some of my life as a commuter

Sometimes, while I'm driving to work, I'm quick enough to grab a shot just as nothing continues to happen.


At this parking garage, when I'm not in too much of a hurry, I'll use this little ramp to transition between the deck and the side walk, mostly to enjoy the spectacular view of the adjoining puddle.


This ramp is at the same garage but it is for restricted use only by people confined to a unicycle.


I'm not so sure we should keep reserving the best parking spaces for the people who are handicapped if they're going to keeping calling in sick and staying home all the time.


One train I ride on has tables specially designed to satisfy the full table, little bit of table, and no table preferences of riders who want to sit together.


If you haven't heard from me and think there's been a train wreck and it's dark, be ready to read these instructions to me over the phone.

Odds and Ends

Best picture I could get without being obvious about it. Siamese twins tragically joined at the ankle.

Ignoring the warning, many a marriage has been destroyed by the carpet cleaner that was so convenient it was used every day.

Like bats (the animals, not the baseball equipment), these spoons & sporks spend the day sleeping while hanging upside down.

By night, caught for the first time on film, they roam in great herds. The alpha sporks notice my furtive glancing & attack.

and then I bought a house

The best thing about living in a bigger place, so far, is that I can choose different rooms to camp out in.

I've decided to leave the china out & all set up like I'm about to have guests. Probably more convincing after I get a table.

Okay, I know what you're thinking. I should have some fruit in the bowl and use the good plastic flatware.

Damn! Crystal plastic doesn't provide enough contrast against the carpet & the fruit needs to be more natural. More shopping.

Selfishly, I exhaled at regular intervals

I had a nice long bike ride on Sunday. However, it occurred to me later that the whole time I was not even considering the impact on global warming due to my exhaling carbon dioxide. Near the end of the ride I stopped to fill my water bottle and decided to sit in the shade for a bit. This was all I could find and I hogged all of it.



Later, it occurred to me that I hadn't even considered the impact on global warming due to my having a black nylon bike pack (instead of the common white brick bike pack). How embarrassing. Well at least not as embarrassing as being the person honored with this 30 foot "expressway" named after her (at taxpayer expense? for how many dollars?). I bet that before it was paved, that path was a wetland where moose and caribou roamed freely.

Celebrating Health!

Since I hadn't been riding my bike much so far this year, I was guessing my cholesterol test was going to be worse than last time but it was better! I celebrated by eating this roast beef salad.



Okay. That last picture was just the serving suggestion. Here it is as eaten, with non-fat croutons and non-fat salad dressing.

some of my life in April '04

Most of these have nothing to do with each other but they'll finally allow you to get to some sleep instead of wondering what was happening in my life in April '04. Do these fill in the gaps for you? For those of you not working on writing my biography (Carl?), please think of other ways they might be interesting.


I'm often impressed with my
knowledge of and expertise with the
controls I find around me. I'm
also willing to tutor others.






However, sometimes I can become overly focused on stuff and it has consequences.


Today I got to miss the train from
what will be my new regular
station. It's similar to
missing trains at other stations.





Like this:










Once I do catch a train, it provides time to reflect on the important things in life.

As far as blue jean seams go, this
one is the king of beers!

New caption, not just for Nancy, because this never really made sense.

Very much like train tracks, the parallel threads in this seam manage to get along by keeping their distance.


You don't have to imagine being Nancy getting ready to have a baby in Memorial Hospital to appreciate this one, but it helps.



When I was in the train station in
Newark, I was struck by how much it
must look like the delivery room at
Memorial Hospital.





Finally the rewards of reaching the destination.



Nothing welcomes a tired traveler
better than water for sale in the
room for only $4.00/bottle. Thanks
Sheraton!




But it's not always like that.


Free ice cream at Union Station!

(New caption, for Nancy only:
Free ice cream is free ice cream, regardless of whether it's already been "used".




Now, back to my ordinary life.


Be careful when mixing different
grades of plastic bowls and
flatware during fine dining, otherwise, this could happen.




I often notice convenient uses for things that are not what was intended.


I liked this box so much that I
bought it, even though it still had an
air conditioner inside and so was
kind of pricey.





I took advantage of an opportunity to move and buy a house. The important factor--altitude. I went from the oppressive pressure of 30 feet to the dizzying height of 390 feet. Here's the proof.

