TeeBee's Blog

Our church's Christian Education team organizes an Advent Workshop every year. A small service, followed by potluck sandwiches and soup, then lots and lots of Advent crafts. Emma brought her friend Madeleine; Alex brought his friend Matthew. Gina manned the wooden snowman station (I cut out and painted 30 snowmen). I roamed around taking pictures and helping out. Lots of fun for all who attended.

Pics here.

teebee

Last night, around 9:15 - kids are in bed, Gina's around doing something or another, and I have the living room to myself. I decide to put on a record and do some reading. Open the cabinet and there's my album collection - some 5 feet of vinyl chronicling my musical history. I select one (Take 5/Dave Brubeck) and am halfway through putting it on when I realize: I miss this.

Not the sound - albums sound mighty hissy and poppy compared to CDs. It's the ritual I miss. Slice the dust jacket-covered disk out of the sleeve. Maybe a moment or two spent remembering when you last listened to that album, or when and where you were when you bought it. The 2-handed handle-only-by-the-middle-and-edge move to extract the album from the dust jacket. The casual flip-from-the-edge to select the right side. Place it on the platter. Get out the Discwasher. 3 drops on the edge, rub it in with the bottle. Gently spin the platter with one hand while applying the Discwasher with the other. Lift the tonearm (when was the last time you used that word?) and with a surgeon's precision, set the needle into place.

I've probably done that ritual a thousand times in my life. Done it so many times it's automatic. Hands do what they need to do w/o thinking. Bing bang slip plop spin wash thump music. Done.

Doing it again last night felt like stepping back (a bit) into time. My first album - The White Album by the Beatles. Buying that 3-album Frank Zappa all-instrumental album in college and listening to it over and over again. The gentle glow from the turntable strobe being the only light in a room late at night while I snooze on a couch. The click-whirr-bump-click sound as the tonearm returns to its resting place after an album completes.

Will people of the CD generation have their own memories like this with CDs? Possibly, but I doubt it. I think things have to be a bit of work in order to be a ritual. Turning on and tuning the TV isn't a ritual anymore. Starting the car isn't either. Slipping in a CD takes no effort or preparation, so I don't see it becoming an anchor for past memories.

Oh well - their loss.

tb

Warmest birthday wishes go out to my big brother Ed!

teebee

I had been looking for a gear reduction motor for awhile - something that could be used to animate Halloween props, or make a cool indoor mini-golf hole, or something. I found what looks like one at the local surplus place, but can't figure out how to get it to work.

Pics here.

Looking at the wiring diagram on the side, it looks like this is a single-speed, reversible motor. If you put 110v AC power across black-blue, you go clockwise. Black-red gives you counterclockwise. When I tried doing that, nothing happened. I think the problem is that the circuit indicates a capacitor across red-blue, and I didn't have that.

Anyone have any insight?

teebee

Poker last night, snow this morning.

Poker: A full house (pun intended) as everyone shows, even Ghost Dave. We're playing on our new porch, and it's a bit tight but not too bad. Jim brought wasabi something-or-others, and all our sinuses are cleared out by wasabi fumes.

I deal a round of 2-out-of-three that just won't end - no one can get 2 out of 3. Finally resolve it after 3 go-rounds with a hand of 7-card. James wins.

Glenn calls for a round of "side bets" - everyone groans. Goes on and on and on and on. Finally someone gets 3 chips, and we can move on.

Big winners - Glenn and James. I pretty much bust out, along with Jim and Norm.

Snow: woke up to a light dusting on the ground. Is snowing pretty hard now - big, wet flakes that melt when they touch the ground. Am currently working with a guy from Bombay who has never seen snow. Be interesting to get his reaction.

teebee

So far I've been talking about cars that I rode in (mostly in the back, fighting with either my oldest brother or youngest brother). However, in December of 1979 a frightening thing occured - I turned 16-1/2 and promptly got my license. From then on, cars took on a whole new significance. Now, I was the driver. And the first car I drove on a regular basis was:.... No, not the van - Ed and Dave got to drive that. No, not the Fiat - it was done by the time I got to drive. Not the Celica - I hadn't earned that right yet. Nope, it was:

1977 Chevrolet Chevette, dark green w/tan interior

This was the car we bought after selling the van. Monster V8-powered camping machine to POS early-American econobox. Quiet a transition, no?

