Category: general

We’re leaving tonight for Kentucky, to spend Christmas with my family. We’ll be taking a rental SUV. Whee!

I’m packing up the computer now, so I won’t be back online until sometime after we arrive. Have a good one!

They say memory of childhood events sharpens with age. I hope that’s the case for me, because there are a lot of stories from back then that I’d like to tell, but I don’t have enough detail to flesh them out over more than a few paragraphs.

Right now I’m thinking of the time Dad took us kids to his Uncle Lewis’ place on Lake Cumberland, and we climbed a cliff. I actually wrote about it once, for my Advanced Writing class back at UK I believe, but I don’t think any copies of that story exist anymore.

We were down on the beach, probably looking for fossils, arrowheads or driftwood–the beach there was pretty much all rock, though there were places that had sand. Beyond the flatter area near the water there was a rough incline of slate and limestone and shale (I think), stone that broke easily and therefore had a few layers of half inch thick, roughly round rocks piled on its surface.

There was a trail, of course; that was how we’d gotten down to the beach. But Dad knew that Uncle Lewis’ place was atop that ridge, and he decided he wanted to climb it.

That meant that all three of us kids had to climb it too.

I was the oldest, but I was also scared. If we slipped from the cliff, we’d tumble back down onto nothing but rocks. Our dog, Misho, a beautiful Belgian Malanois who was smarter than Lassie, was with us, and obviously he couldn’t climb the cliff. I knew he could find his way back by himself, but I said “What about Misho?” anyway, in the hopes that Dad would give up on climbing the cliff.

“He’ll meet us up top,” or something like that, was Dad’s only response. I considered going with Misho…but I was a very obedient child. In my gut I knew that climbing the cliff was the wrong thing to do, but here was my father telling me to do it.

So I gazed longingly after Misho as he bounded off towards the woods, and then I did as Dad said.

He had us climb up ahead of him, so he could help us along. This was good, because there was hardly anything to hold onto, and the flat rocks kept slipping underfoot. Every now and then a scrawny plant clung to the cliffside, but for the most part there was nothing but stone. Often as we climbed Dad would prop his hand under our feet or bottoms to give us leverage. I to this day am not sure what he was holding onto.

I don’t remember much about the climb. I know that it took a long time, and that it was difficult, and that I kept imagining tumbling down the hill and smashing down onto the rocks below and wishing that the water was closer so it might cushion the fall a little. And I remember a particularly long, ratty weed that I grabbed onto near the top; the cliff was much steeper at that point, and this weed helped me get up past the rocks and into the forested area near the top of the incline. Once I was there it was easy to climb through the woods the rest of the way to Uncle Lewis’. In fact, AJ and I got through that part so quickly that we then had to wait quite some time for Ben and Dad to catch up, and I paced around Uncle Lewis’ front yard terrified that they’d fallen.

That is really all I can remember. I don’t remember if Misho was there when we got to the top or if he showed up later; I don’t remember where Uncle Lewis was during all this; I don’t remember much from when Dad and Ben finally arrived, other than my intense relief.

Confounding my Lake Cumberland memories is the fact that I used to have a lot of dreams that took place there, including a very vivid falling dream. I have a memory of actually sliding down a cliff face atop those loose rocks, all the way to the bottom, and that may have actually happened, but I can’t be sure that it wasn’t just another dream.

I hope someday I’m able to see the events of my childhood in greater detail.

Asahi.com: Bill to ban large commercial complexes from opening in suburban areas

Sparking howls of protests from the retail industry, the government and ruling coalition decided Wednesday to ban commercial complexes with a floor space exceeding 10,000 square meters from opening in suburban areas.

The planned bill to revise the City Planning Law would force, in principle, large commercial facilities, such as supermarkets, restaurants, movie theaters and entertainment complexes, to open only in commercial and other designated districts of urban areas.

[…]

Some retailers’ strategies for survival hinge on large shopping centers in suburban areas, where land is cheaper, ample space can be secured for parking lots, and a single complex can attract hordes of customers.

[…]

However, local shopping districts in urban areas are now suffering from a phenomenon known as “shutter streets.” Store operators have been forced to close down as consumers increasingly spend their money in suburban shopping malls.

