a little disappointed

The '92 4runners had a recall for head gasket problems. Ours had been fixed before we bought it. I've talked to other owners of 4runners who said Toyota was great about dealing with this problem, multiple times. Having the repair blow out as well and then having that fixed, as well.

Which is good, because the (previously repaired) head gasket in ours blew out a couple of days ago.

I've been a Toyota fan for a long time. Been driving them regularly since '88. They could pretty much do no wrong in my eyes. Let's hope they live up to it.

But, in general, the Fo has been kind of a disappointment to me. It just feels wrong.

how not to keep your books

One of my friends worked at a local nightclub that's run by a complete moron. We knew this prior to the weekend, but she got laid off and went to go apply for unemployment yesterday. And found out there's no record of her working for this guy. Even though she isn't an under-the-table employee. He's been taking out her FICA, SS, etc every week, and pocketing it.

Fucking slimebag.

I've never liked the dude much. He just gave me the heebie-jeebies, and he's done some things to other employees that I thought was pretty despicable. They run a jam down there once a week but I rarely went and when I did I only grudgingly handed any money over to the place.

Well, apparently he has managed to get away with it- other employees who went to file for unemployment and didn't get it didn't pursue it any further than a shrug and an "oh well", but this friend of mine, she's a pitbull... She's calling BOLI on Monday.

I've run into some pretty shady business practices in KF. I know it's not confined to KF, but man it's just more prevalent here I guess.

another great jam

yeah we have these all the time! hahaha! I thought it was great. I got to jam with the guy who runs the sound at the Ragland. He's pretty damn talented. And got to play "Fisherman's Blues", which I'm always up for playing. Who can resist a Waterboys song!?

red zone

Front page story in today's Herald & News is the Red Zone. The Red Zone 330,000 acres (approximately) of (mostly dead) forest between Bly and Paisley.

Save the Trees, Kill a Forest doesn't seem to have been working very well.

the pants

This is the first pair we made. I picked the fabric. I love batik style prints and so any of these that have them I probably picked the material for.

Yesterday we picked up a sewing machine at Goodwill for $20. It is in the shop getting a tuneup currently. Once we dig Nat's machine out of storage, the Goodwill one will be mine.

I'm looking around online for places to buy hemp and bamboo fabric. I am going to do some printing on unbleached cotton for some of our pants. Man that bamboo and hemp stuff is expensive ($17 a yard!!! and that's cheap!!). That's what I would like to make some of the pants from, though.

The first pair I'll be making myself are for my Smart Half, out of flannel, long legs. I will probably be starting those Sunday night.

pay me for the notes

I knew it would happen eventually. If I kept going to the jams, kept expanding the group of people I know who play, avoided getting a rep as someone hard to work with...I really am not hard to work with when it comes to music. I make frowny faces while playing some songs and grumble about some others, but I'm pretty easy going, actually. I show up early and get set up, don't get falling-down drunk very often, and don't fight with the patrons. What more could a band ask for?!

I've been asked to play bass in one of the bands around here that is working. Not my favorite music, but then not all the music I hate, either. The guys seem jolly enough.

Finally. I'll be starting in early September (my first gig with them will be during the weekend of Sept 5/6). This is how I'll be paying for school this semester, too.

One of the things they liked about me was that I played pretty much whatever they threw at me at the jam one night. How I do that is my little secret, but the only people that regularly stump me are the guys who want to play jazz-type jams.

Pillory me if you so desire, but I don't get much jazz. I like the early jazz, but more modern stuff that came after, hmm.. the 50s I guess, makes my brain asplode.

@!#$!%#

a short run of the posters for the festival came in yesterday.

I hate them. I hate the logo. I hate the design. I hate that there's black script written over black areas of the print. I hate the numerous punctuation errors strewn all over it. I hate that it looks like someone threw a bunch of clip art at a piece of paper.

Of course it's irrational of me to be this hostile to a piece of graphic design work. But, it looks like crap.

I called in the errors to our prez. No one proofed it before it went to print.

more about pants

Screamin Natalie and I eyeballed the fishermen's pants today, went out and picked a fine little fabric and some pattern-making stuff, and 5 hours later we had another pair without taking mine apart.

Well, ok, they aren't pants, they're shorts. But anyway, now another pair is wandering around the locale.

And I didn't sew very much, because I don't know how to use a sewing machine (but I can hone your cylinders for you...), but I helped make the pattern, pinned it on the fabric, and made efforts to cut in a straight line. Also I ironed. I threaded the needle (correctly, even, and more than once) and figured some other stuff out on the machine. That's plenty sewing enough for me. I can sew by hand pretty well, but never was able to master a machine. Well I may have, had anyone taught me, which nobody did and it never mattered much to me one way or the other. Screamin Natalie is determined to show me how to sew, though. I showed her my attempt at crochet from a couple of years ago- the 2-yard long rope of red yarn. She laughed. Yeah but I can still hand-pack wheel bearings like nobody's bidness.

