Green tea, please. There've been a lot of vigils around town - yes, I'm bringing it up, I can't escape it when I live at the epicenter. Though I will say, this is likely the last bit I want to say about it for a long, long time. The cliche thing to say is "It's different when it's your city on the screen," and it is. Oddly, maybe I'm just in a better circle of people, but my feeds and interactions generally don't involve politic'n an bullshit'n. People here are just sad. Sad and angry and hurt and confused. Once the initial wave of press and media and calls for change receded, we saw more of what Orlando has done for those personally affected. In this light, I'm proud of my city and what it's done following this weekend. Check this out from a friend's post who has her ear to the ground: Also, ALL airlines are offering free flights for the families, not only Jet Blue. Here's the center of my Student Union, a shot before the vigil (one of many to come): I had left before it all started, yet here's a shot from a friend of mine during the vigil: And, lastly, a shot from a buddy who was downtown: I read Obama is coming in town tomorrow (no public event: only to visit the families and survivors), which I just got an e-mail reminder about tomorrow's luncheon for the Mental Health Association to be sure to leave even earlier due the President's presence in town maybe making a commotion traffic-wise. The luncheon itself is viewed as "part of the community spirit" now, which is a plus. ? In training for it last week we were informed there's going to be multiple layers of security due to a celebrity appearance. I didn't even think of it, though it makes sense (Did you know that Glenn Close has her own personal detail?). Unfortunately, we'll be tight on time, so I won't be able to get a picture (like a scrub) with a movie star. :( Back on topic of communities, scrolling through, I'm relatively impressed the discussions on here didn't devolve into utter flame war(s). For all the divisive topics that come with events like this, there were interesting opinions, arguments and so forth from all angles. Tensive on given threads; still the atmosphere was far different than I expected for "the internet"... All is said and done, I think this is really the last bit I hope to discuss about it, for whatever it's worth. EDIT: Thank you for the badge, WanderingEng.The City is donating $7500 to each victim's family for funeral expenses and the burial plots are free. The plots will be lined up in the cemetery so that they can be seen even when the cemetery is closed and will face the Orlando skyline. If anyone needs information about how to obtain this, please send me a private message and I will assist you.
Your perspective is concrete. Ours is abstract. Of course your experience is different. There's a quote in the emperor of all maladies, credited to I can't remember who. "Statistics are people with the tears wiped away." Continue being people for us. That's what makes a community.
Thanks, I've been thinking about this. I guess it would be counter-productive to go dark on the subject when I could instead shed light. My intention with regard to [...] this is really the last bit I hope to discuss about it was more in reference to the circular debates that happened under the discussion thread rather than continuing with open dialogue of how to help and what's going on around town in wake of Sunday. "Worst Mass Shooting in US History" is the last thing I wish for people think of when they hear my city; instead, define us by what happened in the wake of echoed gunshots. That came out way more poetic than initially intended. Yesterday's MC for the luncheon was a local columnist, Scott Maxwell. The luncheon's focus was (naturally) skewed as a result of Sunday. For example, the mayors of Orlando and Orange County were with the President instead visiting families and victims, though they stopped in prior to the event as a nod. One of the most interesting things Scott spoke of was how his usual role in these national stories is as the contact reporter (I don't know what this entails), yet as he started receiving calls from other news agencies, he also received a call for lunch with a reporter from Newtown, then a call for dinner with a reporter from San Bernardino, then another call for lunch from Blacksburg's reporter, and so on - as if we'd joined fraternity of cities visited by similar tragedy. I'll be posting a handful of updates where there are (verified) emerging avenues to contribute and support those affected alongside some uplifting gestures that have happened as a reaction .Continue being people for us. That's what makes a community.
this is likely the last bit I want to say about it for a long, long time.
Spent all Friday and Saturday playing with my new best friend. Picture included. No Internet, hot as hell, got to see some of the Herschel 400 and got to see some really, really faint galaxies after the moon went down. We tried to find the comet currently bright enough to be interesting, but turns out we were looking in the wrong part of the sky, off about 20 degrees. Nuts. Spent the whole weekend with nearly zero access to the outside world, came back Sunday to find people are still people. So here is that pict of my new best friend I promised.
