Category: Uncategorized

Here I am again, sitting at the kitchen table here at Lyon and Wolf’s place watching the world roar by outside the patio door and figuring it’ll be a nice day today.

I love sunrises simply for the wonder of long shadows and subtle highlights. For example; there is a bit of sunlight seeping though the railing on the porch, casting shadows, and rather than being the “dark” and “light” of daytime, it’s a sort of airbrushed affair with softer edges and is very pleasant.

Then there are the squirrels out in the back yard that are ceaseless in their antics and have boundless energy and grace… I put a broken sugar cookie on the porch railing and two of them have been leaping around and chasing one another for the right to stash it somewhere.

Today the family here has to go and visit family elsewhere, which few seem to be all that enthused about. This is especially evident with the Otter who, much to her chagrin as this will be a bruising to her “punk-goth” image, has to get dressed up for the occasion…

Well, that’s assuming she actually gets out of bed today. 😉

I’ll remain behind today so that I am not witness to the plastic smiles and forced happiness on both sides of their family fence… This is an example of what not to do for the holidays; there isn’t any reason for people to feel forced to endure unpleasantness in the name of “holidays” as it turns the whole thing into an exercise in tolerance rather than the festive occasion it should be. I’m not saying this will be the case with the family here, but over the years I’ve heard nothing but horror stories about this particular yearly encounter.

While the family here is out, a friend of Wolf’s will be stopping by to get some pointers on web design and HTML technique from yours truly… I’ve never met this person, and I don’t do new people well without someone I know acting as a buffer, so we’ll see how this goes.

Other than that there isn’t much to report. My stay down here for the holidays has been quite wonderful. I’ve been spending my nights in the alter room which has been very nice… Apparently I’ve been deemed “ok” enough to not mess up the flow in there. The biggest advantage to the alter room, in my view, is that it’s a ritual space and I can very easily blot out the rest of the world for a few hours in there. This lets me get up feeling like I’ve spent the night at home up on my mountain, rather than camped next to a straight away at the Indy 500.

See, normally when I come down to visit for a few days I get frazzled very quickly due to the press of people here. Sure, civilization is encroaching at an alarming rate up there in Eagle-Vail and highway 6 has become a source of noise 24/7, but it’s still pretty much a hermitage. Due to this I’m acutely aware of the crush of human presence down here and it stresses me out.

Here there is a press of “others” that you can actually feel. This house sits pretty much in the geo-center of Aurora, which is where 80% of Denver lives, and due to this there are people on top of people here: “Stacked like cord wood, they are!” as my Grandfather would have said. Alameda runs right next to the other side of the garage and is six lanes of 24/7 traffic which can become so busy of an evening that there will be a 4-5 mile long parking lot out there, a mere 15-20 feet from the house. This is much like I figure it would be to live on the median of an interstate.

Another thing that will get to you here is the abject stupidity out there should you actually leave the safety of the house. Usually before you clear a mile in the car you will have been cut off, honked at, tail gated, nearly hit, and so nervous you’ll have a death-grip on the steering wheel.

Don’t get me wrong though, the house itself is very nice with those unique touches that Wolf and Lyon tend to give a place (those who know them know what I mean). I like it here, but just wish the house was somewhere else. 😉

Ahh, the dead hath risen! The goth-girl has crept out of her crypt to snag a cookie from the tin Wolf’s mom dropped off. Then, as if suddenly realizing the sun was up, she turned and crept back down to the dank safety of her mausoleum…

Well, I guess I’ll sign off and do some writing while it’s relatively quiet here.

Still down here at Wolf and Lyon’s place, which is nice.

We had a great Yule dinner last night, which was proceeded by a nice mini-ritual in celebration of all that was last year and all that will be this year.

Dinner was roasted Cornish hens with stuffing and gravy, a mushroom medley (Mmmm!), a green bean casserole sort of thing, sourdough and sharp cheddar on the side, and a desert dish that was really good and had apples in it, but I’m not sure what it was.

