Monthly Archives: December 2011

Lazy Day With Positives

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The sun emerged from hiding today and temps soared into the low 50s.  As I understand it, tomorrow could come close to hitting 60 (the perfect temperature), though the rain may also return.

While I didn’t have any grand plans today, I thought about getting a haircut and doing some more work on the GBB library page.  Neither of those things happened, of course.  I did get a small measure of grocery shopping done this morning.  Basic stuff – cheese, milk, bread, apple juice, cat litter, and some more cheese for the outdoor cats.

During the cold and wind yesterday, Buddy and Fleck
kept each other warm by setting up a cat stack.

I discovered last night that Fleck, Buddy, and Brooks all love cheese; and, by using my last slice prudently, I was able to convince Fleck (at least) that the cathouse that I built for them is not a death trap.  When I went out this morning to put out their dry food rations, Fleck casually strolled out of the house as if he owned it.  After returning from shopping, I stepped out to the deck to parcel out some cheese and he was back in the house.  He and Buddy had a nice time begging for (and receiving) their treats for about 10 minutes and then he went back into his house for a nap.  I’m not sure, but I think Buddy may be sharing the new quarters with him, which is precisely what I’d hoped.  The two of them can surely keep the inside of it warm no matter how cold it gets outside.

I don’t know if there are gay cats, but Fleck and Buddy are extremely close to each other.  I have a suspicion that Fleck may be Buddy’s sire.  Those two sentences, taken together, are kind of sick, no?  Anyway, they’re cute together and I’m glad that they have an obvious bond.  It’s got to be tough to be an outdoor cat.  Hopefully, having a friend makes things easier.

After I played with the deck kitties for a while, I came back inside and made some seriously kick-ass Shepherds Pie for lunch (and dinner, as it turned out).  Not sure what made it so good.  It may have had something to do with the fact that I haven’t made it in several months – or maybe I just got lucky with my selection of spices.  Whatever the reason, it was superb.

After eating, I settled onto the couch to watch a movie and ended up sleeping for about 2 hours.  Woke up later, watched the movie again (Netflix is awesome that way) and then had some more of the Shepherds Pie.

Practiced the tuba for another 30 minutes tonight (Bordogni etudes, mostly, but finished with scales).  Fingers were quite sore after that, but not as much as last night.  In fact, I was able to mess around on the piano for another 30 minutes after the stint on tuba.

And tonight?  I’ll probably watch another movie and hit the sack early.  Maybe tomorrow I’ll get that haircut.

TWD

alliteration

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December despair.
Dark, drizzly, dreary days.
Damned doubts.
Depression.
Doom.
Death.

That is my happy sestet for the day.  A friend suggested that I write a sonnet about the word “Frowsy” without actually using the word, but I’m just not up for it.  Bitching about December using only “D” words is much easier.  I really need to come up with a decent topic to write about in this blog.  Maybe I’ll start taking the suggestions (lame as they are) from the “Post-A-Day” groups.  To keep it interesting, I guess, I could also use a “Word-A-Day” system and try to work the daily words into the daily post topics.

Something to try in January.

What might be more interesting is to do both of the above exercises while also trying to keep a coherent narrative going.

Yeah.  That was like an “Aha!” moment right there.  Beginning next week, I shall endeavor to use strange words and boring topics to create a work of fictional genius.

Need some character names, though.

Winter Blahs

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It has been cold and dreary outside for the last few days.  Rained again last night (three days in a row), but today is just overcast and very windy.  Temperature has been hanging around 40 for the last several hours, and my space heaters are blazing without interruption.  I’m still toying with the idea of getting a kerosene heater at some point this winter.  I think it’d be a real help in the living room.

Christmas itself was a rather quiet day for me – and no, I’m not complaining at all.  I did some more cleaning for much of the day and then started building a cathouse for my deck cats.  With the rain and cold, I think they can probably use a warm, dry place; and the litter-box cover that one or two of them had been sleeping under was letting a lot of water in.

The newest cathouse in Duluth.

Late on the afternoon of the 25th, I went over to Jenny’s place and had a lasagna dinner with her and her folks.  Picked up several bottles of beer (Christmas and birthday presents) while there, and then came home and went to bed.

