Yet Another Mt. Ascutney Hike

My buddy Dimitri and I went on another awesome hike up Mt. Ascutney on Thursday. As usual, I volunteered to be the 'pack mule'; we rested and ate at the platform where they launch hang-gliders from, baked in the sun for a while and we both got a bit sunburned (fortunately mine has faded to a tan already). It was a crazy-beautiful six hour jaunt with perfect weather. Here are some pics.

'Cascade Falls' - roughly a 70-80 foot sheer drop

Dimitri and I at 'Gus's Lookout', looking sufficiently worn out

The view from Gus's Lookout

The Wild Columbines are in bloom again!

Photographic Chronicles of Delightful Workplace Nonsense

My workplace is quite unique, the other people employed within it being no exception. It is not your standard retail store and we all have unusual personalities. I enjoy having my own brand of absurdism and some of us share a really abstract, dark sense of humor, which makes for some very strange pranks on each other. View the pictures below for a full dose of the sweet madness.

"I am here to protect you from the terrible secret of space": One of my coworkers likes to draw random faces on the daily to-do lists in my department, then one of us usually adds on a body, accessories, and a caption/word-bubble or two. This one is both a reference and a tribute to this obscure internet phenomenon.

One of my dearly-missed coworkers created this mixed-media face just for me, I especially like how she created the jawline from random mathematical problem sets.

A spoon that one of my coworkers purposely rusted as a prop and tribute to Salad Fingers, specifically in reference to this episode where our noble hero expounds upon his affinity for rusty objects, specifically spoons.

Spongebob has obviously been VERY VERY naughty!

Squidward, wearing a lovely feather & bow headpiece, accompanied by a random girlfriend supplied by my buddy Dan.

"Telekrinkulum": Once in a while it is nice to confuse people by writing an emphatic made-up word on a specific date on the department calendar....

...and then offer a confusing clarification by giving the word it's own separate holiday.

A sign that has been hanging in my department for a long time.

I really can't offer a valid explanation for this one, it's totally random except for the fact that 'Feathers' happens to be a fan of Stanley Kubrick, his garb and commentary reference the movie A Clockwork Orange

Even aquatically-necrotic, tire-sitting murder victims can enjoy the fresh, bold taste of Mentos™.

More references to Salad Fingers

Various employees' representations of other employees

To the casual observer, all of this probably looks like the work of a bunch of criminally insane freak-shows, but really folks, where would we be without a bit of nonsense in our lives!!??? :)

Bloom

Springtime means that many of my houseplants decide to burst into bloom all at once.

'Beefsteak' begonia blooms

Geranium

Orchid

'Goldfish Plant' bloom

Blooming Christmas cactus that never wants to bloom around Christmastime.

Euphorbia (aka 'Crown of Thorns')



....and now for some other random pictures from my home and workplace:

Beautiful Ukrainian Easter Eggs created by my sister

Mouth of a Plecostomus

Porcelain Crab, top view

Porcelain Crab, bottom view

A gecko who looks happy, but in truth is likely pretty pissed off (in a holding container while his cage is cleaned). One needs to be very careful around them because of their penchant for selling car insurance policies to unwitting victims who are taken by their cuteness.

Funky gecko foot

Grumpy-looking 'talking catfish' who is probably happier than a pig in mud, hiding under some greenery at the front of his tank

My roommate and 'Addie', my coworker's dog

Neritina snail slurping at the side of a tank

Firebelly toad

Firebelly toad, underside

Leaving For A Few

From Quaker Faith & Practice:

20.01
I ask for daily bread, but not for wealth, lest I forget the poor.
I ask for strength, but not for power, lest I despise the meek.
I ask for wisdom, but not for learning, lest I scorn the simple.
I ask for a clean name, but not for fame, lest I contemn the lowly.
I ask for peace of mind, but not for idle hours, lest I fail to hearken to the call of duty.

