how much for the universe?

This is why I LOVE Neil DeGrasse Tyson. If you aren't inspired by this video you're a cyborg.

I wish I could cook things better so I could invite NDGT to my house for dinner.

pimp my shark

A few days ago a friend of mine was showing me his TV. It has a box attached to it that can go into the TV and find shows people like. Then it stores them and you can watch them later and fast forward through the commercials. The box keeps the shows in there for 30 days. I think.

I have to admit that when my friend was explaining all this shit to me he was also showing me how to do a search on TV shows because I had just finished saying that TV is stupid because you can't search it like the internet. So I asked him to do a search on sharks and a ton of TV shows came up. Most of them, unfortunately, were not about sharks. They were about people, lawyers and assholes for the most part. But he did find two documentaries on great white sharks that I hadn't seen before and a show called "shark therapy" about people who get attacked by sharks and then hang out with sharks to get over the attack. Or something like that. His dog was biting my sock so, again, I was distracted.

That's the coolest thing I've ever heard of a TV doing, besides blowing up.

The other day we watched the great white shark documentary. He isn't particularly interested in sharks but he was trying to be polite. The documentary was filmed in Isla Guadalupe, where I went in 2003 to tag great whites.

Immediately things went south (haha):

friend: (in a mexican accent) Yes, my boat can tag great whites. We'll bring my brother. He makes burrritos.
me: we make special shark tags, out of cinder blocks and recycled car parts
friend: we weld them to the sharks (at this point in the doc the scientists were drilling a hole into the great white's dorsal fin to insert the tag)
me: pimp my shark

sometimes gaming the system doesn't work because the system is fucking stupid

So, against part of the advice of a friend who's a professional athlete ("doing too much PT can exacerbate an injury"), but following other of his advice ("increase quantity before increasing resistence"), I doubled and then tripled up on my PT, which I started a month ago because my knee hurt so bad I could barely walk. I was initially given a green thera-band (easy) and told that I could get a blue band if I improved. Instead I decided I wanted the yellow band (the hardest thera-band) because I'm an over-achiever and wanted to skip blue (it's like the silver medal - no one wants to be #2), which is why I was doing extra PT exercises.

I was all ready last Friday to go in for my appointment and get my yellow band. Then my fucking therapist called in sick and my appointment was canceled. So I had it rescheduled for today and did a bunch more workouts in the mean time.

I get there, and it's not my therapist, it's some pipsqueak named April. She didn't even ask to see me do my exercises, just started tying blue thera-bands around my legs and shit. I was like "wait a minute, the blue is too easy, I think I need the yellow thera-band". She was like "what yellow thera-band?" and I was like "the hardest thera-band, the yellow one." I showed her how the blue thera-and was so easy for me that I could do my inverted plank and spread my knees wide enough to give birth (should only be able to pull them a few inches apart).

She looked at me for about a minute without speaking and then slowly said "the hardest thera-band IS the blue." I showed her on my tablet that it's yellow. She said "we don't have yellow here" and I realized I had somehow mistaken an orange thera-band (stupid easy) I had seen on the ground in my previous session for yellow.

Then April said "if you could do the exercises with the yellow thera-band you wouldn't be in therapy would you?"

Whatevah, bitch.

So, I didn't get my yellow thera-band and was instead given a sheet of paper instructing me how to build a wobble board. The bottom of the paper has a warning that I may get a concussion or serious injury if I fall off the wobble board or close my eyes while on the wobble board. And I have to wear two blue thera-bands for all my exercises since my PT office DOESN'T HAVE THE FUCKING YELLOW THERA-BAND.

Total. Suck.

I didn't make another appointment.

kid gloves...but made with real kids

One of my favorite movies these days is In The Loop. And a friend of mine just found one of our favorite scenes on YouTube. Among the other classic lines: "Shut up, Love Actually!" (to a character who looks like a character in the movie Love Actually).

He also found out that it's part of a series called In The Thick of It. Need to watch that too.

I love british humor.

Regina Dugan was right about geeks!