For Yule I got a new fantasy novel, which is a perfect gift for me, and a bag of pretty tasty jellybeans. 🙂

Yesterday I took Wolf to work so that I’d have the “witch wagon” (her van) with which to run a few errands for her. Taking Wolf to work is really cool because she works down in Boulder at NIST/NOAA and there are about a million really cool things going on down there at any time. The problem yesterday was getting into the campus in the first place as we’re at a high level of “threat awareness” and they’re pretty picky down there with who gets to meander around the campus at that level.

Yes, my watch was correct to the second according to the master clock down there.

The remainder of yesterday was spent driving around, running errands and taking Otter to a local game store, which was, as one would expect of a 14-year-old, an adventure in and of itself. 😉

Today I’m helping out around the house by taking care of the kitchen, and then I’ll do some writing if Otter, and her friend who is here for the day, can keep from knocking the house down around me. 😉

Ok, the dishwasher is done so I have to get back to it…

Here I am at Wolf and Lyon’s place in Denver.

Got here Friday evening and everyone decided on having some really good take-out Chinese, then we decided to go see the “Return of the King”. It’s the holidays and they are kind enough to let me play family with them so most of this weekend will be my treat.

So off we went. Wolf, Lyon, their daughter, Otter, and I got over to the theater for the 8pm show and had a little time to spare to get munchies and still be the #2,3,4, and 5 people in the theater… We’re geeks…

Then the movie came on…

Wow…

Seriously, that’s it folks. I really doubt anyone will be able to top that movie for a very long time…I truly expect the next Academy Awards to be nothing more than a Peter Jackson and Company party.

The final installment is about 3.5 hours long so go to the restroom before getting settled as you wont be able to get up till the end of the credits.

The storyline is flawless having everything from tense moments and seat edge action to very touching and poignant moments. The scale of this movie is astounding as well and you’ll definitely have to see it more than once to catch it all. Then there are the effects shots that are brilliant, the music that is brilliant, even the static art behind the closing credits is brilliant…

We got back here to their place so jazzed from the movie that no one got to bed before 1:30 or so.

Saturday morning we headed over to “Sam’s #3” for a prime rib & eggs breakfast. Sam’s is one of the best breakfast places in Denver in my opinion… We then headed over to Attactix, which is a local game store, to do some gift shopping. The folks here are serious gamers so what better way to get things they’ll like?

I got Lyon a new dwarf miniature to paint, a can of primer, a Warhammer magazine, a Warhammer 40k army management program, and this really cool carrying case with which to transport his Warhammer 40k armies in.

Wolf got a few miniatures she wanted, the d20 system rulebook, and the “Oathbound” source book for the d20 system.

Once we got back Lyon had to take off to a meeting so Wolf and I went grocery shopping for the holiday meals…

$150 later we returned home and Wolf fixed cheese stuffed portabella mushrooms (one of my favs) and steamed artichokes (another fav)… We then spent a few hours pouring over the new game stuff before calling it a night.

We’ll see what happens in the morning…

I may be offline here for the holidays. I’ll be down at Wolf and Lyon’s place if anyone needs me as they were kind enough to provide a temporary unicorn shelter down there.

See, Larry and Vivian are nice folks but I don’t really want to spend the holidays with their family as the “kids” all ridiculously rich and aren’t well grounded. Their usual topics of discussion are how the water was in Cancun, how this year’s BMW z3 is doing, which books/movies they’ve produced recently, and how they’re going to take advantage of this year’s rich-get-richer tax laws… Meanwhile I usually hide in my room, wonder where Cancun is, figure out how I’m going to afford to fix the Lincoln, finish a book I’m reading, and try to compute how much money I’m going to have after taxes.

That and they all have yuppie-larva which are all spoilt rotten and have the attention span of a gnat. I don’t mind children, but those aren’t children…

Anyways, I’ll have my laptop with me but I never know if or when I’ll have a moment to post about the day’s events when I’m “Oot and aboot”.

I’ll also have the Sony s707 with me, so expect a few compromising photos. 😉

Well, Aryntha and Rai were up here for a night. We didn’t do much of anything but sit around and shoot the proverbial shit, but it was still fun.