Inazo Nitobe, 1909

The last week's time has been a bit crazy and I am packing up to head up to northwest Vermont to care for my grandmother and do some work/repairs around her house while my sister is out of town on a work-related trip.

A Charming Sight

I grew up right on the cusp between the video game generation and the generation before it where kids actually participated in highly social pastimes and cooperative activities; games which involved lots of imagination and improvisation. At the risk of sounding curmudgeonly, I am often a bit disheartened by what seems to be a new generation of kids who are conditioned to stay indoors, playing their Playstations/Nintendo wiis and surfing the internet, busying themselves with things which I believe are causing an unnatural level of sociopathy as well A.D.D. and other emotional/mental disorders, robbing them of the chance to form good social bonds.

On my way to the mountain for what was to be a lovely hike, I saw a group of kids out on the street, drawing designs, pictures, and artificial trails with sidewalk chalk. They had also constructed an ingenious little partitioned play area on the nearby lawn, using sticks, flat rocks, and various bits of found junk to simulate an indoor living room complete with a pretend TV, some chairs, and a few fanciful modifications thrown in.

Sometimes I focus too much on some of the negative aspects of modern life. I have to say that it was a beautiful breath of fresh air... seeing that there are still kids who do... well... normal kid stuff. Whoever the parents of these kids are, I applaud them.

And the hike was indeed awesome. The wild columbines are forming buds and should be blooming within a couple weeks. I sat on top of the mountain and watched two separate thunderheads in the distance, throwing bolts of lightning around with a lot of great cloud-to-ground action. It almost looked like they were competing.

Yeeeeaaah! :-)

I just stepped onto the scale for the first time in 8 months and it made me happy. I recommitted myself to a healthier lifestyle a couple years ago and I've now surpassed the original fitness goals that I'd made. 180lbs. and a 33" waist was my original target, now I'm 170lbs. with a 32" waist. This is right around where I want to stay.

I went on a severe diet and a rigid military-style workout regime back when I was about 19 or 20... dropping weight quick and bulking up on muscle fast (I think I was about 155lbs. with a 29" waist back then) but I looked like a Nazi prison camp survivor with a bit of extra muscle and I ended up with a lot of athletic injuries from pushing myself too hard. Things are definitely better and I am less injury-prone this time around. Back then, I was obsessed with fitness to the point of it becoming my identity. I was known as "the gym guy" around town and became the local gym's poster boy for a little while. Having lived as an awkward, overweight kid throughout most of my middle-school and high school years, it felt really good to be noticed for physical achievement. I came crashing back to earth in my early 20s, realizing that a well-conditioned body means nothing if you allow it to make you conceited and it causes you to ignore your emotional & spiritual health.

Arguing With Me, Myself, and I

The property manager comes to my door the other day with some news. Apparently the house that my apartment is in will be going back on the market within the next few months. This stresses me out a little for several reasons: he currently has a high asking price and wanted to give me the right of first refusal.

One part of me is saying, "YES YES, DO IT!!! You've been wanting to own your own home for years!"

My analytical, practical side is telling me "Not so fast, the asking price is high and the building has a few issues that need to be dealt with, the taxes in this town are skyrocketing along with the property values, and do you really want to deal with such a high mortgage payment?"

Then the other part says, "but there are two units in the building, you could have most of your mortgage paid by the rent from the other unit!"

So of course my practical side chimes in,"For God's sake, you know yourself and you wouldn't deal well with the stress of being a landlord in this area, you've heard the horror stories from your friends who decided to take that route. Plus, do you really want to tie yourself down to this area for an extended period of time? I know you've been planning on breaking away at some point in the next few years."

Then the other part of me retorts,"but it's a place to call home, a permanent home. You'll have the stability and control over your environment which you've been craving for years. You can finally have dog and a nice big garden too!"

Then there's an entirely familiar, yet foreign part of me that is saying,"You may be called to drop everything that gives you stability in favor of something greater. Would it serve you well to become this firmly-rooted at this point in life?"

