some lyrics, just cuz

This should be my anthem...

"My house is a small apartment, I pay my bills and I pay the rent
when the month is gone all my money's spent, so i can live in my small apartment."
- My Apartment, Addison Groove Project

Ya gotta imagine it sung with some seeerious FUNK! That's the only way it can really be my anthem :0P Someday maybe I'll be able to replace small apartment with "sweet log cabin".

In other random afternooner diversions, here's a must have for any flying spaghetti monster advocate: FSM* (ahem, Nancy!). Back to Work. I'm a machine today. Started at 7am and still going. The Energizer Bunny got nothin' on me!


*FSM = the humorous retort to the idiotic theory of intelligent design, read more here if you dare.

5, 6, 7 seasons ?

I love the seasons. All of them. Even these wierd pseudo-hybrid half seasons that seem to keep happening before the real season starts. These times used to annoy me, now they're kinda fun. Just when i thought it was time to bust out the 'ol long johns and settle in for the winter, I'm planning my next bike ride. It's a nice surprise. Stratton and Mt. Snow are open, so i could even do both biking and snowboarding in one weekend if I wanted!!! Well, if I didn't have to save money for Christmas anyways. That's the beautiful thing about biking...it's expensive to start but once you have your rig built up, riding it is FREEEEE!

a thanksgiving story

Twas the day of thanksgiving and all through the home
there was TV and X-box and beers topped with foam.
Gonzo, Sam Adams, drunk fast and with cheer,
and we munched tons of cookies while refilling our beer.
Then came the supper, enough for 20 or more...
We ate turkey and stuffing til we all yawned small roars.
Waddling from the table there was only one plan,
Naptime for us, as fast as we can!
Every couch and pillow, every space on the floor,
Were filled with full tummies and on occasion a snore.
And when napping was done, Sam Adams was there,
For a few feast topping beers and an end to the affair.
So that was Thanksgiving, great in every way.
I can't wait for Christmas, Have a Happy Monday!

The end.

hurts so good

Yesterday was a bike ride day. It was destined to be a good day. Why? I hadn't ridden in over a month (due to Jake's weekend races and some weekends of rain and blah blah blah), and I had new bike shoes (sixsixone...they kick ass!), and new winter gloves (also sixsixone), AND a brand spankin' new Marzocchi fork (Jake got it for $80, it was originally about $250...ROCK!). It was like pre-Christmas. I haven't bought anything lately, so to get all this stuff at once was craziness. And it was all fairly cheap due to the magical bike shop discount.
So we went to Tyler Mill, and from beginning to end I felt more confident and more smooth and damn if I wasn't cranking up hills like a mofo. I even succeeded in climbing through a rock garden that I failed miserably at on my last ride. And logs...hoppin those were like butter. It's amazing what a comfy pair of shoes and an extra inch of travel will get ya. The extra inch makes my handle bars sit up higher and my overall bike fit seems to be just a little bit better.
So now I'm a little sore, but it's a good sore. The next trick will be to ride in the snow. I've never attempted 2 wheels in the snow, so that should be one hell of a ride. Turkey Day weekend!!!! woo!

Looks like I might be snowboarding AND bike riding this winter. kick ass.

alumni-itis

Today, I had the strange urge to visit my old high school. I thought about high school for the first time in awhile and starting remembering all the people that taught me. Ya see, I wasn't so much a social animal in high school. I didn't like cliques. I liked learning and sports and non-snobby people. I was the un-assuming, good-grade getter, good tennis player that was conversational, but i never fell over myself to make friends. I had a nice little group of friends that I quite liked, and that was all i needed. I didn't mind high school, just never really looked back when i left it. I was happy for it to be over. Just now I was thinking how I won't go to any of my reunions. I don't have the desire. If people really want to find me, it's pretty easy. I'm google-able. But I would like to revisit the school. I'd like to visit some teachers and say, "hey, thanks for making me write those thesis papers, and correcting my horrific grammar, and for making me sit at my dining room table staring at derivatives and theorems and proofs. Thanks, cuz it helped me be a good student in college (minus all the beer), and it still helps me to be a good scientist." Yup, good 'ol OC may not have been my favorite time in life, but I came out of there with a pretty good head on my shoulders. hats off to the alma mater (oakland catholic). that's about as alumni like as you'll ever see me get.

