Cold Weather

I have been freezing all day long. The high today has only been 60 degrees. I left all of the windows open last night, and the temperature in the house dropped down to 62. This is our third day in a row of unseasonably cool temperatures. I'm not complaining; it's just weird. Really, we have had an almost perfect summer. We've had no long hot streaks; we've had pretty good rain in the city if not in the mountains, and we haven't had to deal with lots of smoke and dust from forest fires. I'm not sure why I haven't gotten out and hiked around more. I guess I feel like I should be spending all of my time working on my renovations. And, really, I have done plenty of walking around even if it has been urban hiking rather than up in the mountains.


Jonathan 7/24/2004 03:37:00 PM

 
Trevor Pryce

I've been a fan of Trevor Pryce for as long as he's been in the league. This year he is stronger and more relaxed and ready to dominate. With him in the front and guys like Bailey and Lynch in the back, other offenses will have plenty of reasons to worry. Hopefully the Broncos' offense will be able to make the most of the opporunities that the defense provides. We'll see soon as practice starts Wednesday.


Jonathan 7/24/2004 03:05:00 PM

 
Something Familiar

I had noticed this resemblance previously. The interesting question is whether the Dodge Ram design is intentionally reminiscient of the female plumbing.

As they say on Fark, "I'd hit it!"


Jonathan 7/19/2004 07:11:00 PM

 
Hiking

My sister and I did a great hike today. Just beyond the Eldora ski area we hiked up toward Devil's Thumb Lake and Jasper Lake. The final bit of road to the trail head was more than a car could handle when we got there, so we had to park a bit further away then we planned. The beginning part of the trail was plenty steep and strenuous, and it wasn't long before we had broken a good sweat. We hiked up along side a raging river of snowmelt and then on through some beautiful mountain meadows. The trail steepened again beyond the meadows as we turned toward Jasper Lake. About half a mile from the lake we stopped for a break as my sister was beginning to get a pretty bad blister on one heel, and I was ready to sit for a bit myself.

We had been aware that there was some stormy weather around us since we first entered the meadows. But as we stopped to break, we rather suddenly found ourselves boxed in on three sides by ominous looking clouds. We were half a mile from lake number one and then another mile further from lake number two and our goal. But her feet were getting bad, my feet were beginning to get a bit sore, the weather started to look a bit scary, and we had already gone four and a half miles. When the lightning and thunder started in earnest, we decided to call it a day.

Maybe a quarter mile into our descent it began to rain. I think my buddy Stu will vouch for me when I claim that I like to be fairly well prepared when I go off on an adventure (and I do consider the possibility that every hike could turn into an adventure). And luckily, I was well prepared. I had rain gear for myself and my sister which we donned after realizing that this was a bit more than a brief, passing shower.

It rained the entire way back. At one point, as the rain started to come down a little harder, I snickered to myself as I thought of what I was about to say. I turned to my sister and let her know, "Well, at least it won't rain any harder than this."

I don't think I had the sentence out of my mouth before it started to rain a little harder. The rain came down harder and harder with every passing half mile. It wasn't cold, and it wasn't generally very windy. We stayed relatively dry for a while, and we maintained fine spirits as we were very hopeful that the weather might bring some woodland creatures out for us to see. There were plenty of warnings posted about bears, and we were really hoping that the dreary weather might bring them out to play.

Alas, the hairy mammals didn't emerge from their hideouts, and we less hairy creatures eventually began to get more and more wet. It seems there is only a certain amount of time you can spend in a downpour with a plastic jacket before at least parts of you begin to get wet. As we got closer to the bottom, the effects of all the rain above began to make its way down, and soon we were hopping puddles and then walking through them. Before we made it back to the car we had to walk through water that was above both of our hiking boots.

