registed for the ride

I decided to hit the used bookstore in Troy today, so I headed there after dropping Mark off at Preschool. It wasn't quite that I wanted to hit the bookstore itself, but rather I wanted to sign up for the Troy Strawberry Festival bike ride. I have about 3 weeks to finish getting ready for it, I'll be doing the 29 mile tour. Both years I did it my bike computers said it was really about 32 miles, but I think 29 is their target distance.

Anyways, the used bookstore in Troy has a unique property: it is part of a pseudo mall. There is an office building containing the Troy Chamber of Commerce, as well as Strawberry Festival office. On the main floor, there is a rear entrance for the book store, as well as a coffee house. On the other side of the bookstore from the coffee shop is a small deli type restaurant. While it doesn't have an entrance to the lobby, it has an ordering window. Handy, especially if it is raining.

I didn't really find anything I was really looking for there, but I did pick up a Jack Higgins book I was missing. I almost stuck some luck, I did find one of the Jon Winters books (Professor Gilbert Cross from Eastern Michigan University is the author, written back in the real early 80's) but it was the second of the series, I am only missing the 3rd of the series, but I was pleasantly surprised.

Beyond that the day was normal until I picked up my cousins daughter who we babysit most weekdays, and at the store getting some supplies she piped up how she has a dad now.

Her dad has been 'absent' since before she was born, though I internally wonder if it really was her dad wanting nothing to do with her, or being run off by her mom. At any rate, her dad is staying with her and her mom for a week or two, and yesterday she was finally told that the visitor was really her dad.

It is odd for me, I've babysat her for about 3 years, in which time I was effective the only make role model in her life. Now her dad is in the picture, and he may well be gone in a few weeks.  But it feels like I have lost part of my purpose, not that I actually officially had it. (De facto vs. de juri) It still makes me feel odd though.

Dull reading

I am currently working on reading two classical books, Don Quixote (Wordsworth Classics) and Rob Roy (Wordsworth Classics). (To be fair, I have 3 other books that I might start reading at any moment as well, but sticking to the point for now...)

I started Don Quixote back in 2003, and until about 2 weeks ago was still on the first 10 pages. But I did vow to finish that book, and I think I might even be about 6% of the way through it. It is, after all, a big damn book. (One of my favorite quotes from Wagons East!) It really started out dull, but has improved a bit as it has gone along. Rob Roy, on the other hand, well, damn its dull. Twenty-nine pages into it (almost 10%) and all that has really happened was Frank, the main character (yeah, Rob Roy isn't the main character, and hasn't even been mentioned yet either.) has bitched about not wanting to take up the family business and is traveling north to get a cousin as his replacement in the family biz.

How either of these are classics happens to be a mystery to me. Ironically, everything I knew of the Don story happens to be within the first 20 or so pages. But the rambling I saw therein is nothing to that of Rob Roy. I would dare say the rantings of Frank would disgust even the most hardened EMO today. The edition is unabridged, but damn, I can summarize  the first 29 pages as quickly as this:

Frank goes home, and his dad is pissed that he will not follow in the family business . He might be able to get over it, but then he finds out Frank want to be a poet. Frank is disowned, and sent to retrieve his cousin. Along the way there he starts traveling with a guy that is paranoid that Frank might actually be a thief, not that it stops him from traveling with Frank.

Seriously, take each of those 4 sentences, and make each one take about 7 pages each, and you have the first 29 pages of Rob Roy.


On the bright side, I do have a few other books I will probably start (and finish) before  I get much farther through either of the above books. Yu-Gi-Oh! Vol. 6: Duelist (Yu-Gi-Oh! (Graphic Novels)) , The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials, Book 1) , and The Drakov Memoranda

I can probably read YuGiOh (and vol 7) in the space of a few hours. (45 min each I would expect) and Drakov would probably be a 2 day long read. No idea about Golden Compass though, it is a bit bigger, and I hear a fair bit more complex.

All told, I don't think I'll pick up another 'Classic" book anytime soon.

The pics are safe

I found this great link today and it allowed me to actually get ubuntu to boot using the old main file. I got Mark's zoo pics off it, and switched back to the newer install of Ubuntu 10.04. I even found out how to print off the networked pc that runs Windows, which means I don't really need to ever boot to windows for darn near anything.