Yesterday, I finished up the cathouse and got it set up on the deck.  As of this afternoon, a number of the kitties have shown interest in it, but none have actually made it a home yet.  Ungrateful little bastards.

Should you be wondering, the cathouse was also a way for me to begin cleaning out the garage.  I’ve got a bunch of scrap wood and other various junk lying around in there, and was able to use a lot of it to put the house together.  Along with about 1/3 of the wood, I cleared out a number of garden kneeling pads – which I’ve never used – some rags, and some nylon tenting material that I’ve been hanging on to for God knows what reasons.

While building the thing, I started taking a close look at the layout of the garage and am slowly formulating an idea to put in a big workbench area along the back wall.  Currently, that space is taken up by an old desk that Dad built, 4 or 5 wire shelves, and about 8 milk boxes.  I’m quite certain that there’s plenty of room for me to put in a full-length bench, under either cabinets or shelves, and have a decent place to play around building things while still allowing two cars to park there.

Today has been devoted mainly to coding the GBB library page, doing some laundry, thinking about doing dishes, and wondering if I’m going to go out to play some trivia tonight.  Oh yeah – I paid some bills, too.

No wonder I’ve been depressed all day.

TWD

a holiday poem

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Man.  I’m hungry.

‘Tis the night before Christmas and I am at home
sitting in bed and composing a poem.
My bathrobe is hung by its hook on a door.
Underwear’s strewn on the unvacuumed floor.

One cat is curled up at the foot of the bed.
With visions, no doubt, of dead bugs in her head.
The other cat’s downstairs, most likely asleep.
No worries, no job, no appointments to keep.

And I, in my nakedness, type like a fiend
writing this verse on my laptop (wide-screened).
The TV is off, but the air cleaner hums.
What’s chaffing my ass?  Oh – some old cracker crumbs.

There’s no tree in the house and no presents to wrap.
I’m an old single guy and I don’t do that crap.
I don’t leave out cookies and milk for the elf.
I don’t even have any snacks for myself.

The crackers, you see, were from sometime last week.
Since then, I’ve had nothing but salads (all Greek).
There’s canned food downstairs.  Of that I am sure,
but, for me at least, kidney beans hold no allure.

That being the case, there’s not much to say.
I guess I’ll just starve for the rest of the day.
Tomorrow, however, I’m having lasagna.
I’d offer to share, but you might get some on ya.

So have a nice Christmas, alone or with friends,
and think of me starved, as this poem portends,
but do not get misty-eyed.  Nay!  Do not weep!
I’ll surfeit tomorrow.  Tonight, I shall sleep.

TWD

Closing Out the Year

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I’ve had a fairly uneventful week, which is nice.  Did a little (very little) work between Monday and Thursday before shutting down the work laptop for good on Friday.  Not planning to bring it back up until January 3rd.

Dropped Scott off at MARTA on Wednesday morning, and he’ll be gone until at least the 4th.  Once I had the house to myself again, I sort of got into the cleaning mode.  Cleared out the music room, which had become a dumping ground for … well… for stuff over the last year or two.  It has now been reassigned to its former role of a place for horns, music, books, a piano, etc.  It also has the Day family dining room table in it, although I don’t have any chairs yet.  Maybe I’ll cruise up to TR this week and pick those up.  If they’ll fit in my car.

I also got serious about rebuilding my “Kramer” laptop (so named because of the faux wood finish on the case) and got it up and running again.  I’m using it now, in fact.  Set up its docking station on Mom’s old sewing machine table – a nearly perfect fit – and there’s now a fairly nice little office setup downstairs (also in the music/dining room).

I also straightened up the living room and let the Roomba loose for a few spins around the entirety of the downstairs area.  Great little machine, that Roomba.  I don’t endorse a lot of things, but I’ll give that thing 5 stars.

Upstairs, I did a half-hearted job of cleaning my bedroom, but more needs to be done.  Really want to get some wireless set-top boxes for the televisions so that I can rearrange the bedroom the way I’d really like for it to be, but that will have to wait.  At least all of my clothes have been laundered at put into drawers – and I’ve got a festive holiday quilt on my bed now.  Hoping to clean out the bedroom closet this week also.

