So one of the most depressing things about moving from the Boston area to Schenectady was leaving behind so many people.  I knew i was gaining a good crew here, since scholar's friends are all top-notch.  But some of the people whom i will only see once or twice a year from now on back in Massachusetts i didn't realise exactly how much i miss until this last weekend, when i saw many of them again.

Friends of mine with whom i used to have a weekly game had their annual House Con.  It migrated a little bit away from their wedding anniversary date, but the reason behind the housecon is that instead of traditional bachelor and bachelorette parties, they had a giant housecon right before their wedding 10 years ago, and invited most of the wedding party and other assorted friends who game.  It was obviously a raging sucess, because this year was TheirLastNameCon* X (Ten for the Latin impaired).

[*While many mutual friends of ours will be reading this, they also value their privacy, as is sensible.  For the remainder of this post i shall refer to them as the Bennies.  Not only are they good people (benevolent) but Bennie has a bit of a pun meaning for gamers. The con shall be called BennieCon]

The Con was as fabulous, enjoyable, wondferful, warm, welcoming, and memorable as usual.  I must point out now that in past years we have not always been as close as other years; for example last year i was unreliable and had to cancel a bunch of games last minute.  In fact two years ago i brought someone who really strained the limits of the Bennies' hospitality.  There was some rudeness, some unwillingness to participate or mingle, and some dumping of garbage in a weird corner, like behind the couch or someplace completely inappropriate.  I personally would have banned me based on the SO's behaviour, but instead of holding a grudge the Bennies just mock me incessantly.  I prefer the latter, obviously ;)

Where am i going with all this?  Despite the fact that many aspects of our lives and personalities do not mesh, including personal beliefs on politics and medicine, the Bennies and their entire circle of friends really fill a room, a party, a game, or a gathering with such positive vibes.  The Bennie's specifically and so many of their friends as couples and inidividuals put aside personal differences or grudges to come together and support their friends and simply have a damn good weekend together.

The main point of this post is actually this:  The highlight of BennieCon this year was a vow renewal between the Bennies, since it was their 10 year wedding anniversary.  And while watching the extremely moving and simply beautiful outdoor backyard casual yet deep and powerful ceremony, i had the following revelation:

Weddings, while fun and obviously very important, are NOT where the focus should be.  Yes, they are the first legally joined day in a lifelong journey between two people, but the journey started long before they made legal commitments to each other.  It's the day after the wedding, and the days after that, ad inifinitum, that are important.  The marriage is important, not the wedding, in the long view.  And as such, i propose that vow renewals become the new Important Day in people's lives.  10 year, 20 year, and hopefuly 30, 40 and 50 should be when people rearrange their personal lives to fly or drive in from whereever they live and shower the couple with their love and loyalty. 

At one point during the ceremony we were asked to plegde our continuing affection and support for the Bennies as their friends and family.  And that is an important aspect of a couplehood, or a family, or a community - it's not just about any individual, or even any couple.  Your own personal happiness and security comes first, but the happiness and security of the people around you should be attended to the instant you have taken care of yourself enough to function.

And in my personal opinion, the Bennies are a stupendous example of people who, while they make sure their own sanity is a priority, make the wellbeing of their friends an important enough issue in their lives that it flows naturally.  They do not give more of themselves than they have to give, thus weakening their own strenghts, but incorporate generosity into their everyday way of life.

Like many people, i use LJ mostly to complain when things go poorly.  Not this time.  I may have gushed in a few places, but pointing out the positives in life is important, and many of us neglect it.  Thank you Mr and Mrs Bennie, for reminding me of what i have, not what i lack :)

Hagzilla said hello to me yesterday!

She also complimented me on the garden!

I suppose this means i need to find a better nickname for her :|

Anyone who thinks i gave her that nickname preemptively, you would be very much mistaken.  She made the first strike and i responsed out of hurt and anger.  But since now she's saying hello and making polite chit chat, while i'm not willing to forgive her error, i am willing to chalk it up to influence from a substance, or poor judgement.

ANYWAY the backstory:
( Intrigue! Mystery! Backstabbing! Well, not so much backstabbing... )

Either way, i need to come up with a new nickname.  I was being cruel in response to a major hurt, but now i need to get over it.

The end ;)
 

That's actually a bit misleading. I started this about 3 weeks ago, and the semester only ended yesterday.

