A small house

Jay's small house:

(via Presurfer)

Friday fun

A police-hating dog:

(via)

 

Pixar’s Terminator:

(via)

Mountain goat man

This is me: being speechless.

(via SucceedBlog)

Pic of the day

Just a random shot from a disposable camera while stumbling down the strip at five in the morning.

I’m so easily entertained

It’s music, entirely out of sound effects from the Terminator 2 movie. But it’s beautiful in a not-very-Terminator2 kind of way:

My mind is still melting

Ummm… chain-based gearing running through hydraulically controlled swing arms gives this truck about 7ft of travel on each wheel. Unbelievable. One question though, what happens when this guy gets stuck? Nobody can get anywhere close to where he goes to get him out.

(via Neatorama)

Easy car repair

I wonder how much a mechanic charges for this fix? :)

(via Bits&Pieces)

Friday Funny

(via Bits&Pieces)

A life update?

Been a while since anything of any depth has made it onto the blog. I suppose it’s been a while since anything of depth has made it into my mind. The two have a correlation with each other.

 

For the most part I feel like a chicken with my head cut off, running around the yard without a clue of where I’m going. Basically, I’ve just been trying to keep myself busy. How am I doing that? Oh, let me count the ways:

1. Cooking – yep still doing lots of this. Rarely photographing it, playing it entirely by ear, and using it as a main source of stress relief in my evenings. And once a week I try to get together with mom to make her dinner.

2. Photography – Well the ‘pic of the days’ keep showing up, so I guess I’m out there shooting. It’s become a bit brainless, but is still enjoyable.

3. Friends – Yeah, hanging out with friends more now than any other time in my life. Weekly dinners with a big group of us, hanging out at Coyote Joe’s on Wednesday nights, all sorts of entertaining stuff.

4. Reading – I finished War & Peace, read Carl Sagan’s ‘Contact’, Steinbeck’s ‘Tortilla Flat’, and ‘The Giver’. Currently switched tracks a bit and am reading Kahlil Gibran’s ‘Laughter and Tears’. Yep, I’m reading some poetry, and it is awesome.

5. Exercise – Well the addiction continues. I finally reached a point where I realized I was over-doing it. I’ve cut down to ~2 hours of lifting per week, 8-12 miles of jogging, and 6-12 miles of hiking per week. Yeah… I might still be a bit over the top, but what can I say. I feel good (and sore) most days, which is what really counts.

6. Dance – Oh yeah, I’ve added dance into my exercise routine. I’m taking ballroom dance lessons at Yavapai College, and it is a total blast. I’m picking things up fairly quickly, and have some great people in the class to help me along. I was a little afraid of going to a dance class by myself, but have had no problems. I’ve even started occasionally making my way to the open dance at the senior center on friday nights. So far I can make a decent mimicry of the Rumba, Waltz, and Foxtrot. :)

7. Driving – Anywhere. Generally Sunday is reserved as a ‘get out of town’ day now. I just try to put myself in an unfamiliar place, open my eyes, and enjoy life for a few hours. Sometimes people come along with me, sometimes not.

These are all the things that keep my mind occupied, and for the most part they do a decent job of it. There are still plenty of days when loneliness creeps in. Even after six months, I’ve not adjusted entirely to not waking up next to somebody, not having a hand to hold, or a knowing look to share.

 

And lately, there have been more days of floundering at the seeming lack of purpose in my life. Where am I going? Is there some grand scheme to this whole ‘life’ thing, or am I just left to myself to figure out which direction to steer this boat into? Questions which have no realistic answers. This, I know. But they pester me none-the-less.

 

All-in-all though, I’d like to think it’s a good life. Or as Robert Prisig said:

“Things are better now. You can sort of tell these things.”

Comics

from TheOatmeal.

The six types of crappy hugs.

 

The 5 phases of caffeine:

Because it’s been almost a whole friday

without something funny. So here is a guy trying to eat eat breakfast while his arm is being constantly electrically shocked.

Ummmm… wow

I didn’t know it, but apparently dolphins are starting to form ‘super pods’:

Puckets of Rundam

My reader overfloweth with awesome this morning:

 

- Probably the best 365 project I’ve ever seen.  (via UtterlyBoring.com)

 

- 100 Ridiculous college courses. (via Presurfer)

 

- My Persona (via Presurfer):

 

- Dog, blown off of pier, saved by stranger. (via Bits&Pieces)

 

- McAwesome little Guitar Player:

(via Bits&Pieces)

A whole bunch of random

Not in much of a writing mood, so here’s a bunch of random:

 

Fog harvesting, great six page article. (via)

 

Yodeling country singer:

 

I notice weird things. Like in the second image of THIS PHOTO ESSAY, the car has an Embry Riddle sticker on the back window.

 

Also on BurnMagazine.com, Aston Kusters.

 

Vibram FiveFingers review at wired.

Friday fun

Soccer goal celebration fail:

From the wonderful folks at Fail Blog

Only my sister

It’s eight o’clock in the evening and my phone rings. It’s Nikki. Nikki calling at eight o’clock in the evening means either:

A)  she is in trouble, or

B) she is in town and wants to hang out

I pick up the phone, to find that today it is a little bit of both.

 

Apparently, as she was shaving her head at home in Jerome her clippers broke, mid-stroke. Dead. Finito. No more clipping to be done. She was in dire straits, as there is no store to buy a new pair of clippers near her, and she didn’t really want to shell out for a new pair anyway. She asked if she could come over and use mine.

 

ME: “Sure, where are you?”

HER: “At home, in Jerome.”

ME: “So, you are going to drive for an hour to my house, just to use my clippers for ten minutes?”

HER: “Yes, see you soon.”

 

An hour later a knock on the door and there she is. One bare patch of scalp showing in an otherwise dark mop of hair. I can’t help but laugh as I take her into the bathroom to setup a make-shift barber shop. I’m not sure what she was thinking, but that one patch is as short as you can get without using a razor. There is no option except to take the rest of it down to the same height.

 

We joke, we laugh, I give her a Mohawk. Then I give her a top-knottish looking thing. And then I finally shave it all off, as close as I can get with my buzzer. When I am done her head is a combination of tan face and brilliant-white scalp. My floor and sink are a mass of near-black fuzz.

 

She looks in the mirror and says she looks like a skin head. I can only agree. She laughs and says she will throw some tanning lotion on it to get it darker.

 

She thanks me for my help, gives me a bag of apricots as payment, and drives back home. I sweep up all the hair and go to bed.

 

A situation that is 100% Nikki. A whole lot of random, a dash of drama, and a bucket full of funny.

A little friday fun

World’s worst alarm clock, but guaranteed to wake you up:

(via)

Ambivalent bumper stickers

Yeah, these are my style.

 

(via)

Motivation?

Not sure if this in inspirational or sad. The boy has drive, but did he lose his childhood?

11 year old boy graduates from college with honors.

 

At least bullies aren’t a problem for him, since he’s also won many national martial arts competitions…

What a catch

Florida fisherman catches U.S. Sidewinder missle while fishing in the Gulf of Mexico.

 

The military totally did not let him keep it.

(via)