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So there is good news and bad news about our new community garden plot. The good news: it is a nice-looking, friendly little garden, and we’ve already met two other gardeners who were extremely nice and seemed about the same level of experienced-amateur gardener that I might consider myself to be. Our garden leaders seem very nice, and should be holding some kind of group meeting soon, which I hope will allow me to really get to know the rest of the gardeners.

The bad news is a little more serious. Our 100 square foot plot sits next to two 30-feet tall blue spruces. That might be OK, except they sit immediately to the south. The. plot. is. shady. all. day.

If you’re not a gardener, you may at this point be saying, “So what? Clearly plants grow in shade, I see them all the time. Grow up!” In part, you’re right: I should grow up, but this is the second time in recent months I’ve had this problem: when we moved into our northwest-bottom-corner apartment and found I couldn’t raise much in pots on the windowsills. The garden was supposed to correct that problem, but as Sam considers, perhaps we are being “hazed” as new members of this exclusive locale. The pure shadiness of the plot means that more than half of the things I planned to grow must be crossed off. So, tomatoes, gladiolas, all peppers, basil, daisies and zinnias are out. LOTS of lettuce, spinach, broccoli, peas, collards, and did I mention lettuce? are in. We’ll show them we know how to garden.

The tragedy that keeps me from accepting this and moving on is that I haven’t grown tomatoes for over a year now, and was desperately looking forward to raising the crop that has the most payoff: a freshly grown and plucked tomato, something I could rest assured would grow in Colorado with much the same requirements as in Missouri. While I could quietly slip my brother $50 cash (he’s a certified sawyer) and the trees would suddenly no longer block the sun, I have a feeling I’d be hunted down by an angry mob if I did, since no one else would stand to gain from the trees mysteriously being chopped down.

So, we’ve taken the first steps – meeting a few other gardeners, and amending the soil with high-quality compost and sheep manure while picking out the blue spruce pinecones. This week I’ll probably put down peas and a few kinds of lettuce and spinach. If things work out, we’ll get a lucrative trading system down, offering the rare mid-summer spinach and lettuce when everyone else is drowning in tomatoes and basil. Oh, and next year we’ll request a move to a sunny plot.

No, I’m not moving. But one of the downsides of Boulder right now has been lack of access to a community garden, and that’s about to change. I got the call today that I have a bed in the Fortune Garden, one of the community gardens that I am told is difficult to get into. This is because it is located in one of the oldest, most esteemed and expensive neighborhoods of Boulder – and there is little turnover for both real estate and garden estate. I weighed the benefits of the two nearest gardens (this one’s closer, more intimate, and better protected from wildlife) for a couple months before requesting my top choice. I’m hopeful it’ll be as good as I expect.

It’s not the fairest thing to expect community, friendship, drinking buddies, outdoor activity, grassroots activism and oh yeah, fresh vegetables and herbs from a simple 100 square feet, but my last plot, at a meager 50 square feet did just that. I miss my fellow gardeners from the humble Clemens garden very much, and hope I’ll find interesting gardeners at this new location. It’s a little further away, but that’s all the more reason to become more comfortable on my bike and to prepare seeds for spring. It’s time to read up on what Colorado’s growing season will and won’t let me do (damn the desert climate), and figure out what seeds or seedlings to order.

The other benefit to Boulder’s community gardens set-up is that they have made the gardens part of city-owned land, protected from development. My last garden existed at the grace of two, not just one, private property owners, and came under threat of condo development during my time there. While it was inspiring to see how our garden group came together to argue for keeping the garden (successful so far), it’s a lot less stressful to know the city’s got your back. Plus, for a ludicrous sum, I could take a course this summer in bee-keeping, which is awfully cool. I just have to figure out whether it’s hundreds of dollars cool.

