Bus ride home with Grammy Lector

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Stamps-With-Foot had an appointment today and I rode the bus home from work. Riding the bus in Seattle is never dull. For part of my ride home I sat next to a grandmotherly looking lady with a blond/gray bun on top of her head, wearing a sweater with cats faces on it, and she was alternately reading: Wine and Cheese : The Essential Reference and The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers. I kinda wanted to ask her why one would be reading such dissimilar books on the ride home, but I kept thinking about how she might want eat my liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti. No, really….

When I got some Stamps-With-Foot was waiting for me with a glass of the wine pictured below. There are days when I do consider that I am in a Twilight Zone episode, looking for the gremlin on the wing.

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A bowl and a mallet

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I few weekends ago I spent some hours hunched infront of the lathe just playing with shapes and chisels.  I came away with a much needed maple carving mallet and a large elm bowl for Stamps-With-Foot.  She was all smiles when I presented it to her and turned it in every direction to see all the detail.  There was some kissing.  The mallet is now in my shop and I have used it for some clean-up chiseling on some trim and the bowl is sitting on our kitchen table filled with fruit and the first roses clipped from our bushes this year.

I find that if I spend a whole day in my shop and come out out with a little something that either makes the wife’s day easier or something that she has requested fixed I can get away with walking into the house covered in wood chips and sawdust.  A hour or so of labor is a fine trade for 8+ hours of shop-time were I am not penilized for not mopping the kitchen floor, washing dishes, or cleaning the toliet.

Spring in Belfast, Northern Ireland

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One of the reasons my J-O-B pays me the medium bucks is because I will travel anywhere in the world with little to zero notice.  I again proved that last week when, with two hours notice, I hopped on a plane from Seattle to Northern Ireland two days before the Memorial Day weekend.  Stamps-With-Foot was none too happy.  I bought her shiny objects while there to quell the violence in her heart.  Man, she really likes shinny stuff because I haven’t heard one more cross word from her about my trip and I am starting to wonder if she relishes when I travel so that she can display annoyance and mock anger to receive sparkly bobbles and guilt-heavy jewelry.

Some rough initial, unedited opinions of Belfast:

  1. Strong northern winds blowing when I arrived brought in the smell of cattle and pastures – the sweet decay of manure and decomposing grass.
  2. Road right-of-way here is on the left side of the road.  This makes me a hazard to curbs, rental cars and living beings.  I also noticed after repeatedly walking against the flow of foot traffic on the street that people here walk on the left of sidewalk and escalators are left-flow as well.  It’s the little things one notices.
  3. There exists a weird pocket version of adolescence rebellion Northern Ireland: lily-white 12-18 year old boys who are overly groomed, cell phone to ear with hip-hop blaring, trying to look tough – Impossible when one is wearing his collar popped and has his feet shod in white leather slip-ons.
  4. I went on a hop-on hop-off city tour that included drives down the Falls Road and Shankill Road areas of town were 40’ high barriers, blast walls, bullet scarred bricks, and where victims’ and martyrs’ murals take up the entire sides of buildings and.  There is not an inch of street in those neighborhoods that doesn’t hold some palpable sad memory for some.  It was spooky and sad and made me say a prayer of thanks for my lower-middle class childhood.  Growing up in Belfast during The Troubles, in a constant state of fear and vengeance would have probably led me to a very angry and short life.
  5. This land is a sea of red hair. Most of it real, some from a bottle, one 20-something lass walked into view with natural ginger roots and pink/red tips. An Asian teen and a black girl with red dos also strolled by my people-watching perch – Were they red-headed just to blend…?
  6. I happened to stop in at a mass at St. Mary’s (walked out of Kelly’s Bar and there was a church, what do you do?) and police had to be called because of drunk/high/ crazy lady (maybe she was all three) interrupted mass and tried to take over the microphone at the pulpit.  – High drama.
  7. Traveling without my wife is lonely and sucky.  The sharing of things and people seen, food eaten, and the smell of the flower and grocery markets is a thing not to be trivialized.
  8. Every third word I here is “fock” or “focking.”  Spoken with gusto by men, women, teens and kids (one lad with spiky hair, maybe ten, at an international food market said today: “Ah fock this ma, I wanta go home”). It seems that the Northern Irish have such a great affinity for this word and use it as much as possible in an apparent attempt to claim it as their own.
  9. I went to Madden’s Bar to drink a pint and listen to the advertised Irish trad music. Walked in for the last 30 minutes of the Champions League final between FC Barcelona and Manchester United. As I sat down, Barcelona scored (final was 3-1 Barcelona) and the crowd cheered.  Apparently, I was in a Nationalist/Republican Pub…  I kept my United love to my focking self and drank my focking Guinness as focking quietly as focking possible. Music was great though.
  10. For some reason biking in Belfast is not wide spread. It can’t be due to a northern Irish aversion to 2 wheels:  I arrived on a Thursday afternoon and the roadways between villages were packed with road bikers all kitted up in multi-colored spandex.  Really, hundreds of them, but in the city it seems like almost no one rides.  I went out walking on a mostly sunny afternoon in the central part of downtown and saw maybe 15 people riding all day.  There was only one fixed speed wonder and only 1 guy on a trials bike (Danny MacAskill fan I would bet) out hopping on to park benches, walls, and planters.  It is not the weather – London and Hamburg are full of bikes. The Belfast streets are broad and flat.  It must be something left over from The Troubles, I don’t know and didn’t get a chance to ask.
  11. As discovered when Stamps-With-Foot and I were in Dublin – Guinness is better in Ireland!

