However, shit breaks, and sometime Monday the thermo-coupler seized and the furnace shut down.  You don't know what you have until you don't have it.  How did people survive without central heating!  I like cold, but 38ºF (2ºC) isn't fun to live in!

Well, then again, it was fun for that short time.  I've noticed that times of making-do are enjoyable, ...like camping, or the first few days in a new house.  I'm not sure why, but it's cool to have to figure ways to get ordinary things done...

...like using a folded paper plate and paper towel as an impromptu coffee maker, or watching only the few available regular broadcast channels until the cable is connected.  What did we do before cable television ;)

I actually had a good time huddled in the bedroom with the television and space heater, making runs to the kitchen for provisions and such.  I also didn't know, until this, how much heat a big LCD screen emits!

I've been busy lately, and couldn't get my heating company here until today.  Monday night I had gone out to get the space heater, but almost all the stores were sold-out after last week's ice storm.  Finally found one at Wal-Mart, where I should have gone in the first place!  God bless Wal-Mart ;)

It was weird being home today (didn't want to leave the house not knowing if the furnace was really fixed) and listening to the house go from near zero to normal room temperature.  You'd think the place was alive with all the cracking and creaking it made.

Yes, that's a bottle of vodka shaped like a Kalashnikov rifle.  I don't have one yet (obviously a photoshop job, the vodka bottle part), but I will find one for my collection some day!

I was surfing through my Favorites List on television this morning.  I watch television in the morning AND do a crossword while finalizing 'last night's dinner'.  I passed by a show called "Yearbook - 1998".  "Yearbook" is a series of hour-long shows, each focusing on a particular year from the early 1960s to the late 1990s.  Definitely interesting if you have a nostalgic gene in your pool.

Anyhow, at once I thought to myself,  "1998?  That's just yesterday, ...why are they doing a show about yesterday on an historic look-back series?".  Then I reminded myself that it's 2007 and the show was reflecting back 9 years ago, ...almost a decade!  That 9 years, this morning, seemed very short to me.  However, I knew, if we went back 30 years and they were doing a show in 1977 about 1968, THAT would have been history to me, ...then.

This all brought me to a flashback of the 1964 World's Fair.  Not the fair itself so much, but my sense of time at the age of 5.  Perspective is always skewed, always, and the grasp on any sense of time is one that seems greatly slanted by one's age.  You know the feeling, how time goes faster and faster the older and older you get.  It's definitely true, and what's really weird to me is that even the memories of those times-gone-by maintain their distortion.

The World's Fair of 1964, ...I remember being in the back of Dad's station wagon on the Long Island Expressway.  We were returning home to New Haven from Manhattan, where Dad was a professor at Cooper Union.  As we passed over the elevation of a bridge, I could see down to where someone was building this huge, fantastic amusement park!

This was the Summer of 1963, ...and the construction was the World's Fair.

I asked Dad what all that cool commotion was, and as he explained, I got very excited!

...especially when he said that we would go there when it opened the next year!

...next year?  I remember how long a year seemed to me at that moment.  It was an unobtainable eternity to me, and I remember how torn I was watching Flushing Meadows fade away in the car's rear window.

I don't simply mean I remember the feeling of that eternity within that memory,  ...I mean that same time span still today seems like an eternity.  It's strange that in my mind right now, the time between 1963 and 1964 is MUCH longer than from 1998 to 2007, even though I'm comparing one year to nearly a decade.

I understand the explanation about this warping of time related to age, ...when you're 5 years old, one year is 1/5th of your life (ALL the time that you've known, and can compare), ...and when you're 20 years old, one year is then only 1/20th, etc.  The mind thinks in derivatives and ratios and proportions, rather than linear measurements.  I would think, though, that the memories would have readjusted themselves, ...at least a bit.

I can also remember getting ready for grade school on Monday mornings.  Starting down the stairs towards the door, and thinking how long the coming week would be before the next weekend.  The previous Sunday night was spent with Ed Sullivan and Topo Gigio, and foreboding thoughts of the next week full of school.  Friday afternoon seemed so far away!  The next Saturday morning cartoons, ...with Clutch Cargo and Courageous Cat and Jonny Quest, ...and swimming at the YMCA after that, ...after that at 7am.

