The Cracked Egg

Had breakfast the other morning with Liz at The Cracked Egg. It's a local place that gets some good press. It was decent. Liz's raspberry stuffed french toast was much more interesting than my polish sausage and eggs.

Rather than toast, you can choose Coffee Cake. Fairly tasty.








Some decor -

Enough Coffee?

So you think I got enough or what? And for the record, I rarely drink Powerade!

Headbutting Birds

Just about the end of the month. Leaving the Veegus is coming sooner than later for sure.

I am all into Wimbledon this year. It's been some great tennis with lots of surprises on the women's side. Both sides are very tight, and I have no gut feelings about who will win. I think it'd be a kick in the royal pants however, if Lisicki and Murray could pull it off.

Another season of True Blood is on. It's only the first episode, and while I know it can't just be the same stuff over and over, some of the new material is kinda silly to me. Tara finding herself in cage fighting though? That's pretty cool.

So last week I only ran twice; a 7 mile run and an 8 mile run. But they were really hard on my legs. All that downhill stuff especially on the south loop just kills my quads. I broke out ice and nsaid this weekend with plenty of foam roller. It worked well though as I've run the last two days without issue. That was just roughly half way though. I may have to walk much more coming down to reduce the possibility of injury. Also maybe not wear such bright clothing because the humming birds were hunting me. One actually bumped into my forehead!

The other issue is snow. There's still plenty of it. In fact, my Friday outing was stopped because I could not find the trail. I was so close to the changing point (Griffith Peak) to where the next 4 miles are not so steep. I talked with other hikers who could not find the trail either. I was glad I turned around when I did because trying to come back down in 'no trail' land, I slipped several times in the mud - my hands coming down like spikes in the snow or dirt to keep from sliding down the hill. Those trekking poles would've came in handy then had I brought them.

How fast will the snow melt? How long will it take me? There is a fair chance that I might not make it to the top of Mt. Charleston before I leave. Honestly, after I came down last Friday, my hunger for it was kinda lukewarm. But it still tasks me!

Fooo- Fooo-ooood

I eat this prolly once a week at least.

Tunafish
Red & Yellow Peppers
Spinach
Onions
Cumin
Tarragon
Reg Mayo
Hot Sauce (not on it yet)




I've been lovin the pig restaurant lately before we leave! Here we have a Half a Rack of Hogs Heaven BBQ ribs, some skillet beans and collard greens. The sides are not always the same in their making, but still good. Gunna miss these ribs!



I was driving around central Veegus, and gasped when I saw a drive through sign for this place. My last memory of it was being violently ill in the Phillipines driving down the Mayon Volcano, after which I re tasted everything I had eaten at this place.

I'm almost compelled to go in and eat something just to move past it! So I can say if it's really just McDonalds from the Bizarro universe or something harmless. Course, any US restaurant over in the PI is a bit off anyway. It's prolly fine.

But you see the bee man out front right? I guess he seems innocent next to the likes of the hamburgler.



Goodness I gotta clean my windshield!

D Cells please!

There was a time when I would buy cassette tapes for 9.99 at Camelot music. I would just pick something that had a cool looking cover. This was my death metal phase. I bought a lot of bad music that way. I still have some of that stored deep in the parents house.

I can remember the first time I was able to go into a music store and actually listen to certain, not any, just certain cds. Often you couldn't fast forward though which was really frustrating.

My music tastes were always weird, so it was a huge treat to go to Tower Records in New Orleans or Atlanta. Sometimes my friends and I would make a road trip just for Tower Records. We'd spend from 1 to 2 hours in there looking at cds. Then the trip back would be listening to cds the whole way.

One time, the car we were driving only had a tape player. So we brought a huge boom box and a tape player adapter. This would plug into the boom box's audio out port, and the adapter would go into the car's tape player. We used it driving up though and after only 20 minutes of our 5 hour drive back the boom box died. We barely had any money left, so we stopped at some rinky dink gas station in the middle of nowhere and paid what seemed like a ridiculous amount of money for 8 D cell batteries. There may have been a large bag of change in that transaction. All was saved though and the trip home was full of sonic wonderment!

These trips to Tower records though were often full of pressure to buy extra. Finding a new band with a cool sound was a super find! However, you just had to pay for it and hope for the best! There was no pre listen yet.

I've been carrying around 2 huge boxes of cds with me now for a few years. I am finally trimming them down. These 6 cds are the worst cds I've ever purchased. They still sound absolutely wretched! I can't believe I bought an album with the word 'Poodle' in it! Maybe I should keep them. Maybe not.