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Bike to work month… big belly… left in the dust by old guy…

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May is bike to work month and I need to ride. As I have neglected my many two wheeled lovelies this spring in my quest to become hugely fat, I decided it was time that I get back in the saddle, shed some pounds, and get into fighting shape. My first outing was somewhat painful and more than a little ego smashing. I drove into work the first sunny morning of the month and cut out 20 minutes early to take advantage of the not-rainy weather. This winter and spring have been cold, wet, crappy, and gray and I am so white that my skin is almost translucent.

I rode my CycloX bike at what I believed was a nice little let’s-get-reacquainted clip. The sun was warm, the sky blue, little wind, I was soaking up vitamin D, and WHOOSH! – an ass on a blue bike darted past me without a word and cleared my bars by a couple inches. Son of a… Poor form, poor form… Times past, I would have chased him down, stuck on his wheel and punished him with a nasty big-ring pace till he fell off, ashamed of his transgression and performance.  However, my cookie handles precluded me for doling out lessons in cycling etiquette right then. Let’s just say that I got passed a bunch.  Once, that lovely afternoon, by a 70+ year old man on a ’80s steel frame, who said “Look out, son!” as he rolled by on my left.  Really, he said that.

I would like to tell you that I got stronger as the month wore on, but traveling for work, a painful case of costochondritis, and my own laziness conspired against me.  I rode home three more times in May, averaging once a week and did ZERO weekend rides.  I am more than a little ashamed to own as many bikes as I do and not treat them with the respect they deserve.  June and July are going to be different.  I am going to commute an average of twice a week (when I am home instead of in Belfast – long story) and I am going to do one weekend ride a week.  In fact, next weekend I am going to take my lovely bride on a tandam bike ride/pincnic on either the Burke/Gillman or the Cedar River trail

On a brighter note, ridership at my work has increased 33% from last May to this: we have 3 people out of 700 that now ride to work occasionally instead of just two…

Bad Luck or Karma Boomerang?

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When you open up your travel toiletries kit and you find that your toothbrush is broken in half after 20+ hours of flight-time and after arriving at your hotel just as all the local shops close, you have two choices:  Use the nub or go to bed with fuzzy teeth.  I chose the former and as I made a mess of things, I couldn’t help think that I must have set my karma on fire at some point in my recent travels in order to deserve the splotch of toothpaste that somehow landed in my right eye.  Did one of the ferns I took out of the yard have a Secret of NIMH expansion colony under it?  Did I cause a bride-to-be in transit to miss her wedding by taking a specific parking spot?  Was the taxi I took from the airport destined for more worthy/needy passengers?  Did I drink the last beer in the last keg of Guinness at a pub on St. Paddy’s Day and did violence ensue? 

opps…

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I apparently am a blog-tard…  I recently accidently turned off all comments for like a month and had no clue and a couple of days ago I mistakenly published a draft that had incomplete sentences, more misspelled words than usual, no pictures, and a run-on cycling related rant that I digressed into.  I am officially grounding myself from posting for a week.

The most awesomest desk ever!!!!!!!

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The wife and I have desk issues:  Not problems with sharing, it that we own too damn many.  I have a 1950s copy of a 1790s Federal secretary, we use an Art Nouveau drop front secretary as a liquor cabinet, her sewing desk is a ’80’s maple laminate, there is an 7X3′ drafting desk in the basement, I am currently refinishing a solid oak university desk for her office and we pay the bills on a Duncan Phyfe drop-leaf.  We need another desk in the house like John Hinkley, Jr. needs an assault rifle…

For Stamps-With-Foot’s birthday, we went and perused jewelry stores, had lunch and coffee down town, window shopped for a new Persian carpet, and eventually wandering into our favorite antique market…  Damn!  I bought another desk.  In my defense though, this is the most awsomest desk ever!!  No, really.  It is a solid wood 1960 build of a Norwegian/English/Swedish cabinet desk – a modern interpretation of a Moore or Wooten folding wing desk.  It unfolds and slides like a fvcking Optimus Prime Transformer!  The minute I saw it, I felt all funny in my lower abdominal region…

Now, to get my little bride to agree to this purchase, I had to promis to sell the Federalist secretary and a 5-drawer quarter-sawn oak dresser, but it was SOOO worth it.  Additionally when I went back a couple of days later to pick up the desk, I also brought home an additional 2’ section of library card catalog.  The wife was not as pleased with that surprise…

Sorry, the pictures were snapped with my cell at the shop and do not do this beauty any justice at all.

Fresh cut grass makes me tingle in the lower abdominal region…

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After 100+ days of rain, spring is finally here.  I only really know that because my lapin cherry tree and the ornamentals on the block are in full blossom.  Hopefully, all the hard work done in the rain and mud till now is about to start paying off.

Prep has been the theme for the past few months.  I spent some quality time killing yard moss, reseeding in the front and back yards, adding weed and feed, conducting property-wide dandelion genocide, planting 70+ bulbs, and getting the soil in the garden bed ready for the tomatoes, carrots, onions and garlic.  In addition to finishing the raised beds and converting the cat litter-filled pond into a flower planter for my wife, I have cut all the trash trees, vines, and blackberries from my south fence.  My neighbor on that side keeps his home and yard in the Miss Havisham fashion.  I have taken three loads of branches/leaves/vines to the dump and I can now see from one end of our property to the other.  So far this year his pine tree has delivered three 5-gallon buckets worth of pinecones in my front yard and I have had to clean my gutters three times.  I have a sneaking suspicion that the particular pine tree in question is not long for this world…  There is a holly tree of some relation that is not looking all that well either...

I finally got a great espalier apple tree in the ground, two columnar apples to flank it, and an additional cherry (a glacier) up front.  There is now a fig for Laurel, a dwarf Helena apricot from Dave&Sarah, a Satsuma, and an Improved Meyer lemon – all in containers so we can hot-house them this winter.  For the side yard, there are two huckleberries in bloom – ready to plant.  The last rose bush (a J&P Radiant Perfume) has been planted on the back fence and irrigation lines have been run to the roses, garden boxes, raspberries, and fruit trees.

