Phil's Rambling Rants
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Below are the 25 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Phil Parker" journal:[<< Previous 25 entries]
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12:45 am
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Drip... drip?
So I stick the pan from my very late dinner under the faucet in the sink and turn on the water to rinse it, and a little water trickles out, and then just a drip.
It was working fine just a few minutes back, when I rinsed the food processor and washed the cutting board. Now, nothing. I did the obvious, turned the circuit breaker off and back on. No effect. I'll poke around tomorrow and see if I can find anything, but I don't think there's anything else that I can do but call the well guy.
This is so not good. In the "multi thousand dollar repair when you haven't worked since August" sense of "not good".
Tags: home, life
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04:14 pm
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Oh, yuck.
I just found a tick crawling on my belly. Now there's a sign of spring I don't appreciate.
Tags: life, nature
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12:26 pm
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A spiritual moment
I got out into the woods for a bit this morning, for the first time in a couple of weeks. It's still cold, but I was dressed for it. It was sunny, although a very light snow was falling, and beautiful if stark. I felt more joy of being alive than I have for many weeks, just marveling at the crisp air and the sunlight sparkling on the snow. I feel like I made a little bit of progress on my personal spiritual quest to understand the universe and the divine in it. As I came home, I heard the invocation before the inauguration, and I had the thought that while our human religions are pretty muddled, I feel there is some truth down there. There is love in the universe, and life is truly good.
Tags: kickapoo, life, nature, philosophy, walks
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03:08 pm
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Bleak
A messed up sleep schedule left me unfit to drive this morning, so I'm at home now when I should be with my tigers. I went for a walk in the neighborhood.
Just a couple of weeks ago, despite the shorter days and the turning leaves, there was still a lot of summer left. Now, suddenly, it feels like winter. It's a cold, gray day with a few snowflakes and a wind that seemed to blow more through my soul than my adequate jacket. It will be four months before the world really starts stirring, and weeks beyond that before it really wakes up.
It's going to be a long winter.
Tags: life, philosophy
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03:22 pm
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Drill, baby, drill
I've had a handyman project in progress for several weeks that I've allowed myself to be distracted from -- a shelf and coat hanging arrangement for my entryway. I'd cut the lumber to size; stained it; painted the moldings; cut, mitered, and attached the moldings to the wall mount part; and carefully marked where all the holes I need to pre-drill go when I got pulled away.
Today, I finally got all the holes drilled. As a bonus, I screwed the two boards that meet in the corner together and attached this L shape to the wall. The screws even hit studs as planned. I'd have gone on to start attaching hardware, but the battery died in the drill.
I feel the gratifying sense of accomplishment that I haven't been getting from just getting day to day tasks done lately.
Tags: home, life
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11:55 am
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Life's little mysteries
Last night as I was stumbling into the house with my groceries, I found a tiger whisker on one of the door mats. Now, I have a pretty good collection of whiskers, but I generally keep them in a safe place, because they're a personal treasure. There are a few that I have in more exposed places, but none of those seem to be missing. It's definitely not the one I found on Sunday; that one was almost half black and this one only has a little black. As entertaining as it might be to speculate that a tiger came to visit while I was out and left it as a calling card, I think that's significantly less likely than being rescued from deep space 29 seconds after the Vogons space me. It's pretty certain that it's one I brought home earlier, but I can't fathom how it got there.
Tags: cats, life
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11:16 am
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Cleaning hits The Llama
On my big trip to Ecuador in 2005, I did some shopping in the big native market in Otavalo. This is one of, maybe the, largest native market in South America; Americans go to Ecuador just to go there. Of course I was going to spend a week in the jungle, but since Otavalo was on the way, we visited the market. One of the things I bought there was a rug made of a patchwork of different colors of llama pelts. It's a cool thing that I enjoy showing off with my other souvenirs from the trip, but it's never been convenient at home. When I had a dog, I had to keep it packed up lest it become a chew toy, and it's lived in a duffel bag (that I also bought in Otavalo and took the souvenirs home in) sitting on the couch.
