Yet another basement purge, only this time we mean it!

So we had a little water disaster (one of the timers on Ric’s faucet system broke) and water poured into our basement for several hours before we discovered it. Which means stuff got wet. Especially rugs on the floor. (And what, you might ask, were we thinking when we put rugs on a basement floor?! I doubt they will return.)

So I have been feeling really oppressed by the basement, increasingly so over the past year as more and more stuff just got piled up in there. And even though I did a major purge of my stuff last winter, there’s still way too much stuff. So this time I’m establishing VERY strict zones. And enforcing them. Eliminating stuff we don’t use…. we’ll see who the REAL packrat in the family is….

Blaine and I are even going through all our CDs (> 600) and importing the songs we want into iTunes. Wonder how long before I need to purge my iTunes library?

We’re using several methods of reduction: free geek as possible of course, craigslist, freecycle, put it out on the curb with a “free” sign on it (the exercise machine is already gone via that route), goodwill, etc.

Anybody need anything? We prolly have it!

I expect to feel lots better soon.

WSBG reviews The Devil’s Candy and The Upside of Down

I’m getting seriously behind on my World’s Smallest Book Group book reviews, am I not? Time to start catching up…

Okay, so we read The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity and the Renewal of Civilization by Thomas Homer-Dixon and The Devil’s Candy: The Bonfire of the Vanities Goes to Hollywood by Julie Salamon. What a weird combination! Except that the making of The Bonfire of the Vanities movie might be a perfect example of a civilization at the point of catastrophe!

Anyway, The Upside of Down is an important book. It’s largely about how five major “tectonic” stresses — population imbalances, energy shortages, environmental damage, climate change, income gaps — are putting the earth and civilization at risk. Presently, collapses are much more likely to be global rather than regional like the fall of Rome, because the world is so connected and connections are so fast. When civilization goes down next time (and we are heading straight toward that outcome), the effects will be horrendous. He calls it “synchronous failure: catastrophic collapse that cascades across boundaries between technological, social, and ecological systems.”

We found a lot more downside than upside in the book, but that’s probably because he gives us little reason to put a lot of faith in ourselves as humans. And the four of us think he’s right to be pessimistic. Here’s what he says has to happen for us to save ourselves and the earth:
1. We have to reduce the underlying stresses listed above
2. We need to cultivate a prospective mind so we can cope better with surprise
3. We must boost the overall resilience of critical systems like energy and food supply networks
4. We need to turn breakdown to our advantage
One of the most promising things he sees is the Open Source movement… though it hasn’t quite lived up to its promise yet.

Here’s something from the book I’d like to leave you with:

“One thing is clear to me now, I thought: our values must be compatible with the exigencies of the natural world we live in and depend on. They must implicitly recognize the laws of thermodynamics, energy’s role in our survival, the dangers of certain kinds of connectivity, and the nonlinear behavior of natural systems like the climate. The endless material growth of our economies is fundamentally inconsistent with these physical facts of life. Period. End of story. And a value system that makes endless growth the primary source of our social stability and spiritual well-being will destroy us.
“Our current values serve the interests of today’s political and economic elites, and so are aggressively defended by these elites. Growth, even in already obscenely rich societies, is sacrosanct. This central value won’t really change until it’s discredited by some kind of major shock, which probably means some kind of system breakdown. Then, alternative values that are centered on the idea of resilience might flower, not just at the fringes of our societies but also at their core. They might, for instance, promote the merit of smaller populations that tread lightly on nature, of decentralized communities that can take better care of their own needs, and of lifestyles that are far less complex and fast paced.” (pp. 305-6)

That wouldn’t be so bad, now would it?? WSBG highly recommends this book!

Okay, The Devil’s Candy is not an important book. But that doesn’t mean we didn’t have a kind of guilty pleasure in reading it. The people in the book could serve as poster children for why the warnings given in Upside of Down won’t be heeded in America.

I confess to enjoying reading about some of the technical things in filming certain scenes in the movie.

Speaking of the movie, we convened after breakfast at my house to watch the movie. Oh. my. god. It sucks sooooooooooooo bad. Not a single one of the four of us could remember ever watching a worse movie. What a frikkin waste of money. Energy. All the things Homer-Dixon warned against. Not one single redeeming quality.

There is just no excuse for something that bad that costs that much. Period. End of story.

Kindling a gift of the Magi

The irony of it…. in my last post, I confessed to our excessive e-aquisition, which is mostly an i-aquisition. When I wrote it, I had forgotten about the Kindles.

