June 20, 2007
 
                                       
 
This past weekend we went down to Brooklyn and had a great time.  First, we went to Etsy's 2nd birthday party, which was neat.  Their offices are on the 6th floor of an old building in Brooklyn with a great view of the Empire State Building.  Cool music, neat people, and yummy pizza.  Afterwards, we spent a while just walking around the city.
 
The next day we got up early...or I should say that Baxter woke us up early.  It ended up being one of my favorite parts of the trip, us walking Baxter in the deserted streets of early morning Brooklyn.
 
That morning we went Geocaching, and then hit the Renegade Craft Fair.  We ended up meeting a bunch of Kari's blog friends, and bought lots of neat stuff (and lots more, but I can't find links to them).  We wandered off and got a late lunch along with some crappy service, and then back to the apartment where we took a short nap before venturing off again.  After riding the New York subway system for less than a day, I felt I was an expert on it, and proceeded to get us lost by getting off at the wrong station.  We finally arrived at Prospect Park, two hours after we left the apartment (yes, we were that lost), just in time to claim a spot on the grass and watch the free Joan Osborne concert.  There was a small group of people near us playing badminton without a net, and of course one time the shuttlecock landed just a little too close to us, Baxter darted out of my lap, snatched it up, and tried to maul it.  At least the people thought it was super funny and let him play with it for a while.  
 
The next day we did lots more walking around, visiting shops, etc, and then headed home. 
 
Today I had a chance to copy the pictures I took, and over 90% of them are very out of focus because, for most of the trip, my auto-focus button was off on my camera.  Crappy.
 
One week to Morrissey!    
 
 
What I'm listening to right now:  The White Stripes - Icky Thump
 
 
 
June 19, 2007
 
This is crazy.  You can't watch it without tucking in your legs out of fear that you're going to hit something. 
 
 
What I'm listening to right now:  The Streets - Let's Push Things Forward
 
 
 
 
June 11, 2007
 
                                      
 
Um.  I really don't have anything interesting to post today.  I just happened to open the web-making-type-program and here I am.  Yup...here I am with nothing to say. 
 
I'm looking forward to this weekend.  We're going to be in Brooklyn at the Renegade Craft Fair, hopefully see a show, and all the fun stuff that comes with going to New York.  This will also be Mr. Baxter's first foray into the city, so it'll be a fun time all around.
 
Been writing a goodly steady amount in the book each day lately, but hit a bit of a snag.  I got a little freaked out yesterday when my computer decided to crash.  It's five years old, and I've never had a single problem with it, but I have a deep-rooted fear that when it does have a problem, it'll melt and become a pool of melted slag on the living room floor.  I restarted it and it worked fine, except that all of my bookmarks in Firefox were wiped.  I was horrified when I realized that I had hundreds of web pages bookmarked as reference sites for my book.  Stuff I'd never ever be able to find again, much less remember even a tenth of.  Luckily, my wife is talented with the internets and we (mostly she, as I was too busy bemoaning the loss of my precious bookmarks) found the solution and got it fixed about an hour later.  Ahh.     
 
My goodness.  I could listen to this song on repeat for weeks... 
 
 
What I'm listening to right now:  The New Pornographers - The Bleeding Heart Show
 
 
 
June 8, 2007
 
Damn you, Ren!  She tapped me out for one of these "tell bunches of things about yourself that others might not know"-type of thing.  The official rules are: 
Each player starts with 7 random facts/habits about themselves. People who are tagged need to write their own blog with their 7 things as well as these rules. You need to tag 7 others and list their names on your blog. Remember to leave a comment for them letting them know they have been tagged and to read your blog.
 
Ok, here goes...
 
1.  I cringe in sheer agony whenever someone says, "I could care less."  That implies that hey, it's not that bad because, after all, you could care less.  The phrase is actually,              "I couldn't care less," which brings a whole new level of indifference about the subject.  If you're going to say it, say it correctly.
 