Last night I played the final GBB caroling gig at Lenox Mall (for the Salvation Army thing).  Much to the relief of my aching elbows, I did so on a tenor horn instead of the tuba.  Started out pretty out of tune, but after the horn warmed up and I messed around with the slides enough, I acquitted myself fairly well.

This morning, I finished watching Jane Austen’s Emma on Masterpiece Theater (PBS).  I tried to read it earlier this year, but lost interest about 3/4 of the way through and felt sort of guilty about it.  Now that I know the story (I assume that the movie was fairly true to the book – it was 4 hours long), I might give reading the book another shot next year.

I’m also going to finish Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying this week. It’s quite likely that I’ll have to start over on that, as I’ve forgotten much of the plot and most of the characters, but it’s a pretty short book.  I stopped reading it because I found that just reading it was impossible for me – Faulkner is just too much work – but that reading it aloud made it much more interesting and opened my eyes to just how good a writer Faulkner was.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t bring myself to read aloud when Scott was in the house; and, since he lost his job in November, he’s been in the house pretty much non-stop since then.  Now that I’ll have a week alone, maybe I can knock the thing out in an afternoon.  Shoot, maybe I’ll tape myself and give away personalized audio books for family birthday presents this year.

Spent much of today asleep.  That wasn’t my intention when I got up at 6:45, but I crashed on the couch at somewhere around noon and didn’t wake up until nearly 6:00 this evening.

Tomorrow (Christmas day), I’m going over to Jenny’s place to have dinner with her and her parents.  I realized today that I don’t have gifts for any of them.  Maybe I’ll stop at Kroger’s and get them each a pop-tart or something.

TWD

Another Week Completed

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I must admit that this week has gone by rather quickly.  I finished a couple of small projects at work (including the all-important A&D – listing my accomplishments for the year), but spent most of my time there playing around with other tools/ideas that I want to make use of going forward.  CSS and JQuery are going to be high on my list in 2012, and I’ve started messing around with a website framework that makes good use of both of those things.

Since the current webmaster of nabba.org (the brass band association’s official website) apparently has nothing to say about the new site that I built last month – I’m supposed to be taking over for him, but he’s not making it easy – I went ahead and uploaded the framework that I’m going to start playing with next to the “fake” nabba site.  You can view it at nabba.us.  As it stands now, it has nothing whatsoever to do with NABBA – it’s just a basic design that I pulled from a tutorial – but I’ll be playing around with it over the weekend.  I think I’m also going to try to use it as a framework for my online library for the brass band (which already uses a lot of jQuery), and I may just go ahead and try to rewrite the whole brass band website into it.  I haven’t really decided yet.  Still very much in the experimental stages.

Not in the experimental stages, but very much in the writer’s block stage, is the Frowsy Noise blog.  I can’t think of a thing to write about.  I’ll try tomorrow.  Hoping to do some picture taking tomorrow, too.

Played carols at the mall with 6 other guys this evening.  We sounded pretty good and raised a bit of money for the Salvation Army.  I’m supposedly doing it again next Friday, but I don’t know if anybody else is planning to help out.

I started playing around with a new camera app on my phone today called “Instagram.”  It’s pretty cool and has some decent effects:

Picture of Boo taken with my iPhone and edited with Instagram

TWD

who am i?

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I’ve been watching Breaking Bad for the last week or so (I’ve become completely addicted to it) and one of the scenes made me start to think hard enough that my mind wandered and I had to pause the program.  In the scene, Jesse Pinkman is in a post-rehab meeting; and the meeting leader says something along the lines of, “You don’t come here to be a better person.  You come here to learn to accept the person that you are.”

As I said, it sort of made me think.  As far as I know, I accept the person that I am – but I’m not overly sure that I really know myself.  I tried coming up with one-size-fits-all adjectives to describe me honestly, but none of them really fit.  This exercise, of course, depressed the hell out of me and has caused me to wonder  what the answer is to today’s blog entry:  Who am I?

