monkeyplus1

Seems like it’s been weeks of snow on the ground, a first since I arrived her fifteen years ago. In the past, it’s just been a day or two, but this is ridiculous.

This picture was after the worst of it, after a snow day from hell where the neighbors and I spent the day on the roofs, some thirty feet off the ground, clearing problematic ice packs and snow accumulation.

Here, the girl is just moments from sinking in the powedery snow thigh-deep.

The wife’s car, left on the street, was blanketed.

(My WRX stayed nice, dry and warm in the garage).

Driving in the snow has been a learning experience. Four-wheel drive is fucking awesome.  Never getting past 30mph, I rarely used the breaks, leaving the car in gear the whole time, and slowing down by just taking my foot off the gas.  Excellent traction, no chains, no snow tires.

There were a few iffy spots.  My neighbor was driving me to a rental place to get the 30-foot ladder and growing impatient with the slow traffic, unwisely decided to use a side-street.

We spent nearly 30 minutes stuck atop a snow-pack, the wheels just digging the car down farther into the snow.

Some Phillipino-looking guys eventually pulled up with a snow-chained Jeep, unloaded some tow-straps, and pulled us right out. One of them said, “you guys got a Subaru stuck in the snow? SHAME!”.  I laughed and pointed to my neighbor, “HE was driving!”.   I could have just as easily made the same mistake, so I learned a lesson from it.

Yeah, the snow has gotten plenty old, we’re tired of it.

It’s xmas eve, and the kids are still up at 9pm, getting on each other’s nerves over who gets to pop some bubble-wrap that came with Grandma’s packages.

Well, it’s time to go spank some xmas cheer back into them. Happy holidays

My webhost upgraded the server hosting my site, and in the process, my blog got nuked. In any event, the good folks at dreamhost.com fixed it up. I did apologize for using the word “fucked” when describing my situation in regard to their upgrade.

At first, video games kept me occupied, then on-demand movies, and of course, my friend the public library. My reading list over at goodreads continues to grow phenomenally.

Lately, I’ve been devouring the work of the late writer Philip K. Dick.  Many things have been said about him, and I’d agree that he had a brilliant and uniquely original mind.

His writing has been behind some movies: Blade Runner, Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly, The Minority Report.

His writing style is stark, unornamented. The ideas behind his stories often overshadow the meager character development, but the ideas are brilliant.

Towards the late 60s and throughout the 70s, it seems obvious he experimented with all kinds of mind-altering substances, particularly hallucinogens and entheogens. The writing in the years before his death in 1982 grow vastly more metaphysical and psychological.

He wrote a lot, so when I pick up a book of his, I usually forego the synopsis on the back cover, and look for the first copyright date.  Any of his books in the late 60s forward are sure to be mindblowing.

Couldn’t get to sleep the other night. For some reason, I started thinking about what I’d put in an autobiographical memoir. My mind wandered across my entire past, thinking of all the people and events that have unfolded.   What a trip it’s been so far.

Made some beautiful music with Des, under the Pinkstrom umbrella.

Listen here at our site   the track is “silver shock”, which we recorded the weekend before Thanksgiving.

We spent Thanksgiving in Boise, Idaho this year, with the wife’s extended family.

We drove the Maxima, to keep the mileage low on the WRX, and also to be able to share the driving, since the wife doesn’t do manual transmissions.  It’s about a 7 hour drive.

The first couple hours driving outside of Portland is amazing, I soaked in the overwhelming beauty of the Columbia River Gorge.  Once you get past that, the scenery grows less and less interesting, and once you cross into Idaho, abandon all hope.

The northern part of Idaho is beautiful, though it’s notorious for white supremist camps. The rest of Idaho is pure red-state: white, Christian, meat-eating, republican, small-town America. They’re not peeling off their McCain/Palin bumperstickers any time soon.

The first two nights we spent at my mother in-law’s house, in the quaint North-end of Boise.  She was kind enough to have a couple vegan things for me to eat on Thanksgiving.

Sleeping there was an allergy nightmare, I inhaled probably an ounce of cat hair and dander, and slept in a room next to the litter box.  The little shits are complete fucks at night, fighting, vomiting, tearing ass through the house, and walking over our beds after visiting the litter box.

The next two nights the wife and I stayed at a Hyatt hotel, pure luxury, almost as nice as being home.

The only times I think being vegan sucks is when I’m traveling, finding food is always a problem.

Glad to be home in lush, verdant Portland. My mother-in-law had a scale, and I weighed myself for the first time, and was surprised. Holy shit, I’ve put on some weight. I’m fasting for a few days, shrink my stomach down, get rid of some toxins and bad habits. It’s worked many times in the past.