Piffle, piffle, piffle... there, I've been wanting to say that for no apparent reason. The prospect of possibly owning my own home for the first time, especially a two-unit apartment building is both scary and exciting. Even if I don't opt for buying it right off... let's say the house goes on the market, the real estate market in my area is starting to slide a bit, the housing bubble having burst and all. The price could drop considerably, making the purchase that much more attractive. Or it could sell right away and the person may want to either clear out all the tenants or raise the rent. I guess I just don't know what to do, I won't stress about the last two possibilities for now... if it happens, it will happen. No amount of worrying will fix it or change the outcome.

Currently reading: A Prayer For Owen Meany, by John Irving. Yet another wonderful recommendation from my sister. Really, I have no clue why I should expect less at this point, she's the smartest one in the family and she works as a librarian. Her reading suggestions are always good ;-) Love ya G!!!

Woolman Hill Retreat

I am back from 'Beyond Queer 101: A Retreat for LGBTQ Quakers' down at the Woolman Hill Retreat Center in Deerfield, Massachusetts (see pics below). The retreat was a fruitful time of introspection, discussion, and an opportunity to make new friends. The facilitators had great energy and were very good at working with us as a group. The scenery was lovely as well. The retreat was good for me on many levels. I met some interesting, beautiful people and it was awesome to be able to share time and experiences with a group of LGBTQ folks who also share my spiritual values. I definitely feel like I walked away a better person than when I arrived.

During worship on Sunday, somebody spoke centered words of reassurance that we are not abandoned... it hit very hard and close to home. While there is much more significance to this, I am not going to press this topic. It is more than I care to write and it will be cleared up at a later time. There is much work for me to do on myself yet. The efforts put forth in the last year of my life have not been in vain, but every time I try to give control over to the creative, caring, passive parts of my person, they immediately get tackled and throttled into silence by my raging, aggressive ego who doesn't want to be vulnerable again, remembers every detail of the pain I've been through since my teen years and wants desperately to keep control over me, even if it means stunting my emotional and spiritual growth. The weekend has been good for me... the raging ego is still there, but it has a few degrees less control over me. I don't know what life is bringing me, I still hurt a lot and wrestle with feelings of abandonment by many of those whom I used to be closest to, but my vision isn't as foggy as it used to be and there is new insight working it's way in through the cracks. I'm still cleaning out my life, still a work in progress, always will be I suspect. I hear that the journey is the best part of getting there.

Some of the cabins at the retreat.

The meeting house at sunrise

The retreat center

The retreat center at sunrise

A funky-cool little yurt at the edge of a small woodland pond on the retreat grounds

Umm... WOW

I am not one to turn my blog into a bigger soap box for my political views, but because I believe that the current war which this country is engaged in was unjust from the start and it touches so heavily on moral values and human rights issues, both over there and back home; I feel that this video (found on digg.com) of former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel at the presidential debate in South Carolina speaks volumes... and I completely agree with him on all points.

Whoa, BACK OFF!!!

I'm packing up to head off to a retreat for LGBTQ Quakers this weekend. While I've been looking forward to meeting new people and having some spiritual and mental downtime for learning, sharing, and introspection, there is now a nasty bug going around my workplace and it is carrying pitchforks and torches, pounding on the front door of my immune system. On top of that, I tweaked out my back when I took a bad spill on my before-work hike the other day. I've been giving myself plenty of rest and have been blasting my body with ibuprofen, ginger, echinacea, goldenseal, garlic, and heavily curried dishes in hopes of keeping myself healthy and ready to go away this weekend. The bug now seems to be retreating back into the wild and my back is feeling a bit better. Here's hoping I keep a sound constitution for the weekend and beyond.

I apologize for not blogging more, I have been very busy with spring cleaning and computer repair projects for friends & family. I am also enjoying my new-to-me laptop as well as the enhanced lazy bum capabilities that it brings. Now I can idly surf the internet from any lounging spot in my entire household.

