photo album update

well, i took a little break from scanning (and editing scans) to finally get around to updating my online photo album (link on the top right of this page). it's a substantial update, with pictures dating as far back as april of 2004, up through the present, in all about 380 or so shots i've just not managed to get conventionalized and filed. the vast majority of content is stuff i've shot myself, but i've included (as i do as often as possible) some that have been sent to me. check out january of this year for some really great pictures of my nephew Cole's 2nd birthday party (unfortunately, Loren and i had to miss it due to a schedule conflict with his basketball game). also of interest is about 6 minutes of video shot early this month of Loren building a five foot five inch snowman during the first snowfall of the year here, along with some great stills of the same, plus a superb halloween bubble-blowing contest with the massive mounds of bubble-gum i gave Loren and Phoenix, as well as christmas pictures from the Sargent household, a million shots of Chowder....even a couple of me in there. and since i'm so proud of this little editing job i did with multiple exposures, i'll post a reduced version of it here:

in all, there are now 1,755 pictures in the album, approximately 1.14 Gb and growing. i recently acquired a video camera so in the eventuality that i come up with a video capture card i'll start converting video to digital also. it's clear i'm just going to have to get a better computer!

hope someone browses around the update- it's a labor of love....well....at least of obsession!

PEACE
inf

an unventful week

Loren played basketball today. his team really had a shot at winning this game, but it got away from them at the end, once more. he played hard, and did his job on the court, but only managed to touch the ball once, and didn't get to shoot it. Melissa & Jason and Mom came out to see the game. it was also team picture day. my mother made the comment today that Loren really turned a corner in his participation in the sports this year, which i think is true. he's applied himself to improve his skills and become more competitive, and we're all very proud of him. he should be proud of himself, and i think he is, for the most part.

i got to see his report card today, and it was less than stellar. if i remember correctly he got an A, 3 Bs and 3 Cs, one of which was a C- in what they call "language" (reading and writing). mostly his grades go down from failing to turn work in on time or turning it in messy. a little too much of his father in him for his own good. all in all it wasn't bad enough to deserve punishment, but not good enough to merit praise or reward. i was really hoping to see some improvement in his grades, i got the sense that he's worked a lot harder this quarter than the last. i hope the (short) talk i had with him after his game (when his mother showed me his grades) is enough to stick in his head for a while. he simply needs to be more organized. shoot me now, i sound like my mom.

changing gears....

this last week i've spent mulling over the possibilities in front of me for future employment. though i'm not entirely discouraged by the prospects open to me at the moment, neither am i overly excited. changing employment always seems to require me to put my ducks in a row around the house before i can really get my mind around moving on to the Next Thing. so that's what i've done.

thinking ahead to what direction life's going to take me in now always seems to get me remembering the past, and that's been accentuated this week by the amount of scanning i've been doing. i'm determined to make it through scanning my entire photo archives; i've got it in my mind that i want to leave a permanent record in as complete a form as possible to 1) look back on when i'm older, should i be so lucky as to live to a grand old age, and 2) leave something approaching comprehensive to Loren and any future generations of my mind. this requires a vast amount of work and a great investment of time. i have thousands of pictures to scan. knowing every piece of equipment has a limited lifespan before it's ready for the junk heap, i've taken to scanning as many photos as i can fit on the scanning glass at a time. i've also been sampling them at high resolution to account for "resolution creep", by which i mean the inevitable increase of resolution on an average display, corresponding to a proportional decrease in the displayed size of a picture at a given resolution. in the 20 years or so i've been involved in computers i've seen the standard monitor go from 80 character by 24 line monochrome to grayscale to 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024 and higher. the advent of HD monitors and cross-platform media sharing technologies are also forcing higher sampling resolutions in media. if i don't want my full size pictures to display as thumbnail-size images in the future, i'd better sample them large now, and downscale them for the present- or rescan everything later. considering the huge investment in time this project will take (i'm guessing most of the next 1-2 yrs, on and off), i very much doubt i'll be willing to do it all again. so- scan at the highest resolution possible while maintaining a reasonable file size and downsample for display now. this machine has only 128Kb of RAM and a 500MHz P3 processor (probably 6 yrs old now), and i'm pushing the physical components to their limits to accomplish my task. furthermore, all the pictures then need to be cropped out of the initial image, in some cases edited for rotation. the finished product needs to be captioned and placed in chronological order in the group of pictures and in the context of my album as a whole. this is, to say the least, a daunting task. many of the pictures can't be easily identified to a specific time, and i'm having to make adjustments to my filing system in order to accomodate pictures that i can only make educated guesses as to when they were taken. regardless, i'll do the best i can in a reasonably exhaustive effort. i'm sure the results will be good.

