The sweet, gracious discourses.

Way back when this year started I believe I was feeling a bit at odds. I do believe I must have had way too much free time back then because for whatever reason I decided it would be a good idea to read at least a book a week for 2009.

For a time this was easy. But by mid-spring things were rather busy and it was becoming difficult. I have allowed myself a bit of cheating by counting any audio books that I consume. Realistically they take significantly longer to get through the book, but I can get in ‘reading’ hours while driving or when I’ve not finished the book after the drive I’ll listen and do crafts.


This is the 30th week of 2009. I’ve more or less been tracking what I read through www.goodreads.com but it’s been a while since I actually calculated how I was doing. And so here is an exhaustive, hopefully, list of books which I have consumed:

Across the Nightingale Floor - Hearn, Lian
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Haddon, Mark
Children of Dune - Herbert, Frank
Dancing On My Grave - Kirkland, Gelsey
The Kite Runner - Hosseini, Khaled
Holding on to the air: An Autobiography - Farrell, Suzanne
Shaman’s Crossing - Hobb, Robin
The Friday Night Knitting Club - Jacobs, Kate
All the King’s Men - Warren, Robert Penn
My Sister’s Keeper - Picoult Jodi
Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia - Gilbert, Elizabeth
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan - See, Lisa
Animal Farm - Orwell, George
Brisingr - Paolini, Christopher
Anansi Boys - Gaiman, Neil
A Thousand Splendid Suns - Hosseini, Khaled
Artemis Fowl - Colfer, Eoin
Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident - Colfer, Eoin
The Children of Hurin - Tolkien, J.R.R.
The Secret Life Of CeeCee Wilkes - Chamberlain, Diane
Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code - Colfer, Eoin
Fellowship of the Ring - Tolkien, J.R.R.
Artemis Fowl: The Opal Deception - Colfer, Eoin
Invisible Man - Ellison, Ralph
The Fellowship of the Ring - Tolkien, J.R.R.
Dragonflight - McCaffrey, Anne
Artemis Fowl: The Lost Colony - Colfer, Eoin
God Emperor of Dune - Herbert, Frank
Dragonquest - McCaffrey, Anne
New Spring - Jordan, Robert
The World According to Garp - Irving, John
The History of Love - Krauss, Nicole
Odd Hours - Koontz, Dean
The White Dragon - McCaffrey, Anne

And the grand total is: 34!

Yay I’m actually a bit ahead.

“Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourses of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness.”

Hydrant Hysteria: Part II

On May 20th the fates changed in my favor. I was going through the mail at the office I noticed something from the Downtown Improvement District (sponsors of this whole shebang). I immediately opened it and then ran to my co-worker/partner in design’s office to show her the good news. We then proceeded to inform every other staff member of our success.

She recommended going home to see if I’d heard about my other designs. But I come to work at 8:30 and leave at 4:30, none of this in between crap. So by the time I left for home I’d pretty much forgotten about it. And then remembering, soon found myself delighted to be have had ALL 3 of my designs selected! Whoa.

Unfortunately Jo supposedly sent in a design of her own that was not selected (she never showed it to me). So I felt a bit bad being so excited about mine. But all 3….wow that’s crazy.

There was a reception for all of the artists on June 3rd. I tried to find someone to go with me, but to no avail. I steeled myself for the awkwardness that is me at socializing type events.

This also meant that I had to drive downtown. As a general rule I don’t go downtown. The exception being for concerts. So I have my well established route down to the Forum and back home. I also occastional go to one other performing arts venue, but I park in the parking garage (and lose my car) every time.

Downtown I went. And I even found street parking! It was pretty spectacular. I procured my materials including the locations of my hydrants. One of my former co-workers was there so I stood around awkwardly for a while hoping he would finish the conversation he was in then I could talk to him. It was to avail and after a bit I determined that I’d had enough and went to leave. However he had seen me and so quickly caught up with me and we chatted a bit before I returned home.

The materials I received there gave me the locations of the hydrants.

They seemed good. I was excited.

[to be continued.....this is a long story]

Hydrant Hysteria

Sometime in April I came across some publicity that my city was having what they called “Hydrant Hysteria”. There were 58 hydrants in the downtown district that would be available to be painted. Artists and community members were invited to submit design proposals for the hydrants.

I thought it would be the most awesome thing ever to paint something, in the public, that is more or less permanent. And so my idea was to make as many designs as possible and submit them thereby giving us (I sucked Jo in) a better chance of being selected.

However as a good many of my plans go, this one fell to the wayside. The deadline (May 1) approached and designs had not been made. Then in a rather last ditch effort I spent an evening making two designs.

The first was my original idea: a penguin. I have a mild obsession with penguins, but as a card carrying member of the Secret Society of Penguins, I feel this is perfectly acceptable. Also it should be noted that “we were penguins before it was cool”. This was the result:

SSO Penguin (see how I snuck in my SSOP reference)
A bit lame but it’s mostly just an inside joke with me and my h.s. friends.