I showed them the “Mormon” episode of South Park on the computer here, and then Aryntha pulled up the web site for Yamaha’s newest piece of electronic wizardry, the Vocaloid (http://www.vocaloid.com/en/index.html).

Aryntha then poked around in Second Life (http://secondlife.com/) for a little while and showed off some of the latest features… I can see that the $200 video card I have in my computer just isn’t good enough for stuff on the horizon and that I’ll be saving my pennies for something better soon. 🙂

That’s about it for new news from here in the thin air. Till the next installment…

Another bit of the banter that goes on in my head:

Flint: “Your reality? You mean that place where the pizza delivery guy comes from?”

Ravik: “… You really are clueless aren’t you? No you fool; it’s not where the pizza delivery guy comes from. I was being facetious about you and the butterflies and rainbows that shoot out of your ass on a continual basis.”

Flint (looking back): “What butterflies?”

Ravik: (sighs)

Flint: “You’re just mad because I’m happy and positive. You’re always killing things and breaking things and just being mean in general…”

Ravik: “At least I have a positive attitude about my destructive habits.”

Flint: “See what I mean? You’re just a bad person and you think that gives you a right to hassle me.”

Ravik: “It’s a thankless job, but I’ve got a lot of Karma to burn off. Besides, if it wasn’t for me being around for you to compare yourself to, you’d be a little island of meaningless “happy”.”

Flint: “No unicorn is an island, but then, no unicorn is a potato salad, either.”

Ravik: “I… What!?”

Flint: “Potato salad… I happen to like potato salad. But I also know that I’m not made of it…”

Ravik: “…”

Ravik: “Someday, I’ll look back on this, laugh nervously and change the subject.”

It looks like it’s going to be a pretty nice day up here today, weather wise. The sun is shining, it’s a brilliant blue sky up there, and thanks to the foot of snow covering everything it is very bright.

Aryntha and Rai didn’t make it up here last night due to a break in the real-world / desire barrier which added hours to things that should have taken minutes. Things have been rescheduled for today though.

Well, the water is boiling for my morning tea so I’ll sign off until something exciting happens…

Aryntha and Rai are on their way up here for a day or so, so I’m busily cleaning the place up and preparing for company. Not that the place is “dirty”, per se, but there were two bowls in the sink and I needed to put towels in the downstairs guest room.

We’ll probably have a bit of an artist’s jam tonight on the board room table. Everyone has been looking for an excuse to “art”, and tonight might just provide it. Yes, Aryntha and Rai are artsy folk too, though none of us have much time to do anything as frivolous as random drawing anymore… Real life and all of its associated stresses and whatnot really puts a damper on a person’s creative output.

We’ll see how it goes.

Wish us luck, eh?

Additionally, it has come to my attention that certain subversives are spreading rumors of the existence of a number between 6 and 8. Needless to say, they are extremely dangerous and should not be approached under any circumstances. Be especially careful with people asking questions such as “What is half of fourteen?” when we all know that fourteen is an odd number.

Needing a break from working on a character illo of a kirin I had a fit of the “mad doodles” and took some sharpies to the blank side of my PC… I think I voided my warranty, or would have if I hadn’t built the thing.

The little black and white unicorn you find everywhere is Ri’Hahn Na’Horain, yet another of my alter egos.

As someone who really enjoyed “Farscape”, I found this to be interesting:

From the SciFi web site:
“SCI FI Wire has learned that production will begin Dec. 15 in Australia on a new four-hour Farscape miniseries, with stars Ben Browder, Claudia Black and others reprising their roles. A source close to the production told the Wire that series creators Rockne O’Bannon and David Kemper are readying a script for the miniseries, which as yet has no air date and no TV distribution deal. The SCI FI Channel, which originally aired four seasons of Farscape, had no comment on the report. A spokesperson for Jim Henson Co., which produced the series, also had no comment.”

“The proposed miniseries will probably wrap up the events of the show, which ended with a cliffhanger. The source added, “I believe it will certainly air on television. At this point, it’s in the early stages of finding that home.”