I have pics of the pants we made. They'll be here eventually. Got a lot of puppy pics since she's caring for a dog that was abandoned, pregnant, at her neighbors house. These little guys are cute as hell. Part brindle coat pit bull (not sure which type- the kind with the pointy head instead of the blockhead) and part Rhodesian Ridgeback. They're all colored like their mom but have their dad's eyes. Which always look at us humans as if we were some tall, hairless idiots.

We probably are. If we were smart, maybe we'd lick our own asses from time to time.

the number 42

It was pretty sweet yesterday to get our power bill and see that the total we owe for the last billing cycle was $42.00.

That was for 429 Kwh over 31 days.

Haven't used the dryer much. It makes the house hot, and then we have to use the AC. So by hanging out our laundry and then dropping it on the fluff setting for 10 minutes in the evening, I killed off close to $60 off our bill. By keeping the dryer off its heat settings, the house has been cooler, so we don't have to use the AC much.

Other things may have finally added up- all of our lights are the new style bulbs now and I revert to my mother and go around making sure they are off if we aren't using them. Always have kind of done that but not so vigilant as lately about it. One computer has not been used much so it's been off about a month. I have been playing more acoustic. Really i have no idea how much two hours of playing either through a 25 watt amp or a 100 watt amp costs, and I didn't switch to save electricity, it's just that the acoustic is always ready to go. The electric always involves dinking around with a cord, or the inputs have loosened up or some other bullshit.

how do you know?

I suppose my suspicions about people may be well-founded. They often seem unreasonable, but then I find out that the little voice in my head was right.

We're lied to from all quarters, all the time. Politicians, especially, of all stripes, just lie right to our faces and we suck it right up, and even yell about the other guy lying, but somehow manage to be blind to the fact that the guy we like is probably lying, too. Or the people who purport to have the truth... they may be lying. All these people running around calling the other guy a liar, are liars themselves. It doesn't matter if they have a D or an R next to their name, they're lying. About something. Pick something. Are you completely sure that your favorite is telling you the absolute truth? Would you bet your life on it? Then why get all drooly and out of breath about them? I don't even think there's any truth to be told anymore, to be my own brand of honest. Who the hell knows just what is and what is not total fabrication anymore? Even facts are fabricated and trotted out.

can i get a friggin halleluja

My final grade in the MTH20 class was a B.

Thursday it was cold in hell.

headstock

my Epiphone rests on the Upper Klamath

a very old cycle

I'm reading a book called "This Realm of England". Yeah, another history book. This one covers England from 1399 to 1688. The old cycle I refer to happened in England during the 1500s, when raising sheep for wool production became profitable. All these people with land that had previously been used for growing food switched to using the land for running sheep. At the same time, silver from Spain's colony of Bolivia was flooding into Europe.

"Despite the false simplicity of economic determinism, the fact remains that a growing population, inflated prices, and an insatiable demand for wool reversed the social and economic cycle prevailing before 1460. They transformed the fifteenth-century pattern of land plenty, labor shortage and high wages into land hunger, labor surplus and rising rents. Behind changing economic design loomed the millions of sheep, which outnumbered humans by three to one." (pg 68)

Sheep... ethanol... silver... oil...

anyway I just thought that was interesting and wanted to share it with the class. :)

and she got a book

Because Naranja had given me such awesome pants, I had to find something at least as neat for her. I headed to the local museum in hopes of finding a sort of local history book with a lot of pictures. Her reading of English isn't as good as how well she can speak it. What I did find for her was a book of photographs from around Oregon. Of the land. I love these books- they show that Oregon is not just the green-weeping west of the cascades. That we have a painted desert, and both coastal and inland dunes, and a billion kinds of birds, and rocky wastelands and both evergreen and deciduous woods and forests, plains and wetlands. She really liked it and showed me the things she'd already seen here.

I have promised to go to Thailand to visit them. I have always wanted to see Thailand. My grandparents spent a lot of time there before I was born, and in their house were always great books about it, great objects to look at and contemplate. As a little, little kid, the stuff was wonderfully alien and fascinating to me. It still is. I want to see the wats, and feel the silks and hear the music, and the language and the alphabet.

comfiest pants in the world

Got to meet dad's girlfriend. I call her Naranja ("orange" in Spanish), because that's how I remember her name.. which is kind of similar sounding.

She brought my aunt and I both these Thai fishermen's pants... I just went and looked them up.

If everyone was wearing these pants, there would be no wars. I do firmly believe that.

Anyway, I like Naranja. She's the shortest person I know. Like, half as tall, literally, as my dad. But she's super nice and all that important stuff.