The rains have come and gone, and come again. The snow is completely gone in the low-lying areas around here, the corn field behind my house became a lake for a while, just like last year. Seasons changing, a lot on my mind, much to write about if I can keep my thoughts clear enough to put it all down. I am currently reading the non-fiction novel Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom, recommended by quite a few friends & acquaintances as of lately and oh, what a beautiful story it is. Having been employed with a medical staffing agency and working as a LNA in various health care institutions, I have witnessed a lot of death and various stages of dying so I heavily identify with the author's unique perspective on end-of-life issues. Still, this book has taught me much despite all my experience. I wish I had read it six years ago. Then again, six years ago I might not have had the mental framework to appreciate the book or learn from it.

Well, I need to go finish some housework & packing. I have a bunch of random ideas and pictures which I'd like to chop into my next few posts when I get back.

Movies & A Music Kick

I had friends over to watch Frida this evening. I enjoyed re-watching it, noticing missed plot details from my previous viewing. A while ago my buddy Pasha hooked me up with a copy of the movie Lair of The White Worm and I only just got around to it the other day. Lately I've been watching a lot of films which are either strange and/or artsy/obscure; Lair was a lot of the first and a tiny bit of the second while bordering on being a grade B horror flick. Regardless, I still enjoyed it. I'll also mention that I've been on a British Isles musical kick lately, soaking in a lot of Irish, Scottish and British musical traditions and I can't get THIS ONE out of my head (from the soundtrack of Lair of The White Worm).

I've met my match

For those of you who don't know me, I have three personal creeds regarding food:

1. Maintain a healthy dietary lifestyle allowing for occasional indulgences.

2. There is no such thing as too much garlic (this is subjective I guess).

3. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS TOO SPICY!!!! In fact, if it isn't making me physically sweat, it isn't spicy enough.

As the title of this post would indicate, I have now met my match. The third rule may need to be amended. My coworker J decided to try a recipe for ultra-spicy chicken wings that she found in a school fund raiser-type cookbook, fully expecting it to be tame because 'spicy' recipes out of school fund raiser cookbooks typically are. She surprised herself with how powerful their kick was and knowing what a peppery spice aficionado I am, she brought a couple of them in for me. Upon the first bite they actually brought me to the fine line between uber-spicy and physical pain, causing me to pant and sweat profusely for about 20 minutes. I've never enjoyed the feeling of my head being on fire, but this was actually almost pleasant.

Interesting side note: it has been conjectured that spicy food addicts such as myself are actually given to a form of natural drug addiction due to the endorphin-boosting properties of most types of capsaicin-containing peppers.

Oh, so they want to play

Warning: gripefest coming on...

I've been trying over the last few years to be a less reactionary person... taking the 'moral high road' so to speak; going to people who are stepping on my toes and trying to calmly discuss the issue with them and arrive at a resolution, but this approach also assumes that the other party involved has some regard for entities outside of themselves.

The apartment I live in is a tad shabby, but it is in a relatively safe neighborhood, the rent is currently reasonable, and there are good neighbors all around. A minor caveat: the walls and floors are poorly insulated, especially against sound. I can often hear conversations that my upstairs neighbors are having in a normal tone of voice. My roommate and I usually work second shift and we typically sleep until late morning due to this schedule. Lately we have been awakened to the sounds of DMX, Eminem, and assorted gangsta rap artists (think of LOUD REPETITIVE BASS-LINES) starting around 7-9am. I tried to go up there and explain to them that we slept late because of the shifts we worked, the walls and floors being poor sound-insulators, and politely asked if they would please keep their stereo turned down in the mornings. I thought everything was good and no sooner had I gotten back down to my apartment when they TURNED IT UP LOUD ENOUGH TO RATTLE THE PICTURES ON THE WALLS... and they left the volume right there. I took no action because it wasn't worth my energy at the time. This morning they were at it again and lately I have been incurring lots of sleep debt because of them.

