Fuzzy

Well, this was quite an interesting entry to the ol’ blog to make. My monitor blew out on Wednesday, leaving me where I have to hook the computer up to the TV in order to see anything. If you’ve ever tried to use a television display on your computer, you’re well aware of what a jerkofftic operation that is. In order to see what I’m typing, I had to set the font size to 36-pt, then shrink it down before pasting into the site. Oi.

If you’re wondering, I had a really nice time in Los Angeles with my boys as well as Matt, Ann, Dave, and everybody else who we saw while I was there. The “Hollywood Adventure” blog, which had just the one entry, is more complete now, and can be accessed by following the link up there on the Web Ring.

Related to that, you may have noticed that I’ve taken down the “Website Version 1.0” link, which I figure most people had little use for. Some of the pictures that were exclusive to that site will, in time, find their way here, but the only feature I decided to move immediately was the first volume of Interesting & Factual Tales, which look a bit better now that they’re not all on multiple pages and whatnot. I actually shuddered when I was clickin’ through a few of those oldies out in LA.

In 36-pt, this small entry has already taken up six pages.

Make sure you take note of my new phone number; the old one is being disconnected tomorrow (3/24).

I’ve sampled several bottles of the beer I made at home, and it’s pretty good. It’s very bubbly and filling, though. Which is too bad when you wanna sit down for about four of ’em, but not so bad if you wanna quit at two. I must’ve siphoned a little too much out of the fermentation bucket, because I drank a couple that had some sediment in the bottom. Not that it’s gonna kill you or anything, but it’s just sort of gross to look at your beer and see little things floating in it. First try, though, so…

It’s been really warm in Bozeman since I’ve been back from CA, although it snowed a little last night; everything was covered this morning. Most of it has melted now. Personally, (especially after a West Coast trip) I am so done with winter and snow and all that crap. Anxious for springtime I am.

I only did three loads of wash today, but it still took me 3.5 hours.

OK, so, a lot of you have heard about this already, so bear with me, cuz some of you haven’t…
My Grandpa Bock’s health has deteriorated significantly over the past week. It was last Sunday that he was admitted to the hospital after losing consciousness and falling in his house. Tuesday afternoon, he had surgery to remove a fist-sized tumor from his brain, which the doctor determined to be a very malignant cancer. Wednesday night, as he recovered in the ICU, with a rough but not very hopeful treatment regimen on the horizon, Grandpa had a severe stroke, which, if treated, would leave him at the mercy of life support machines the rest of his days. Grandpa and Grandma made the decision well before this sequence of events to not put the other or the family through a sad and stressful time like that. The fact is he’s not going to recover, he’s not really responsive to outside stimuli, and so it’ll just be a short matter of time until Grandpa passes away.

Obviously, since I live in Montana, I wasn’t able to be there with the rest of my family this week, and I really wish I could’ve been. I also haven’t gotten much else done all week long, because, as you can imagine, my thoughts have been monopolized by Grandpa and Grandma and the support I could only offer over the telephone.

Clearly, anyone can look at these, but mostly for the benefit of my fam, here are three high-quality photo scans I did of Grandma & Grandpa. Any other photos I have are at home in Eagle River.
– photo one
– photo two
– photo three
(you should right-click these links and choose “Save As…”)
Thanks very much for your continuing thoughts and prayers for Grandpa, Grandma, and all us Bocks.

Well, what else? The next video could be a while in coming, just because I don’t know what my schedule is going to be like for the near future, and I want to do some “production” on the stuff I shot in LA. Interesting & Factual Tales should be coming around with a fair degree of regularity, though; I had several good ideas on my trip.

I had waffles for breakfast and lunch today, and I think I might have them for dinner, too.

Best… Vacation… YET.

Howdy, howdy, howdy!  So here is my first journal entry for the spring vacation in Los Angeles.  I’ve had a good time the past several days w/ the boys in and around their apartment in Sherman Oaks, which is not really anywhere near the above pictured intersection.  I just thought the photo looked neat.

