Tales from the Tower

Yesterday as Jen and I were heading out to the car, I spied my neighbor out walking her dogs. I took the opportunity to introduce Jen, and we learned that she is moving out. This is a good thing. She has two little yapper dogs that go absolutely insane and howl and bark and yap for a half hour whenever she leaves. They also sometimes bark when I come home too. I've been getting increasingly fed up, so it is a great thing that she is vacating the premises and taking her four-legged noise machines with her.

Not good, however, is the stupendously fowl stench emanating from the trash room on my floor today. The Tower of Odd Smells is outdoing itself today. When I arrived home, I was assaulted by some unholy stench oozing out into the hallway. It was so bad I immediately plugged my nose and quickly made my way down the hall. I worked picking up roadside garbage for several summers, and there was little I encountered during that time that rivaled the foul miasma of today. It was the smell of rot and decay but tinged with a fruity edge that just made it all the more horrible. Good grief, was it ever rank.

The interesting thing is that stuff doesn't go that bad that fast, except perhaps dairy products. Whatever fetid, decomposing nastiness got tossed in the trash room had to have fermented and ripened in someone's apartment, because it wasn't there this morning. I tremble to think of anyone capable of living with that nauseating smell.

Details

What a strange drawn out Saturday. This day feels like it has been twice the length of a normal day, but in a good way. This afternoon in particular felt weird, like time was being stretched out. I got up this morning and took the car down to get detailed. I've been meaning to do this for some time, as the crud has built up in the interior and the exterior has been assaulted by sap and pollen. They had told me the whole thing was going to take 5 hours, so I settled in to do some work on the parking map and made plans to meet up with Laura for lunch while they shampooed and pampered my upholstery. Happily, they finished the car 2 hours early, and I was moving Daria out of their lot right as Laura pulled up. Excellent timing.

We grabbed some lunch at Wild Ginger (so good) and then went to downtown Littleton to toddle around. Actually, the main aim was to get myself a manly version of this cool little notebook Laura showed me over lunch. It's called Flip Notes, and it is this spring-loaded, metal-clad note pad. The pen acts as a pin holding the cover shot. I picked one up in masculine black. It's also small enough that I can pack it in my pocket without getting pocket overload warnings from my pants.

I also ended up finding some long sought after lemoncello and picked up a bottle for Isaac and Elsa. Then I really needed a bathroom stop so we went into this intriguing little tea shop. It's part store, part restaurant, all female. They have all these decadant pastries served in artistic fashion and a plethora of quirky decor. I can't remember the name of the place, but it's something in French with an orange tree as an icon; that is, not a tree bearing oranges, but a tree that is orange.

I came home and worked on the parking map while Laura went hunting for shelves. I've got the map pretty close to being finished. I just need to add in a few more buttons, but the basic map browsing functionality is there. Then I made some dinner, watched some Bleach, and soaked in the tub. And here it is only 8! The night is young!

Tomorrow will be church and a trip to the Asian Festival at Sakura Square with Jen. We're then going to go see Wall-E later using free tickets I got from being a good supporter of public radio. This weekend is going to be long in a very nice sense.

Book of Secrets

There's a secret I've been keeping from you. I'm afraid it is not too dark or too horrifying. I've been building books; specifically, The Life of God in the Soul of Man by Henry Scougal. Jen had given me one of her favorite books to read: The Pleasures of God by John Piper. That book is inspired by Scougal's short tome. I knew Jen didn't have Scougal's book, so while she was off in Ireland, I broke out the typography skills, binding thread, chip board, and glue and made a couple of books, doing everything from typesetting the book to building the case and sewing the signatures together. I had to keep it a secret from you, because Jen is among you!
On Sunday, we went to Chataqua Park in Boulder and had a right proper picnic, complete with an assortment of cheese, fruit, bread, and some fruit juice that may or may not have been carefully fermented. I gave her the book then along with a CD and a couple of DVDs. It was a delightful day, despite the threat of thunderstorms overhead, and she liked the book quite a bit.
I had some trepidations about this whole custom bookmaking exercise, because my last experience with sewing and glueing signatures into a book didn't work too well. Foreseeing that might be the case this time, I made two books so I could give Jen the better one and have one for myself. Fortunately, the sewing went well this time around, though the glue did not play nicely. Also, the printing, which I did a Kinko's had some kinks to it that I didn't discover until I had finished and was cutting the pages to size. I like the idea of making books by hand, but when you combine my perfectionism with my deficient craft, I can get pretty frustrated. However, a handmade book has a lot of yourself invested in it, making it extra special.
That being said, I am particularly interested in Lulu.com. It's an online publisher that lets you publish your books in any given number. You can print one book or a thousand. It's also exceptionally affordable, cheaper in fact than the start up cost for crafting your own book. I think the next time I want to make a standard-sized book, I'm going to have to go to Lulu.com.

