Random bits, not related

My mom's new thermostat - the 15 minute install took me 5 hours across 3 days. Doesn't help that it took some heavy thought to figure out how to remove the original or that i used the wrong paint (whose fault?) the first time.

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Friday, on my way to work, heard a beautiful sound, kind of like someone hitting the bottom of a large empty metal coffee container. I filmed it and tried to filter out the background noise - here is the sound, i think i need to work on my audio editing skills.

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Last night i found a dead mouse in my basement, in my work area. At first i was sad that something in my house killed it - i purposefully use live traps. But as i boxed it up i thought maybe it was poisoned in a neighbour's house and spent its dying strength crawling to a comfortable place, where it knew i'd take care of its passage.

Frozen ground is hard to dig.

Topography of a Sunday

Started making some potstickers and realised they were chicken vegetable, not just vegetable.

Bought some baba ganoush and happily started eating it until i wondered why it tasted unright, and then learned that some folks make it with mayonnaise.

Decided resuming basement work was appropriate, went downstairs, measured out some spacing and realised i had measured wrong last week, ordered too few supplies, and one project will now require %50 more funds.


Maybe it's the heat, maybe i've become too complacent. Time for another change?

Lemonade & Bicycles

A friend of mine once said that one way to get over being in a poor mood is to smile a lot, but though i've tried this tactic numerous times over the last few years, i think it only succeeds in making me happy that i'm in unhappy, and thus since yesterday i'm still in a sour state.

In other news, over the past month i've mixed 80 lbs of concrete and 50 lbs of plaster. I estimate that's a fifth of what i need to fix the quarter of the basement i'm working on. It will look quite nice - if different and unuseable - in about two months.

Props

Props where props are due: http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/africa/01/07/sudan.violence.report/ (note the quote at the end of the article). Sidenote: the lead photo is typical of standard intro photo class, railroad style. Hopefully my parents will be out of South Sudan before war breaks out again.

As for me, maybe someone will interview me for new insights into Dawn of the Dead or Unforgiven, like the maize background when we first meet Sally, the soot-darkened lantern at the last view, and are all the splits in other wooden backgrounds deliberate?

Eve

Standing in line with a 50 lb bag of concrete and a couple of crescent wrenches, the cashier asks me, "Not buying Christmas gifts this year?" I thought, if anywhere, Home Depot would have considered concrete worthy of being a Christmas gift. In other thoughts, i wonder how often Armstrong bikes home with 50 lb of concrete, and frozen brakes. I should really keep my bike indoors.

Gone

At 9:15am on Wednesday December 16, 2009, i had my 4 wisdom teeth removed. It went rather well - i was at work 90 minutes later. Showed up with blood on my face and couldn't talk for hours, but no one at work seemed surprised by those details. 4 days later and i'm still doing quite well.

Stinky

It's about as cheesy as a vegan can get - i'm quoted in this article on my work's website.