I have to admit, Ubuntu is a bit different to get used to, but it is a whole lot faster than Windows. Of course, it might be partly that it installed as a 64-bit OS...

Now, if they find the flash drive at JVS, I'll be set. At least I saved the pics Mark took, and that darn near made my day.

Its a bird, its a plane, no its- WTF?!?!

The day started out rather normal, as so many of them do, where the TV auto tunes to channel 7, WHIO for the morning news. The storm last night was quiet, or it was here. A facebook friend mentioned the non-storm as well, but the way the crew on the news talked, it was like Zeus and Thor were having a pissing contest on the roof of the station. (As cool as that would be to see, I'd rather not ever be in a position to see that.)

I got a package to Goin Postal to be shipped to NY, and headed about my day. They couldn't find the flash drive at the preschool with Mark's pics, but they think they know where it is. He seems to be taking it in stride though.

We went to Applebees for dinner, some kind of teacher appreciation night, so Ruthie got to eat for free. She said it was the first time in years that she actually liked the food there.

But a funny thing happened on the way there. We left from Piqua to meet Ruthie there, and I saw something in the sky. Two somethings, actually. Reflecting the sun, but in the shape of birds. One rotated a little, and it turned into a giant metal diamond shape, I blinked, and both were gone. They were too far apart to be the same object, and gone instantly. It almost looked like a kite, but was too big and too bright in reflecting the sun for that. If they had been a plane, it wouldn't have disappeared that fast.

Now, I have seen things in my day. This ranks up there with the weirdest things ever. What makes it funny is that I rationalized it to be a pair of giant metal sky birds rather than some type of aircraft. I think I have seen just a few too odd of things in my days when I am fine rationalizing giant birds in the sky that reflect light like metal.

In a moment of irony, Aerials came on the radio during the ride home. Aerials...


Sometime I really wonder just what the gods are doing.

The case of the ghost rain

Mark had his 3rd t-ball game tonight, and we capped it off a trip to Faith's Pizza. We heard the first of the storm warnings on the radio, and we managed to leave just in time to get home before the storm. And by storm, I mean wind storm. I didn't hear a single bit of thunder, and Ruthie wasn't sure if she had heard one or not.

Major storm warnings, and not thunder and lightning.


Fair enough, I guess. I went out onto the porch, which according to legend, or at least the guy who lives in the house behind us, has been enclosed since about '95. The first thing I saw was there was a huge wet area at the door, like it had been rained on, just barely not yet at the point of making a puddle. The ceiling and walls as well as the floor around it were all dry. Now, I admit, Enzo has left a puddle or two since he started using training pants vs diapers, but he was dry. Stinky, perhaps, but dry. The outside door is a good 10 feet or more, so even if the water came in there, it shouldn't have reached. Nothing else was wet. This was around 8, and by 10 when I was taking out the trash in the now stormless night, it was almost completely dried up.

I managed to finish another book tonight, making the total for the year 40 books. I am about to start The Golden Compass in the next day or so. After 2 Higgins books in a row, I need a genre change. Next for that genre will be The Drakov Memoranda by Jon Winters (aka Gilbert Cross) I already have the sequel The Catenary Exchange and I will probably order Berlin Fugue next week or so. I am really looking forward to it, since the other Gilbert books I have read were the Young Adult books.

I only have 2 cans left of White out Mountain Dew. Perhaps a bad name, but I like the flavor. I might get a second case this week.

I got an order from Germany for hot sauce, shipped w/i the US of course. I have it ready to take to the shipping depot tomorrow, and it will be on it's way quickly. It is actually the second foreign order I have taken, I did one over the phone from a Canadian to be sent to FL once. It is the first time UPS was selected as a shipping method, though I have sent FedEx before.

Now, if only I wasn't burning up, cooking in my skin from the weather... I miss Michigan many times, it's just too dang hot in here, and the windows are too far from the outlets to even think of getting an Air Conditioner. The fan in use now just doesn't cut it. So as long as I survive the heat, my hurt wrist and foot, I'll be fine. Well, that and get the rest of the $$ for the Strawberry Festival ride before the 15th.