time for saturday afternoon coffee, book reading, and attempting to novel write (emphasis on the "attempt")

the unfinished novel

In a feeble atempt to breathe life into this half-written smattering of words I will refer to as a "novel", I'm posting an excerpt. It's a reminder to keep writing, no matter how much the story might suck, or how much this thing seems to be gnawing and clawing to get out of me rather than flowing smoothly as it had just 3 days into the process. So here we go. the unfinished novel: a part of a chapter about something or other:

Holland woke up and meandered his way into the kitchen. He reached for his canvas bag next the kitchen counter and pulled out a notebook. With what little light crept into the kitchen from the street lights outside, he started writing notes. He wrote questions he might ask and theories he might present. He leaned over and reached deeper into his bag pulling out a variety of plastic bags. Each bag held a rainbow of pharmaceuticals. He'd created a variety of cocktails based on his expertise in neurochemicals and behavior. He'd tried variations of the very same cocktails on his rotations at the hospital. Of all the new young residents, he seemed able to pinpoint individuals amazingly well. He prescribed drugs no one had thought to use, he mixed them with things like "a glass of orange juice" or "a handful of figs". He knew the properties of every drug, the benefits of every food, and the pathways each one took throughout the body to reach its destination. He was somewhat of a medicine man in that respect, and with soft steady hands, he was the surgeon everyone hoped would be standing over them if they were in need.
He fingered the multi-colored pills and held them to the light. He'd have to do better than this. He couldn't begin this journey by handing her a baggie of pills and a diatribe on how to use them. There would have to be talk. There would have to be reasoning. There would have to be meditation along with imitation. He'd have to be a doctor, a friend, a zen master, and a genius to get this done. To help cure the uncureable. To harness something no one before him could. He sighed and closed the notebook. Despite all his preparation and confidence, he'd have to rely on his instinct and just hope he didn't screw this up.

caffeine. caffeine. did i mention caffeine yet?

I'm drinking a classic "get-me-through-the-rest-of-the-day" latte. I had to wake up early this morning, thus my sleep to hours needed to be awake ratio just isn't jivin' today. Caffeine was the only answer. In Pittsburgh we had a designated starbucks time. At 2:30pm, pretty much everyday, someone would knock at my door, poke their head in, smile, and go....starbucks????
There were about 3 of us really serious addicts that went almost everyday, and it never failed that on the days when one of the core 3 was actually thinking of skipping the 2:30 appointment, some other office mate came a-knockin. It was classic. I'm glad I'm not doing that anymore (cuz it got expensive), but I miss my 2:30pm caffeine posse. It was a good posse to have. So today, I'm my own posse of afternoon caffeine. so sad, but atleast the coffee tastes good :o)

In other caffeination news. We went to a place called "Sweet Relief" on Saturday. It's a healthy type place that serves wraps and teas. Jake and I rode our ghetto city cruising bikes there (I got to ride my really ugly, but FREE, 70's style orange bike), and had wraps and tea. Cinnamon Apple Spice tea. It was such a perfect mix of apple and cinnamon spice. yum. I like to divide my addiction amongst all forms of hot caffeinated beverage (and sometimes decaf! GASP! only
at night though).

Thus ends my ode to caffeine on a wednesday. cheers.

let it snow...please?!

If I wasn't suffering from enough snowboarding anticipation, my friend in Breckenridge just called to gloat that not only is he on his way to Keystone to ride, but it's a POWDER DAY!! Breckenridge has 15 new inches of the white stuff. I am so terribly jealous. Ode to the Colorado Mountains! My poor snowboard is sitting in the closet just waiting to come out and play! Ah well, I have a novel to finish. We'll have snow soon enough. Stratton is due to open thanksgiving weekend. :o)

Back to my Sunday afternoon caffeination. It will take much of my freshly ground and brewed friend to induce novel writing. On a jolly note, the Steelers play tonight! TONIGHT, not this afternoon...meaning this currently new englanding pittsburgher gets to watch it!! high five!