Yes, Kindles. That would be plural. Here’s how it went down: I bought Ric a Kindle for his 60th birthday. Kindle is Amazon’s new wireless electronic-paper display device you use to wirelessly order books and I’ve heard it’s a wonderful reading experience, way better than any other means of electronic reading (because it’s not backlit, so not the usual eyestrain). Weighs less than a typical paperback. Can download books, magazines, newspapers, blogs, etc wirelessly. Connected to wikipedia. Not designed by Apple (as far as I know), but really easy to use.

People are calling this device a game changer, the future of reading, revolutionary, etc.

Ric’s not a obsessive reader like I am, but he really enjoys reading magazine articles, and I thought he might enjoy reading books this way. And Ric is very much interested in being on the bleeding edge of technology, so I thought this would be a great fit for him.

So he opened it on his birthday and seemed quite pleased. Maybe not quite as shocked as I thought he would be, but hey, it had been a long day and he didn’t open it til 8 p.m. or so. He started using it right away, and was off to the races. (Meaning he started downloading stuff right away)

So when our anniversary rolled around, he gave me a box to open, I noticed it was from Amazon, and seemed about the same size and weight as one I had hidden from him when it arrived in the mail. So I opened it, and guess what…. he had ordered me a Kindle before he opened his. (Because I am an obsessive reader of all things.) Kind of a gift of the magi thing, am I right?

No hair cutting or watch pawning involved, but it did take a while to get it all sorted out because the one I bought had automatically registered in my name and the one he bought was in his, so we had to deregister and so forth. But it’s all cool now, and last night before I drifted off to sleep, I read a few chapters of The Monster of Florence on my Kindle. Pretty awesome experience, I’d say. And the convenience factor is off the hook. Excellent for traveling.

Forgot to take it to the book group meeting on Sunday to let my sistah readers give it a try, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they decide to get them too, given that they are all obsessive readers and inveterate travelers.

Our ever growing e-stable or should i say iStable

Okay, it’s getting ridiculous… Our house is getting way over-hyper-connected. Let’s tally up the electronics for three people:

Three iPhones, three macbooks of varying ages and strengths, four imacs (two newer, two older), at least four external hard drives, four bose systems (one will be departing soon), three ipods, okay, i am really getting embarrassed here. No wonder Apple stock is up!

Then there’s the Sony bravia with the blu-ray (and one of the boses is attached). So today Ric comes home with AppleTV. Guess we just didn’t have enough shit yet.

I blame it on The Wire. We watched the first season on his macbook hooked up to the Specktone in the Airstream. Nice, but no bravia. Future seasons will be in full surround sound and HD all the way. Like being there on the couch in the yard at the low rise.

And just to check out the AppleTV, we downloaded the first episode of Flight of the Conchord. Awesome, awesome, awesome…. great humor, fantabulous music. How did I not know about this?? Oh, that’s right. We don’t have HBO. Which is unbelievable considering how much we pay for cable each month.

I live with two guys who like every sports option known to humankind. And every time the cable company calls offering a new option, they sign right up. I am never home when they call to intervene, of course. (I think nobody really believed me when I reported these things until the time when Joyce and Tom were over and Ric was on the phone with Comcast and they heard him say out loud, “Well, if it’s an upgrade, we want it!”)

So we have a shitload of cable channels, but like the Boss says, usually nothing to watch. So I guess this is better: we buy what we want from HBO but don’t have to pay for the other stuff.

But this is it! I’m declaring a moratorium on any new gadgets for the rest of the year… we’ll see how it goes and where we are at 6 p.m. on July 11th.

all cluttered up…

I’m feeling cluttered. I’m feeling surrounded by clutter. Perhaps that’s because I am. My office is cluttered. My bedroom is cluttered. Too much stuff. Gives me a claustrophobic feeling worse than just about anything.

If that weren’t enough, I am surrounded by many unfinished tasks rearing their ugly little beaks and reminding me how inadequate I am.

This is what happens when you devote too much attention around the clock to a project at work and almost immediately leave on a week’s vacation. My home and yard are now punishing me for neglecting them. And did I mention I’m way behind on my blog?

I need a good solid two days to do some cleaning and decluttering and finishing stuff. The kind of days where you dive in and don’t even come up for air til you are done.

Wonder how I’m going to pull that off?

The Wire

Okay, it’s official. We are total Wire addicts. Joyce has been telling me for years I should watch it, then Reba and Darcy joined the team and were all over it. I’m late to the party, but I am totally ready to par-tay down now.

And I highly recommend getting it from iTunes… the whole first season for $25.87, less than you can rent it from the places you rent DVDs from.