It’s true. Two weeks ago, Berg finally agreed to do it! He had been thinking about it for quite a while, but needed some friendly and a little liquid encouragement (hey, being in engineering can make you more fashion-conservative). He’s quite pleased with the end result, though, as am I. And I get the impression he’s getting a great reaction out of his fellow students, too. Perhaps I will be giving other Aerospace Engineering students mohawks soon…

Berg’s hair is irrepressibly curly, which makes for a mohawk that practically stands up (or poofs up) on its own. Sam’s mohawk, while incredibly long (perhaps 6 inches at the apex now), is so straight that it takes 1/2 can of foul-smelling hair spray and an assistant to stand it up. Thus, he rarely stands his up, certainly not for his recent activities, which have included multiple TV appearances. It’s too bad…I think he would be an excellent speaker for his field, whether or not his hair pushes him to 6 feet tall. But he prefers to keep it down except for special occasions, which is why I haven’t posted any pictures of his mohawk on here. Encourage Sam to spike it, and you’ll see some then.

So how have things been? Same as usual, I suppose. I’m repainting my desert shoes – from green to red, and today I’m making root beer from scratch. The recipe will be posted if it’s successful, but there are days of steps before we’ll know. Root beer making is a very interesting project, however – requiring a variety of chipped barks, and created using a mixture of molasses and yeast that both carbonates the beverage and provides a low alcoholic content. Not enough to even qualify it as a wine cooler, but enough that modern companies don’t even try – as we all know, HFCS and compressed carbon dioxide are cheaper and more predictable.

I have a not-so-secret goal in this root beer project. A nearby local restaurant, better known for its well-loved alcoholic brewed products, makes the best root beer I’ve ever had. It’s not super-sweet, but full of flavor (and scent…not the best for a very pregnant friend newly sensitive to strange smells). It’s clear they’re doing something other root beer producers are not, as no bottled products (I’ve tried quite a few in the last couple months) have quite mimicked the combination of flavors. I have some ideas for how to figure out their recipe, but for now it’s the old-fashioned way: make my own, continue to drink theirs, and try to sort out which flavor compounds need tweaking in my own recipe. Failing that, I wonder what kind of offer would convince one of the hip employees to share the original recipe with me?

For Christmas, I got my very own set of clippers and a barber smock in black and white stripes. This allowed me to trim up Sam’s ‘hawk. He had to show his stuff since his little brother Greg is now a proud mohawk club member as well – check it out, he’s clearly not modest about his new do.

This year being my first year of doing mohawks, I’m just getting started. Expect more mohawks by m. for 2008.

Let me recommend buying a new digital SLR before going on vacation. It means those gorgeous, full-of-light shots you expect out of a nice dSLR can be tried out almost right away.

I took an intermediate digital photography course last month, and it became rapidly clear that while I have a very nice point-and-shoot camera, there are some pretty cool things that mine can’t do. At the same time, a photographer friend was selling their digital SLR in order to make way for a newer, nicer digital SLR (hey, if it’s how you make your living, you use very nice equipment). Sam was nice enough to go in on it with me, both to make it more affordable, and because he too has some photography techniques he wants to try out. I’ve been spending a lot of time with it so far, and since the coast of Oregon is already beautiful, all I had to do was capture it.

Also, this will allow me to improve the pictures I take of fire performers. This coincides nicely with a trip this week to do just that. This makes my summer of travel much more fun and rewarding.

No, Flexistentialism isn’t dead. It is just hibernating. Hibernating in the summer. Strange, I know.

A lot of things have happened recently. We are moving to Colorado, I sold a business for millions of dollars, and I bought a new pair of boots. That’s about it.

I’m here at work, and people are getting awfully frantic about the possibility of snow tomorrow. Discussions are being had about whether or not to cancel meetings, how to inform people if we have to close the museum, how we’ll be able to operate if half the staff can’t get to work because of the snow, etc. I’ve been trying to be the voice of reason, but have switched tactics, and am now the voice of mocking and irony.

“OH Goodness! The seasons are changing again! Who would have expected it?!? How could we have predicted that the seasons might change! How can a motor vehicle hope to operate if there are two inches of snow on the roads! We’ll be helpless!”

