and she was

strong. beautiful. a survivor of unimaginable proportions. hilarious. an unrepentant shopper. lovely. a connoisseur. tall. a traveler. living life to the fullest. a loving mother. a proud grandmother. a motivator. witty. a successful entrepreneur. capable of anything. a truthful adviser. the boss. compassionate. unstoppable. determined. an adventurer. a twin. sarcastic. optimistic. a hero. unexpected. a mystery. an inspiration. a friend. a rose.

7:37 am

april 24, 2009
you are missed sweetheart. greatly missed.

modernism summed

interwebs tells me jg ballard died today. searched for this article which i read some years back. contained a favorite quote.

Modernism lacked mystery and emotion, was a little too frank about the limits of human nature and never prepared us for our eventual end.

fyi penguin, that house is listed here. nice pics.

fried

worked 26 hrs in 2 days. brain cooked. time for a mini vacation. sup' gave me 1 free vac day. ahh, enjoying it already. tomorrow headed for sun and water. hasta.

change of scenery

weekend wasn't a total wash. i did manage to get out in the yard and dig a bit, despite being sick. needed to do something other than lay in bed all day. managed to not get any good pics, but this will do for now.

in bloom:
hinkley's columbine.

$2.50 azalea from home depot that i hoped would be red. not quite. not even close.

same old

went for a walk with my girl inga to try to clear my head. still confused on yesterday's events. shouldn't be. it was, after all, par for the course.

kicked down and left behind with his dog and a pile of dirty junk to care for. same as it ever was.

then again

maybe it's not oak. fever went up over 100F. stayed up. coughing got worse. nose produced green stuff. that's not allergies. had a moment of panic sometime after midnight when i woke up gasping for air, but was coughing so hard i couldn't breathe. in my half asleep panicked state, i thought i was choking.

my helper who doesn't help was gone. he checked out. several times that night, and then permanently. kind of pissed about that. woke up to a resignation letter left at the top of the stairs.

thanks for the explanation.

oak

i'm pretty sure it was cedar. had me torn up from late dec through late feb. out of control sneezy. i would wake up to sneeze. box of tissue per week at work. can't work on the computer without constant drip drip sneeze drip drip. intermittent fever, always just under 100F. early on, the rhinitis was so bad i literally could not move air through my nose. if you had taped my mouth, i would have suffocated. ridiculous. it took a nasal corticosteroid to breathe again. granted, i only used it 3 times, but c'mon. i never take drugs. rather adamant about it.


and now oak? is it possible? i've lived in this town for 16 years. never had bad allergies. no more than a stray day here and there. i do not understand. i now know what allegra d is for.

this time it's more chest. wet cough. a cinder block on my chest. talk too long, cough. laugh, cough. i'm trying my best not to cough right now. can't sleep more than 3 hours at a time. wake up hot, feeling like something is just off. almost imperceptible, like high blood pressure or something. i can't tell if it's the allergy fever or the drugs or what.

the drugs almost work during the day. they cut the sneezy drip in half. i can function with brain mostly serviceable. it's tolerable. but nights are a mess.

soon they'll find out the stuff causes heart/liver/renal failure. or maybe that it sensitizes your histamine response so that you can never go back to your pre-allegra allergy free days. ever again.


or maybe that instead of just being allergic to cedar, you're now allergic to oak. and mold. ragweed. and so on. i'm already looking at my 1/2 empty orange bottle thinking, oh god, what have i done?

dry

after the age of 30 the skin completely forgets how to moisturize itself. i have spent the last several years looking for the perfect lotion. not too watery. not too smelly. sometimes i am my grandmother.

yes, mr. ex-neighbor. i had a bday. lucky 7. you were close. from left to right, the cats are grey (tinker), skinny (scout/scooter) and tombear (tom-tom; no relation to you).

music missing from the beach list: tom petty, grateful dead.

music that reminds me of the beach

items listed do not indicate my like or dislike. this general soundtrack plays in every restaurant and shop there. the lone exception to the pallete would be paper planes by m.i.a. which was playing in a swim suit shop. i've had a fondness for it ever since and it recently reappeared for me in slumdog.

dire straits
neil young
bob dylan
eagles
country (can't conjure up a band or genre. it's all the same.)
jimmy buffet
bob marley
zz top

as if i hadn't heard enough classic rock in high school behind the pine curtain. i had associated a feeling of nausea with zz top and jimmy buffet. now i smile and think of sticky wind and sandy sunburn.

the condition at work led me to input one or two of these groups into pandora next to the pixies, mr airplane man, radiohead, theivery corp. every time a beach song comes up, i have a mini escape. i can almost smell the stale fishy air.

upgrade

little mr. rhea is a big boy now.
cascade or bust.
i remember when he was a smoking, partying, beer-goggled coop. i'm not even sure he knew how to ride a bike. stook, our little baby's all grows up!

