A small view into a large life

5:00 am - wake up.
5:30 am - hit the road
7:15 am - arrive at work!

Proof (sorry for the dim light cell-phone photo).

4:00 pm - depart
5:45 pm - arrive at home.

The route (which says 2008-08-06 on it accidentally; the ride was on the 5th).

Mostly uneventful except for a harrowing experience by the Manchester airport where I found myself in the left lane of a four lane highway (two each way) and needing to get to the right shoulder quickly but there was lots of traffic and no place to stop. Ultimately, I found a no-man's-land between N and S lanes where I could pause until traffic permitted me to dash over to the correct lane. I certainly didn't want to end up on the interstate! Altogether a pleasant ride through the countryside with a few miles of considerably less pleasant city riding at each end.

It was good. Very different from last year. Which was also good - both the last year and the difference.

In no particular order...

Crow ~ Musician ~ Priest ~ Raven ~ Friend ~ Sculptor ~ Canvas (view 1, view 2) ~ Brother ~ Entrepreneur ~ Witch

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Addendum 2008-08-04 @ 21:11

Movie #1 - "Mama Mia" - big fun! And I don't like musicals... but this one... this was just fun. Uplifting, charming, silly. A must-see. Big screen not required.

Movie #2 - "The Dark Knight" - I thought it was well done for what it was (a comic book movie); the Joker performance was downright creepy.  It took me hours to clear my head after watching it. "Intense" would be my first adjective to describe it. It was about 45 minutes too long, though.

The Twilight list is up!

My choices today, in no particular order: spider, monkey, white hart, bison

The good news: none of them is likely to be as demanding as Raven, so I might expect to sleep some reasonable amount this year!

I do wonder why spider & white hart are application-requireds. They do not appear to be of the "prove you're ready for this" that some of the others (this year and past years) more obviously require. I wonder if my application for white hart from last year is still true...

Forecast was for rain in the morning, so I did strenuous exercise in the evening and did not set an alarm to get up at o-dark-30 to ride in to work. As it turned out, it was a beautiful day after all, but I was unprepared for the ride by the time I woke. I did get in 39 miles or so tonight, but that's just the usual.

I'll be on the lookout for a good day to do the big run. It won't be next week, but maybe the week after...

I think I'm going to try for a new record this Friday... just about 60 miles in one day. This won't be a single ride, but rather two 30-mile rides with a long period in between. I'm going to take advantage of the long daylight and take my bike to work! So, I'll go to bed early on thursday, get up about dawn on friday, head out for about two hours' ride to work, arrive around 7:30am - work a nearly full day (which is mostly sitting in a comfy chair, which will probably be a good thing) - then ride home around 3pm to avoid the bulk of the evening traffic. Yes, there's a shower at work ;)

I'll try to remember to drive the route thursday morning to see what it's like before committing to riding it. Unless there are LOTS of killer hills, I'm up for it. Report to follow on friday night, if it happens...

Update on the compost - I have two servings of compost now spread on depleted areas of the lawn... those areas are now showing enhanced grass growth to the tune of 2x - 4x height compared with neighboring terrain, bounded farily clearly by where I put the compost. The stuff from the tumbler totally works, even after only 2 weeks of processing prior to deployment.

Today - a new ride... 15 miles to Walden Pond... an hour in the water, lounging about with a friend, then 15 miles home again. It was a hard ride - or so it seemed - because of the heat and humidity and the fact that I had additional baggage of swim wear, a towel, a change of clothes for after (wouldn't want to put on the sweatty clothes I arrived in to START with), a beach bag, and the usual gear: tools, spare tubes, pump, locking and cable, first aid kit, water... so with all that baggage, it really felt like slow going.

But then I looked at my GPS which, among other things, tells me how fast I went. 17 mph! That's a new average speed record for me! I Generally make around 16.5. Okay, so it doesn't seem like all that much faster... but considering that I thought I was CRAWLING, it really says something.

What's it say? It says I'm getting stronger and fitter is what it says.

The hour long break between the two 15 mile sections and the fact that it's not quite as hilly as the Groton-Acton route surely helped, too.

Still, I am pleased.

Short term - the Mystery Cat has a safe foster home where she will receive excellent care (thank you wren13) until and after the kittens are born.

Long term - homes have been found for a what seems like more kittens than she is likely to birth, so they will be taken care of when they are weaned. There's some interest in the mama cat, too, once the pregnancy is done. Also, things will be much calmer around the house with just the one kitty (belonging to the roommate), now that there's no in-house kitty conflict.