I’ve recently switched to sarcasm, noting that I’ll be leaving work early to pick up extra ammunition on the way home, in case I have to defend my home during the weeks of isolation caused by a moderate snowfall.

I hope it snows a bit, that would be nice. I’ll still have to go to work, however.

I’ve recently gotten two more websites up and running. One is a small placeholder website for our St. Louis based fire performance group, Pandora’s Matchbox. We spin poi and staff, do fire eating, fire breathing, fire devil sticks, rope darts, fire painting, etc. We even have flame throwers! Fun stuff! We get hired around St. Louis for parties, events, art galleries, stuff like that. The webpage is just meant to be a way for people to get in touch with us if necessary.

The other webpage is the store. A few of us in Pandora’s Matchbox make our own gear, and are now selling it. The storefront is still in progress, most products still need images, etc. However, it is up and running, and you can, in fact, buy our gear online. The shop has been cleverly named Pandora’s Toolbox. Cute, huh?

And as long as I’m plugging stuff, I’m doing a little work with my friend’s new business, Sunflower Solar. My friend Will has been working up to this for a while, and it is really starting to take off. They do solar power installations around Colorado, mostly around Boulder. They have focused on simple, easy to implement systems that qualify for the maximum rebates from the local energy company, XCel, and the maximum tax credits for renewable power. That means they do grid-tie systems, that don’t use batteries. They install panels on the roof, an inverter that converts DC to AC in the house, and then they back-feed that into your existing breaker panel. During the day, your house makes more power than it uses, and the electric meter spins backwards. At night, or when it’s cloudy, your house uses more power than it makes, and your electric meter spins forwards. At the end of the month, either you owe a little to the power company, or, if your meter ended up farther back than it started, they owe you a little, and will actually cut you a check. Cool, huh? The process is called net-metering, and is available in about 30 states.

Will and his team have been installing like crazy, and are quite busy, so I’m doing some basic engineering work for them, preparing diagrams for building permits, etc. It’s a neat process, and I’m glad his business is doing well.

After much time spent taking new pictures (with the new Casio Exilim Z-55), I have put up a series of photos from the last eight months. Check them all out, as they include many familiar and new faces, but here are some details, since the albums already cover two pages:

• February 18th, 2005 – Mad Arf exhibit at Mad Art gallery – Friends, art and dogs at an art deco former-police-station art gallery and Lohr’s return to STL.
• February 20th-21st, 2005 – Dennis visits St. Louis – Dennis comes to visit and we have fun at the SLSC, getting Boba and making “twins” of ourselves.
• March 9th, 2005 – Poi-making workshop for an afterschool group in Florissant – Nita’s connections lead Pandora’s Matchbox to do a poi-making and spinning workshop on a cold day in March. The kids had a lot of fun, WE had a lot of fun, and we all created a lot of streamer poi.
• Spring and Summer fire performance and gatherings
  • Firespinning at Artica – Some excellent shots of Brendan, Sam, Pickle, Lohr and Jim spinning crazy shapes down at Artica in April.
  • 3rd Friday @ 3rd Degree – 3rd Degree put up a large outdoor sculpture consisting of glass bubbles placed at different heights on rebar across an entire field. Playing in it was half the fun, taking the pictures was the other half.
  • Zoofari 2005 – Pandora’s performs at the zoo for a charity event all in black, and feasting on great food, drink, and music in between performing.
  • September 9-10th, 2005 – Schlafly Art Outside – Quickly becoming a well-liked gig, Pandora’s performed with some great drummers at Schlafly’s Bottleworks. Some neat pictures of Amanda, Carolyn, Pickle, Sam, Jim, and Barb.
• Miscellaneous Gatherings of Friends – A hodge-podge gallery with pictures of Webster U friends, Berg’s last Hurrah at the Eat Rite diner (fun, but I can’t bring myself to say yum), drinking at the Cabin, Sam’s fun Black-Out-Birthday party, and a couple shots from this year’s Moonlit Ramble with our friends Jon and Jenny.
• April 22nd, 2005 – Laura T.’s and My Birthday Party! – Laura and I share a birthday, and we celebrated together with a big party at her new place. Together with a lot of vodka, matching birthday cups (hers was blue, mine was red!), friends, and more cheesecake than we could consider eating, we had a fabulous birthday.
• May 1st, 2005 – STL Biodiesel Club at Forest Park Earth Day celebration – The St. Louis Biodiesel Club attends Earth Day 2005, bringing demonstrations, vehicles, and soap for sale.
• May 14th-15th, 2005 – Interfuse 2005 – Interfuse, the Midwest Burner regional burn held at beautiful Ozark Avalon in mid-Missouri was made more fun this year by having each group traveling to the event bring an “appendage” or more to add to the “Frankenmann” to be burned on Saturday night. Despite the bizarre appendages the STL crew chose to bring, we were welcomed with open arms, and had a great time all weekend.
• July 4th-7th, 2005 – Dustin’s visit to STL – One Sunday night in July, our friend Dustin buzzed our buzzer, having driven all the way from Boston, on his way to Colorado. It was a surprise visit, but luckily there was much going on, and we got to show him our garden, the SLSC, take him to a big 4th of July gathering outside of St. Louis, and play with fire eating and tall bikes before he went on his way to Fort Collins.

