crazy norwegians sure know how to cook up fish and chips!  gonna go see the midgets and sprint car races tonight with liz at coos bay speedway.  i sure am doing the red neck type of stuff this summer, first log shows, now midgets and sprint cars...what's next? 

this is a pic of my car on the day i left az on may 30th...you should see how messy it is now!  the plant has sure grown a lot!  and i melted my sleeping pad this morning on my stove so have to get a new one :(  

finished sense and sensibility by jane austen and pygmy by chuck palahniuk.  i do not reccomend either book for anyone unless you are planning to off yourself.  very depressing.  sense and sensibility is the darkest of jane austen's novels and should be avoided at all costs (like the plague and whale maggots) and pygmy is so screwed up that there are no words to describe it, don't read it.

a quote from sense and sensibility by jane austen (this one is a great put down):

“She did not think he deserved the compliment of rational opposition.”

and a quote from pygmy regarding vibrators:

"From battery sex toys to ones that plug into outlets, build a better vibrator, Pygmy, and the world will beat a path to your door."

stared at the ocean for hours today.  walked with doggies, picked up shells, played with seaweed, crunched the sand, smelled the seaweed, saw the sea lions swimming, watched the waves crash, met a border collie named jack that reminded me of yankee, ate clam chowder, fish and chips and marionberry pie, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc.

pics of a whale i saw a cape disappointment.  it had died at sea and washed ashore.  so far it is my ONLY whale sighting to date.  sad that the whale died, but as far as they could tell it had been a natural death.

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log shows are for real.

when you drive across the country and then back again, you STOP when you see a sign for homemade country style sourdough bread, especially when you have an ice chest filled with smoked salmon.  i was wondering what i was going to put the salmon on...just had to buy some cream cheese to go with.  can't even begin to describe it.  heart the beach.  heart fish and chips.  tried some fresh longneck clams and chips today, can't say that i hearted it but i ate it.  tomorrow is the crazy norwegians, BEST fish and chips on the coast...

lame attempt at self portrait, you can tell moose and hunda are REALLY into it...

best thing to do when in washington...drive around and look for the volcano evacuation and tsunami evacuation route signs.  OR you could try going to the log show (it's a LOG show NOT a dog show...).

I could have sworn I had posted this but looked and couldn't find it.  Don't write stuff that you don't want to come true.  Check it out, the 'old blue van' story exists in a green van at a state park in washington.  No lie!  This story was inspired by both my families 'old blue' suburban that went EVERYWHERE and did EVERYTHING and by an old van that was parked at the 138/I-15 interchange for a year...

Here is a pic of the 'green van man/banjo guy' to prove it!

The old man chose his new life carefully.  He knew it would be his last; the doctor had said six months to a year, but treatment might prolong it.  

“Prolong what?” the old man had asked.

“Your life,” the doctor said.

“Oh, you mean the pain,” the old man clarified.

The old man liquefied his assets, paid bills, and organized his accounts.  No family meant no will and no strings.  He tried to remember his brother and got as far as his sticky black hair before he had to sit down with a headache.  The seat back was straight, he leaned into it and rested his elbows on the table in front of him.  He planned for the months to come.

The van was an old blue Chevy; with rust for wheel wells and two cracks running horizontal the length of the windshield.  The old man walked around the van and kicked the tires; the rubber was bald and gray.  He stood there for a moment, scratching his head while the salesman starred off into space.

“I’ll take this one,” the old man said.

“Why don’t you look around?” the salesman suggested, “We have a lot of models to choose from here on the lot.  This old blue here isn’t going to last but six months to a year.”  He patted it affectionately.

The old man smiled, “Perfect,” he said.  

Together they walked back to sign the papers, the salesman had to adjust his stride to match the old man’s.  The salesman held open the door while the old man shuffled to the counter.  Pen in hand, the salesman went through the particulars while the old man nodded.  Then he gave the pen to the old man, who wrapped his bony hand around it.  Ink leaked onto his thumb and left a smudge where he signed his name.  The old man exchanged the pen for the keys, and a shake of hands sealed the deal.  The salesman watched the old man walk out of the lobby.  He had to squint in the glare of the sun but could see a smile on the old man’s face as he hobbled away to his new van.

That night around the dinner table the salesman turned to his wife of thirty years and said, “I sold the blue van today.”

His wife stopped eating and looked out of the window into the dark night.  “Wow,” she said, “I have so many memories of that van.”

“I know,” the salesman said and put his hand on hers.  He squeezed and felt the warmth of her skin.  He glanced at her face and saw a tear slide down her cheek.  “Good old blue,” she said.

