EricNixon.net - Past Months

September 28, 2006

Wow. Wow, wow, wow. I just filled up my gas tank today and it was only $24. It's so amazing to see gas at only $2.11 a gallon (hooray for election time!). Check out this handy-dandy website to see how much you're paying compared to everyone else.

What I'm listening to right now: Bloc Party - Banquet

September 24, 2006

Hi! Wow, I started out the month updating the site all the time, and I've just let it slide the rest of the month. That's ok. I've been busy, and I'm sure you have been too.

I do have some news...I'm moving back to New England! Kari's job went from being a seasonal thing to a permanent thing, so I'm packin' up the cats, and all of our crap, and heading North in a couple of weeks - just in time for peak foliage! Autumn is my favorite season, so it'll be nice to be back for the best of it.

Hmmm, I just noticed that someone lifted one of my pictures from the old version of this site and added it to the pictures in the MySpace profile for the Berkshires. Eh, s'alright.

So back on September 1st, I wrote about how Zoe likes to lick the ice cubes in my glass of water on my night stand. Well, it's still happening; but now, after Zoe slobbers her "I just ate smelly cat food"-ness all over my water, NewCat hops up and adds her Friskies-flavored drool to my water as well. It's very disconcerting when I wake up in the middle of the night, reach for my water and smell/taste Sea Mariner's Catch flavored water. Yuck.

My mom had a helpful suggestion to put a bowl of ice on the floor and maybe they'll go for that instead of my water glass. Last night I tried it, but they were all like "Oh, what's that on the floor? A bowl of ice? I'm going to blatantly ignore that...oh! There's Eric's water glass... *lick*lick*lick*lick*...".

Anyone have any idea why cats like to lick ice cubes? Mine never did this until a few weeks ago and now, much to my chagrin, it's become the high-point of their evenings.

What I'm listening to right now: Buffalo Tom - Summer

September 17, 2006

Wow, the weather around here has been wonderful lately. Lower 80's and sunny. Ahh.

Yesterday I went to an outdoor art show in a state park perched high up on a nearby mountain range. The art show winded down a trail for about half a mile or so, and part of it was besides this great lookout area. I wish I had known about it more than two days in advance, because I would have totally wanted to sell my pictures there. It was fairly well packed with people, probably because it was such a nice day.

Otherwise not too much going on here. Spent a lot of the weekend so far writing down ideas for my book, going for walks, etc.

Just because, here's a not very good picture of NewCat:

What I'm listening to right now: The Deathray Davies - Release The Squid (Box 6)

September 9, 2006

I just hit 10,000 views on my Flickr account today. Hooray me!

What I'm listening to right now: Meghan Toohey - Please You

September 8, 2006

What inspires you? For me it's mostly music. But I do have a few physical things that I keep within eyeshot to help keep me focused and thinking. They all have stories behind them (some long, some short), which I'd like to share right now...

I picked up the first one a few summers ago when I was at a family reunion on Cape Cod. All of my family is from the Berkshires, but every year they rent out this huge house (cleverly named "The Cape House") for a week and family members come and go, hang out, explore the Cape, and just have a good time. My father ritualistically went to the reunion every year, but I was always busy or not interested, so I never ended up going. That was the case until the summer after he died, when for the first time, I felt compelled to go.

I had a great weekend meeting family members I'd either never met, or hadn't seen since I was very young, and therefore don't remember them. So yeah, it was like meeting tons of new people. I drove my cousin and his family up to Provincetown where we walked around for a while before driving back down the coast, stopping at lighthouses and beaches along the way. That night we sat on the oversized back porch eating freshly cooked burgers, and drinking good beer (out of the proper glassware!).

The next morning, I got up early and took a ferry over to Martha's Vineyard. I smartly avoided the expensive taxis and stuck the the island's great bus system. While waiting for the bus to take me from Edgartown to Vineyard Haven, I had some time to kill, so I went into the touristy shop that was a few feet from the bus stop. Just as I had expected, I didn't find anything interesting, and as I was heading for the door, I glanced over at a display full of polished rocks stamped with inspirational words. This one in particular waived at me:

It might have been the color that first caught my eye, but it was the word that stuck with me. At the time, I was writing an enormous amount of poetry, and this simple rock just seemed so right. When I got home, it got a place of prominence at the base of my computer monitor.

