Edmund Zebrowski LIVE!

LOST..again and some brain wavings


Last night gave us the return of LOST and ya know it was a good episode. We learned about the back story of Juliet but as always more questions got asked like what the fuck was that machine that Carlos was hooked up too?!?! I think the next 15 weeks are going to be good ones.










Has anyone seen that Coke commercial that has the slightly British kid making the cell phone ring and handing the chick a Coke? That dumb thing makes me smile every time













Also Firefly's Captain Mal is going to be in a new series coming out that looks REAL good called Drive. Don't know if I'll have time to watch it live but I'll DVR it.













Brain wavings…….hello



Walkman

Typewriter correction tape

Floppy disk

Car phone

Long playing record

Cas-single

45s'


What do all these words have in common? Most likely if you are under a certain age you may never hear these words. Lost in the whorl wind of progress.













Kleenex

Jell-o

I-pod

Pam

Band-aid

Pop-tart



What do all of these words have in common? Here are examples of brands over shadowing the item. You never ask for cherry gelatin at a restaurant it's always Jell-o, or "Pardon me do you have a plastic adhesive bandage.

May the Hung Horse of HappyCrap take a dump on your doorstep..and may the smell never go away




I told you I'd post some more and here we go. I've caught a few more episodes of Torchwood and ya know….it still sucks. Yea some of the cast are hot, but if it wasn't for that none of the characters are likeable nor very interesting. I guess I'm in the minority here as it's getting brilliant ratings in the UK, but remember this is the country that had a talent show to find a Maria for the Sound of Mucus so their tastes can be quirky.


The realm of theatre in my world has been kind of quiet. Nothing big is opening that I really want to see. I have an interest in seeing Cry Baby because … come on it's more John Waters on stage how could I NOT want to see that. I was talking to Scott the other night that I haven't seen one bit of footage on Young Frankenstein and really I don't care… I did see a real interesting documentary on the Lord of the Rings musical in London and now THAT looks cool. If you Google the show the main site has several long segments from the show. Take a look at the end scene of the destruction of the ring…very cool. PBS broadcast the new staging of Company last week, and while I have not seen it all the way I have watched several segments of it. The whole people playing instruments is interesting but I think it was put to better use with Sweeny Todd.


Andy and I need to have a talk….yea Andrew Lloyd Webber has found a director for his sequel for The Phantom of the Opera. I think that I need to do an intervention. This show should never happen, we must make it stop!


We saw The Spiderwick Chronicles over the weekend and it was cute I guess. I had read the books a few years ago and thought them to be simply charming with a great air of old world fair tale-ness about them. The movie was good, but it is so vastly different from the books as to almost be a new telling of the same story.


So HD-DVD has died, and Blu-Ray has won for format war…it's such a nice smug feeling to have known that you were on the winning side.

It LIVES!!!!!
Life for the last few months has been busy to say the least. Back around the end of December a friend of mine that runs a tarot meet-up here in Crystal Lake said that there was a lady that was going to be giving tarot and astrology classes at the beginning of the year. The lady it turns out was Janet Barrnes who used to own a shop in Evanston IL called Light of the Moon, the shop that was my spiritual touch stone growing up. My goal this was year was to learn both these things and here now was classes being taught by a lady that influenced me over 15 years ago, so I've given up half of my weekends each week since January to further my studies of these areas.


I never gave astrology a second thought till this year, but it's been very interesting to see how it works. Now I can see how people put so much stock into it..do I..well I'm not there yet, but it is very cool to see what you can find out about a person with their charts. Several friends of mine are taking the class with me and as we carpool and have a grand time getting there and back.


Home has been going good, the house it providing a good source for projects as last week I made 18 feet of bookcases to finish off the room in the basement. They are this rich blue color and they are a great contrast to the deep yellows and gold of the walls. I also put in a small writing area to give me a place to mix my aromatherapy oils and paint my tarot cards. I lugged, measured and cut every shelf and side of those suckers and I'm very proud of them.


On the aromatherapy front, my friend Di and I are making a line of scents for a local shop that is looking to carry some of the items I make. These along with tarot bags, carved altars and had dipped candles will round off a nice product selection for them.