2.  TV sucks me in and can instantly turn me into a vapid, drooling zombie.  It doesn't matter where I am, if there's a TV within eyeshot, I cannot help but to stare helplessly at it in a zoned-out state.  In order to help save myself, I bought one of these and have used it so much I drained the battery in it.   I also don't want to have cable in my house.  Netlifx is one thing because at least DVDs have an end, whereas TV is eternal (plus the overwhelming majority of what's on TV is such awful, mindless crap, and I lead a much richer life for not spending five hours a night plugged into the tube).
 
3.  I am ageing several beers.  But wait!  The big beer companies say that beer needs "born on" dates and you have to drink it by a certain date in order to have a "fresh" beer.  Yes, that's true if you like macro-swillish "beer".  However, higher-alcohol beers can be aged, just like fine wines, for years to bring about a more complex taste.  The trouble is that I don't know when I'll open them.  I mean, when is an occasion special enough to warrant opening a beer that I've been protecting and ageing for years?  Anyways, I now have a very small, but slowly growing, collection which currently includes:  
     Fuller's Vintage Ale - 2004
     Stone 05.05.05 Vertical Epic Ale
     Stone 06.06.06 Vertical Epic Ale
     Thomas Hardy's Ale - 2004
     Dogfish Head Chateau Jiahu
     Smuttynose Maibock
     Chimay Bleue - late 1990's
     Ommegang Three Philosophers - 2005
 
4.  I am the most careful driver I know (this is one of the reasons I don't have comments on here, because Kari would be filling it up with all sorts of protesting half-truths and lies about how I'm an awful driver).  Yes, I failed my driving test the first time when I was 16 and a half (I mistook the gas pedal for the brake and shot out of the RMV's parking lot into traffic with the registry cop holding onto the "Oh shit!" handle above the door for dear life.  We were fine, of course (because I'm such a good driver), but he still failed me.  But yeah, I don't speed, I follow all the rules of the road, and I'm always acutely aware of what's around my car at all times. 
 
5.  I had perfect attendance in high school.  When I say "perfect attendance," I mean perfect.  I was there every single day whether I wanted to be there or not (and it was mostly "not" since I was a C+ student).  On award night, before graduating from high school, I received the "Perfect Attendance Award."  This award was a lousy alarm clock.  What really got me was that they also gave the "Perfect Attendance Award" to the salutatorian who had missed one day.   Uh, that's not perfect attendance.  He missed a day.  Maybe they should have created a different award called the "Mostly Perfect Attendance Award", or the "There Most Of The Time Award" for him because otherwise it just dilutes the perfection I achieved by my attendance.
 
6.  I need to be constantly surrounded by good music every waking moment.  I find that good music motivates, and greatly inspires me.
 
7.  The few websites I check immediately after I turn on my computer are (in order):
     The Astronomy Picture Of The Day
     Achewood
     My Flickr pics (to see how many of my pics got added as a favorite or got commented on in the past day)
     Fark
     Weather.com
 
I'm not going to call out seven people to do this.  Actually, I'm going to do it to two people, because I know how much they hate these kinds of things.  I choo-choo-choose you and you.      
 
 
What I'm listening to right now:  The So And So's - Better
 
 
 
June 7, 2007
 
                                       
 
Fun day today.  Amazingly, both Kari and I had the same day off, so we celebrated by sleeping in and then driving out to Amherst.  We swung by UMass and took my mom out to lunch, which was nice. 
 
After we dropped her off, we got started on our Geocache-a-thon.  I had made a list of a dozen caches I wanted to find in the Amherst/Northampton area while we were there.  To make a long day very short, we had mixed luck finding the caches.  Hmm...like about 50%.  The first one we found was a micro cache (a steel magnetic case about the size of a fingernail that has a tiny tiny log rolled up in it). Yay!  The second one we didn't find, even after a good thirty minutes of wandering around the engineering area of UMass like idiots.  We gave up on that one and spent another half hour not finding another one up in the upper Central area which was placed by a good friend.  Part of the reason we gave up on this one was because it was guarded by an angry swarm of the largest wood-boring bees I've ever seen (who knew that bees could bore into wood?).  Yeah, thanks Pat.  We were a little nervous about going to find another cache he placed because we were afraid it would be surrounded by bloodthirsty dingoes. 
 
