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Hi. I've been taking on many home improvement projects. Minor copper plumbing, 5 switched lighting and outlet-related electrical installations (most impressive is the dimmable under-cabinet lighting). I saw "300" back in March, and it has become my favorite movie of all time which unseated "The Professional" which unseated "The Matrix" which unseated "Braveheart" which unseated "Terminator 2". I designed built, and installed 36-cell shoe cubbies to facilitate my wife's need to organize shoes. We have made an effort to visit family regularly, and so have spent much time with that family investment. I have applied crabgrass preemergence twice, fertilized, spread peat moss amendments, mowed a lot, spot treated weeds, and fought the desire to water my yard. I went on a weekend canoe trip with two of my friends on the Buffalo in N AR. That was a blog entry on it's own. Gail became a tenured professor, and received a research award from the university. My grandmother became ill and died. I became engrossed in the literature that was given to me documenting my grandfather's infantry exploits in WWII and have enjoyed GPS / Google Earthing all of the houses, bridges, treelines and locations that I have read about him covering as a 30cal gunner with the 84th. It will make for two amazing vacations in Belgium some cold day when the landscape can be experienced in it's seasonally accurate condition. I love the ability to read something like "We set up in a chateau 150 yards north of town and covered the main approach." and I pan up, stretch a Google Earth tape measure and say, "Holy crap, that farm house is still there. *inserts GPS POI bookmark* ". I'm amazed at how little terrain his company fought on until they broke into Germany. Months of experiences on a strip less than 5 miles long at the Sigfried line--all walkable (as indeed they did). I've enjoyed reading their captain's handwriting as he describes the character of each man who fought alongside my grandfather and tells of funny, tragic, and heroic things that surprised him about his group of "hatchet men". I have a myspace page now: www.myspace.com/hughes417
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| 1st Anniversary, Studio 60, and Moebius Gail & I have been musing over what to put in front of our fireplace for a few weeks. When I saw this daybed, I was surprised to instantly remember it from an architecture slide I had to memorize years back. The Barcelona Daybed. A classic by the architect Mies Van Der Rohe. designed in the mid '20's specifically for the display in the Barcelona Pavilion in an exhibit that no less founded the modern movement in architecture. I find it amusing that he designed furniture specifically for the exhibit (you could say as an afterthought) and that simple afterthought even revolutionized the furniture design world. Gail instantly loved it in ways less verbal and more visual and tactile. This was our 1st year anniversary gift to one another.
I have been daydreaming lately and have already researched, contemplated, and formulated my lawncare schedule for the entire coming year (growing season - as we lawn guys call it). For those of you south of Little Rock, you need to apply your preemergent crabgrass preventer some time this month. This keeps the most pesky of grassy weeds from ever even showing up all year. If you want an easy and safe way to really take care of your lawn, go to www.scotts.com and answer 3 questions and follow their Yearly Program.
Studio 60 is a good TV show. If you liked The West Wing, you'll like this (same original writing staff, and several carryover actors). I'm playing some "classic" video games including 1993's Syndicate, 2000's Deus Ex, and 2002's Thief II. I can't tell you how gratifying it is as a gamer to come back to the games that kicked your butt when you were younger, and then pwn them because you have simply gotten smarter and faster. It's one of the only things in life that lets you come back and redo things now that you have grown up. And it boot up and looks exactly as it did 14 years ago.
Speaking of...this is an interesting story. When I was eight years old through when I was 11 years old my brother Matt got me hooked on my first video game. It was a Commodore 64 title called "Moebius". It was a ninja runs around and kills people and has an adventure game. Only as a child, it was my "Lord of the Rings" if you will. I read the manual literally every week, and it was written as a sensei to a student in the first person. Anyhoo, it was a very complex game, and I SUCKED at it. You had to find water and food and not get killed by enemies, and I died in every way imaginable. Well three months ago I FOUND the game online as part of an emulator (program that lets old games play in Windows). So I gleefully fired it up! And I mean I racked up on food and water, and none of the bad guys could even TOUCH me. I couldn't believe how easy it was! I decided to track down the guy that wrote the program and give him a "Thanks for making Moebius" letter and let him know that the game got me drawing ninja stuff 24/7 which led to me becoming good at drawing, which led me want to be an artist and then an architect. So in the process I find out how good of a Google-stalker I can be and found him currently as a middle school computer science teacher in Arizona--and my email was on the way. He was blown away, and we have exchanged a few emails since. It's funny because I still have this kneejerk reaction of being scared of the things that always killed me in the game, like "Oh crap, a wild tiger is after me! What do I do?!" and then I realize how simple it is to press one key and dispatch the danger. It's a really weird feeling having a completely unfounded fear come at you from two decades ago. Here is a picture of the box art that I tried to copy by drawing about 3 times a week--back in the day.
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| Mobsters, coffee, and GPSIt's been about 6 weeks since my last post. We had a merry Christmas, and I had a great birthday. Gail has a car now. We've been slowly doing some home shopping and decorating. Our first anniversary is coming up
in about half a month. Since A&E is showing the Soprano's and it's pretty well cleaned up (probably 5% of the audio is dubbed in off-voice "freakin!" or "stupid!" as adjectives). It's good. It stays true to the mobster genre that I dabble in watching, only with a homefront twist that is just enough to get Gail to watch. I've been toying with my dad's Christmas GPS gift. I am enjoying accurately recording GPS points and transferring them to Google Earth.
I have educated myself about how to prepare good coffee (after drinking a lot of swill at work out of a rancid, oily pot). So Gail is worried that I'm becoming a coffee snob all of a sudden...oh yeah, I never drank coffee until after I graduated. Church is good. They truly are our family. God has been great to us. We'll keep you updated.
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We had Thanksgiving with Beth & John in San An-Tone. I was hunting weeks ago and missed a doe twice (semi-automatic guns only serve to make you feel more inept). I have about 6 personal house projects that will have to wait because of budgeting. I am going to be working with Gail's father (a master electrician) to perform some simple switch rewiring, adding some GFCI convenience outlets, and adding a motion sensing security light. I am playing a game that is pure crack, Company of Heroes. My wife and I just finished our first Christmas house decorating and it is magical. As an uninteresting side note, if you have granite counter tops you will dull your knives to a useless state in a matter of weeks. If you have many knives you will spend a whole weekend having to resharpen and hone them--just a glimpse of one of my recent honey-do's. I feel sad when I look out on my celery-colored lawn. because ALMOST all of the trees in my backyard are sticks now, I am waiting one more week before performing the final winter leaf herding. After that I will have absolutely nothing to do in my yard until March. How sad. We are alternating using the "Rodey" during the day, and getting by with one vehicle. Just many random Wintry bits to share, we are huddled up and sipping hot cocoa as it were.
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| So long, Taurus I totaled Gail's car Friday. We were driving down to Kenny's wedding and after glancing 2-ways, I misjudged a speeding truck's closing distance and crossed a 2-way stop. His fullsize F-150 with steel brush guard smashed into the passenger's rear quarterpanel and spun us 120 degrees. If you were to look carefully at his truck you might see that it broke a weld on his brush guard. Last month we were happy to convert over from full-coverage to the half-priced liability-only...this month we're not happy about the timeliness of that decision. Her car had just had half of it's value invested in new tires and tune-ups, and WAS running perfectly and on-track for replacement in 2-3 years--now it's on-track for replacement immediatly. No party was hurt in the accident except the stop sign. Oh, when our rear end swung around, it lashed over the curb and thumped a stop-sign 40 feet. We are looking at several replacement vehicles, and will likely make a decision in a week.
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