the process of going through old photographs is like a forced trip through the past. combined with the fact that my slow computer doesn't accomplish most of the editing functions quickly, i'm looking at each picture for longer than i otherwise might. i feel like i'm reliving my youth. i've started from the oldest (and in many cases the most degraded) source material first, so at the moment i'm immersed in my teenage years. looking closely at these pictures i find i'm remembering things i'd forgotten about completely, and noticing things captured on film incidentally (aside from the main subject of the pictures) that were preserved accidently. it makes me want to take pictures of everything, since i'm one of those annoying people who think every little detail is important. the writing on a shirt my mother was wearing, or a memento long since lost that everyone thought important at the time, the way my moustache used to grow, the pictures i had on my wall of my bedroom in my youth, a stuffed animal on the dashboard of a car, a pair of shades i clearly remember sitting on and breaking 18 years ago, a logo i drew for a band still sitting in my friend's parents' garage a year and half after the band was dissolved. i'm also noticing things i don't have a record of but should, such as pictures of some band members not present when all else are, pictures of people who's names i can't recall.

things i'm proud of accomplishing and things that might have turned out differently and things i regret....i find i have a lot of those. i wonder how much of the things i remember fondly were less idyllic than i remember, and i wonder how many things i regret now, i had good reasons for at the time.

all this from what remains, essentially, a rather uneventful, unremarkable life thus far. i wonder if i have the time left, or the energy, to mount enough effort to accomplish things comparable to those i achieved in the past. is this what a midlife crisis is? coming to the realization that your best days are behind you, and fearing you've squandered your opportunity to achieve the heights you set for yourself in your youth? is it simply realizing that the expectations i had in my youth were unrealistic? in 20 years will i look back at this period of my life in the same way i look back 20 yrs ago?

that's a lot of unanswered questions. if i find any of the answers i'm certain they'll be reflected in future entries, assuming this blog survives that long. i guess i have no reason to assume it won't; it's the longest-running log i've managed to keep (i've tried several times before).

so, here's to the future....may we all be around long enough- and have the presence of mind at the time- to enjoy it.

REM report

WARNING: very boring dream. the reader is forewarned that from this point through the end of this post this particular dream is very very very very extremely nauseatingly unrelentingly thoroughly completely utterly boring.

i was working with my friend Mike Childress in a large shop. some third person had fabricated a tripod for a video camera rather badly, and Mike was pointing out the flaws to me. i didn't think the flaws were all that big a deal; certainly they weren't very difficult to fix, but i agreed with him that the tripod wasn't built correctly. it was as if someone had done most of the work and stopped short of the finish line. eventually i took it upon myself to fix it. i sanded down two errant prongs and was preparing to do some more work (welding i think) when Mike came over and noticed what i was doing. he commented on seeing me working late and sort of stepped in and lent me a hand. when i'd finished, we both got ready to leave.