Smoking Death Weed

Have you seen the recent news bits about cigarette companies having to put graphic images of smoking related nastiness on the packaging? The social discussion is full of oh what's next, will banks have to put up pictures of empty wallets? or will Twinkies have to have pictures of overweight diabetic adults on the box?

I guess they're banking on the results such marketing has done in other countries. Will it really affect anything or as a smoking friend said, now is the time to make cigarette cases hip! Interesting too that there's a new political movement for the deregulation of marijuana. I think it will happen in the next decade. Which state will be the first?!!!

Here's a rare picture of me smoking from 1998. The original exif said Dec 31st, but dang!! Was I crazy enough to be in New Orleans on New Years? It must not have been very memorable. I look at this pic and think ahh man, my humvee watch! That thing was cool. Anyone recognize the shirt?



Anyway, back in 08 or so I quit smoking for a little over a year. Then it was about 6 months of buy a pack,quit, buy a pack, quit, repeat over and over. I would get so irrational and difficult to be around. It was not pretty. So today is finally another whole year of no nicotine whatsoever. I have no urges or desire to smoke either. I just have to be careful not to get too buzzed while eating Mexican, and I'll be good to go for another year!

Random Tbone 221047

If I knew my Pat Tillman post was going to receive so much traffic, I might have wrote a bit more to it. However, most people are prolly just coming by way of the picture on it.

It's officially hot here. It was on broil as early as 9am this morning. I prolly could've ran today, but I found myself on the couch watching some Wimbleton and it suddenly went dark. I needed that dark I'm pretty sure. My run at Bristlecone on Monday was good, but 3 miles of downhill worked my quads good enough to last a few days.

I played with the Black Diamond Z Poles today at REI. These are trekking poles that are stupid light and collapse and fold out very quickly. They are pretty awesome I think, but I haven't decided if I like the whole pole thing yet. I used the REI poles we already had at Bristlecone and decided that I just found them annoying. However, Bristlecone is not nearly as steep as the South Trail, nor does it have any snow. I think Friday if all is well, I will go up the South Trail with no poles. Let it swang natural!

Spyderco finally released their Sprint Run for the Bob Lum Tanto folder. If there was one thing that would've been perfect in the universe of knives for me, it was a spydie hole and a tanto blade. There just weren't any being made. I saw the sprint posted on Knifecenter.com in the am and knew that in an hour it would be gone ( it was). I paced and thought about it intensely for like ten minutes. This was a knife I could buy and easily sell back later at what I paid if not more. Alas, I said nope. If this knife could not urge me to click the Add to Cart button, then I don't know what could. I haven't purchased a knife since late January. I think it's official, I am done with knives!

Severator is done.

MULE

Oh the joy of watching your player emerge from the round in the lead. Oh the excitement of a meteor strike. Oh the excitement of a 'collusion'. Oh the annoyance of pest infestation! The list goes on and on.

Redstander

Once upon a time in a program called 3D Studio Max I would sit and spend hours mutating and adjusting and randomizing and doing other things equivalent to poking fingers into the dark. 97% of the time the shapes I would get would be just junk. Course you might see this and think that, but I happen to like it. Whatever it's orientation, I can always come back to the Redstander and find some interest in it. I would often use it as a displacement map while altering layers in photoshop.

Tick Tock

Time is running out for our stay in the Veegus! A month from today, if all goes as planned, we should be in Colorado Springs. The first stop in the long path back to humid Florida. I'm sure I will miss the 10% humidity here.

Last couple of days have been non stop cleanathon for me. We had a family come look at the house today, so I had a TUUN of stuff to clean. It was a good thing, a stressful thing, but hey it helped me look everything over for packing. Seems that we gotta get rid of some stuff... again! Freecycle time!

Been quite a few days since I've eaten super bad, so there was no way I was going to get my kitchen dirty tonight. Off to the Pig Restaurant as my daughter calls it. It's a local bbq joint. This is another item from the Veegus I will miss, Hogs Heaven BBQ. I love coming in this place, where I can get a half rack of the tastiest melt in my mouth ribs, listen to some great jazz music, see guys in tank tops and jail house tattoos cooking the food, while loud aggressive women whip on them and love up the customers, and wash it all down with insanely sweet tea. Mmmm good! The collard greens were awesome too!

Rewind to two days ago, and I came moments from getting seriously hurt. It was really a crazy merging of events. I guess many accidents are in retrospect. Let's see if I can explain.