More specifically, what defines me?  What is it that I like doing?  What don’t I like doing? If money were no object, what would I do with myself?  What talents, if any, do I possess and are any of them worth pursuing from an “I like this” point of view?

So I’ve been thinking about this on and off for the last few days and decided I’d try to figure it out – in bits an pieces – with this little FN blog.  Not all at once, of course; and I’m not going to turn this thing into a tell-all (that’s what my original blog was becoming, which is why it is no longer open to the public).  As I think of it, though, I’ll try to hash things out.

I really like photography.  I do.  I’m not that great at it (and I do wonder if getting my stupid eyes checked would help), but I honestly enjoy it.  The feeling that I get when a really good photo comes straight out of my camera is one that I can’t describe.  I want to show it to the world, hang it on my wall, and – perhaps most importantly (and most maddeningly) – do it again.  When I see a great picture taken by someone else, I get jealous.  Not necessarily because I didn’t take it, but because if I take the same picture – even if it’s just as good or better – it still isn’t mine.  Somebody else did it first, and anything I get after that is just copying.  Screwed up, huh?  I might still love the shot that I get, but on some level I’m annoyed with myself because I didn’t think of it first.

In other news, I saw a suggested topic from one of those “Post-A-Day” blogs today that went something like, “How do you decide on your New Year’s resolutions?”

It’s an interesting question in an odd sort of way.  How do you decide which resolutions about which to be resolute?  Is that the question?  Or is it, “Why do you keep making the same promises to yourself, year after year, whether publicly or not, when you never succeed in keeping those promises?”  I mean, if I wanted to set a goal for myself and be relatively assured that I’d make that goal, it’d be something along the lines of, “I resolve that I will not wear soiled underwear during the entire 2012 calendar year.”

Now, this might be a no-brainer to some of you; but try keeping that goal when you’re camping for a few days in the middle of nowhere.  It’s not a completely safe goal if that’s the case – but I could keep it by just going commando.  So there’s that.

Those other goals, though (and I do make them – or at least think about them – every frigging year), have almost become pointless.  I mean, if there’s this “resolution” that you want to make (and keep), then why haven’t you made it and kept it previously?  Furthermore, most of the “big” resolutions are always negative.  As in, “I will not smoke this year,” or “I will not drink this year,” or “I will not eat chocolate this year” (that last one, by the way, is one of those goals that I could fly through).  And, with those negative goals, what does the person who makes them always do on December 31 – the day before those negative resolutions go into effect?

You got it.  Mr. Resolve goes out of his way to binge like hell on the very thing(s) that he’s determined to give up.   And he wonders why he’s already failed to live up to his expectations by about January 3rd.

Why not make some positive resolutions?  “I will put $5 into a cookie jar every week.”  That of course, doesn’t limit you from taking $3 out of the cookie jar every week…

Anyway, I don’t know what makes me think I’ll be able to do/not do something next year that I’ve been not doing/doing for long enough that I think I have to start/stop doing it; but I still make the damned resolutions every year, and I’m sure I’ll do it again in a few weeks.

This time, though, I think I’ll just make my resolutions on a weekly basis.  Who knows?  Maybe I can keep one going for 52 consecutive weeks.

TWD

Monday

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I knew I was going to be tired today.   Got about 4 hours of sleep on Saturday because I stayed up half the night watching season three of Breaking Bad on Netflix.  I was not aware that the 4th season isn’t available (will desperately look for it online tonight, because I’m completely hooked at this point).

Since at least college (and probably long before then), I’ve been able to function normally on the day after I don’t get enough sleep; but – regardless of how much sleep I get on that next day – I will be wiped out TWO days after not getting enough sleep.

You’d think I’d learn, huh?