So, that is an old-school Meade 16" F5 reflector. Not in the image is a 7" Astrophysics refractor, and hiding behind the big guy is a 12" Celestron SCT that needs a new motor and does not slew correctly. The photography guys use the Astrophysics scope, but we did do some visual with it this weekend. All in a building with a roll-off roof, warm room, power etc. Fri and Sat were above average. We had clear, clean skies with less than 40% humidity. It was neat. Once the moon went down I went for some faint stuff that had been eluding me for a while. Myself and a few others stayed overnight at the observatory. M64 looked amazing, and we saw all the detail in M91 that I have ever seen. There is a tiny, tiny faint galaxy just off M13 that I've never seen below 2000 feet in elevation, but I saw it twice this weekend from the Ohio Valley of all places. Speaking of Hercules, I finally got a visual on this little bastard. Even in the 16" pictured, it was tough. Was not able to be 100% on Pluto, but I was in that star field, so it was there somewhere. The issue with Pluto right now is that it is very close to a bright star that washes out everything faint around it; throw a 16" mirror at a magnitude 5 star and you lose your dark adaptation. I'm slowly working on the Herschel 400, I am now sitting on 224/400. I'll have to hope for more decent weather on weekends and push to get this done and get my pin next year.
We put a deposit down on an apartment!! Managed to come WAY under budget which is awesome. Moving in August. Currently in the "resisting buying all furniture with nailheads" stage.
Fuck yeah for saving money! Now, take the difference between what you were willing to spend and what your current apartment costs and squirrel it away. It'll be there for when you really need it, like a rainy day, a down payment for a new car, or even for a house. When do you guys move in? What kinds of things do you plan to do when you have guests over? A home isn't a home until you fill it with friends. :)
You know it. I'm looking forward to being able to actually save rather than continuously overspending on tent. We move in mid August. I'm for sure trying to get game night to be a regular thing. I'm gonna have my mom send my super nice Mah Jong set from California so I can teach (and relearn) the game with my friends bc I am a literal Jewish grandma. I also have friends who I'm sure will want to come over and play with my cat(s) to-be and that's fine with me.
It doesn't feel like June. 2 more exams to go. Wish me luck.
OMG it's Wednesday. Sitting in RDU atm, headed back home. Spent the night at thenewgreen's. Ate a tuna sandwich for lunch.
I'm exhausted. Well done while you were here! Onward!!!!
It's only 3:30 p.m. in my time zone (PDT) so I'll just have a coffee, and throw in a shot of that lovely new chocolate cherry Bailey's. Yum. Yup, on the west coast now. But note: I actually kayaked in the mangroves of the keys last week. I kind of half-assed everything, but don't tell kb. You can't go from EYW to YVR without taking at least three planes. Hubski, pubski, I've been just checking in enough to send a :-) or cryptic self-congratulating remark. Because: travel Because: deadlines Because: things have changed are changing. I seem to be rubbing up against the non-line world more. Blame my new iPhone. There is still MUCH to discuss and much to say and do. Also, after my still-working-on-the-damn-separation-agreement ex-husband fell into a slough of despond, I stopped writing amusing #stateofthelil posts mocking him and just felt bad and compromised. On the other hand, as you know, I met someone. Hubski community is awesome company when the so-called love of your life is symbolically and/or metaphorically asleep. But if you are moving into a strange multi-city oneness with someone who is very invested in "getting" you, you just want to sing, "I need you here with me, not way over in a bucket seat."
Just returned home last night from visiting Columbia, Missouri. As a native southern Californian and now central-highlands AZ dweller, I was blown away by the density of plants and insects! I was also flattered by the hospitality of everyone I met there. The midwest seems to shout to me, "We've been here a while." I'm aware that Columbia may be an outlier when it comes to openness to foreigners, though, due to being a college town. The reason I went was to reconnect with a girlfriend I was living with here in Prescott. While the trip sadly concluded our relationship, it also gave me a lot of inspiration to be less of a homebody and put my feelers out to the community. Unrelated: does anyone here know of a method/site to research cities to live in? I've mostly been reading anecdotal reddit comments about specific towns I'm interested, but I imagine there are better ways to go about this.
Dude if I went by Reddit comments I'd never live anywhere. The stuff that horrifies them horrifies the fuck out of them and the stuff they like is generally the opinion I want to punch in the face. Prescott is awesome. I did part of a summer in and around Jerome/Cottonwood/Sedona. Love it up there. I wouldn't move anywhere I hadn't at least vacationed.
Almost done reading every written work by DFW. Went through most of this audiobook this morning over 12 mini-preps, with the unabridged book in the mail some time later this month. Other than that, I'm finally taking some time off to visit Delaware this weekend.
Wow, props to you. I think it took me a good 3 or 4 months to get through Infinite Jest. I think I enjoyed it overall, but I have yet to feel any desire to pick up another DFW book. When I do eventually get that urge, do you have a recommendation for what to read second?