The Apricot and citrus trees will stay in containers so that I can

move them into a hot-house when the temperature drop in the fall.

The multiple weird cold snaps this year have been decidedly unhealthy for my strawberry pots, but the kitchen herbs planted last spring are doing well.  The orange-mint has taken over a rectangular container and the rosemary is starting to bloom tiny baby-blue flowers.  The two sunshine blueberries in pots are covered in small white blossoms and the grass in front and back is thick, healthy, and Ireland green – I can’t wait to string up the hammock and snooze gently swinging above my lawn.  Although I still have dandelion farms on either side there have been very few that have dared to peak up in the grand lawn of Le Maison Du Talley this year.  Their appearance has been followed with swift and forceful retribution.  Speaking of the weed farms adjacent to me: It seems that someone sprayed them in the middle of the night with Scott’s liquid death.  Now all the yellow-orange flowers that they were cultivating seem to be shriveling up. I think it was the gnomes. -I have a couple of English garden gnomes that are leftist lawn militants.  The local dogs give our place a wide berth – narry a singe poop on the parking strip this year and there is a racoon living over at Miss Havisham’s and they are preparing to hunt safari-style…

The second of three loads of branches taken to the dump in the last month.  My neighbor loves me so much that he shares his trees and yard waste with me…

I am slowly being replaced.

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I have mentioned previously that my relationship with my wife is a Polaroid of happy modern love, with a side order of belligerent puppy.  Her dog REALLY wants to be alpha-male in our house !  He wants prime the snuggling position when TV watching.  If I get up off the couch or chair, he is immediately in my spot.  Brodie tries his dead-level best to sleep between the wife and me – sneaking into the blocking position in the middle of the night.  I ofter wake up to jowles and puppy breath sharing the pillow with me.  If we have to leave him in the car for a minute while we run in somewhere, he waits for us in the driver’s seat.  My bathrobe is now his bathrobe, etc…

So night before last, I got up to pee and got caught up for like 30 minutes writing a work e-mail on my iPhone.  I came back to bed and I found that not only does Brodie share a love for firm pillows, my side of the bed, high thread-count cotton sheets, and cute girls, he apparently also has a deep affection for presidential biographies…

That dog has some sort of diabolical plan formulating between those big ears…  I feel that he is trying to slowly replace me – you know, like some morning he will dig a deep hole out back, help me into it, and trot back into the house to have his morning coffee, read the news, and get ready for a hard days work, all  without Stamps-With-Foot ever knowing the difference…

My kitchen knife-rack is cooler than yours!

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We were given some really nice kitchen knives for our wedding – REALLY NICE.  I take pride in the fact that we never have dull kitchen cutlery and when my chef father-in-law comes for visits, he always remarks on the usability of our chef’s and prep knives.  Those were just Target specials that were leftovers and cast-offs from my parents and friends.  I was fine with them banging around in drawers and odd knife blocks.  Well, the new Globals, were above a shabby knife drawer and required a case that befitted there quality and beauty.

As part of the kitchen remodel, I am adding little touches that make cooking in our kitchen as easy and pleasurable as possible.  I decided to add a custom wall-mounted knife holder that would both protect the generous gift and make them immediately ready to use. 

Knives need a good hard wood to protect them (hardwood retain less mosture) and the harder the wood, the longer it will last through the years of little nicks and jabs as knives are withdrawn and put away.  I had some reclaimed maple flooring sections that came out of a local school gym that were just the right width and were bone-dry.  I went out to the table saw and cut 10 kerfs from ½” to 2 ½”.  I then glued and clamped two pieces together and let them sit for a day.  After the glue was fully cured, I cut off the original flooring grooves, drilled mounting holes, sanded it with 220 grit, and mounted it in the kitchen.  Dowels were installed over the screws in the mounting holes to make the installation seamless.  I taped off the wall and the contact strip where the knives would enter/exit and painted the rack and painted the rest a gloss white to match the eventual color of the cabinets.  One added benefit is that our Globals show very nicely in their new rack!  I am working on replacing the 9” crap chef’s knife with a Global sashimi blade and a 9″ bread knife.  Both the whe wife and father-in-law approve.

Evil on the inside

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My dear friend Rosy is currently feeling the sting of retribution.  It is his own fault and really more the result karma then anything I might have done.  I HATE snakes and he thought it would be giggly funny to send me an e-mail with an embedded surprise snake video – it may have made me fling my iPhone and pee myself…  Unhappy does not cover my reaction.  Even before his giggling subsided, I began “Project Retaliation.”

Rosy has a beautiful and loving wife, supportive parents, friendly neighbors, and ultra religious in-laws.  I decided to deliver payback through these good people.  The thing about my core group of friends – The Arthritic, Big Belly,  Hillbilly Climbing Assn., is that we are occasionally mean to each other…  There have been forced birthday paddlings, blow-up sheep in restaurants, public ridicule, chain-mails, doctored pictures, co-conspirators, and certain gross misdemeanors committed in the name of good fun, love, and friendly vengeance.  This is shaping up to be one of the latter occurrences.

First, I went online and signed him up on the  Liberation Party website as wanting information and I gave them $10 in his name.  I used his wife’s email address for further contact – she has strong Republican sympathies and the rest of her family are Super-Tea Partiers.  Apparently, Rosy also gave the Tea-Party $10 and clicked every “send me updates and info” button that he could while making that donation…  My friend is now an official Lady GaGa Fan Club member and his picture and details are on one of the Justin Bieber freak/fan sites – they will be sending him periodic (hopefully daily) updates for all things Bieber.  I requested some dirty, dirty, adult toy catalogs for him and sent them to his parent’s address.  Then, a 1-year subscription to OUT! magazines was sent to Rosy via Amazon, but I used his conservative next door neighbor’s address.  Rosy will get a Bear of the Month-mail from now until the end of time and there were also literature requests for everything from hair-loss treatment to laser back hair removal to penile enlargement device specifications.  It really is the small things in life that make us happy.