Fleck (left) and Buddy chow down
In spite of walking around like a zombie at 6:30 this morning (Boo’s been letting me sleep in these days.  I might actually have to set an alarm if she keeps this up), the morning started out on a happy note because I learned that Fleck has moved into the new accommodations that I set up for my squatter kitties yesterday afternoon.
Who’s Fleck?  He’s one of about six feral cats that live in my back yard.  Several of them seem to spend most of their time either under my deck or in the “extreme” back yard (the part separated from the rest of my land by a French drain and several large privet trees), but most of them make the occasional journey up to the deck itself, and they can be seen sunning themselves on my outdoor table during nice weather.
A few of them have gotten quite used to me, which isn’t a total surprise because they’ve been getting food from me literally since before their eyes were open.  Their mom was, at any rate.  Fleck, oddly enough, was not one of those kittens who was born under the deck last summer.  I first noticed him – fully grown – hanging out in my front yard about two years ago.  Since then, I’ve spotted him now and then either hiding under the deck or slinking away through the backyard privet; but over the last few weeks he has become much more sociable and can be counted on to make his way to the deck whenever I open the back door (a noise that several of the cats have come to associate with food – for good reason).  He has come to enjoy having his head scratched and vocalizes quite a bit whenever he sees me.
My favorite little squatter cat is named Buddy, one of the kittens in the second litter born this summer.  He’s never been overly afraid of me, and about a month ago he just decided to be my outdoor pet.  Whether I give him food or not, he’ll come running to me when I go outside, and he’ll usually flop over and look at me with big eyes until I scratch his tummy.  
So yesterday, I moved the top of a litter box that had been sitting in the backyard for two or three years up to the deck and put some rags under it in the hope that Buddy would make his way to it and give up his under-the-deck sleeping quarters now that the weather has turned decidedly chilly.  Should you be wondering, the litter box top was in the backyard for the same reason – it’s basically a plastic dome that I put out there so that the cats would have a dry place to go.
Buddy didn’t seem too impressed with the setup yesterday afternoon; but when I opened the door this morning to put some food out for the feral feline buffet, Fleck nonchalantly squeezed out from under the box top, yawned, stretched, looked at me, squeaked happily, and started chowing down.
When I went out tonight to check on everybody, it appeared that Buddy may be sharing my little cat condo with his much bigger pal.  It made me smile.  They’re both very sweet cats, and I like having them out there to keep the rodents away.
On the musical front, I got a nice surprise last night.  A small group from the GBB did some red bucket caroling for the Salvation Army on Friday, which was fun; and the same group plus two more got together at the HQ of the SA last night to provide music for a Christmas dinner that they were having for their recovery groups (alcohol, drugs, etc).  We did this primarily because the SA lets the band use their temple as a rehearsal space and also lets us house music and equipment in an upstairs mechanical room – for free.  That being the case, we try to help them out with music whenever we can.  
We were told on Friday that we might possibly receive gift cards as a thanks for playing at the dinner – which is awfully nice of the SA – so it was completely unexpected and made for a really great night when, after being given a dinner and getting to listen to a (pretty good) comedian perform, we were also each given $100 in cash.
Hope all those suckers in the GBB who were too busy to help out hear about that!
Oh – and I got to play TUBA at both the Friday gig and the Sunday one.  As far as I know, I’ll be doing it again this Friday (another red bucket deal at an Atlanta mall).  After being on the tenor horn for the last 6 months, it was both a challenge and an incredible amount of fun to play the big horn.  Inspired me to maybe practice it a bit between Christmas and New Year’s, when I’ll have the house to myself and won’t have to go to work.  I’d really like to get my chops back into shape if possible.
TWD

yeah. i’m mr. fix-it

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Got home this evening and decided to tackle the knocking noise in the automatic litter box that’s in my bedroom.  It’s a pretty remarkable device as litter boxes go.  I can see the lot of you rolling your eyes at me, but it’s true.  Basically, this is a large round bowl with a conveyor belt sticking into one side of it at an angle.  A small electric motor spins the entire bowl about once every hour, and the poop and solidified chunks of pee are carried up the ramp and dropped into a plastic bag.  No muss, no fuss.  Really.  See for yourself:

So the problem has been with the small motor that rotates the bowl.  It’s a tiny little thing about the diameter of a fifty-cent piece; and, for whatever reason, it has developed a very slight knocking.  Unfortunately, that slight knocking is passed from the motor and amplified through a series of four gears (the last one being the bowl itself) and has become rather loud.