If you're feeling a barrier, I'd pick up one of the short stories books. Girl with Curious Hair was a great second read for me. It's unabridged, got a lot of strange stories, and ends with a short novella that's a decent precursor to IJ and has similar themes. From there, you can either opt for non-fiction / essays (Lobster, A Supposedly Fun Thing, Both Flesh and not), more short stories (Oblivion (very dark), Brief Interviews), or either of the other two novels (Pale King, Broom of the System). It took me a while to approach Pale King, but after the first many insufferably boring chapters, it suddenly becomes much more engaging and an interesting read.
Holy shit, his entire work? How long did it take? What are your favorites and least favorites? And how do the audiobooks of his hold up?
Since starting Infinite Jest... 595 days Favorite would definitely be IJ, least favorite would be either the first half of Pale King or some of the non-fiction in Consider the Lobster. The audiobooks are all pretty good, but a few of them don't include footnotes or are abridged and lacking several stories from a given book. But DFW himself narrates a few of them, and he's got a very peaceful voice to listen to.
Asking $15,000 firm. No lowballers, tire kickers, or joy riders. I know what I have and I know what it's worth. Might be willing to trade for a Ford Mustang or an ATV and some guns. Truck currently does not run. Will need to be towed away." Ever since I made that comment on bfv's weekly music thread, about a dream house and garage, I've been browsing Craigslist for fun on my lunch breaks and spamming my wife's phone with link after link. I'm seeing tons of really good deals from realistic car sellers. I'm also seeing tons of jokes too. Maybe it's a redneck thing . . .
"For sale. GMC Crew Cab Pickup. Like new. Garage kept all its life. Never seen rain. Many parts replaced with new, too many to list. The car runs strong and the odometer will continue to climb as I use this as my daily driver. I just completed a round trip from California to Maine with zero issues. Minor dent in the front.
Ha! Fuck. I didn't even notice that. I just pulled a random image off of Imgur. It's more than likely though. Chinese car companies constantly rip other designs. I don't read Jalopnik anymore, but I know they've had a few articles dedicated to them in the past.
I've been browsing property lately, a mix between dream homes and realistic stuff. It's fun to look and find land for sale that hits many of my wants at a price I find reasonable. I'm not going to move on anything for at least a couple years, but I still browse around. Not many joke properties, though.
Getting back on the train. Was visiting my sister in Redneckistan. The train is cool 'cuz you get to see the forgotten hearts of all these little communities and observe what they were before the freeways came. Carlsbad? Oceanside? San Juan Capistrano? I get it. The train is bad because you see solid graffiti for about 45 minutes out of LA. At the Anaheim station there was a topless woman studiously brushing the dirt clean with a palm frond. The bike has about 250 miles on it. Broke the pedals clean off. Have everything dialed. Toying with buying bondage shoes. It is eerie how comfortable my incredibly uncomfortable-looking saddle is becoming. A decade and a half ago I resolved that my chair would conform to my ass, not the other way 'round and I hope that my posterior prevails.
I've had a weird couple of weeks. Though nothing's changed in the past while, I've felt noticeably disconnected from the passing of time. I enjoy my work, though I took on extra that I probably shouldn't have, and my routine, but it's all blending together. It feels like I'm stuck in my routine wake up, go to work, come home, play games and hang out with friends for a while, eat dinner and hang out the family for a bit, work some more, go to bed and repeat. I'll do this for a while, blink and a week's gone by and then a month. It feels wrong to complain about all of this since the things I listed are all the things I want to do. Writing it out makes it seem obvious that I need to break this routine, but at any given moment it feels like I'm doing the thing I should be doing. Anyone have any suggestions?
You too, huh? enjoy my work, though I took on extra that I probably shouldn't have, and my routine, but it's all blending together.
I've bitten off way more than I can chew lately but on a positive note I think the Japanese beetles learned not to fuck with me. At least that's what it seems like after I bashed them with a shovel last night and left their corpses as warnings to the others. I can't see as many today and normally no matter how many you kill they still seem to multiple. I read leaving piles of dead ones out or liquefying dead ones to spray on plants can be a helpful deterrent. I'm going to be building some bat houses to put around the yard because the bats will eat them along with other annoying flying insects too as an extra measure. This really slowed down progress on redoing the gardens but it's probably a good thing since I don't exactly have the design down yet. I actually might look forward to this winter since I'll just be done with it all whether I want to be or not.
Today I watched all episodes of Mr. Robot except for the first one which I watched yesterday. Absolutely love it, maybe my favourite TV series. I'd hoped to have done more, because I 'enrolled' in Machine Learning and "Learning learning" classes on Coursera(without paying for a certificate) and are already a day behind. They're actually pretty good.
