bummer skool

just got back from my first class of the condensed summer school session. the course is entitled "principles and issues in information technology." it will be an overview course that breaks down fundamental aspects of the way that e-commerce has affected, and will continue to affect, the business model. other issues will be more specific to the innerworkings of networking, which includes a small group project that will focus on planning the implementation of a campus-wide wireless network and preparing a report on potential productivity assets to the campus patrons (professors, students, administration).

the syllabus has a lot of work crammed into the next 5 weeks, but the subject matter is of particular interest, and the work therein will prove to be exciting and beneficial. i'm looking forward to the enlightening challenge.

sowebo festival

after spending the morning hours at sid and sylvia's apartment, amy and i ventured over to our all-time favorite street festival.

what makes it so fantastic, is the intimate "realness" of it all. it takes place in a section of southwest baltimore that has style, soul, and yet faces great challenges. the neighborhood is home to the oldest market in baltimore, which opened in 1836. There is a strong undercurrent of the 19th century architecture amongst the homes and business fronts throughout the area. Nonetheless, the facades give way to the barron, derelict, entombed reality which has plagued the neighborhood for decades.

yet that soul is strong and alive, and thirsty for a renaissance. the festival brings together the diverse activists and artists of the area to celebrate the effort that is being made there. it is a far cry from the cookie-cutter gentrification we are all too familiar with, but actually a living, breathing community walking on its own two legs, however bruised and scathed. it is an example of how a multi-cultural, multi-lingual, multi-ethnic can begin to work together toward reestablishing itself.

it is a day like this that reminds me what a unique and beautiful place baltimore is. a city which is more or less self-governed and self-operating. a city supported on its own two legs, however bruised and scathed, by a large population of people who are pushing with all their might to correct our path. to move us forward. to make us whole again.

reconnected

after the phone being inoperable for nearly one week, and two interspersed phone company trips out to the homestead, our party line is now back online. within 15 minutes of discovering this, the phone rang. both amy and i let out a small sigh, as the quiet was somewhat nice.

traditional jewgan food

that's jewish-vegan food, or what amy and i have been calling it recently. the term has become somewhat colloquial after the african israeli dining experience we had the other night. take a look at their history and story. uncertain of the validity, but damn fine vegan lasagna!

tonight, i whipped up some vegan latkes. they were out-and-out nasty greasy. don't know if i will replicate that experience. there are left-overs if anyone wants them.

as an aside, i woke up 2.5 hours before work start time today to take a longer bike ride. got a new wireless cycloputer yesterday as the one that i've had since '98 crapped out beyond repair. it had 11,284 miles on the odometer.

anyway, on the ride this morning i went by the preakness horse race track and saw a few jockeys and horses trotting around the track. i took a short detour and watched for a few minutes. the parking lot chain link fence boarders the oval track at a few spots, so i really had a front row view. their measured and forceful breath was something that i had never heard before. it kept time with the galloping down below. beautiful creatures.

without phone

came home tonight and found that the telephone had no dial tone. it is eerily disconcerting when you have such inconveniences afflict your humdrum life. you feel a wee bit of panic set in, not being connected to the outside world. no telephone, no dsl.

i went up the street and called the phone co. from a payphone. they suggested that i disconnect all the phones in the house and try to re-hook them up in ~15 minutes. their suggestion did not work. i'll give them a call from work tomorrow. my suspicion is that the new neighbors got their phone hooked up (as they seem to have fully moved in over the weekend), and the phone company jostled something when they set them up that sent our phone on the fritz.

Elite

make it so...

tomorrow's agenda

1) arise and wake ~7am (possible short run)
2) sean arrives at 8am, smile and mention necessity of coffee
3) amy, sean, and i get coffee at neighborhood coffee haunt, common ground
4) depart for d.c., destination international spy museum for 9:30am reserved tickets
5) see james bondy stuff
6) go to sticky fingers vegan bakery
7) enjoy walking d.c.
8) meet up with todd later
9) out to eat at another vegan joint
10) either head home or stay the night at todd's in capitol hill

mitochondria mass

lactic acid (updated link, 5/18) is not the evil culprit of muscular sluggishness as we have been led to believe. it is actually just the opposite, fuel for the muscles.

mom and dad's new blog

the land. illustrates progress on the building of their new home, which has recently commenced.

note: this blog will be listed in blogroll in sidebar for future reference.

get it done

went on a long bike ride the other day, and my destination led me through the confusing township of dundalk, md. dundalk boarders the southeast corner of baltimore and is home of several industrial ports. it has a 50s pizzazz to it. stemming partially from the sub-urban, yet townie feel, and the pervading working class edge. the oddity of that which is dundalk is enjoyable.

