Yay!
Greenman Is Done!
Originally uploaded by Jake Sutton.
In February, I start the next one. Gotta get all the Fish time I can afford while he’s still in Denver.
Archive for the 'Obsessions' CategoryPage 3 of 26
A few years ago a new development popped up near my own subdivision. It was called Bradburn Village and was part of the latest urban development trend of “New Urbanist” communities. All I knew was that the houses seemed really nice (more than just “little boxes on the hillside”) and that residents would have a pub within staggering distance. Some of the more extravagant houses even had carriage house apartments, which is something that catches my eye since we live with my mother-in-law. Alas, the real estate game in Bradburn is too rich for my blood (assuming we would ever be able to sell our current house — not likely in these economic climes).
That doesn’t keep me from walking through the neighborhood (there’s open space between us and them) or stopping into the aforementioned pub for black & tans with bangers & colcannon. I still like to grab the “for sale” fliers to see what’s going for what and pine wistfully when the answers are “perfect” and “too much”.
Then I run across this: The lucky bastards have near-weekly keggers! And of course, everyone who lives there loves it. I’d really like to get a peak in their Yahoo! Group for some real scuttlebutt, but I’m guessing I’d be mostly disappointed.
That social interaction would be a double-edged sword for me, though. Part of me wants to live in a “village” where everyone knows everyone else in at least a cursory manner. The other part of me wishes everyone else would leave me the hell alone. Forever. Give me a glass of beer, though and that second part tends to get out of the way. 
As it is, I live in a nice neighborhood in my cookie cutter (though mostly well-built) house. Several of my good friends live within a ~5 mile radius. I have nearby open space in which I can make my jogging attempts. I can still take advantage of some of the amenities in Bradburn, too — I just don’t get to stagger home from the pub, so I take it easy and save the staggering for when I get home later.
Mostly I just like to look at the houses anyway.
BTW: Bradburn isn’t the only example of “New Urbanism” in my area. We also have Stapleton (at the location of Denver’s former airport), Belmar (in near-by Lakewood), Arista (coming soon in even-closer Broomfield) and probably several others. Prospect New Town, in Longmont, was the first one to catch my notice. Too bad it’s in Longmont.
I suppose if I had to pick one musical artist to call my favorite, Tom Waits would be it. (Last.fm bears me out, too.)
As I remember my childhood, our house was always filled with the music of people like Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, and Townes Van Zandt. These artists are still at the top of my list, but I always remember the similarly frequent times when the Tom Waits records were out. His voice always gave me pause. It was so different, I’d stop and think “What IS this? Why is it so different from everything else? And why do I like it so much?”
And then there was the cover for the Small Change album with its be-pastied stripper… Now THAT was something for my prepubescent mind to ponder!
And that really is the best part about Tom Waits. He makes you think a bit. He tells wonderful stories in his songs. They may be comical, maudlin, tragic or surreal, but they are all wonderful.
Happy birthday, Tom. May you have many more. Thanks for everything so far.
(And thanks to my favorite homebrewer, David, for pointing out the date this morning.)
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Track o’ the Post: Tango Till They’re Sore from Rain Dogs by Tom Waits, because that album was always the most fascinating/baffling to me when I was young.
For the record, my legs have chosen the first option, though the second could be imminent the way things are going. (Also for the record, there’s no point to this post. I’m just whining about how hard it is to get in shape after letting myself become a fat bastard. Feel free to ignore or tease as you see fit.)
You see, some stupid section of my stupid brain decided my walks weren’t good enough and that I should try to jog for as much of it as I can. At this point, I’m walking/jogging a loop that is just under 3 miles and all of my jogged chunks add up to a mile or so. I do this on the weekends only, because the days are so short now that it’s pitch dark by the time I get home, and my little loop lives in unlit open space with coyotes and junk running around in it.
Continue reading ‘You want I should freeze or get down on the ground?’
When I switched my home computing empire from my dying home-built, full tower PC to my new 24-inch slab o’ sex iMac everything went pretty smoothly. I managed to transfer all the files I cared about over, and Google Browser Sync made setting up my new copy of Firefox so easy I was kind of left with a “that’s it?!” feeling. I left the PC running, but I haven’t had to jump on it yet, so I’m about to rip out the hard drives and toss it.
The biggest part of the move from my perspective was my iTunes library. Firstly, let me say yes, I use iTunes. I know some ubergeeks who scoff at such an idea, but I don’t know what they are trying to do with their digital music that I can’t do in iTunes. Most importantly, I figured out some sweet-ass “smart” playlists that made it easy for me to play the sort of thing that suited my mood at any given moment.
Which brings us to the point. Continue reading ‘Goal Oriented’
I’ve been intrigued by synesthesia since I read The Man Who Tasted Shapes sometime in the second half of the 90s. It seems so bizarrely wonderful: numbers might have colors, musical notes might also have distinct hues - or perhaps shapes… It’s just freaky to imagine, and more significantly, it illustrates how seemingly arbitrary the brain’s powers can be.
Now Kottke points us to this post, which in turn quotes a Scientific American article about a wonderful phenomenon:
We also observed one case in which we believe cross activation enables a colorblind synesthete to see numbers tinged with hues he otherwise cannot perceive; charmingly, he refers to these as “Martian colors.� Although his retinal color receptors cannot process certain wavelengths, we suggest that his brain color area is working just fine and being cross-activated when he sees numbers…
Martian colors! That rules.
Is it wrong to be jealous of an “abnormality”?
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Track o’ the Post: Bright As Yellow from Glow by The Innocence Mission, because I’m a little girl sometimes.
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