SMAG, SMEG, SMIG, SMOG, SMUG

hey li'l buddy

2009-11-25T01:38:24Z

That's the back of my mailbox.

truth in advertising

2009-11-25T01:32:15Z

*** CHILTEPIN UPDATE ***

That's over 700 of them with another 50-100 still on the plant.

After having shared (more like "administered") these to several (now former :-P) friends, I can seriously say that the best word for these are "incapacitating". Chew up one, swish it around... and for the next five to ten minutes, you are doing nothing more than dealing with the pepper. Whether you're doing a little dance, or cussing, or spitting, or eating sour cream - that is all you are doing. It's pretty incredible.

whether you agree with the editorializing or not, this is a brilliant photo

2009-11-23T20:33:20Z

finally

2009-11-02T08:55:44Z

Larva metamorphosizing into adult ladybug. Pardon the bad picture.

also

2009-11-02T08:52:43Z

Taken in the backyard. That bee is about a centimeter long.

HOT HOT PEPPER ON TRAY ACTION

2009-11-02T08:49:57Z

That's about 250 chiltepins, or about 1.25 million Scoville units (3000+ jalapenos). It's about half my "crop" by number and about one-third by mass. :-)

I made the tray from a scrap strip of MDF, a little screen, and a lot of wood glue. I didn't plan on painting it, but the night I did most of the cutting, I got a headache so severe I had to yack twice. Turns out MDF is bound with formaldehyde resin and releases lots of dust when cut. The first symptom of a formaldehyde reaction? Headaches. So anyway, it continues (slowly) leaking formaldehyde from all surfaces, and I didn't want to pick a peck of poisoned peppers.

Building it for the (gas) stove top was to take advantage of the residual heat from the pilot light, of course. :-D

awwwwww yeah

2009-10-05T21:50:32Z

In decreasing order of hotness:

1. naga jolokia
2. Red Savina habanero
3. habanero
4. Thai pepper, what I have about 300 of maturing in my yard
...
...
...
X. jalapeno
...
...
...
XX. bell pepper

They're so tiny and so damn hot. The practical-joke possibilities are endless.

Also discovered in yard: pineapple guava (feijoa)! I only see five growing, and the biggest is about as big as a golf ball, but it's still exciting!

snobscure @ 2009-09-02T17:42:00

2009-09-02T22:43:00Z

Oh yeah, the Pristiq was a disaster, by the way.

snobscure @ 2009-09-02T17:37:00

2009-09-02T22:39:39Z

What do you do when you conclude that you are special enough to live a reasonably easy life, but not special enough to do something really big with it?

Do you choose to be happy, and settle down to a life of contented tedium, finding/cultivating bits of beauty and uniqueness where you can?

Or do you choose to pretend that you *can* do something big, and go down hard in a glorious failure?

Or do you choose a mix of both, and spin down slowly in a haze of alcohol and drugs?

Or do you have kids, and devote your life to them?

I'm dealing with these issues now, hard:

* if I were going to do something big, I'd probably be at least started by now. Being independently wealthy (not having to work) at a young age would have helped.
* a glorious failure would probably leave me either dead or broken beyond repair, and I'm not ready for that.
* alcohol and drugs would probably lead to the above, but in a less-satisfying way.
* kids would be a very bad idea.

So now it's a question of what I can grow in my garden, and who I can share the fruits with.

I'm not exactly bored, and not exactly tired, though a little of both. I'm feeling more like a horse with mental blinders on. Ahead are things I need to do and people I'd like to please. To the sides are psychic self-absorption, including some interesting things I wouldn't mind being absorbed by (projects and so forth) - a bit of the baby with the bathwater here.

Some of this is the Zoloft starting to talk. It's not the best place, but it's better than where I was two weeks ago, by a long shot.

I don't know where my head will be when I get back to Austin and a wider sphere of responsibility. I'll try to keep my mood up.

snobscure @ 2009-08-31T19:10:00

2009-09-01T00:10:54Z

Ai yi yi.

snobscure @ 2009-08-11T23:53:00

2009-08-12T05:02:45Z

I think I've passed well beyond buyer's remorse and into full-blown buyer's soul-crushing depression.

Well, this too will pass. In the meantime, I'd be well-advised to enjoy the perks as much as possible. That's the only way to win.

snobscure @ 2009-08-09T01:47:00

2009-08-09T06:47:44Z

DENTAL PLAN

snobscure @ 2009-08-05T13:36:00

2009-08-05T18:37:42Z

"You know the Koreans and their fucking waterworks, Res. Whole god damned country wants to soak or be soaked with urine. My travels have taught me that it’s the curse of these little yellow bastards. You should get a wetsuit whenever you fly into the airport in North or South."

Oh, the things you learn when you're least expecting it...

snobscure @ 2009-08-03T14:14:00

2009-08-03T19:29:55Z

One thing I predicted - and that other homeowners confirmed - is that this experience would make me less of a perfectionist, and I see it happening already. The "clean blue workshop" of my visions has sprung cracks in the drywall, and the cabinets have gone crooked. There are no real bastions of perfection outside of, say, math, and collectionism. In reality, you simply do what you can, and then you die.

To tip the hat to Einstein, insofar as you have achieved perfection in your life, you are not experiencing it, and insofar as you are experiencing life, it is imperfect. (Redefinitions of "perfection" as "perfect moderation" cheerfully directed to trash for purposes of this post.)

I'm too out of it to give this justice Case in point - having a house ~= experiencing life, writing a quality post ~= achieving perfection.

first night in the new place!

2009-07-26T05:49:57Z

It's such a different feeling than being in a rental. On one hand, I know that if something needs to be done, no one else will do it for me (for free); on the other, I know that anything I do will be rewarded in the future. (Maybe not in a 100% cash sense, but definitely adding together cash return + gained knowledge + gained satisfaction + ...?)

