Friday, October 27, 2006

News from MN, 10/27/2006

To all yee spooks and goblins, I say bye. To everyone else I say hi!

I played Mr Mover this week. Laurie is loving Asheville (North
Carolina), so much so that she has decided to stay down there after her
6 month house siting job is done this spring, so she no longer needed
here apartment here. I offered to help pack her stuff up for the
movers, so I took a few afternoons off last week and randomly
distributed all her stuff into 30 boxes, taped with 200 feet of packing
tape. It is now in storage at the storage place a few blocks from here,
awaiting her next residence. She had fun telling the movers that her
ex-husband and his new girlfriend had happily volunteered to pack her
stuff for her ... apparently this is not how ex-husbands usually work.

Zach finally got a chance to auto cross his Miata, last race of the
season. He went up to the cities, to a big event with 50+ cars,
including 20 other Miatas! But they were no match for the amazing
Zachman, as he had the lowest time of all the cars in his class! In the
first picture you can see Dinoman, rather Dinoguy, ... no thats not
right either ... Dino-thing? ... no ... lets just say the Dino (you car
guys can appreciate that reference) ... you can see the Dino admiring
Zach's 1st place trophy.

The 2nd picture shows Zach explaining the wonders of his super-sticky
racing tires to Helen. I don't think she is quite ready to auto cross
here Subaru outback, but she does know how tires work now.

The 3rd pictures is of the last breakfast that Helen and I made for the
2 actresses that had been staying downstairs on weekends for the last
few months. They had come been traveling down from the cities for a
local Shakespeare production. In the background, you can see 'the
Dino' at his new post as the guardian of the deck. I had to put him
outside as he was eating too many invisible cavemen.

We finally got our experimental dried corn ears re-hydrated! Soaked it
for 3 weeks, then boiled if for a day. The 4th pic shows Helen debating
the health benefits of rehydrate, slightly burned, corn. I voted to
have the squirrels test it. They buried it, so maybe that tells us
something.

There is a growing community of people who work/play in an online
virtual reality program called Second Life. I created a character
there, but wasn't something I got into much. The silly grins you see on
those 3 boys in the next photo is what you get when you let them undress
your Second Life character and parade him around the various venues buck
naked. For free characters, like mine, you don't get the detailed body
features that you can get if you pay some money. So my guy was more
like un-buck naked, but that didn't stop them from trying to get my guy
to flirt with girls at a dance club.

The last photo shows a daemon eyed Zach instruct his friend Travis how
to snort a V6 engine. Note, snorting V6 engines is not a recommended
activity for small children. But for a big guy like Travis, it seems to
have worked, as the car disappeared from my driveway shortly after that.
Hmmm, come to think of it, so did Travis!

Bruce

Sunday, October 08, 2006

News from MN, 10/08/2006

YoAll,

N&Z turned 21 last week. Yikes! Me boys are grown ups. Much alcohol
was not consumed. Zack's buddies tried their best to get him to go out
on his birthday and get his free 21st birthday drinks, but he is not
much of a bar man. But he is very much a 'large birthday cookie from
his girl' man, as is demonstrated in the 1st photo.

Those same 2 (Zach and Jessy) also had another celebration last weekend
... their 4th year boyfriend/girlfriend anniversary. They invited
friends and relatives to join them in a morning of paintball battles.
Thats Jessy in front of her sister and brothers in the 2nd photo.

I introduced Helen to South Eastern Minnesota corn in the 3rd photo.
That inquisitive look on her face was caused by corn being a bit dryer
than the corn she is used to. This is corn only a cow could love. We
tried hydrating it in a bowl of water for a week, but it somehow
magically comes out just as dry as it started. I'm thinking instead of
making corn palaces in South Dakota, they should be making cruise ships
or air craft carriers out of the stuff.

Zach is still crazy busy with cars. A couple of the summer residences
of my driveway are in photo 4. They are about to take the orange one
out on a tow rope drive in an effort to coax it back to life, but alas,
it was not to be. Hopefully by the time the snow flies.

Got a letter from Nick (attached). He is doing well, slurpily and
stresslessly exploring caterpillars with slowquiet steps. He may visit
Laurie in Ashvile North Carlina for his fall break in a few weeks.

The last photo shows a wasp who misplaced his head, will little adverse
effect. Actually, Zach and his wicked sharp pocket knife helped with
that, but don't tell that to the wasp humane society.

Bruce

===============

Letter from Nick Man.

Subject: stately raven, saintly days

Yore,

He whose crown towers over mine--does not his mind so tower over my
mind? And do I mind? No. I will think in the shade.

Classes this semester are good. Not amazing, but solid. And at least so
far, fairly easy. I'm reading slurpily, exploring the town, practicing
handstands, and still barely touching the computer but for to do
programming work. Stress doesn't tend towards me, but this semester it
is as if stress and I are walking through different worlds: its is the
world of the mundane and mine the magical, with little interference
between the two. Ah, but stress often tackles most of my friends.
Perhaps it is attracted by the marching sounds of their shoes, and
cannot hear my slowquiet steps, or catch up with my leaps.

At the edge, there is Truth, and looking far beyond it: Beauty. Yet I am
not on the mountain, but cozy at home with Commitment.

Kittens, picnics, silkworms, sketches, caterpillars, booksales, trees,
sailbikes, dogshows, pingpong, acorns, mooncakes, bats, frisbee, moles,
rocktroves, frogs, barefeet (actually happened)
Sunrise, balloon arch, treecouch, soap graffiti, leafpile, computer
sage, bumpkeys, window escape, Asheville, art museum, chinpong, winter
China, snowgiant, super keyboard (dreams)
Mirrored chameleon, blind fog run, computer poet, moon dog, art, slow
gravity imaginator, batsleep, skill, runspeed, vineswing,
microknowledge, mountain (dreams deferred)

Thanks for all the well wishes on my day of aging. Whole thing's a
little silly and nice. May our missiles soon intersect.
Love and minnows,
--Nick