Imagine riding on your bike on a wide two lane road. I'm coming from a direction that hardly any traffic ever comes from. In fact, this whole area is pretty low traffic. That's why I ride here. Anyway, I'm also coming behind a woman whose just out for a cruise on her bike. She's going at a moderate clip though, and I feel like a weirdo just hanging behind her, so I start to pass her. She looks back and is a bit startled. We exchange some friendly talk, and I speed up to pass her. So now I'm moving much quicker. There are 3 cars bunched up coming down towards me with a white BMW leading. I'm approaching an outlet to a subdivision that is longer across than usual. There's a median which is kinda odd, but hey Veegus has some odd stuff.

At this point the BMW sees me, but hasn't committed to turning in front of me yet. I feel at this point, I should just go faster so this guy can make his turn since he's got 2 other cars right up his butt. So I speed up more. Then the 'oh shit' alarm comes on when a silver VW Beetle comes from the subdivision to pull out in the same direction I'm going. The driver is a teenage girl. She sees the BMW slowing down, but since I'm not a car, the BMW is beginning to move over since the street is wide giving the illusion that he's going to make a turn. I'm staring at the driver of the VW, kinda in awe that she hasn't looked in my direction at all.

So you can see the dilemma. I have a BMW making his turn at a rate of speed that if I was clear, would be fine, but I've stopped peddling and am on the verge of full stop at prolly 20+ mph. Going in front of the VW would not be prudent. If only the VW driver would look at me. The VW driver has 2 other girls in the car. Her passenger I'm pretty sure said something like Look Out!! That's what the look on her face said anyway. The VW driver finally turns her head which is immediately full of apology and embarrassment. At this point I'm already braking, just a nano second from 'omg, squeeze the brakes with everything in your power and then hope to somehow flip over their car braking', while the BMW is moving ever closer to my back wheel. And in that next half second as my hands released their tense grips on the brakes and my feet fired through the pedals, I kept going as the VW driver waved me along. Accident avoided!! But whooooooooo...kinda close!

Ender's Game

Warning! Post is full of spoilers

With that out of the way, I will say that I finished reading Ender's Game a couple of days ago. I had an itch to read some scifi. So I looked at some popular lists and Orson Scott Card's novel caught my eye. I think deep down I really wanted something a little deeper in terms of science. Perhaps next time I'll try an Asimov, or Arthur C. Clarke novel, but I'm quite happy with my experience with Ender's Game.

It doesn't take long to find a plethora of reviews about the book that herald it as a 'great' book, even life changing for many. Sadly, I think I've missed the boat for such an impact. Seems that many feel that a teenage mind would be more moved by the book, but I don't think it's the mindset or maturity of a teenager so much as the cynicism of being an adult that limits our ability to accept certain aspects of the story. One has to remember that this book started its life in 1977. Items like the political back story, the way video games are used, the use of the word fart (kidding), and how children are viewed won't be accepted by some. As for the way 6 to 12 yr olds act (most of the characters are this age) and behave? My feeling is that the minute you underestimate kids, you lose.

The writing style is very direct with description being minimal at times. This seems to bother some readers. In Card's introduction, he explains how writing for the stage, minimalism helps the viewer engage their own imagination. I think this approach works well. Much of what happens takes place in the Battle Rooms on a space station. I think it would be easy to overly describe such a place and this would deter from the story pacing and be limiting to what our own minds can choose to focus on. For me, the actual Battle Room structure wasn't so important as trying to imagine the awkwardness of the null gravity and envisioning the maneuvers and the speed required to make the game challenging.

I recently read Tinkers which is a book that explodes with language that is immensely descriptive, beautifully arranged, and has economy to boot. Yet, Tinkers for me had so much style that I think it made me less interested or able to to relate to the characters. Funny enough, the minimalism in Ender's Game has done the same for some of its readers I think. However, I was able to connect with Ender, Graff, Valetine, and Mazer Rackham very well. Mazer Rackham!!!- you have to love this name. His name might as well have been Laser Beams and Ass Kicking! a guy who had beers with Duke Nukem on the holidays!

There's a lot I liked about Ender's Game. The fast pace of the story, the relationship between Valentine and Ender, and the idea of the 'ansible'. This is a device which allows for instantaneous (faster than light) communication across the Universe. I also enjoyed the military components of the story. Interesting that for some Marine's this is required reading. The last chapter of the book was my favorite part and will most likely cause me to buy the 2nd book in the quartet, Speaker For The Dead.

