After my estrip binge yesterday, I'm now on a restricted diet. Probably not a bad idea anyway going into the holidays, since I'm already late opening Santa's little workshop this year. Not good at time management.

I took this four day class that I don't want to talk about, and everybody in it wants to stay in touch with each other except me. I mean, they want to keep in touch with me, but I don't want to stay in touch with them. I am turning into my father. He went on an elderhostel group trip to India and travelled with a small group of people for 2 weeks. They all wanted to exchange information to stay in touch, and he flat-out told them he had enjoyed spending time with them, but he had no interest in ever hearing from any of them again. My dad is not known for his tact.

So far today I've received over 15MB of digital pictures of people's kids, dogs and cats. None of them was scaled-down to email-appropriate size. And that's not counting the digital double prints of Mittens, HotDog and CoCo because she didn't think the first set went through.



This is about as much as fit in my email display window. Now, why on earth would I want to open that?

So, am I supposed to send something in return? I have no kids, dogs, cats, gerbils, fish, turtles, parakeets, or tadpoles. Although I've had all of those (except kids) in the past. Maybe I could russle up some stock footage.

No wonder I'm alone.

Something weird is happening with my phones. Just thought it was a random fluke last night when I hit some key combination that locked my cell phone. Which was a pain because I had no clue what the unlock code was (hint: try 9999 or the last four digits of your phone number if it ever happens to you). Anyway, didn't think much of it until a cop showed up at my door this morning. Asks me how I'm doing. I say fine. He says, you called 911? I say, noooo...(!) Turns out my landline called 911 w/o me. That's the number they traced it to.

That's weird, right?

The good news is I figured out how to turn the shutter sound off on my cell phone camera. Now I don't have to pretend to sneeze when I take a stealth close-up.

Last post today, I swear. Guess I had some pent-up journaling after my four-day hiatus.

Phone pix reminded me - I forgot to tell you about my Rave experience last Saturday. I was in this all-day class 10am-midnight Thurs-Sun (I don't want to talk about it), and ended up getting invited to a Rave party by this guy in the class.Totally out of the blue. Sensing some weird [inlink]terry,361[/inlink]karma, naturally I said yes.

Planet Sol


Fire hoola-hooping


Painting as performance art


The scene


Space lounge

I got in for free since my newfound Rave buddy was scheduled to start manning the door. That also meant I was cruising solo again. It was fun, but I only stayed for an hour and a half. I'm no spring chicken you know.

Stopped at the local hardware store on my way back from the farmers' market. They have everything.







Let me know if you need anything for the float.

The right mix tape [inlink]drchlorine,59[/inlink] could surely drill a link to my reclusive heart. For what that's worth. ;-)

I've been a mix-tape giver and receiver since way back when the needle met the vinyl. I wasn't as prolific as I should have been, considering the profound impact the medium has had on my life. But I sure put a lot into the ones I made, and played the hell out of the ones I received. I have to digitize those for posterity before they wear out.

Probably the biggest mix tape project I ever did was for my college roommate's wedding reception. We lived together, went to classes together (both journalism majors), and worked the 4pm-1am shift at a typesetting shop together. Oh yeah, we also both worked on the school newspaper five days a week. No wonder I didn't graduate.

She asked me to handle the music for her wedding reception in Rhode Island, including schlepping my stereo and speakers down there and wiring the place up. I was a nervous wreck. It all went great, except her twin brother thought it would be funny to play a practical joke on her 10 minutes before she was scheduled to walk down the aisle. He told her I called to say I got a flat tire and wouldn't be able to make it. Brothers suck. Luckily I walked through the door of the church not long after that.

Come to think of it, my copy of tape 1 from that series got stolen along with my car stereo. Cripes - take the stereo already, but have the decency to eject the tape first!

One of the advantages of working the night shift at that type house was being able to print out fancy labels for my tapes. Little did they know that's why I wormed my way into being the night systems manager - so I could run off my own type. You guys have no idea what I'm talking about. This was an era before PCs and personal printers. (gasp!) Ok, I'm scaring the kiddies now. Sorry.