Month: July 2009

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Amped up!

I know that everything had significance upon a time, but there really was a ton of junk in the garage until last week’s purge.

Today’s archeological finding? The amp for my brother’s bass guitar!

There’s a sordid tale of teen angst and paternal neglect behind this one, but my bro can dish on that if he pleases.

There’s also a tale of mystery as to the whereabouts of the aforementioned bass guitar, but I’m convinced it was sold for drug money by the previous occupant in the house (during the 5-year interregnum before the Rothstoration).

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What It Is: 7/13/09

What I’m reading: Killshot, by Elmore Leonard, and Asterios Polyp, by David Mazzucchelli.

What I’m listening to: LP by Discovery, which was okay, but a little too deliberately like a poor man’s Postal Service.

What I’m watching: Just The Tall Guy (one of my favorite movies back in college, but one I haven’t watched in at least a decade), and this week’s Deadliest Catch. Amy had a pretty late work-week, and I tend not to watch a lot of stuff by myself.

What I’m drinking: Plymouth & Q Tonic.

What Rufus is up to: Making his first foray into a lake.

Where I’m going: Back to the office! Eek!

What I’m happy about: That I managed to reduce my daily caffeine intake by more than 50% during this vacation! (Also, that I managed to clear around 225 square feet of my backyard by pulling up rampant forsythia, cleaned out my garage, took care of a ton of other items on my to-do list, and still got to spend time with my brother & his family.)

What I’m sad about: That the downstairs freezer and the washing machine both crapped out last week. We got a new washer on Sunday and have a repair guy coming next week for the freezer.

What I’m worried about: Getting back into the rhythm of working at my office, as opposed to working at home.

What I’m pondering: How much of my Top Companies issue will be out of date by the time it sees print.

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Up above, aliens hover, shooting home movies for the folks back home

While cleaning out the garage this week (I have the best stay-at-home vacations!), I came across some fun artifacts.

First up: my dad was a professional photographer, and I guess he also shot home movies (pleasedon’tturnouttobeBobCrane):

The item on the left is a Bolex Paillard P3 Zoom Reflex 8mm camera, c. 1963-4. The item on the right is a Flip video camera, c. 2008.

Looking this up online, I find that people still shoot with this Bolex; I should read more to find out how they justify using it instead of our various video and hard-drive based options. Were the lenses that much better then?

More to come . . .

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Lakewalk

I spent a chunk of the morning working on the garage. After clearing out a 40-year-old worktable, I discovered that it was over a square foot of extremely sticky, viscous grease-oil sludge, with decades worth of junk (nails, can lids, lightbulbs, etc.) trapped in it. I scraped up a lot of it (it takes the paint off the floor!), then decided to take a break.

Since it’s such a lovely day — 70 degrees, sunny, nice breeze — I decided to take Rufus out to a trail on Skyline Drive and walk up to Ramapo Lake. Ru decided that he needed to cool down a little, and, well . . .

Here’s the full set of pix from the walk. Now, back to home-work!

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Lakefront

It’s another vacation-at-home day, dear readers! I started it off by taking Rufus for a 6:30 a.m. walk down to Skyline Lake. I’d have gone later in the day, but then it might get too warm or start thunderstorming. Here’s a pic from the side of the Skyline Lake clubhouse:

And now . . . to clean out the garage!