It's supposed to say “jewelry“. I am honestly not in the business of writing about baby rat jews.

Roo, Allana, and I swam a bit longer today, working on figuring out how long we can comfortably swim in water at that temperature… I think our consensus is in the region of thirty to forty minutes without any real training or conditioning. We walked out as far as we could to see where the channel is cut (since I think a decent rule is to stay in water that's “walking height” so if there's a problem others can help you out easily even if they're not confident swimmers).
Come join us at noon and midnight (police permission pending for the night swim) on the 21st (Solstice, and a new moon) for our next swim! That's Thursday by the way. Oh, and I think the news are coming, so if you have something to promote, wear the t-shirt. And trust me, it's a lot more fun than our faces make it look in that last photo! www.winterswim.com
Oh! And I met with a really talented friend of Blair's today who's going to carve a skull with my tattoo on it to fit on the top of my cane. I was going to make a few for other friends with canes, so drop me a line if you're interested… If it turns out nicely I'll commission a BME belt buckle from him — I've wanted to do a proper 3D buckle for a while.
So the dicks at “IMPARK” want me to pay a $137.80 fine over a couple of parking infractions. Normally I'd just assume it was legit, but unless I'm missing something, they are attempting to charge me twice within one minute for two parking lots that according to google are an eight minute drive apart. Nice try, assholes.
I'm working on getting the weekend's update fixed; we have about 10,000 images for posting but there's been a mystery problem with the software (probably due to the bulk). I'll get it sorted out soon (it's rebuilding now).
And now on to your regularly scheduled update…
I've finished a lot of paintings lately… Here's two (there are around twenty of mine here in all that I ought to post). They're in the basement where it's kind of dark so I couldn't get a very good photo of either of them but I'm happy with how they turned out. The painting on the right took about half an hour, and the painting on the left about an hour (although it's painted over an old painting). I'm trying to get into the habit of painting faster.
For a while I thought that my leg hurting more was placebo, or at least just mental localization making it seem more obvious, but I'm a little concerned because it's starting to move into the territory where I don't feel comfortable driving because of the discomfort and difficulty in controlling it. I smoke pot (under doctor's advice) to stop the pain but I don't drive obviously if I have, and I wouldn't drive on other painkillers either…
Meh, I probably drive too much anyway!
That reminds me though, I've had a couple funny “car encounters” in the last few days. First I (along with Phil and Roo) got run off the road by a oncoming pickup truck that decided they had more right to our lane of traffic than us, so we had to hop up onto the sidewalk to avoid a collision. I laughed a little because he pulled the “my truck is bigger and cheaper, I dare you to hit me” game of chicken, which I think I've probably done in the truck.
Then I was driving down the street and an oncoming car literally turned straight into my lane and started driving right at me (basically they were turning without bothering to check oncoming traffic). I slammed on the breaks, and a moment later so did they. It was a little old lady driving, so I just put up my hands in a “don't stress it” gesture and she laughed and that was that.
Then today I pull out of a parking lot and drive to the end of the street where there's an intersection with lights… Strangely though, people were ignoring the lights completely — cars were strewn about, motionless at random angles as if a tornado had tossed them around. It was really weird. So I sort of snaked my way through them and went on my way.
Other than that, I've been doing so much stuff lately that I can't really write about here until after Christmas anyway because I can't be sure who reads this blog. I'm off now to do that some more. BME update will probably get posted later tonight or in the morning (more likely morning because it's huge), and then another one next week, and then other than maybe some articles/interviews, we're good until 2007!
FINALLY: TODAY (UP UNTIL MIDNIGHT) IS THE LAST DAY TO GET IMAGES SUBMITTED FOR THE 2006 AWARDS. ALL IMAGES UP UNTIL MIDNIGHT WILL BE INCLUDED, ALL IMAGES THAT COME IN AFTER THAT WILL GO INTO NEXT YEAR'S AWARDS.