at this point the "shop" environment i'd been working in seemed to blur lines between types of businesses- it had elements of retail and the restaurant field also. the main boss on the premises was a brunette woman who might have been my son's soccer coach....whoever she was, she was giving instructions to her second-in-command (asst. mgr?) who was a 30-ish woman with dishwater blonde hair. i remember this second woman getting ready to leave the premises herself, raising her voice to project through the large room and asking everyone to please fold everything "like so". it was at this point that i realized there were racks of clothing everywhere (hence the above reference to a retail environment). we exchanged some small talk as the woman left.

there was a dark colored end table/shelving unit type thing on display and the tag on it caught my eye. for some reason i read the copy on the tag from where i stood, and it was something about how it was good to come home from a day's work and be able to have something to show off to the neighbors. i wasn't impressed. the merchandise (the shelving thing) was cheaply built, and not very inexpensive at $30. it had a removable smaller stand that was for mixing drinks or something. i looked up and saw another stand, this one a full-sized unit that would enhabit most of a wall in most living rooms. this one seemed almost to be apologizing for calling the potential buyer an alcoholic, while promising to make a grand impression on their guests. i turned away again, this time toward a table which seemed to be.....more like a booth in a diner.

it was at this point i realized there was a small menu on the table. opening it, i saw that it was a "rush" from the manufacturer of the larger wall-unit bar. in pretentiously upscale language it promised to be an invaluable aid in the user's self-instruction of mixology, but seemed to be missing all the details. there was also a very large expanded version of the same "menu" at the booth, and i picked it up and opened it too- it was also missing all the details.

at this point i was thinking that bartenders make excellent money, but they have to work on Saturday nights....

i noticed one of those paper things you put under a glass in a bar on the table, and i picked it up. the head manager woman (the one who may have my son's soccer coach) had written something in pen on it to the effect of "let Metro bring the money"....i also specifically remember it reading, "it'll never happen....." very strange.

regardless Mike was leaving and we both seemed to be ready to rush out the door. so i made the rounds making sure the place was locked. Mike beat me out the door so in the end it was my responsibility to finish locking up. i passed through what now appeared to be a shopping mall. the lights were dim and the janitorial people were doing their nightly thing. at the end of the hall, by a smoked-glass wall that housed the exterior doors, near an end table, i noticed a small brown plastic garbage can with a new clear liner. i also noticed the drawer of the end table was slightly open. as i rushed past, i tried to close it with my foot- not quite successfully. i didn't stop however, it wasn't that big a deal and wasn't my responsibility anyway. i exited the hallway through the smoked-glass door, and walked the short distance to the adjacent exterior wall, and the door to the shop this narrative started with.

attempting to close this door was a problem. i seemed to have a bunch of stuff in my hands, and there were a couple sheets of plywood which seemed to compound the problem, keeping the sliding door from reaching all the way over to latch correctly. it required a key to throw the latch in this door. and the latch was comically large....easily a foot long. eventually i stuffed my watch (which i'd been holding) in my pocket, cleared my hands of the other things i was holding (can't remember what they were), moved the plywood out of the way, and still seemed unable to manage to close the door.

somehow my watch (which must have doubled as a cell phone) managed to call the police. realizing they were on their way, and being somewhat embarrassed at my inability to close the door, i went to my toolbox in the shop and dropped all my stuff there and returned to the door to try some more.

eventually they did show up, and the manager of the place too, but it was a problem with the door (which i realized after messing with it for a while) and there was nothing anyone could do- the door was simply broken.

and mercifully, that's the end of this boring account of this boring dream, dreamed this past evening by this boring blogger.

REM report

Scene 1:
i was driving along some roads through empty fields. at an intersection i came to stop behind a strange vehicle. it looked like one of those homemade pickup canopies that resemble a shed, only there didn't seem to be a pickup attached to this one. it had green trim. though i couldn't see the driver, i knew it was the actor who played John Boy on The Waltons. he sat at the intersection for a long time, so i finally went around him, passing by him on the right, then turning back to the left to continue on. winding along a while longer i finally ended up at a dead end on a steep driveway.

can't remember the next thing that happened but i remember trying to leave on foot. i had a fishing pole and a fish with me, and i had to put them down to climb over a fence. the fish slithered away while i was climbing. i chased it for a while but it lost me in the leaves covering the ground.