We all need to do what we can

It's been so dry that 1) I got no mulberries from my tree, 2) I got bigger apples than ever from my tree (no, NOT from the mulberry tree, from the APPLE tree), and 3) I wasn't reminded of the public service announcement aspect of these posts. All three of these may have been the result of other factors but don't let me get distracted from my mission. I know it is waayyy out of chronological order but this is a public safety issue.




When you leave a spoon in the sink,
prop it on its edge so it won't
hold water, which will keep the
mosquitoes from developing

Baggy and I have a falling out

All relationships have their ups and downs:


My friend and I begin our great
adventure! Baggy couldn't
"afford" a ticket. What
am I to her? Just a sugar daddy?

What am I looking for anyway?

A little background. I had a general life melt-down about 12 years ago, with a central focus on my apparent ineptitude in some areas of relationships with women, principally my wife at the time. True, things getting extreme was "aided" by a misplaced confidence in modern medicine and heavy doses of the latest "wonder drug" but having an attitude that I used to think was optimism (but now seems more like just wishful thinking) contributed heavily. In any case, it was about five years before I entertained the thought of risking the emotional pain of things not working out in another relationship and, worse, the potential for being a source of emotional pain for others, regardless of my good intentions.
Being in hotels, on business trips, rarely brought the expected distraction of being excited about being in a new and different setting; instead, it mostly left me focusing on how alone I was and what I was looking for in the next relationship. Fortunately for me, at one point a few years ago, I was staying in a rather upscale hotel and it led me to an insight about whether I was limiting my options by expecting to find everything I was looking for in a relationship in an actual human being. Opening the closet door, I reached for the valet service laundry bag and started a new relationship just like that. It was a very attractive bag, slick white (actually quite a bit too pale for my usual taste), hanging upside down and even appearing as if wearing inversion boots--quite edgy. It just hung there not seeming self-conscious at all about what it was doing. I took it out and draped it over the back of a chair. It didn't say anything but, disappointed as I was with that since I'm a very verbal person, I just went with the flow and figured I could do all the talking (it is a laundry bag, after all).
I noticed that it was communicating by way of an attached checklist that was fluttering in the air conditioner breeze. Perfect! It's telling me what it wants or, at least, what my options are, in plain language, in writing, and with me being able to keep a copy for later, apparently so we could compare notes if there was a disagreement/misunderstanding, so neither of us would be reduced to having to remember and have that be a big deal and a source of contention. It had a tattoo--the hotel logo--but I found myself being less judgmental about that compared to my attitude towards tattoos in isolation from what they are attached to. We ended up spending some time together, mostly just going about our business, although sometimes watching television together, with it just staying there draped over the chair, but finally I noticed that, just like that, I was starting to fall for this bag! Ultimately my bubble burst when I noticed that there were PRICES next to that checklist!  I immediately felt queasy--I was getting involved with a WORKING bag. Later, it occurred to me that, what the hell, I do things for money too; I guess we all just do the best we can with what we've got. I did bring the bag home with me but I knew this relationship was over. That's where Nancy came in.
As always, I keep my best friend, Nancy, up to date on my love life, or lack thereof. I talked to her about the prostitute bag and how it had opened my eyes to new possibilities. She suggested that I should still consider relationships with women to supplement any relationship I might have with a plastic bag but was happy for me nonetheless. Unbelievably (okay, not really because she comes up with this kind of stuff all the time), a few days later a package arrives in the mail from her. She'd found and sent me a very attractive cloth bag, much more my speed in overall appearance and demeanor, and with NO price list attached! It doesn't talk either but what an amazing bag! This could work out. Here are the captioned photos:




It's a magic bag! When I got
home, I found it had arranged
itself like a chef's hat on the
TV. We had a good laugh over it.




We communicated more and I've
learned that "it" is a
female and she has excellent
keyboarding skills as well as IT savvy.




"Baggy" is very domestic.
Here she's cooking my dinner.
What a great bag!
 




What's that noise so early in
the morning? It's Baggy
vacuuming! This is really turning
out well.






Baggy does have a troubled side; in
fact we share the fork biting
phobia. Here, I found her in the
kitchen, just in time.

 


 Baggy can't get enough of
bicycling even when it's just
hanging on the wall. I think
I'm falling in love.

essential info about my backpack or a bad picture of biting a fork?

