The River Green

I think I have subconsciously sabotaged my own computer so that I can avoid my math class... and in royal fashion. However, my life is now turned upside down and it feels like I am missing a huge portion of myself. This is because of the brilliant, smart and intelligent move by the idiot 'Raul', a service technician at KU, whose idea to re-install Firefox without my consent during a session share, caused my bookmarks, user names and passwords to become part of the great wind. Thank you, Raul. May your testicles be clamped for all of eternity and may your face be coated in maggot shit for ten years.

Labels: random events , unlikely events

As the third term begins, I find myself petrified at taking a math class. It has been so long and I have such an aversion to the subject to begin with.

I am invited to a seminar on 2/24 at 4pm, with three more seminars scheduled throughout the term, which is confusing because I don't know if that means that I will not have a weekly seminar for this class or if these are three special seminars in addition to the regular weekly ones.

The class is called MM150-32: Survey of Mathematics. The book came on my birthday and has alot of ground covered, including statistics, algebra and calculus (and I just peed myself).

The only other thing that I'm dealing with is the annoying delay in getting our new e-mail UI.

Not the smoothest of starts to a term, but we'll manage.

Labels: classes

3D movies are weird. The glasses fit over my own and apparently caused a resemblance to Roy Orbison. Getting used to the way the movie looked and the 3D effects were difficult to get used to and the warning on the package stated that if you started to feel strange, you may be experiencing a seizure. Yikes. Almost immediately, the main protagonist has to adjust to his new alien body. I felt a connection to him because I was trying to get used to the 3D aspects.

Overall the movie was good. I liked the way the alien culture was created using aspects of both native American and African cultures- both strongly identified with nature. The effects were amazing, and the 3D was great. Due to the nature of how the movie rendered in 3D, it was impossible to tell if the computer animation was realistic; the entire thing looked like a viewfinder and even the 'real' people looked animated.

The central antagonist was very much over-the-top and I thought the role as a composite, was not properly averaged out over political, military and corporate evils, but rather simply added up. The actual corporate token character was too weak.

It was all very imaginative and the environment aspects were incredibly original.

During the progress of the story, I felt that certain portrayals betrayed suspension of disbelief. There already is so much to suspend, that even the slightest departure from a realistic human condition, provides an element of utter disbelief.

Another part of the movie that sort of bothered me was the romantic scene. So, here we are on this world with large blue beings with tails and a 'bonding braid', who have connections to animals and even the planet itself, and you are trying to convince me that all there is to intimacy is light kissing? I was expecting something strange or a higher intimacy level. It seemed like 'The People' had a closer bond with their horses than with each other. It was all very strange.

Even with all of the plot difficulties and character establishment issues, it was still an amazing movie with a powerful message. I'm not convinced it should have been nominated for 'Best Picture,' though.

Labels: movies

Icicles. The sharpest of them are perfect murder weapons. The heaviest of them can take down gutters. Luckily, the latter, not the former applied to those hanging from and around our house.

I tried to keep ahead of the icicles growing on the front of the house, both from the porch roof and the house roof. Fairly early on, batting them down from the bedroom window resulted in the drain half of the gutter coming down. It sits on the porch roof waiting until one or both of us are in a prone position to fall on our heads.

Not having the gutter present allowed a rather large chunk of ice to form on the three wires which provide our home with electricity. After trying a pole, longer ole, curtain rod, hairdryer and cursing at it, Marieke suggested I use the gecko sprayer filled with hot salty water to melt the ice. Our fair cross-street neighbors were kind enough to act as audience, promising a round of applause if I was successful. I was and afterward, we left to do laundry.

The back of the house was a different world altogether. The ones growing above the back door needed daily whacking to keep the dogs safe. Little known to me, there was a much larger danger just out of my line of sight. Since I could barely venture 5 feet from the back door without fusing pitons, I was unaware that the icicle growing to the left was not growing from the roof of the mudroom, but was in fact growing from the roof of the house. It was freestanding and about 25-30 feet long.

