Sunday, December 14, 2008

oat me, oat me... oh! oh! *

as far as I'm concerned, the reason god created summer the way it is, was to let us pause from having oatmeal for breakfast.. so when we start having it again we would be struck anew by its amazing deliciousness. (I am aware that this cosmogony completely ignores the inconvenient fact that some people eat oatmeal year round- CRAZY people!!)

have I said enough on that subject? mayhap. DAMN BUT I LOVE ME SOME OATMEAL.

*with apologetic appreciation for billy squire.

Friday, October 31, 2008

(as a dog who is particularly sick, presumably)

hey everybody.

It is halloween, and I am sick. I have been slightly sick for about eight days, but until day-before-yesterday this entailed simply the occasional sneezing bout and intermittent soup-poop. Yesterday and today it is full-blown sore throat, runny head, fever, aches, and misery. Yesterday I stocked up on good old-fashioned chicken-noodle soup. Also, it turns out very helpful to drink bunches of water- WHO KNEW?!? don't answer that. So I feel like I am sufficiently on the mend, that I might be able to bundle up and wander through the scary maze tonight! But don't expect any "rock & roll until the break of dawn" out of this one.

end transmission.

Saturday, October 25, 2008

went to a show

(note: other stuff happened too)

So I went to a show the other day, up at the stairwell gallery. It was "Aniki Dawn" of Providence, "SnowBlink" from Toronto, and "Dead Western" from Sacramento. It got past my bedtime, so I couldn't stick around for Dead Western, but I liked the two other acts pretty alright. (note to self: after you grab the .txt file cheat-sheet of "how the heck do I make links, new window, etc, & stuff" from other computer, make that a link to jake's photoblog). I have to track down snowblink online so I can say I liked them, and buy their CD (as I mentioned I had to dash off) but the main thing I came away from this show thinking about was how, when kyla (Ms A. Dawn) mentioned via inter-song banter (often an important aspect, helping steer the atmosphere) that she hadn't changed out of her pajamas before leaving the house that day, and was in fact still wearing them, the thought immediately occurred to me that, since I have been sleeping in my clothes for several months now, "wearing my pajamas all day" is a much less depressing way to think of this! Of course, upon any amount of further reflection, it immediately becomes clear that these two concepts ("PJs all day" vs "sleeps-in-clothes") are actually approximate opposites: on the one hand we have "cozy and comfortable all the time, cuz why the heck not!" and on the other, "never achieving particularly comfortable, just crashing as-is". See how that works?

I tend to think of this type of dichotomy as a relative or correlate of the old "glass half-empty or half-full" idea, only I have come to know it as "is the glass almost totally empty, or a little tiny bit full"?

Friday, July 25, 2008

a funny thing happened on the way across the parking lot...


whand
Originally uploaded by ro6ot
I thought I saw a little dry leaf skittering across the asphalt as I drove out yesterday; a little dry leaf that looked a lot like a tiny crustacean. wha-HUH? try "a tiny lobster" (aka 'shrimp")!!! He or she was totally not afraid of me, and was showing off kung-fu stances to keep me from attacking it. CRAZY, RIGHT?

Sunday, June 29, 2008

momma (didn't) told me there'd be days like these


OUCH!
Originally uploaded by ro6ot
WTF man!?! was this screw sitting balanced point up, or how the heck does this $%*# happen?

Monday, June 23, 2008

yeah so

hey everynobody-

sorry my posts have been so sparse and uninteresting!

here's some good news- I had bought a bunch of computer memory for a super good price on ebay a while back, only when it got here, it was dead- I got burned by a scam artist selling factory rejected RAM sticks. BUT! Paypal refunded my money when I filed a claim against the scam artist! I was surprised and delighted.

what else.

its hard for me to figure out what to say here. I have a filtration problem, I tend to keep my walls up really high (i.e. don't talk about stuff with anybody), but the things I really want to talk about, I kind of feel are too important to just blurt out. I worry too much (about the wrong things).

never quite as it seems dep't

what happens when you hear Chuck D. on the radio (BBC no less!) then, later that same night, when you discover theres an episode of South Park on your HD you didn't watch yet, it turns out its the one when the kids repeatedly summon the ghost of Biggie Smalls?

You end up having dreams that Flava-Flav is trying to kill you! Guest starring Charlie Murphy and featuring Flying Ninja Ice-capades.

well, really "Ice Ninja Flying-capades" but you know, who's counting or whatever..

Sunday, May 25, 2008

this is just to say

i know, I know: this blog is terribly boring looking!
Well, here is a picture to liven things up a tiny bit-
(specifically, a picture of my speedy new 30-year-old bike):
peugeot

I drove* to North Adams on Saturday, to go to a friend's opening at Mass MoCA.

*please note, I did not drive the bicycle seen here;
rather I drove my truck, andy goldsworthy.

On the way I thought up this term to refer to a group of civil-war veterans who only want to hear speeches about pasta:

spaghettysburg addressable.

in a similar vein, what kind of plastic building blocks do you think kids play with on the cluster of islands where singing is never accompanied by instrument?

(these are ideas for a word game a couple of other friends thought up;
there isn't a name for the game yet that I know of.
I think these may not strictly qualify, in which case
this OTHER game they DO count as might be called 'threedom'.)

Monday, May 19, 2008

OK so

well, turns out (and i AM TOTALLY touching real genuine wood as i write this) that my previous back injury was pretty minor, and I am fully recovered- now I can do all my usual stuff as ever, except I am carefully leaving "being totally stupid about doing things that might hurt my back again" (such as [lifting very heavy stuff without noticing my posture] and [trying to do multi-person jobs by myself]. this second one is the bigger deal, and basically constitutes a life-change.) wish me luck!