I haven't been doing a lot except paint the house, do homework, and play in my garden. The house is still not entirely photo worthy, but i thought i'd share what i've accomplished outside. So far i've spent most of what i had budgeted for gardening on 2 trees (crabapple and Japanese maple), a bunch of ground cover, and a compost bin. scholar's pseudomom who lives just a half hour north of us was VERY generous, and i spent a full day at her house digging and weeding, and she gave me a small lilac, a forsythia, a spirea, 2 giant hostas, a huge clump of spiderworts, 2 kinds of sedum, and some Dutchman's Pipe.

Anyway, the first thing i did was plant the crabapple, and rip up most of the invasive grass and weeds in the front yard on the side away from the driveway.

The second major task was ripping out all the grass on the Inferno Strip, also known as the verge, boulevard, treelawn. The strip between sidewalk and street that the city owns but we must maintain. It did occur to me that a cheap weedwacker would be cheaper than the $60 i spent on the ground cover plants. But the ground cover plants are nicer than a weedwacker! It took two days to pull up all the grass, move the pavers - i was 'rewared' with about 300 pounds of broken up concrete when i moved in, including a handful of still square or rectangular pavers, and some decent granite or quartzite stones - and put in all the groundcover and the hosta and the daylilies i'm using to fill space for now.

Then after spending the day at SuperMom's i spent all day yesterday putting things back in soil.

( Pretty hand drawn maps of the results here! )
I will weed and straighten up the backyard soon, but for now, the major planning is done. There isn't much else i can do until i decide when and how to rip up that blacktop. Having that much debris removed and soil delivered will be costly, so probably next summer.

Hope you all approve :)

When i had cable, it was obviously The Daily Show.

When i worked outside the house, and needed brain downtime that wasn't completely goofing off, i used Scienceblogs to take breaks and read and rest.  Not a bad news source, since everybody there often comments on non-science news.

Now, i have no cable and i spend most days online doing homework, so doing more online reading doesn't feel very restful to me.  I suppose "word of mouth" is the best way of describing how i get my news.  Mostly through talking to friends or reading threads at CM.  I basically ignore the news :)

Several evenings ago, it got very dark and the street lights came on.  It got darker and darker and it never rained.  I couldn't figure out why it was getting dark but no rain came.

Then i looked at the clock - 9pm.

It's SUPPOSED to get dark every day.  Sometimes it doesn't even rain when that happens!

I have a very happy garden right now, though.

No, not a trendy new club.  Some people call it the verge, the treelawn, the hell strip, or the inferno strip.  It's not technically your property, but you will be ticketed if you let the grass grow too long.  It's where you put your garbage cans, between the sidewalk and the street.

My grass was about 8 inches high, and since i'm slowly replacing the grass that i do own with actual ground cover, buying a mower for that strip of land seemed insane on many levels.  So Tuesday and Wednesday of this week i dug up THE ENTIRE THING - 3' x the width of the lot, which i think is 33 feet.  So 99 square feet of grass that needed ripping up, and because i'm anal i shook out as much of the dirt from the roots as possible.

Day One: I started ripping.  After the first 10 or so feet was done i actually took some of the pavers and mixed granite/quartzite (not totally sure what it is) from the back yard and made a little patch for the garbage cans to go.  Plus, that's about 30 square feet i didn't have to buy plants to cover ;)  The stones are free after all.  I also put in 3 little pavers right in the center, in hopes of preventing people from walking on it too much.  The next door neighbours all park in front of my house instead of their own.  Whatevers ;)

Around 3 pm, the sky blackened and the wind whipped up suddenly.  While i'm loving all the rain (haven't needed to water the new crabapple more than twice in the 3 weeks it's been in!) i wasn't thrilled about working in the rain, or having it rain while i was half done.  So i threw my back into it and dug a hole in about 5 minutes and put in the Japanese Maple (Bloodgood, if you care ;)) just as the rain started.  Free watering for new tree for the win!

Day Two: I had only gotten about 60 % done with the ripping of the grass on the first day.  Ugh.  So i got back to it, finding that second day soreness is a serious issue!  I finished pulling up all the grass, went in back and assembled the new composter, moved into it about a third of the "mulch" i.e. the crap that accumulating from multiple years of the previous owners not raking.  I dragged 3 bins of that "mulch" out front and used it on the newly bare dirt, and the maple, after checking that maples do in fact like acidic soil.  Then i threw in the spare hosta and a giant patch of daylilies i had to move to make room for the composter, and the new ground covers i bought:

Vinca minor (Myrtle), Ajuga reptans (Bugleweed), Cerastium tomentosum (Snow in Summer), and Thymus praecox (Nutmeg thyme).

