Real-life drama on the elmwoodstrip.

On my way to the bagel store from the library I passed by Spot and noticed an odd sight. A woman was sitting on the bench apparently unconscious while a man took her pulse and another looked on. No one seemed to be panicking so I thought it must be under control and kept walking to Manhattan Bagel (*). After completing my purchase, I walked back and saw that the woman was now flat on her back on the ground and the guy who had been taking her pulse was on his knees delivering CPR. Next came the sirens and then the firemen, who hooked her up to some oxygen. Soon the ambulance came and they whisked her away. All in a matter of minutes.

As they were loading her up another guy came over and told me, "It was heroin." As I looked askance at him he says, "yeah, guess she did it in the bathroom and overdosed." That's just insanity. First off she didn't "look" like a heroin addict, just your regular looking, late-twenties, slightly overweight, mousy brown hair type of girl. Second off, who the heck does heroin at spot coffee? WTF, mates? The one other point that could've jived with this theory is that the guy with her (not the guy doing anything productive like taking a pulse, who I found out from another woman was a doctor who pulled over in the nick of time to drag her back to life) said to the paramedics that he knew her but that they weren't friends. Maybe the bunk dealer? Maybe we'll here more tonight at 6:00 from the local news.

• didn't want to put this in my dramatic story, but Manhattan bagels is having a buy a dozen get half a dozen free sale today. 19 bagels for $5.99. Pretty good deal, though a lot of bagels.

and never catching up to it. That was yesterday for (e:matthew) and I. Turned into a nice walk though and happy time together. Today it is also (e:matthew)'s year [inlink]soyeon,217[/inlink], so I say, "Cock-a-Doodle-Doo! rooster-boy."

I think (e:paul) has got me sick now.

I made chili yesterday. I have a big ole pot, so come over and get some. Problem is, it's not too tasty. Followed a recipe which apparently sucked. Edible, just not tasty. Lots of hot sauce should do the trick, right?

here are some of the results:


These tasy veggies will mostly likely end up in the soup pot, except for the dandelions, they belong to the beast, Basra.


These yum-yum fruits are about to be liquified by a good pal of mine, the blender. Ho!!! Smoojie time!!!

And, I too was at the butterfly house yesterday in our neighborland, Canada with (e:matthew) [inlink]matthew,499[/inlink] and (e:paul) [inlink]paul,2652[/inlink][inlink]paul,2650[/inlink][inlink]paul,2649[/inlink] It was very nice, humid, and jungly. Word of advice though, don't tell the people at the border you're going there or you just may get harrassed (especially if you're "three guys our age").


Here is me and the butterfly, well butterflies to be exact. You see, I's such a hot man that theys couldn't help but juz get it on, right there, right then, right on my shirt.

(as suggested by your friends at IRS and Toyota)

Since everyone's talking about the hybrids and taxes [inlink]jason,74[/inlink] [inlink]dan,65[/inlink] [inlink]uncutsaniflush,2[/inlink] I thought I'd agree and add a handy link to the instructions on how to claim the credit and which cars are eligible.
(provided by your friendly IRS)



$2,000 bucks. That's a big deal. But buy this year since it decreases to $500 next year and who-the-hell-lknows after that. Though I suppose with Georgie at the helm we just might get $5000 if we wait till next year but buy a hybrid-SUV instead. Got my hybrid Escalade with a whopping 25 mpg in the city, instead of the normal 11 baby!! (Anyone remember the "loop" which let owners of the giantest of SUVs get a break for having cars big enough to be eligible for a credit originally intended for farm equipment?) Tax Code length is getting out of hand with all these spendthrift Republicans throwing credits around like candy.

we got to go skiing today. We vanned on over to Allegany State Park (take 90 to 219 S until Salamanca and follow the signs) for some much needed exercise of the cross country variety. (e:matthew) and I were still debating whether we were going or not when Mr. Dave Doyle himslef appeared with his magic van and said, "get on in, we're a'goin skiing." So ski did we. It was only (e:matthew)'s 2nd attempt and I felt bad getting pretty darn lost at every other bend. You'd think that at a place with so many trails and people (must have been 20-30 cars in the lot) it would be difficult to lose your way, but somehow we ended backtracking twice. Ended up being a good mix of evertything that makes skiing fun, a little exciting downhill, a couple extended up-hills for warmth, a fast jaunt down a paved road, and the perfect idyllic trail wandering around and above beaver dams. The weather was perfect, no wind and blue skies, I didn't even wear a coat. To me X-country is such a good sport because it worls you out all over real good, and, if you can stop staring at your feet for a moment, when you look up and pause you see the beautiful side of winter shimmering and bedazzling. I love when just a little slice of pool or stream manages to break free of encrusting ice; the contrast between white-white snow and darkly moving water is so perfect and somehow serene.