Good results all around. I am relieved that a high-karma solution has been found to this difficult situation: no strays, no crowded shelter, no murder. Roommate's cat will be at peace. Roommate will be at peace.

I suppose I should have known better than to take in a stray (having not been a pet-person historically) . . . but, well, one doesn't learn without experiences... and sometimes things (and people) change. As it turns out, though there has been a lot of change in my life in the last half year or so, becoming a cat-person was not among them.

I have done as good by this cat as I know how - I hope that is enough.

So after many weeks of having the Mystery Cat live with me, the novelty has worn off and the true nature of the situation has been revealed: I was not a pet-having person before she showed up and I am not a pet-having person now, despite her considerable cuteness, affection, and persistence.

Anybody looking for a furry companion? She's free to a good home. She is an indoor/outdoor kitty, fully clawed and quite capable of survival unattended in the outdoors.

She's up to date on her shots, has an RFID (aka "kitty lojack"), and is generally well-disposed. I just don't have the tolerance for a creature under foot nor one who needs my attention when I have other things I want to do... she is not unreasonable in her needs or behaviors... all very normal and ordinary things a felis domesticus should have and do and need... but they are not compatible with this particular human.

The dog days of summer send their regards.

Had a lovely time at AHO -- big fun for all who were present, sorry you missed it, the rest of y'all.

I did a handful of intuitive* tarot readings while there... evidently, I was spot-on for the two whose readings talked about the present. The two which were about the future, well, we shall see what comes. In one case, that was a 7-years-from-now prediction -- better put that one in my PDA. The other was for this year - I'll probably remember. Actually, I think I'll start a journal of predictions. . . .I don't read often, but I do enjoy it. Maybe I should get myself my own deck o'cards.

And later that same night, I saw some bright green swaths of light when I closed my eyes. That's very different from what I normally see under those conditions. Normally, I get black and brown like TV "static". This was vivid color and it wasn't moving. It was dreamlike, though - the more I tried to look "at" it, the more difficult it was to see. I opened my eyes - just the ordinary dim white light from the moon - closed them again - bright green! Like thick spider webs. Fascinating. I wonder what it was I saw...

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*No looking at "the book" or interpreting standard meanings for the particular cards. Instead, I just follow the images and see what pops out in any given spread. There's no fixed number of cards or fixed meaning for any particular position in the draw sequence - it just is what it just is.

Life - mine's great - that's why I've been too busy to write :)

For those of you who are following the compst story, here are some annotated photos of the latest batch, from day 0 through day 8. The batch isn't done yet, but it has transformed considerably. The next several days will be less interesting as "almost dirt' turns into "even more like dirt".

So batch one of the compost is sitting out in the yard, theoretically nourishing the depleted soil beneath it. It's only been there a few days and I'm just letting nature take its course with respect to what happens next, so it may be a while before there's news. I'm hoping that the established grass on the perimeter of the newly nourished soil will go, "hey! Food!" and start to have grass-babies and fill it in.

Batch #2 of compost was started a couple of days ago. This time I left out the super-dry leftovers from last year. This batch is 95% grass and 5% kitchen scraps of various sorts. By day #2, the temperature was 160F inside! Steaming, even in 80 degree weather. Nice! Already it has reduced noticably in bulk and darkened in color. I had the forethought to take photos of the full bin and a new picture (more or less) every day so I can post a pictorial story when it's done.

Listen to Gwyn's Theme, another in my "soundtrack" series. 4m20s, 5Mb.

This is is more than a sketch but less than "finished" -- each of the five parts is improvised but has been re-done a few times to get me as far as this. I do plan to refine the whole thing a bit more, but I think it stands pretty well, even as a "first draft". As always, please listen using good headphones or speakers -- your typical laptop speakers or $5 headphones just won't do the music justice.

Comments are welcome (as always when I post creative stuff - I wouldn't post them for you if I didn't want to hear from you about them)

So... the first batch of compost has been ready for a little while now, but just last night I had the opportunity to shovel it out and take a close look. Very nice! Black, moist, mostly unrecognizable biomass... much richer-looking than anything already on the ground around my house. I am quite pleased with the performance of the ComposTumbler. I've raked out the nice new black earth over a seriously depleted area of my yard. Now we get to see how well it actually helps things grow....

What kind of wild fool is intimidated by joy?

If you want to know what my guise looked like from the outside, you can see this picture and the closeup. Thanks to Dave Anderson for taking the pics (which were in the dark and black-on-black, so my apologies for over-contrast-enhancing the images, but otherwise you'd see nothing at all).

Anyone who was at the Guisers' Ball last Saturday... did you see me?

I personally thought I did an effective job of being not-me, but I am looking for some corroboration.