From NPR, 5 Nerds To Watch in 2013:

Regina Dugan says there's a lesson in that. As she told a TED conference last year, "You should be nice to nerds. In fact I'd go so far as to say if you don't already have a nerd in your life you should get one."

One of the reasons I've been slacking on my blog is because I've been hanging out with geeks (not to say I'm not a geek), including my brother Steve, who is in town for a mining conference. I am lucky to have plenty of nerds in my life.

Advantages of hanging out with geeks:

Situation 1: I bought some yogurt covered cherries. The yogurt is actually "chocolate yogurt" which doesn't even exist except in the Sunmaid laboratory. The cherries are near their expiration date and while the cherries are good the chocolate yogurt is not. A geek friend and I are doing experiments to determine the best way to remove the chocolate (yogurt, heating, lemon juice) so I don't have to throw the cherries away but can get rid of the disgusting yogurt.

Situation 2: I'm trying to get Steve to buy a TENS machine because I LOVE mine. He scanned something on my TENS machine and was able to look up the model and web site quicker than I could find the information on Google. He also scanned something on my friend's dishwasher because he wanted to know if it was a model that had been recalled because the dishwasher turned itself on and wouldn't turn off.

Situation 3: We had a massive snow storm on Sunday. A true geek has so many "toys", including snow blowers, that you never have to shovel snow manually.

To be fair, there are some disadvantages:

Situation 1: Eating a cherry that has been soaked in vinegar will probably make you throw up even if the vinegar is effective in removing the chocolate yogurt.

Situation 2: Having easy access to information about a dishwasher model may encourage geeks to take the dishwasher apart to see if they can fix it. Steve's girlfriend jokes that my family takes our friends' faulty machines apart, and, if unable to fix them, leaves. Then the friend has to buy a new dishwasher.

Situation 3: I discovered on Sunday that the snow blower has a tube on the top that you can move to change the direction the snow blows. If you happen to have a friend who is a mischievous geek he may aim the aforementioned snow blower tube at you while you are shoveling snow manually. And then you get a face full of snow. And then the geek friend laughs because you look like a human snow man.

hahaha

great idea or potential organ donor situation?

I haven't been posting much on my blog because I've been fucking off climbing and riding motorcycles. A friend of mine has 3 bikes. No, that's not a typo. Three bikes.

One is a dirt bike that is currently being worked on. Then he has a BMW touring bike and he just procured a Harley Davidson. Since the weekend was nice we had to take both out. He describes the BMW as a polite waiter who ensures that your dining experience is perfect. The Harley is more like the waitresses at Mercury Cafe, which is to say rude and obnoxious. And they don't corner really well.

His BMW has a radio so I suggested we blast NPR. He asked me not to say geeky things in front of his biker friends like that. Then he demonstrated to make sure I understood what he meant by bringing up some topics I might have brought up with him:

"So I was watching this DVD on chaos...GEEK!"
"Did you read about that meteor that crashed into...GEEK!"
"Hey, that license plate is an irregular num...GEEK!"

He and his biker friends are trying to talk me into getting a motorcycle. At first I was thinking no way. I'd spend all my free time fixing my bike or fucking it up on the trails...

...but, I do still have all my bike stuff from when I had a Yamaha TTR back in 2007 or was it 2008.

Quantitative analysis on whether or not I should get a dirt bike:

Cost of bike + insurance + having to deal with the fuckwits at the DMV (I have to subtract something otherwise this equation won't come out in favor of getting a dirt bike...hm...subtracting 1 is always safe) - 1
[I'm going to put some braces in here so this formula looks like some of that fucked up shit on wikipedia (then put in some parentheses to confuse people so they won't scrutinize my formula) * (how come you can't put things like exponentials in blogger posts?) - (doesn't anyone blog about math?) + (I should add some brackets too because I like them * once at 1 am when I was writing code I noticed they look like a pilgrim head {} / happy thanksgiving!)]  (this is the point in the equation where you put in a big dividing line)
________________________________________

(quick! think of something to divide!) FUN * (cool jacket + new boots)

= maybe I SHOULD by a motorcycle

Sometimes I wonder what life would be like if I had friends that were good influences on me.