Then I worked on my awesome idea that had suddenly struck me that day or the day before. I had been trying to think of something that would tie into the city itself somehow. And I noticed this picture:

Supreme Court Dome
My city is the state capitol and that is the Supreme Court Dome in the capitol building. I’m a big fan of slightly abstract repetitive patterns and so I went for it:


Supreme Cournt Dome

I loved it.

Now I was torn as to what I should submit. The penguin had significantly more personal value to me, but the dome was just a lot better looking and I liked it as well. So I decided that decisions were no fun and submitted both a day or two before the deadline.

A few weeks prior to the deadline I had mentioned to one of my co-workers about the whole thing. She had heard about it from another co-worker and the concensus was that the Symphony should submit a design. However spring is a ridiculously busy time here and so nothing ever became of it….until April 30.

That evening I once again stayed up late with my random drawing supplies and used the ideas that she and I had bounced back and forth to create a 3rd design:

Symphony Under the Stars

It turned out well. And I mailed it the next day.

All in all I was nervous. I couldn’t decide if I thought that no one would hear about it and I’d have a really good chance of being chosen or if my hurried attempts at being an artist would be in vain. Although I did have high hopes for the Symphony as the design turned out well and frankly we are a fairly major institution in this town.

Anxiously I waited for the listed May 15th deadline of when artists would be informed of success. The 15th came and went and I heard nothing. In fact that weekend I was downtown working the last concert of the season. There was a primed hydrant right outside of the venue that just sat there taunting me. I was sad.

[to be continued]

Re-invigorate

I have decided to once again attempt to revitalize this blog.

Recent things I want to post on:
Hydrant Hysteria
Biking
Food
Spinning

Wish me luck.

Mountain versus Road

We are in Sedona AZ today and I decided that I wanted to go biking. And being as mountain biking is a big thing around here I figured it'd be a good opportunity to give it a try. I'm a pretty decent road biker (if I do say so myself) so I figured I ought to stand a chance on the dirt.

I talked to the guy at the bike shop, said I was a road biker, and asked what trails he recommended. They had a map so he showed me the main trail that started right across the street. But that trail wasn't particularly long so he recommended going about half way up it and then taking this other trail. That sounded good to be so off I went.

I discovered fairly quickly that my rental had the most squeaky brakes ever, that was annoying, but so it goes. All in all the thing was harder to propel. That's to be expected though given the weight and the fact that it wasn't necessarily so properly fitted to me.

Once I hit the dirt and all of its numerous accompanying rocks I discovered the joy of the mountain bike design. I felt those obstacles but all in all the ride was no where near as jarring as my road bike (particularly my awesome new road bike which is partially carbon and lets me feel every bump in the road).

I also discovered that mountain biking can be scary. For me it was alot like skiing. They can be totally awesome and I'm sure I'd love them. But I'm also not at all very practiced in the sports so I spend much too much time concerned that I'm going to fall over. And on a mountain bike this falling over involves falling onto hard dirt (which is also dirty) and rocks. Not exactly so ideal. It seems to require a lot more control on a mountain bike to keep it going where you want.

It also seemed to take quite a bit more power (although my being winded could also be because I'm not nearly as in shape as I was this summer), and I found it nearly impossible to maintain any speed.

But enough of that back to my story!

So I went down the main trail. Went the wrong way once, hit a parking lot figured I must be wrong went back found the main trail again and managed to keep it this time. When I got to the other trail he had recommended I was speculative that it was actually a trail. It looked more like a narrow washed out portion down the hill. But there were bike tracks, down I went.

Before that I was of the mind that I was capable of this mountain bike thing. I'd gone up and down and over and around rocks. Some of the stuff was even like crazy jagged rocks and ledges that would be a few inches up and what not. I quickly realized that I had been on the "nice" trail and that this new devilry is most likely 'real' mountain biking. It was something similar to somewhat loose jagged rock in a significant downgrade with some curves thrown in for good measure.

Going down I would stop probably ever 25 feet because I either thought I was going to or actually did nearly fall off. At least once I definately executed a jump off the bike because I'm falling but try to make it look like I meant to do that maneuver. It was impressive.

I got down to the bottom of the mess and it really didn't look like the trail was anything more trail like after that. And so I conceded. Back up the craziness I went. And somehow I was actually able to ride the whole way up (albeit granny gear).

And off on my nice trail like trail I went again all the way to the end. On this one part there was some kind of mound running across the trail, I don't know the purpose. But it was on a down hill so I had a bit of speed and on a whim I pulled up the front to become airborne. Such things are actually possible on mountain bikes, and I must say they really are quite a bit of fun.

All in all good times. I'm definately not ready to give up my road bike (especially since it's awesome, shiny, light, new, and awesome). But it really would be cool to have the opportunity to do more mountain biking and learn to be able to handle some of the tougher stuff. Inevitably this is such awesome mountain biking territory here, I'm not sure that they have such cool places at home.

Dead and alive.

I used a #3

I have lived the alt tag.

Although I did become a bit more speedy with all of the AP test drilling.