I rode it to work yesterday morning. My wife and kids were out running errands near the college, so they gave me a ride home yesterday. The plan was that I would just drive to work this morning and put the bike up on the rack to bring it home. Well, when I went to get the back to come home with it, the rack where it was locked was empty. Completely empty. I walked right by it this morning on my way in, but I don’t remember if I saw it there or not. I wasn’t even thinking about it, so I really don’t remember.
I am trying to not get too upset at myself over this. I did everything a reasonable person would have/could have done to prevent this from happening. There is nothing I can do now to prevent it from happening. I do have another bike that I can use to get to and from work. I guess I’ll have to start bringing my bike into my office or something.
So, what do you think the odds are that I’ll find it and be able to steal it back again?
I pulled myself out of bed this morning at 5:30, got in the car, and drove to the beach. Then I drove to another beach, then another beach, then another beach, and another, and…I checked pretty much everywhere between Scripps and OB Pier, and, 80 minutes later came home without getting wet.
Everywhere I looked, the waves were itty-bitty little ankle-biters. I am actually not all that picky, I’ll paddle out while most guys stand around complaining about how crappy the surf is; this week has been pretty ridiculous though. Windansea would have been worth the hassles of changing and getting wet and all that, but Windansea feels over-crowded at six folks in the lineup. Add the overly-aggro localism that place is famous for, and it’s not the most enticing place to surf all by yourself. Windansea’s crowd looked inviting though, after driving south a bit. There were probably 30 people out at Tourmaline…seriously.
If I had a longboard I probably would have at least gotten in the water and paddled around. Getting a longboard/fixing the fin-less 9’0” in my garage is going on my to-do list.
Despite what you might have learned by watching Gidget, surfing in Southern California in the summertime is rarely very eventful. This summer has been especially mild. In fact, I remember when I was up in Santa Barbara thinking, “I don’t know if I have ever seen it this flat in San Diego.” Well, I have.
They are saying that this is the coolest summer San Diego has had in something like 100 years. Maybe the heat is still yet to come…as are some waves.
I just checked out this list of the 20-most (legally) downloaded songs in history. I s’pose it’s a sign that I am completely out of touch, but I think that I have only heard seven of the 20, and I only actually own one. And I am someone who works in this field! This list makes me think that there are way too many 15-year-olds with access to their parents’ credit cards.
Just as a side note, I caught my four-year-old daughter singing along to this song yesterday as we were out running some errands:
Can you tell that I’ve been working on my dissertation while she’s around?
It is 4:17 AM. I have been up since 3:15. I can’t get myself to go back to sleep. I have hives all over my body, even on my face (the face part wasn’t the case when I went to bed).
I have found out that I am allergic to a certain medication. I was initially prescribed this medicine about a month ago. I started to notice itchy spots on my ankles and legs, but didn’t really think much about it. Then those itchy spots got worse and started getting red and spreading a bit more, and that’s about when I noticed that they were hives.
It took a while to figure out what might be causing the allergic reaction. I am not (was not) aware of anything to which I am (was) allergic, except walnuts, and that is a pretty mild “sensitivity.” It was especially difficult to figure out what was going on because the hives started down at my feet an ankles; I figured it must have been something external.
Finally I figured that it must have been the medication I was taking, as that seemed to be the only variable in the situation. I called the doctor and she told me to stop taking the meds, and to start sucking down Benadryl. The hives went away the next day. Problem solved.
I visited the doctor’s office a week and a half later and we talked about the situation. The doc said that it was quite likely that I was allergic to one of the “inactive” ingredients in the generic pills, so she recommended that we try the name brand. Besides the horrible side-effect of causing me to break out into hives, the medication seemed to have been working.
Well, it turns out that I am allergic to the active ingredient. I started back on the same meds on Monday, and I broke out into hives by Wednesday morning. I stopped taking the medication on Wednesday, as it was clear that it was the allergen. Yesterday, Thursday, it kept getting worse.
Now I can’t get myself back to sleep. I am simply too uncomfortable.
Here are some nice visual aids to help you see what’s going on:
PS: I made a bunch of cosmetic changes to my website (I haven’t gotten around to replicating the same look over here, yet. Take a look and tell me what you think!
So, I know that Lady Gaga is all the craze right now. Her almost pornographic videos, her wacky costumes, her music…she’s getting all sorts of attention. She won a freakin’ Grammy last year! I was actually kind of shocked, ‘cause I thought that the “Academy” could see right through her façade.
Maybe I am just old, maybe I am out of touch, but I don’t really get what is spectacular about her music. I had a student tell me, “Well she can sing well, and she can play the piano, so I think she’s good.” So I guess all that is required to be considered “good” is the ability to play the piano and accompany yourself on the piano. Her music doesn’t really stand out to me as ground-breaking, or even interesting; it sounds a lot like all of the crappy pop music from the mid-90s. Actually, it sounds like it because before she was Lady Gaga, she was writing music for people like Britney Spears. I do have to give her props for having worked in the industry in some other capacity than a spoiled teen star…
When I first saw her, I dismissed her right away. But then I had to call myself back for a moment. Two of my most favorite (and, I think truly artistic and innovative) artists are also famous for wearing wacky, strange costumes: David Bowie and Björk. But to me, Lady Gaga is nowhere near the league of someone like Björk. Still, I had to take a step back and remember that wacky costumes and stage antics don’t always equal musical drivel…just usually.
