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Bands Reunited: The Alarm

I taped the show on Thursday night and watched it yesterday afternoon. I liked it way more than I expected. Usually VH1 is so much filler. I don’t remember being an Alarm fanatic, but I liked them a lot and had some of their records. Weren’t they sometimes referred to as U 1and1/2 (as in less than U2)? I didn’t remember until Erin mentioned it, that we saw the Alarm in Santa Barbara (Sunday, Dec 1, 1985 — I just went and found the ticket stub) at the Arlington Theater. I saw REM and Dokken at the Arlington, too. (Not at the same time, in case you were wondering.) But back to the Alarm — it was sad the way they melted down — I had long moved on and gotten into the hairband scene by the time they broke up in 91. The coolest part of the show was seeing the fans — when the band played it was this room filled with people my age (mostly guys?) going apeshit and singing every word.

Oscar Nominations Today

Bob put the TV on so we could watch them live. Keisha Castle-Hughes! I am so thrilled. I’m excited about a lot of the nominations this year. And I’ve actually seen a decent number of the movies. We saw In America over the weekend. It skates on the edge between something wonderful and something heart-breaking the entire time. We were wrung out at the end. And before that we saw Big Fish which is another fine film and heart-wringer. We still need to see Mystic River and Barbarian Invasions — and those don’t look light-weight either.

I know — what is this? Maybe 3 posts a week for eons and now 4 posts in one day. I have more, too. I have a whole thing about Tex Hall’s State of the Indian Nations address. I think I might start an Indian blog. More on this later.

But this is a Yoda blog. Yoda is my iMac. I bought him in March of 99 which makes him about 110 in computer years. He’s a 266 MHz lime G3 with 64 mg RAM and a 6 GB harddrive of which I’ve used about 2.85 GBs — I’m just getting the whole music on the computer thing and I got a digital camera for my birthday so my HD demands are rising. Poor Yoda — he can barely walk and chew gum at the same time. I’ve used him pretty much every day since I bought him and he’s been great but we ordered a new computer this week.

On 2/11/89 I bought my first MAC (I have extensive PC experience at work and can state with real authority: I hate windoze) — a Mac Plus which I still have. I think it came with a half MG of RAM — Erin upgraded it to a whole MG — I think. I’m not really a power techno-geek. The new computer will only be my 4th MAC. The Mac Plus was The Good Mother. Then I got a 520 Powerbook which was Lestat. Then Yoda. The new one is going to be an EMAC named Frodo. I want a new machine but I’m always sad about ditching the old one. It seems rude to even write about it on him.

Sex Advice from Cowboys [Warning: explicit — but hilarious.]

“Where’s the best place to engage in outdoor sex?

Just about anywhere. I’ve done it in the creek, I’ve done it on horse blankets. I’ve done it in the long grass, got thorns in my ass. Hell, once I smoothed out pine needles and threw her down right there.”

It is Martin Luther Return of the King Day weekend at our house. We started Fellowship extended version on Friday and finished it yesterday and then watched Two Towers extended. This afternoon we’re going to see Return of the King on big screen. Bob hadn’t seen FOTR or TT and he kept saying, “I can’t believe how good this is.” I loved all extended stuff and can’t believe some of the stuff that got cut out (although I understand why). Like that whole extended Boromir/Faromir scene in TT. None of the extra stuff felt like padding to me.

I thought I was having some sort of allergic reaction to something. I’ve never had an allergy and didn’t expect one to pop up at this point in my life but I’ve been sneezing with watery eyes and endless runny nose. I’ve been at it all weekend and now I’m wondering if it might be a cold. I’d almost be relieved if it was a cold because then I could be sure it would go away. But it doesn’t feel like a cold.

The latest snow report is that we only have a few lingering patches. Otherwise we can see lawn again. Our backyard plants don’t look bad at all and I swear the grass and weeds have been growing under all that snow and ice. The front Rhodie needs chopping and will be much shorter in the future and the hedge-thing next to it will turned to compost. Also our front rain gutter is drooping. We went for our first walk in two weeks yesterday and saw all the damage to the trees in our neighborhood. Wow. One of our neighbors had such a lovely yard and he lost 2 trees completely and one he whacked back to a trunk. It looks so sad.

Liz Woody has a story Simple Customs of Salmon Nation in the Pantagonia catalog.:

“Salmon were the first to teach us of wealth.

“In the Longhouse the host family offers gifts in honor of loved ones in birth, naming, achievement and, finally, in death. It is called a Giveaway. …”

Maybe it’s a problem of my age but I never can remember how things work. The cd player in my car has this bluescreen display which you can setup to play little animated things which is so useful to have in a car where you’d want something to watch while you drive. It came set up to show what track the cd is playing or what radio station is on or the time but one day I was trying to figure something out like how to stop a cassette on fast forward and I accidentally switched it so that it now shows bouncing notes flashing up and down. Brilliant. And I don’t even know where the instruction book is but do I really have to plow through a 50 page booklet just so I can display the radio station? Everything comes with huge booklets now. You need devote a whole area of your house to collecting and storing these things for reference later. Our answering machine loses the time if there is the slightest power blip and I can never remember how to reset it. My alarm clock does some odd thing so that when I hit snooze sometimes it’s for 3 minutes and sometimes 7. Can we just have a 10 minute standard? Otherwise, why bother? I can lock the dialpad on my cellphone except I have to remember how to unlock it. All these passwords and PIN numbers and user names and passwords. It’s way too much.

This afternoon I went outside to see if I could chip the ice off the front porch and walkway. Surprise, it worked. I got it all cleared when the roof groaned and then all the snow slid off with a mighty WHUMP! and covered it all up again. I would have been bummed except it was so nice to be outside. I tossed chunks of ice the size of encyclopedias from the walk and onto “the lawn.” The sun even came out for a minute or two. All around ice slid off powerlines and tree branches and the roof icicles dripped steadily. It was a great time to be outside. We unburied Bob’s car and left the rest of the driveway for tomorrow. It’s still over 40 degrees so I think we’ll be back in action by tomorrow.

On Monday I was ready to go to work but I noticed my front right tire looked low. I almost decided to ignore it but I knew the bad weather was coming in and I didn’t want to get stuck anywhere with a flat tire. Going to Les Schwab during weather events is like going to see Santa Claus at the mall on the 23rd of December, but I sucked it up and went anyway. The parking lot was full, the waiting area was full and the line at least 8 people deep. The wait was about an hour but it turns out that the best looking guys work at Hazel Dell LS and they have a huge window in front of the service area so I could spend my hour watching these guys running around with tires and tools and dirty hands. It was awesome. I had a nail in my tire and got it fixed and I was off for work.

I spent 3 hours at work, filled two boxes with things to do at home and left. It’s now Weds and the news says we’re in for still more of this freezing rain crap. I’ve had enough. I’ve managed to do most of the work I brought home but any additional requires other files or things on my work computer or reference materials at the office.

Check Out The Ice Scene