However, I still have some materials left over from my recent book creation. I have the materials to make a small oddly-shaped book, say a 3x3 or 4x4 book. Now I just need some inspiration and a good idea. Any suggestions?

You can see a PDF of the book in my portfolio.

Oh, and pictures will come soon. Blogger's image upload system isn't working right now.
UPDATE: The picture upload works now, which should be pretty evident.

Very Interesting Commute

I don't think I've said "Bike on your left" so much in one day. Today was Ride Your Bike to Work Day, and there were scads of cyclists on on the trail today, especially around REI. But that's not the very interesting part.

After I passed REI, I came to a police cordon set up around the bridge to Riverfront Park and the trail through the apartments that leads to the bridge over I-25. I asked if I could cut through, since that's my route to work, and the police let me cross the yellow tape. That's when I saw the dead body. It was lying under a white sheet. Woah. That stopped me in my tracks. A detective suggested I head on out, and I asked what had happened. "We found a body in the river, and we're trying to figure out why," he said. I rode on out past the news teams. One journalist was interviewing some cyclists about Ride Your Bike to Work Day while he waited. I wish I could have heard some more of his questions. "So, how does a dead body effect your view of Ride Your Bike to Work Day?"

Fear of Falling and It's Official

It's two blog posts for the price of one!

So, the other day as I was riding home from work, I saw a man hanging from the wrong side of the railing of the bridge over the Platte at Confluence Park. "Hmm," I thought, " that is probably not good." As I approached, he let go and plunged into the rapids below. Evidently, he meant to do this. It took me a while to recollect back to swimming in the Rogue River and the crazies that would jump off the Lobster Creek Bridge for the joy of it. That bridge is much higher than this one, but the river is also much deeper and much more placid at that point than the Platte. This joker jumped into fairly shallow rapids where the water is fast as it drops down to meet Cherry Creek. This is something I will never be able to do. I do not like falling. My body will not let me.

But maybe, my elevators will. The Tower of Odd Smells has three elevators in the middle of it. The other day, the middle one was stuck on my floor and making a very loud thrumming noise. I figured this just validated the choice I had already made to walk the 11 flights of stairs up to the gym. The next day, there was still the loud thrumming, but when I lift weights I don't walk up the stairs. I called for an elevator and the one on the right came. I got in, and as it started up, I noticed something was wrong. The normal interval of beeps was changed to 1 normal, then 3 fast, then 1 normal, and then 3 fast. Then came the sudden, shuddering halt. The display said that I was on the first floor, then the basement. This did not strike me as anything good, so I hit the open doors button, but nothing happened. Finally it opened and I gratefully exited onto the 11th floor and made my way up to the gym. I walked back down after I was done, thank you very much. Isaac and Elsa say I now live in the Tower of Odd Smells and Pitfall.

Next Post! Which is Brief!

It is official. I now own my car outright. I have the title in my grubby little paws to proove it. This morning I got my mail and was puzzled by a notice saying I had a certified letter waiting for me at the post office. Certified mail is usually either really good or really bad. Fortunatley, it was really good, and I own my car and am debt free. Woot!

Also, I wanted to share a super neat plug-in for Firefox: PicLens. It's a media display thing that is super slick. Rather than try to describe it, I'll point you to the site and recommend the demo.

This is Where I Work

This is what happens to my dunnies at work. This why most of my toys are at home. This is a creative use of speaker cables.

My Fellow Commuters

This morning on the ride in, I passed a guy dressed in slacks, a button up shirt, and flip flops commuting to work on a skateboard. Only in Colorado... Of course, I ride home from work in a button up, jeans, and sandals, so I'm one to talk. On the ride home today, I spied a cyclist with an interesting tattoo on his calf. It was of a road sign for bicycle crossing. Very meta.