and this gas station, situated in the heart of dundalk, has decided to stop playing the gas game and price their gallons at the inevitable (i actually believe that they ran out of 3s, but am unsure how 7s resemble 3s...)

jason

amy and i had a great visit with my cousin jason. we met up after work the past two nights and went out for dinner and real conversation. it is wonderful to catch up on things, and to share memories and perspectives of times past. we talked about a lot of events and people that i hadn't thought of in awhile. it was particularly interesting to hear his memories of grandpa v., and how remarkably similar his remeberances were to my own.

i feel that our brains are similar in many ways, jason and mine. and it is difficult to say whether that be a biological issue, or just that we think on a similar wavelength and would be friends regardless of biological connection. probably a bit of both, i would venture to guess. nevertheless, jason is a beautiful human being and a great friend. i hope amy and i can make it to chicago to see him in his homestead soon.

incidentally, that is the fiberoptic peace bird of happiness that grandma v gave out for xmas two years ago. it's illumination and happy peacefulness still glow, as can be seen from our amusement.

last spring semester class

in a half-hour i have to present a paper and oral review of the findings of my semester project on the healthy air act. the bill passed the state legislature this session, and the gov has signed off on it. it is one of the most stringent air pollution bills in the country. it makes me proud to be a marylander. i feel calm and composed about the presentation, so i hope that i'm not deluding myself with false confidence.

tomorrow, we are going to dinner with my favorite cousin, jason, who is in town from milwaukee. really looking forward to seeing him and catching up.

vanity update

yesterday, i took a look in the mirror, as i do on a modestly infrequent basis, and found a new white hair. now, the white hairs which freckle the sides of my head have reached the point where they are virtually incalculable, so what makes this one different, you ask. i guess because it was jetting out of my nostril. yes, a white nose hair. the body certainly does have a sense of humor.

cotton monsters

when i was a kid, i didn't really believe that there were monsters under my bed. but what did concern me was that television shows and movies always talked about kids who feared such creepy things under their beds, and this made me wonder if i was incorrect in my monster disbelief. there is really only two occurrences that stick out in my mind as feeling grave fear from seeming anomalies in my youth.

one was turned out to be the shadow of a tree limb that shown through my bedroom window and danced about on a windy night. the second turned out to be the gurgling of my childhood dog's stomach that i had unknowingly fallen asleep atop. in both instances, i awoke from sleep and remained petrified and scared for what seemed an eternity, and slowly gained up enough chutzpah to pop up out of bed and face my fear. the realities of both situations were met with sudden deflated emotion. this beastly image of what was going on was so completely built up in my mind, in the case of my dog's stomach gurgles, i visualized robbers in the house stealing all our stuff (interestingly enough, the tree limb outside my window i also thought to be a robber, hmmm...), and when i confronted them both it was a lackluster reality. almost a bit of disappointment, in a way.

anyway, these fantastic cotton monsters are made by a baltimore fiber artist. you honestly need to hold one to appreciate it, but i think that it may have been this is the type of creature that all the kids in movies and tv were faffing about.

cars are a luxury

from mid-1998 until october of 2003, i did not own an automobile. there was a brief period of anxiety about what living without a car would be like. what i came to discover was a vast amount of disposable income that began to flood my bank account (o.k., not flood, but more than a gentle trickle).

all of a sudden i had another few hundred dollars each month. there was no gas, no maintenance, no insurance, and no loan payments (although at the time of my de-car-ification, the 1993 geo tracker was paid in full--yes that's right, a geo tracker).

the loss of my car became a great liberating factor. a bit of a luxury, it may seem, as at the time i owned second generation curbside recycling in ames, iowa-- a bicycle-powered curbside service utilizing bicycle, custom bicycle trailers by jim and joan at bikesatwork.com. the town i was living in was 5mile x 5mile square of uber-flatlands amidst cornfields.

this did not limit my mobility, as one might argue it would. to the contrary, by bicycle i moved my home from ames, iowa to portland, oregon. partially fueled by curiosity, partially drive for adventure, and partially by the extra funding that i was able to save up after liquidating my automobile.

looking at jim and joan's site this evening, i found an interesting sublink that totals your costs of car ownership, and calculates how much money you could save accumulated over years in a low-percentage account.

in 2003, my lovey and i moved back to oregon from japan and decided to purchase a car together and travel across the states together, motoring our way to our new home of baltimore, md. we bought a $2,400 subaru legacy wagon from the portland rescue mission that a teacher had donated. to date, we've been fortunate in only putting minor maintenance costs into our chariot, and managed to rack up the miles to just shy of 175K. our subaru has proven to have been a wise purchase as far as automobiles go. we've been able to conserve resources by using only one car, save moolah by sharing costs, and be able to make trips to places that we otherwise might not have gone. a compromise, perhaps.