Also - I feel like I'm a lot better with coordinating and being responsible for work results myself than I am with being satisfied with the responsibility and communication skills of your average landlord/rental company. So from that standpoint, things are good, too.

reasons to learn to become lucid at will

2009-07-24T08:19:09Z

* return to the endless orange ocean - and the wooden ship sailing upon it. Give Alisha a hug and ask my Imp a few questions.
* return to the labyrinthine building - any instance will do. Find the heart and try to absorb it.
* return to the arena - I was specifically told not to come back until I could stay lucid. Find out what's behind that fifty-foot tall door, and probably fight it.

To the extent that I believe in such mysticality, I feel I should probably (or even was *meant* to) do these things at some point in my life.

In fact, if I believed in an afterlife, I might even say it was good preparation for it.

snobscure @ 2009-07-22T15:15:00

2009-07-22T20:32:28Z

Okay, I need to write this in chunks or else I'll never write it. Not for public consumption, per se, but I'll remember from it later.

20090716 THU: fly up with Calley, cab to Drake (seeing the aforementioned Volt), Eric meets us at Drake, little awkward at first, go eating and visiting and seeing Eric's place (Eric's first time meeting Calley), feeling overwhelmed, part impromptuly, rest at Drake, leave Calley to meet Eric and Entourage (1) at Bin 36, bachelor party begins. Drinking is off the hook of course, but I achieve my one goal for the night and keep everything down. I learn later that night that Eric's second rule (after "have fun") for the party was "respect the tap", that is, if someone says "no more for now" (taps out), don't be a pusher. Funny, because at one bar I told Paul (craziest of the Entourage), as he was ordering a round of shots, "for the love of God, leave me out of this one", and he very uncharacteristically left me out. (This is the guy who was buying shots + beer backs fifteen at a time later in the night, FYI.) Thank you, Eric! Cabbed back to Drake with Eric, Calley there that night, harassed her (I'd say "molested" except it would give the wrong idea), slept drunk.

1. I call them the Entourage both because they were Eric's party for this occasion, and due to the show - Calley says, "you mean the show where they dress in all-black and try to live the high life?" to which I responded, "well, they don't dress in black..."

snobscure @ 2009-07-19T17:43:00

2009-07-19T22:46:03Z

The first pre-production test car based on the final Volt design was built in June 2009, in Warren, Michigan.

Guess what I saw (one of?) on 90E in Chicago on Thursday?

back!

2009-07-19T22:42:31Z

I've gotten a lot of work done.

here's how to make the glass half full

2009-07-15T23:14:44Z

So, the new place has a walkway that had macerated granite poured on it at one point, but now it's been worn down a bit and there are quite a few weeds growing in it. I've been pulling them and throwing them in the new compost pile. Check this out:

1. by having weeds growing where we don't want them, they are sapping nutrients from the soil, thus making it more difficult to new generations of weeds to grow there;
2. by composting them (along with the dead-and-dried stuff) and spreading them where I *do* want them later, they're functioning as a channel to redistribute (like Obama lol) nutrients as I see fit.

Hooray for weeds!!!

snobscure @ 2009-07-15T14:43:00

2009-07-15T19:46:58Z

No gross details, but it's not hard to put two and two together:

1. the seller of our house and his son lived like fucking pigs;
2. pouring two gallons of rolling-boil saltwater into a (practically) empty trash can, followed by a cup of bleach, is very satisfying in a "nuke it from orbit" sort of way. :-)

snobscure @ 2009-07-15T10:56:00

2009-07-15T15:59:55Z

Fuzzball (cat) was lying on the bathroom floor while I shaved and listened to KUT. She was there for a good twenty minutes (I was in and out, not shaving the whole time :-P), but the second John Aielli started talking, she got up and sauntered out.

That is one smart cat, I tell you what.

snobscure @ 2009-07-12T00:14:00

2009-07-12T05:36:02Z

I gotta say, baseboards and quarter-round look pretty innocuous until you try to remove a 14" length of them.

Tools used (in rough order of first use):

* Dremel tool (cutting attachment)
* flat saw (forget what the carpenter's name for it is)
* 14-in-1 paint tool + rubber mallet
* small claw hammer
* chisel + mallet
* wood file

... but the good news is, we have our second closet about 65% built in! Hooray!

Calley (who's watched quite a bit more home-improvement shows than she's actually done home improvement) said earlier this evening, "I just hope that this isn't one of many future weekends spent on fixing up the house", to which I replied, "well, it *is* pretty satisfying... I mean, what else were we doing??"

I think the important thing is that lately (in the last few months) I've crossed the threshold of understanding houses to the point of not being afraid of them anymore. So, you know, if we're not able to paint all the rooms we want to paint before we have to move our furniture in, we'll move the furniture out again later, and if we put a dent in the wall doing it, we'll fill it. Or if some of the drywall cracks suck up our joint compound and we have to paint over them and we can still see the cracks, we'll slather in more joint compound later at leisure until they're filled, then put on more paint. And if the paint has changed colors since then, we can get more made from the lid. Etc. etc. etc. It's just a house, built out of raw materials in standard ways, and everything can be fixed - not all of it by us, but quite a nice chunk of it, if we take our time.

So yeah, I'm pretty excited!

snobscure @ 2009-07-08T15:31:00

2009-07-08T20:32:54Z

"Joe, go hose that chicken piss off the tarmac" has a nice ring to it!

closing tomorrow!

2009-07-08T16:46:32Z

bad: calculating down payment as 20% of loan amount, not of the purchase amount (GOD am I kicking myself for this)
good: being so paranoid and cautious that I had a cushion deep enough to absorb the difference

phew!