The sound ordinances in this town are such that anyone making excessive noise at any time of the day is fair game to have the police called on them, but I really don't enjoy wasting the PD's time with petty noise-wars and other such frivolous issues. So... I happen to have a nice little sub woofer attached to my computer stereo system. I keep it turned all the way down most of the time but when it is at top volume, it outstrips their stereo by at least 30 decibels. So I took the sub woofer, mounted it on top of my entertainment system, pointed up into the ceiling, cranked it all the way up to top volume with a bass enhancement plugin running on my computer's music playing program. I put it on the loudest, most brainless, obnoxious, repetitive club song I could find in my music folder (Noname - I'm Your DJ, Johnny Vicious Remix) and set it to repeat for a good 20 minutes. The trick seems to have worked for now. Time will tell if I need to take this approach again. My next step may be to go down in the basement and start randomly flipping the circuit breakers for their apartment.

Yeah, this probably seems like an immature, retaliatory method for dealing with the issue but I already tried the nice-guy approach and I am heavily dependent on getting enough sleep.

Currently dreaming of the future time when I will have my own house on my own land and not have to deal with things like this.

Thanks for listening to my whining.

Like Damp Earth, Leaf Litter, and Moss...

...was the smell of the woods on my hike yesterday. I forgot what springtime in the woods smelled like and realized how much I missed it. Yet again I caught myself slogging muddy trails after dark, but I don't mind. Again also I will mention that I find it strange that the woods in the night-time was one of my biggest fears well into my teenage years, now it happens to be my biggest source of zen moments and spiritual/mental/emotional epiphanies. I am noticing more and more that life in general and mine in particular is filled with odd paradoxes and like a newly learned word... the moment you grasp it and integrate it into your vocabulary, suddenly it is popping up everywhere, causing you to take note of it; 'prescient' being one of them, and seemingly apropos given some recent life circumstances which I won't expound upon right now.

A lovely quote spotted on a placard in the meetinghouse library today:
"Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark." -Rabindranath Tagore
It gave me some food for thought, even more so than much of the reading I've been doing lately.

I finally got a laptop computer, purchased for $200 plus some mind-numbing computer work for a couple of friends. The model I worked on was a Dell Inspiron 1500 which turned out to have some device driver issues, a couple of viruses, and a bazillion spyware programs on it. The model I received for this bargain price was an Inspiron 1100. Definitely not top of the line, but more than sufficient for my purposes. I also needed to do a bit of work on this one being as it was infected with one of those malicious RIAA rootkits as well as more viruses and spyware. Both machines are now in excellent working order.

Oh yeah, and I know this post is totally going A.D.D. on you, so I should just run with it now... a few random pictures I found lying around on the computer (I can't remember whether or not some of these have been posted here before):

Me (around age 20 or 21?) and 'Little Buster Brown', a baby robin that my sister's dog brought in unharmed after finding it outdoors. He was an awkward-looking little pink blob with quills when I first took him home and brought him up on a diet of meat-based baby food, worms, and assorted bugs. It was amusing for visitors to see me puttering around in the back yard with him on my shoulder or head. I enjoyed making them think I was some sort of ultra nature boy. Raising this little guy was easy, but the problematic part was letting him go. He just kept coming back no matter how often or how far I took him into the woods. The most amusing scenario was when I thought he was finally gone and he came barreling out of the bushes, landing SPLAT! into a bowl of spaghetti that I was enjoying on my parents' front deck.

A nice silhouetted sunset shot that I took while walking to a friend's house the other evening


'Cromwell', a wild turkey who frequents my parents' back yard


A couple of macro shots of a 'Cherry' shrimp, Neocaridina denticulata sinensis, in one of the planted displays at my workplace

Back when I had long hair, not sure what got into my head back then (I drank a lot back then, so possibly too much Captain Morgan???) ;-p