To the gecko room we went. Once the lizards were out of the way (and covered), I leaned out and began whacking at the monster. A couple minutes later, we were running downstairs to make sure the mud room was still there and still had all of its windows.

After determining that all was good, we discovered that the top of the giant ice tentacle was at least 27 or 28 inches wide. It was literally an ice boulder now.

Marieke then leaned out of the window in the office and began bringing some of those ones down. Not wanting anymore large icicles to form, I shoveled some of the snow off the mudroom roof.

Over the next couple days, as the temperature rose above freezing, more and more ice fell to the ground. Most of it landing with multiple thuds and at least twice, landing so hard that it rocked the house and caused the lights to flicker.

Another ice chunk was on the house closest to ours, reaching from the top of that house all the way to the ground, in the space between the two houses. I knew I had to take it down before it fell uncontrolled into the basement window. It wasn’t as wide at the top as our ice monster, but it was much, much taller and the window was directly across from the base. While Marieke hung out in the mudroom, I managed to push it away from the window and it came crashing down. Marieke said it sounded like it was going to come through the dining room wall. I was actually worried for a minute that it would start falling toward me, in which case, I’m not entirely certain I would be writing about it today.

Hopefully we’re done with these ridiculously large icicles for the season… maybe even for a few years or so.

Labels: snow

The XXI Winter Olympic Medal Table

Labels: Olympics , sports

When the weather report mentioned another 9 inches of snow, I almost had a conniption. The streets were hardly cleared from the massive snow that we just had and now they’re talking about another nine inches?!

I think all of Pittsburgh must have been in shock. Marieke had yesterday off. For the first time ever, the County Court of Common Pleas closed. The kids had a third day off from school today.

There is currently a bit of controversy brewing about snow removal and the city’s lack of response to the first storm, let alone what little response there has been to the second storm. To add fuel to the fire, the Post Gazette posted the following on their blog:

In case you missed it, the PG posted a map of city salt routes that shows the web of city and state roads through Pittsburgh's 55 square miles.

Red indicates a state road, yellow means a primary road, blue means secondary and green means tertiary. Each Public Works division has a list of priority roads.

As for the homestead, I performed my duties, clearing off the steps and sidewalk, digging out the car and going to the grocery store. Part of going tot he store everyday was to see what the ‘outside world’ looked like, since Montclair is always so isolated.

As the above slideshow reveals, the additional snow was almost more than I could bear.

As the slideshow to the right reveals, it was almost more than the city could bear. Walking in it was really difficult on the ankles because even on the street, it was slippy. On the sidewalks that weren’t shoveled, ridges appeared, forcing your foot to slide sideways and downward on almost every step. The only clear spot I came across in terms of the sidewalk in the business area was Parkvale Savings. Their lot was clear, the entire sidewalk surrounding their building was clear and salted. Giant Eagle’s parking lot was a mess. The only part of the sidewalk along Greenfield Ave. that was cleared off was in front of Homer’s; they have a snow blower. The other side was a complete mess. The Buddhists were the only other place along Greenfield who even made an attempt at shoveling. It was a sobering experience at Giant Eagle when I saw the manager handing out vouchers for bread, the entire multi shelf trolley having been emptied. In the dairy section, it looked like they were preparing to do the same thing for milk. There were two gallons of whole left and nothing else. Three workers were standing there watching me walk past, their expressions a mix of anticipation and dread that I would begin demanding products that were not on the shelves. I considered doing just that, even though I didn’t need any, just to see what they would do, but decided against it since my striped scarf would only muffle anything I might say.

I made several videos with both the camera and my phone for posterity. This was, after all, one of the heaviest snow falls in the history of the city. Both Marieke and I had some fun with the macro setting on the camera and as soon as I get a data cord or flash card, the pics and vids can come out of my phone. The gallery to the left is of the various plants around the house that looked neato with the snow on them. This is more attention than these plants have received in three years!

There are some pics of some holly bushes down the street, but they’re not in this gallery. I will be posting those to Facebook as soon as I can spend more than fifteen minutes on the computer without trying to fix whatever else might be going wrong with my final project. Unfortunately, those of us attending internet school do not get snow days!