My first driving experience with this car was after school, before Mom and Dad came home from work (and before I had my license). We lived at the time on a private, dead-end road. Past our drive was was one more driveway, then a long winding stretch of road leading to a mostly-deserted Adam's Family type house, where the road looped around and came back. A perfect little dirt-track for an ambitious driver wanna-be with a go-kart-type car and no parents around. I'd spend about an hour perfecting my 2nd-gear slide-the-rear-end techniques: hard left out of the driveway, accellerate towards the first turn, catch 2nd coming in, tromp on it, slide the rear out to the right as you went around, maybe keep the slide going down the back straight, catch 3rd, then a quick downshift into 2nd, then a driver's choice - hard right to go around the circlc counterclockwise or stay straight to go clockwise. Mostly I went right, then a quick snap to the left, tromp on it again to bring the rear around, come out of the turn with the backend seriously out to the right, straighten it out, catch 3rd again coming back down the straight, pop to 2nd for the turn, then mash the brakes in case Mrs Day came lumbering out of her driveway in her old Volvo, hard left into our driveway, around the loop. Repeat. Park car, go out onto road with rake and rake up all evidence of mischief. Funfunfun!

Whoops - maybe shouldn't have spilled that particular pot of beans. Don't be mad, Mom.

Anyway, soon I had my license for real and was driving immediately. My older brothers and I went to a high school that was 30 miles up the line, so we drove every day. They were 2 years ahead of me, so by junior year they had graduated and I had to carpool for the first 1/2 of year. As soon as I got my license, I was driving. I can remember my first time pulling out onto Rt. 128 into traffic - an abrupt, uphill onramp into busy traffic with an 60-hp tin box. Terrifying! I soon got the hang of it (keywords - ramp speed and momentum).

This car became our little personalization experiment. We had a series of cheap but powerful stereos, whose speakers were inevitably mounted in boxes in the back that could be hoisted onto the roof for those social occasions down at the beach. Beer tap shifter (whose additional leverage eventually caused the lever to snap). Rims off of a Vega (causing the tires to rub the wheelwells until we "corrrected" that issue). Various other odds and ends here and there. No real dents or accidents, but a few dings here and there.

Random Chevette memories:

- Driving it in the snow. Man was it a blast. It was light, with rear-wheel drive and a hand emergency brake, so you could practically sign your name with it. Favorite thing - turn left into our road with the backend out (courtesy of a timely tug on the emergency brake). Down the hill, left into the driveway with backend out, snap hard left to bring the backend 180 degrees around, then reverse into parking spot. I did this once, absolutely flawlessly, got out and there was Mom on the front steps, watching. She didn't say a word. Either awed by my prowess or stunned into silence; not sure which.

- One time we came home from school; I got out from the back and slammed the door and *poof* - the window shattered into a million billion pieces, each the size of a raisin. WTF?!! We had to spring for a new window. For years afterwards, we'd find little bits of glass in the car here and there.

- Once the clutch cable broke on the way home from school, so we drove it clutchless. Wasn't that hard once you got the hang of it. Upshifts - rev up the engine, foot off gas to unload tranny, pop out of gear, gentle pressure towards next gear, it would pop in as engine RPMs dropped. Downshift - slow engine down, pop out of gear, gentle pressure towards next gear while you revved the engine up and down, would pop into gear when revs matched. Stall it at stops, then restart in 1st to get going.

- After awhile, the interior carpet got *nasty*, so we installed our own. We took a carpet remnant and hacked it into shape with utility knives and carpet tape. Came out pretty nice, IMO. Opinions varied.

- How to annoy the driver:
- slyly take it out of gear going down a hill. Driver resumes gas at bottom, engine revs, driver goes "WTF!!!". Hilarity ensues.
- pop horn button into driver's lap. Bwahahahaha!