• July 30th, 2005 – Artica Vessel Awards held at Urbis Orbis Gallery – Artica is celebrated again, by recognizing the special contributions of many people to it in a ceremony marked with vessels given as awards. Pandora’s also performed, making it a great way to reconnect with Artica and Pandora’s friends alike.

  I haven’t even put up the pictures from Burning Man from this year, or our trip to see Mike and Marcia get married in Colorado. Those will come soon, but I wanted to make sure everyone got a chance to check out the great pictures from the last few months. You can post comments, download pictures, send them to a service that will print them on photo paper and mail them to you for a fee, or post a comment here if you want higher resolution copies of anything. (There’s only so much space for pictures here). Feel free to share the links if you think of people who don’t usually check this website but would be interested.

Today I did my civic duty and voted in an election. It was good fun, as always, and a relatively satisfying experience. In honor of the event, I used the button making machine we have at work to make some, “I Voted! (I think…)” buttons. Perfect for people who’s voter registrations were printed on the wrong paper or who’s ballots were lost at the printers. Or if you are in any of the following states, who are all having problems, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Virginia or West Virginia.

In fact, one of my coworkers here in Missouri was turned away from the polls because she recently changed her address, and her voter registration was supposedly now ‘invalid’. She came into work on the edge of tears, crushed because this was the first election she was actually voting in, because it was the first one that mattered to her. We got her connected with MoveOn’s Election Protection group and their emergency number, 1-866-OUR-VOTE. The lawyers on staff advised her well, and this afternoon she’ll be going to court to get a court order allowing her to vote. She’s looking for someone to give her a ride, and if she can’t find someone with a comfy car by this afternoon, I’ll be taking her in on my scooter, AKA the Emergency High-speed Two-stroke Voter Delivery System. Protect your rights people, its a jungle out there.

Tonight I’ll be getting good and drunk, and either celebrating or cursing loudly. The next few days are going to be interesting, to say the least!

Update: ElectionLine.org has a good guide to election related news posted. It will be updated throughout the day as events reach the news.

In an interesting twist, Madalene is going to be present at the Presidential Debate airing tonight at 8:00pm CST. The debate is being held at Washington University, only blocks from our home. Madalene was chosen by Gallup for participating, and is one of only 140 audience members allowed in.

The format of the debate is ‘town-hall’ meaning some questions will be asked by members of the audience. Each audience member submits two questions to the moderator, Charles Gibson, from which he will choose 15-20 that he will have the audience members ask.