The anticipation of weekends were so wonderful, ...they still are ;)

Memories!

AnimEX link

If you're anywhere near Middlesbrough (Teesside University) on February 5-9, go see this exposition!  It's one of the very best!

This is wonderful!  It's cold, sleeting, ice covers everything, ..and looking like Dallas will be shut down today.

I'm watching the weather on television, sipping a hot cup of tea, and getting 'covered up', Russian-style.

I've never been into sports, other than watching the occasional football game, or boxing match, and the World Cup, but these are rare.  With this big screen, though, I've been watching the play-offs and loving it!

Football is great, ...nothing compares to the level of strategy, the constant pace of action, and there's just enough violence.

I don't care about particular teams or players.  In fact, it's embarrassing how little I do know about the sport.

For instance, one of yesterday's games had Baltimore playing against the Colts!  How can that be?

You'd buy a styrofoam-insulated case of 50 hotdogs and hawk them as fast as you could up and down the stadium bleachers.  Actually, you'd buy two or three cases and sling the extras over your back.  This saved on the downtime of running back to the depot to buy more cases.  

The cases cost something like $1 per hotdog, and you'd sell them for $1.50 each.  It wasn't unusual to sell 20 or more cases during a game.  It was a lucrative few hours of work for a teenager.

"Red hots!  ...getcha red hots!  ...right here!"

The best part, though, was that after the third quarter of the game, many of the college students had run out of money, and the normal cash arrangements would break down into the old barter system.  No money, but they still had drugs and alcohol!  It was interesting to see what a hotdog was worth to a drunk (poor decision-making) and stoned (munchie-crazed) stadium full of college students.  So we'd finish the day's work with one pocket full of money, and the other full of psychotropics, ...then came Saturday night ;)  THAT was good football!

Vodka spaghetti sauce, ...now I can get sauced twice at the same time ;)

Not as cool as Cannibas Vodka from the Czech Republic, perhaps, but definitely up there with Level Vodka from Sweden!

Notice the sauce matches so well with the Khokhloma table cloth from Nizhni Novgorod, Russia ;)

Also on the news recently, ...fires in Malibu, California.  I was watching the houses burn, and then remembered that I helped build one of those ;)  My girlfriend's dad was a contractor (actually, all three of my long-term girlfriends had dads that were contractors, and all three were vegetarians, too, ...hmmm) and I earned a little extra money helping build this house for a few months while going to UCLA.  I quickly went out and found a computer-related job, btw!

Notice how professionally I hold that hammer,  ...way up close to the head where I can take advantage of leverage ;)

Here's another reason opposing the hanging of Hussein...

...I don't like to get political, and who am I to judge a president, but at this point, and after hearing Bush's speech last night on television (everything lately seems to be attached to that television;), it's undeniable what a failure he's been.

Again, I blame nepotism.

Anyhow, if Saddam was still alive, our new plan could have been to put him in a taxi and drop him off in the middle of Bagdad telling him "Okay, you were right, ...just don't piss us off again, ...and it's all yours!".

...naked parties!  Other universities are experiencing this, too, apparently.

Now, I'm not one that thinks we should all walk around naked all the time, but I'm always amazed by the amount of shock that nudity provokes in this country.

This was sort of weird...

Last Friday morning, I was catching a smoke and looking out the window in one of the bars downstairs from our office.  A pigeon glided into what looked like a normal landing on the sidewalk.  It stood for a moment, then started fluttering around like it had a broken wing, but the actions were more spasmodic than that.  I paid little more attention other than feeling a bit sad.

An hour or so later, Rob and I headed over to Hooter's for lunch.  Hooter's is right across the street from our office.  We got there and I waited outside to finish another smoke while Rob went in to get a table.  I was standing there when all of a sudden another pigeon flew right by my head and landed on the trash receptacle next to me.  It slide down the metal top and landed on the ground.  Everything seemed normal, for a pigeon, when it also started to flutter about.  It had the same strange nerve disorder the other did, too, not simply a broken wing.  Plus I just saw it fly in for the landing.