- Stupid driver tricks: passenger takes wheel, hanging on down low. Driver reclines his seat all the way. Drive down road, observe reactions of other drivers - "Ahhh - no one is driving that car!!!"

This car had mostly had it by the time I went to college. We sold it for couple hundred bucks (at most) to some guy who was buying it for his wife.

I think we got our money's worth out of that one. It certainly has a significant spot in my driving history.

teebee

Ol' Red is a 20-something-year-old Snapper riding mower my dad gave me when he and Mom moved from the big house (with a big lawn) to the smaller house (with a little lawn). Dad had survived for years on a steady diet of no-name push mowers so when he bought Ol' Red it was a bit of a shock. "Dad - bought a rider?". He explained it was more efficient; took less time. He would prove it by buzzing around the yard in high gear, mowing down anything in his path, sprinting to the cuttings-dumping area to unload, then back for more. 45 minutes later - done!

By the time I got Ol' Red it was a bit faded, and the electric start had stopped working. But it was still a fearsome grass chomper and excellent leaf-picker-upper, leaving not the slightest bit of arboreal waste in its path. I made room in the shed, and in it went.

I found that our yard was too wet in the spring and too convoluted in shape to really effectively use a rider, so most of the time I use our push mower. But every fall is when Red gets to shine, 'cuz it's leaf season. I roll him out blinking and yawning into the sunshine, carefully remove all the mice nests from the blade housing and from under the engine cover, check the oil and gas. A few gentle tugs on the starter to swirl the oil a bit, then a few good hard pulls and Red roars back to life.

Red didn't get out at all last year 'cuz we were in the middle of our addition, so it was with some trepidation that I approached him this year. Would he be sulky and uncooperative due to the long hiatus? Had the mice finally decided that ignition wire was a good mid-winter snack? Would I have to (gasp!) spend money to get him fixed?

All such fears were in vain. Red fired up on the 2nd pull, then ran like a champ for 4 hours straight. For 1 shining hour, our lawn looked picture pretty perfect. Then the wind picked up and some remaining leaves dropped in the spoil the party.

I rumbled Red happily back into place in the shed. He's earned his keep for another year.

teebee

p.s. - I could swear I typed up something like this before, but searched my blog and didn't find anything. Wonder if re-blogging is commonplace?

I had typed up a good fiery rant about the Bush victory, but Blogger seems to have lost it. Don't have the energy to re-type it. Suffice to say I am not happy.

teebee

Our office has had trick-or-treat for employee children for the past 3 years. Each year we've decorated the office to some degree or another, depending on the motivation of each individual cube dweller. A group of die-hard Halloween fans have been setting up a "spook house" in some of the less densly-populated cube areas, and this year they recruited me and my friend James as the lone R&D representatives.

My friend James and I decided to do a "prison block" theme. We had 4 big sheets of corrugated cardboard from a computer that was delivered last week. We painted them black, added "bars" with duct tape. I cut out openings, then screwed some wood to them to create openings you could look through. We mounted them across the cube openings, blacked out the cube interiors with black poly, decorated the "cells" with various spooky props. I set up sound using a coupla of PCs and some .wav files I mixed up (clanking chains, creaking doors, flys buzzing, etc) to add "ambience". Each cell was lit using a single Xmas window "candle" with an orange bulb, so it was very atmospheric once the lights were turned off. I also made a wildly over-the-top prop electric chair out of some old lumber, distressing it with a hatchet and spattering it with red and black paint.

Some other people were setting up a spooky graveyard, so I made them an old-fashioned coffin, using some really beat-up roughsawn pine someone had in their barn. Turned out real nice.

It was a great success. Our area was at the very end of the spook house, so by the time kids got to our area they had alreay been "gotcha'd" a few times. James manned one of the cells and did gotchas for kids. We had a word-of-mouth system for letting spookhouse "employees" know when a kid didn't want to be too scared (plus we had "emergency exits" for those that wanted to bail out), so he'd just sit there for the less brave.

A lot of work, and cleanup was a drag, but it was worth it.

Pics here.

teebee