THIRTEEN laboratories 3.0

I went to the Doctor yesterday afternoon. Ostensibly for a check up, but in particular to address a concern about rapid clotting that has been evident the last few times I donated blood. While I was there, I also got a long overdue tetanus shot, and got a referral to get myself a vasectomy.

A few months ago I came across a web page that had to do with internal parasites, and testimonials on how their product could cure you of them. A real multimedia affair with pictures and movies. Some text made the claim that 60% (or some number that seemed huge to me) of North American adults were crawling with these bugs. I have not had a day since where I did not have a moment of concern that I was being eaten alive. Gruesome stuff.

I was just about to part ways with the doctor, when I finally spit it out "This is kind of embarrassing and probably not true, but I can't stop thinking that I may have internal parasites" which led to questions about why I think this. It turns out that almost no one here has them, and those that do went to the third world and drank from puddles of stagnant water. I personally have never done such a thing, and thus can return to being creeped by people loaded with bait. Seriously, I am feeling waves of relief here.

Also, the Doctor (a pretty lady) cupped my junk and told me to cough. I betrayed my inner 16 year old by not finding it to be at all hott.

A squirrel died on our lawn yesterday (that is when I discovered it anyway). I usually bury animals in that condition, but it was so hot, and the ground out front is hard as a rock. I waited until dark, unusually concerned with fleas, and used disposable tools to coax him into a bag. He flipped over at one point (and I was sorry), revealing his enormous dead testicles. "You were a boy" said I. This is the story of how I put an animal in a garbage can. Then I watered the window boxes.

I have always been an indoor person, but I thought I had grown out of it. I do enjoy working in the garden, and feel especially proud when it is looking nice, but it seems that when it gets beyond the 70s outside any plans to get in the yard are easily derailed. This weekend, touching on the hundreds, found me briefly assisting in setting up for Jennifer's yard sale. After that, Fiona and I went to visit my mother. That seems okay. Sunday let me sleep til almost 10, which is extravagant luxury. It was an inferno outside already, but a short shower showed up to make things muggy, More rain looked likely, so we quickly moved the unsold items from the backyard to the front porch where they will be picked up by some charity. I tried to sort my office a bit, attempted to get the baby to nap, and suddenly it was dinner time.

Spring and fall are the only times I can get things to happen.

Oh wait, I took an old maple cutting board, and mounted Ikea wheels on the bottom. I guess I don't suck after all.

We went out to dinner last night. We probably should not have, since I am so pressed for time between my work and freelance deadlines, but it was a nice night to get out of the house. Jen was tired of the same places we usually go, so we went to Ann Sather's instead, which is not new, but is not a regular place for us. It worked out well. Fiona was well behaved, which works towards confirming Jennifer's theory that she is more cautious in places she is not so familiar with. A fine meal was had.

Getting there was a bit of a trick. We went to Belmont location, and the traffic was not as snarled as I thought it might be. There was an odd police presence in the neighborhood, and we spent some time trying to figure out why. The cops did not appear to be doing much, other than blocking off traffic for 2 blocks on the Westbound side of the street. This made parking pretty easy for a change. My assumption is that it had something to do with the Gay Games, but there is not strong reason to believe that. A Gay Games store opened 2 doors down from AS, and was near dead center of the blockaded area.

There was a table of older German men next to us in the restaurant. I was not paying much attention to hem until I saw them gesturing at us while talking a bit loud to the waiter. Apparently they had been there first, only ordered simple egg meals, and were pissed that our more elaborate meals had arrived first. They were difficult to calm down. I understood their irritation, as we were nearly done with our meal by this point, but I wished they would have left us out of it after the first time them told the waiter that we had better service. It was distracting, and made it difficult to mind my business. On some level (a level seldom reached I guess) it made me feel bad. I promise you old German man, I did not conspire with the waitstaff.

What drama. I cannot imagine anyone enjoying this post, but I will put it up anyway since I went to the trouble of typing it.

Who is your favorite Muppet? Why?
QotD submitted by knitwitology.vox.com.

Bert. I am not entirely sure why. I find him sympathetic. He does not screw over the other Muppets, but they always mess him up, and he does not hold a grudge. Sure, he is pissy, but anyone would be if they had to put up with Ernie. We differ on the pigeons.

Apparently, when I was a child, I introduced myself to people in the neighborhood as "Bert". Things being different then, I knew many adults independent of my family. I don't know how old I was, but one of my first strong memories is of crossing paths with someone while walking with my mother, and having the person say "You must be Bert's mother". I felt so clever and mischievous.

Grover sits at Bert's right hand in the pantheon. The aliens who say "Meep meep mepmepmepmep" sit on the left. Guy Smiley is a trickster god.

I bought a remote control airplane today. I also bought my lunch. Other than that I spent no money, aside from the unknown amounts accrued by the household as it ticks along measuring the power and gas.