I figured this pigeon, and the other one, were fledglings that just left the nest and still didn't have their flight muscles in tune yet.  This didn't explain the convulsions, though.  Rob and I joked that maybe this was like the canary in the cave and the birds were succumbing to some airborne disease or toxin before other creatures, ...or maybe avian flu had hit Dallas.  We joked, and I even thought of writing something here over the weekend, but figured the story wasn't worthy...

...then I heard the news this morning that a section of Austin, Texas was shutdown this morning because they had found 60+ unexplainably dead birds.  There were also two police officers that started feeling ill.  This report was then followed by the news of a strange, natural-gas smell that was permeating all of Manhattan and parts of northern New Jersey.

Weird!

I've seen the human version, ...you know, where they somehow put a fiber optic scope inside the uterus of a pregnant woman and take motion pictures of the developing embryo.  Cool stuff!

It's weird to think that you yourself were in there at one point.

The show started with a brief explanation of the fertilization process, ...how 20+ million (20+ million!) sperm cells get released into the vaginal vault, where most of them soon die from the hostile environment, or simply get lost on their way, ...and then die.

Next, the survivors of that initial D-Day assault must reach and breach the cervix, ...not an easy trip and, again, ...many die or get mislaid trying.  After this test awaits the uterus, and a very long journey to the two Fallopian tubes at the other end.  Even more die, or lose their way, ...and then die.

Only one Fallopian tube has an egg, so half of the now severely dwindled troops end up taking the wrong road.  They're lost, ...and they die. 

By the time the others reach the egg, there are only about 1,000 left (that's 0.05%, one out of every 2,000 of the original troops).  They all then try to find the egg and attach themselves to it.  The few that do, use enzymes to melt their way through the currently accepting egg's wall.

As soon as the first sperm makes it into the ultimate of targets, the egg changes the polarity of its membrane and the egg wall immediately releases a surge of mucous.  All other burrowing contenders are shoved away.  Only one, of the original 20+ million, wins this race!

Then I suddenly realized, "I'm one of those sperm cells!  I survived that trek, ...well, half of me did, in order to be here right now!". 

...made me feel sort of accomplished and fortunate ;)

Once again I'll say that I love my home, very much, but when I go into semi-retirement in the next 5 or 10 years...

... I'M MOVING TO EUROPE!

Thanks for the laugh, Joel ;)

One more day to veg!

This was the longest vacation taken in more than ten years.  A full two weeks with absolutely no commitments or plans, other than taking care of me, ...love that me ;)

I've gained ten pounds (4.5kgs), but fuck me!  ...it was worth it!

I had expected to be bored by this time, with two weeks of nothing, but I'm not!  I could do another two of these weeks, ...easy!

What did I do for two weeks solid?  ...other than eat expensive food?  ...I watched television on my new big screen!  I've watched nearly 30 DVDs and tons of broadcast shows.  I even caught myself watching stuff I didn't care about, only because it was so cool on the large screen.

...and the sound!  More than a few times, I thought I had heard something in the house (late at night).  Twice, I grabbed the gun and did a walk-around to make sure the house was empty.  The trouble wasn't any intruder, it was the stereo system, on the new set, making sounds seem like they were coming from somewhere other than the television.  The old set was mono, I love this new television ;)

Side note:  I don't care what anybody else thinks, nothing will give you a better sense of security and self-protection than a familiar and readied gun.

I spent two of the days watching old, nostalgic sci-fi movies.

It's strange how memory adds such a pleasant filter to things from your past.  Of obviously inferior quality, compared to today's sci-fi, I still prefer the old movies from the 1950s and 1960s.

I watched "Invasion From Mars", a recent addition to my library.  I hadn't seen it since the very first time back in the early 1960s.  A fond memory, even though I was in bed with the flu when I saw it back then.

If you're not old enough to know better, here's a list of really good sci-fi movies from the 1950s and 1960s:

Them
The Fly
20 Million Miles To Earth (Harryhausen is great)
Journey To The Center Of The Earth
War Of The Worlds (NOT the one ruined by Tom "may bother" Cruise)
Forbidden Planet
First Men In The Moon
The Time Machine
The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms
Invasion Of The Body Snatchers
Slaughterhouse Five (1970s, but still an oldie)
Day Of The Triffids
2001: A Space Odyssey

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