The old man took to ownership of the blue van like static to a dryer sheet.  Everyday he set himself a new task; he had thirty days before the new owner of the townhouse showed up.  He cleaned the van, on the inside only; there was years of accumulated dirt and goo to remove.  The old man left the outside of the van alone, he didn’t want to risk flaking off any of the oxidized paint.  He put new sheets on the mattress in the back of the van and piled it high with thick, soft blankets.  It was as if he were building a nest and the more pieces of material he could add the better.  A few pillows topped it off; a cocoon of comfort.  

The old man packed two milk crates full of oatmeal, sardines, pasta, crackers and other dry goods.  The milk crates fit perfectly under the bed, as if the bed had been built with that purpose in mind.  He stowed a flashlight in the glove compartment and a map under the visor.  The first aid kit fit in the console, he made sure it was full of band aids and Neosporin.  The last thing the old man did was to stash pain pills near the bed.  The bad days were getting worse and he did not want to deal with the hurt.

And that was it.  He drove off from his home of twenty years and did not look back.  The day he left was cloudy and overcast and made the desert look soft.  He heard noises in the engine compartment as he drove and something clunked when he hit potholes on the road.

The news reporter stood in the shade of the porch, he was interviewing a woman who commuted to work down in the valley.  “I saw that blue van.  It was parked at the end of the road by exit 142.  You could see it as you drove from the highway onto the freeway.  Anyone could see it.  It was in plain view,” she said.

“Did you ever wonder why it was there?” the news reporter asked.  His hair blew in the wind as he scribbled information on a memo pad.

“I guess so.  Sort of.  But I was one my way to work and I was always late.  Then the rush hour blues would kick in and I would forget about it.  Plus I couldn’t see it on the way home; only on my way to work, by the time I had been to meetings and luncheons I could barley remember where I was off to next, let alone think about some blue van parked in the middle of nowhere.”

The news reporter encountered apathy on many assignments and this one was no different.  As he drove to the next interview he picked at his cuticles.  They bled and he had to wipe his fingers inside his coat pocket.  The thought of an old man, dying a painful death, holed up inside a dilapidated van made him unsure of his own humanity.  The old man had lived 80 plus years, known people, had family, possibly had pets and then packed up and come to the desert to die.  As far as the authorities could tell, he had no living relatives and since he had left enough money to take care of the van and his remains, it was a closed case.

“Yeah, the blue van, parked out there in the desert.  I heard about that.  Some old guy died in there, he was dead for a week before anyone thought to check.  Thank god it was winter.  Wonder what his story is?”

“Were you ever worried that your store was in danger, that you might be robbed by the owner of the blue van?”  The reporter eyed his scabby fingernails as he waited for the store clerk to answer.

“Nah, we get robbed once in a while but it is usually yahoo kids on their way to Vegas.  They drive nice cars and are in and out so fast you don’t know what hit you.  As soon as that guy turned off the motor to that van we knew we were safe.  Never saw him though.  He didn’t come in to buy anything.  Although I think he used the hose out back to get water.”

By that time it was old news.  The paper ran the story, not much was disclosed.  The van had been towed and impounded and the body taken to the morgue.  Local residents labeled the spot, “the blue van location” and stayed clear of it.  Some of the carpools that passed the area merging onto the freeway discussed it lightly during their drive to work.  

“What happened to that van?”

“I heard some guy died in it.  He was really old.  I read about it in the paper but they didn’t explain many details.”

“Why would you choose to die in a rusting old van?”

“I don’t know but the article said that he had been camped their three months or so.  Aren’t the police or the welfare authorities supposed to check on things like that?”

One lady that drove by the spot two times a day taking her kids to school and back silently chided herself for not stopping to see who was living in the van, or at least calling the fire department and having them stop.  She felt a slice of guilt every time she drove by the “blue van location” for the rest of her life.

The wife of the salesman kissed him as he left for work.  He looked into her eyes, “I sometimes wonder what happened to that old man that bought old blue.”

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note to self:  never trust anyone

note to self:  shriveled raisin/pickle heart

The Fault
By: ffluffy
Dedicated to: Dad

When I stand at the road cut and stare at the fault I see more than just the wavy layers of sediment, the broken lines that were laid down flat but now twist back upon themselves, turn sharp and go nowhere, end before they start.  I can see back into my child hood, mineral collecting trips, fossil hunting expeditions, roadside geology books, pulling over and wandering around in the road to ‘get a better look’.  Growing up in the southwest made observing rocks easy.  There are no soil horizons because there is no soil; it never rains enough to break down the feldspar in the granite Santa Catalina Mountains into clay.  There are no trees growing on the bare slopes of the Santa Rita Mountains to block the synclines and anticlines from view.  The sonorant desert is naked in its geology, spread eagle for the world to see.

