Thursday, June 25, 2009
The Sun.
Here in the mountains of Colorado (as with other high-elevation locales) the sun makes a very noticeable difference in temperature as perceived by the human being. A cloud passing by can make it feel like it got 15 degrees cooler. Also, for some reason - perhaps the long periods of time with no clouds or perhaps the thinner atmosphere - it is very easy to get sun burned out here, even for me with my somewhat darker complexion. Unfortunately, I hate sun screen. I always have and I always will (unless they make it so that you can't feel it). I could be considered a dirty guy, but when it comes to the feeling of dirt, grime, grease, stickiness, etc. on my skin for long periods of time, I begin to get edgy. So being forced into a dailyl ritual of slathering oily lotion all over my exposed body is less than appealing to me. Furthermore, here at the winery, one never knows what the day's labors will entail. Usually, I try to grease up before leaving for work so that I don't waste time card time taking care of my skin. And yet... there are often times when I put on sun screen only to discover that we'll be working inside all day! What a bummer! Sometimes I feel lucky, like we'll surely be working inside... and then I don't put on sunscreen and then we work outside. Crap. Today was a new record, however. I had information direct from the boss-lady (she told us yesterday) that we would be working inside today. I proudly marched on over, not a drop of sunscreen on my body, and was told by boss-man that we would be working on a slip form for a masonry project... outside. CRAP! I took a bottle of sunscreen and began applying it to my bare arms and lower legs. Just as I finished (annoyed at guessing wrong, even with inside information), Lance came and said, "oh yeah. I forgot. I need you guys to bottle inside today." DOH!!
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
I'm Dumb.
Introducing a new blog segment!!! Hopefully (or maybe not, actually) this will be a reoccuring bit, as I do a lot of dumb stuff and more than not it's pretty funny in retrospect...
Car Oil
So I changed my car oil recently, right? Yesterday we filled up in Grand Junction (45 mpg on the last tank. Woot!) and since my car burns oil notoriously, I thought I'd check the oil level. Empty!! What?! I just filled it full a week/40 miles ago! I can't have burned through all that oil so fast! I got my oil reserves from the trunk and proceeded to dump in an extra quart or so. I checked again and... still empty! Weird. Oh hang it, there is some oil there. Oh, it's way too much. Oh, I guess I was used to my oil being dirt black and now that it's clear I couldn't see it as well. Now I just overfilled my car's oil tank. I'm dumb! [Author's note: after starting to write this, I remembered that I was going to do web research and see how serious a problem it was that we then proceeded to drive home with too much oil. It's a big problem apparently... maybe why the car started rattling funnily. In fact, I may have entirely ruined my car. So apparently there is a linear correlation between extremity of dumbness and amount of time it takes to be funny later...]
Car Oil
So I changed my car oil recently, right? Yesterday we filled up in Grand Junction (45 mpg on the last tank. Woot!) and since my car burns oil notoriously, I thought I'd check the oil level. Empty!! What?! I just filled it full a week/40 miles ago! I can't have burned through all that oil so fast! I got my oil reserves from the trunk and proceeded to dump in an extra quart or so. I checked again and... still empty! Weird. Oh hang it, there is some oil there. Oh, it's way too much. Oh, I guess I was used to my oil being dirt black and now that it's clear I couldn't see it as well. Now I just overfilled my car's oil tank. I'm dumb! [Author's note: after starting to write this, I remembered that I was going to do web research and see how serious a problem it was that we then proceeded to drive home with too much oil. It's a big problem apparently... maybe why the car started rattling funnily. In fact, I may have entirely ruined my car. So apparently there is a linear correlation between extremity of dumbness and amount of time it takes to be funny later...]
Monday, June 22, 2009
It's been a whole month...
...since I last wrote. Sad, huh? My life is busy, I guess, but I've been saying that now for the past five years or so. I just have to prioritise. One of the philosophies I've been developing over the past few months and/or years is that it is usually more effective (and therefore better?) to correspond/talk on the phone more frequently in smaller doses. I guess the same goes for blogging. If I write a large amount of content when I do write, then I set the bar high for myself and end up not writing when I have a free 30 minutes or so. So maybe I'll just keep it short and sweet and save the photos for when I have that perfect shot. Then again, I like pictures, even if my photography skills could stand significant improvement. Here are two pictures of my car at various points on my journey out west. Can you tell which one was taken in Indiana and which was tak
en in Colorado?
(Also note the noticeable frown of my rear suspension. As though all of my crap was not heavy enough, I just had to keep adding weight further and further back...)