Put in the order for my herb seeds to get them planted in the spring. We're tearing up about a 10x80 foot section of the yard for a butterfly, herb and grass garden. Scott and I are both real excited to get this in and get it started growing. This is the last part of that 3-16 project I've been planning.


LOST is back on the tube and what a fucking fantastic season it is this year so far. American Idol is also back on so I'm in full DVR mode as two of the three shows I watch are on, now all we need is Pushing Daisies to come back on…sigh…soon


More later just wanted to give you a little bit of an update…..

Close Encounters of the Blu Kind
Today while picking up the last bits for a project Scott turned to me and said 'Let's pick up a PS3' ...so the world of Blu-Ray DVD has begun and the Zeb-ankal house. We picked up the high-def disks of Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Chicago....pretty ....very pretty.

I love our house, even with it's little quirks. It's just real nice to have a place to turn your sub-woffer, put up your feel and veg out. I'm sitting here gazing at our new Christmas tree and my handsome boy friend and am just happy and content as the twin cats sleeping on the couch.

Turkey..Tao and the rest of life
So we hosted Dead Turkey day this year for the first time. We were kind of excited...so excited that we set the table the day BEFORE we were to eat….I know, I know how gay is that. In our defense we needed to make sure that we had all the silver we were going to need polished and the good china all washed up from sitting storage for most of their natural..and unnatural life. It was a small gathering of Me, Scott, my mom, grandma and our friend Carmen. The latter spent the night before where we ended up having a Good Eats marathon. If you have never seen an episode of the show that airs on The Food Network, think of if it as the love child of Mr. Wizard and a toaster oven. It's this kinda wacky cooking show that teaches you the science behind why you do what you do when cooking so you can better cook what you are cooking. Carmen had never seen an episode of it, and I needed to watch the turkey episode,, "Romancing the Bird", and some how we ended up on a marathon of about 4-5 episodes before heading to the store to get the last few things for the next days glutton of carnage. One of the best things that we made was a homemade dessert that Scott came up with of sliced pumpkin pound cake soaked in ammeratto and orange juice and layered with fresh maple whipped cream….it was so fucking good. The day itself went well, and after a fantastic dinner we conned people into helping us put up our Yule tree. We had a blast the whole day, and my mom stayed overnight so we had a nice time to relax and catch up.

Tao

So out here in the unfashionable end of the northwestern spiral arm suburbs of Chicago we tent to have to fend for culture as best we can. We get the odd 25th tour company of Cats or some over ambitious community theatre group trying it's best to make The King and I somehow interesting with an all white cast painted up to look as asian as then politically corruptly can but every so often something comes through that is real good and Tao was one of them. Some how about a month ago I ran across a link for this group of Asian drummers and found out that they were coming to of all places Elgin. So I rounded up the troupes and at $25 a head we went into the Elgin Collage Arts Center for Jesus Christ knew what. What we got was a jaw dropping evening of truly amazing entertainment. The show itself was called The Martial Art of Noise and it was just heart pounding to watch. For two hours we sat sell bound by these guys. Here is a link to a promo video of theirs on YouTube. If they EVER come near you please check them out.




Life otherwise is going good. I've started to take a Ti Chi class and am finding it a relaxing challenge believe it or not. I'm also taking part in a Gong Bath this Friday where you get washed in the sounds of singing bowls and gongs. My second level Raiki training has been coming in handy to relieve stress and relax the body after shoveling the show off the drive. Oh I know what, we saw a sneak preview of The Golden Compass last week. Now I'm a HUGE fan of the book series and have read it twice over the last ten years and I've just gotten both Scott and Carmen to read it so we all went into the movie with pretty high expectations. And………..quite frankly I wouldn't let my dog pee on it. It was so bad and disjointed that 30min into it we all knew we were going to hate it. Now the look and casting were spot on, so no complaints there it was the way they handled the story, or lack their of. Unlike with Lord of the Rings where they distilled the books down to the basic story and chose to tell that New Line distilled the story down to the basic story and took one look at it and said 'We can't make that the religious right would feed our testicles to a rhinoceros. So let's tell a story AROUND the tail and no one will know the difference". The books needed a studio with balls to make the story and well...New Line doesn't have any I guess. Well National Treasure 2 and Swenney Todd are coming up, and I'm looking forward to both.