We'll see how they take, and if the neighbours all walk on them or not.  The talls ones are meant for this summer only, and then when i have the cash dollars, and time, i can get more ground covers and make the entire thing green.

Photos someday.  Right now it looks pretty lame ;)

 

The belly dance workout on Monday, after a weekend of homework, was challenging but doable.

Today, after 2 straight days of gardening, for 3-4 hours each day?

Almost killed me.  Holy cats. I thought my calves were going to spontaneously combust. 

And i only made it through 1 hour of cardio afterwards, with only half of my wrist weights on.  And my lats feel like they are going to seize and my head fall off.  My hands ache more now than they did after all the digging.

But i feel good :D

End of semester is less than two weeks out, and for some reason i'm compelled to do a lot of backreading and get caught up on all your lives. 

The 8 months in this apartment has been nice, but i'm ready for the next stage.  Which is going to occur next week, as i close on a modest little house in Schenectady.  It is walking distance to the strip malls on 7 right where it crosses State (5, aka Central) and an Aldi's, less than half a mile to Central Park in Schenectady, and about 1.7 miles to Mohawk Commons.  It needs to be painted pretty much every room except living and dining room, and could use a heck of a lot of cosmetic work.  But here's to hoping that being in a house again and out of this nice but generally claustrophobic apartment will perk up my mental and physical state.

Other than that, no real news except that i look forward to being aware of the people here whom i should have attended to while i was studying, but did not :)

Yeah, i've been bad.  In my defense, i've been busy.  School is tougher than expected, getting all the little certifications together is taking time and care and attention and....

...drumroll.....

After a 10+ year hiatus from my old Tang Soo Do club at Michigan State (whom i miss dearly) i tested last night at my new Tae Kwon Do club straight from white belt and was promoted to purple belt, which is 4th gup, or Sa Gup.

Needless to say, i learned a LOT of forms and one-steps in a very short time.  I still confuse them with each other about 25 % of the time, due to overlaps and similarities in the first two.

But phew.  I'm glad that's over.  I have plenty of other things to keep me occupied and unable to post as much as i used to, but i desired a self-absorbed moment to alert my friends here as to one of the reasons for my disappearing act.

Plus, i'm really proud of myself :D

Bad Yttrai for not posting, or even finding the time to read lately :(

Good Yttrai for being mostly caught up on homework thus far!

Good Yttrai for finding a carpool and a place to stay at Gencon!!

Bad Yttrai for planning to attend Gencon when scholar probably cannot go :(

Right now the plan is for me to be there either Tuesday or Wednesday through Sunday.  Plane tickets to Indy from Albany aren't that bad right now, so i'm hoping scholar will agree to attend Friday-Sunday.  Of course, he might not find out until after the plane fare rises again, so this is a tough spot.  Fingers crossed and looking forward to seeing random people who read this whom i only see once a year!!

Not that you all care ;)

• Visiting the parents was really quite lovely.  There were some stumbles and patterns of behaviour hearkening back to my early childhood, but in general it went very smoothly.  Being self-absorbed and introspective does wonders for altering bad interpersonal habits, apparently!
• School is school again.  My motivation is wavering, probably because my month off was just so relaxing.  But today is dedicated to getting back on track, and the next few assignments due Sunday and Monday will be challenging but accomplishable.  Either this little rush of effort will fix me, or else i'm permanently broken and should just give up ;)
• Had a short visit with Bro, SIL, Nephew, Dad, and StepMom in December, between xmas and New Years.  That was also good, but as always i have to analyse and introspect.  Maybe the thoughts will get shared, maybe not. Navel gazing, ahoy!
• Schenectady has had a number of snowstorms and ice storms, starting up right around Thanksgiving. I kind of love it, though i have off street parking in a shared lot, so it is not as traumatic as it could be.  Still, lots of unburying car and jump starting dead batteries and paying for new all season tires and enthralling details like that to attend to.
• Fairly big apartment fire in my complex last night, three buildings over.  The woman in the apartment is apparently fine, and had no pets or roommates.  Dramatic, but with a safe ending.
• That's all the generic news that's fit to print.

A timely meme, courtesy of arenson9 .  I will be away until the 18th, though i will have access to dialup. I can't guarantee i'll do a lot of heavy surfing while gone, though i'm going to try to post a photo a day if my parents' computer will play nice with large photos.  Somehow i doubt it, but it's my goal.