AND...a GoNzo post

The nice fellow at our local beer shop ordered Gonzo Imperial Porter. It's expensive (around $11 for four), but worth it. It's fantastic to have a neighborhood beer shop owner who wants to know what beers he can order us. This is a beautiful thing. The 7 bottles of Gonzo in my kitchen are an even more beautiful thing. Hunter S. Thompson would be so proud. To have Gonzo AND have all the latest and greatest winter seasonals hitting the taps/shops...ooooh! Last year I was addicted to Anderson Valley Winter Solstice. So far this year it's been dogfish head 'punkin ale. I think winter is my favorite beer season. 'Tis the season to get sloppy drinking good beer with relatives.

Also, beer provides good inspirato when your brain seems full of cobwebs. Maybe gonzo is the juice I need to get crackin' on my novel...right after the ice cream. Nothin like beer and ice cream on a thursday night!

say what?

That's my response to being delerious on the couch sick on Tuesday, and then having to make it through three days of 8am-6:30pm training Wednesday-Friday. But I'm making it! One more day! The training is even enjoyable. They provide plenty of food and beverage to consume through the whole process of learning. mmm, yum! It's a course on fMRI analysis with SPM. Neuroscience stuff. fMRI = functional magnetic resonance imaging and SPM = statistical parametric mapping. Sometimes I think scientists create programs just to add to the ever growing arsenal of acronyms. Some days I find myself speaking more in acronyms than real words. Ah, the joys of being a science nerd. Tonight, I rest my brain with the help of my good friends Ben and Jerry. I have a big fat bowl of Dublin Mudslide with my name on it.

My Novel progress is negative right now. Tonight, perhaps my characters will wake back up after their lengthy nap.

munday

So i have 7822 words now. I should be at around 11,000. oy. I have a lot of writing to do tonight. I was just too tired to plow through this weekend. We rode up to Putney, Vermont yesterday. Jake competed in his second cyclocross race this year. We stayed almost all day and watched all the other classes race. The race environment was awesome, it was on the grounds of a bike shop so they had tunes blaring throughout the race, and were selling food and apple cider ( I had two of those...YUM!) Jake finished right smack in the middle of his class. The setup of the course was pretty nice...they had one huuuge run-up, one little run-up, one set of hurdles, and then a lot of twisty turny parts on smooth dirt. They had one jump that most people just rode up and over, but a couple of people got some air coming off. I was taking some pictures when one cyclist decided to huck it and he crashed right in front of me...right into one of the course barriers. OUCH!! He was okay though, right back on the bike. A few teenage kids were mooning their friends as they rode by. heh. Gotta love bike racing. If I ever raced, I think I'd try cross before mountain bike racing. Cross has this nice mix of bike and running (that's why they have the hurdles and the hills to run up, so you have to get off the bike, apparently a lot of road bikers race cyclocross cuz it's good training in the winter). I don't think I'm a racing kind of gal though. I like to spectate. I'm a Class A spectator. Class A is the highest. We watched the class A mens race. Their first lap was completely insane. They did the course in about half the time, and watching them hurdle was almost unbelievable. They lept like deer. My bottom lip almost hit the ground. eesh. So now it's monday, and it's still warm out. wooo! I'm still excited for snow though. Apparently Killington was open for a few days already. They're closed again, but had 3ft at the top. This is why i would love to live in Oregon. Mt. Hood is open through July. You could be mountain biking one day, then take your snowboard up to Hood the next. THAT ROCKS!!!!! On that thought, i best stop daydreaming and do some work.