A couple weeks later I got the text message below from his mom:

One might be tempted to think that I over reacted.  One would be wrong.  Rosy once contemplated releasing a live adult bison into my apartment because I teased him about his mom being hot and me having prior physical relations with her (I didn’t) – he actually looked at the logistics of getting the thing trailered in, really.  Rosy doesn’t have a stop or pause button – you have to decimate him to make it stop.  He fired the first shot in this little war and I had to retaliate with immediate and decisive force or there would have been more snake videos and pictures.  He will attempt some sort of well thought out retribution and I will then have to use the nuclear option: his turbo-religious in-laws.  Stay tuned…

Trying to make my neighborhood a better place.

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I live a street over from an arterial road that is renowned for both it speeders and the accidents that they cause.  There have been individual demands and requests for YEARS to have the city do something about the collisions and deaths along “I-35.”  As this is my neighborhood, I need to be involved if I expect things to get better.  I recently sent different versians of the letter below to my city council and our mayor:

Councilman _______________;

As this May is bike to work month, I would like to invite you to either join me for my daily commute along 35th Ave SW in West Seattle or for a stroll and discussion along that same stretch of road.

There have been repeated community pleas asking city officials to do something the speed of the traffic on that road for years (see links below), there are multiple speed-related accidents a week, and at least one  pedestrian or cyclist death a year since 2006.  According to SDOT’s own findings six of the top 15 most frequent accident prone intersections for the past five years are along 35th (at Morgan, #4; at Webster, #7; at Barton, #8; at Juneau, #12; at Thistle, #15).

I would like for you to join me for both a first-hand look at the issue and a discussion of possible rational solutions.

Thank you and regards,

Hiram Crookshank

Links: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, & 8


No reply yet, but I will wait a week or so and see.  If I don’t hear anything, then I am going to turn it up a notch – the squeaky wheel gets the oil and all.

Tiny woman, sweet voice, totes a .45…

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I have 5 aunts over 70 years old and 4 of them legally carry a concealed pistol.  These are sweet little old ladies who bake and teach Sunday school.  Woe is the individual that kicks in their doors…  The most common misconception that the general public has concerning those who own or carry a firearm is that they are all cheap-beer swilling, grizzled, right-wing, gun nuts with itchy trigger fingers.  While those people do exist, it is not an accurate picture of an entire group of people.  It would be like judging all Baptists by the actions of the small groups in Kentucky that handle snakes and drink poison…

I recently stumbled on to a YouTube video done by a tiny, well spoken mother, and firearms instructor that is terrific in showing a softer side to the discussion.  Take a look at and stop by her website for further information.

Library book sale time again

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It could be worse; I could have addiction issues with heroin or gambling.  Instead I am afflicted with a cookie habit and Biblophilia.  I have reduced the cookie bingeing to reasonable levels – I was at Santa-level consumption during the holidays – and I have been using the library more instead of haunting bookshops and trolling Amazon.  That said, the Seattle Public library bi-annual book sale always does me in.  Last year, I bought a full set of 1911 Encyclopedia Britannicas and missed a complete set of Harvard Classics by 20 minutes.  This year I went to buy 4 novels and see what their mountaineering/sailing lit selection was like…

Crap.  I left the sale with 3 boxes and a grocery sack of books and Stamps-With-Foot left with a bag full as well.  I got some GREAT stuff:  a first edition (signed) of Red Sky in Mourning, a KILLER 2 volume micro print edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, the Ed Veisturs’ K2 book with a spotless dust jacket, some fiction I HAD to have, and a cloth bound complete Britannica Great Books set.  We are now full to the brim and if one more book comes in, I will have to build some new shelves.  We are planning on a large book case/Murphy-bed combo for the office, but that is years away and at this rate it will be full on the first day it goes up.

Biological Clocks and Mad Travel

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In the last nine days, I have been in three States, have held three new babies, and have watched my wife’s baby-clock go from tick…tick….tick… to BOOM!BOOM!BOOM!  There were three pregnant bridesmaids at our wedding and one of the groomsmen had a very pregnant wife.  In Portland, we met Trystan: A handsome 3-week old little man that is the spitting image of his father.  In Orange County, CA I met Valiant:  a 5-week old heart breaker that looks like his Mommy.  In San Francisco I met Valentina for the first time – Stamps-With-Foot was there for the birth.  Valentina is 6 weeks old and also looks like her daddy.

All these little ones have, seemingly overnight, turned my sweet little “puppies-are-better-than-babies” wife into one of those crazy ladies who talks of nothing but nurseries, baby clothes, water births, talcum powder smells, and the merits of cloth vs. disposal…  All the diaper talk mania is taking its toll on me:  I had a dream a couple nights ago in which Stamp-With-Foot locked me in a room and made me perform till there were babies.  By the time I woke up (I should saw was jolted awake, sweating), there were like 20 of them at all different ages and sizes as well as 4 rabbits.  Some jars of my grandmother Talley’s plum jelly also made an appearance (WTF?!)…

The dishwasher that ate my March

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Stamps-With-Foot hates doing the dishes.  She has about as much appreciation for dirty plates as the Dali Llama does for Chairman Mao…  Since moving into our 1928 wonder, we (mostly she) has been hand washing the pots, pans, silverware and plates and letting them dry on our limited counter-top space.  When discussing kitchen options a dishwasher was her number one priority.  There was some huffing and foot tapping…   I did as commanded and cut out a cabinet beside the sink (GOD! It hurt to alter the original cabinetry!), planned for plumbing and wiring, worked out the floor build up, cut access holes, made trim pieces, marked off measurements, etc…

For insurance reasons, I brought in an electrician to run the new power line back to the panel and while he was there, I had him install three outlets above the counter (there were none), move the stove power line and add a receptacle for our future over the stove microwave.  That sounds fairly simple, but there was some drywall to remove, some 420 time, weird access issues, and a stove cord he drilled through…  It took him two visits over a three week period to complete the needed work.  The plumber (I don’t plumb, I suck at it and old galvanized pipes scare me!) was easier to get a hold of, a nice guy, knew his stuff, and completed his part – two valves and line installation – in just a single morning.  I do recommend the later type of contractor instead of the former!