Glamour shot

R.I.P. Gigabyte GA-7DX Frankenstein Box: 02/25/2000 - 03/14/2007

This paragraph is dedicated to my old computer, may it rest in peace. It lived through almost eight years of my repeated tweaking, experimenting, overclocking, obsessive component-changing, power-using, multi-tasking, repeated bumps, drops, poor soldering skills, and a few brown-outs. She lived a long, productive life (considering what she went through) and served me well. I brought her into existence with a mish-mash of parts that I acquired on the cheap from various sources. She lived hard, served me well, and died owing me nothing. Some of her vital organs have been harvested and put to use in my new Lenovo box which I just purchased from a local computer store. With the aid of a new motherboard, the rest of her will likely be resurrected again in the form of another lovely Frankenstein box who I will raise (yet again) as my own, this time being brought up in the ways of Ubuntu and SUSE instead of the corrupt and evil ways of The Dark Side, which eventually hastened her demise in the previous life. I am now in the process of teaching my current little one a balanced, zen-like approach which includes the ways of Ubuntu, Red Hat, and Windows XP so that she may learn from all of them and use what each may have to offer. (Though I am secretely hoping that she will gravitate toward an outlook residing on the side of Good).

As you may have guessed by now, old computer = dead. I am not pleased that I had to spend a large chunk of my tax return to get a new one, but I saw this coming a while ago and it didn't take me by surprise. This would also be why I have not updated the blog for a couple weeks. I am in the process of experimenting with Ubuntu Linux, Suse Linux, and Red Hat Linux; trying to decide which one I like more. I've tooled around with Linux a little in the past but never in a serious capacity. So this is a whole new confusing ball game for me but I intend to stick with it, even if it means having to peruse technical books & manuals for hours on end. For moral and ethical reasons, this is a step that I've been meaning to take for a long time.

I am in the middle of a bit of a spring-cleaning surge. The basement is still the final, scary frontier... there are relationship leftovers, abandoned hobbies, unfinished projects, furniture & household items in need of repair, and useless tchotchkes by the hundreds down there, all laying around in unorganized piles and in need of much cleaning before they can even be given away. I am saving it all for a weekend off when I'll likely get doped up on coffee and tackle the subterranean chaos with extreme prejudice. I fully expect that it will result in at least half a dozen trips to the local thrift store and a spate of new items for sale on my Ebay seller account.

Wish me luck folks!

Pride Comes Before The Fall, and I Get Right Back Up

Sorry for taking so long to update. My roommate brought home the most lovely flu bug and it has kept me a bit occupied. I had just been bragging to a coworker that I have a cast iron immune system and I almost never get sick enough to be kept out of work... then WHAM!!! I get taken out by nature for a week. On the upside, I feel much better now and went out for a 14 mile cross country skiing excursion today. I slid on over to the next town and explored a side trail that I'd never been on before. I chased the setting sun up over a ridge of small mountains... only to lose it behind another ridge. The trip up was a heck of a workout and the trip back down was crazy-fun, except for the fact that older cross-country skis like mine are much harder to control when careening down steep, narrow trails at high velocity. So the trip back down, while exciting, was done to the tune of "aaah, ouch, *crash* $%##@!!! *crash* ouch, ouch, *crash* %@#!!! whew! Yeeeehaaaaw!" The sunset was a beautiful shade of peach with touches of pink (curses for not bringing my camera this time) and after the sunset the landscape took on a surreal palette of blues, it almost looked like a cross between Van Gogh's 'Blue Period' and something out of a Robert Frost poem. As much as I am frustrated with the lack of culture in this area, the scenery more than makes up for it.

And as promised three posts back, here are the pics from my last cross-country ski trip.

First covered railroad bridge headed south east, the trail that I follow is part of the "Rails To Trails" program which converts old railroad lines to recreational & nature trails. This bridge is a leftover from the era when there was still a working rail line running through this very spot. Note how high the openings are (about 22 feet), this was to accommodate the high stacks on the locomotives.


Interior of the first bridge


Shot of the river taken through a gap in the boards


The second covered railroad bridge


Interior of the second bridge


Underneath the main highway bridge in Kelleyville/Newport