( picture of The Llama in here )
My ongoing housecleaning project continues to progress, and it's now reached that couch. I have to do something with The Llama. I don't want to just stuff it in a closet and forget it. I'd like to actually display it but it's too doggone big. But it can't stay in its duffel on the couch any longer; the key to success in taming clutter is not leaving things just lying around in reclaimed areas.
What to do, what to do.
Tags: home, life
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10:53 pm
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Yes, we have no envelopes
How is it that ordinary products that one has been using for years can just suddenly vanish, even though they still appear as useful and needed as ever?
A couple of weeks ago I used the last of my old box of normal business sized envelopes. I obliviously bought another box, and conclusively proved that it really does matter whether it says on the box that they work in a laser printer, because these don't say and they don't. So I looked in the supplies section of a regular store or two. No printer-friendly envelopes. Today I went to Staples. They don't have any printer-friendly envelopes. Well, actually, they have some super-nice resume envelopes for $20 for a box of 50 that say they're printable, but no ordinary everyday ones. So I tried Office Depot. They don't have them either. The salesman said they used to carry them but they don't any more; they could special order but I'd have to pay $10 shipping for a $2 box of envelopes that costs $6 at the office supply store. (When they had them at the general merchandise store, a box was about $2.)
I know I'm out of touch with the culture, but I can't believe I'm the only person who would rather type the address, stick it in the slot, and have it neatly printed in the right place than have to trust the post office to be able to read my lousy handwriting. Any suggestions for a store that would actually have something as eccentric as envelopes I can actually use?
Tags: life, questions
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11:36 am
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Weight
I was at Carle yesterday where there's a working scale. I weighted 214.8, which is about 7 lbs. less than 17 days ago (the last time I was there) and about 5 lbs. less than I've weighed in at least 20 years. Keeping myself too busy to snack has much to recommend it.
Tags: health, life, weight loss
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10:21 am
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Housecleaning progress
I'm not sure if I've discussed this publicly, but my house is a total pit. Stuff piled everywhere, a fair bit of it stuff I actually want to keep but don't have a place to keep, mixed with a lot that I need to suppress my packrat tendencies and just throw away. All the stuff in the way serves as a convenient excuse for not actually sweeping or dusting. All in all, yuck; you won't be invited into my house unless you're the HVAC man and the furnace is dead. And since I have time on my hands right now, I'm working on that.
I certainly kept myself busy yesterday. The mess in the house as a whole is still daunting, but most of the bedroom is almost respectable. The dog crates that dominated one corner are in the garage. Thanks to the new wire shelf, a bunch of the clutter has been tamed. There's still a ways to go to get the rest out of the places it was shoved into, but I didn't push a significant amount into the rest of the house. I more than doubled the space dedicated to my stuffed animal collection, and they still don't all fit, but they come much closer. I swept and vacuumed in the corners and mopped and scrubbed a couple really nasty spots on my hands and knees.
I need shelf space to put the clutter on, and I vowed I would never buy another piece of particle board furniture years ago after my nightstand tried to kill me. All right, I shouldn't have been standing on it, but I needed the height, and if it weren't made of crap it wouldn't have crumbled and dumped me on the floor. After that incident I bought a very nice oak nightstand that I could dance on all day. Well, I can't dance and I couldn't do it all day if I could, but the night stand wouldn't break. And no more particle board has crossed my threshold.
Since particle board is out, I don't want to spend a lot of money, and while I may be smarter than your average bear I'm worse at woodworking. So I need to go with plastic. I've had a plastic adjustable shelf unit in my closet that I'm quite happy with and I hoped to get more of the same type, but I've been all over town and searched on the Internet and I'm convinced that they don't make them any more. Menard's has the fixed-spacing plastic shelves that are the current flavor of the month on sale for the best price I've seen, so I bought one Wednesday and found it, if not good, at least tolerable, so I'll get some more today.
I have a long way to go but I think I see a light at the end of the tunnel. Hey, what's that woo-woo noise?