So, after maybe 6 hours of my labor and $1200 (washer price + craftsmen), my wife now has a dishwasher and lots of outlets to plug crap into.  Now, I can get on with the rest of the kitchen remodel – 9 feet of new cabinet build and installation.  I won’t need any additional professional assistance, so hopefully the rest goes smoothly and quickly.

Weekend in Portland

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Stamps-With-Foot and I went down to Portland for Easter weekend… as if we had all the freetime in the world – no projects looming over us – and a pot of money.  We have some dear friends there that have just had a baby and we went down to meet him and hang out with them.  Holy Pork Chop on a Stick!!  The weather was AWESOME!!  I am talking 65 degrees, blue skies, sunshine – the works.  Saturday found us in a green city park, sitting under a tree, having a picnic, and swigging mimosas!  It was a really laid back day and just what the doctor ordered.  We spent Easter Sunday with an old family friend who happens to be Jewish – I always imagined the Easter bunny as having Hasidic roots…  After a lazy morning, yummy coffee, and a terriffic breakfast, we drove into downtown and went to the Portland Chinese Garden.  Our friend is on the Board of Directors there and we got in for free.  Although the rain came back, we had a phenomal time walking the paths, finding nooks and alternate views.  There was a late lunch at the tea house and the ladies partook of sake and plum wine.

Cycling Bigot

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I attended a meeting of the Seattle Crime Prevention Council tonight and as we were discussing more pressing matters like excess speed on our block leading to multiple accidents and at least one fatality a year since 2006, a gentleman in the back made a pronouncement about “all cyclists” being dirty, smelly, trash. You got to love generalizations… I bet someone on a bike really ticked this guy off and now he loathes ALL bike riders – making up a little story in his mind about how everyone who lowers themselves to peddle a two-wheeler is somehow beneath him.  Huh… I think I remember showering this morning and I have a feeling that the shirt I am currently wearing cost more than the man’s entire outfit – including his cheesy 10 carat nugget pinky ring. Apparently, bigots come in many forms…

Abu Dhabi is not exacty a vacation destination.

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I spent almost 5 days in Abu Dhabi and I wouldn’t exactly call it a vacation destination…  Did I mention that is is 22 hours of flight time?  It is a very expensive city ($100 dinner for one) that is full of heat, sand, and construction.  No old souks, lots of strip malls, Rolex watches on wrists as far as the eye can see, construction workers wearing flip-flops while wielding in the high steel…  I find that the place has very little soul compared to places like Morocco, Egypt, and Lebanon.   My magazines were censored with a black marker (really, really!) and I found that even some Wikipedia entries were censored.  Not a huge fan.

On a positive note, I will say that the architecture in the UAE is fantastic.  Serious aesthetic lessons could be learned by western students taking a semester to look at the body of work there – Office and apartment buildings with color, striking lines, curving details.  Really beautiful buildings!

So, I got there and the sun was pouring down and it was 90 degrees out.  I had no sunscreen and I stopped by the hotel store to pick up a bottle.  The small Asian clerk had her back to me when I asked and she started telling me that they had 5,7,10, 15 SPF and turns to look at me.  She gave me the once over and reached all the way left and grabs the 50SPF for babies and says, “you chubby and very white.  You burn easy.  Better you have this one.”  Son of a…  I know I am pale, but did she have to throw chubby in there?!?  I find that middle aged ladies of the Asian persuasion are brutally honest.  The next night I am eating Thai food and my waitress asks if I want some sort of pudding for desert and as I am saying ‘no thank you’, she smiles and says, “Better you don’t have it anyway.”  I guess I gave her a puzzled look and the shoots back with, “You have desert a lot, missing this one will be good for you.”  I am 5’8″ tall and weigh 173 pounds!!  I wear a size 43/44 coat and 32 pants.  It is not like they rolled me into the place on a cart.  I do have 10 pounds of cookie weigh from the holidays that I still cannot shake – 10 pounds!!  Man, run away from any tiny Thai/Viet/Chinese/etc… women in Abu Dhabi if your ego is teetering on fragile. 

Going to Abu Dhabi next week… At least it is not summer there yet

/ Matt Talley

Abu Dhabi ( أبو ظبي‎ ), literally Father of gazelle, is the capital and the second largest city in the United Arab Emirates.  My J-O-B is sending me there to look at some fiber optic issues on a commercial passenger jet.   I will be armed with a digital microscope, a satchel full of wire drawings, and bright shinny new passport as my old one was both full to the brim with stamps, visas, work permits and set to expire in less than 6 months.  I will have some time to kill waiting for access to the aircraft and for my flight out, so I am going shopping for nick-nacks to outfit our Moroccan-themed living room.  Maybe a small metal lantern or three and some brass.  Abu Dhabi is a shopping mecca, not the dusty souk kind, more like the 19 shopping malls in a five block radius kind of shopping…   But there are a couple of blocks where one can paruse store shelves filled with dusty stuff and not have to carry a sack of cash.

I cannot say that I am the happiest of campers to be traveling tho the Middle East while there are revolutions and air strikes afoot though…

Nerdy is the new black… Fountain pen love.