She got a dad's wild-ride-land-of-the-cowboys tour of the west. They landed in LA, drove to Vegas, drove to New Mexico (i think?), Colorado (Vail and Durango), cut west to Elko, then Klam, then down to Rogue River, and today, off to San Francisco, then back to Los Angeles.

She saw the Grand Canyon, Vegas, the huge desert that stretches from east of the I5 all the way to pretty much west Texas, the deepest lake in the Western US, the biggest lake in the WEstern US (or is that Salt Lake? Nevermind, she saw that too), volcanoes, lava flows, snow, four national parks although I am not sure of which four except Crater Lake and Grand Canyon. Rogue River, Lower Animus River, Colorado River, Klamath River. The Rockies. The Coast Range. The Alvord Desert. What a great trip. They stayed in a 3 million dollar condo in Vail, and a rathole in Tuba City. Local brews were tasted at every stop where they were available. I found out Pad Thai is only Pad Thai if it has shrimp in it. If it's another meat-thing, it's something else.

friend's kid is missing

Well, I haven't seen this friend in over a decade, but once a friend, always a friend in my book. It's terrible that Jacob is missing. Here is the information: Especially important if you happen to be in or around Reno, NV. pictures are at the myspace page

Missing Child
Sparks Police Department (775) 353-2231
Case #: 08-10242


Location Last Seen: Boulder Creek Apt. – Clear Acre/Sun Valley Blvd.

Last Seen Wearing: Dark colored shirt and pants / Black tennis shoes (airwalk brand)
Date of Disappearance: 7/25/08
Name: Jacob Anthony Callan
Nicknames: Jake
Date Of Birth: 02/09/93 – 15 years old
Gender: Male
Race: White
Height: 5 ft, 9 in
Weight: 180 lbs
Hair Color: Brown
Eye Color: Brown
Wears Glasses: Yes (but was not wearing them when he was last seen)
Hearing Impaired: No
Birthmarks: none
Scars: none
Tattoos: none
Piercings: None
Medical Issues: Has eczema type rash
If you see this child, please call 911 IMMEDIATELY.

Refer to Above Case #
Mother: Kat Callan (c) 775-954-6309


From KC;

"This is my stepson Jacob. He is currently missing in the RENO NV area.

Please understand we only heard about this tonight. It is Tuesday August 5th, 2008. We received this in email from his mother Katrina. We have been out of town for the last 3 days while Ian had eye surgery. I beg you, I implore you -- PLEASE pass this on. The police are saying he is a possible run-away: but nobody has seen him, and according to Katrina, he never reached his intended friend's house -- where he said he was going.

We'll update when we can, & will try and keep a blog running full steam on any updates on myspace -- at Ian's page www.myspace.com/ianddaniels.

Please, please pass this on, we so desperately need your help! Ian & KC Daniels


We also ask that if you see anyone, any boy that looks like Jake, (or even like Ian) PLEASE CALL 911!!!!"

never planned on the bombs in the sand

I've recently become a fan of the Drive By Truckers. Yeah, they have been around for a while, but it does take me some time to listen to EVERYTHING I (can) get my hands on.

But "Dress Blues" is the song that got me looking around for more of their stuff. There's a version on Youtube that's very stark and beautiful - much more than the album version.

I'm learning it on the geetar. I can even sing it pretty well. It's in the right key for me I guess.



And now my younger brother is joining the Army. My youngest cousin, also, landed in the elite rangers. Other cousins, been out and back again from Afghanistan and Iraq a couple of times.

now i see what's going on

nobody reads actual articles online. They just read headlines. That's where a lot of people get all their news information. Headlines. Comments on stories where you can comment are full of people who just read the headline and say something... stupid.

scramble, like verruckte

ok sorry there's no umlaut there, and i can't remember if there is supposed to be one anyway.

Got an email from Dad on Frida "Am in Colorado. En route. Should be there the 4th. Will call you when I get close"

I thought I had until the 6th! Haha! I'm gonna be cleaning all day tomorrow and when I get back from the show today. weeee.

dear anonymous jerkoff

Well actually that's all that really needed to be said.

welcome, all ye, to the Temple of Suck

The folks who brought you Faster Than The World a couple of years ago have started another mess. The Temple of Suck

I'm a contributor there, so stop in once in a while. We've been talking about food lately. My contribution is not there yet, but give me a free hour over the weekend and it will be.

thing that stuck

At the jam last night I was asked to join another band. This one's a little closer to what I enjoy. So we exchanged numbers and will see what happens. Have to pay for school now. hahaha! It may just be as backup, but five gigs will pay off this semester. Two more will pay for the books.

Dad is coming in August 4. A little nerrrrrvous. Well, he knows I'm a shitass housekeeper too.