Scene 2:
i was watching Blossom from the Powerpuff Girls running from an unseen pursuer. it seemed like i wasn't actively involved in the chase, that i had no personal stake in what happened, but i was trying to help her. she was riding some type of vehicle- like a flying motor scooter. at first she was cruising along outside in fields much the same as i was driving through earlier, but a few quick turns and she seemed to be flying through empty space. there was an opening surrounded by tiny green luminescent dots which she flew into, and after flying through some tunnels she emerged in what looked like a cartoon mall. she ducked in and out of rooms and seemed to be trying to collect some round cartoon tokens (possibly a form of money or credits for specific things, like you'd collect in a video game). maybe i made the connection in the dream, because suddenly she ducked into an arcade, and hovered over the pinball tables, one of which spewed tokens into the air, which bounced all over the room. she flitted around gathering them, by which i mean she flew her scooter into them and they disappeared like they would if you were playing a video game, and she got most of them but had to hurry on, to avoid being caught. i saw a token she missed and grabbed it.

i was following her, trying to get her attention to give her the token, and she didn't seem to notice me. i threw the token at her but missed. again i tried to get her attention, and though she seemed to notice me this time, she didn't stop. i threw the token way out in front of her so it would be in her path. it bounced off a wall far down the hallway, and rolled back on its edge, like a coin, directly to her, and she actually veered out of the way to avoid it.

that's all i remember.

knights play their best game of the season....and lose

in what must surely be the lowest scoring basketball game ever played between two 5th & 6th grade teams, the granite falls knights dropped their 4th game in a row by a score of 16-6. with a combination of great defense and lackluster shooting apparent on both sides of the ball, the knights held their opponents to only 4 points through three quarters of play, managing only 2 points themselves. in a reversal from her previous stance, Coach Timm (sp?) played a zone defense, and started Loren at the right defensive post position. Loren played the entire first half, sat out most of the third quarter, and played about half the fourth quarter, during which he went 1 for 3 shooting, scoring his first bucket EVER (raising a fist in celebration, and incidentally joining this reporter), grabbed 2 boards, played great defense throughout, and even got called for a defensive foul (bodying). it was easily his best game ever, he did just about everything right for the entire game. i'd like to think his coach saw his skills and left him in, but the fact that they had only 2 substitutes present at the start of the game, and only one more kid show up (about halftime) might have had something to do with it too.

unfortunately, my normally worthy digital camera takes crappy pictures in the gym where ALL Loren's games will be played this year. the lighting is simply too dim and/or diffuse or something. i think the flash is too small to make it to the court and back to the bleachers. i really didn't get, and don't anticipate getting (with this camera) any decent pictures of him in action. the only pictures that come out with any kind of clarity at all are the ones i take when i'm standing fairly close to him.

as such, this is the only really worthwhile picture to come out of the whole game, and i took 22:

2005.01.15.17.23.48.pst
after a little well-earned water at halftime

soundclick.com song usage statistics

well, it occured to me today to check out how my tunes were doing on soundclick.com; i've got 21 MP3 tracks posted there for anyone interested in checking them out (the link's to the top right of this page "download inf's MP3s"). i originally posted the tracks in february 2004, for the most part, and since that time:

the pages i've set up have received 1,240 hits
as a collective whole, the songs have been streamed 1,351 times
in all, there have been 174 downloads of my songs.

the peak traffic occurred in march 2004, during which my music was streamed 995 times.