I don’t have a way of knowing before hand if Madalene will be chosen to ask a question, so we’ll just have to watch and see!

Its an exciting event, and she has spent all day with the group, being checked out by Secret Service and preparing her questions. This is an important debate, and it is great that she is a part of it. Make sure you tune in!

If you want to watch the debate, you can see it at 8:00pm CST on most channels. NBC, CBS, and even FOX are showing it. You can also listen to the debate on your local NPR station or even listen to it live on the NPR website.

I have returned from Black Rock City. Actually, I haven’t gotten all the way back, I’m still in Santa Cruz, CA. Tomorrow I take a plane from San Jose back to St. Louis, but for now, I’m sleeping at Zubeyir’s house.

I have a whole crap-load of pictures, but I’m not uploading them from this little laptop, so I’ll tempt you with this one.

I have just gotten back into the bus after traipsing around for hours in the open desert during a vicious dust storm. I’m talking complete white-out. You can even see the raccoon eye pattern my goggles left on my face. Despite being filthy and windburned, I’m still smiling. Welcome to Burning Man.

And before anyone asks… Yes, those are furry ass-less chaps I’m wearing, and no, they don’t actually belong to me.

More pictures coming, some more scandalous, some less. See you St. Louisans tomorrow.

I’m off to the desert! I’ll be at Burning Man until the evening of the 7th. Don’t expect any posts or anything in the mean time, though there is the possibility I could hit a terminal and get online for a few minutes.

If you need to get ahold of me, well, don’t bother, it probably won’t work. Email is your best bet, I’ll try to check it once during the week, and again when I’m back in California after the event.

Again, if you are going, find me at Pandora’s Matchbox, 3:30 and Mercury!

Its decided, I’m going to Burning Man! After a few years of trying and failing, I’m finally definately for real going to Burning Man this year. I bought my plane ticket today, my BM ticket is lined up and ready to go, and all I need to do is pack my bags and high-tail it to the desert.

For those who aren’t aware, Burning Man is a 7-day festival/event held in the Black Rock desert in Nevada. The desert is completely devoid of life, and hundreds of miles from civilization. Unlike sandy deserts, the Black Rock desert is a hard packed alkaline flat, left behind after a large body of water evaporated hundreds of thousands of years ago. Facetiously called the ‘playa’ (pronounced ‘plai-uh’, not ‘play-yuh’) which is Spanish for ‘beach’, the climate is extreme. The temperatures reach over 100F during the day, and can drop into the 40s at night. With no bodies of water or biomass to regulate the temperature, the climate is much like you’d find on Mars. Dry and calm, with occasional dust storms and fierce winds. Even the alkali soil has it in for you, being strongly basic and tending to eat through skin and unprotected items.

Why would you want to go to a place like this? Because for 7 days, Black Rock City springs from the ground as over 30,000 people flock to the desert. As tents and shelters and buildings are set up, neighborhoods form, streets appear, and the hustle and bustle rivals any major city in the world. Artists come from around the world to display art installations that are either inappropriate, or unsuitable for the regular world. A celebration of creativity, people dress how they want, show off their art, regardless of how strange or big or dangerous, and have a good time. The desert is a blank canvas that any number of amazing things can happen upon.

At the end of the week, a gigantic, towering sculpture of a human form is burned (hence the name). Other artists join the fray and set their artwork aflame. On the last day, people clean up their camps, and return to their lives. Burning Man is a Leave No Trace event, which is taken very seriously. Camps pack in, and pack back out every little thing they bring, each piece of trash, and even used greywater. When artwork is burned, it is placed on large raised platforms to prevent scorching the fragile earth. With everyone working together, you could come back after the event is done, and not realize anything had even happened there.

