just enough time to be preoccupied

I really like this song. It's been stuck in my head the last couple of weeks.
I don't know a lot about his band, but I think this is the 3rd track that's been getting rotation on the stations I listen to. Weirdly, once I looked them up and saw them, I was a little put off. (especially from some of the KEXP live performances I saw) They come off as somewhere between cocky jerks (oasis style, maybe?) and 90's throwback in some kind of bad way.. Still, for reasons, this song hits some resonant things in my brain.

Also, interesting to me, the first lyric "Did you know I could claim the dreamer from the dream" is a line used in addiction therapy/support. It's from a book called A Course in Miracles that the author claims was dictated to her by Jesus. I guess I'm always a sucker for stories of divine hallucinations.. Makes me wonder what's going on with that developer who wrote an API to God. Maybe he died? I can't remember.

I think there was something that I now forget about playing pool... but where coherent memory starts, I was in this strange, long but small side room of a Instagram influencer looking apartment and this lady was coarsely chopping bits out of the end of a gigantic pool cue. ..supposedly to illustrate the special construction of this thing, invented by the lady who manufactured them. Something about the wood being solid, but it was like several solid chunks arranged in a certain way, kind of like staves. There was no mention of the gigantic-ness, though I feel it was understood that it was just large for purposes of explaining the construction.

( Read more... )

I am generally kind of adverse to eating at home. I was just pondering this.. I want to make some black bean dip, which is super simple, but also something I haven't done in a long time, and I think both the uncertainty of the recipe's success as well as a generally uncertain time to prepare (even though it's just like dumping some cumin in a can of beans) kind of puts me off.

I will cook hot dogs, or a piece of salmon at home sometimes, but these are very known timeframes and outcomes.

Also thinking I would rather try to make a recipe not when I am at the point of meal time. if it fails, I'm going to be left hungry. (or unsatisfied?) But also, I am less likely to eat "leftovers," if I were to make it at a non-meal time. I think part of this is that when I'm freesytling a schedule, I don't know I need to eat until I -need- to eat.

I don't know if this is really a thing, but it seems like a viable part of it. There's probably something here about novelty too.

I don't know what's up with all the remember-able dreams lately. Two theories are that I'm sleeping well, and that I'm waking up during REM sleep.

Either way, I had a dream last night.. there was a beginning that I don't remember, but I was with a group of people and as I start remembering, we were walking back from somewhere, through a gym equipment store owned by Jean Claude VanDamme. As we pass through and he's standing there in a retail dude kind of way, I notice that one of his machines has kind of fallen apart. I don't know what the machine was, but the broken part looked like some kind of bike handlebar and all the bolts had fallen out of it, and there was a hack-job metal strap loosely holding it on.

I said something about it, and started fixing it. We were having some kind of conversation while I worked on it, and then he pointed out some other bad assembly, so we were both kneeling on the floor trying to put this thing back together. it was a round sheet of plastic with some kind of plastic ring/gasket around the outer edge, and thick white grease all over one side. The plastic ring kept separating from the sheet, and we were trying to get it back on so the whole thing could be put back onto the machine.

That's about all I remember.

I'm pretty sure this one came from a few things.. I think the forgotten beginning came from watching Goosebumps. The gym equipment was from trying to find an affordable but not junk incline bench yesterday. (no joy) And the Jean Claude thing was from my childhood friend _________ who I don't talk to much, but occasionally sends me completely random things on instagram - last night he sent an old conan clip where Jean Claude was demonstrating kicking a mug of water out of andy's hand.

I haven't been having dreams I can remember for a while. This weekend is really the first time I've gone alarmclock-less in a while, and I think it contributed to some dreams.

Friday night I feel like I had about 5 different dreams, but I lost what most of them were about.

