Discomfort for health

I came across this tonight on yahoo news blurbs.

WALKIN

I think this is fascinating. The human interaction element has to be refreshing no?

A friend and I were talking recently about good trips off the beaten path and the odd yet unique items you come across, ya know the meat of a cool trip. The common item in these, is nice people. People that go out of the way for you. People who share with no conditions, and listen with an interest that even your closest friends have a hard time matching. I'll have to peruse his journal and see what adventures he's had.

Last few days have been hectic. Lots of showings, but still no offers. Got into someone's top 2, but lost due to our highway noise. Maybe the other house inspection will reveal massive radon. Bah, I don't really wish that though. Bad karma for my own basement.

Running outside has been difficult with the grass pollen in high quantities. I'm sure I look like an insane person slobbering along. In a way, it's kinda fired me up though. I've been taking advantage of all the hills in my neighborhood and doing a lot of hill repeats.

I got some new running shoes too. They're working out pretty well. Review to come soon.

Crazy Part 2

Well as I was saying, I was eating tunafish! Then I was thinking about lightning because the weather was getting hectic. I thought to myself, well no running outside today, because I see flashes off in the distance. Then it occurred to me that maybe it would be possible to construct a faraday suit you could run in. Then take it a step further and purposefully run in Florida in a county that has a really high percentage of strikes. I recall Okaloosa was way up there on the strike list one year. So yes , purposefully trying to get struck by lighting while running! How amazing would that be?

I know you're saying well what if you most likely died! Come on! Where's the risk. All you'd have to do is have a group of 4 paramedics run with you so you'd have a good chance of getting revived. Most lightning strike victims survive with good CPR. So I read anyway. You know someone would be up for it. Get a picture of that with a rainbow or tornado and you have what me and a friend call the photographic grail of leviathan..or something like that.

So I was going to post a pretty cool ball lightning video from youtube, but I got surfing and got stuck on tornados. This vid was pretty cool.

London is funny!

hahahahahah I can't stop laughing at this silliness!

Kill da Wabbit

A week or so ago, my dog found a well hidden stash of baby bunnies right outside our back door. Unlike my friends dog, he did not inhale them and masticate their innards. Instead, he was just curious, and they ran around and squealed. My daughter was very excited and instantly wanted to adopt them. How does she know this is an option?

We do not like the rabbits though. So I put the four little bunnies in a large zip lock , beat them with a stick, and buried them. This thought ran through my head, but I could not do it. They were so tiny and scared. With all the drama with my little one and the dog though, we had to relocate them as the only other option.
So we sneaked them into a box and released them in a secluded portion of a park. Hopefully, they will get a fair chance.

Today the rabbits have upped the annoyance level by making big burrow holes under the front porch and eating entire plants in the flower bed. Our whole neighborhood is loaded with rabbits I tell ya. Time is on their side, but I'm very close to buying a .22 caliber Ruger. Some bunny may end up in a ziplock after all.

Maybe I should just watch WaterShip down again. It's been years.

Slip Crunch

I may not have been really sick! Of course I was sick! There was colored discharge dammit! However, I think my allergies may have donned their little Ige ninja suits and threw a sneak attack party. I can't be certain, but am on high alert. The 'nose' is under control for now. It's mere days before I will have to bust out the sinus rinse/flonase/zyrtec/allegra/claritin combination. Lotioned puffs are at the ready!

Cool moment of the day - running uphill on a road that has houses being built on it. This caused a ton of dirt to cover the road. I can run in the middle of the road, cuz no one is driving here yet, and all that can be seen are houses in various stages of construction. And for a few minutes the sound of my breathing and shoes pushing the dirt out on the pavement sounded/felt really cool. It was an interesting surprise.

After finishing The Pacific on HBO , I picked up a copy of the book that EB Sledge wrote. I think this book will be powerful.

Temple Grandin

Well I have caught my daughter's cold. I laughed at it and mocked it, so I guess it decided to put the smack down on me.

Have a 9am house showing tomorrow. First showing we've had in 9 days so that's nice.