---

here're the figures for the individual tracks, in alphabetical order:

A Little Bubbly [demo] : 131 plays, 11 downloads
All F*ed Up [no vocals, as recorded by Infidel] : 37 plays, 11 downloads
America [as recorded by Infidel] : 46 plays, 5 downloads
Coward [as recorded by Infidel] : 39 plays, 7 downloads
Distractions [live, dry] : 102 plays, 8 downloads
Distractions [live] : 179 plays, 10 downloads
Dtune [demo] : 50 plays, 8 downloads
Escape [as recorded by Infidel] : 40 plays, 12 downloads
Happy Song [demo] : 44 plays, 7 downloads
High Wire [as recorded by Infidel] : 30 plays, 5 downloads
I Wanna Disappear [demo] : 38 plays, 6 downloads
Jus' Livin' [live outtake, as recorded by Pat Fagg] : 31 plays, 5 downloads
Jus' Livin' [live, as recorded by Pat Fagg] : 24 plays, 5 downloads
Liquid Motion Experiment #2 [demo] : 170 plays, 20 downloads
Lullaby [live] : 162 plays, 9 downloads
Now Is The Time [as recorded by ThoseDudes] : 18 plays, 6 downloads
PiBuWiFaSur [instrumental, as recorded by Infidel] : 28 plays, 6 downloads
To Hell With It Anyway [as recorded by ThoseDudes] : 31 plays, 9 downloads
Too Easy [no vocals, as recorded by Infidel] : 34 plays, 10 downloads
Tracers [instrumental, as recorded by Infidel] : 31 plays, 5 downloads
Unspoken [as recorded by Infidel] : 86 plays, 9 downloads

---

in order by number of times streamed:

179 - Distractions [live]
170 - Liquid Motion Experiment #2 [demo
162 - Lullaby [live]
131 - A Little Bubbly [demo]
102 - Distractions [live, dry]
86 - Unspoken [as recorded by Infidel]
50 - Dtune [demo]
46 - America [as recorded by Infidel]
44 - Happy Song [demo]
40 - Escape [as recorded by Infidel]
39 - Coward [as recorded by Infidel]
38 - I Wanna Disappear [demo]
37 - All F*ed Up [no vocals, as recorded by Infidel]
34 - Too Easy [no vocals, as recorded by Infidel]
31 - To Hell With It Anyway [as recorded by ThoseDudes]
31 - Jus' Livin' [live outtake, as recorded by Pat Fagg]
31 - Tracers [instrumental, as recorded by Infidel]
30 - High Wire [as recorded by Infidel]
28 - PiBuWiFaSur [instrumental, as recorded by Infidel]
24 - Jus' Livin' [live, as recorded by Pat Fagg]
18 - Now Is The Time [as recorded by ThoseDudes]

---

in order by number of downloads:

20 - Liquid Motion Experiment #2 [demo]
12 - Escape [as recorded by Infidel]
11 - A Little Bubbly [demo]
11 - All F*ed Up [no vocals, as recorded by Infidel]
10 - Distractions [live]
10 - Too Easy [no vocals, as recorded by Infidel]
9 - Lullaby [live]
9 - To Hell With It Anyway [as recorded by ThoseDudes]
9 - Unspoken [as recorded by Infidel]
8 - Distractions [live, dry]
8 - Dtune [demo]
7 - Happy Song [demo]
7 - Coward [as recorded by Infidel]
6 - I Wanna Disappear [demo]
6 - Now Is The Time [as recorded by ThoseDudes]
6 - PiBuWiFaSur [instrumental, as recorded by Infidel]
5 - America [as recorded by Infidel]
5 - Jus' Livin' [live outtake, as recorded by Pat Fagg]
5 - Tracers [instrumental, as recorded by Infidel]
5 - High Wire [as recorded by Infidel]
5 - Jus' Livin' [live, as recorded by Pat Fagg]

---

in order by downloads per time streamed:

