A few days ago I did some deep damage to my leg, and it had a low-grade infection, so there was quite a bit of swelling in the tissue surrounding the issue. It’s an interesting experience for me to go through, because there’s no real feeling (just phantom sensations) in that part of my leg because it’s in the region that the nerves were severed in. However, I could sort of feel this, with a dull, not quite identifiable ache in the region and up the leg. On one hand it hurt of course, but on the other hand, it was really, really nice to feel something.
Mmmm… bacon!
More pleasantly, I hung out at Nefarious’s school for a while and played with kids in the playground — five is such a super-fun age. Afterwards we went to the park (as almost always) and played hide-and-seek with other kids there, and then made spagetti and cheesecake for supper… Lefrog just sent me a great last-minute ModBlog post, so I’m doing that, watching Jeopardy, and eating a mango. Exciting or what?
Oh, and I got my “GoogleApps” account authorized today, so I’m looking forward to brushing off my rusty Python skills and coding something fun… I’ll have to think about something fun to write — I thought about a photosharing forum system that interconnects stuff a la everything2 might be fun and a quick write.
We took the bike to the park after school where Nefarious bumped into a school friend (and gleefully, an ice cream bike) and they played — and damaged their clothes, repeatedly sliding down the hills through the mud — climbing all over the outside of the structures… Her friend’s dad was a rockclimber, so unlike most parents seem to be, he wasn’t too freaked out by it and actually encouraged it. That’s her climbing of course. She’s played on the rock wall at MEC a few times and loves it… Anyway, they are both covered in bruises, scratches, and mud, and appear quite pleased at that (her friend’s dad said he’d have to bribe her with candy to keep the story from her mother — I’m not sure if he was joking or not). Lots of happy insects too, if I can attribute an emotion to an insect anyway — I took the picture below today.
This morning I got up and after breakfast, when we were about to leave for school, Nefarious and I discovered that my truck was missing. After thinking for a moment that in some grand conspiracy it had been stolen as well, I realized that I’d been sick the day before and had completely forgotten to move it off the street, so come Monday morning, it was ticketed and towed. It’s not all bad though. The events that followed reminded me of a koan that’s in one of the childrens’ books that I read most recently to Nefarious’s classmates when I was there for reading day… It goes something like this.
A poor farmer’s horse ran away. His neighbors all came and said “oh, what bad luck!”
“Maybe,” replied the farmer.
The next day, the horse returned, along with two wild horses. His neighbors all came and said, “oh, what good luck”
“Maybe,” he replied.
The next day, farmer’s son tried riding one of the wild horses, and was thrown from the horse and broke his leg. His neighbors all came and said, “oh, what bad luck”.
“Maybe,” he replied.
The next day, soldiers came through the village, drafting young men for the war. Because the farmer’s son was injured, he was passed by. His neighbors all came and said, “oh, what good luck”.
“Maybe,” he replied…
Nefarious has been begging me to be allowed to ride her bike to school, which is about a 2km distance. It’s quite far I think, so I’ve been putting it off with practice runs to the park. Anyway, she got her wish this morning so she was super thrilled to be among the kids that park their bikes on the school balcony, and showed off her PA system to her friends. All in all, I walked a total of about 5km to pick up the truck, exercise that I quite likely need (not that I’m in any way out of shape) and it was nice to go for a long walk anyway.
It’s not yet “officially” online, but I’ve been working on taking some better photos of my finished paintings (there are still many left to do) and getting them onto a dedicated gallery site — art.zentastic.me for now. There are some XML/CSS errors so it looks terrible in IE… but really, what sort of fool uses IE?
The site has very high resolution images that are suitable for printing, and the images are under a creative commons license so as long as you credit them you’re welcome to use them quite broadly.
Question: I’d like to start selling prints, and I know there are a number of sites (CafePress and others) who offer this service. If anyone has worked with any of these, I’m definitely interested in hearing your feedback on their comparative merits.
You know, I’m pretty tired and admittedly burning the candle at both ends, my car got stolen, I haven’t gotten a pay check in over six months and I got an “insufficient funds” when buying groceries today — “trouble, oh trouble move away” — but the amazing thing is that a bike ride to the park still always makes me feel much, much better!
That said, riding Caitlin’s bike is a little uncomfortable, so I’m thinking of making my own bike (alright, Caitlin will have to do most of the work because she’s the welder here)… I was looking at the various plans on Atomic Zombie and they looked pretty fun. When I can scrounge together a few bucks for pieces I think that’ll be high on my to-do list.