But, even after giving her the benefit of the doubt, I’ve had a hard time getting where the artistry is. She is getting credit for it, people are talking about it, but where is it, exactly? The costumes aren’t anything the Leigh Bowery didn’t do 20 years ago. The super-sexual objectification is right out of Madonna’s playbook. The music, which is supposed to be the point of all that other stuff, is only mildly interesting. She sounds like Britney Spears, Madonna, and Imogen Heap all thrown together…but not as good. I will admit that her songs are catchy, that the melodies are pretty memorable. I guess that is expected from someone who cut their teeth in the biz by writing pop songs.
I hate to be one of those old folks (‘cause I am 28, you know) who curses all those young whipper-snappers and their meaningless music, but I guess I am. Whatever happened to subtlety?
This semester I am teaching a class called “Digital Audio Recording & Production.” Today we started talking about mixing. More specifically, we discussed mixing “styles,” of which there are three big “schools:” New York, London, and Los Angeles So, in having the discussion, I tried to find some examples of these styles. I tried going through my iTunes library looking for examples, but rather than dig around listening for these subtleties, I went with the “textbook” examples. Therefore, I downloaded this song today as an example of LA:
I am pretty embarrassed that that song is in my library, that it’s going to show up on my credit card bill. Ugh… It is, though, a pretty good example of that style of mixing and production. The other examples I used were from The Doobie Brothers. Fleetwood Mac’s and The Eagles’ albums are perhaps the best examples, but I was kind of in a hurry, so I didn’t think of those until it was too late. So now I am stuck with Van Halen clogging up my iTunes library…
Unfortunately, the current electro-charged political climate has sucked me back into facebook. Actually, I’ve only logged in a few times since Sunday, but I keep wanting to read what my “friends” are saying about it. I have a few “friends” and family members that like to get all whacko when it comes to politics. So, I’ve been curious how these folks have been reacting (if you could call it that) to recent events—I guess that’s my inner voyeur showing. Anyway, I started poking around facebook, looking for status updates with exclamation marks and other such emotive punctuation. Needless to say, those are hours I won’t get back, and for which I have nothing to show…
We officially closed escrow on the house on Tuesday, and recorded the sale with county on Wednesday. That means we “own” the place (or we will after 360 payments). So, since we haven’t moved in yet, you’d think the house would be vacant…you’d be wrong. The former owner is still there. He signed a document stating that he’d be out by 7:00 AM this morning, but he’s still there (it’s 11:30 PM), as is most of his stuff. That 7:00 AM deadline was after we’d allowed him to stay for an extra 24 hours longer than originally agreed.
The house isn’t really ready to be “moved in to;” it needs new carpeting, new paint, and several other fixes. We have to move out of our apartment on Saturday. We have already extended out move-out date three times. We realized that the house wouldn’t be ready for us by then, so we planned on just moving into the garage and spending the first part of next week getting all of those things done. Then, after Christmas, we’d be able to actually move in and enjoy the place.
Those plans, however, were contingent upon being able to (1) get in there in the first place, and (2) get started on all of the work that needs to be done ASAP.
We scheduled a contractor to begin working on retexturing the ceilings today, and we would more or less follow him through the house, painting. The carpet layers are coming next Wednesday, so we hoped to have all of the painting done. But, we are now a day behind, the contractor lost a day of work, and the former owner is still in the house. We now owe the contractor for a lost day of work, and are no closer to being able to move in.
I am not one to open my mouth in confrontations, so you’d have to get me pretty p!5$3d to hear my opinion(s). When we went down there at 5:00 (with a new lock in hand) and he was still there, I let the guy have it. He said “Just give me 45 minutes.” “45 minutes!” I said, “You were supposed to be out of here 10 hours ago!” I told him it would probably take me 40 minutes to get the locks changed, so he had that much time to get his stuff together. I fiddled with the locks for half an hour or so, at which point he came to me and said, “I need just another half hour.” I looked around and saw that he had made virtually no progress. I again let him have it. I told him that I wasn’t going to make any more “deals” with him, that enough was enough.
He told me about how he didn’t have any money (until today) to rent a truck or to hire movers. A truck costs about $50. Certainly he has a credit card that he could charge $50 to…especially knowing that he is going to rake in $250,000 from this deal once escrow closed. Also, escrow was supposed to close on November 19…almost a month ago. Now, why he wasn’t making these sorts of arrangements during that extra month, I really can’t say.
I am planning on going over to the house in the morning. It is pretty much a given that he will still be there. In fact, he told me he would be. I said, “Tomorrow?! Are you kidding? You said 45 minutes…what’s this ’tomorrow?’”
It might sound like I am over-reacting. Maybe I am, but I think you have to see the place (and the guy), and go through everything that has gone one over the last two months to really get how I am feeling. Maybe a photo will help. Here is the kitchen 3½ hours after said former was supposed to have vacated:
I am trying really hard to see that guy as a good person, as a person with some flaws, but someone who has some strengths… but, man this guy is making it hard!