I ended up NOT going on the group bike ride last weekend, for the silly reason of not having any 'serious cycling clothes'... instead I went on a nice solo ride out to georgiaville pond, which was the first discovered swimming hole many years ago. It turns out that the group ride I DIDN'T do was more like a regular 'tour de beer' than a serious cycling trip, so I ended up better off; except that I've been hankering to go do tour de beer ever since it became spring, so I missed out on that social aspect.

(tour de beer is a providence tradition whereby an assembled group of bikers rides around town to a series of hangout spots, and at each spot, hangs out and consumes a beer, before proceeding to the next spot & repeating the procedure. Its a super fun mellow way to catch up with one's crew if, like me, one tends to lag behind in base-touch with the friends.)

in other news, I am currently picking out which health plan I want to sign up for once I am officially hired at where I've been working for 2+ years, so THAT's awesome. Copays & Deductibles y'all... yeah it turns out its no long all about the Benjamins*.

WHO KNEW?!?

*is there already a satire "all about the benefits"?

Saturday, May 10, 2008

betterer!

hey all!

my back doesn't hurt anymore, thank goodness. I've even been on a few bike rides, sort of testing the waters doubly- to see how my back feels, and preparing for a group ride on sunday.

Tomorrow I am going to Boston for the evening to see my friend play music, and several other bands as well; at a place called "P.A.'s Lounge" to which I've been before but scarcely remember. Its actually in Somerville, not Boston proper. I'll tell you how it goes!

the bad news this week: the 8-gigabyte SD card I got for $50 on the interwebs, seems to have fatally corrupted itself... will I be able to get it replaced or get my money back?!? we shall see!

This evening instead of going to the Masquerade ball at the Dirt Palace, I stayed home & put new tubes and tires on my fancy Peugot bike to get ready for the ride on Sunday.

thank you for tuning in- I hope you (whoever and whenever you might be, reading this) are well!

rob

Sunday, May 4, 2008

weakened update

I hurt my back at work on Wednesday, and I have been taking things a little easy (physically) since then.

Here is what happened: I was wrestling a stupid heavy box up three stupid stone steps, with the help of a hand truck but otherwise without assistance for no reason{other than to see if I could do it} and BAM ~or rather OWW!~ I get this burning pain in one little spot of my lower back. For the next two days this pain occasionally kind of quieted down or almost-disappeared when I held still, but was still there.. that was Wednesday, today is Sunday. Since Friday I have mostly kept a heating pad [the substrate from monkey's winter palace] on the area, and taken Naproxin Sodium, an anti-inflammatory which helps, not just hiding the pain but in actually CAUSING THERE TO BE LESS PAIN because the pain is caused by the inflammation.

Today I feel better enough to try doing some yoga! (note: this is mostly a joke, funny because if I do nearly anything even slightly strenuous which involves me moving but not keeping my lower back still... hello pain! Also though, partly not a joke, as I HAVE done child's pose and it feels like it's helping! Thanks to my friend Jo for that suggestion.)

In other news, though I haven't as yet gotten the 'Lappy 486' seen below quite into shape yet, I am however nonetheless composing this entry on his younger brother, the 600X. USING LINUX EVEN! I met the cutest lil puppy on the internet the other day, and it followed me home & totally moved into my little computer! I like him a lot.

As for his big brother, today I'm going to radioshack to get 9 AA-battery holders to solder in place of the 9 cells I took out of the 770's dead battery, so I can make a functional battery, so I can finish trying to get THAT stupid thing kick-started without pouring too much money into it. (the $8 "untested" battery from ebay was of course totally dead and unusable.) I think its gonna work, I'll let you know!

Friday, May 2, 2008

I am losing / control of the language (again)

yeah so it turns out "not being able to talk to people"
ISN'T like a muscle, say in one part of the body,
that gets stronger when you force yourself to use it
by immobilizing a different part.

Have my written communication skills atrophied
while I've been not using them, even as my in-person ability*
has largely failed to blossom?

MOST LIKELY!

nonetheless... back on the horse!

a likely story you may well be saying to yourself.

WE SHALL SEE.




*my personable-ality?

Monday, April 14, 2008

the great indoor fight

Djever have one of those (seemingly interminable stretches of time)?


here is my IBM Thinkpad 770Z, which I have been building from cheaply-eBay'd parts* since sometime around the end of last year. I'll go ahead and save all you folks some trouble by telling you, since nobody else will: This laptop won't boot if it has an Hard Drive smaller than 5 gigs in it; this includes 4.6 gig hard drives, sadly. Yes, even in the 2nd HD adapter, and even via the 760 drive caddy (seen here.)

*i.e. I first bought the bottom half, no screen, for $30, then I got a screen for another $24, then a HD caddy and some memories for $40, THEN the 2nd HD adapter (so I can get all the data off my old laptop, a 760XD which is a Pentium I@166 MHz running Win98), and NOW I am waiting for the $9 battery before I can update the BIOS so I can install WinXP on this guy & use it a little, and decide if I want to throw $70 on a brand new, awesome battery. STAY TUNED!

click the picture to go to Flickr & read somewhat more about it, complete with explicatory notes...

Thursday, April 3, 2008

christmas movie

here is a little video from xmas day that's been
languishing in my camera and/or computer ever since!


christmas victrola from ro6ot on Vimeo.

Sunday, March 30, 2008

new truck


Andy Goldsworthy
Originally uploaded by ro6ot
I GOT A TRUCK!

can I tell you how I feel, as I drive down the road, or up the street, like this: "DAMN, no wonder I've pretty much felt like shit for the past four years- what was I doing DRIVING A NOT TRUCK?!?"

much like I feel after yoga: "no wonder I've felt like shit for the past [number] weeks- I haven't been doing yoga!"

in other news,
film at eleven.

About Me

olneyville providence, rhode island state, United States