33.33% - Now Is The Time [as recorded by ThoseDudes] : 18 plays, 6 downloads
30.00% - Escape [as recorded by Infidel] : 40 plays, 12 downloads
29.73% - All F*ed Up [no vocals, as recorded by Infidel] : 37 plays, 11 downloads
29.41% - Too Easy [no vocals, as recorded by Infidel] : 34 plays, 10 downloads
29.03% - To Hell With It Anyway [as recorded by ThoseDudes] : 31 plays, 9 downloads
21.43% - PiBuWiFaSur [instrumental, as recorded by Infidel] : 28 plays, 6 downloads
20.83% - Jus' Livin' [live, as recorded by Pat Fagg] : 24 plays, 5 downloads
17.95% - Coward [as recorded by Infidel] : 39 plays, 7 downloads
16.67% - High Wire [as recorded by Infidel] : 30 plays, 5 downloads
16.13% - Jus' Livin' [live outtake, as recorded by Pat Fagg] : 31 plays, 5 downloads
16.13% - Tracers [instrumental, as recorded by Infidel] : 31 plays, 5 downloads
16.00% - Dtune [demo] : 50 plays, 8 downloads
15.90% - Happy Song [demo] : 44 plays, 7 downloads
15.79% - I Wanna Disappear [demo] : 38 plays, 6 downloads
11.76% - Liquid Motion Experiment #2 [demo] : 170 plays, 20 downloads
10.87% - America [as recorded by Infidel] : 46 plays, 5 downloads
10.47% - Unspoken [as recorded by Infidel] : 86 plays, 9 downloads
8.39% - A Little Bubbly [demo] : 131 plays, 11 downloads
7.84% - Distractions [live, dry] : 102 plays, 8 downloads
5.58% - Distractions [live] : 179 plays, 10 downloads
5.56% - Lullaby [live] : 162 plays, 9 downloads

for an average download per streaming instance of around 13-17%. basically for every time my music was streamed, 13-17% of the time there was also a download, or somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 out of 100 people (1 out of 7) liked what they heard enough to keep it, and that's pretty khoul in my book. the site doesn't keep track of the number of IP addresses it streams the music to or i could figure out precisely how many different USERS listened to and/or saved the music. this is as close as i can get with the tracking statistics available on the site.

i'll close this post with a sincere THANK YOU to everyone who listened to my music, and another sincere THANK YOU to everyone who shared it with others on their own. wonder how many copies of my tunes are floating around out there....have to take a look on the P2P networks.....if i find anything out there, i'll post what i find!

THANKS AGAIN everyone :)
inf

my favoritest Canadian just started her own blog :)

welcome to the blogging community, Wanderlust ;)

anyone that wants to get in on the ground floor of what promises to be Truly Amazing can check this out:
Wanderlust's Bungalow of Musing and Contemplation

PEACE
inf

finally some SNOW!

after much hemming and hawing about the possibility of snow, including some days when the surrounding areas got their share but this neck of the woods didn't, the snow finally came early this morning, dusting everything with white and eventually building up oh, say....about 3 or 4 inches. it was enough to get out and have a respectable snowball fight, and for Loren to make a fine specimen of homo erectus frigidus. Loren managed the majority of the tough stuff himself, and only called for reinforcements when the mondo middle section needed lifting. we had to break it up; the two of us couldn't put the belly on the man.

here's a couple of the better shots of Loren with his new pal, whom he's dubbed Omnioxniphidus.

2005.01.09.12.55.38
Loren applying the finishing touches



2005.01.09.12.56.32
priceless



2005.01.09.12.56.42
No shortage of affection

thanks for the scanner :)

probably the most useful gift i was lucky enough to receive this christmas was a scanner/(photo) printer/copier from my folks (thanks guys!). seeing as how i've gotten it installed (though not before i bought the wrong USB cable and ended up salvaging a suspect one (which seems to be working fine) from an old scanner i inherited from someone at work), i figured i'd get right to the task of scanning some pictures nearing the end of their lives, before they completely deteriorated. here's the results:

the following pictures were all saved from the inside of the lid of my toolbox, where they've been taped since 1996 and early 1997- that's 8 years of getting shuffled to and from work and having tools bang off them and scratch them up. i took advantage of the color copier at work and replaced the originals in my toolbox with color copies. these scans look much better than the color copies i made. when i have a few more moments i'll try to clean them up and re-print them, as sort of a photo-restoration-skills test.