It took us nearly four and a half hours to hike the nine miles round trip. We took plenty of breaks on the way up, and sat for around forty-five minutes before we turned down from our highest point. It was a great hike. We both agreed that we want to do it again with an earlier start to ensure we can make it to the top before the typical Colorado afternoon thunderstorms roll in. It was long and fairly strenuous, but it sure was peaceful and pretty. It was nice to be walking through meadows of grasses and wildflowers with a heavy afternoon rain falling straight down upon us. I sure don't understand the three groups that we saw heading up in the rain and with a very late start, but neither of us complained about the rain at all.

To top off a great hike, we called some friends of my sister on the way home and asked them to meet us at the bar for a drink. They declined but instead invited us over and proceeded to make us big ol' New York strips on the grill along with corn on the cob, mashed potatoes, and plenty of margaritas.

Today was a pretty good day.

Jonathan 7/17/2004 09:27:00 PM

 
Homeless Thoughts / Weblog Thoughts

At the corner of Colfax and Speer last night there were two guys. One had out his cardboard sign begging for money. The other had a small, brown, diary-type book. His nose was inches from the parchment as he wrote frantically the entire time I could see him. He never looked up; he just kept writing. It was then that the thought occured to me:

The crazier you are, the more important it is for you to keep a diary.

Jonathan 7/14/2004 09:26:00 PM

 
Inventions

Via Fark, come two inventions that will change the world.

The first is the AWOL: Alcohol without Liquid. No calories, no hangover, drunk in one-tenth the time. If you haven't started thinking about what to get me for christmas, I think we've found the answer.

The second is a revolutionary new waterproofing method. In all seriousness, this really may change the world. What if everything that you owned was waterproof? I think that is where this may be leading us. After having lost my beloved Canon Digital Elph as well as a PDA to the ravages of water last year, I for one cannot wait to see where this can go.

Jonathan 7/14/2004 12:23:00 PM

 
Mozilla

With all of the concerns about Microsoft's Internet Explorer, I decided to install Mozilla. I was skeptical of switching for a couple of reasons. First, from a user's point of view, I really like IE - especially with the integrated Google Toolbar. It is straightforward and easy to use and I don't have to think about anything or have to configure any advanced settings. Second, I have tried numerous other browsers in the past. Netscape Navigator was a bust for me long ago. I can't recall what I couldn't get to work right, but way back, like eight or ten years ago, Navigator did something to rub me the wrong way. I tried Opera too. I could never get it configured properly, and it was noticeably slower for me than IE. I didn't like their version of tabbed browsing either. I think there was another one that I tried a few years back, but its name and details escape me.

I downloaded Mozilla 1.7 about three weeks ago when the big security flaw in IE was announced. I have been using it exclusively since then. It seems to load pages differently than IE which usually - though certainly not always - seems faster. Last night I got Macromedia Flash working in the browser. (I had been ignoring it until now; it's not that it was at all difficult to install.) Today I found that there is a Googlebar for Mozilla. And now I am back to having everything I need in a browser. The only thing I really miss is the shortcut to press shift to open a link in a new window. That can still be accomplished with a right click, but it's just not as smooth.

Jonathan 7/14/2004 12:00:00 PM

 
Girl, I Would Bake You a Pie

I made a variation on this apple crisp recipe tonight. Instead of just apples, I had apples, blueberries, strawberries, and peaches. I also added a half teaspoon of ground clove to the crisp portion.

It is awesome.

Jonathan 7/08/2004 10:54:00 PM

 
For the Fourth

Go here to learn lots of interesting facts about the leaders of our country over the past 228 years. Which presidents had facial hair? Which had problems with alcohol? How many lost the popular vote? How many were never elected? How did they die? It is a great page with a bunch of quick lists for your perusal.

How come I can name the killers of Lincoln and Kennedy but not Garfield and McKinley? Likewise, I knew of the attempts on the lives of Reagan and Ford but not on Truman and Jackson. There is a lot here that makes me want to learn more.