And speaking of my car, Gwen is doing fine these days. She got her first oil change under my care the other day, only a measely 3000 miles late. I also have begun making some serious mods. For instance, because I didn't feel she was assertive enough, I drove her over some huge rocks on a crappy dirt road up a mountain. Now the resulting dings (and holes?) in her muffler let her roar through the countryside. (Some might argue that Colin, Jonathan and I were just lazy and didn't want to hike the extra 2 miles at the beginning of our trek - and they would have good reason, as we started our backpacking adventure at about 9 pm, eventually finding a reasonably good campsite at around 11 (no thanks to our 15' visibility range do to the limitations of our headlamps) - but no, car-related coolness was all that I had on my mind at the time.) Future mods will hopefully include installing the air filter I ordered online. For the last 6000 miles I had been wondering to myself, this big empty hole over the air intake looks like you could screw something over it... I wonder what that might be... Well, all my stupidity aside, Gwen is still getting 40 mpg, so with her I am well pleased.
What have I been up to?
Oh yeah, one more bullet point:
We noticed the ad in the High Country Shopper, the local free magazine that has all the community news and advertisements. Outhouse race? Sounds dumb. Let's enter. We checked it out on the internets, and it seemed within our grasp: outhouses would be raced for 200 ft. on a grass surface. Certain dimensions must be met (thou shalt make thine outhouse 3 cubits by 6 cubits, not exceeding 7 cubits in width... [that reminds me, if you have heard of lolcats, check out www.lolcatbible.com. If you haven't, visit www.icanhascheezburger.com first... Exaggerations aside, this has provided at least 2-3 hours of entertainment for us thus far, and it's still not getting old...]), and there must be a jockey inside, sitting on a seat - with a hole - while the race is in progress. Colin had the brilliant (no sarcasm) idea of making our outhouse a litter of sorts, rather than utilizing wheels, as we guessed other teams would do. Since the race was only 200' we figured a lightweight design with no rolling friction would give us superior acceleration. Awesome. We're in. We sent in the $5 for registration, and decided on the name "the Queen's Latrine" because it sounded clever. We later decided it would only be appropriate to dress in drag for the race. We began to hype ourselves up during the preceding weeks, but we didn't actually do anything but talk. At 7pm the night before the race we built the Latrine. It's makeup: two 1 X 6's, some 1" dowel rods, and a ton of cardboard. We actually spent more time painting it than we did building i
t.
And the painting was quite the process. Before I arrived, Colin and later Jonathan had begun developing a style of collaborative art-creation. Colin's rules for this process: anyone can paint anywhere at any time they choose. The numerous paintings that adorn our walls are a testimony to the efficacy (or maybe "grooviness" is the word I'm looking for) of this style. Anyway, the three of us, Evan (the bosses' son) and Nicole (the bosses' son's girlfriend - also our jockey) had a great time painting into the night. On the big day the five of us were up at the crack of dawn to eat a huge pancake and sausage breakfast. And then as quickly as the last manager's special sausage slipped down someone's gullet the sun dresses went on and we piled into a huge diesel truck - kind of a driving oxymoron...
There was a parade before the races. We were somewhere after the fire trucks and somewhere before the people in pioneer getup and blanks in their guns. Fun times. Crowd reactions ranged from cheers to cat calls (from women, from jesting men and from men too uncomfortable to know how else to respond) to questions such as, "isn't wearing a dress kind of gay?" (Colin's response: [innocently:] "Isn't that okay?" - silence -) The parade over, we chugged some overly sweeted iced tea, and loaded up on power food - i.e. corndogs and funnel cakes.
The actual race was somewhat of a disaster. We hadn't actually practiced synchronizing our running while carrying a jockey-laden outhouse. To make matters worse, we learned about 3 minutes before the race that due to the small racing area (only about 75-100'... great planning, guys...), each outhouse would race against the clock, going down the field, rounding a pole and returning to cross the finish line. Unfortunately, even with two physics majors on the design team, lack of information ultimately left us hosed. We accelerated very well, yet upon trying to round the corner with our superior speed Evan (the outside-back runner) simultaneously felt all the weight of the Queen and her Latrine shift into his hands and was accelerated (think crack the whip) and flung outward toward the crowd. He dove into the ground - out of respect for the crowd's probable wish to not make physical contact with a running transvestite - and the rear of the outhouse crashed down.
Jonathan and I looked back, saw why our progress had been so suddenly arrested, looked at each other and drug the Queen the remaining 40' over the finish line. We finished last, yet were only 2 seconds behind the winner, despite our humiliating wreck. We recieved the "flimsiest outhouse" award - a mini plywood outhouse, housing a roll of toilet paper.
en in Colorado?
(Also note the noticeable frown of my rear suspension. As though all of my crap was not heavy enough, I just had to keep adding weight further and further back...)
And speaking of my car, Gwen is doing fine these days. She got her first oil change under my care the other day, only a measely 3000 miles late. I also have begun making some serious mods. For instance, because I didn't feel she was assertive enough, I drove her over some huge rocks on a crappy dirt road up a mountain. Now the resulting dings (and holes?) in her muffler let her roar through the countryside. (Some might argue that Colin, Jonathan and I were just lazy and didn't want to hike the extra 2 miles at the beginning of our trek - and they would have good reason, as we started our backpacking adventure at about 9 pm, eventually finding a reasonably good campsite at around 11 (no thanks to our 15' visibility range do to the limitations of our headlamps) - but no, car-related coolness was all that I had on my mind at the time.) Future mods will hopefully include installing the air filter I ordered online. For the last 6000 miles I had been wondering to myself, this big empty hole over the air intake looks like you could screw something over it... I wonder what that might be... Well, all my stupidity aside, Gwen is still getting 40 mpg, so with her I am well pleased.