Evolution: a thought

Conservative Christians and Intelligent Design. Don't these people have anything better to do with their time than attack a fundamental theory and prevent their children from learning one of the most engaging keystones of scientific discovery?? Why is it that people are repelled by things they do not understand? An academic war over teaching evolution??? If I were a parent right now, I think I'd seriously investigate the option of home schooling.

from CNN.com:

"Now, the new Kansas standards, which outline what teachers should teach and test on, leave evolutionary principles in the curriculum but insert phrasing that encourages students to question their validity. The standards also delete certain text about how science is defined.
"The stakes are high," said Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education. "If Kansas gets away with it ... I anticipate that in every state where science standards are up for revision, we are going to be fighting another battle."
Efforts to undermine evolution instruction have also been seen in Michigan, Kentucky, Georgia and elsewhere. And one key case was being tested in court this week in Pennsylvania, where a group of parents sued the Dover Area School Board because teachers had been ordered to tell biology students that the theory of evolution is not established fact."


[kudos to Pennsylvania parents for showing some gumption and resisting this rediculous BS.
It's ashame you have to sue to have your voice heard these days. Though evolution is called a theory in the sense that we do not know exactly how it occurs, there is undeniable proof that organisms evolve. This is most certainly established fact. Urgh, anti-scientist crap makes me irritable. Science is fun! Parents are going to ruin it for their children. What a shame.]

word count ahoy

I just hit 6000 words. I feel like that episode of friends, where phoebe and rachel start running together. Phoebe does this crazy flailing her arms around running, cuz she says that's the only way it's fun. It's like how little kids run around when they play. I feel like i'm running around flailing my arms like that, only on paper. It's free and un-restrictive and a very good feeling. I don't think i've ever willingly written this much in four days. I don't know if i can keep it up. I don't care though. Seems okay so far. It's like therapy.

Ribbit

Toad's Place. Medeski, Martin, and Wood. Last night. WoW! Toad's is quickly becoming my very favorite small venue. No matter when we get in line, we always seem to get there at a good time, and we always have a good spot with a view of the band. It's got this great small club feel, with the possibility of anyone playing there...no matter how small or big. The Stones opened their '89 tour at Toad's! If you scan the posters hanging across the ceiling you'll see everything from the Talking Heads to Dizzy Gilespie to Count Basie to Slayer! Phish played a few shows there in 1990. So far we've seen The Reverend Horton Heat, Les Claypool, and MMW. We may check out Galactic next week. This depends on funds and the level of tiredness at concert time. Apparently Toad's started out as a French Restaurant that served frog legs, and as the restaurant business dwindled live entertainment was brought in...and it grew and grew and grew. And now Toad's is know by promoters everywhere as a fantastic place to do business with...bands actually contact them to play there!!
In addition to my post MMW joyful stupor, it's absolutely beautiful out today. The suns shining, the trees are bright yellow-orange-red. AND, I might have a new bike tonight. Nothing exciting. Jake scored a couple old beaters for us to cruise around town on. Apparently mines a reaaaallly ugly orange. WOO-HOO. If any ugly color suits me, it's ugly orange. I can't wait.

it's ALIVE!!

My NaNoWriMo Home. This little webpage is keeping me on my game. You have the option to upload words whenever you like, and as often as you like. Some might wait until the very end, and just keep track on their own until that time. Not I. The minute I've made some progress, I upload it. It keeps me motivated to see that word count steadily increase toward the coveted 50,000. I'm at around 3600 now. So i'm working at a good daily pace. I hope this keeps up! I'm trying not to force it, which is hard when you know you absolutely must get a certain amount done each day, or face playing catch-up. I can't tell how it reads yet, it's all just a blur of story and character. It's a fun ride so far. Though it's only Day 2, 28 more to go!! Today I posted my first excerpt. Whether I continue posting excerpts daily depends on how cohesively I manage to keep this tail I'm weaving (on my massive literary loom). So far, I think it's atleast okay. That's Something.

egads, a novel hatches

I have 1700 words of a novel, and damn is this stuff hard. I have an issue with trying to get everything out at once. It's like a race to extract the story from my head... every detail, every aspect of a scenario. This makes for a horrific time trying to fashion a piece of coherent writing 50,000 words long. wow. hard. But I'm gonna have some tea, and plow through the jumble of words I wrote today. Maybe they'll even make sense. Maybe I have a story on my hands. Maybe it will even evolve over this next month. hrm. I wonder.