My next inspirational thing is another rock (second out of three!). Actually a meteorite. I

bought this at some kind of antique and collectible show, I want to say, in Connecticut. I think I was maybe 10 or 12 and we were in the Groton area for a submarine launch (my father did secret sub-stuff while working at GE). I saw a booth that was selling some very neat meteorites, but most were out of the meager range of my allowance savings. The one I could afford was this one. It's an iron meteorite that's probably the same diameter as a quarter. After moving a few times while in high school, and then off to college, I lost track of, and forgot about my space rock.

Sometime around the beginning of this year, I looked in an old footlocker containing a lot of my old Scout stuff, and hey, there was my meteorite. Perfect timing since I was just starting to write my science fiction book. I spend a lot of time staring at, and fiddling with this hunk of metal. I always wonder how old it is, and where it came from. It helps put things like life in perspective for me. It was probably once in the core of a long-dead planet and took who knows how many millions or billions of years to travel across countless amounts of space, only to happen to land on the Earth, and to happen to be picked up by someone who sold it to someone else, who sold it to a little kid twenty years ago. Baxter, however, likes to try and eat it whenever he's on my desk.

I got the third in my trifecta of desk rocks last year when I was on a business trip to Las

Vegas. After the conference was over, I stayed an extra day and took an hour flight to the Bar 10 Ranch. From there, about a dozen of us drove ATVs about 15 miles to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. While on our way there, the guide stopped every few miles to point out interesting terrain and features. One of them was this big dome of volcanic ash.

Looks really are deceiving as the lava dome is a mile or two away, and there's an 800-foot deep trench inbetween it and me just on the other side of the grassy foreground area. The ground here was littered with pumice-type volcanic rocks. I grabbed this one, which now sits on my desk to remind me of the neat places I've gone. Well, the rock itself isn't that inspiring, but the trip into the Canyon itself was amazing.

So yeah. When I'm sitting at my desk and needing a touch of inspiration, these are what I look at.

What I'm listening to right now: Upholstry - Señor Pueblo

September 7, 2006

Tonight a certain little dappled dachshund charged at a certain world-renowned cellist.

Kari will post the whole story soon on her site.

What I'm listening to right now: Ranier Maria - Catastrophe

September 2, 2006

A month from today I will be in chilly climes of Canada on a business trip. A month from tonight I will be seeing me some Yo La Tengo up there in the Toronto. I'm wicked excited about this...partially because it's been forever since I've been to a live concert, but mostly because I've been really getting into this band the past few months and now I've got a chance to see them play.

I am, however, not excited all about Reba McEntire playing at the convention I'm going to.

What I'm listening to right now: Yo La Tengo - Pass The Hatchet, I Think I'm Goodkind

September 1, 2006

Zoe has been doing something very strange lately, and I don't know how I feel about it.

I love drinking water. When I'm home I drink water constantly. At bedtime, I fill my big ol' cup (32 oz) with ice (it's nice!) and a little bit of water. During the night, it melts and if I wake up during the night, I still have cold water (ahh.). Lately though, Zoe the cat has been taking to jumping up on the night stand and licking the ice cubes. It really annoys me because I'm trying to read and she's there happily licking away on the ice cubes. Even when I turn out the light and try to sleep, I still hear a consistent and never-ending *lick,lick,lick,lick*.

When I wake up during the night and want some water, I think to myself, "That's not normal water. That's cat water now." And I fall back asleep very thirsty.

In the morning, I hit snooze on my alarm and have been finding NewCat sitting on my night stand and drinking the water from my cup. It's like both cats are teaming up to steal my water, and I'm not liking this one bit.

What I'm listening to right now: Morning Theft - Thirty Helens Agree