October 2, 2009

After work and dinner, I attended one of the several art events that the city holds semiannually - GalleryNight. The event I attended was in the Mound St Yoga Center. It lasted about 30 minutes and consisted of several dance/installation pieces, one of which my friend participated. Their piece was about 7 minutes long and had to do with apples. The apples were brought out onto the stage area in red wagon and then strewn about the floor, after the dancers performed their installation in full, they ended by slicing up the apples and serving them to the audience; sort of Brechtian. The piece was charming and quaint, and I thought the best of the offerings. The Yoga center is celebrating its 25th year, so there was lots of vegan cake around with Prosecco. I had some water as I was parched from walking 3 miles to the event (I wanted to see how long it took to walk from my house to that area, about 35 minutes.) So, I got in a good hour of exercise in the deal.

Camp Randall is surreal when it is all dark and no on around. In walking through Kendall Street where many of the leisure liberal class resides, the street and houses are set up nice, but with my experience, theses little liberal bastions, like other across cities in the USA, are profusely congested by cars. I find it funny that most of these people would consider themselves environmentally conservative, but are truly liberal when it comes to using and owning automobiles; I think there was one for almost every tree on the blocks I walked.

September 27, 2009

Summer's reign pretty much ended today. At noon, I was outside mowing the lawn and its was bit humid and maybe 80 degrees F. In the afternoon, clouds moved in and there was heavy rain from time to time. After dinner, we reclined to watch some programs on TV, and about 8PM, we saw a bunch of flickering occurring outside. And then rain poured down massively, turning into the droning pelt of hail. It was unbelievable to hear such a deafening sound all throughout the house; winds also picked up tremendously. Karen checked the Weather Underground website and noticed that our region of the city was under a pink section of precipitation; this is beyond the red level. The hail intensified and then subsided after about 15 minutes; but what an unnerving 15 minutes to hear that sound non-stop; kind of scary, definitely unsettling.

Looking out our windows after the hail passed, we could see about 3 or 4 inches of standing hail. It was hard to see though as most of it was translucent and not opaque; so in the street lights, it glistened like broken glass. The temps fell to 50 that night, and the forecast did not have anything higher than 60 in it for the next week.

September 15, 2009

Our parrot Elliott vomited today. He does this periodically as it is a symptom of his chronic illness. It is an arresting sight, to say the least. I am not revolted by the function, but feel empathetic when someone is experiencing this act; it is humiliating to say the least, and my compassion swells when I see it occurring. Well, apart from one time when I was on the Portland transit system, Tri-Met. The bus line that went by my former household on Division Street was the Number 4. For some reason in their compromised opiated minds, the heroin addicts would get on the bus, thinking for some reason it went to the Belmont Street methadone clinic. How they ever thought this is beyond my comprehension, as the numbers or streets are not similar. But, there they would be, slumped over in their bus seats, all strung out and pasty, like little E.T.s from that lovely movie by Stevie Spielberg.

On one ride from the downtown area to my home, there were a couple on board the Number 4 that exhibited such a physiognomy, and were muttering gibberish most of the ride. When they finally figured out by 39th Ave that they were on the wrong bus, they began to agitate, albeit at strung out speed, which is surreally slow. Then one of them vomited, but the vomitus came out equally slow; I suspect that peristalsis is also compromised by opiate abuse, which is quite phenomenal as the function is involuntary. And the vomitus; it looked just as white and pasty as them - how does that work?

September 6, 2009

Paul and I finished all but one window and fitted our new faucet. I assembled a new waterhose spindle and began washing the house's exteriors. In the evening, we drank much beer, and some of Paul's friends came over who were visiting their families in Stoughton. The end result was that 4 men, in ages from late 30's to early 40's and one of their wives, managed to drink about 27 beers in about 3 hours; not bad for a 'Pabsting.'

Before we retired for the evening, we caught some of Jerry Lewis. It is sad to see such an old man attempt to sing, walk, and look cogent.

September 5, 2009

Paul and I purchased materials to replace our basement windows. I helped in painting the wood 2X4's, and chiseling some of the wall borders to help size the window casements better. In the evening, we drank plenty of cheap beer, which is a great help when doing projects; it doesn't alter you that fast, and you can drink plenty of them during the day and evening, and still be OK in the morning to proceed with work. We also watched the Badger game and during halftime, the squirrels outside my house on Regent Street that have been eating and gathering all the hickory nuts from the lone shagbark hickory tree on that part of the street. The squirrels are at such a rate that every second pieces of the nut would fall onto the street, and every once in awhile a few nuts themselves. The street in that section is littered with nut pieces and resin from the nuts.

September 4, 2009

Paul came into town from Milwaukee, and we began sizing up projects for the house. For the evening, we drank lots of beer and caught parts of Natural Born Killers, which was the first movie date Karen and I had.

September 3, 2009

In going to our closest grocery store, Whole Foods, to pick up some fruits for Elliott and a few other items, I had another brush with academic royalty. I was walking into the store and practically bumped into Chancellor Biddy Martin. She is pretty small, like Donna Shalala was, but more plump and red in the face as contrast to Donna's visage resembling that one witch in Wizard of Oz. Biddy was pretty pleasant but a little removed in that she knew that I figured out who she was when I apologized for bumping into her.