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Monday, May 23, 2011

Speak up

Just an observation made during my overnights:

People sound the same when they talk through the drive-thru speaker. It's like people have voice presets. I imagine it this way:
Picture an individual's voice as a t-shirt. There's different cuts, styles, colors, designs, sizes, etc. If you take away all these embellishments, you're left with a piece of cloth. This is our voice preset a "voice base", if you will. Different mixtures cloths / materials represent different "bases". These presets are our voice with no intonation or accent or "stain" that we've picked up in our daily life.

Neat? I think so. Obviously my overnights got boring. Hell, I played hockey in the lobby for an hour on Tuesday.

Nightmare

Is a good word for how work was last night. I hate doing overnights, especially weekend overnights. I expected it to be busy, so I wasn't really stressing out in the beginning. By 4:30AM I started getting really pissed off, 'cause people were still coming and I needed to change to breakfast. I think it's a little ridiculous how people stay out so late. I barely got shit done and I'm damn tired. 1 down, three more to go.

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Hollerado Land

So the night was getting dirty, and I asked the Lord for mercy;
And He said, "Oh, so now, you wanna talk?"

Not what I had in mind He would say, but amusing nonetheless.

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

minefield

I didn't have to, but I dove right in.
My goal? To know.
To let me be known.
They were fine just sitting there, or were they?
In a path never traveled, but would it be?
Now, they're out in the open.
Not safe, but sorry -- was it a matter of time?
No regrets.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand some blood just came out of my nose. This usually means a lack of sleep & being super tired. G'night!

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Waterboy

I've already talked about how my dad inspires me to try gardening a little. I know I have no patience or too much time for all those plants, though. I did have a grand idea in my mind: a little pond.

The neighbors said that there used to be a little water feature in the corner of the backyard a while back. The last owners of the house weren't big gardening people, so they took it out and covered up the old hole. "It would be nice to put a new one in," I thought. I told my dad I'd like to, but in the back of my mind it was something that would be done much later.

The opportunity arose, since summer break means more free time (PSN is down, too). I barely had plans in my head, but enough ideas were there. I tagged along with my dad to Home Depot, just to see what I can get. The biggest challenge was to find a basin shaped nicely that I can bury underground. They had a nice one, but I got distracted by something even better: a tarp / lining for ponds. Free-form time! I grabbed a pump and some tubes, too. With rocks and a Japanese lady feature in the backyard, I was good to go.

Digging was the first hard part. I needed to dig down pretty deep, and be able to keep the shape I want. It's harder than it sounds for a rookie like me. You wouldn't believe how many buckets I had to carry to the other side of the garden. And the little pond isn't even big! The Japanese lady had dirt stuck in her hole, so I had to poke it out. Stuck the tube in, sealed the tip with silicon to keep it in place, and ta-da! The second hard part was covering up the sides of the tarp. It wouldn't look too nice seeing black plastic sticking out the sides. My dad and I dug a little around the pond, and used some cobblestone-type bricks to surround it. We threw in a few real rocks around the sides to keep it looking more garden-y.

The pond is small, the shape isn't consistent, and the lady leaks a little. But the sight and sound of the water flowing out is sooooo worth it. Pics when I get the chance.