It was “gomi” (garbage) day in Joi Ito’s community – a day when everyone gets together to clean up trash and unwanted junk that’s been illegally dumped.
On my trip to Japan (this was in about 1993), I went hiking on Gomiyama – in other words, I found a trail that went up through the bamboo forests behind one of the shrines in Matsuyama on Shikoku.
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The mailbag is open at Velcrometer, where a reader mentions that “Dr. Jellyfinger” may have had a cousin, “Mr. Hamhands.”
I’ve been reading your entries for a about a year now and I have to tell you how much joy my husband and I get from of your entries on Dr. Jellyfinger. You see, it seems that we live in a house owned by his cousin, Mr. Hamhands.
Now that’s interesting, I think that Dr. Jellyfinger’s great-nephew-in-law might be the former owner of this house, The Rev. Izontha Prize Doolittle.
Rev. Doolittle apparently spent so much time looking up to Heaven awaiting the Rapture that he thought it wasn’t worth doing things like cleaning out gutters, upgrading the landscaping, maintaining the drainage, or indeed adding any amenties such as decks, fences, or 3-season rooms. All or some of which it would be nice to have.
Oh, well. Next summer, maybe, is the summer of getting the deck with a pergola. I’d like to have an area that could be somewhat shady… and screened off would be great, because David doesn’t like being outside during mosquito season.
At least this way we get to have something built the way we want it.
Now that the weekend is over, the deluge clears off and the sun comes out… too late to do anything outside now, of course, and everything is soggy underfoot anyway.
What fun we’ve had today – first I had a screaming shrieking hissy over my inablilty to get Front Page (insert sympathy shrieks here) to do what I wanted it to do for the Holy Moly web page. Then at the height of the fit (and the top of my range and volume) the power went out and all the various UPS‘s started beeping and chirping along with me. Which made me scream again, because it’s startling to find yourself suddenly in the dark when you’re already upset and angry with yourself to begin with.
David came running downstairs and I had to calm down enough to say I was okay. I should have said “I’ve totally FUBARed the church web page.”
Then we decided things were bad, possibly very bad, because the sump pump and the ejector pit pumps were both now not running, and it was raining like hell.
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At long last another entry has gone up for the September trip to Britain. It only needed some images and some tweaking but of course it had to lie around being a draft for more than a month.
Well, it’s there now, and there’s really only one big entry left, which will cover the rest of our time hiking in Yorkshire, and the 2 nights we spent in London at the end of the trip. And then the thing will be done, aside from a few things that come after our return home.
Blue Belt
Your skills are adequate from managing day-to-day life as a MT-Do, but you still have much to learn.
I might have ranked higher if I had installed MT all by myself, or if I had actually made modifications to the program (what, I can’t even figure out how the macro thingy works unless I can see how someone else did it and adapt).
But glee! I’m not a white belt. There’s consolation.
I knew I spoke too soon. The lawn blimps are back. There’s also an illuminated flag-thing hanging in front of the garage that’s red, white and blue Christmas lights in some sort of plastic grid. The sign to the left is permanent and commemorates local firefighters and police, which I was able to read for the first time today. Usually, I’m flying past on my way to work or to church (ooh! my brilliant career, not). I can’t remember if the flag signboard was always there, or went up after 9/11. I think it’s been repainted recently – it used to just say “support our troops” in large, unfriendly letters.
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Church today was funny (now there’s an opening line). It’s Pentecost and a lot of the readings were about tongues of fire and the Holy Spirit and the voice of a strong wind and so on. Every time one of these themes would come up, there would be a rumble of thunder. There were several perfectly timed violent thunderclaps during our priest’s talk with the kids from church school, putting a very strong emphasis on everything he said.
The church school had some sort of project today, so they had popcorn and watched a video about Noah before they came upstairs to join us. This point was not lost on Father, who opined that given the choice between incense and popcorn, he thought popcorn smells better. and ba-DOOOM-boom, there was a tremendous flash of light and a mighty thunderclap.
At the end of the service, we had several hymns to sing – the thunder got louder and scarier, and as a joke I sidled over to stand closer to Susan and discreetly pretend to cower. We were singing as loud as we could (within reason and the bounds of musical propriety) to be heard over the din.
I realize now, humbly, that this may have been God’s judgement of our efforts.
Everybody’s a critic.
Anyway, when I arrived, these ducks were there waiting to take possession of a very nice little puddle, which became a friggin’ HUGE puddle after the service. Note the steeple otherwise known as a “a bit of vaguely religious ironmongery” – during the height of the lightning storm, Fr. Lundberg expressed the hope that it’s well grounded, especially since he stands directly under it in the sanctuary.
Thunderclap – ba DOOOM boom. And so it went.
Well, I finally got the simple web pages for “Holy Moly” updated (see The Church of the Holy Innocents) and added the date of the “Holy Rollers” car show. Apparently, we’ve been getting entries already – car shows are big around here, I guess. We’re going to hold it on the incredibly large and expensive-to-maintain lawn, which is ideal for this kind of event, since it’s construction-grade sod from the 60’s.
And now I’d better get out of here. Big party piece for the choir, and we’re short-handed (or voiced) this week.
I borrowed this book from my MIL the other day when we went down to see their new place: The Nine Parts of Desire. I couldn’t put it down while I was there, and it’s one of “those books.” You know the kind I mean – books you heard about a long time ago, wanted to read, but never got around to it.
I like books where the writer has to become a part of a community in order to write about it and the people in it. That was why I liked Nickel and Dimed. I read the latter when I was on vacation in Maui a couple of years ago – the same time I read Fast Food Nation, in fact. Read together, they were pretty damning.
I don’t think “Desire” will present any damning evidence of anything, but I expect it will be enlightening.
Well, I’ve put an 8-hour day into screwing around trying to get something to work again.
So now, let’s talk about the house again, shall we? The “kitty garden” is growing fairly well, except that the lawn service guys keep cutting the hell out of it with their big string trimmer. I keep forgetting to put some fencing around it; they came earlier than expected this weekend and caught me again with no fence and no little sign in Spanish saying “Favor de no cortar” which I hope is a fairly polite way of saying “please don’t cut (these).” However, here’s the kitty birdwatching statue installed in its place of honor. Some of the plants are doing pretty well, some are not (I think it’s too much wind and rain in addition to all the string-trimmer damage).
The result of all the incessant blogging: a somewhat satisfying feeling of self-expression, a lot of weeding and planting yet undone, and a few extra pounds on me (and I seem to be taking on water).
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