21c art hotel

heard an npr piece today on an art hotel in of all places louisville, ky. they said there's one coming to austin - wanna bet soco? it's a 24/7 contemporary art museum and hotel.

this one looks like something zach would do.

meander

i've never really followed the green austin bike route signs. i suppose they could be useful, but i always followed the routes i either learned while on the wheel of someone directionally gifted, or carved out through years of wandering. i ignored the signs.

tonight i used route 29 as part of my wander home and was quite pleased. now i have a new flat alternative to lake austin/scenic/matthews/pecos or exposition/balcones.

and what do you know, the bike route map is now a pdf online. i probably still have my 10 yr old paper copy that i picked up at freewheeling back when the caad 3 was new and shiny.

austin bike route map

seymour hersh

too busy to do my own reading. so i'm stealing this one from quirk.

hope

electoral projections look promising: 1, 2.
(thanks quirk)

good read

cut, kill, dig, drill.

What is most striking about her is that she seems perfectly untroubled by either curiosity or the usual processes of thought. When answering questions, both Obama and Joe Biden have an unfortunate tendency to think on their feet and thereby tie themselves in knots: Palin never thinks. Instead, she relies on a limited stock of facts, bright generalities and pokerwork maxims, all as familiar and well-worn as old pennies. Given any question, she reaches into her bag for the readymade sentence that sounds most nearly proximate to an answer, and, rather than speaking it, recites it, in the upsy-downsy voice of a middle-schooler pronouncing the letters of a word in a spelling bee. She then fixes her lips in a terminal smile.

the author speaks my mind. (thanks unk)

palin the brilliant knower of foreign policy

can't resist. it is just too perfect.


Watch CBS Videos Online

i don't know if i'll be able to handle a whole debate of this quality on thursday. i may have to limit my intake.

history refresher

needed to remind (inform) a friend about the u.s. training of the mujaheddin in the 80s. this person had totally forgotten about the recent history leading up to what happened in sept '01. folks do not seem to grasp the extent to which the u.s. stirs the pot nor the consequences therein. excerpt:

The last word goes to Zbigniew Brzezinski: “Prior to the devastating September 11 attack on the twin towers of World Trade Center, US ruling-class figures remained unrepentant about the consequences of their dirty deals with the likes of bin Laden, Hekmatyar and the Taliban. Since the awful attack, they have been downright hypocritical."

In an August 28, 1998, report posted on MSNBC, Michael Moran quotes Senator Orrin Hatch, who was a senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee which approved US dealings with the mujaheddin, as saying he would make “the same call again”, even knowing what bin Laden would become.

"It was worth it. Those were very important, pivotal matters that played an important role in the downfall of the Soviet Union."

"What was more important in the world view of history? The Taliban or the fall of the Soviet Empire? A few stirred up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?"

because clearly we have the situation under control.

link

rethuglican resentment

i'm going to quote nearly the whole thing because i can't decide how best to paraphrase him, and frankly i'm not in the mood to write anything novel on the sad state of affairs. all i can say is the general voting public in this country has fallen to the level of a numb trash tv addict no longer capable of seeking and learning new information, formulating intelligent and (god forbid) well-read opinions, or functioning in society as a responsible/respectful citizen.

from one of my favorite central texas gardners:

...In the past I have written about the "spiritual discipline against resentment." Well, after watching the Republicans it is easy to see they have no spiritual discipline whatsoever - in fact, Governor Palin's speech and most of the other sneering rants that oozed from the podium were the spiritual equivalent of resentment stoking. The R's have taken a page from the very worst identity politics of begrudged charlatans like Al Sharpton and and are now claiming to be the victims of terrible, condescending "elites and the media." They wear their alledged victimhood like thorny crowns, whining about their mistreatment. Never mind the fact that the so-called conservative movement has held sway in Washington for most of the past thirty years, and that Fox News and dozens of other media outlets are little more that propaganda machines for Republican party. Meanwhile, the Democrats have passively allowed the Republicans to engage in disasatrous wars and drive the nation ever deeper into debt while the so-called "media elite" has gone along for the ratings ride. What we witnessed last week was McCain's final capitulation to the very same "agents of intolerance" (his words) who once savaged him, spreading lies about the legitmacy of his daughters, his sanity, even his sexuality. So much for McMaverick! I thought mavericks weren't supposed to sell their souls.


We need to be very clear about this, the alleged "conservative" movement is now a sham that has disintegrated into corruption and cronyism while diminishing American power in the world and bringing our economy to its knees (if not the knees of the nations that actually own us!) Real conservatives don't tax their grandchildren. Real conservatives don't cheat veterans. Real conservatives don't ignore the constitution. Real conservatives don't pillage the earth without a care for tomorrow. Real conservatives don't whine and wring thier hands about how put-upon they are. The truth is the Republicans are not "conservatives" at all, they are reactionaries. The party of Lincoln has become the party of George Wallace and Elmer Gantry - a shot-gun marriage of old fashioned greed and willful ignorance that is whipped into a froth of bitter resentment every four years. Governor Palin is George W. Bush in a skirt - a pretty smokescreen of train-wreck family values happily allowing herself to be used as a distraction designed to make people bury the hope for real change under a smoldering pile of fake resentments. While preaching bi-partisanship, McCain has chosen the low road of divide through fear politics. Shame on us all if he succeeds.

link

well said, tom. and thanks unk for the intro to a new slangism.

no credentials. whatsoever.

let me just say, this woman is simply a dumb broad. and i hate that label, but in this case, the shoe fits.