Labels: snow

In the evening of Thursday, February 4, Marieke and I returned from an epic grocery shopping trip; we needed just about everything. Our normal parking spot was being taken up by one of Marty’s friends, the same one who a few weeks ago, bumped the car trying to get out of the driveway, whilst not paying attention to Marty’s directions. He was kind enough to move his truck before we unloaded too many more groceries. We told Marty that it was a good thing, too because we had to stock up ahead of the storm, which was, at that point, forecasting 5-8 inches. The snow was going to come over the course of the next day and should be pretty much over by midnight.

In the afternoon of Friday, February 5, Marieke said that the people she was in training with decided to end early because one of them heard the storm was now going to dump 9-12 inches of snow. This was somewhat hard to believe, since in storms past, the forecast was always off by at least 3 inches, usually on the short end at that.

By that evening, having decided to stay ahead of the snow and keep the sidewalk and steps periodically clear, we went outside to find Marty, his girlfriend Debbie and their dog, Carmen San Diego, already out, doing the same thing we were doing. I brought Oskar down and ran up and down the street with him as he tried not to let on that he was interested in playing with Carmen. The four of us concluded that we may just hit the 12 inch mark since there was already a substantial pile of snow on the cars and it was only 9pm.

We went to bed that night, expecting a heavier than normal, but not an outrageous amount of snow. Our plans for the next day were still on: Marieke had an afternoon hair appointment and then we were off to get Alyssa for a sleepover. While our plans may have to be pushed back to accommodate clearing the steps and brushing off the car, it wouldn’t amount to more than 15 minutes to a half hour delay.

On the morning of Saturday, February 8, I was startled awake at 7:30am, by three words that I heard coming from the television: ‘state of emergency’. The local channel 4 news had a ticker running along the bottom with ‘County commissioner declares state of emergency in Allegheny County’. Within about five minutes, ten other counties did the same. After another five minutes, the governor announced that the entire state was under emergency declaration. The reason for these successive declarations was linked to the 24 inches of snow that somehow fell to the ground. The official total as of 8:00am was 18-24 inches; some parts of the area had up to 28 inches.

All we could do was run from window to window shrieking in disbelief.

I really didn’t want to double the work of shoveling, so we decided to wait until the snow stopped before beginning the clean up process. Of course, we had to cancel our plans, much to the horror of Alyssa. She even tried to convince Carey that Bill could bring her here.

Mom had my gloves from last Friday when we had to retrieve her phone, so I needed them before I could start the process anyway.

Plans were drawn up to meet mom at Giant Eagle, or closer to her place, sometime after noon. She couldn’t wait to bring them, so had to stand on the sidewalk until I finished digging out the steps.

Digging those steps out and the sidewalk was nothing short of a feat. Perhaps not enough can be said for having done alot of ‘pre-shoveling’ the night before, even though it didn’t look like I shoveled at all.

I offered to help dig out the cross street neighbors after finishing our side of the street, since there was no sign of Marty at this point (he came out after I finished helping the ladies). They gladly accepted and we worked to keep most of the shoveled snow in the driveway and not around the car.

We did have some fun during the whole mess. ‘Fluffy’, the strange, white, long hair cat who makes his home on Montclair, made no effort to hide the fact that the street snow made for an excellent potty. I fell into a snow bank while trying to cross the street and Marieke took to throwing snowballs at me as I shoveled.

It’s kind of fun to be stranded in the snow and be snowed in, but literally hundreds of thousands of people are without power in the city and I can not fully express how grateful we are that we still have our lights on. Watching the nearly 12 hour local news coverage of the snow storm was interesting. Over the course of the day, the governor shut down all the interstates and the city learned that our mayor was out of town to celebrate his birthday. Of course, we have plenty of snacks for the Super Bowl between the Colts and Saints (Geaux Saints!!!) later.

I doubt Marieke will be going to work tomorrow.

Labels: snow