When I got off the plane on Thursday Wordy and Lorch were at the airport to pick me up.  They brought Wordy’s car, which had just gotten out of the shop after about 10 days worth of repairs following his small accident (rear-ended a woman, crumpled some shit up, but it came back nice and clean).  It wasn’t that long a drive from the airport to the apartment.  I thought for sure it would be longer.

It’s a nice place they’ve got here, kitchen, dining room, living room, 3 bed’s, 2 bath’s… they don’t have a table, though.  Well, they have a coffee table, but no dining room table.  When we went shopping to Ikea (which MS Word knows how to spell; creepy) I suggested that I found one that would fit real nice in that space.  They said they couldn’t afford it.  I said that I just said it would fit, I didn’t say they should buy it.

Wordy bought this chair instead, because his roommates like to do the full-recline on the couch(es).

That Thursday evening, since we were already in Burbank, we went to Best Buy so Wordy could pick up a home theater stereo setup he’d been planning to buy for a while, but decided to put it off until I arrived, so the three of us could set it up.  We spent about 9 hours at Best Buy, and by the time we were getting ready to leave, I had been awake for about 20 hours, so I was quite  prepared to sleep.  Lorch says that we saw this guy while we were in Best Buy, but I said he was crazy.

We ate out that first night as well; we went to In n’ Out Burger, where I had the Double-Double combo, animal style, with a Coke.  It was tasty.

Friday, we set up the stereo, since we were all too tired to do it the evening before.  I had some Cocoa Pebbles for breakfast.  I could kinda go for some right now.  We didn’t do anything particularly exciting on Friday evening, Lorch and Matt and I watched The Rules of Attraction, which I bought at Best Buy the night before.  Wordy wanted to see it too, but he was working kind of late on Friday, and I told him I’d watch it with him again later in the week.

Yesterday, all the men of the house were out at work for some time, so I read Wordy’s latest McCaster Fugnasty short story, which I thought was damn good for a first draft, and I also had some suggestions about things he may do to improve it.  I went with Matt to the used CD store nearby, where I got a copy of Living in Oblivion Volume 1 for six dollars.  Somebody stole that CD from me at WRST a couple years back, so I was glad to get a new (er, uh, used) copy.  Later, Matt and I watched About a Boy, which Wordy bought the other day at Best Buy, and we woulda waited the extra 40 minutes or so to start it after Lorch got home, but I thought he’d seen it already.

After Wordy got home around 10, we went to a bar for a couple little drinks, but again, drowsiness ruled and brought us back before much coin was dropped.

This morning, I woke up about 9:15 and then got in the shower right away.  I wanted to out for breakie, but Matt definitely wanted to sleep in as long as possible, and Lorch had to be gone to some jerk-off-tic meeting at work from 7-9 AM, a meeting which wound up running until 11.  Good thing Wordy and I didn’t wait for him to go to Mel’s Drive-In, where we each had a Denver omlette, although Wordy got his without mushrooms, and when it arrived, he said, “Aw, shit, I was gonna ask for this with cheese,” and I said, “Well then you didn’t really want a Denver omlette, did you?”

Earlier this afternoon, I had Lorch take me to SuperCuts for a haircut, and it was a good thing we went when we did, cuz they were closing in about a half hour.  It cost me 16 with the tip, which I guess isn’t too bad for being LA.  When we got home, I trimmed my beard a lot closer to the skin, and mowed down the cheeks a little.  Back in September I decided I would go for the “Obi-Wan Kenobi in Episode II” look, a look that I never reached and ran out of patience with.  Currently, I’m sporting the “Tom Cruise in Minority Report-plus-a-beard” look, which you could see if I had A) a digital camera or B) a means of capturing a still from the video cam.  Neither one very possible right now.

