Flexistentialism Welcome Guest | Login or Register

…there was a boy. Despite being as frustrated and annoyed as most 13 year-olds, he went to a camp where he took classes with about 90 other adolescents marked early on as smart kids. Sustained on Dr. Pepper, eye-rolling, an encouraging role in DJing, and new friends, he struck up friendships with several people at the camp, including two kids who lived a hour or two north of his town in the mountains of Colorado.

Those two kids egged on the boy, insisting he return letters, send mix tapes of his high school radio show, and ditch school to meet them for slurpees or other ridiculous activities not usually considered worth driving 100 miles round trip for.

One of the kids had a high school friend who loved designing and making costumes.

Time for college came, and the kids headed to different schools: across Colorado, Utah, Rhode Island….

The second kid reached junior year in college, and needed a roommate. Luckily, the two campmates bumped into each other at an outdoor concert the summer before and mentioned the need for a roommate. Turned out that the costume design friend was moving back to Colorado, and set to start that fall at the same school and needed housing as well. Trusting the camp friend’s judgement without a second thought, the costume designer and the second kid became roommates.

They had many parties, with many great costumes…

And along the way, the original friendships from camp held together – including visits to each other’s schools and more often, invitations for the boy to come to the theme parties. By this time, his DJ skills were definitely developing.

College finished for the kid from camp, and graduation meant a trip away from the state for graduate school. There were tears as what was a very fun household broke up for everyone to go their separate ways. However, the kid from camp came back a few months later to see friends, and in the usual way, gathered together as many friends as possible for a short in-town visit, whether or not they usually hung out together in the kid’s absence.

Somewhere along the way, the costume design girl and the boy from camp had noticed all the neat things about each other – and seemed to share a certain goofiness, an interest in similar music, and it wasn’t long before they started dating.

15 days ago, these two people got married – in a beautiful 1920s ceremony complete with handmade dresses for the bride and her bridesmaids, and guests turned out in bowlers, flapper dresses, and long satin gloves to dance, eat cake, and celebrate most of the night. It is hard to believe that now a lifetime together can happen because of a spark from two people I met 15 years ago and helped introduce to each other.
Congratulations, S & N.

You’re right. I haven’t posted in a while, because it’s hard to know which stuff to post. So let this serve as a jump back into the posting waters, with some generalized updates:

• Both Sam and I are now employed. I am what you might call under-employed, but it works for now and forces some time organizing skills that are worth developing. Also led to an interview for a better job that I don’t have details on yet.
• The garden has gone through two frosts now, and we’ve pulled out most of the greenery. We have a funny system set up to hopefully ripen the tomatoes: a long pole stretched across a chair with the tomato vines draped across it. The tomatoes dangle down, hopefully turning red with a little more support. I wish I could speed up the process with some ethylene. Unfortunately, it’s not sold retail. For the garden plot, the hope is to switch to a sunnier locale next year, meaning that I need to pull out my herbs and sow a winter cover crop to make this plot more appealing. Luckily, I have extra wheat from my uncle to put down – it looks really attractive when it shoots up around Easter, and puts nitrogen back into the soil.
• Our road trip west was wonderful – and included cutting 21 mohawks! But get this: two of the mohawks turned out to be NEXT DOOR neighbors here in town. It was bizarre to meet 1000 miles away and find out we live so close in real life. It also included learning how to provide a variety of services in a pretty urban environment, including lots of bike repair for Sam, and general bartending for all of our friends. It is a great experience to realize how much we all like to fix things.
• I got to meet four bats up close through a volunteer position at the DBG. Wish I had brought the camera – but they were amazing even without it. A neat fact: only New World bats (microbats) echo-locate, and it makes them look like they’re silently screaming. I very much want a bat detector for Christmas, but understand if you’re not interested in dropping $300-$1800 for a hobby device.
• I’ve been tutoring calculus. It’s a good reminder of how much cooler calculus is than the math sections that come before it, and how much fun it is to share with someone else why we need calculus. I think I must be doing a better job than I expected.
• I have an obsession lately with reading and learning about America’s urban decay. That is to say, I am watching The Wire, reading Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, and closely following the corruption and replacement of St. Louis’s police chief. Our current city really doesn’t have urban decay – it’s much too wealthy and restrictive for that kind of thing, but St. Louis has it in spades. I’d like to think that there are people in St. Louis, Baltimore, Detroit, the Bronx, and other major urban centers who are working to improve the education, opportunities, and lives of people who live in crumbling urban areas. I’d like to get back into more of that at some point, even if the overarching point of The Wire is that the situation is hopeless.
• We had a chance to show around an architect friend from Austin recently. Having visitors is fantastic for discovering the area in a new way – she had very different things she wanted to see compared to other visitors, and with the fall color, it was easy to oblige. This is a hint to those of you who might come visit – we are well outfitted to show you around and put you up.
• I’ll end by offering two interesting links that I think reflect my thoughts on the changing political landscape: a meticulously researched poll website called www.fivethirtyeight.com (referring to the exact number of electoral college votes) that gives some very well researched data on how various national and senate elections may go. The second is Flickr’s partnership with the Library of Congress. The set linked to in particular fascinates me. It is all shots of Americans during the Great Depression and just afterwards, showing the poverty, agriculture, industry and lives of citizens during the last period of serious economic turmoil. Flickr and the Library of Congress are asking individuals to tag the photos with any information you might have – if you can identify people, towns, crops, or other information it allows them to have a better understanding of what the Farm Security Administration was recording.