Lamentations

It occurs to me that I don't recall ever hearing a sermon on the book of Lamentations. This doesn't mean I haven't heard one. I'm not that great at recalling the key points of last week's sermon, let alone those from decades past. But it certainly seems that the book of Lamentations doesn't make it into the pulpit very often. I think I've heard more lessons on Numbers, honestly.

And I can sort of see why. First off, major downer. I'm only into Chapter 3 and we've already had Jerusalem laid waste, mothers eating their children, and God personally mauling the author. This will not play in your health & wealth churches. This won't play in most churches. The author—I'm going to say Jeremiah for brevity's sake—lays the responsibility for this destruction squarely at the feet of God:

7 He has walled me in so I cannot escape; he has weighed me down with chains.
8 Even when I call out or cry for help, he shuts out my prayer.
9 He has barred my way with blocks of stone; he has made my paths crooked.
10 Like a bear lying in wait, like a lion in hiding,
11 he dragged me from the path and mangled me and left me without help. Lamentations 3:7-11 NIV

Furthermore:

37 Who can speak and have it happen if the Lord has not decreed it?
38 Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both calamities and good things come?
Lamentations 3:37-38 NIV

This is not in the easy-reading section of the Bible. God is good and loving and compassionate! Right? Right? Actually, and this blows my mind, Jeremiah agrees. He says:

31 For men are not cast off by the Lord forever.
32 Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love.
33 For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to the children of men.
Lamentations 3:31-33 NIV

The same guy who is lamenting being mauled and shot with God's arrows is extolling the virtues of God's unfailing love. He's saying that God's compassions "never fail. They are new every morning." How wild is that? Lamentations so far, in particular chapter 3, have been an amazing testimony of Jeremiah's faith in the sovereignty and goodness of God. Jeremiah bewails the devastation of Israel and Judea, but he totally believes that is appropriate and right for God to bring that calamity. It is His sovereign right. In verse 39, Jeremiah asks, "Why should any living man complain when punished for his sins?"

This already hard book sits extra sour on my tongue since I'm currently reading a Calvinist text. If we have no free will over whether we deny God or follow Him, how can this kind of tribulation be justified as a punishment for things we have no control over? Ah, anyway, musings on Calvinism will have to wait for another post.

Jeremiah definitely points that this is punishment for the Israelites' idolatry and spiritual adultery. God would rather bless Israel, but He will punish it severely if need be. Jeremiah's submission to God's wrath and his attitude in the face of it are an astounding monument to his trust in God. Right now, I don't think I could muster that kind of attitude in the face of such widespread desolation. Until I can develop that, I guess I'd best work to root out idolatry in my life, and hope there's no "Babylonian exile" in store for America, huh?

Smooth Operator

What a difference a new suspension makes. Daria is now riding as smooth as she did when she came off the lot. Now that I have a new front stabilizer link, I can see how far things had degraded before. The best thing? It was all covered under my warranty. I wasn't sure whether or not it was still in effect, but it was, so I got off without having to pay a cent. That's a big ol' PTL, folks, especially since it took 4 hours for them to get the problem fixed.

During those 4 hours I worked on the parking map and got lunch from Heidi's Deli. The sandwich was a BLT with avocado, which was exceptionally tasty.

Okay, interruption here: While I was typing this up, I just heard on NPR that some guy in South Korea burned himself alive to protest the import of US beef. Good grief! Protest all you want, but the import of beef is not something to immolate yourself over. Holy moley!

All right, back to the post already in progress: So, after I got my car back, I then ran some errands all over the city. It was filled with frustration as I couldn't find what I was looking for, and looking for some things in the wrong places. I was back and forth across the city. I wish I could say that my demeanor remained as smooth as my suspension. After that last failed parallel parking attempt, I was rather steamed and rather glad to be out of my car, even with its new lush suspension.

Oh, Man

I am losing it.

So my wonderful car Daria is not her normal smooth self and has been making clunky noises when I drive over uneven pavement at slow speeds. Since this could be something related to the wheels, I decided to get it taken care of quickly. Now, I've visited two Mazda dealerships here in Denver. The first one I went to in order to get my car serviced and stay in my Free Tires For Life Scam plan with Mazda. I found out later that this dealership wouldn't honor that deal from the Orlando dealership. But after they rotated the tires, the yo-yos in the shop there didn't tighten all the lugnuts on 3 of my wheels. There were 2 or 3 loose on the front drivers wheel and one loose on each of the rear tires. They were loose enough that they were coming unscrewed from the vibrations of driving. I could easily undo them with my fingers. So, I was not too inclined to return there.