Tags: home, life
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01:27 pm
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Driveway
Yesterday, just as I was going out to the car to drive to the lumber yard, a guy in a pickup truck pulled up in my driveway and asked me if I'd be interested in having some recycled asphalt put on my driveway. Seems he had a couple of (small) truckloads of the stuff extra that he needed to get rid of, so he was willing to grade the driveway and spread the stuff for a lot less money than normal. Perhaps it was unwise, since I'm unemployed right now, but my driveway really needed some help. If this stuff performs as expected, it will be much better than the usual mud pit for a long time and it will be money well spent. If I do end up moving to a new job, I think not having a bunch of muddy potholes where the driveway should be will increase the chances of selling this house.
Tags: home, life
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01:57 pm
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Officially unemployed
Friday was my last day in the Hydrogeology lab at the University of Illinois.
I worked there for a little over two years. It was never a good fit and I was not happy, so part of me is very relieved. Part of me is terrified of the future.
I have learned from my experience with the jobs I've had that good jobs come through personal contacts, not through searching the want ads. Even though we call the personal stuff "networking" these days and instead of newspaper ads there are job web sites, I believe the same principle applies. This applies even more to my present situation, because I would like to try a different career field, but I don't have a degree or work experience in another field.
I am hoping that someone I know will have a line on something specific, where by "specific" I mean "My cousin Fred, who installs solar panels, needs an assistant." I do not mean "You seem to like animals; have you considered a job working with them?" I know such suggestions are well meaning, but they are not helpful in my present mental state.
Tags: life, work
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08:51 am
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Weight steady
I checked my weight yesterday; it had been 4 weeks and there was a 2 week vacation in there. Still, my weight came in at 221.4 -- close enough to where it's been.
Tags: life, travel, weight loss
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09:30 pm
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Editing is hard
I've been suffering major procrastination and avoidance-of-work on dealing with my photos, but in the last few days, I've gone through my EFRC photos and made a first selection of those promising to print. Today I winnowed that selection from 151 down to 100, so they'll just fill an album. It was hard choosing; the last 20 or so I axed were worth printing, but having exactly an album's worth is important. I'll be getting them printed Wednesday (assuming no comet impacts or other disasters), so the next time you see me in person (well, after Wednesday for the couple of you who will see me before then), I will have brand new tiger pictures to bother you with.
Tags: life, photography
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11:01 am
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True progress
For somewhere around 20 years, all of my pants have been waist size 40.
Today I'm wearing the brand new size 38 shorts I bought last night.
Tags: health, life
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12:04 pm
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Stupid weather
I need a good Saturday hike right now. Unfortunately it's rained about 6 inches in the last week, so the longer trails I know are most likely impassable. And we're having more thunderstorms now.
I am cranky.
Tags: life
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09:42 pm
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Public Announcement
With DucKon just around the corner, I figure it might not hurt for me to say this to the world -- it just might bring a little more happiness to some people (one of whom is me).
I'm a very shy person, and I am very bad at noticing and understanding non-verbal cues. I have a short list of people I know it's OK to touch, and outside of that, I'm really unlikely to risk it without specifically being told it's OK. So if you'd like a hug or a backrub, please say so.
Tags: friends, life
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08:06 pm
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Unpleasant milestone
I had to get gas today. So, of course, today was the day our corporate masters decided it would be fun to raise the price another 30 cents.
For the first time, it cost over $40 to fill up.
Tags: car, life, society
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09:27 pm
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A little springtime peace
I left work early so I could get my allergy shot, and then when I got to Carle they told me they still weren't giving shots. A week ago (on my regular day) they'd called me to say their refrigerator had failed and destroyed all the serums, and they thought it would be a couple of days to get them remade, so I shouldn't come in. I hadn't really remembered that they'd said to call before I came in; I just assumed that they had to have it fixed by now. And they didn't.
