So today I thought it would be a great idea to get the studded snow tires onto my bike. I should have known better. Changing tires is one of the most stressful things you can do in a small apartment with a velvet couch and a clean bed so near to hand. It's nearly always messy work, and it's stressful under these conditions. It took forever, I ( Read more... )

So I took some unwanted CDs to AKA this afternoon and they wanted a whole slew of them. Gave me back some obvious duds. But I walked out with David Bowie's Aladdin Sane (which I've wanted on CD forever), John 5's Songs for Sanity, The Pogues' Red Roses For Me, and Martin Carthy: The Definitive Collection. I haven't been through the whole bunch of ( Read more... )

Friday afternoon a plumber knocked on my apartment door and said he needed to bleed the radiators. This was a 10-minute operation at best. Seems someone broke a pipe with a hammer (accident), and they had to shut off the heat, fix the pipe, and then bleed the radiators ( Read more... )

A little less than a week ago I saw a report that Arlen Spector was introducing an amendment to the Patriot Act making it a crime to occupy a security zone at a public event. So I googled his name and found his office's website. I sent him an e-mail saying that this was basically a ploy to protect the president knowing what low opinions some of US ( Read more... )

No, it's not some outre adult entertainment involving multiple partners. It's a human beatbox from Japan, sort of a Bobby McFerrin with better taste in music. A co-worker suggested I might like this, and he's right. So I'm busy downloading mp3s (legally, of course) and enjoying.

http://dokaka.com/

So every once in a while, I'm looking at art in a medical journal and I think, "ew, that looks like meat ( Read more... )

Good times ( Read more... )

So I got 2 separate calls from my landlord's office telling me that the front door lock would be changed. The second caller confirmed that the problem was due to my creepy upstairs neighbor, who was being evicted after giving out keys to some of his unsavory acquaintances. And I was told not to buzz him in to the building. And he's related to the ( Read more... )

I'm currently reading Gunpowder: Alchemy, Bombards, and Pyrotechnicians by Jack Kelly. khrystabelle gave me this as a birthday present, and it's a brisk read full of great stuff. Kelly makes the point that gunpowder was a catalyst for ideas about internal combustion and that it led some great minds away from the idea of fire as a living thing and toward the ( Read more... )

For khrystabelle, as if she doesn't already know

http://www.news24.com/News24/Backpage/Offbeat/0,,2-1343-1347_1832416,00.html