I'd die of boredom. Motorcycle is safer than that.

birthday bench

I guess all my worrying was for nothing. The cart I got for my dad arrived today.

My mom wrote:

The bench got here this morning and was all put together and on a skid.  I unwrapped it, put the skid under my boat to get it up off the floor (which is a really good thing), then proceeded to clean and rearrange the garage.  Bob is going to be so surprised and pleased.  He will probably change things around when he gets here Friday, but stuff is organized and up off the floor and in a condition that if he wants to change things it will not be a big deal and if he doesn't, everything is in an easy to get to place.  He's going to love it.

Doesn't look that insanely big. And my mom can move it.

That dude must have been a midget.

I'm not crazy, I'm creative - there's a difference

My new pantry has been driving me crazy because I couldn't find a way to neatly organize it. I am a bit A type about organization:

well organized

messy

even more organized

But then I got a great idea to stage a town in my pantry using my food:

This is main street. All the bottles in front are hanging out people watching and the stuff in the back is people walking down the street. The lasagna box is a bar. The salad dressing is a cop.

This is the bad part of town. The oatmeal is a fat gangster. The potatoes are a passed out homeless person. The bottles of olive oil are prostitutes. The packages in the back are drunk people holding each other up.

This is the jail. The eyeglass cleaning spray is the warden and the red thing of cat crap is where you get checked in to the jail. The large tea holder is the main jail and the smaller one is holding cells. The napkin holder is a barbed wire fence. The salt is solitary confinement and the band aid box is the infirmary where the inmates are taken when they get stabbed.

big guy, small fork

Way to go fuckwits at the Mercury Cafe...

What sense does it make to give the tallest guy in the restaurant the smallest fork? And, BTW, he has oversized hands from playing sports and stuff.

smallest fork EVER

This was the original pic I took but as you can see I was laughing too hard to hold my blackberry straight - you can see my normal sized fork on the plate

In case you're wondering what that is on the plate, it's a tofu chop and a potato and cheese thing.

it may not be the best present, but it's probably the biggest

My dad's birthday is tomorrow. I asked him what he wanted and he said for me to visit him when he's home. But he's not quite sure when that will be...

...so I asked my mom for an idea. She couldn't think of anything at first, and then she woke up last Friday at 330 in the morning and remembered my dad and my brother talking about a table he wanted to order for the garage where he could put manuals and what ever shit he was using for one of his many projects. She sent me the link to a store where he often buys things called Gempler's.

Went out on the web site, found the table I think my dad was referring to, and ordered it (I also had them add wheels so my dad can push it around).

nice, normal table

Just looking at it in the pic, it doesn't seem unreasonably big...

Then I decided to email a picture of the table to a male friend of mine who will be tres jealous. That's when I noticed that there was an additional picture of the table on the Gempler's web site. So I clicked on it:

Holy fuck. Is that guy a midget? The table is HUGE. SHIT.

I called my dad and said I got him a surprise for his birthday and he said "I hope you didn't get something over the top." Um, is a huge table over the top?

Gempler's called today and said the table is so heavy they need a special truck to deliver it and would they be able to fit the truck down my parents' drive way and did I need pneumatic lift services.

Fuck fuck fuck. The table has WHEELS. Can't they just push it down the driveway? I am now imagining that I bought my dad a huge table that weighs more than the state of West Virginia and that only godzilla can move.

Sigh.

I am art at the DEAD academy

Yesterday a sub group of my writer's group that loves movies did our movie night at the DEAD academy which is an art studio / training place for artists. Last Friday we did it in Mike's basement...it's my second movie night. I got invited back because I was able to name 10 movies that no one in the group had heard of (thanks to my friend Neil!!!!)

We were supposed to go to Mike's (my writing mentor) basement again for movie night but Thursday night he remembered he had promised to go to the DEAD academy to promote this year's digifest. I was sad because this week it was my turn to pick movies to watch. So Mike said "don't worry, we'll just do movie night at the DEAD academy."

Yesterday was first friday (DEAD is in the art district) and Sante Fe street was packed. DEAD was even more crowded and packed with people.