Jonathan 7/04/2004 12:11:00 PM

 
More Painting

Somehow, I still have more painting to do. I wonder at this point if I will ever be done. I have a knot in my shoulders that is excrutiatingly painful. My back has been sore too. Once I get this place back in order (hopefully by about this time next week) I'm going to treat myself to a massage. Hopefuly I will be able to afford it. After paying bills this month and still needing to pay for the remaining two-thirds of my flooring, I am getting pretty close to being out of money. I guess I'm going to have to start looking for a job pretty damn quick.

I did finally get my closet installed yesterday. I'm at a point where I can start bringing some of the stuff from the garage back up into the house. All of that carrying and going up and down the stairs is probably just what my back and shoulders need. Oh well... I guess I'll just go take some pain medication and get back to the project. It could be worse: I could have to work 8 hours a day like the rest of you and still have to fix up my house. I don't think I could handle it.

Jonathan 7/04/2004 11:46:00 AM

 
Books and Music

I jumped on Friendster for the first time yesterday. I'm not sure I get it. I'm not the kind of person who has a lot of friends to begin with.

Howard Stern reportedly was recently talking about how adults don't have friends - that friends are a childhood construct. [I can't for the life of me remember where I saw this; it was a female blogger, that's all I recall. Googling Howard Stern, adult, and friend doesn't give me quite what I'm looking for.] Of course living in Denver I don't get to listen since Howard commented that the high school girls who live here are too good looking to kill.

Anyway, I don't reckon that I will make much use of the service. But as I was reading Melanie's profile, I thought it was interesting that she brought up this High Fidelity quote.

A while back, Dick, Barry and I agreed that what really matters is what you like, not what you are like. Books, records, films – these things matter! Call me shallow, it’s the fucking truth.

That was a great movie, and that was one of the great truths so succinctly stated. Then this morning I was reading Eric S. Raymond's old blog post about how both selling published books and simultaneously giving them away for free on the internet actually boosts sales at least for certain types of books. These books, termed identity goods, are the kind that you want to own and to display on your bookshelf because they say something about who you are.

My mother has never been able to figure out why my father and I buy books instead of just going to the library. Why buy it when you could get it for free? Subsequently, she can't understand why we would want to keep read books around. If we've read them, why not donate them to a school or library or retirement home? She clearly does not understand this concept of identity goods. These collections say something about our personalities, about our inner selves.

When I go to someone's house for the first time and there are no books on the shelves and no records near the stereo and only a few crappy CD's, I can tell an awful lot about that person. I'm pretty sure I'm not interested in dating someone who does not have at least one room that is cluttered by books and/or music. The pieces that make up the clutter and how closely they parallel or resemble my own collection probably could be correlated to the likelihood of the success of the relationship.

What reveals more about a person than the little things that they enjoy when they are alone? The music we listen to and the books that we read tell far more about us than the schools that we attend or the jobs that we hold.

Jonathan 7/04/2004 10:09:00 AM

 
Big Thoughts

A half-dozen times a day I seem to come up with great ideas to write about. By the time that I get around to actually writing about them - which may be a day later or 60 seconds later - the grand has become the pedestrian. Thoughts come to me and initially strike me as fascinating, funny, or at least original. When I try to expand them to the point of being able to write about them, nothing seems original anymore. Everything seems obvious.

Perhaps I need to add more fiction or creativity to my writing. Maybe I should take a creative writing class. Maybe I should just write more. Tony's instructions for how to blog say to write daily and twice that if you fancy yourself a good writer. I do fancy myself as such; I guess I need to do something to prove it.

Jonathan 7/04/2004 09:49:00 AM

 
Updates

I've been working to update some of the code and layout of this site. I think that I have my archives fixed for now. I know that throughout some of the old months there are some links that link back to other things I've written but point to the old blogspot URL. I need to figure out how to get everything off of blogspot and only on this site. Someday I'll go back and clean it all up, but not today.

It strikes me that, like myself, this blog is quite a bit more colorful and interesting after I have been drinking. I really need to drink more - if only for the good of the blog and the enjoyment of my readers.

Jonathan 7/02/2004 08:58:00 PM