So anyway, we found four, couldn't, for the life of us find another four, and didn't have time for the remaining four (that's a lotta fours).  It was still wicked fun. 
 
On the way back home, we took a different route which brought us by the out Scout camp I used to go to/work at.  It was weird walking around the camp since the last time I had been there was in 1993, and it really hadn't changed at all.  It didn't look any worse, or any better.  The trees were a little taller, but that was about it.  Kari got to listen to more camp stories as we walked through the woods.  Since we were the only people in the 500 acres of the camp, every mosquito there attacked us with delight, which made me speed up the tour - a lot.
 
 
What I'm listening to right now:  Dropkick Murphys - Dirty Water (live)  
 
 
 
June 2, 2007
 
                                        
 
Today was a relaxing day, but sadly, no laundry got done.  We slept in, eventually got up, and planned our route for attacking the dozen or so, good-looking, tag sales going on in the area.  While on the way to the first place, we got a call from Alexandra, who happened to be also going to the same tag sales, and just so happened to be right behind us.  We teamed up and hit the good sales and got lots of cool stuff.
 
Afterwards, Kari and I did what we love to do most, just drive around and explore where we live. 
 
Tonight we met Maurice at Rumpy's Tavern and hung out for most of the night.  Later, we were joined by Alex.  We all decided to make a date out of going to this event in town, which should be a good time for all.  Last summer when we were in Alabama, we happened to turn on the tv and just happened to come across the local PBS station showing a live performance broadcasted from Tanglewood of A Prairie Home Companion.  It was like a wonderful slice of home on tv mixed with a comforting scoop of ice cream.  
 
Speaking of upcoming events...I'm getting very excited about seeing Morrissey in a few weeks.
 
In book news...I haven't been writing as much as I've been wanting/needing to.  I've been distracted by events of the future books in the series as well as background to past events, but sadly, very little actual work on current plots.  That's going to change soon, though.     
 
 
What I'm listening to right now:  The Cure - Jupiter Crash
 
 
 
June 1, 2007
 
                                        
 
I've come to realize that my posting is too infrequent when I start getting emails from people like "Update your blog," and "Seriously, update your website."  So, to you impatient people, here I am.  You can rest easy knowing that I finally updated my site. 
 
The other night we drove down to Hartford and met a friend from college.  She's a big-shot-type person at a big company in the San Francisco area and her company is looking to open a branch in Connecticut, so she happily offered to come to New England and help set it up.  It was really cool since I hadn't seen her in four years when I went out to California to visit.  We had a fun night having dinner at a trendy Hartford restaurant and then driving around the city seeing what's what (lots of pretty areas interspersed with oodles of sketchy areas). 
 
Man, (a lot of) these are really funny.
 
Yesterday we were invited to a reception at the Berkshire Museum where they were showcasing the pictures of several photographers who have pictures regularly featured in Berkshire Living magazine (uh, I don't know why their site hasn't been updated in a year and a half...maybe someone should point that out to them).  Some very good stuff in that thar museum.            
 
Yesterday, Kari sent me a link to this neat-looking movie that came out last year called Paris, Je T'aime.  I happened to look it up and found that, amazingly, it was playing in a little movie theater up in Williamstown, so up we went after work.  Some of the shorts in the movie are very cool, some are funny, and some are downright depressing, but it all works.
 
Ut oh...it's "Big Decision Time."  There are two really awesome things going on during the same day at the end of July, and I can only go to one...
 
Belgium Comes To Cooperstown - Ommegang, my favorite brewery in North America has this really fun weekend thing where you can sample 150 different Belgian beers, eat great food, and watch bands.
 
or
 
They Might Be Giants' annual (free) Fan Appreciation Show at Mohegan Sun.
 
Great beer vs. TMBG.  Crap. 
 
The exciting plans for my day off tomorrow?  Laundry, and lots of it. 
 
 
What I'm listening to right now:  Bjork - Joga
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

                                                                    © 2007 Eric Nixon.  All rights reserved.