I've got mad insomnia or something. Three nights ago I went to sleep at midnight and woke up at 3am. Gave up on trying to get back to sleep around 6am. Two nights ago I slept from 2am until 3pm. Last night I didn't sleep at all, but I just got up from a "nap" that lasted from 9:30am til 5pm. I don't even know, man. In other news, I got a job at a local burger place. I start Friday. They're paying me enough that working there doesn't feel like a waste, which is nice, but I'm still not too into it. Mostly my parents want me out of my room for a couple hours a day because they don't think I'm accomplishing anything (BS).
Planning to build a deck in our backyard this upcoming weekend - should be fun! Being back home is expensive as fk, Just spent 100$ at the doctor's, then 100$ for a new goddamn charger, then 100$ at Costco. And the day's not over yet. My entrepreneurial dreams are being a little bit squashed by adult responsibility. And motherfukers at UO still owe me 6k and stopped responding to emails... what should I do!? The only good thing right now is the 20$ unibroue variety pack of 24 beers I got at Costco. You beer lovers jealous yet?
The cost of life in somewhere expensive like a lot of urban areas in the United States can be absolutely startling. Especially when you think of cost in terms of hours-of-work-at-my-wage units. Wow. This Apple laptop charger cost me 5 and a half hours of post-tax income. This reminds me of a joke. A comic relates having gone to a professional baseball game and finding out, The next day I'm at my 8 year old niece's dance recital. And I thought, "I would pay a hundred dollars for a drink."Beers cost $10 a can at the stadium. Ten bucks! I thought to myself, "I would never pay ten bucks for a drink."
So I actually think I figured out my trip to Canada. My friend actually came up with the idea, and I figured I'd roll with it. I was originally gonna drive into Canada (It was between Montreal and Toronto). I went to get coffee with a good friend of mine, and they suggested if I decided on Montreal to just take the train from NY Penn to Montreal. It's a ridiculously long ride, but from what I've seen it's really scenic, so why not? Plus, it is pretty cheap in terms of travel. I figured I would spend one full week there because the ride is so long I essentially miss out on two days. The only real issue I think I might have is that I know Montreal is predominantly French-speaking, so I wonder if I will struggle with a language barrier. Beyond that I'm strongly considering Montreal over Toronto for now. I probably won't get a chance to go until maybe august at some point. You probably saw that video on the internet with Pharrell telling that woman (Maggie Rogers) that her music was really great, well the song was actually released today (yesterday?). I really like the song, Maggie Rogers - Alaska
Thanks for the song link! I didn't know how long we'd have to wait. edit to add: Any other music you can recommend in a similar vein? Hell, anything you like at all?
You should not have any problems not speaking French, everyone working in service s bilingual, and i'd say 80% of regular Montrealers. You only risk running into trouble if you go out of the city into the countryside. When are you going? I think he francofolies started, next it's jazzfest. Free concerts downtown all day every day. What are your interests? I can recommend you some stuff to do too! MTL represent 😉
Unless things change I probably won't be able to head out there until late July, early August. My interests are pretty varied. Music and art are always a big thing for me when I visit any major city. Any like botanical gardens, or easier nature trails I'm always a big fan of. I'm interested in good coffee, and good food. Honestly any places of interest I will do my best to visit.
That train ride should be ridiculously scenic. It looks like the tracks are along Lake Champlain for a long chunk, and you might even see some of the Adirondack mountains to the west. I've been to Montreal and haven't had problems knowing only English. I did the best I could with my extremely limited French, and the locals worked with me in their really quite good English.
I came home from my trip to find that the person to whom I entrusted my car fucked it up, then lied to me about it, then took it to 'a guy he knows' to try to fix it. And he has the nerve to make jokes about it and expect me to laugh. Lesson learned: Be an island, even if it costs. Edit - No fluids that get put into the engine compartment stay in the engine compartment. Managed to get it to my apartment complex anyway, and out of the sketchy neighborhood it was in without it overheating, but I won't be driving it anymore. Time to start calling scrapyards and browsing newused cars. The responsible party is going to be paying me the bluebook value my car had when I handed over the keys. Exactly how he will go about doing that is still undecided. Anybody got an old Subaru they wanna sell?
Or, "let the little things go or find yourself alone." Friends do stupid shit. They are our friends because we forgive them. Not sayin' you should underwrite his career with Uber but "you jacked up my car" is a dumb reason to cut a friend loose. You will regret it and that right soon.