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A local fellow blogger just published a post about fountain pens that I wish I would have beat her to! Now I have to stand in her shadow and try to come up with a witty observation or two . Damn…

I started using or trying to use a fountain pen back in college after hearing the writer and historian Shelby Foote discuss writing all his manuscripts out longhand with a dip pen. As a history major, that sounded like something amazing to do and I took a cligraphy class and wrote letters at the dawn of the e-mail age with a leaky black bakelite stylo. Though, like many things started in college, it fell to the way side as the rest of life swirled around me – picking up my lone surviving calligraphy pen every now and then to address Christmas cards or to add flair to a note or sign. I didn’t become a complete fountain pen convert until we lived in Germany for a couple of years: ALL the “smart” engineers had a nice pen to initial drawings and sign docs with (being engineers, there was the ubiquitous mechanical pencil as well). I wanted to be Euro/Old-World cool!!

I jumped right in and bought a couple of cheap cartridge pens and worked out which nib size and ink color was best for me. I now have a quiver of Lamy Safari pens with different nibs (from EB to EF) and a weighty stainless Lamy that my bride gave me for Valentine’s day one year. I use it for signing legal docs and for writing her love notes.

After trying Montblanc and Parker inks, my pens are now loaded with Noodler’s Ottoman Azure, Bulletproof Black, and #41 Brown. I have some blue Lamy refills – just in case, but the only time I have used them has been on travel when I ran out of the good stuff. Note: I find that Montblancs seem to find their way into the hands of the pretentious…

I have converted my wife as well. Any ‘Thank You’ cards or notes she sends out are written with either her glass pen or a compact Scheaffer. Though far from a luddite, I hope that more and more people switch back to fountain pens as the amount of auctual writing we do every has dwindled, I feel it is important to add weight to the words we choose to scribble instead of type.

For like-minded brethren go HERE

And for Shelby Foote/Civil War highlight reel:

 

Seattle Bike Expo 2011 – Sights

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Sunday before last, my Father-in-Law, the Chatty Buddha, and I trekked over to the 2011 Seattle Bicycle Expo.  We got a late start, make later still by the whole Spring Forward thing.  We arrived at the show a little after 3:00 (show ended at 4:00), snagged free parking, and talked the two young ladies at the door into letting us in for free!  We spent some time looking at the classic bikes (Where I drooled some and my pants got a little tight), made a quick walk of the show floor, and the circled back to the booths that were most interesting: the $70 cycling Jerseys going for an end-of-show-special for $30 were particularly attractive.  We picked up a couple and a conned the vendor into giving us two caps that matched the jerseys for the price of one. J

I walked through the Bamboo Getto and took a few shots, talked to the gents at Co-Motion cycles, Eben Oliver Weiss, AKA Bike Snob, gave a talk that I wanted to see, but my packed weekend schedule prevented it.  He Blogged about his trip here.

The First Ride of Spring – Rekindling My Bike Romance

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Let’s say that I have been neglecting my bikes this year.  If my road bike were a truly a woman, she would have already maxed all the credit cards and run away with that suave, skinny, tanned bike mechanic that so lovingly tuned her last summer.  With the return of Daylight Savings time, it is time to rekindle the romance with my many two-wheeled mistresses.

My oldest friend, Herbert, was in Seattle celebrating the rain/spring break/grey skies for a week and we decided to go for a long bike ride while he was visiting.   We cruised down to the ferry dock near Lincoln Park and took a couple bikes over to Vashion Island for a circumnavigation tour of that dot of terra firma.  I rode my commuter bike and Herbert rode my 1979 disco-orange Volkscycle.  The night before we installed some retro fenders on the orange beauty (Arron’s Bike is the SHIT! – incredible customer service!), thinking we might get wet, but karma intervened and we had blue skies and warm sunshine for the whole trip.

After climbing a nasty hill leading from the ferry dock, we rode south along the less populated western side.  Vashion is dotted with small farms, quite roads, tall trees, and beach front cabins.  The abject poverty of some of the homes we passed was quite sad:  3000+ sq. soot cabin with 3-4 acres of green pasture behind, a dock extending out into the Sound with a handsome 30+ foot sail bot moored there, panted barn, new tractor, happy cows…  so sad…  😉

We stopped for lunch and beer at the Quartermaster Inn – yummy red pepper soup – and made it to Vashion Island Coffee Roasters just before they closed.  Coffee…  I bought a bag of my favorite Ecuadorian roast, and enjoyed a fine cup of joe, sitting on the bench outside watching the world go by.   Getting back on the bikes was difficult…  after a wet winter of cheating on my two wheel mistress with beer and snacks, my insensitivity to her was repaid by the butt-numbing pain inflected by my bike seat.  Holy crap!  Herbert was in worse shape as the plastic 1970’s plush saddle h was astride turned into a crotch mounted torture devise after 25 miles or so.

All together, we rode 46 miles, drank some good beer, ate yummy food, ingested way too much coffee, laughed about stupid things done as children, lovingly remembered friends that have passed, and made some memories.

Post Script:

We had planned to paddle a kayak over to Blake island the next day, but our butts decided that wasn’t going to happen.  Instead, we hobbled around for a couple of days like two old guys in search of a hemorrhoid pillow…

A Better Man Than I Will Ever Be.

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J.A. Sparks of Deport died on Saturday, December 18, 2010 in Brentwood Terrace Healthcare and Rehab Center in Paris. He was 86 years old. Mr. Sparks was born in Clardy, Lamar Co., Texas on June 1, 1924, the son of Joseph Alexander and Jessie Hulett Sparks. He married the former Juanita Webster on January 12, 1952 in Texarkana. Mr. Sparks was the owner and operator of Sparks Metal Construction for many years, was a long time member of First United Methodist Church, Deport, a member of Deport Masonic Lodge #381 for 61 years. He was a former school board member of the Deport Independent School District; was on the Board of Directors for First National Bank of Deport for many years and a U.S. Army Veteran of World War II.