I finally finished Animals In Translation. Jeez I'm so slow with books, but I finally had a chance to watch the HBO special on Temple Grandin as well. I highly recommend this movie. It's full of inspiration and thought provoking ideas. Heck, it even makes me consider taking beef off the menu. And if you know me, that's a pretty big deal.

Crazy Part1

I was eating some tunafish today which was notable since I haven't eaten it in months. I was really grossed out watching people work in a tuna packing plant a while back. The memory has faded I spose. Plus, it's been sitting in my pantry, and I don't want to waste it.

So while chewing away in the kitchen I had this crazy thought. In order to grasp it, you must first watch this.

The Pacific

I started watching the new HBO mini series The Pacific when it came out. I was really excited to watch this after seeing Generation Kill last year. Band Of Brothers was just amazing in it's scope and power, so I had high expectations for The Pacific.

At first, The Pacific seemed kinda slow. I felt the characters were uninteresting, and the story telling kinda disjointed. There was no tension for me in the battles scenes since I wasn't connected to the characters. So I quit watching for a few weeks since I was too busy to watch it anyway. Well I eventually picked it back up and every episode just got better. By the 7th episode or so, I was wide eyed and tense when watching.

Last night I watched the 9th episode, and it just rocked me. That saying "it can not be unseen" that you see applied to viral videos..well I kinda feel that way about the 9th episode. The ending just haunts me as one of the most gut wrenching collisions of brutality and compassion I've come across lately.

Here's a historical information link from hbo's website for the battle of Okinawa. It truly was a different world then.

Pull me under

Cold and wet on the inside and outside
leaky leaky boats all around me
screen glow and laughter meant for strangers
staring beyond walls
playing a game of moral struggles
it's a grand pinball failure for all of us

3300

I ate a bunch of really high calorie food today at Olive Garden, but it was ooooh so good. It's been since almost last June that I ate there, and it's just always so delicious. I think the Black Tie cake might be overtaking the Tiramisu as my favorite desert.

I also ran across an interesting book whose topic is people without language. Here's the book descrip:

For more than a quarter of a century, Ildefonso, a Mexican Indian, lived in total isolation, set apart from the rest of the world. He wasn't a political prisoner or a social recluse, he was simply born deaf and had never been taught even the most basic language. Susan Schaller, then a twenty-four-year-old graduate student, encountered him in a class for the deaf where she had been sent as an interpreter and where he sat isolated, since he knew no sign language. She found him obviously intelligent and sharply observant but unable to communicate, and she felt compelled to bring him to a comprehension of words.

One Free Bite

From an article in the recent edition of Bicycling by Bob Mionske, he writes "In 18 states, the law allows one free bite!"

If you've never encountered a chase hungry dog on a bike, I can tell you it's pretty scary, especially if they see you coming. Mionske also reports that in 28 states the owner can be held liable for dog's behavior for the first bite. He goes on to say that even though the law is on your side, there's this idea that you can be reasonable and humane in stopping the dog from attacking you and that if you become the aggressor, then you can be held criminally liable.

I tell you what, I love dogs, but if you're too much of a dumb ass to keep your dog from chasing and attacking me, guess what?!! If I get bit just once...I am going to kill your dog as quickly as I can. If I have a child with me, then no bite will be needed. You think they'd prosecute me in that situation? I think those are some shitty laws.

Alpha

Reading about cancer today and in the comments section of the article I found this snarky reply that actually made me laugh.

A self proclaimed alpha is really just an epsilon watching a nova special about the universe and buying a Stephan Hawking book to sit on the coffee table.

Ouch? hahaha

Uzumaki

When I lived in Maryland I used to visit a certain Blockbuster video store to check out their large selection of foreign films. I recall picking up one movie box that instantly cracked me up. It was a Japanese horror film about Spirals. At the time, it seemed that every month there would be a new Japanese horror remake so I paid no attention.