I realized when I got there that we (the movie night people) were one of the art installations. Unexpected but fun. I got to pretend to be a movie expert, said a bunch of insane shit that sounded academic about movies in general, and then I sat on the floor while everyone else sat on chairs. We watched demonlover. The artist who arranged us was enthralled with my TENS (best thing I've ever bought EVER - if you have joint pain GET ONE) so we decided to put it on Mike's knee instead of mine and then he was supposed to shake his leg like he was being electrocuted, which he did very realistically.

Mike's dirty from sitting on the floor with me. DEAD is, um, rustic? Industrial? actually it's dirty and half built...

When people came over to talk to us he said I was in the CIA and was torturing him. I was supposed to point out the technical flaws in the movie (e.g. the pillow smothering scene was so fake) and when there was a gun on screen a guy named Trinity had to say "Oh, a .45" and then I had to yell "that's a FUCKING 9 mil!" For our participation we all got 6 bottles of Oogave soda to take home, as much fat tire as we wanted (don't drink beer usually but that's okay), and pizza (I didn't eat it because it was from a chain).

DEAD doesn't have any heat and I am still freezing.

We were the most viewed installation. Fun!

Our installation...it was late so most of the movie people had left...Mike is sitting on the floor pretending to be me.

a free pizza isn't worth dying for

Last night I ate an entire pizza by myself (it took 3 hours but I did it). There’s a restaurant next to my hotel that serves the best brick oven pizza.

Then last night I had a dream that I was on the subway in DC with two women that were in their 20s. I was their mentor at work. We got off the metro and went to a shiny glass skyscraper that said “CIA/FBI HEADQUARTERS” on the side in silver letters.

I was like “You know what we should do? We should climb to the top of this skyscraper. There’s an antenna up there that you pull on and then you get a coupon for a free pizza. And when you get your free pizza it comes with a coupon for another free pizza. We’ll never have to pay for pizza again.” The women were like “COOL!” So we started free climbing. I had a climbing rope over my left arm and figured we could use that to rappel down after we got to the top.

The wind was blowing as we were climbing and it was even worse when I got to the top. I grabbed the antenna, pulled it towards me, and it started quivering. Then the pizza coupon came out of the base of the antenna. I put it in my pocket and then went back to the side of the building to see how close the two women were to the top.

I realized they were both in trouble because they couldn’t climb over this scaffolding thing that was just under the roof. So I climbed down and pulled the first woman over the scaffolding. Then it started raining so I lowered the climbing rope and pulled up the second woman because I was afraid she would slip and fall.

Then I looked out over the city and realized we had free climbed 100 stories up and that there was nothing on the roof to anchor the climbing rope on so we could rappel down. Then the wind started blowing really hard and the sky scraper started swaying violently. I almost fell off the building. I thought to myself “come on, you better start acting professional” because I didn’t want to scare the two women with me who were relying on me to be the expert climber.

We had to crawl around on the roof so we wouldn’t fall off the building. I had assumed that there would be a low wall around the edge of the roof so we wouldn’t fall off but there wasn’t. Then I realized the scaffolding was up because they (who ever “they” were) had been taking the wall down. The women were crying and holding on to other antennas on the roof. They kept asking how we were going to get down. Then it started lightning. All the antennas were buzzing from the electrical charge and we couldn’t hold on to them anymore because they were giving us shocks.

I thought “we are so fucked and my free pizza coupon is disintegrating in the rain.”

Then I woke up.

it's not a penis, it's a FUCKING VEGETABLE

SO ANNOYED!

My office has a cafeteria so I always go down there at lunch to get a salad (don't ever have time for a real lunch hour, just end up carrying my salad from meeting to meeting and it usually takes me 2 hours to finish it). Anyway, there's a TOTALLY ANNOYING little asian woman who works at the caf and she is always in my way at the salad bar. Like I'm trying to get some spinach and she starts fluffing the arugala in the bowl next to the spinach with her little tongs so I have to wait. Then I decide to get some tomatoes and she walks right next to me, reaches in front of me, and starts fluffing the shredded carrots so I can't get any tomatoes because her arm is in the way. She fluffs the cucumbers when I'm trying to get the red peppers. Etc.

