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many years ago i used to go on road trips with my friend rus on our motorcycles. together we drove all over the west coast and desert country. later i rode my bike from san francisco to chicago and back, stopping at all the highlights of the midwest like wall drug and the corn palace.
i’m setting my sights higher for future trips, and i’m now the proud owner of this camper van. it’s outfitted with everything i would need for extended trips or if my housesitting gigs run out i could just live in the parking lot like gonzo in the tv show trapper john, md.
she needs a name though, like any good vessel or ship. any suggestions? gonzo’s rv was called the “titanic”.
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i have at least one friend infected with the new internet worm, because i’ve received 19 copies of the darn thing by email in the last twelve hours.
i heard today that someone wrote an anti-virus using the virus as a basis. the anti-virus spreads just like the virus though by sending email but it then fixes the security hole, cleans up any bad virus, and it stops. clever way to spread a security fix to the people who need it and the people who are naive enough to double click on unknown attachments.
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molly just sent this picture from the reunion. four are missing, but these are all the first cousins, aunts, and uncles that made it. cute!
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Our CEO yesterday called a PR firm, hoping to get our entire company made over by the Fab 5 from the TV show Queer Eye for a Straight Guy.
Personally I wouldn’t mind getting a new desk. I’m sure the fab 5 would get rid of all the cube walls (”too drab”), get us some decent couches to lounge on, and bring the conference rooms up to post-modern Scandinavian standards.
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Found a performance of the San Jose Taiko group this last weekend, at a Japanese crafts festival. Taiko is a traditional form of Japanese drumming.
It was a super hot day, but worth grilling in the sun. They were great. (click on the picture for a zoomed view)
I spent much of the weekend trying to fight off my cold unfortunately, while running errands getting ready from next week. I know, taking trips to the store is a terrible way to fight illness. But I’m feeling almost 100% today.
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i really appreciate self reproach with a sense of humor. saw this license plate on a mercedes this morning:
YUPY SCM.
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this weekend I read another book by Pema Chödrön, where she described a set of 1300 year old self-help teachings called in tibetan the lojong instructions. they were brought to tibet from india by atisha. Geshe Chekhawa five hundred years later was using them to treat lepers but noticed that these teachings were helping his ornery, stubborn brother become a nicer, more centered person. if they could help his brother, he figured, maybe they would be generally useful.
anyway, there is a visualization exercise that’s part of these instructions. i tried it months ago but it clicked for me more this weekend. click on the “more” link for details.
Read more »
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woke up yesterday morning in nantucket harbor and took a water taxi, a regular taxi, a 17 seat twin prop plane, and a jet. this returned me home all in about twelve hours. well, not really home but my temporary housesitting home nonetheless.
tabby the super affectionate, hand biting cat was really glad to see me.
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tomorrow i’m sailing with my cousins chuck, peggy, and maddie to nantucket on their boat “trilogy”.
click the picture for a closeup of their sloop.
chuck is obsessed with keeping birds from landing on the boat and leaving guano behind, he had small spiky things installed on the mast stay spreaders and there’s a small inflatible fake snake on the boom. he tried putting an owl on a spreader, only to have a neighbor give him a picture of two cormorants sitting on either side of the fake owl - one with it’s wing around it like it was posing for the picture.
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today my uncle took me around the cotuit and osterville harbor area in his boat the “Molly III”. just a little afternoon cruise, waving to everyone else on their boats, reviewing the mansions that have oceanfront views, and soaking up wind, sun, and sea. you might critique me as bourgeois but i’m really grateful and it was recharging.
i was having thoughts about the scarcity of this resource, how many people get to enjoy a beautiful natural setting and how a continued growth of wealth in the world wouldn’t really make it more accessible. if robots did all the work, there’s only so much cute harbor to go around still. and we keep polluting the ones we have.
the church steeple in the picture to the left marks the cotuit town center as seen from the water. click either picture for a full sized version.
i view wealth as just a measure of productivity per person, in a nutshell. america is the wealthiest nation because people here produce more value per person on average. we also have cheap natural resources that we exploit (some would say rape). we’ve invested in things like aqueducts and dams, and we have more capital to work with. farmers for example buy big combines and trucks and increase productivity through the use of capital. but basically that’s it, how much wealth we have is directly related to how efficient we are on average. i’m not complaining, this is what gives me the time to keep learning and thinking and enjoying life - i’m not stuck spending all my time just surviving.
we can’t really increase the number of beautiful waterfronts there are though, and exploiting the environment for cheap resources tends to decrease them. i guess if the population decreases over time then they’ll be more accessible, but it’s not like we can create a new form of transportation and be more efficient in our recreation. there’s only so much beach.
monkey see, monkey do serves as a personal blog and creative outlet for