This meant that instead of just being able to squeak in a walk before dark, I had plenty of time. I perhaps should have done a longer trail, but I just went to Kickapoo for my usual walk on the Riverview trail. There were a fair number of birds around. Just off the top of my head, I had phoebe, kingbird, towhee, gnatcatcher, red bellied woodpecker, flicker, catbird, song sparrow, white throated sparrow, red winged blackbird, a song that was maybe an oriole but I'm not sure, mourning dove, cardinal, blue jay, robin, an I-think-great-horned owl hooting, a pair of swans and of course bunches of geese on the lake, and a turkey vulture overhead as I went home. After I'd finished walking the loop, I went over to the pond east of the parking lot and sat on the bench. As I sat and tried to let go of the day, I could momentarily catch the illusion that rather than the wind making ripples on the lake go by, I was actually moving in the other direction. It was very peaceful for a few minutes, but when a couple of people jogging by on the other side of the pond and talking loudly shattered the illusion, I decided I should go home and make dinner.
Tags: kickapoo, life, nature, walks
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10:59 pm
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The meaning of life
Sorry for being Posty McPostalot this evening, but I have one more entry.
The 7:00 To the Best of Our Knowledge was a show that really got me thinking. It was ostensibly about "green" lifestyles, but it had a lot of stuff that really resonated with me. I feel too tired for coherence so I'll try to just blurt out some thoughts. Hopefully when I read this, I'll actually remember more than I can put into words now.
It talked about how actually living according to the principles one believes in is very important for feeling happy. I make the effort, when I have a fairly easy choice, to minimize packaging and throwaway things. I feel uncomfortable using paper plates and plastic silverware. I'm not willing to go as far as the guy they profiled who lived in New York. He refused to use electricity or carbon-powered transportation (even the elevators in his building) and wouldn't use anything that created trash. He supposedly didn't use toilet paper. I wish they'd actually pressed him on how he cleans himself after he takes a dump. But I wish I could find the courage and fortitude to say to friends when I'm visiting "instead of putting out paper plates and forks, please use real plates and silverware, and let me help with the dishes".
They talk about how our lifestyle has us rushing and stressed all the time. I wish I could simplify my life so that I didn't have to do the things that force me onto a schedule where I'm always feeling rushed and I never have time, but it seems like modern life is a package that's all stuck together, and I can't see how to cut out one piece without that meaning that I also have to cut out the next. I think I could give up a lot of my stuff; I could probably handle having just a room in a shared space. And if I didn't have to have a house that's a big part of the reason I have to have a regular job. But the one piece that really scares me about trying to break out of the rat race is health care. I have to have a real job or I get to find out experimentally if my asthma is cured or just in long term remission, by dying if I stop the Flovent and it does come back. Without a real health plan, that one prescription costs more than I spend on food.
Tags: life
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10:02 pm
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Lovely housefilk
Last night, I had the pleasure of attending a housefilk at the home of ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) bedlamhouse and ladyat. I've been hoping to attend one of the Indianapolis filks for about as long as I've been aware that there are such, and this time it came together, because (a) they're not actually in Indy, but conveniently just west in Danville (Indiana, that is, not Illinois), and (b) they generously offered crash space and a willingness to get up early enough the next morning that I could be at EFRC at more or less my regular time.
The sad thing is that it's really hard for me to say much about the actual events of the evening, because most of the people there were people I either hadn't met, or whom I vaguely recognized but couldn't attach names to when they first arrived, and even though we did a round of introductions, by the end of the evening I still didn't know their names. Ernest Clark, who wrote a whole bunch of really great songs back when I first started in filk but whom I only see sometimes at Chambanacon, was there and he told me he's in Lafayette these days. There was an older fellow with an odd looking but nice sounding guitar (which he explained is actually an Elizabethan-styled instrument, based on the first proto-guitars that actually sported metal strings) and an impressive repertoire of Irish songs. I managed to pick up that he's an SCA member and his SCA name is John of someplace. When we broke for eating and socializing, he and I told each other how much we enjoyed each other's music.
Sitting in the circle helped me to remember why I've spent all this time and effort on music. Going through my filkbook as my turns came up kept whacking me with the painful knowledge of how many songs I used to do in circles that I no longer remember fully. (The book helps with words, and a little bit with chords, but when I can't remember the playing style and rhythmic feel I used with a song, I'm just reduced to trying to reinvent something on the spot, and when I can't remember the tune, having it in the book doesn't help.)