this first picture's from december of 1996. if i'm not mistaken it was taken on christmas eve day (which would make it a tuesday). the higher-ups at the sign company i worked for at the time, National Sign in Seattle, allowed me and another employee to bring our sons to work that day. it was the day of the company christmas party, but everyone got some work done that day also- including Loren, who cut his sign teeth on a channel-letter project for this Campus Square sign which would eventually stand outside a strip mall in Federal Way. the blue letters he's working on have glass housings which screw into the sheet metal of the letter body, allowing the electrodes on the ends of the neon tubes to contact a spring which is in turn electrified with (generally) around 20,000V at approx 30mA, thereby causing the semiconductive gas in the glass neon tubes (still generically referred to as neon though in many cases the glass holds a different inert gas) to flouresce. Loren worked hard on these letters! eventually i'll get around to posting a picture of the completed sign, which was written up in a Signs Of The Times magazine (a trade rag for the sign industry). when i get THAT ambitious i'll update this post to include it that picture. incidentally, the sign in the background is part of a $1M assembly that was a completely overblown parking sign for a casino in Las Vegas; it had literally 60 transformers in it, and went out on 3 semi trucks!


this second picture is of Loren and the other employee's son (Taylor I believe his name is) inside the main body of the sign. it was fitting Loren spent some time in that sign because i did too- being the smallest guy in a shop has its disadvantages. no one else could fit inside it to terminate all the wiring, so Yours Truly got to spend a couple hours in there on his back. imagine climbing inside the motor cavity of your car and rewiring the spark plugs with the hood closed..... in any case, Loren had more fun in there than i did!


this last one is actually chronologically the first one to go in my toolbox, from july, 1996. yep, that's Loren, licking his Uncle Jason's bald head. everyone at work thought it was former Mariner Jay Buhner at first glance. always good for a laugh. Jason was a good sport about Loren teasing him like that- and it's obvious Loren was having a ball. this all took place on the back patio at my folks' house.


ok that's it for now. hope y'all've enjoyed the blast from the past as much as i have-
PEACE

so it's a new year already

damned if these new years don't just keep comin' quicker. gonna use 'em all up 'fore i know it, then where'll i be? safe guess: somewhere that is not here. yes, i highly doubt i will be entombed upon this chair in this room; it would bring down the property value.

i wonder if anyone's actually ever asked to be cremated and have their ashes thrown....in an ash tray. i wonder if anyone's ever had their ashes sprinkled lovingly, like a fine, rare spice, into a simmering pot of spaghetti sauce. brings a whole new meaning to the term "eat me".

christmas came and nearly went before i was ready to actually participate this year. not much christmas spirit in the ol' boy. i finally worked a little of it up on christmas day itself, watching my son open presents, and sitting around at my sister's house with the folks. hopefully this year the christmas bug'll bite me early enough to get things done earlier.

new year's was frightfully uneventful also. managed to get together with ThoseDudes, but that's about all i can say positive about the experience. new year's day began with sittin' fer a spell in a hot tub whilst drinking coffee and Bailey's- as good a way as any to start a year.

this blogger's been trying to quit smoking. it would help if i actually ran out of cigarettes. i've gotten to the point now where it's really difficult to smoke one. i think i have about half a dozen left and when these are gone i'm going to try to tough it out. unless of course i find MORE cigarettes hiding around here somewhere. i've smoked 3 this year so far, in bits and pieces. take a couple drags, get dizzy, put it out. a step in the right direction.

ok if i don't get some dinner going soon, i'm not going to get any. and i have to shower off all this sandblasting dust from work.

PEACE