What have I been up to?
- pruning. always pruning.
- putting 2 X 6 sled runners on a mobile sheep shelter
- eating ludicrusly lavish lunches (at the bosses' house)
- driving to Paonia with the boys (and doggie) to play pickup ultimate and soccer
- learning to weedbadge (=trying to keep the vine death:weed death ratio at a minimum while atop a tractor equiped with a ginormous weed whacker on a hydraulic arm)
- making tasty food
- learning to fly fish - so far only befriending the local fly shop guy. I have yet to actually cast into water
- most recently: attending a wedding in Cairo, NE.
Oh yeah, one more bullet point:
- entering an outhouse race in a local community festival, constructing a racing outhouse, dressing in drag, and thoroughly shocking and entertaining the conservative community of Crawford, CO.
We noticed the ad in the High Country Shopper, the local free magazine that has all the community news and advertisements. Outhouse race? Sounds dumb. Let's enter. We checked it out on the internets, and it seemed within our grasp: outhouses would be raced for 200 ft. on a grass surface. Certain dimensions must be met (thou shalt make thine outhouse 3 cubits by 6 cubits, not exceeding 7 cubits in width... [that reminds me, if you have heard of lolcats, check out www.lolcatbible.com. If you haven't, visit www.icanhascheezburger.com first... Exaggerations aside, this has provided at least 2-3 hours of entertainment for us thus far, and it's still not getting old...]), and there must be a jockey inside, sitting on a seat - with a hole - while the race is in progress. Colin had the brilliant (no sarcasm) idea of making our outhouse a litter of sorts, rather than utilizing wheels, as we guessed other teams would do. Since the race was only 200' we figured a lightweight design with no rolling friction would give us superior acceleration. Awesome. We're in. We sent in the $5 for registration, and decided on the name "the Queen's Latrine" because it sounded clever. We later decided it would only be appropriate to dress in drag for the race. We began to hype ourselves up during the preceding weeks, but we didn't actually do anything but talk. At 7pm the night before the race we built the Latrine. It's makeup: two 1 X 6's, some 1" dowel rods, and a ton of cardboard. We actually spent more time painting it than we did building i
t.And the painting was quite the process. Before I arrived, Colin and later Jonathan had begun developing a style of collaborative art-creation. Colin's rules for this process: anyone can paint anywhere at any time they choose. The numerous paintings that adorn our walls are a testimony to the efficacy (or maybe "grooviness" is the word I'm looking for) of this style. Anyway, the three of us, Evan (the bosses' son) and Nicole (the bosses' son's girlfriend - also our jockey) had a great time painting into the night. On the big day the five of us were up at the crack of dawn to eat a huge pancake and sausage breakfast. And then as quickly as the last manager's special sausage slipped down someone's gullet the sun dresses went on and we piled into a huge diesel truck - kind of a driving oxymoron...
There was a parade before the races. We were somewhere after the fire trucks and somewhere before the people in pioneer getup and blanks in their guns. Fun times. Crowd reactions ranged from cheers to cat calls (from women, from jesting men and from men too uncomfortable to know how else to respond) to questions such as, "isn't wearing a dress kind of gay?" (Colin's response: [innocently:] "Isn't that okay?" - silence -) The parade over, we chugged some overly sweeted iced tea, and loaded up on power food - i.e. corndogs and funnel cakes.The actual race was somewhat of a disaster. We hadn't actually practiced synchronizing our running while carrying a jockey-laden outhouse. To make matters worse, we learned about 3 minutes before the race that due to the small racing area (only about 75-100'... great planning, guys...), each outhouse would race against the clock, going down the field, rounding a pole and returning to cross the finish line. Unfortunately, even with two physics majors on the design team, lack of information ultimately left us hosed. We accelerated very well, yet upon trying to round the corner with our superior speed Evan (the outside-back runner) simultaneously felt all the weight of the Queen and her Latrine shift into his hands and was accelerated (think crack the whip) and flung outward toward the crowd. He dove into the ground - out of respect for the crowd's probable wish to not make physical contact with a running transvestite - and the rear of the outhouse crashed down.
Jonathan and I looked back, saw why our progress had been so suddenly arrested, looked at each other and drug the Queen the remaining 40' over the finish line. We finished last, yet were only 2 seconds behind the winner, despite our humiliating wreck. We recieved the "flimsiest outhouse" award - a mini plywood outhouse, housing a roll of toilet paper.- Outhouse race entry fee: $5
- Acrylic paint: $10 (sorry, art people, that this estimate is probably so wrong...)
- Utility costs to launder sweaty sun dresses: $0.40
- Providing comic relief for the entirety of a rural mountain community: priceless
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