Again, I’m no huge fan of television, but Farscape was worthwhile in my opinion as it was a definite step in the right direction for the tried and true “space opera” genera. So, I guess some time next year I will have an excuse to turn on the TV for four hours.

Ok, back home now. Moved about 3 tons of display cases from the big pile in the space next to the shop, into the shop, and got the floor plan set up. Jack got all the skis put up for display, all the ski boots sized and out, all the snowboard boots sized and put up, and all the snowboards are now in their rack and sized.

We did what I figure amounts to a full day’s work in 5 hours… Whew!

The thing that really kills me is that Jack is a heavy smoker. Normally I can deal with it by just not being within 20 feet or so of him most of the time, but when I start really working and breathing heavy, the smoke kills me. I spend an hour or two every night when I get home coughing and I smell like I’ve been in a bar all day. Drives me crazy, but I never say anything. I don’t want to make things hard on the guy.

Anyways, I got to looking at the store in general today and decided it needed something. See, the new shop has about 20 foot ceilings and these huge, blank, white walls. Well, I’ve decided the places needs… ART!

I’ll be working up some designs for three murals; the one on the long wall above the snowboards will be a four part, blended, of a guy on a snowboard doing a grab off a jump (winter) flowing into a guy in hang glider (spring), which then goes to someone in a kayak going off a water fall (summer), and ends with a guy landing a dual suspension bike on a trail (fall); kind of a leave ground in winter, hit ground in fall thing. The mural over the ski rack will be a mountain panorama, and the one over the guitars in the music section will be lots of old school and new metal band logos done in high-perspective, high-specularity chrome and gold with some kind of red-midnight blue wash as a background in a flame sort of motif.

It should be pretty cool and a lot of fun. I haven’t broken out an opaque projector or done anything over 11×17 in years, but I have faith in my abilities. I’ll put up the designs, then pictures of the finished products for the folks out there who don’t get up here very often.

Speaking of folks coming up here; the Eagle-Vail exit off of I-70 is finished now; exit 169. What this means is there is a highway g’zinta-g’zouta about 4 blocks east of Château D’Isaster now. You won’t have to deal with round-a-bouts to get here anymore! 😉

Also, on the subject of roads; the road work on highway 6 is finished now. No more road cone mazes to traverse, construction equipment to dodge, or odd ball speed limit changes… Well, till you do the 45 to 20 to 45 at the WalWorld round-a-bout.

In other news I got the USS Lincoln home and it doesn’t seem any worse for the wear of sitting out in the below freezing weather last night. I was worried as the radiator leaks and I hate to leak antifreeze anywhere where animals can get at it, so I’ve been primarily using water and figured I’d have popped freeze plugs today.

I haven’t had a chance to get a battery for the Wagoneer yet… I’ll probably do that tomorrow as I’m tired and am seriously thinking about a hot shower and a nap.

Ok, still waiting for Jack here…

Got an email from a friend and one thing they mentioned was this quiz and said I should take it. Well, with the web address firmly in browser I did so.

Here ya go. Was there any doubt?

Dunno if I agree with some of the observations of character, but it’s not my quiz right?

You are Form 3, Unicorn: The Innocent.

“And The Unicorn knew she wasn’t meant to
go into the Dark Wood. Disregarding the advice
given to her by the spirits, Unicorn went
inside and bled silver blood.. For her
misdeed, the world knew evil.”

Some examples of the Unicorn Form are Eve
(Christian) and Pandora (Greek).
The Unicorn is associated with the concept of
innocence, the number 3, and the element of
water.
Her sign is the twilight sun.

As a member of Form 3, you are a curious
individual. You are drawn to new things and
become fascinated with ideas you’ve never come
in contact with before. Some people may say
you are too nosey, but it’s only because you
like getting to the bottom of things and
solving them. Unicorns are the best friends to
have because they are inquisitive.

Which Mythological Form Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Well, there is a little blue sky showing up there and the sun is peeking out on occasion. The snow seems to have abated for the nonce and I will attempt to get the USS Lincoln out of the parking lot at the shop today. My first stop will be Napa to get a new battery for the Wagoneer so that I don’t have this problem again.