The first one I remember was that I was at a bar or restaurant somewhere where S, a friend/romantic interest from Lafayette times worked. I was hanging out with her, but something was happening with cars in the parking lot so I went out, apparently had somekind of super powers, and picked up the entire parking lot by the concrete curb around it and moved it somewhere. Then the dream shifted, and I heard a sound that I knew was this other superhero person looking for me. like with a metaldetector-esque device. He was looking for me, because whatever had given me super powers was an item I had and he wanted it. by using it, it set off the detector. He was tall and lanky in "angel" looking garb. When I saw him pop around the corner of a building I took off flying, knowing that he was more powerful and faster than me. and he took off after me. That's all I remember.

I think this was largely inspired by my recent binge watching of the HBO series "raised by wolves," a ridley scott produced sci-fi bit that is suspected to be based on the apocyphral book of enoch. It's really bad in some ways, but really tickles my brain in some ways. Maybe I thought I was a necromancer in the context of that show?

The other dream is that I was hanging out with T, another from-lafayette person who happens to live a few blocks from me here. We're not really friends but acquainted. In the dream, he owned a bar/restaurant of sometype. (don't know what's up with this concept recurring) It served some sort of fruit drink in weird bottles that reminded me of the pepsi bottles from back to the future 2. We were embarking on some side business of making these clay sculptures that were to be used as headstones, and were setting them up in the landscaping outside the business. I think there was more, but I can't remember.

In highschool, a couple of people in my little peer group worked at the Dairy Queen down the street from the highschool. _____ who was the singer in one of my bands as well as ____ who dated a guy who played bass in one of my bands.. (I think.. or did he date her older sister?) Also, now that I think of it, I believe _____ also worked there, someone who was only socially tangential, and is now an occasional riding buddy.

We were one of the rare schools in the state at the time that had "off campus lunch", and the DQ was a common stop. it wasn't a brazier location, so your options were basically chili cheese dogs or nachos. but that sufficed.

There was a secret menu item, invented by _____, a guy who was a few years older than me, but also was into BMX and worked there. It was called the Nanner Niller, and it was a coke with banana and vanilla flavoring. A tribute to Elvis Presley, somehow spawning from his peanut butter and nanner sandwiches. It's a great drink, and I still occasionally try to order it. many places, including my local DQ don't have any liquid banana (fake, or the dregs from the peeled banana bin) so it's rare that I actually get it.

I've been trying to ride _almost_ every day. Partially to try and lose weight, as the bare minimum thing I might accomplish in this tremendous downtime. (especially opportune when combined with the fact that I'm still not drinking soda because of the migraines.. probably down 600 calories a day right there) It's also become really the only activity in my life besides biological functions and staring at this screen.

Anyway, It's roughing me up. I have a saddle sore-junior, mostly from riding my cyclocross bike on trails, and my nipples are again chafed to bleeding, which is mostly due to the fact that all of my jerseys are old - I think the bike clothes companies make the fabric turn to steel wool after a year or two so you buy more new ones.

Last week I got 5 days and 80 some miles in. This week I've almost got 50 already. I seem to be losing about 6 lbs of water per ride (it's really humid here right now) but I'm not losing much other weight. At the same time, I can see more musculature and vasculature in my extremities, so I know at least a little fat is burning off. probably gaining muscle back is offsetting the loss.

The cross bike has been a good change of pace. I ride mostly the same trail over and over, and while it is the closest thing I've ever had to mastery, I'm really at the long tail of not getting much faster or doing anything new when using a mountain bike. I haven't used the cross bike on trails in about 2 years, after I fell and damaged my thumb. I started again last week, and it kind of re-opens the mastery conversation by being different enough that I'm back down the learning curve, but same enough that I'm having fun and not getting frustrated.

There are two difficult features on the trail. One is called "tetanus hill", and is basically a part of an abandoned car, an awkward chunk of concrete, and some wire fence sticking out the side of a levee. It's a steep climb with those obstacles, with not much run-up. The other is similar. Called "chunky monkey", it's a climb with little run-up, over a chunk of concrete and about 3 feet of big roots. These are the two things that I can't "clean" (traverse without stopping or putting a foot down) consistently on the cross bike. I have cleaned each of them at least once on it, but it's still iffy. Maybe that's exciting. I don't even think about them on the mountain bike. Along with this, I think falling the other day was good, because I haven't in a while. While it hasn't been the case in other areas of my life, I feel like falling reminds me that taking risks has rewards.. if I'm not falling, I'm not finding the edge of what I can do.