So there – an update – and a likely probability of more updates soon.

These wheeled structures are carrying 3 solar panels connected to 4 seriously sturdy batteries, an inverter, and some other stuff to create power for 40 people, nonstop, for 10 days. It could go longer, no problem, but eventually you want a shower. Bravo to Sam, Lohr, and that friendly red truck, Tuff Cherry, for making it all possible.

Through the magic of my clippers and my new left-handed scissors, I successfully turned
this…

into this:

Our visitor decided when I last saw him in April that he wanted a mohawk. Luckily, a drive out to see us gave us the chance to do so. I think he was pretty pleased with the results, as was I.

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”:http://www.pandorasmatchbox.com. 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”:http://www.pandorastoolbox.com. Cute, huh?

And as long as I’m plugging stuff, I’m doing a little work with my friend’s new business, “Sunflower Solar”:http://www.cosunflower.com. 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”:http://www.xcelenergy.com, 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.

Click for larger image

After much time spent taking new pictures (with the new “Casio Exilim Z-55″:http://world.casio.com/exilim/en/ex_z55_z50/), 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”:http://www.flexistentialist.org/gallery/madarf – 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”:http://www.flexistentialist.org/gallery/dennisinfebruary – 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”:http://www.flexistentialist.org/gallery/poiworkshop – 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”:http://www.flexistentialist.org/gallery/summer2005
** “Firespinning at Artica”:http://www.flexistentialist.org/gallery/artica_april – Some excellent shots of Brendan, Sam, Pickle, Lohr and Jim spinning crazy shapes down at Artica in April.
** “3rd Friday @ 3rd Degree”:http://www.flexistentialist.org/gallery/glassbubblesea – 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″:http://www.flexistentialist.org/gallery/zoofari2005 – 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”:http://www.flexistentialist.org/gallery/schlaflyartoutside2005 – 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”:http://www.flexistentialist.org/gallery/friendssummer2005 – 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!”:http://www.flexistentialist.org/gallery/melaurabdayparty – 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”:http://www.flexistentialist.org/gallery/earthday05 – The St. Louis Biodiesel Club attends Earth Day 2005, bringing demonstrations, vehicles, and soap for sale.
* May 14th-15th, 2005 – “Interfuse 2005″:http://www.flexistentialist.org/gallery/interfuse2005 – Interfuse, the Midwest Burner regional burn held at beautiful “Ozark Avalon”:http://www.ozarkavalon.net 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”:http://www.flexistentialist.org/gallery/dustinvisit – One Sunday night in July, our friend “Dustin”:http://blog.magicpants.net 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”:http://www.flexistentialist.org/gallery/vesselawards – “Artica”:http://www.flexistentialist.org/gallery/septemberfire 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”:http://www.mydd.com/story/2004/9/27/125755/309 or who’s ballots were “lost at the printers”:http://rockymountainnews.com/drmn/election/article/0,1299,DRMN_36_3267080,00.html. Or if you are in any of the following states, who are all “having problems”:http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2004/story?id=216032&page=1, 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”:http://www.myvotemyright.com 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”:http://www.electionline.org has a good “guide to election related news”:http://electionline.org/index.jsp?page=ElectionLineToday 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”:http://www.npr.org/stations/ or even listen to it live on the “NPR website”:http://www.npr.org/.