For now, ze meme:

List the towns or cities where you spent at least a night away from home during 2008.
Mark with a star if you had multiple non-consecutive stays.

Schenectady, NY*
Albany, NY*
Colonie, NY*
Ballston Spa, NY*

All of the above were part of visiting scholar, either at his house, staying with a friend in Albany, relatives in Ballston Spa, or a hotel in Colonie.  Lovely Colonie :D

Kissimee, FL

Flint, MI
Traverse City, MI
Bark River, MI
Manistique, MI
Curtis, MI
Indianapolis, IN

The Road Trip from Hell many of you read about before you got bored with dozens of photos of nature :D

Arlington, VA

Been a weird year for me with no trips overseas but the chaperone trip to Disney and the giant road trip home. 

Crossposted to CM, since it involves all sorts of CM folks.

So in the early part of the dream a female friend (noone with a real world counterpart) had just bought a GIANT old house to update and live in, in a relatively rural neighbourhood/division somewhere in New Hampshire.  We had 4 neighbours, but we all owned multiple acres of land so we could barely see the other houses.  We spent some time planting more trees for privacy, and then there was a major hassle regarding a failed saftey inspection which revealed all sorts of deliberate sabotages.  Weakening of floor joists, intentionally miswired light fixtures, loose pipes, that sort of thing.

During this stress, it turned out i had a bunch of CM neighbours!  Trillian and Nareau were in town somewhere, kiznit had a horse ranch nearby, and Nerfherder was several rural roads away.  It was about a 10 mile drive, due to the windy roads, but only a mile overland on foot.  It turned out that the straight line between our houses was a Ley Line, which was midly amusing.

We spent some time hiking in the hills behind our houses, and helping kiznit with the horses, which was all idyllic and cool for a while.  Then it turns out that a serial killer was working those same hills.  He/she was sick and cruel and liked to partially dismemeber the victims before killing them, so body parts were being found all over the place.

The saddest part was when we found Nerf's head one day :(

So suddenly we were all highly motivated to help solve the case, so we spent a lot of time in groups for safety, searching the hills for clues.  After a variety of escapades which i don't fully remember, several of us found a shack with some realistic prop body parts in it.  We suddenly realised that Nerf wasn't dead at all, since we found several "practice" heads.  Something about the tools or materials lead us to visit Nareau, since we knew he had a background in stage prop design and buildling because of his DJing work.  (No, it doesn't make sense to me either now that i'm awake.)

We show up at Nareau's house, which is completely empty of furniture except a bed and some pillows on the floor, the kitchen is full of empty take out containers. and there are about 40 cats.  Most are Russian or British Blue, including one named Frank who is a dead ringer for the Cheeseburger Frank cat.  We try to delicately ask if Trillian has left him, and he freaks out and reveals that there was never a Trillian at all, he made her up.

Well, that is certainly odd, and we spend some time trying to comfort him and get him some help.  We're relieved he's not the murderer, but we still have to catch the real one.

[EDIT: WAIT! I remembered a middle bit just now!

While searching, we came across the hotel room of the suspect!  It was a VERY swank hotel in the Carribean, with a promo spot being done by the guy who narrated Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, and some weird TV ads with well known mobsters giving it their seal of approval.  Somehow we managed to break into the suspect's opulent suite, to discover he too, like Nareau, had gotten rid of all the furniture except for a box spring and some white sheets.  We used a UV lamp to check the box spring for blood stains, and found only very faint ones in the diamond hatch pattern that a lot of mattresses have on them - in other words, he had once had a blood soaked mattress leak through onto the box spring.  Ewww.  

Then we put the UV lamp on the sheets which were completely covered in writing only visible under black light, but dark on white instead of bright blue on white.  (If i had time i'd look up substances that do that, but i'm running out for xmas eve dinner in a few seconds here.)  The writing was all very disturbed, profanity and obscenity laden, misogynistic rantings.  Very disturbing.]

So we head back into the hills to the shack where we found the parts, and start tearing it down.  Turns out there is a false back to all of the rooms and in each little section a person is walled in, chained to the floor, with a pile of food and water to keep them between visits by the killer.  No one has been mutilated yet, and of course Nerf is one of them, so we have a happy ending there.

No idea if we caught the guy or not. 

So my xmas gift to myself was a month of WoW.  Yeah, i know, you can't eat only one and you can't only play WoW for a month.