Burning Man is an escape for many people, and one important feature is that no commercial activity is allowed at Burning Man. You will see no corporate advertisements (or even non-corporate ones), you will not have to sell anything, or pressured to buy anything. The only things for sale are ice and coffee, which are available at one special camp in the center of town, and proceeds from the sales are given to the local communities who live on the fringes of Black Rock, the people who’s ‘backyard’ the event is held in. Just being away from advertising for a few days is a unique sort of vacation that I’m looking very forward to.

I recall a humorous story I heard once about a tax assesor visiting Burning Man to investigate tax violations. It was assumed that with so many people in one place, lots of untaxed commerce was probably occuring. However, when the tax assessor arrived, he saw no monetary transactions. In his report, he humorously noted that the only transactions he saw were to the effect of, “One massage traded for one game of miniature golf” and “five grapefruits exchanged for a body painting.” With no transactions, there were no violations, and nothing to tax.

Survival is difficult in the desert, and Burning Man publishes a very detailed survival guide outlining what you need while in the desert. You need to prepare for bitter cold, and blazing heat, prepare for rain or shine, and have structures that can handle the intense winds and dust storms the desert is apt to experience. People dehydrate fast, and everyone is expected to bring at least 2 gallons of water per person per day for drinking and cooking, more if you plan to take a shower or something. People take care of each other, but people are also expected to come with survival in mind, ready to take care of their needs in the harsh environment.

Anyway, I’m pretty excited, and I hope to have a great time. I’ll be leaving St. Louis on the evening of August 27th (a Friday), and flying to San Jose, CA. There I’ll meet up with some good friends of mine, and we’ll ride together into Nevada. After the event we’ll ride back to California together, and I’ll catch a flight back home on the morning of September 7th (a Tuesday). More friends will be arriving by school bus (modified for habitation, and for running on pure vegetable oil instead of regular diesel fuel), and friends from St. Louis will be arriving via rented truck and trailer. I haven’t seen many of these friends in over two years, and I can’t imagine a better opportunity to spend some time with them. If you are going, look for me on the playa!

At 9:36 PM Central Standard Time, the Cassini spacecraft began its final burn to enter orbit around Saturn. On its seven year journey it has travelled over 2.2 billion miles, and after several gravity assist accelerations around Venus (twice!), Earth and Jupiter, it reached Saturn at a Saturn-relative speed of over 54,270 miles per hour, after its 96 minute long burn, it was moving at a Saturn-relative speed of 68,293 miles per hour. Which is why I’m forced to say, “Fuck NASCAR, this is real speed.”

At 11:12 PM CST, the spacecraft had officially entered Saturn orbit after having safely passed through the ring plane, and the mission has now begun. From this point on, its all science, snapping pictures of moons, dropping its Huygens probe on Titan, and studying Saturn in detail.

Check out a few of these images in the JPL photo journal. If you have a fast connection, be sure to click on the full resolution links on the following pages to see incredibly detailed high resolution images.

• Ringworld Waiting – This picture is from the approach to Saturn, when the great gas giant had filled the camera’s field of view. In natural color, it is a peaceful and beautiful giant, never before seen in such detail.
• Phoebe Close-Up – On approach to Saturn, Cassini made a fly-by of Phoebe, a small dark moon of Saturn, one of the blackest objects in the solar system. Probably a captured comet, this icy rock is stark and looming in this detailed mosaic.

• A Guide to Saturn Orbit – This image is a diagram of the final burn and approach, which was just completed successfully about an hour ago.

  For more pictures, which should begin streaming in over the next few days, keep an eye on the Cassini Homepage. The front page has news, and you can click the Multimedia and Images links to see the latest images coming in from the robotic spacecraft. The next ‘cross your fingers’ moment will come on Dec. 25th, 2004, when the Huygens probe will separate from the Cassini spacecraft, and begin a 21 day trip to Titan. Early in the morning on Jan. 14th, 2005, the probe will penetrate the thick atmosphere of Titan, and begin studying the mysterious surface. For a more detailed timeline of the Cassini mission, including over 74 Saturn orbits, and close fly-bys of all the major moons (and most of the minor), visit the operations timeline.