The Formics! Who were they? I'm not quite sure why they attacked us twice. Wouldn't they have figured out the first time, maybe Earthlings are sentient? In the actual attacks on the bugger homeworld -Bean, Petra, Crazy Tom and the rest, they too were controlling real life soldiers many light years away? I have trouble thinking out the trickle down effect of those type of manuevers. And finally, indeed what a horror to think that not one human made an effort to communicate with the Formics. I mean math really is the universal language, everyone has to have math no? Some things you just have to accept though.

Here's one of my favorite quotes from the story by Valentine Wiggin.

"Welcome to the human race. No one controls his own life, Ender. The best you can do is choose to fill the roles given to you by good people, by the people who love you."

And finally, In Orson Scott Card's intro he has a paragraph that really stands out to me :

"Why else do we read fiction, anyway? Not to be impressed by somebody's dazzling language- or at least I hope that's not our reason. I think that most of us, anyway, read these stories that we know are not "true" because we're hungry for another kind of truth: The mythic truth about human nature in general, the particular truth about those life-communities that define our own identity, and the most specific truth of all:our own self story. Fiction, because it is not about somebody who actually lived in the real world, always has the possibility of being about oneself."

This paragraph explains to me why so many people like this book. Somehow the majority of readers find something very compelling to identify with in this book. This is probably why the last chapter resonates with me.

South and North

Ran outside today. I haven't been running much this past week, so I guess I was feeling all energized today after riding the bike for a few miles. I ran a 5K in the desert by my house. Wow, the heat just beat me down. Some might say, well that's pretty obvious, maybe even stupid. However, the oven heat does a really good job of removing all other distractions from your mind. I'm not thinking, does my leg feel tweaky? Is my quad or hamstring tight? All I'm thinking is, holy mofo it's hot as booooop out here. Drink, run, drink, walk, drink! It kinda forces your mental state to focus on the simple concept of running economy and not think about what boxes I need to go through before our move.

I've told people I live in north Las Vegas, but this picture will give an idea of how north I live. The red arrow is where my house is. The landing strip looking thing to the left, is a huge gun range. The strip is waayyyyy to the right not in the picture.




Earlier in the week I decided to test out the trekking poles Liz bought from REI. Up to the south loop I went. I hadn't looked out the window in a while and as I was driving this is what I saw. I thought, that doesn't look too good, but figured I'd go check it out anyway. Turned out to be not bad at all.



The poles were pretty cool. They were awesome on snowy areas. Running downhill which I couldn't resist for just a little bit, is kinda tricky. It will take more practice. They definitely assist going uphill of course. It's interesting getting more of an upper body workout with the poles. I'm not sold on them yet. I'll test them out more next week hopefully.

Here's a pic from the south loop trail just about 1.5 miles up. You can see a cave in the rock wall on the middle left side. The next pic is directly looking in it. Spooookie! Then finally a look back down. After about 2 miles, I decided to turn around to take it easy. Also the weather was looking rougher. Funny thing though, I found out I still had cell signal here. Who wants a call?

Cathedral Rock

Well, I finally made it back to Mount Charleston. At last I got a chance to check out the South Loop trail. The dogs and I just went up a little bit of it, about a mile or so. From that first mile and reading online accounts, it sounds like the first 4 miles will be pretty steep. Plenty of sections I came across, that I wouldn't be running on as it would just not be very efficient for me. Course my leg doesn't want anything to do with such incline running at this time. So this brings me to trekking poles. It's new, it's fun, it's trekking pole time! And if I dig them, then it's time to buy a Nathan HPL 2.0 hydration vest. See how I turn setbacks into perfect ways to buy more stuff!!

Another factor though is snow. Even in my short walk with the dogs I came across a huge pack of snow on the trail. It's creepy walking over thick snow and seeing a hole, wondering just how deep that hole may be? Apparently snow is the norm for this time of year though, so I'll just have to see how much is really up there.

Here are a few pics I took from the outing.
This is called Cathedral Rock



Like they were really going to turn around for a picture :)



A nice view while standing on slanty/slippery snow pack. You can see the small village near the left.

Tinglemix

Blackholes, supernovas, and gamma ray bursts
Begging, pleading, and supplication
Spicy hummus, flaxseed,and quinoa salad
Love, lust, and red jealousy
Tweezers, knives, and dirt cheap razors
Silence, peace, and blue apathy

Park Bench

I saw you sitting there in the park
your gut wrenching from some irrational thought
like a severed finger painting inside your stomach
you couldn't make it stop
you couldn't stop thinking about it
you couldn't wish it away
you just had to wait