The other Mazda place only gave me bad customer service when I was getting a part from there, so I figured I'd give their service department a spin, because I certainly wasn't going to the idjits at Mazda Dealer A. So I called them up and scheduled an appointment mid-week and very early in the morning. I decided later that that time wasn't going to work, since it would mean riding to work on my bike from Aurora. No dice. So I looked up the number and called and rescheduled my appointment for tomorrow morning.

Or so I thought ...

When I went to get directions to Mazda Dealer B, I realized that I couldn't remember the name of Mazda Dealer B. This alarmed me, because, hadn't I just called them earlier this week? I had a sneaking suspicion and I checked my cell phone records to confirm it. Sure enough, I had scheduled my original appointment with Mazda Dealer B, then called Mazda Dealer A to reschedule it. Mazda Dealer A didn't dispute that I already had an appointment with them, so they just signed me up. So this means now that not only did I break an appointment with Mazda Dealer B, but I am now signed up for an appointment with the monkeys over at Mazda Dealer A, the ones who didn't put all my lugnuts back on.

Oy vey.

Return of the Night Heron

This morning as I was riding to work, I caught something moving out of the corner of my eye. I turned and saw the night heron flying down the creek beside me. Ah, the night heron, our nocturnal sentinel of Cherry Creek. I had been mildly worried after he disappeared during the winter. I guess he's just migratory, but now he is back, and mixing it up a little by being active in the morning.

This particular morning, he was just gliding down the creek, paralleling my course. This elegant little bird and I kept pace for a short magical moment, then he landed and I sped along to work.

More Minutiae

So, they're starting to weedeat the high grass along Cherry Creek. It sort of makes me sad. I like the tall grass, as it is part of a very thin and transparent illusion that I am not in the middle of an urban center, but rather in a natural space. However, I imagine it will give relief to allergy-prone cyclists. I don't have allergies, but over the last week even my eyes have begun to burn a little. Of course, the vapors from the carpet glue probably aren't helping. They put down new carpet this week in my office building and the miasma is still pretty strong in the halls.

Compile, Compile, Test, Curse, Compile, Compile

My eyes are burning. With pollen or hatred, it is hard to tell. Flex has riled up such venom in me today. In truth, it is mainly the project that I am working on that is the problem. It is so Byzantine and convoluted that it is no wonder it breaks with regularity. Flex doesn't help though. Today it decided to stop letting me know when I have compile errors and just sit for minutes and time out instead. Then I have to clean the project, use an ANT script to recompile to get the compile error, then fix it, and then run the ANT script again, and then do the debug session again. If I'm working in the framework project, add in the step of compiling the framework every time.

Urrgh. I'm just angry. Maybe that's what I should say. I'm angry. RRrrrrr.

Once Upon Cherry Creek

So, I went to Cherry Creek with Laura and her friend Mike today. They were looking to enjoy some chi-chi shopping, and I thought I'd tag along, since it just was Laura's birthday and all. While we were there, I witnessed an interesting combination. There was a J. Crew advertisement using 'Rock the Casbah' as its tagline. I also saw a poster for a trip to London to see the premiere of the musical Mamma Mia! using the tagline 'London Calling.' I know that this is the postmodern world we live in, swimming in pastiche and remix, but is the Clash really something that works to sell turtlenecks and Abba-inspired musicals? Using the track and album titles of a seminal punk band for trendy togs and Dancing Queen just seems out of whack to me.

Also out of whack? In the Oakley store, there was a mother buying her son a pair of shades that probably cost more than a car payment. The son was all of 11. Who buys an 11-year-old boy super expensive fragile sunglasses? How long before those glasses are left on the bus, crushed at the bottom of book bag, or run through the wash?

Minutiae

Wow. I actually got some work done on the parking map. It was weird. I just felt like doing more programming after getting home. Crazy. Now I just have to harvest the momentum and keep going.

Work's going to get crazy here soon. Like, today. We're ramping up for a big project. At a big meeting for the project, I noticed one of the guys with the client is a guy who lives in my building and works out in the gym at the same time as me. Small world.

Speaking of working out, I am sore, and boy, does it feel good.

Happy Birthday to Laura, too!