But after the revision, operators will be banned from opening huge outlets in suburban areas unless municipal governments redefine the purposes of such locations.

Special exemptions that have endorsed large-scale development projects in suburban areas with development plans will also be scrapped.

Public facilities, such as hospitals and schools, will also be required to obtain permission before relocating to the suburbs.

That last bit is a little whack, but at least hospitals and schools aren’t banned entirely from the suburbs.

It’ll be interesting to see if this anti-Wal-Mart bill passes, and if so what kind of effect it will have on Japan. Obviously we never had anything like that here; the deserted downtown area lined with empty storefronts is a common image in the US.

I just saw this quote in an article on CNN, and it seemed weird to me:

Senate Republicans said they expected the House to approve a $493 billion defense spending bill — shorn of the ANWR provision — on Thursday. Ditto for the Patriot Act extension.

Is “ditto for” an approved AP Style phrase? (I’d check, but…you know.)

Sean was in a car accident today. Thankfully, he is fine.

The car took a lot of damage, though. It’s currently over at the Toyota dealer. The radiator was damaged, so the car might be a total loss. We don’t know yet.

Fortunately, insurance will mostly pay for a rental car, so we should still be able to go to Kentucky as planned.

Here’s some irony for you. Sean used to have this bad habit of never answering his cell phone. He’d leave it in the bedroom and stay in the office and never hear it ring. I always used to think, “What if I get in a car wreck or something and I can’t get a hold of him?”

Well, guess what?

I’m not sure exactly what I was doing when he called me four times, but I didn’t even notice I had missed any calls until hours later in Wal-Mart.

A new $20 million four-lane road will be built from just south of Southland Christian Church to just north of the Y intersection of U.S. 68 and Ky. 29 near Wilmore.

Project Manager Keith Caudill said the District 7 Office is in the process of getting an appraiser to evaluate properties along the intended route for the new four-lane road.

“We’re hoping by the spring of 2006 to start the right-of-way acquisition process,” Caudill said.

The expansion should mean four lanes all the way from Lexington to Wilmore, I believe, as I’m pretty sure the construction they’ve already done has made it four lane up to Southland Christian.

The real reason this article was written was because they’ve dug up some fascinating historical artifacts from a slaveowner’s home along the route.

The two-room house was owned by Mason Barkley, a hemp farmer who owned about 25 slaves, said Susan Andrews, project manager for AMEC Earth and Environmental.

The dig has peeled back earth to find evidence of a stone hearth where there was once a chimney. Bigger stones are pier stones where wood members were laid.
Another structure revealed by the dig is a detached kitchen and slave house from the 1840s. There is evidence of a stone cellar, and you can still see the stone steps that went down into the cellar.

Around the time of the Civil War, the shed was demolished and the cellar was filled, and a kitchen with a chimney was built onto the main house, Andrews said.

The site also has the remains of two kilns where clay bricks were made. Bricks were found in straight, neat rows.

Clay and water would be mixed and then the bricks would be formed by hand, Andrews said. They were thoroughly dried, stacked and then covered by a clay chamber. Then they would be burned for three days, and after the fire died down, the bricks were allowed to cool.

“A lot of big farms would make their own bricks,” Andrews said. She is aware of only two similar kilns being dug up in the state.

Household artifacts have been found at the Jessamine site as well.

“We’ve found beads and jewelry, some of the things that have fallen through the floor,” Andrews said. “We found pierced brass disks, which is something found a lot near houses occupied by slaves. We found hand-formed pipes, smoking pipes, lots of smoking pipes, actually.

“We’ve found broken dishes and glasses and bottles and buttons. In that cellar we found a huge part of a bone that might have been an ox. They must have had oxen up here and slaughtered one.”

The site might add more information about slaves in Kentucky, Andrews said.
“There’s not much known about how slaves actually lived, especially in the Upland south of Tennessee, Kentucky and West Virginia, because they lived differently than down South, where they had hundreds of slaves living on a plantation. Slaves didn’t write, and most of the history was written by well-to-do white men, and you get a certain bias with well-to-do white men.”

It’s a really amazing find. The artifacts will probably be kept and studied by the University of Kentucky. It’s too bad they can’t just transplant the whole site and set it up as a museum!

