Silly size but splendid sounding

Chris Thile (thee'-lee) of the band Nickel Creek plays a mandolin. When I first saw their "Smoothie Song" video, I thought Chris was just poking fun at playing a fake mini guitar. Silly me. But then I looked carefully and I realized it was indeed a serious instrument. And wow how cool and unique it sounded when pieced together with Sara Watkins' violin and Sean Watkins' guitar. Their strumming and picking are tré virtuostic and so killer rich, as likely instilled in their upbringing. I admire immensely their achievements and focus at such young ages.

Nickel Creek is my latest musical inspiration. They're labeled as contemporary bluegrass. My favorite songs are "This Side," "Speak," "Smoothie Song" and "Lighthouse Tale" in that order, with neato videos to match as well.

It's the good old 'don't judge a book by it's yadda yadda' lesson learned.

Super stuck!

The maker of floor adhesive is a g*dd*mn mother f*cker!

Two hours it took! I'm sorry, I mean more than two hours it took to remove just two one-square foot tiles off my kitchen floor. (Linoleum or vinyl they were; whatever, I don't care.) I might as well have been scraping away at epoxy with a straw. This stuff was incredibly sticky.

It was suppose to be a simple replacement repair. I thought I could just peel 'em out and put new ones down. Hubboy! It turns out that the squares wouldn't lift in one piece; they'd just tear in small rips at the surface. So I ended up having to use a wood chisel and hammer to remove it all, and I had to be careful not to scrape up the wood subfloor underneath.

Anyway, it's a job done and over. Enough said about it. Good riddens.

G*dd*mn adhesive mother friggin glue f*cker! Curse your soul!

My new heart monitor

I bought a watch that can measure my heart rate. I read it could be useful for making my bike trainer workouts more efficient, although I already knew that years ago. And of course I was curious how high I could get my bpm (beats per minute)--unadmittingly the likely reason for getting it.

Now there's a conventional but inaccurate formula for calculating an individual's maximum heart rate*: (220 - age) = (max heart rate). Unfortunately, that's like saying that the average person's height is 5'8" so we all must be.

Last week I set out to test the '220-age' formula. On that day, I tried taking my heart to the limit on the bike trainer. I peddled and peddled away for about 40 minutes and found my highest rate peaked at 195 bpm. Still, it was a short workout and I wasn't warmed up well enough to get myself to exhaustion for a more accurate reading. Otherwise, it's possible my heart could've gone a few beats higher. So see, being 36 years old, my max heart rate should've calculated to 220-36=184 bpm, but it was really 11 beats above that. Now it certainly doesn't mean that I'm healthier than the avg; just that the formula is inaccurate when applied to an individual. Probably today or tomorrow, I'll bike again for a more thorough test.

By the way, I think there lies the reason for me keeping up with the workouts: it's a methodical way for appeasing my curiosity on how far I can push myself at a given age.

***

* Go ahead, play with yourself :-). I'd previously thought my heart could just keep beating faster and faster til heart attack city occurs. But no, it eventually levels at a certain rate no matter how much you push yourself. How weird it was to see this when I was biking hard!

Ethnic manners

I'm fascinated by the different social attitudes of cultures. Like in France, as I was told by my former French teacher, people there perceive a smaller 'elbow room' space. For example, my teacher told a story where she had a conversation with an American and her face was less than a foot away from his. A pretty normal distance for her and her copatriots, but not for him. Well, he had backed up a step and then she would move forward a step. Then he'd back up again and she'd move forward again...and so on until they had reached the other side of the room. She found this to be consistent with almost all Americans she spoke with, although she did eventually learn to stop waltzing across the floor and give the yanks their space.

Anyway, now I read this New York Times article about Hong Kong Disney and how the visitors from different cultures take varying attitudes when it comes to simply standing in line. Such a sample reminds me that language extends well beyond mere words.

I don't know where else I'm going with this. I'm just simply fascinated.

Time to watch Globe Trekker on PBS. Ian Wright is da bomb!

Bush quotes

I do understand that President Bush's public speaking ability could use a bit of refinement. I look forward to reading his press quotes for remarks that just don't seem quite right. Like Jay Leno's monologue before my bedtime, Bush's words certainly can make my day:

On Hurricane Katrina:
"We'll get on top of this situation and we're going to help the people that need help." (FoxNews.com)

The president's plane flew about 2,500 feet over New Orleans and about 1,700 feet over Mississippi. "It's devastating. It's got to be doubly devastating on the ground," Bush said. (CNN.com)

Sunday bike ride

Success. I followed through on my decision from my previous post to do a bike ride Sunday morning. I logged in 42.78 miles for the just over 2 1/2 hr tour, which is my longest ride in recent years that I can remember. Toward the end, my quads started to cramp when I got off the saddle going up the hills, but I still felt strong. I drank some coffee prior to my ride as an experiment, as I've read that caffeine can boost performance. Indeed, I think it did.

I like the area where I bike. Even though I live in a pretty densely populated suburb close to Newark NJ, I'm amazed that I only need to peddle for about 40 minutes west to smell the sweet stench of horse sh*t. That's my indication that I'm approaching beautiful farm and park scenery along relatively quiet country roads.

I use Microsoft Street & Trips to plan my routes. And having looked at the overview map of Sunday's ride, I'm impressed that a bike can cover so much ground efficiently. I'll plan my next route in the same area, since I'm fond of the towns, but along the other backroads that I haven't taken.