Lately I've been seeing a lot of spirals and spiral type shapes. The other day I spent some time walking by the river and was just mesmerized by these vortexes in the water near the edge. Some would linger and then disappear while others were constant and would get bigger and smaller. Guess I should have taken that Fluid Dynamics class in college eh?

Anyway, I don't think the spirals are out to get me, but it's funny how my brain has decided to pick them out lately. I even mowed my backyard in a spiral pattern today!

So I looked up that movie and its in the title of this post. Here's a hilarious trailer for it. Though the ending may lead you to believe it's the Japanese version of The Hills.

os veix3

The title is the 8th track from the new Autechre album. Their song names always crack me up. However, they can truly get away with being cryptic because much of their music is complex layers of pattern jumbles for the subconscious. Their new album is exciting for me since it seems a tiny bit more melodic than their usual stuff.

Speaking of music, I have never tried to run with headphones. I don't think I would like it for a number of reasons, but I've often wondered how interesting a contrast it would be though to run with something like Autechre or Steve Roach playing rather than the usual upbeat menu.

Click Here if you wanna listen to OS Veix3

Then for contrast this video is way more chaotic..or is it? However, the animation done by an independent artist is absolutely brilliant!

In normal news Asa fell off the swing today, and I laughed. She busted pretty hard too, but she was fine. Later she would not go down the slide because there were small flies on the slide! I don't know where this sudden bug fear is coming from. (ok I know where hehe )

Had a couple of showings since Sunday and we lowered the price. The last people to look really liked our place, but they're trying to find a ranch style in the same price range. Dat ain't gunna happen babee, so that's good news for us. Maybe we'll get an offer yet.

Bi?

Some of you already know that I am bonkers about the movie Whip It. Maybe it makes me a sissy boy, but whatever. I dig it! I actually went out and bought the soundtrack on cd. Cd's are the next vhs no? Well I guess I'm still behind the curve since my rickety ole Win 2K isn't supported by itunes or amazon's album downloader.

Anyway I was looking around at Whip It pics and came across a set of pics of Ellen Page and Drew B. in some interesting poses and one where they're kissing. Now I know one simple pic obviously for marketing or whatever isn't an admission to being bisexual, but it made me wonder about what seems to be this increasing level of bisexuality in my periphery. Is anyone else sensing that being Bi is the new gay?

She's right!

It was a frantic morning. I was trying to get the house cleaned up for our open house showing today and found myself running out of time. Liz was at work this morning, so it was ten min till noon, and I was doing a last minute vaccuum of the rug to pick up dog hair and someone pulled up into my driveway! I was out of the house five minutes later as my realtor was pulling in. I don't know where the car that pulled up went.

After all that panic, we had not one person come to look at the house. Feedback from our last showing was that the other bedrooms looked to be too small for their kids furniture. These kids must have some nice furniture :/ 20 days on the market and not much feedback from several showings. We are debating on lowering the price.

I did get to run outside today without pushing the stroller and pulling the dog at the same time. I had recently read another blog called Ironmom, and she was talking about running in the rain. Turns out she really enjoyed her wet run. I got a nice light sprinkle as well as some crazy wind with some very cool cloudscapes.

Last time I was in the rain, I was in Colorado at night , putting up a tent. That was extreme anti-fun! This run however was so refreshing. I forget how wonderful things can smell and the steamy fog is always cool.

Density

We've been looking at places to rent in the north LasVegas area. Many of the homes are very nice. I was looking at LV with google earth and it's kinda interesting to see how close all the homes are there compared to where I live now in NE. Notice the dearth of green in vegas...heeello desert!

In serious news, I am just in awe of the disaster taking place right now in the Gulf Of Mexico. This site has some incredible high res footage from space of many things, but you can really get a perspective on how big it is from these sat images. CHECK IT

And lastly, my shoulder has decided to get a bit inflamed today. I hope it's just passin by and not stopping for any serious pain. It's frustrating to me, because I didn't do much of anything last two days. It's just out of nowhere again so it seems. Anyway, some vitamin M and rest and hopefully I'll wake up without issue.