Thrill

My wife Jae has very curly hair. I mean this is serious. People are impressed by the curliness and density of her hair. She's let it get shoulder length or so lately, and she has a mane.

Yesterday she went to her fancy artist of a hair dresser, and he decided he wanted to see her with straight hair. I'll give him credit, I didn't think it was possible. It was straight as straight can be. It was cut very stylishly, as well. No doubt she looked good, but it was weird.

So she stops by my work with her hair like this, walks across the parking lot to where I 'm staring at her, and kisses me hello. She looked so different it kind of felt like I was cheating on my wife. But I wasn't, so it was OK.

Hiking La Luz

Sunday, Dave (my father-in-law) and myself hiked the La Luz Trail. It is a trail from the foothills of the Sandia Mountains to the crest. We hiked up and over to the High Finance restaurant and tram. Jae and Priscilla (wife and mother-in-law) rode the tram up to meet us for dinner. Then we all rode the tram back down.

It was an incredible day, from small things, like how the fallen Aspen leaves look against the pink granite path, to big things, like the storm blowing in across the desert.

That was probably the coolest part. There is a particular difficult part of the trail, steep switchbacks, that is the last hard fight, and when you get to the top it opens up to this this amazing vista. We would usually stop there to rest and enjoy the incredible view. This time, though, the incredible view motivated us on. This storm racing towards us out of the West, over the plains of the desert. It was awesome, in the profound use of that word. A little scary, too. We kept moving. Got a little windy, but not insane. We got snowed on. Watching the snow blow in perpendicular to the mountains was Wow.

Dinner with Jae and Priscilla was a great way to top off the day, and the tram ride down also something I recommend.

Physically, I'm still paying for that day, though, I can tell you.

borrowed words of the day

Luthor Watts, world's greatest DJ, has been playing a song by Jesse Sykes And The Sweet Hereafter. Part of the chorus is:

Your dark eyes remind me of the dreaming dead

more Tolkien

After the Hobbits, my favorite people of Middle Earth are the Rohirrim. I love their poetry.

Where now the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that
was blowing?
Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair
flowing?
Where is the hand on the harpstring, and the red fire
glowing?
Where is the sping and the harvest and the tall corn
growing?
They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind
in the meadow;
The days have gone down in the West behind the hills
into shadow.
Who shall gather the smoke of the dead wood burning,
Or behold the flowing years from the Sea returning?

Verse of the day

Marching song of the Ents.



    We come, we come with roll of drum; ta-runda runda

        runda rom!

     We come, we come with horn and drum: ta-runa runa

        runa rom!

     To Isengard! Though Isengard be ringed and barred with

        doors of stone;

     Though Isengard be strong and hard, as cold as stone and

        bare as bone,

     We go, we go, we go to war, to hew the stone and break

        the door;

     For bole and bough are burning now, the furnace roars --

        we go to war!

     To land of gloom with tramp of doom, with roll of drum,

        we come, we come;

        To Isengard with doom we come!

        With doom we come, with doom we come!



Found at this neat website that has much verse from Tolkien.

Anti-depressant

Jae and I are attending an 8 week class taught by a Buddhist nun from the Shakyamuni Buddhist Center. You don't have to buy the whole doctrine for this to make sense. The class is on developing more compassion. One thing the teacher has said is that if you are depressed and want to feel better, try doing something nice for somebody else. Worth a try.

Carnivores

There is a local restaurant, Rudy's Country Store and Barbeque. Good food. You should check it out if you are in Albuquerque. On their aprons it says:

"I didn't claw my way to the top of the food chain ... to eat vegetables!"

Matter and Anti-matter

Last night, on our kitchen table, was a copy of The Virtue of Selfishness, a book of essays on Ayn Rand's philosoply, Objectivism. Also on the table was a book about Buddhism. I don't remember the title or author of that one, we have many. I picked each book up, one in either hand, and held them at arm's lenght. I moved them slowly towards each other, wondering if they would destroy each other in a burst of energy when they touched. They didn't. Now they are stacked on top of each other on the table.

borrowed words of the day

Salvation sat and crossed herself
called the devil partner
wisdom burned upon a shelf
who'll kill the raging cancer
Seal the river at its mouth
take the water prisoner
fill the sky with screams and cries
bathe in fiery answers

From Townes Van Zandt's "Lungs"

Interesting musical discovery of the day

Shiva In Exile

Magnatune describes them as Gothic Arab/Indian World Music

If you go there, you can listen. A fun thing to do at Magnatune is pick a genre and then listen to their mix.

Book on Tape, _Lord of the Rings_

Jae and I are listening to the _Lord of the Rings_ books on tape. I should have looked up the particular edition before I posted. I'll post it later. It is really well done. The story, of course, is incredible. I find a couple of interesting things about the book on tape as opposed to reading the book, and as opposed to the recent movies.

This is an unabridged version, I should mention. First thing that was interesting was pronunciation. Hearing the names and non-english languages pronounced is cool. The second thing was the songs. The narrator sings the songs. Very cool. For those reasons, even if you've read the books and seen the movies, I recommend trying these books on tape.

Fertile Field of Radio Drama

Driving home late on a sunday night, on one of the public radio stations, we heard 2 radio dramas and a spoken word piece. Blogging about them might be futile. You kind of had to hear it. Fortunately for you, I found that you can listen to some in RealAudio format off the KUNM wesite.

The first we came in in the middle. The protagonists seemed to be a male and female investigative reporter. They were investigating a factory where a foriegn sounding man was training "biobots," lured out of the moutains with food, to work in his factory. It was kind of a mishmash of animal rights and socialist commentary. The reporters, in the end, "freed the slaves." Bad to the point of perversly fascinating.

The second item was a spoken word performance, "Letter to a Blind Farmer." The narrator had seen a picture in the paper of a blind farmer named Ivan getting married in Siberia. He wrote him a letter. Rambling, non-linear, again bizarre to the point of mesmerizing. We laughed. We lifted our eyebrows. We gave each other quizical looks. The commentary on the story of Oedipus was a high point. Through it all you had the nagging suspicion that this was exactly the kind of correspondance you'd get if you were unlucky enough to be featured in a tabloid. This one they have the RealAudio. Follow that link and search for the keyword "blind" in the page, and you'll find it.

The 3rd piece was the final installment of, well, something. Many of the characters were "cyber-enhanced" animals, including ferrets and bears. The bear at one point exhaltingly declairs that from now on he "will be Resplendent." He was taking "Resplendent" as his name.

At this point we had been sitting in the car in the driveway for awhile. We turned off the radio and came in before the end of this epic.

Remember, always be yourself.

"Remember, always be yourself. Unless you suck."
--Joss Whedon


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Suitable for Everyday Use

I work with a woman, who when you ask her how she is, she will sometimes reply, "Suitable for everyday use." I like that.