Endorphin deprived

Just past 1 am and couldn't sleep. Saw Blade Trinity a few hours ago on DVD, then Tina woke up to find me as part of her all too consistent just-after-midnight routine. I laid down with her again but just couldn't shut the brain. So obviously here I am.

I haven't worked out in a week and the withdrawal is kicking in. Ahah, that's it. Anyway, it hurts. So first thing come 7 am (hopefully), I'll be out on the rode on my Cannondale on a long morning tour to Morristown and perhaps beyond. If I'm lucky, I'll chart about 40 miles roundtrip. I think I need it. At least it should help me sleep more soundly tomorrow night. Then the twitching should stop :-)

Gotta zzz...

Back to school

Can you hear it? It's that song. That song from the Staples commercial: "It's the mooost... wonderful timmme...of the yearrr...." It's ringing in my head right now. And I'm sure I'll forever remember that jingle til the day the cows come home. Ummm, yeah.*

Tina awoke eagerly this morning for her first day in kindergarten. She was excited and so was I. I thought of my old grammar school and highschool days and how I really looked forward to coming back to the classroom from the long summers. Shopping for new clothes wasn't too much of a big deal for me. But the stationery...oh boy!...the geek inside just couldn't keep the thrills quietly at bay. Cool looking folders, .5mm retractable pencils, killer binders and, of course...the ultimate pocket protectors! Yeah, I know...dweeb city to the max...but hey I could care less then. It was cool to me. Now let's get back to the present.

Since it was the first day of class, parents were allowed to bring their children into the classrooms to meet the teachers. Otherwise, the kids normally get dropped off just within the school doors. All the teachers seemed nice as I figured from speaking to one at length in the hallway. Then I spoke casually with the principal as he passed by and he was darn alright as well. Now I say that with surprise because I remember being fearful of my school authorities and thinking of them as not being too kind. I vividly remember many of their 'mean' moments. Very many. And some I felt were just plain terrible to us. Anyway, again to the present.

It felt very strange to talk one-on-one with the teachers and the principal as peers. For a brief millisecond, I expected to hear the condescending tones and pedantic rambling as I long remembered. But it didn't happen. My flashback feelings were trying to convince me otherwise, but I realized quickly that times have indeed changed, that the school system has evolved productively and that my kids would likely be taught better than I was taught and with much more compassion than I had received. Thank goodness gracious for that.

Now if they could only improve the morning dropoff and afternoon mayhem in the parking lot. Talk about crazy!

*That Staples commercial originally aired in 1993. I failed to find which ad agency brainstormed it.

Buzz buzz

I killed a lot of bees today. At least I thought so. They were really wasps; yellowjackets, to be precise. They were nesting within the space where my outdoor faucet pipe meets the house foundation. (I knew I should've sealed that hole long ago. It's just an invitation for insects to come in. Darn me!)

I had seen the wasps congregating around the faucet weeks ago, but cared nothing for it until I saw one milling about in the basement yesterday. So I finally got off my ass and headed to Home Depot for a solution.

"Excuse me sir," I said to a Home Depot man. "Umm, where are your bee insecticides? I have some bees that I need to kill." The Home Depot man said, "Right here." And he pointed to a spray can that read 'Wasp and Hornet Killer.' "That'll do the trick," he said. And suddenly, it was then that the funkiness dawned on me. Hmmmm, I thought. What the f*ck do I know about bees and wasps? I mean what the hell's the difference?

So I bought the can, went home, sprayed the entire contents into the hole (no doubt everyone does the overspraying thing when it comes to killing insects), and then went upstairs to Google about the difference between bees and wasps (yellowjackets really, since these are the ones that everyone confuses for bees).

In a nutshell: bees are nice; yellowjackets are not. Bees are practically all furry; yellowjackets are more shiny. Bees hang around flowers. Yellowjackets hang around garbage cans. Bees sting only once then die. Yellowjackets sting, and then sting again, and then sting again...

Remember the times when you saw these really fat fuzzy things flying gracefully from one flower to another almost in slow motion, and you said, "awww, that's so cute; it's a bumblebee." Well, you were so right. It was. And then remember the other times you saw one of these thinner flying thingies scooting around your head and it seemed to never go away. You waved your hands in the air, spun around, ducked down and eventually ran off in contortions to avoid getting stung. Yup, that's the nasty yellowjacket; a wasp.

And now you know.

My basement floor is now littered with about 15 or more yellowjackets. I went downstairs to check an hour after I sprayed and saw them all either dead or gasping for life. I smiled in victory, of course.

So here's what I learned: I'll never think badly of a bee ever again. They'll always be my sweet furry little friends. But to all you yellowjackets, I say "be afraid; be very afraid, for I shall always be pointing my spray can at you."

Now I know the difference.

Shooting stars tonight

The peak of the Perseid Meteor Shower is tonight. Unfortunately, the forecast in our area calls for clouds and chance of thunderstorms starting early evening. Plus, we live in an area where there's too much light pollution. We'd need to drive westward to get darker skies.

If the conditions do become favorable for us, I'd really like to treat my little ones to the show. I think they'd get a real kick out of it. I think it was circa 1986 when camping that I had my first and only full viewing of the showers. Mother of goodness was it amazing.

For more info:
http://www.space.com/spacewatch/050805_perseid_guide.html
http://www.jackstargazer.com/