(e:Matthew) should have some pictures before too long, so check his journal.

I took some pictures of the fish tank. They turned out okay considering how small everything is and how poor my photography skill is.

Here are a couple of shots that I stuck all together in a vague approximation of where they are in the tank. Upper-left and right are some mushroom-anemone things with some feather-duster worms. The middle-top shows the "pinkies" as we call them, they're a type of Gorgonia that slowly creeps along and encrusts the rocks with buds that become new polyps. Bottom left is the brain coral which had it's tentacles out, though you can't really tell in the pic. Middle-bottom is a bubble coral that is slowly regaining it's health after nearly dying. Lastly is a blurry pic of the coral-banded shrimp, he's the big boss of the tank, and menaces everything else with his giant claws.



This is a coral thing too. Some kind of tree coral or something. We forgot to look at the name when we bought it and it kinda looks like a couple different varieties. It shrivels to a little-bitty thing every night and slowly becomes erect as the light increases.

least that's what I think when I read the newest essays about what the universe is. Strings twirling about spawning multidimensional particles which appear as waves. Or is that the other way around? I'm pretty in to how reality can be interpreted through physics. I can understand up to a certain point and then my mind just starts travelling among all these possibilities of what reality is. I try to put strings through what I know. I wind tauruses (tauri?) through reality. I think of cubes within cubes, 10-dimensional cubes?

Just yesterday I was watching Dragonball Z (auf Deutsch) where this guy from the future comes and messes with the present and then comes back later to find that the present (his past) is very different from his experience. Yeah, deep. It made me think of this idea of time as a wheel which keeps spinning, and if you were to backtrack you couldn't do it by reversing, but rather by jumping to the next nearest wheel of possibilities. Thus you could go back in time, but it would never be your time. You could change all you wanted there, but everytime you went back to your own time it would be the same.

I haven't read anything "physical" for awhile so I'll imitate our resident ozone-making genius (e:ajay) and read The Fermi Solution. [inlink]ajay,251[/inlink] I just put in a request to our beleaguered library system and should have it soon. Bis dann leute!

I stopped eating the beef over a year ago after the whole BSE scare. A couple years before in Germany I stopped eating beef because of their Mad-Cow scare. Now, apparently I will have to stop eating goat too. Admitedly I don't eat a whole lot of goat, normally just when I have Carribean/East Indies food at Palm Tree (MAP TO: 69%20ALLEN%20ST) or Steel Drums (MAP TO: 1410%20MAIN%20ST) but it's so tasty when I do eat it.

Perhaps I should just cut all "hooved" animals off the food list. Stick to just birds for the meat. And maybe a little bacon here and there. And sea creatures, no problem there. Should just go veggie, but it would never work with my emaciated roomates: they'd just shrivel up and die.

Goodbye, dear goat.

when I wrote that little rant below. Huh.

Welcome to new user Spinyuwhatsit.... er, Spinalyakist... um, okay sorry (e:Spinuyashagc) I'm only making a little fun cuz you asked us not to. And I have a couple straight girls I could let you hang out with if you promise not to hit on them. [inlink]spinuyashagc,1[/inlink] Just plain hitting them is fine though. (e:lilho) for example, or (e:tina). They like it nice and rough. K, nuff trouble for the morning.

Is this the story of my life?

How I am supposed to do something for you if I don't know what you want?

Why don't you know what I want?

You don't know what you want.

OK, great.

Just clicked the transfer button to finally fully pay-off our car. Feels very nice. Plus an extra $250.00 a month (unfortunately it will just go to other bills). This is the first time I've actually owned a car. Can't say I terribly enjoy it. A big hassle. Car payments, insurance, registration, shoveling/scraping... So annoying. I hope soon to live in a place with a viable public transportation system again. In Jena (Thüringen, Germany) there was an excellent system with buses/trains that ran 24-hours. In the day I never waited for more than 10-15 minutes, at night never more than 30. It was so good and regular that you didn't even have to know schedules, you just went to the nearest stop and knew that a bus/train would come within 10-15 minutes. Plus in the summer it was very bicycle friendly and small enough that you could get just about anywhere in less than 1/2 hour.