Answer: Both. I sent this picture, originally, as a bad substitute for not having a picture of biting a fork--sometimes I have the caption before I have the photo. However, I get lots of questions about my backpack. One brother calls it my "Millennium Backpack". I admit that, in many ways, I'm just an aging boy scout and still adhere to the motto "be prepared". I've decided to do an inventory, both to remind myself of what the hell I'm carrying around all the time and, likely, make some changes and to have a basis for a "what's in my backpack?" contest. To answer a recent question and give you an early start on imagining what might be in there, it weighed 25 pounds when I weighed it a week ago on Friday (and that's without my laptop and charger, which adds another 7 pounds).

politically correct fighters and another mystery solved

On the one hand, GE makes engines for fighter jets. On the other hand, some people might be disturbed by the idea of a fighter jet used for, oh I don't know, maybe fighting. What to do. The solution, this promotional panel next to a model of their wonderful engine that suggests that the purpose of an F-16 is to use its powerful engine to flee to safety if it encounters an enemy!




caption: GE is proud to supply the engine for the Air Force's latest "Fraidycat" version of the F-16.









It seemed like I spent waaay too much time finding this photo, in fact only the thumbnail version of it, but some information is so important to get out to the public that such diligence is appropriate.


caption: I can't count the number of times I've been asked how
Amtrak keeps the caps on the back of the armrests. Philips head screw.

how are your peaches? and choosing a dog

caption: If you notice that your peaches are
marked "best before Mar'03", they're still
fine now.

(This only makes sense knowing the date sent was 3/6/04; I don't have of this same batch left to test now.)

New caption (for Nancy ONLY): If you can trick peach cubes into sliding down a plastic spoon handle into a some juice, before they know what's going on, you can seal the top and sell them as food!



caption: I described what kind of dog I want to the pet store sales person. She
suggested this one. Seemed kind of
gay. I passed.

being followed

My shadow realized that I was following it and, suddenly stopped and confronted me about it. No, it didn't SAY anything--it's a shadow. But if looks could kill I'd be dead.

holes, scuffed heels, and what?

Lots of pictures that I sent, early on, were of things on, around, or seen from a commuter train while I was, yes, you guessed it, commuting to and from work.




caption: Wondering what the default pattern is for holes in something but
didn't ask because I'd have
interrupted? This is it.

new caption for Nancy ONLY (because I never interrupt anymore): Wondering what the default pattern is for holes in something? This is it.







caption: I can't imagine why you would
care how scuffed my shoe heel is.
It's this scuffed. Okay?!
SATISFIED?!!!

(Note: Just to not leave the wrong impression, I never let Nancy not having actually asked me something, like how scuffed my shoe heel is, prevent me from pre-emptively responding with exasperation and sarcasm.)


The following was one where I thought I had an interesting image but I never came up with a caption. It's the overhead storage rack, looking straight up from the seat. I tried doing something with it looking like a ladder, or rotating it 90 degrees left and having it be the mustache between a mechanical monsters eyes and mouth. Nothing worked and I gave up. Any ideas?




caption: ?

squirrel not using an umbrella

Okay, in the course of getting myself setup to post old photos with captions that I've sent to people, I realized that some of the captions are inside jokes or, otherwise, only make sense with a little (or much) more context, so I'll provide that when needed. Also, this will be really boring for Nancy, who has already seen most of these, so for her sake, I may provide alternate captions, for her eyes only (this will be on the honor system so if you aren't Nancy please IGNORE the additional captions). If I've completely missed with my caption, please let me know what it should have been (must be 125 characters or less to meet the original caption limit).

From Feb '04:



caption:

squirrel not using an umbrella



caption for Nancy ONLY:

squirrel not using an umbrella near shovel





caption:

Squirrels more political than we
thought? Here, clearly, one
protests our actions in Iraq by
turning his back on the flag.








caption:

This image may seem familiar. This
time, see if you can find the
squirrel then create your own
caption.


(recipient of the last photo couldn't make out the squirrel sitting at the end of the rail as a squirrel)






caption:

Unless you think you might need
some of this stuff, I'm
throwing it out. I'll need to
know by Thursday morning.

At least only one broke

Pow! Damn it, I dropped the 3-pack of preserves. That's okay, I really only wanted the apricot preserves anyway and what are the odds of ... DAMN IT!!!