I hope we can do it again real soon.
Tags: filk, friends, life, music
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09:37 pm
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I want my 4 hours back
I didn't have time to write this entry yesterday, precisely because of what this entry is about.
Sometime in the middle of last week, one of the folks at work emailed an announcement to everyone in the building that there was a computer recycling event this Saturday. Since I have been tripping over a dead 21" CRT monitor in my living room for months and I have a couple of dead printers lying around, this seemed like a good idea. Unfortunately, nothing in the announcement mentioned that what appeared to be half the population of Champaign would also think it was a good idea and the folks who were going to be accepting the junk would be utterly overwhelmed.
( too much detail about a really long wait )
I'm glad that I am rid of the junk and that it's in the hands of someone who's at least purportedly going to recycle it rather than just landfilling it. I'm glad that the governments and volunteers who made it happen did it. I hope they can repeat it on a semi-regular basis. But I also hope they can find a better system so that hundreds of people don't have to sit in a queue of cars, or at the very least that they can provide some warning.
Tags: c-u, life, tech
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09:43 pm
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Taxes done
Taxes:
- Computed in spreadsheet - CHECK
- Copied onto paper forms (checking numbers copied into spreadsheet) - CHECK
- Labels affixed - CHECK
- Photocopied (Yay for printer that is also a copier) - CHECK
- Envelopes stuffed, addressed, and stamped - CHECK
- Envelopes mailed - pending (not making a special trip out of the house tonight)
Perhaps some year I will e-file. I plan on e-filing either (a) when they start charging a service charge for paper filing, or (b) when I believe that I can do it myself, through my current web browser, without having to buy or install software, pay fees, or suffer undue gaggage.
Perhaps some year I will actually be together enough to do this in February.
Tags: life
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08:44 pm
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Impediments to Photography
I wrote a comment in pir_anha's LJ that I should actually make as an entry in my own blog. I'd like to be able to actually capture all the trains of thought that this has set off in my mind, but to begin with I'll just repeat what I said in that comment. Hopefully soonish I can expand on some of this.
Upthread from this comment I'd mentioned that there were some things holding me back as an on-line photographer. I then expanded on that to say:
What's keeping me from posting pictures on a reasonable regular schedule is that it takes me so much time sitting in front of the computer before I can actually post something, and secondarily that it's such a chore.
I need:
(1) a reliable broadband Internet connection;
(2) a software solution to organizing pictures so that I can pull the memory cards from the cameras I used that day, stuff them in the card reader, and not have to use my brain at all to get the files copied
into the file structure *I* want them in;
(3) a software solution to organizing, uploading, and presenting as a web page the edited pictures I want from that day.
(2) and (3) are things I ought to be able to do for myself, but I'm so damn burned out on software and computers that I've made zero progress towards those goals in the more than 3 years I've known I need them. I have a tremendous aversion to paying commercial software prices, but if there were a package that would just do what I wanted, I'd be willing to pay for it. What I'm not willing to do is to pay huge wads of money for something that I then have to deal with learning to use, hoping that I can actually get it to do what I really want.
Tags: life, photography, tech
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07:21 pm
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Not eaten by troll
I managed to leave my windbreaker at birder2's on Monday, and not notice it until today, and I need it tomorrow, so I had to travel west. So I decided I'd take my walk at Homer Lake, since it's slightly on the way, instead of being in the opposite direction. I knew it would be muddy. I had my boots, I thought I'd be OK. But as I slogged through a whole lot of mud and quite a few pools of standing water that completely covered the path, I started to imagine that I would sink in, get stuck, and be eaten by a troll. However, no trolls or other monsters were in evidence; the closest we came was several friendly doggies who were walking as well.
Nothing is looking very springy, and the wind blowing off the lake felt darn cold, even though the car thermometer claimed it was 48°F. Except for the frogs in the shallow lake north of Oak Ridge, it felt more like winter than spring.
Tags: homer lake, life, nature, walks
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