My Uncle JA was one of my favorite people on this earth.  He was the first adult who treated me as a sentient, thinking being when I was a child.  There was genuine interest in his eyes when we talked about trees, farming, building, and shooting.  JA, to the horror of my mother and delight of my father, taught me to shoot a pistol accurately and safely when I was nine years old.  Not a small cheap .22 cowboy knock off mind you – I learned to shoot using his big stainless .357!  That same summer he introduced me to the biggest oak tree I have ever seen – the acorns as big as silver dollars and he shared his childhood collection of arrowheads and tales of the collecting.  I returned home to my parents after a week at the Sparks’ home, with a burn scar on my thumb (lesson:  don’t pick up odd scraps of metal on a job site…), a .30 caliber rifle casing from his WWII days, and a milky-quartz Caddo-knapped arrow head.  I have held on to those mementos, including the scar, all this time.

As I grew into adulthood and life took me here and there, I got to see uncle JA every couple of years – he helped me get an “A” on a collage paper with a letter about a deer hunting trip in Germany during the closing days of WWII.  When visiting, we would ride the fields in his truck, he would describe in detail what he was working on at the time, eat Chinese food – his favorite, and just talk.  He always had the same look of interest, acceptance, and care.  Knowing that Uncle JA’s sweet tooth rivaled my own, I would send him chocolate from Europe when we lived in Germany, with my Aunt Juanita doling it out to him a little at a time.  After he went to the hospital, I sent a couple packages, knowing that he might not understand where or who they came from, but I hopped they would be a happy surprise during his day.

My own son, who at 9-years old was also enamored by Indians, is the current owner of JA’s arrowhead.  I gave it to him after we got home from a Christmas visit to Texas where Carlton got to have lunch and ride around with JA and me.  I have never seen that child happier.  He keeps it safe in an old jewelry box on top of his book shelves.   As for that old, patina covered .30 casing: It was in my pocket on a cold December morning when we laid a better man than I will ever be to rest in the gray-brown Texas soil.  JA Sparks helped shape who I am and his memory and example will live with me for all my days.

Running in the dark with The Chatty Buddha

/ Matt Talley / 2 Comments

My Father-in-law was visiting us for a week and in an attempt to support my Santa-to-svelte transformation, he took up the reins to roll me out of bed before work to run with him.  He picked the most amazing time to morph into a Drill Instructor:  DST-Spring Forward, rain, wind, cold temps…  Who wouldn’t want to leave their soft bed and warm wife to slip on still-wet shoes  to go run in the dark and shiver as the rain gods pee on them??  Ooh, sign me up!

We ran at Lincoln Park, along the beach, up the hill, and through the trees the first morning for a 3.5 mile jog.  That initial run was bearable, but the next Monday morning was a whole other monkey!  It was dark, I was tired, a touch hung over, there was pouring rain, the mercury sat at 43 degrees, and no coffee had yet found me.  Stamps-With-Foot’s father, who we shall forever more refer to as The Chatty Buddha, had been up for an hour, done some yoga, had coffee, and was full of wit and observations.  Without coffee, I am more of a grumpy Neanderthal than 21st century Renaissance man.   It was hard not to send The Chatty Buddha to his celestial reward as we drove over to the park and as we began our run, a quip from him just after my first stride made me fantasize – in Technicolor – about pushing him down a long steep, wet, secluded forest stairway…  The sudden stop of rain, cessation of the biting wind, the sound of the trail crunching beneath us, and the sight/smell of the tide coming in – lapping the driftwood logs – made me completely forget about my in-law-patricidal thoughts.  We ran 4 miles and that sunrise beach run was the absolute highlight of my day.    Well, that and the resolutely frugal Chatty Buddha bought me a soul-satisfying triple Grande 1 pump Starbucks mocha as we headed home.  I am really glad he got me out into cold.

Second site is up and running

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Oh, if I had a hammer…  As mentioned,  in my heart of hearts I am just a joiner, a cabinet maker, and a carpenter.  To work a hunk of dull wood from rough plank into a beautiful and useful object, used for generations, is so fulfilling to me.  I sleep very peacefully after a day spent in the shop.  Since I am a 21st century ape, my building interests have bloomed to include metal work, gears, bicycles, motors, hydraulics, computers, cars, motorcycles, machining, etc…  While my specific skill set in most deeply rooted in wood, I can and do appreciate the accoutrements of the other trades.   I have been cyber-hording pictures of planes, saws, machines, shops, tools, bike frames, blueprints, and images of amazing works of craft and skill for YEARS and finally decided to do something with them.

I have built another site (in all my unlimited free time…) that is geared toward shining a spotlight on useful, finely executed, beautiful handmade and simple machine-built objects: Little bits of our world that become more appreciated, admired, and useful with age.

The site is Beasauge.net – a definition of the work in included there.  I would have liked to have Beausage.com, but some dill hole is cybersquatting on the url and wants $$$ to give it up.

F-ing Auto-complete!!!

/ Matt Talley / 1 Comment

The auto-complete function on my iPhone is making me crazy.  I keep sending inappropriate e-mails to friends, the dog walker and now a big-wig at my company…  My greatest hits include:

Boiling customer issue:
What I meant to say:  This is going to get ugly, I feel it in my bones
Auto-complete:  This is going to get ugly, I feel it in my boner

Discussing an author with friend:

What I meant to say:  I bought a couple of her books on Amazon, It was just too good a deal to pass up.
Auto-complete: I bought a couple of her boobs on Amazon, It was just too good a deal to pass up.