The cross bike has also reactivated something in my legs. I've had a couple of rides on it, where an hour in, I suddenly can just turn the crank over effortlessly. I don't know if it's muscle memory from when I used to ride it all the time, or if the biomechanics are better or what, but it's kind of nice.

we're having a mouse infestation. During the winter, we get some, understandably, as it's cold out and there's not much food. I'm not sure why they are coming in now.

One was in the kitchen (which must mean that my attempts to fill all the holes in the wall with steel wool failed) and Hank (cat) was chasing it around. Later that day, someone killed it and left it outside my office door where they bring the toy mice.

Yesterday I came home from a ride and there was a dead mouse in a 5 gallon bucket that Helena had left in the sink. It had cat food in it before, so the mouse must have been looking for food and jumped in from the washing machine? (how did it get on the washing machine???)

Today I asked Helena to bait a trap since we seem to be having so many.. In winter we just do two in the garage and get about a mouse every two weeks. An hour after she set it, it went off while she was out there dying yarn. I have the duty of disposing of them... so I went to get it, and I've not experienced such a fresh kill.. he was still twitching and his eyes were really bulged out. kind of grossed me out TBH. I hate having to kill them, but they poop all over our silverware if unchecked. ick.

I've been watching this show on netflix called midnight diner. It's pretty thin and soap-opera-ish, but the premise is really satisfying to me. It's a small Tokyo diner that's only open midnight to 7a, and seats about 9. One, slightly mysterious, good natured guy works there, and there is a rotating cast of regulars interspersed with randoms. Each episode is a story around one customer and is usually tied to the food they get at the restaurant. It's kind of like a short attention span Cheers with hyperbolicly emotional plots and just a dash of cooking show.

I'm into season 2 now. Glad I found it, nothing else is really capturing my interest. I wish there was a place like the diner here. In my 20's and even 30's hanging out at bars was a real community builder for me, and I always wish I could get that back. I've tried to find a "home" bar here, but everything has too many people, and I think I've just outgrown the bar vibe. The Diner in the show has alcohol and people drinking, but for the most part, the people seem like they are there mainly to hang out, which is what I'm really after.

I finally found a Fiverr dev willing to take on my little lyric generator project. It's been interesting playing product owner on a teeny tiny scale. His first pass only took him a couple of hours and was pretty cool, but it had a couple defects and one of the completion criteria was completely misinterpreted, but I figure in all, that's pretty good for the couple paragraphs and sharpie wireframes I gave him.
Here's an example of some of the things that come out based on a corpus of lyrics from the band hum:

my eye to see far to spare and she miss the train.
differ from her dream with absent eye.
upright let me to come back now.
do care what they choos.
dream with seven nine and think about the end.

I guess the biggest issue I have is that he used the NLTK routine for "stemming" the words, hence some of them missing their suffixes. If this were intended to be generating grammar from scratch, that would matter, but I'm just going off of probability, so it doesn't. He said he'll pull it out in the next rev, and I think the usefulness of output will go up a lot.

I only briefly looked over the code. It's not how I would have done it / want it to be in some ways, but I guess in terms of utility, it still gets me farther than I was. For example, he's just storing the words linearly in the order they are imported. I'm not sure how this affects the probability component since words have multiple instances. though maybe he's taking that into account when he retrieves the word rather than when he puts it in. It also looks like he's using a graph database for something?  know they are trendy, but seems weird.. Maybe it's just easier to work with than other methods like my stupid hacky arrays.

The sentences don't make a lot of sense, but that is as expected. This concept is super basic, and the output intended to be more inspirational than usable verbatim. and hell, most song lyrics don't make a lot of sense anyway.