Then I try to get some salad dressing and she starts re-arranging the salt and pepper packets that are above the salad dressing. It happens EVERY FUCKING TIME I go down there. I usually only have about 5 minutes to grab something to eat, which is a reasonable amount of time, except for the asian fluffer who causes huge delays. I've tried tricking her by building my salads in reverse order so she doesn't know which vegetable I'm going to get. Didn't work. I've tried faking her out by suddenly going to the sandwich bar but she just waits until I go back to the salad bar to continue her infernal fluffing.

I want to stomp on her glasses and set her hairnet on fire. I was late to a meeting today because of her.

Speaking of meetings, I had to leave our staff meeting today because the colleague I was with when the farting incident occurred sat across from me and was trying to make me laugh (it's the first time I've seen him face to face since the fart) but I was ignoring him. So he sent me an IM that said "what's up, fartner in crime?" I choked on my tea and pretended that's why I had to leave for a minute. I was coughing and laughing at the same time which hurt.

And also, I forgot to mention, they took the beets off the salad bar. I'm like "why don't we have any beets?" and they said "I don't know." I was like "are you going to order some more so we have beets?" and they were like "I don't know." So here's a question you might be able to answer fuck wits - how am I supposed to make a spinach and beet salad with no beets? Annoyed, part 2.

Other than that the day is going well.

if only peace were so easy in egypt

Althea has stopped attacking Otis. At least during nap time.

keep your friends close and your enemies closer

first dark matter discovery - Venus and Uranus

I know that sounds like the start to a sex or fart joke but it isn't. I swear.

So I'm almost done with my dark matter class and we're learning about quintessence which hurts even my creative head. Then Dr. Carroll told a story about the first dark matter discovery.

Back in 1618 Johannes Kepler came up with the third law of planetary motion (has to do with how planets orbit the sun and calculating their orbits). His calculations worked really well until he got to Uranus. Something was off with the orbit. So he surmised that there was another planet that couldn't be seen (i.e. dark matter - that's all dark matter is, something we know is there but can't see) with the telescope technology of the time that was fucking up Uranus' orbit. Not only was he right, he even was able to precisely (well, as precise as space can be) predict where it was.

Cool story and interesting when thinking about dark matter!

BTW, astronomy and astrology were not separate disciplines at that time so Kepler was called on to provide astrological advice to the emperor of Prague. And Kepler's mother, Katarina, was accused of being a witch after a dispute with Kepler's brother and some stupid cunt over money (cunt said Katarina made her sick with a witch's brew). Katarina was imprisoned for 14 months even though there was no evidence against her. During that time Kepler was working on his "harmonic theory", which explains the harmonic shape of things in our universe in terms of music. He thought the uniformity in nature was caused by musical tones of objects in space as they interacted with human souls. But that's how he discovered the third law of planetary motion, so maybe creative people aren't so insane.

Kepler died in 1630. He wrote his own epitaph:

Mensus eram coelos, nunc terrae metior umbras

Mens coelestis erat, corporis umbra iacet.

I measured the skies, now the shadows I measure

Skybound was the mind, earthbound the body rests

rocky mountain paint fumes high

My friend Camile and I painted her bathroom today. She's having it redone by the same contractor who did my kitchen (in fact, she's the one who introduced me to him).

The day started off with Camile's cat Althea (I bet I spelled that wrong) attacking my feet. She's the cutest kitten and cries to be picked up and when you pick her up she purrs loudly. She also loves to attack Otis, Cam's other cat, and to hide under plastic drop cloths, particularly the one over the bathtub (Cam kept checking to make sure Althea wasn't suffocating).

Camile, her daughter Kayla (who gave her Althea), and Althea. Look at Althea. She's obviously contemplating her next attack.

Otis, the Burmese cat that Althea attacks. He's like "why me god????"

The cats together. Althea is like "born to kill bitches! attack!!!!" Otis is like "for real dudes? get me the fuck out of here! need catnip like yesterday!"