Right now I’m waiting for Jack to show up and give me a ride over there.

Last night was beautiful and I was up till about 2 am trying to draw what I was seeing. The sky was perfectly clear (so it was *COLD* out there) and the moon was very bright. With all of the recent snow clinging to everything and all the people holed up in their houses with flickering fireplaces, the whole world looked like a massive Christmas card. Everything was a remarkable shade of blue to white and everything with an edge sparkled like it was dusted with diamonds.

It was truly beautiful.

Well, the water is boiling for my morning tea so I’d better run and get it before Jack gets here.

Have a great day out there.

For those of you out there who are winter-impaired I offer you a photo:

Today’s word is SNOW!

Yep, it’s coming down in buckets outside. Since a little after 7 this morning, when it started, I’ve got about half a foot on the front deck.

Now, as always, there was a bit of humor injected into my day already. I left the house at about 9:30 in the USS Lincoln to get to the shop by 10am. First I couldn’t get the car out of the driveway, then I inched my way out to highway 6 where I got stuck for two lights as the road was so slick and I could do nothing but spin the tires. Well, once I got going, I made it to the shop with minimal fishtailing and car dodging to discover a neat “feature” of our new location; one has to go down an incline off of highway 6 to get to the parking lot. Basically customers check in, but they don’t check out.

Once I arrived at the shop Jack came in and we collectively agreed that there wasn’t any real reason to be open today. So I climbed back into the USS Lincoln (which in the span of ten minutes was covered in about 3 inches of snow) and attempted to get out of the parking lot… about a dozen times.

During these attempts I was nearly hit three times by folks going way too fast for the corner and ending up in the ditch next to the entrance. After which they would slowly slide down into the parking lot with everyone else.

Something of note: Usually when it even –thinks- about snowing up here the plows are out in force and they just drive around looking for errant flakes. Today on the other hand this storm came in so fast and dumped so much that they are just now getting out there to make it safer… Seriously, at 7am it was sunny and blue sky out there.

Anyways, Jack drove his little jeep and was able to get us out of the parking lot. He dropped me off here and we’ll go get the Lincoln when things clear up a bit, like Wednesday.

Normally I would have taken the Wagoneer as it’s built for this sort of weather, but the battery in it is dead. I guess I need to get over to Napa and get a battery Wednesday.

A couple more pics for posterity:

We’re getting some good snow up here today which will make the tourists very happy.

Today is a drawing day. I have to get started on the latest ADE project so with the snow and the cold I suppose today is as good a day as any to get started. Well, maybe I’ll go see the 1pm showing of “Timeline” first. The movie looks just campy enough to be fun.

Also, I got a new cell phone. The old phone is fine, but the number attached to it got out to far too many random people up here and I wanted a newer (cooler) phone. Over the thanksgiving weekend I got no less than 20 different phone calls from people I didn’t know wanting me to give them fish in regards to their computer.

You know the old saying: Give a man a fish, feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, feed him for life… Well, none of the ridiculously rich folks up here want to learn to fish, they just expect the fish to be delivered post haste and it’d better be a damn good fish!

So anyways, those of you out there that need to call me call the old number and I’ll give you the new number. Or you can drop me an email and get the same effect.

The new phone is pretty cool. It’s this matrix-ish slide-open job with all the bells and whistles… Well, ok, it doesn’t have a camera in it, but it’s a phone for Pete’s sake. I have a few nice digital cameras and I don’t need one in my phone.

Here we are, another weekend and another two days of music and musing. Today’s events will include some writing, finishing up the third book of “The Dresden Files”, and maybe if time permits, some Shadowbane.

I had dinner with Scott, the boiler repair guy, and his girlfriend last night. It was actually a house call to take a look at their computers with dinner being the bait, but it was delicious none the less; chicken enchiladas. They have two really cool cats named “Tick” and “Tock”, both are black as pitch, the size of a small dog, have thumbs, and Scott called them “Ozark Mountain Cats”. At any rate they were both really friendly and were just very neat cats in general.

The computer repair was easy, as usual; just a case of too much spyware again. Adaware should give me a percentage for all the copies I’ve sold over the last year.