Brilliant Weekend

What a great weekend! Jen and I spent most of Saturday together, playing games, eating Kristina Kringle (don't worry, it's a pastry), and walking down to Wash Park to play frisbee and chat. We also saw the new Indiana Jones movie, which was very silly but fun. It was great to spend some much time with her.

Then today I went to church and hung out in Littleton until the afternoon. That's when we got together to do a fundraiser for my church's mission trip. This was a brilliant idea for a fundraiser. It was a local version of the Amazing Race. People donated money to participate, and the cost of the fundraiser was just time on the part of volunteers, money for the gift certificate prize, dinner, and a few packages of Oreos. It was quite fun, too.

My friend Matt and his dad and I were the A-Team. I, of course, was Mr. T. It's only natural. They released people from the church office according to when they registered, so we were 6th out of 8 teams in getting started. We grabbed our envelope with our clue and ran out the door. At first, it looked like they had forgotten to give us a clue. However, Matt noticed that there were spaces in the middle of words. I figured out that if you took the letter in front of each of the spaces, it spelled out Highlands Ranch Town Center. Off we went!

When we got there, we weren't sure what to look for, and the town center is quite large, with a similarly-named RTD transit station in the middle. After lots of searching we finally found someone from the church in the middle of a farmer's market. We then had to do a challenge which involved finding envelopes hidden in 4 different books inside the nearby Tattered Cover.

The clues we found in the books led us to Red Rocks. We had to go to the stage at the ampitheater, and while two of us sang constantly, one of us had to run back up to the top and then back down again. Needless to say, I wasn't doing the running.
The clue we got there led us to Coors Field where we had to get a series of pictures with strangers. We were then given an exceptionally nasty math equation to solve. Once we solved it, we had to call a number with the answer. The person on the phone gave us the next clue, which led us to one of the many Starbucks on the 16th Street Mall. There I did a bunch of math equations with the number 16 and we got the next clue.

That one sent us to the Denver Mint, where we had to run a very easy obstacle course and eat a pack of Oreos. By this time we had drank all our water and the three of us had to finish a large pack of Oreos. It was not so fun.

Once we choked those down, we got a clue that we figured was for Washington Park, namely near the water there. We got there and checked out the north lake, the fish pond, the boat house, the bath house, and the building with the pool. We weren't finding the people with our next clue, so we decided to use one of our helps. Each team started with one help to get them past a clue that stumped them. However, so many people had trouble with the first clue that they gave us an extra help. We figured, why not use one? The help just confirmed for us that we were in the right place, but didn't give us the location of the people we were looking for. After a lot of looking, we finally found them in a random spot on the south lake. We had to answer some presidential trivia to get the next clue.

The answer for that puzzle was Park Meadows. The clue mentioned a hunter, so we headed for the Dick's Sporting Goods store there. We couldn't find anyone there, so we went out into the mall and found our people at a fake glen inside the mall. Our challenge here was to find a lot of merchandise spread all over the mall and get the prices for each. We split up and headed out to get the prices, but since it was the late afternoon on a Sunday, the shops in the mall were closing. I actually got locked inside of Nordstroms and had to get a clerk to let me out. They gave us a bye on that challenge with the prices we had collected, so we grabbed the next clue and hustled on out.

This was the final clue. It was definitely pointing to a cemetery, but we weren't sure which one, so we used our second help to confirm that our destination indeed was the Littleton Cemetery. Once there, we had to find a single grave out of the whole graveyard. There was only one team there when we got there, and we hadn't been called back by someone winning, so we figured we had a shot at the big prize. However, this was not an easy task. The team ahead of us had already been there an hour. We looked and looked and looked. Finally, because the game was going overtime, the organizers gave us a hint and told us that what we were looking for was in a tree. By this time, two other teams had caught up with us. Everyone was frantically scanning trees and gravestones. Finally, Matt saw a placard on a tree that told him to call a number with a secret phrase. We then were told to return to the starting point. We nonchalantly got out of the cemetery and then sped back to the church office ... and arrived 3 minutes after the winning team. So close! They had dinner waiting for us, so we enjoyed some chow before exhaustedly, but contentedly heading home.

It was a great time and super fun! Brad Evans and his crew did a great job getting the challenges and clues at the right level. The timing was maybe a bit off, since it was supposed to end around 5:30 and we didn't leave the cemetery until 7:30. Nevertheless, it was exciting and exhilarating. I'd definitely do it again!