My ex asking me what my son can buy me for Christmas:
What I meant to say:  Hmmm…  Smart wool socks?
Auto-complete:  Hmmm…  Smart wool dicks?
The latest incident was sent to a director concerning a document package:
What I meant to say:  I put it in your office.
Auto-complete:   I put tit in young office.
His Reply:  Thanks buddy!
My reply: Not an issue.  Oh damn…

Since this “feature” is making me seem even more inappropriate than usual, I hopped onto in inter-webs to figure out how to turn it off.  I ran smack into a site listing MANY more examples of auto-evilness.  Thought I would share.

~Matt



Trip to the vet

/ Matt Talley / 1 Comment

We had to take a trip to the vet early this morning.  I was reading the West Seattle Blog and there was a post about a couple of dogs dying of  something called leptospirosis.  As I read the article, I grew increasingly alarmed and upon seeing that we live two blocks from where the deceased dogs lived, I was on the phone to our vet immediatly.  Come to find out, Brodie had been given the first of two boosters for leptospirosis back in July, but we missed the second.  Crap…

Look, I really like that dog.  He may be the best dog I have ever had.  Even our friends who are cat people let him come to their house and chill.  I would be beside myself if something happened to him that I could have prevented.   Stamps-With-Foot is bordering on insanity when it comes to this dog.  She will tear up as we carpool from work, thinking about snuggling with him when she gets home.  She is SUPER puppy-narcissistic: takes every opportunity to show an album worth of pictures to perfect strangers (“…and this is him sleeping…”) and will go on at length about how sweet/smart/handsome/cuddly/soft/smart/amazing/laid-back/handsome/etc… he is.  If something happened to Brodie, she would be inconsolable.  Things would be ugly!  I already had to have the, “No, we can’t clone the dog!  Do you know how expensive that would be?!?!”discussion.

So, off to the vet we went.  The Wife made me call her after the visit to let her know that he was OK…  He got his first round and our dog walker (STOP judging me!  I swear we are not those people) is also aware of the outbreak and is watching him closely when he is out and about for his mid-day stroll.

Our Dirty Little Secret…

/ Matt Talley / 2 Comments

The wife and I strive to have as little impact as possible on the world around us.  My green lawn is chemical free, our firewood is shop-scrap and blown-down timber, our garden is organic, we conserve water and electricity, I compost our kitchen and yard waste, we are looking at honey and egg production this year, we recycle or reuse over 92% of our waste (real number – I calculated it out over a three month period by volume), I build furniture and cabinets from recycled and thrown away wood, and we either carpool or I ride to work most days.

However, we have a dirty little secret that needles at my green-bent little soul at least a couple of times a day – the massive 1942 oil-fired heater in our basement.  We burn diesel to warm our home.  Worse, we burn it in an antiquated heater that our service person said was “…about 30% efficient…”   I feel like I and wearing a scarlet H (hypocrite) on my chest.  We HAVE to do something about it!

I had considered switching to biodiesel, but so much oil is used in the production of bio-crops (tractor feul and fertilizer) that there is actually more oil used to produce most available biodiesel than regular fuel.  I do not have the time, room, and am not zoned properly to produce my own biodiesel from used fryer oil.  We have instead decided to replace our war and famine-fueled antique oil guzzler with a modern heat pump.  I wanted a closed-loop geothermal system and we have the ground space for it, but the $25K price tag put it out of reach.  We have instead opted for an above ground model that will have an electric booster for when the outside ambient temperature falls below 30 degrees Fahrenheit.  It will increase our winter electric bill some, which now sits at ~$40 a month, but it will give us air-conditioning for the one week a year that we need it and the projected price increase (~$20 a month) will be offset by the $2K+ savings on oil every winter.  The system has a 20 year warrantee and will pay for its self in fuel savings in three years J  I wanted it installed last fall, but it looks like it will go in this summer.

Additionally, I am installing a fireplace insert upstairs and am building an electric “fireplace” for the basement family room to help out when the temperature drops.  We have only lost power once in the year and a half that we have been in our home, but just in case I am having an auxiliary generator adaptor wired to our main panel during the kitchen remodel so that our heat pump, fridge, freezer, stove, water heater and a few lights will be available if a storm or wind knocks our power out.

Girl Scout Cookie tally, so far…

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CRAP!!  I have a body fat percentage hovering just under the Santa-level after a Thanksgiving and Christmas season filled with glutoney and sloth (I am looking at knocking the 5 other ones off as well…).  I am working semi-hard at the gym to rid myself of my marine-mammal worthy blubber, but that got shot in the foot yesterday with the arrival of my first six boxes of Girl Scout Cookies.  Jenny Craig here I come…  So far, I have purchased six boxes from a guy,s kid at work, my wife picked up four boxes from one of her employees, and we have four more on the way from a 12-year old family member.  Fourteen boxes of yummy, baked, CRACK!

Fourteen boxes is a bunch all by itself, but when you add the frozen cookie dough that I just bought from another coworker’s kid, the three chocolate bars I was wrestled into purchasing from the 12-year old Girl Scout’s sister, and the 5-10 boxes that I will get pressured into buying outside of my local grocery store, my future begins to become clear: I am going to turn into a fvckin’ Weeble Wooble…

Stepping up on my soapbox now: The little girls that stand with their mom outside Safeway are velociraptors!  Evidenced by the fact that they hunt their quarry in packs, are relentless, and unflinching:  They huddle as a would-be victim steps out of a car, then all break rank before their unwitting mark nears.   One, the cutest and most doe-eyed of the pack, will step right in front of you with a box in her small, outstretched hands and ask you to “Please” buy some of their crack.  While one fumbles with the “No Thank you, I am trying to be good” answer, two of her “sisters” move in from opposing oblique angles and simultaneously cut off a possible escape and present you with another box of baked love-handles to be.  You will end up walking around the store with a minimum of two boxes in your cart, getting the sad also-violated nod from the other addicts who have fallen for their Late Cretaceous Period-inspired snack-trap.

Stepping off my soapbox and returning to my box of Samoas…