Teaser

I’m working on a little how-to that shares some basic tips for how to keep your computer cleaned up and tuned up. Stay tuned.

New-found empathy

It’s 5:53 a.m. and I’m showered, dressed, bleeding from my right foot where the handicat tagged me when he decided that it was not time to pee, and I’m waiting for the coffee to be done.

I know I slept last night, but only because I remember being woken up from REM sleep by the kid as I was dreaming about a truck stop in the deep south serving me fry bread with other deep-fried goodness on top.

Meg and Alden spent the night in bed with me for a change. It was cool enough outside that they were both comfortable sleeping upstairs. Of course, that was a big change for all of us, so none of us slept very well. Especially the kid. And especially Meg. And especially me.

After listening to the kid fuss for an hour, and get kicked and pummeled and generally all the stuff that didn’t happen in my taijutsu class last night, I decided at 5:20 that I was officially “up.”

I asked Meg if this is what she goes through every night, and she said, and I quote, “Yup.” Then she rolled over and tried to go back to sleep.

Flooded Dragon Ass

Last night, we had the great-grandstinker of all rainstorms. We got between five and seven inches of rain in about three hours, there was *constant* lightning and thunder and heavy wind.

Nothing came down around our house from the wind, but a good third of the yard, and all of the vegetable garden, is under water. And I even weeded on Friday.

This is the view west of the house, looking toward the hay field. There’s more water in the field right now than there has been in the last four years of spring runoff.

And since this storm considerately arrived at about 12:30 a.m. with the most amazing thunder (think shotgun blast in a small concrete room) I’ve ever heard and rolled until about 3:30 or four, and while the storm was going the National Weather Service was kind enough to let us all know every twenty minutes that, *insert blaring siren on weather radio here* “Hey you guys in Ashland County are still getting hammered by this storm and wow! is it ever raining.” I would have turned the damn radio off, but I don’t trust myself to recognize the netherworld howl of an approaching tornado from REM sleep.

So now, after Meg’s folks make their weekly call in eight minutes (that’s when they call, not for how long), we’re going to go to the Golden Glow because they have coffee that we don’t have to make. That, and I was dreaming about their farmer’s omlete between sonic booms last night.

Thinking about grad school. Again.

Talking with Meg about her thoughts and plans for grad school has made me interested in what it’d be like for me. I spent some time this evening kicking around UW-Madison’s Web site looking at a variety of programs (remote environmental monitoring, library information science, psychology, philosophy, technical communication, you name it, pretty much) and judging the life work of some very bright people by how they come across in a web site.

Take, for example, the philosophy web site. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a more egg-headed, haughty web site. It’s exact opposite is the remote environmental monitoring site: What a fun, well-written, engaging nook of the Web. Can you guess which program has me fired up? I’ll give you a hint: I’m not a huge fan of eggs.

New friends

Charmaine and Josh came over for cheeseburgers, potato salad, beer, pie, and conversation. It was a proverbial good-time-had-by-all (I’m pretty sure) sorta dealy. Spent a lot of time talking dogs and boats. I got to show off how well Molly isn’t trained and impress with our collection of shedding cats.

Stayed up too late, though, especially with post-soire-cranky-Bubbington, so am disconbobulated, disorientated, and disinterested at work this morning. Interesting discoveries, wouldn’t you say? I guess, though, it’s what I deserve for disrespecting the decompression directives I’ve clearly defined for myself.

See what I’ve done?

More photos

…at Flickr, and this time, there are even some not of Alden. *Gasp!* What is the world coming to?

Blast Furnace 10 K

I ran (some) and walked (mostly) my first 10 K race ever, this morning. The race started at 9 a.m. and as we stampeded past the Northern State Bank sign, I looked up and swore to myself. It was 89 degrees.

The course seemed like it’d be easy: it was flat with only two short, steep hills, and the whole thing was right along the shore of the lake. But the sun was just blistering. And there was almost no shade on the course. The whole thing was on sun-drenched, gooey-around-the-edges black top.

Of course, none of that slowed down the hard-core runners. The winner did the course in 40 minutes, wich is actually a little slow for a 10 K. I, on the other hand, came across the line at about 81 minutes after walking more than four of the sixish miles of the course. I figured surviving the course was probably a really good idea, and when my feet felt like they were on fire and my sweating slowed down and I was feeling a little light headed, thoughts of survival came to the forefront of my mind. And that was at the one-and-a-half mile mark.

Jeesh. I guess all my training probably would have really paid off for a race run on a gravel road at 5:30 in the morning.

I’m a little dissapointed that I didn’t manage to run the wole course, but I’m proud as heck that I finished (not everyone did), and that I was able to come across the line with a smile and feeling reasonably put together.

I spent the last mile of the race running with the assistant D.A. from Chetek who came up here just for the race. He’s a veteran racer and gave me a lot of good advice and was good company for the last bit of the race. That was cool; thanks, and maybe see you on the Birkie trail!

Saved by an old friend

Out of nowhere, one of my friends from school (think sixth grade, junior high, and high school) popped onto the blog a couple days ago and said hey. He also suggested I keep the blog around just in case someone else comes looking for me online.

It’s not a bad idea, really. So I’ll keep the blog around, though ya’ll are still going to have to live with my random and sporadic posting. I’ll see if I can live with it, too.

And thanks, Chad, both for saying “hi” and for piping up about my blog.

Note to Chad

Please send me your e-mail address to ajvanbeest at gmail.com.

Contemplating Abandonment

Howdy ya’ll. Both.

I’m thinking of abandoning this blog, both because of my relatively pittiful record of regularly updating it, and because of my even worse track record of receiving comments.

I guess it’d be one thing if any of you would write back (and thanks, Pete and Robin, by the way, for your posts), but this thing has sort of turned into something that feels like writing to a wall. Except that when I go talk to the wall in person, it already knows all my news because it read it on the blog.

I guess what I’m saying is this: If you care about this blog, here’s your chance to post a comment to encourage me to forge ahead with this thing. Otherwise I think I’m going to go back to scribbling in my notebooks and catching up with my friends and family over a mug of hot tea or a stein of cold beer.

A nice little can of gas

So.

I just took an online quiz to “figure out my spirituality.” Or maybe, as Styx is singing right now, I have “too much time on my hands.” Either way, dig the results:

Which religion is the right one for you? (new version)
created with QuizFarm.com

Yeah, so there you go. In case you care, here are two links to Google results about satanism.

Now, to be honest, I’m a little agahst. Not, I’m quite certain, as much as Mom and Dad (*with much wailing and rending of clothes* “Where did we go wrong raising him?”). I mean, I figured I’d come up with paganism or agnosticism or something. But satanism? I mean, come on. Really.

But that does explain why I wear all that black. I’m sure it has nothing what-so-ever with being slightly overzealous (and yes, I could be just zealous if that suited me more, but it doesn’t, so stop interrupting, please!) in my persuit of taijutsu. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some chickens to kill.