Quite fucking frankly, it is the most fucking amazing fucking tv show ever fucking made. I fuck you not… (they use this word a lot, so I’m using it way more than ever, can’t seem to get it out of my head)

We watched the last three episodes back to back until midnight last night. Couldn’t stop. I totally fucking love this shit…

Trying to figure out why I find it so appealing. Well, first of all, it must be said that the writing and acting are off the hook. And then there’s this: I am a person that totally hearts ambiguity. I guess because I find so much about life to be that way. This show is all about ambiguity for me. Nobody is totally evil or totally good. What appears to be is usually not. The best intentions very often lead straight to no results. Which is just how it is in real life sometimes.

The characters are complicated, you can find something to love and loathe in almost everyone.

And god does my heart ache for the life we offer up to those coming up in neighborhoods like this. How on earth anyone can survive and succeed against these odds is beyond the pale.

And I find myself having a really hard time not believing those who suggest that drugs are a conspiracy to take out neighborhoods and people so they won’t be much trouble outside the hood. I think the whole war on drugs things is totally fucked up, and if we wanted to make drugs not a problem, we could and would do just that. It’s all about following the money. Way too many people in positions of power are benefitting from the drug culture.

Kind of like the war machine. Follow the money IS what it’s all about.

At Cape Disappointment

We’re sitting at our little dining room table in Toaster Moon at Cape Disappointment. Am I disappointed that it’s misty and wet this morning? Not a bit. It’s cozy in where we are.

Our only concern this morning is that Poppi seems to be hurting, kinda like she did before she had surgery for a herniated disk. We have her lying on cushions in front of a window where she can see out. We HOPE it’s not another disk gone bad… but we decided to forgo the romp on the beach this morning in hopes she feels better later. When she hurts, we hurt, we love our little stuffed animal so much.

Pippi is up to her usual verging-on-pancreatitis-diarrhea, we have a knack for this shit…

Ric is happy cuz he is organizin’! He brought his label making machine and is busy making labels for his new tool organizing system in his new truck.

Yeah, he has a new truck. It’s a Sprinter and it is ginormous. It’s at Performance Mobility right now getting the lift installed. We’re using his old truck to tow Toaster Moon on this vacation, but next time we’ll be in the Sprinter (and we do hope it is up to the towing task.)

He’ll be selling his old truck, the sooner the better so he won’t have two truck payments… yay for craigslist!

Somehow I survived the last couple of weeks and now I need some serious R&R. So does Ric… he’ll be 60 this coming Saturday! Wow! That’s fairly amazing. And a few days later, we have our 7th wedding anniversary. This August we’ll have been together for 11 years. Time flies when you’re havin’ fun, I guess.

So we don’t care if it rains this week, cuz we brought the whole first season of The Wire! And a bunch of other movies… and I brought all the New Yorkers and Atlantics I’m so behind on, plus the book group book, plus some sewing, and of course my laptop so I can catch up on my lil ole blog. So rain your heart out. We be ready!
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The Geek Gets Gorgeous!

 

We finally have something to show for our work!  Come on down and check out the storefront windows at Free Geek!!

In fact, stroll through the whole facility…you’ll see a new level of orderliness, cleanliness and appreciation for the esthetic at every turn.  What the heck is going on??

If you’ve been to Free Geek, you may have noticed that for the past few years, many of the storefront picture windows have served more or less as a storage closet for plywood, cardboard, styrofoam, etc. – basically anything and everything that was completely opaque (thereby blocking all the light) and butt-ugly.  It kinda felt to me like Free Geek was mooning visitors  ;-(

Everytime I pulled up in front, my heart sank.  So I proposed we beautify the windows by making some kind of community quilt to hang along the front.  There was an initial hesitance from some quarters because there was fear it would block the light (huh??? you mean the light you haven’t ever seen???), but we assured them we could hang it in a way that would allow ample light.

We had some great old linen napkins that had been Ric’s grandmother’s that we used to create quilt square kits, handing them out to anyone who agreed to participate.  

Deborah Hubbard and Moira stepped forward and together we joined the squares that were turned in.  We loved the variety that appeared…

Of course there were penguins:

and cleverly used computer detritus:

and words that capture the Free Geek essence:

and Free Geek weirdness:

 

On Saturday, Ric (aka Call the Fixer) spent the whole day attaching wood to concrete, designing and creating little wooden thingies to put the brackets on, and getting the rods in place so we could actually get them up.  Thank you Mr. Fixer Man!!

We have a few more to hang, so it would be well worth your while to come take a look… it sounds weird when I say it out loud, but Free Geek is getting gorgeous!!!