I used to fly airplanes when I was a kid. Line control planes mostly, but occasionally my stepfather's R/C model as well. I had a lot of fun doing it, tho in retrospect, I cannot see where the fun was to be had on the line model. You spin in a circle, and make it go up and down. It was probably that it always drew a crowd. The miniature engine was pretty marvelous to me as well. little brass parts, and a beautiful varnished prop. The light smell of the fuel resting in my nose. I was hardcore about it for years.

My mother came down to try it one day. I mostly flew in the parking lot of my grade school, which was quite near my house. My stepfather's humor leaned heavily towards insult (which is why he did not remain my stepfather I suppose), and he instructed me to kiss my plane goodbye. Being the little bastard I was, I played along. My poor mother. The plane took off, and she immediately lost control of it. She completed half a revolution, and jerked the control upwards, so they it ascended 90º, passed over her head and raced toward the ground at full speed, causing about the most spectacular mini explosion a plane like that could have. I did that sort of thing all the time, but I knew when to pull up. Dad made her feel bad, but I did not care. It was a cheap kit, and barely any trouble to put together. It took longer to paint it than to build it.

The plane I bought today runs off DC brush-less motors and batteries, and is ready to fly out of the box. This is pretty amazing to me since I have not paid attention to the model plane world since those days. The controls are a mystery at the moment, since the pictures don't show any moving parts that I am familiar with. No rudder or alerons, so I have no clue how the plane is controlled. It sounds like you can crash it all you want tho, hard, light parts, attached with rubberbands, so nothing likely to break is given much opportunity to do so. The motors are on the back of the wing even, so that if you tip it dow, you don't smash them or wreck the props. I am looking forward to this.

While walking around at lunch today, I stopped in at a media store and noticed that Cemetery Man is now out on DVD. I would have bought that if I had not gotten the plane. There are several  DVDs out that I want very badly, but they are going to have to wait I guess. Maybe a good long time if the current secret family plan starts leaning towards reality.

I love architectural drawings. When I was in high school, my future hopes rested on becoming some sort of structural engineer, or a comic book illustrator. Math broke my brain, so I came a bit closer to the second goal, but that kind of became less realistic as my taste in comics shifted towards the unprofitable kind. I took as many drafting and associated shop classes as I could manage in the service of building things, and I certainly found it valuable in the Illustration program I eventually pursued, as well as in building a set of basic construction skills that give me vague ideas about how to do everything (poorly).

I came across the Sketchup program last fall, and the demo videos hooked me good. The ease of use, and the flexibility of the software give me a weird feeling somewhere between a satisfying meal and sexual release.  Something akin to Legos and everything I loved about drafting and making scale models. Google bought the company a few weeks later, and the rumors that they would make an associate product available for free proved to be true. PC only at first, so I waited and suffered until the Mac version appeared. I checked every so often, and last week was finally able to download it. I watched like 5 minutes of instruction videos, and just went nuts with it.  On the following Monday, I showed what I had done over the weekend to an Art Director I work with, and he gave me a job right away. I am struggling to learn a few things that are not so obvious, but it works incredibly well, and is very responsive.

"Yelly"

The downside is that halfway thru my drawing, I discovered the export to 2D feature is set for screen resolution only. My job will pay enough to buy a full version of Sketchup, with extra tools, and more nuanced features in addition to the export flexibility. I think that is the right route to go, but I think I can also trick some resolution out of it by zooming in, exporting it in pieces and reassembling the drawing in Photoshop. Another possibility is to download the full version demo, which has a short lifespan, but I believe has no restrictions on function. I have not tested it, but it seems obvious that the full version should be able to open free version files.

Sketchup

If you have a desire to use 3D software, and have been frustrated by Maya demos, or whatever you have gotten ahold of, this will probably make you as happy as it has made me.

I have been having disturbing dreams lately, several guest starring people who have appeared in Hollywood movies. On Thursday , Parker Posey and I spent the night chopping off our fingers with a blue chef's knife at some sort of award party. The two of us crying, and begging the other to stop, and leave the fingers be. It was such an awful thing that it shocked me out of my sleep, and I was unable to get back to bed. The strong emotion of it, as the amputation was near bloodless and pain-free.

Last night the dream was that a former coworker from 10 years back had returned to the office. Lured actually, with the promise that he had a bunch of money coming to him because of some accounting error that hid some vacation pay from him, and allowed it to grow to something significant. The truth, that I did not know, was that he was there as a human sacrifice to Martin Lawrence (a frequent figure of malice in the few dreams that I end up remembering). I did not see him die, but I saw Martin, and asked what was going on. The secret revealed, I fled the office and ran home to find the trees around my house rotted, and filled with insects about the size of gerbils, and covered with a prickly skin and sticky looking liquid beads at the tip of each point. Dead branches dropped around me and I felt incredibly sad.

Waking up was not so bad this time tho. My daughter woke me gently in the midst of this. She climbed onto the bed, and crawled over to me. A couple of gentle tugs on my nose and her happy smile set me right.