But before you go growling at the US 68 expansion for destroying a historical landmark, read this:

Parts of the existing two-lane U.S. 68 will remain as a service road and a bike path.

Bike path!!!!! See, that makes it all okay ;>

You need to be careful when writing those tell-all stories on your blog…the police may be reading.

Blake [Ranking] was sitting in the back seat as he and then-17-year-old friends Jason Coker and Nicole Robinette left a party when he pulled the steering wheel as a prank, causing the car to somersault off the road.

His blood alcohol content after the crash measured 0.185, more than double the legal limit.

Robinette, who was driving and had no traces of drugs or alcohol in her system, was seriously injured. Coker lay in a coma at Orlando Regional Medical Center until he died Jan. 11.

“It was me who caused it. I turned the wheel. I turned the wheel that sent us off the road, into the concrete drain …” Ranking wrote in the blog. “How can I be fine when everyone else is so messed up?”

Ranking later retracted his words, deleting them from the blog and penning an explanation.

“People say I ‘contradict’ myself since I ‘already admitting pulling the wheel.’ I didn’t ‘ADMIT’ anything. I went on a guilt trip, and I posted the story that I WAS TOLD . . . Nicole told me I pulled the wheel, I believed her,” he wrote.

Still, the confession forced him to lead guilty Monday to manslaughter charges. He could have gotten 15 years in prison, but defense lawyer John Spivey and Assistant State Attorney Julie Greenberg recommended five years in prison, 10 years of probation and a permanent license suspension.

(Losing control of your inhibitions is dangerous. If you’re going to get drunk/stoned/whatever, do it in the relative safety of your own home.)

I think a lot about the fact that blogs are public, and that you never know who is reading. This issue seems to come up a lot. I think a lot of younger writers don’t consider the impact of what they write.

For example, you’ll see a lot of younger people writing long diatribes about why they’re mad at their friends…and they’ll mention the friend by name or nickname, as if the blog’s contents were somehow inaccessible to that person, or perhaps in an attempt to make the person see how angry the writer is. These standard and completely understandable teenage displays of anger and frustration can be very dangerous in a blog setting. With who knows who out there reading, the things you say could have a permanent impact on your or someone else’s life.

And what happens when someone gets mad at someone else, and decides to lie about them on a blog in order to get them into trouble? I can’t believe it hasn’t already happened, somewhere.

Hopefully, blogs, like other Internet communications, will ride the crest of newness and become more stable, and “unwritten rules” will become widely accepted, just like they have for forums and chat rooms. Until then, though, I expect to see a lot more stories like this one…

I have wanted to start a cooking club for some time now, but I’ve never really done anything about it. “Wine@MSN.com” (whatever) has an article about the phenomenon, and their findings on what makes for a successful coterie of cuisine. Here’s their list:

• Choose members carefully. Successful cooking groups recommend six to 12 people per club, be it friends, co-workers, couples, singles or a heady mix of all. The only prerequisites are culinary enthusiasm and regular participation (although extra points are given for dishwasher ownership).
• Pick a consistent time. For most, once a month is frequent enough to be regular without feeling like a chore. Sundays often work best for nine-to-fivers because it interferes less with other weekend plans.
• Plan meetings around a theme. Themes such as sexy Spanish foods or Mardi Gras are festive, get members excited to cook and ensure that the dishes will work together. Plan menus and courses ahead of time, a lesson the Cooking Club learned after their first session yielded what Singer calls a “catastrophic menu” of pumpkin bisque, couscous and olive ravioli. From then on, a groupwide e-mail was sent to coordinate menu options and avoid future fusion confusion.
• Meet at the entree-maker’s home. This is purely a matter of convenience — lugging a 10-pound roast around is just no fun.
• Prepare assigned dishes in advance. Every member should contribute one dish; however, eight people cooking eight different dishes in one kitchen is a recipe for disaster. Have members do everything but last-minute assembly at home. Cooking independently will help develop confidence and, after all, it’s enjoying the results en masse that’s important.
• Celebrate successes and chalk up blunders to experience. Remember, the object is to have fun — make that your group’s mantra. Tempers can boil over in the kitchen and egos can bruise like an overripe peach. Mutual regard and support is what will keep your club cooking month after month.