The San Andreas Fault exposes itself many times on its way north from LA County.  The destruction it has caused over the years is exhibited in the fault scarps that wind their way along the base of the San Gabriel Mountains.  There are valleys with such massive failure that rocks stick straight up into the sky next to rocks that hang themselves parallel with the ground.  Devils Punch Bowl is one place that you can drive to and stare down at a massive syncline of sedimentary and metamorphic rock.  Such extreme failure has occurred at this point of the fault that the elevation difference between the top and the bottom of the syncline is plus one thousand feet.  Then if you hike about three miles from the Devil’s Punch Bowl you come to the Devils Chair.  Another dissection of the fault made public.  Rocks going every which way, jumbled and tumbled and strewn about, ‘what happened here’?  If it was a jigsaw puzzle, you would be hard pressed to find a corner piece just to get started.

On the tour of the San Andreas Fault, a swamp turned grass land shows how just a little up lift is enough elevation change to kill the moss and lichens and make the liverworts give way to scrub oak and grass.  And that change occurred slowly, unobservable on a daily basis, except to the liverworts.

I can’t wait for the catastrophic movement.  Like the scarps we saw with the University of Arizona Geology Club at Loma Prieta: ten feet of vertical change in less than six horizontal inches.  It was so tall that the biggest guy on our field trip couldn’t reach the top.  What would happen if the earth moved like that with a person standing in the vicinity?  The immediate violence of it would mess with your inner child and your give you vertigo all at the same time. 

Psycho analyzing the Earth puts everything into perspective; life is short, geologic time is not.  This can be summarized with my brother’s favorite saying, “watch out for life;” more than likely we will all be watching the Earth.  I will never be able to drive past a road cut without counting the drill holes used to blast it into existence, and every mineral or fossil find I mentally dedicate to my dad who drove old station wagons down crazy four wheel drive roads just so that my brother and I could pick up trilobite fossils from the Cambrian period.

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how many bottles of wine can a wineo drink if a wino could drink wine?????????  red cork.  red egg.  red one.  p.s. don't forget to train your dog.

life is dissatisfaction

i'll meet you somewhere

how about colorado

when the world blows up

this is moose and his new favorite couch mate, ducky.  moose hearts all couches, he is a couch whore.

this one time at band camp, i got TONS of mosquito bites camping in Georgia with the doors open.  i think they thought i tasted like wine and peach cobbler, which i probably did.  little hundalootodo kept guard against the alligators and swamp monsters.  i pretty much <3 (heart) the little, he is the best snuggler ever!  when i pulled up to camp i just threw everything out of my car, i have been accused of my area looking like a 'homeless person's camp'.  close enough.

I wrote this story while driving 80 mph on I-10 thru the swamps.  It is dedicated to anyone who has ever volunteered to help people less fortunate than themselves.

Moss Monsters Battle Macaroni Demons For Cookies

The moss was wrapped around the one way sign, but we were going the wrong way.  Q and I battled it out in a game of green and black checkers; the sequin macaroni cheated and double kinged me.

“I think I can see inside your heart,” Q said.

“I found black sparkly sequin macaroni demons in there.  I’m trying to teach them to fly.”

“The moss monster might be able to fly, it hangs out near the fog,” Q glanced up.

“What about that goal?”

“It’s covered in mold, let it go.  Or teach it to fly,” Q shrugged.

The clouds touched the trees, dark and gray and tinted green, pressing down on me and scaring the macaroni demons deeper into my heart.  I checked their nubby wings but they had not grown since yesterday. 

“Maybe you can teach them to jump into the sky and catch a moss rope out of here,” Q suggested.

Go demons go.

Goal demons goal.

Go fly goal.

Cool quote from Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (which is only cool if you have read Pride and Prejudice a million times) by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith.  (Try to imagine a nice shady path in England and Elizabeth Bennet is out for a walk with Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley's sisters.)

But Elizabeth, who had not the least inclination to remain with them, laughigngly answered:

"No, no; stay where you are.  You are charmingly grouped, and appear to uncommon advantage.  The picturesque would be spoilt by admitting a fourth.  Besides, that path is most assuredly rife with zombies, and I have not the inclination to engage in fighting them off to-day:  Good-bye."

Little hundalootodo jumping.