That pretty much brings you up to speed… I’m going to write a little bit later on this afternoon, and then I’m going to eat something, and then I don’t know what.  Again, the men are working, so… it’s all good, though, something fun will happen.

I probably won’t be writing anything else for a couple more days anyway… Ann (Wordy’s GF) is getting to town on Tuesday, and the next time you hear from me will probably be then at the earliest.

I’m enjoying the KaZaA that I have access to here as well.

Oh, speaking of that: I can’t get my laptop to connect to the web on the boys’ cable modem, so if you have any ideas about that, let me know… I think it might be that they only get one IP, but I tried hooking up straight to the modem and that didn’t work either, so…

On a Jet Plane

Hey, so I’m leaving to fly to Los Angeles in about an hour… wanted to give a quick heads-up on that, and say that I will be keeping a log of stuff that happens on this trip, for sharing later on.

Don’t know if I’ll get to update at all next week, but if not, I’m coming back to Bozeman on March 17, so I’ll see you then at the latest.

Dictation

So I’ve recently re-installed this voice recognition software package, something I haven’t used since I was living at Grandma’s house last summer.

If you’ve ever used that sort of software, you can appreciate how hilarious it can be to try to do dictation with it. No matter how “accurate” a given software package claims to be, there is no way you can successfully dictate as quickly or accurately as you can type. I’ve had quite a bit of success with it with one- or two-word commands; stuff like “print document,” or “start Word,” these are easy things. But you start barking whole sentences at this thing, forget about it.

I’ve done about 10 or 12 “training” sessions with the voice software now, so it should be fairly well acquainted with my voice. Take a look at this, though: the italicized text below is what the computer wrote while I was talking to it. You can download an mp3 of what I actually said here.

one of the things I need to get about wish to gain is to make this topic again can now buy some underwear and the reason I need to buy younger wearing his study ’cause I won’t happen now to last through my entire trip to los angeles next week , once I get to l.a. and I figure I’ll need now approximately eleven pairs of underwear and in order to well have enough underwear the last through those eleven days I’ve been really going to need to purchase more sense that I will I be fox series ended half the best I thought it was a reasonable to go into the gap and now I know two or three you’ve there’s the ones that I get from again I simply the most comfortable love the way stand does in chief at all and dying so that’s what I’m going to build now going to the get for underwear the set. to

So I had some suggestions yesterday afternoon and today about what the problem might be with the dry, red, flaking skin on my arms (which is still gross, make no mistake). And I got to thinking, we all had so much fun last week with the Top Five Saddest Songs Ever Written, why not try to replicate that? (That’s what they do on TV, anyway.)

So, get out your stethoscope and white coat, scroll down to the “3/3” blog entry, and then write with a diagnosis and remedy for whatever this skin condition might be. The person with the best suggestion (criteria for what defines “best” I reserve to my discretion) will receive an honorary diploma as well as license to introduce him- or herself at parties as “Your Name, M.D.”

Irritation

Winter has been less than good to my skin. I think my extensive inactivity and daily showering, combined with the general dryness of the season have come together to create some irritating issues, particularly on the backs of my upper arms. I’ve been on a moisturizing soap now for about 2.5 weeks, and that seems to have helped a little; at least they’ve stopped flaking so much, which was gross.
My solution to this problem has been to wear long sleeves when I go out of the house. However, I’m flying to Los Angeles on Thursday, and there will probably be less of a call to wear my winter wardrobe.

I’ll keep you up to date on how this shakes out.

image

I finished a new draft of Blender over the weekend. If I had to give drafts names in computer software terms, I’d say that the one currently online here is version 1.4. The one I got done with Saturday night is version 2.0. I’ll post it as soon as I give it a read-through start to finish, making sure there’s nothing that needs a real stiff polish (like, with a dust rag, not like a sausage).

Ok, well, things to do, things to do… I think I’ll go pay my rent maybe. It finally stopped snowing.