We got the bathroom primed and then went to get the wall paint. On the way back to our little project we stopped at a furniture store called ModLivin. Very cool stuff! I saw a few things I liked but of course they were expensive...

Then we ate lebanese food.

Then we ran out of things to do instead of painting so we went back to Cam's house and finished painting. I think I'm a bit high from the paint fumes. In fact, when Cam took a pic of me painting I didn't realize it was out of focus until I just looked at it a minute ago.

Seriously, I am the best edger ever. I did the ceiling edging with no tape. I heart Purdy brushes!

Camile and I. I look stoned in this picture but I'm actually looking at my blackberry trying to figure out if I've pressed the take picture button or not.

did I just spend $178 on a spice rack that doesn't even come with spices?

Um, yep. I think I did.

It's called the aperture spice rack. I got two of them. In my defense I have been looking for the perfect spice rack since august of last year. And now that I'm trying to cook I have like 10 spices and 3 different kinds of olive oil and some other stuff that really should be on a spice rack.

I called my mom and she said it's okay because people should buy stuff they really like instead of settling and that anyway I hardly ever spend money.

Admit it. The spice rack is fucking cool. Totally. Worth. It.

a day, in pictures, that ends with good news from my physical therapist

First, my library step stool (it's a REAL library step stool) came today. It's for reaching stuff in the higher cabinets in my kitchen.

50th anniversary of the step stool - special edition - it has lines from famous books on the top!!!!

And then I set up my new bar stools.

I like the orange. It looks good!!

And then I went to physical therapy. But ran into this mess 6 blocks from my house:

Oh for fuck's sake.

Here's a zoom in on what's in front of me:

Shooting. Not sure how many people were injured.

Anyway, I finally made it to PT where I was given some new exercises and thera-bands for my knee (my PT said "that is the most fucked up thing I've ever seen" when she looked at my knee x-ray - then she apologized for cursing and said she was just shocked when she saw the x-ray).

And I found out that one of the WORST things I can do is yoga. Yea!!!!! Um, I mean, I'm so sad. I find yoga so relaxing.

Kidding. I fucking hate yoga. There. I said it. But I wasn't lying when I said I like quinoa, so I'm not the totally most unhealthy person in the world.

I have nothing against farts, but I sometimes wish they were better timed

Today I was talking to a male colleague as we headed towards the bathrooms. We finished our conversation and then I pushed the women's bathroom door open. Right as I did that who ever was in there let loose a fart that sounded like the farter's ass was crying for help. Or maybe the person's bowel exploded, I don't know.

I can only imagine what my face looked like. I decided to not go into the bathroom.

I am going to die of embarrassment next time I see that colleague because I admit that I started laughing hysterically about the fart.

I'm so immature. What the fuck is wrong with me?

perhaps everyone doesn't share my vision

I know my friend has some issues with quinoa, especially when it comes to quinoa snacks. So of course I was inclined to make some quinoa snacks just to see if there as horrible as I was told.

Me:

Guess who's making quinoa snack balls. 

Me :)

You said to cook something.

Flax seeds, pumpkin seeds (papitas to all you canadians, why can't you just use real words for shit), oatmeal, shredded cocoanut, quinoa

 Friend:

Is that the before digestion or after shot? Jesus.

Me:

That was just the seeds, quinoa, and oatmeal.

Dude, you used to fucking microwave power bars and eat them. Like anyone should take advice from you on what to eat. They're GOOD. And Marie could make them almost by herself.

I haven't rolled it into cookies yet. And it's a weird color because I melted the chocolate into the dough instead of chilling the dough and trying to get the fucking chocolate chips in later when the dough was cold and not pliable.

Um, it tastes better than it looks?

Friend:

Pure fucking evil there. Soccer moms be jealous!

Me:

Even better, I formed the dough into cookies and froze them. So good!

You're just jealous that I'm a better cook than you.

It's not easy being, basically, a top chef.

Kidding. But would mention the quinoa snacks were good. Except next time I'll pestle down (or what ever the cooking term is) the pumpkin seeds.