After spending 30 minutes ripping the entire setup apart, I managed to get to the motor, which was caked with litter dust (no surprise there), but otherwise seemed to be completely clean.  I’d been hoping that a good cleaning would be all it needed, but after blowing it off and putting some magic oil on the gear, I was unable to stop the knocking completely.  It’s a bit better, but still annoying.

So I moved on to Plan B, which consists of putting the stupid thing on a timer so that it only comes on for 1 out of every 8 hours.

After solving that problem – at least at much as I’m going to solve it without buying a new motor – I turned my attention to my old laptop, which continues to irritate me because I’m easy to irritate and because it isn’t perfect.  So far I’ve tried to install about 5 different flavors of Linux on it (with limited success); but, since Linux can’t play Netflix, I really need for it to be running Windows.

It’s a fairly old laptop.  I think I bought it in around 2004.  For some reason, its wireless hardware is not recognized by Windows 7.  Though I’ve managed to install Win7 on it twice, I have not yet been able to get the wireless up.  To anyone smirking and feeling all superior, YES, I’ve looked for drivers all over the place.  It’s not the software, it’s the hardware.  Eventually, I may pull the wifi stuff out of a busted HP that’s sitting on my desk and see if it’ll work with the Dell.

At any rate, Win7 isn’t going to work.  So tonight I put Windows Vista (Ultimate) on it.  Everything seems to work fine, but it may be a bit too much for the processor.  When I tried watching Netflix at full-screen, the video was choppy.  This may have been because AVG (anti-virus) was hogging all of the cpu cycles or it may not have been.  Whatever.  Tomorrow night, I’ll put WinXP on it and see if it’s happy with that.

Stupid Netflix.  If they’d just come up with a player for Linux, I wouldn’t have to deal with all this crap.

Took this at Chattanooga last season and have no place to use it.  Might as
well throw it in here.

TWD

random thoughts

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The cats are annoyed with each other again.  I had to put an extra litter box downstairs because they’ve divided the house.  Boo stays upstairs except to eat.  Bo stays downstairs except to wake me up to eat.  If history is any indication, this will last for about two weeks.  It’s really much more fun when both of them just follow me around.

The temperature was in the mid-60’s when I went to work this morning.  It’s in the mid-30’s now.  There’s just no way to dress for this weather, much less for success.  I’ve got a space heater running in my room tonight.  Can’t bring myself to move the actual thermostat above 57, and I’m going to be asleep soon anyway.

I don’t like Newt Gingrich.  I mean, I really don’t like Newt Gingrich. I liked him once in about 1993.  It lasted about two days.  Then I learned to despise him. It was not a difficult lesson.

The Animaniacs.  Freakazoid.  Pinky and the Brain.  Earthworm Jim.  Rescue Rovers.  The Tick.  Saturday morning cartoons were never as good when I was little as they were in the 1990’s.  And they’ve never gotten back to the level of the WB since then.

Playing tuba in a couple of caroling gigs on Friday and Sunday.  Looking forward to it.  Should probably polish the tuba before I take it out in public, though.  Sounds like a good project for tomorrow night.  I hope I still know how to play the thing – and how to read bass clef.

It’s December 7th.  Pearl Harbor Day.  Also the day that my favorite cat died in 2001.

Got a new project at work today.  It’s a good thing, because I’ll be able to put it on my year-end A&D (accomplishments and crap that must be discussed with the big boss).  It’s also good because it’s one of those projects that looks really impressive and complex, but actually is rather mundane and simple.  My favorite kind of project.

I went shopping at Target tonight because I needed some varied things.  Mayonnaise.  Bread.  Graphite powder to lubricate a little box.  Socks.  While there, I decided to see if there were any old PS2 games that I could pick up for cheap.  Hey, I don’t have to have the latest games.  Turns out that I’m a total antique.  They don’t even have any PS2 games.  It’s all PS3 and X-box now.  Screw it.  I’ll just play NHL 2004 for a few more years.

The cost to register my car has decreased by $2.67 in the last year.  I’m fairly certain that the resale value has taken a much bigger hit than that.  Life isn’t fair.

TWD