I guess people in general just click on anything that pops up on the screen when they’re online. Something like 60% of the repairs I’ve done over the past year have just been getting rid of gator or any of the other 1×10^32 variants that people’s kids download with Kazaa…

At the store Jack and I have gotten both the snow board rack and the ski rack finished. We should be open for real business next Monday.

Other than that it’s a beautiful day up here in the thin air. I might go for a walk while the sun is still up before firing up the fireplace and finishing my book.

I just got two emails from friends and it seems that folks are hearing in the news that it’s cold here in the Rockies; it isn’t. But, according to the weather man, I’ll be having the last cookout of the season next week. 🙂

To prevent future confusion I present to you the Colorado High Country temperature conversion chart:

At 50° Fahrenheit (10° C):
Californians shiver uncontrollably – Denver folks plant gardens – Mountain folks gripe about the heat.

At 40° Fahrenheit (1.6° C):
Floridian cars won’t start – Denver folks drive with the windows down – Mountain folks, still in the t-shirt and shorts mode, go play Frisbee with the dog.

At 32° Fahrenheit (0 ° C):
Virginians get frozen under several inches of ice – Denver folks wonder why it’s raining – Mountain folks get a distinct feeling that fall has arrived.

At 0° Fahrenheit (-17.9° C):
New York City landlords finally turn on the heat – Denver folks start thinking about snow tires – Mountain folks have the last cookout of the season.

At -20° Fahrenheit (-51° C): Canadians say “Like, it’s cold eh?” – Denver folks agree – Mountain folks start wearing pants.

I hope this helps to clarify the various opinions of “cold” found across the USA. 🙂

The new store is about 90% done now. I finally got tired of waiting for the phone company to show up and finish the job they started almost two weeks ago and have just finished the tone out and punch down of the inside lines… No small feat either. The space the store is in now used to be the regional printing office for the Denver News Agency and as such there are 2 25 pair trunk lines run into the building and a 40 wire internal wiring job including several frame relay lines to Denver… Figuring out which line goes where took several hours all by itself.

At any rate it’s all up and running now hence the fact I can post from work again.

The alarm system is also finished with new magnetic door sensors on everything that opens to the outside, 5 new motion detectors, and a new keypad and alarm box connected to the alarm company.

Jack and I have gotten almost all of the winter equipment organized and out on display now. Today we will be building a display rack for the skis and another rack for the snow boards. Both of these require custom racks as there is just no real good way to display them in/on equipment you’d find at a store furnishings place.

So, it’s a power tool kind of day: We’ll be hacking up 2x4s and plywood, running gas powered nailers, and industrial screw guns till 3-4 pm most likely… Hope our new neighbors don’t mind…

In other news I put in some overtime last night and got the OMFUXS web site updated as well as updating my web site with some photos of Château D’Isaster. The OMFUXS site now has 20% more spiffiness as compared to the original 13 page design!

Ooops, gotta run. Jack is ready to go now,

Later…

It’s a bright sunny day outside with a flawless blue sky; a little chilly which makes it jacket weather though. It’s warm enough that the snow is melting a bit on the hill sides which make the whole world smell like pine tree mixed with a little wood smoke from the fireplaces around here. It’s silent; the world still sleeps under down comforters or slowly goes about its morning routine. There’s no traffic on highway 6 to disturb the peace and the only things moving are the deer on the golf course across the street. I stand here on the back deck soaking it all in and having my morning cup of double bergamot Earl Grey and realize this is why I like it here.

As the sun comes up over mountains to the east there is a magical moment when the light lances through ice crystals on the pine trees and the whole mountain side explodes in a kaleidoscope of rainbow colors for a few seconds. The low light makes everything look very sharp and contrasted; you could probably count the trees as they all stand out so well from each other and the colors are so saturated and surrealistic.

I stand here until the light line across the valley makes it all the way to the bottom of the mountains and lights up Avon. I can imagine people down there griping about the sun coming thought the window and waking them rudely… Well, if you’d just got up a bit earlier, you would have been ready for it. 🙂

This has to be my favorite time of the day.