vote 'Love it':

http://www.dmbootdesign.com/designs/view/2205

Okay, so the flank steak I got at CostCo was decidedly more fatty than the flank steak I got at HEB. It required much more trimming, too. And it cost $.01/lb more than HEB. But I was at CostCo and thought I'd give it a go.

The jerky looks like jerky, and smells like jerky, but it's very greasy. Which makes me nervous.

In fact. I'm fairly certain it will go rancid before Flipside.

Which means I have 3 lbs (pre-dried weight) of jerky to dispose of in a week.

*sigh* And of course, the scent of jerky drying makes me really not want jerky.

Anyone want some jerky?

The day after I got back from Virginia, J4 called me anxious to see IRON MAN already, so we did on Tuesday night. I liked it a lot; J4 was more "meh" -- I think it was too frenetic and noisy for her. But the action and blowing up good was part of the ambience and the emotional arc of the story.

Robert Downey Jr. is just amazing. He has the buff body (his butt is a massively curved thing now!) of an action star, which is not something I'd associated with him before. He gets the charisma and smart-aleck dialog of the lauded, millionaire, genius inventor Tony Stark just great. All deadpan and spoken like he has no impulse control. And the wires that need tying, the fuses that blow, the machinery parts he welds, they all seemed realistic and fun. Of course, once he's back in his own lair where he makes his Iron Man suit with all the bells and whistles, I lost the plausibiity there. He didn't have the wherewithal to smelt, cast, and build such an aerodynamic thing. There's a lot of industrial mechanisms required to engineer something like that.

The character who helps him when he's captured by terrorists who are using the Stark-made weapons to do evil -- which the naive Tony has obviously never questioned or wondered about -- is winningly underplayed by Shaun Toub. How cool and interesting of them to make the guy Persian who gives Tony Stark a heart (literally, a mechanical thing that keeps Tony's from blowing up) and a conscience. Toub is the same guy who played the distressed Persian father in CRASH who got a gun to shoot the Latino locksmith, and he somehow made that violent man sympathetic. In this, he's got a demeanor and heroic actions that jump him off the screen.

Another great actor was Jeff Bridges, who plays Obediah, a shave-headed, full-bearded patriarch who runs the Stark empire for Tony while he playboys arounds. Bridges totally blows away the long-haired, stoned characters of the past and really owns the aged yet still powerful character. Only that sort of gummy voice remains the same.

I really enjoyed so much of the plot since it was about a guy who overcomes physical and mental torture to become a better person with a crusade. They stop the story before the squicky stuff of being a vigilante gets too in your face: you are given clearly bad bad guys for Tony Stark to go after, so there are no qualms in rooting for him. What I didn't really enjoy is Gwenneth Paltrow's Pepper Potts character. With her teetering spike heels and hobbling narrow skirts and severe jackets, she's a fetishized secretary. And though she imbues her lines with lots of sass and sly humor, she can't disguise that Pepper Potts is that most noisome of infantile male fantasies: the woman who lives to support her man. Smart, snappy, capable, her whole existence is about taking care of Tony Stark. That's a messed-up version of the perfect mother: a woman who patiently sits on a shelf until the man wants her, then she's all-powerful in service on him and his needs. When Pepper is called on to do some action-hero type things, she seems to do them with too much shrill shrieking and flapping of hands, just so you know that she IS a girl, after all. To that I say: yuck.

But still a very entertaining movie worth seeing!

Ahhh, a bit of quiet time at the end of the weekend. Just the thing.

Saturday was my last welding class. I finished my Zirconian Officer's War Helmet and I'll be posting a picture soon. It's very shiny and kind of dangerous. I ripped my shirt on it during final assembly, and it almost poked me in the neck as well. And then Susan almost cut herself on it when I brought it home.

Susan and I hit IKEA that evening, looking for pillows for the radio lounge couches. On our way out the door she spotted just the thing -- a futon split into two unequal parts, one exactly the size of the seat and the other exactly the size of the back. Score!

Sunday we did a test assembly of our new shade structure. Not ideal for quick assembly and take down, but it'll do. And all of the roof seams are heat sealed so it doesn't need any waterproofing. We also repaired the tent fly that was punctured at Flipside last year and folded up a heap of bandanas for tie-dying.

And now, bed.

So, it's amazing how different two long rides can be. I had so many issues with my blood sugar last week and absolutely none on this ride. Here's the route I rode:

http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=1887497

Nifty little tool, ain't it?

My bike odometer claimed just shy of 47 miles, so I think this is pretty accurate. The real route had a few more winds too it then the straight lines on here, so seems pretty close.

Strangest moment of this ride came along FM 270 in League City. This particular stretch is pretty rural and had cows in the field across from me. Just as I passed closest to a cow, but still across the road, the cow started bellowing. I'm not talking a gentle moooooo here, but more like somebody had just yanked on the poor things teats. I couldn't see anything disturbing the cow, though. The bellow really startled me, I must say.

I only checked my blood sugar once and it was around 110, and that was after 25 miles. Of course, I had had some hard candies, but nothing near the amount I had the previous time. So I did not buy Gatorade even to refill my bottle, just water for one and Propel for the other. I guess I will call myself ready for the 80 miles next Sunday...

One last plug for fund raising:
http://main.diabetes.org/goto/martang

Mother's Day Proclimation

Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

Julia Ward Howe 1870