Friends? Romans? Countrymen? Interested in giving it a go?

I spent pretty much all day working on AMRN stuff. Can you believe it?

It’s been quite some time since I put so much energy into the AMRN. And now here I am refreshing the boards every few minutes like a ninny :) It’s just like the good old days.

I accidentally deleted the entire GenDis earlier, but fortunately Google had a cache of the nice bit of writing I’d left there, so I saved it to my hard drive. :>

I woke up at 5 am, and lay in bed for fifteen minutes before giving in and getting up. This is similar to Sunday; my body has just decided that it’s time to be awake, period. Kinda cool, as this hasn’t happened to me in quite some time, but kinda weird, for the same reason…and also because I don’t have anything particularly exciting to do today.

I do have a freelance project, though, so I’ll work on that.

But first, of course, I’ve been reading news and blogs. And here’s something interesting. There’s some place(?) called Remuda Ranch that believes that labeling foods as forbidden actually causes us to eat more of them than we would normally. I think this makes a lot of sense. We always tend to want something we can’t have more than something we can have every day, don’t we? And so the article lists some good guidelines for eating, which I’ll reproduce here just in case.

• Balance. Most of the time you eat, do so when you’re hungry. Use food as fuel for your body. Balance also means that sometimes you eat simply when the food appeals to you or when it’s appropriate in a social setting. Allow yourself to eat for enjoyment. Such balance provides you with physical satisfaction and decreases the likelihood of overeating certain foods due to a feeling of deprivation or denial.
• Variety. Choose foods from a variety of sources. The USDA Food Guide Pyramid provides a structure for determining the number of servings from each food group that will provide the best variety. Eat different foods everyday.
• Moderation. Portion size is key. Most restaurants aim to please by offering great value through large portions. Just because you’re given a large portion doesn’t mean you have to eat it all. Take some home for later.
• Drink lots of water. Eight 8-ounce glasses of water is a good daily average.
• Aim for three meals and one to three snacks a day. The idea that snacking between meals is bad is a thing of the past. By eating every two to four hours, you prevent your body from getting overly hungry — which could set you up to overeat later. The body uses the fuel from food very efficiently when you’re eating smaller amounts more frequently throughout the day.
• Avoid radical and fad diets. Fad diets and yo-yo weight patterns only make your body work harder to maintain homeostasis. Weight fluctuations may increase your body’s “set point” — the weight at which your body wants to stay.

In other news, I’m glad to see that Miklos is still alive!

Now that I’m done with my Bloglines subscriptions, it’s time for webcomics!

Ah, well. I’m going to link it, because I think it’s hilarious :D

The new Superman is giving movie bosses a headache – because of the size of his bulge.

They fear Brandon Routh’s profile in the superhero’s skintight costume could be distracting, reports the Sun.

[…]

The Sun’s source said: “It’s a major issue for the studio. Brandon is extremely well-endowed and they don’t want it up on the big screen.

“We may be forced to erase his package with digital effects.”

Reminds me of Prince Henry’s tights in Ever After…they sure didn’t edit those.

I was vaguely aware that magazine photos are retouched to remove “imperfections”, but I had no idea that editing was done on this scale. Click through the entire Flash thing. It’s astounding.

That girl looked absolutely fine before…hell, she was certainly skinny enough before they hacked five inches off her waistline. Most shocking to me, though, were the changes to her face. She wasn’t perfect, but she had her own natural beauty. The image modifications made her look like an ethereal pixie…not by enhancing her existing features, but by redrawing them, turning her into a completely different (and impossible) person.

This, of course, was done as an example, so people can get an idea of what might have happened to the images we see in magazines. I commend Sweden’s Ministry of Health and Social Affairs for the G!rlpower Project, and the Forsman & Bodenfors advertising company for their implementation.

(via BoingBoing, who linked to a demo of the campaign on the ad company’s website)

…because boy are they sore today!

(I’m sure I’m not as sore as Brooke and Mari, though, because they took some time out for an intense bellydance workout while I was baking.)

According to Happy News, New Orleans has its streetcars back. This story reminds me of the reconstruction of Hiroshima.

You Are Socks!

Cozy and warm… but easily lost. You make a good puppet.