But damn, i'm having fun :)  I'm taking today to do laundry, and then i'm busy all day the 25th, the 26th through 29th i'm visiting Bro in DC, and on the 4th i leave to visit Parents for 2 weeks.  So it's not ilke i'll be this addicted for long.  But i'm enjoying it while it lasts :)

For now, a meme about 2008, stolen from emprint :

( A year to remember.... )
And there is a year's worth of experiences in 40 questions ;)

I just read a nice piece on someone's blog describing local businesses and the reasons why that person shops at specific shops, even when sales at big box stores might result in lower prices on some items.  In the grand scheme of things, being pennywise and pound foolish adds up very quickly. I realise that most expensive items are the kinds of things that it is tough to wait around for sales, since you kind of need them when the old one dies - computers, tires, water heaters, furnaces, etc.  This is why i think _in the long run_ it is worth it to be a patron of a small business already.  The relationship is established, you trust them, they trust you, you can count on them when the need is immediate, and they can count on your to send dollars and hopefully new customers their way.

( Not all urban mindsets are the same. Not all New Yorkers are jerks! )
No idea where this long non-rant came from.  It occurs to me that it has been percolating for a while now, but a series of experiences brought it to the front of my mind just now.

For those curious, local businesses i have patronized in the last 2 months who i feel have performed well above my expectations.  There are other businesses whom i'll recommend later, but these are the ones who stand out in my mind so far:

State Street Mobil Service
936 State Street, Schenectady, NY

Tire Warehouse of Union Street
1717 Union Street, technically in Niskayuna

Schenectady branch of the DMV, on lower lower lower State Street by SCCC

Guilderland Martial Arts
Route 20/Western Ave right near where 146N splits off (146 and 20 are concurrant for a while).
(I'm a bit biased here, since one does get emotionally involved with one's martial arts club, but even before i joined i saw demos and testing and i was VERY impressed.)

Stolen from maverick_weirdo .

Take the first sentence (or two) from the first non-meme entry of each month and put them together in a post.

(I did not post in January and February, for whatever reason. Not entirely sure why, but i know i was much busier then than i am now.)

( Disjointed and random, yet difficult to follow! :D )

I misread the instructions originally and thought it was the first sentence of every non-meme post.  That would be fun too, but a lot more time consuming.  A project for after Friday - the day my final paper is due.

From bobmungovan . Thanks!

( Dice! )

About a week ago, an interesting event occurred, which i keep meaning to ponder in written form.

Finally, my final project is in a state that i feel able to self-examine without implosion.

So, reasonably late at night last week, around 9.30 maybe, both a knock and a nearly simultaneous doorbell ring on my door happened.  We know the upstairs neighbours pretty well, so i opened the door without looking through the peephole.   (I used to check it but people almost never stand where i can see them so i got out of the habit.)

Turns out it wasn't the neighbour, but a guy i'd never seen before, about my height, kinda skinny, black, with a do-rag, and on his cell phone.  He didn't look up at me but just started to come inside, like on autopilot.

This is what i find interesting: instead of stepping backwards like i hear is the common reaction, i stepped forwards, leaning in with my chest and shoulders, and said medium loudly, "Yo, dude. Wrong apartment."

He looked up, looked startled, saw scholar over my shoulder, and stepped back out.  He said, "Sorry bro! Lucky i didn't get shot." and walked away.

(Okay, apologise to scholar and not me? WTF mang?!?)

So at least he had the good grace to be embarrassed and apologise.

But i'm still pondering the implications of the fact that i instinctively moved closer to him, not further away.  The choices are, i figure, A) i'm really dumb, B) i'm incredibly badass or C) my subconscious thought he wasn't a threat, and i'd actually capitulate in a truly dangerous situation.

Just something to contemplate in this season of self-reflection.

Stolen from the newly caffeinated impeccablesimon . 

(Yes, i'm working on my final project, honest. I'm taking a break to clear my head.  Resources for students with disabilities in the greater Schenectady area is interesting, but i experience burnout nonetheless.)

( 5 questions )


And that's all she wrote.

Tonight at TKD Master R was noticing his son, E, not putting everything he had into a technique.  So he came up with a scathing yet mostly socially acceptable insult to motivate him:

Master R: "Your Grandma can punch harder than that!"

E: "Um, dad? Grandma is a black belt."

Master R:  "......."

Master R "Well, punch harder anyway!  You get my point!"

Yeah, if any of us had been capable of breathing we would have laughed ;)