Boiled Beef with Dill Gravy, Halloween and Blade Runner
So life as you can gather by the title has been pretty interesting as of late. Lets pick this story up on a nice warm October night about a week or so ago with Scott, Carmen and I walking into an honest to goodness real down home Czech restaurant. With such tasty things as the above mentioned dish and add to that pickled beef in sour cream gravy who can go wrong eating at a place like this. The reason for going here was this: we were going to a train wreck of a show so why not start out with a train wreck of a dinner? So on this Saturday night about 6:00 we were headed into a building that looked like it was out of the old country for some of mama's sweet and sour cabbage. Now the decor NEEDS to be mentioned because the place had that cozy feeling with stuffed birds hanging all over the place, beautiful faux oil paintings of dead game and foul and the four foot coo-coo clock that had dead wooden rabbits hanging by their little feet carved into it…..charming. Truth be told we were all having a ball when we were there. It was so strange. The meal was not bad actually. Carmen got some strange beef smothered in a beer gravy, I got fruit dumplings drenched in butter and Scott chicken in a paprika sludge. We each got different sides to try and all agreed that the sweet and sour cabbage was one of the grossest things we had ever tasted.

The people in the place were even better then the food. We had the couple in their 60s' that were there on their first internet date. He was bombing bad till he got three glasses of wine into her. 80s' boy walked in complete with pegged jeans, green calculator watch and Nelson Twins hair, and our host for some reason had on plastic pants with one rolled up to her knee….gotta love going into the city for culture. After a start like that how could the show be any stranger.
Once we were at the theatre we noticed that the crowd was small and well...old. We were the youngest people there by decades and were feeling like maybe they couldn't get anyone else to show up for this seaming pile of artistic genius that they took to giving out tickets to people in nursing homes because they wouldn't live long enough to spread the bad word of mouth, but once in and seated the lights went down and my great big smile began.

I was a little worried that it would not live up to my hype of the show, after all this was the show who's best line out of it's reviews in NYC was "The weirdest thing you will ever see in Broadway". What if they changed it? What if they got rid of the creepy singing dead ten year old, what if the cross dressing angel was now normal, or God no longer sang his Dr. Pepper song, or the beautiful aria about the exploding toomer was gone or horrors of horrors we didn't have the big tap-dancing skeleton number. My fears were soon put to rest and one by one they oddities came and went in the show that had such a soft spot in my heart.

All the way home that night in the car all we could talk about was how the hell anyone thought this would work on Broadway. Sigh…..art
Halloween

I took the day off of work, because I have allot of time coming still, and so that I would have time to get everything set up. Samhein is the big holiday for us. I set up the labyrinth of candles in the basement here this year. I think it took just shy of 200 to make all the paths. Bookcases were moved, chairs taken out and the whole room cleared to make way for the long evening. We started about 9:00 and went well past midnight but it was a fantastic ritual and we can't wait till this Wednesday when we get to complete the seven day event. In the regular world we did have several large groups of trick-or-treaters. It was nice to see the neighbors and get to know a few.

Blade Runner

So coming out in several different forms this holiday season are 25th anniversary editions of Blade Runner, in my mind the love child of Ridley Scott and Metropolis. It's a movie I've only seen a handful of times do to the fact that there has never been a truly satisfying edition released in any from. Well they broke out the big guns this year and did a full frame by frame restoration on it. Before it hits DVD and the Hi-Def disk of your choice they are giving it a small theatrical run and Carmen, Scott and I took it in this past Friday. Holy shit was it amazing. The theater we were at had it on a digital projector and the film was jaw-droopingly crisp and clear. As Metropolis is to me so this movie is to Carmen and she was amazed by what she was able to see in the details and all. Truly one of the high points in recent cinema going.

On the day-to-day things of life, work is going great. Been there almost 9 years now.

We're getting more used to the house. It's still a bit odd to us because we're not used to being to make as much noise as we want or being able to lay out on the grass and not have to worry that people are going to walk by or dogs come pee on us.

The yard is just big enough to give us projects to do. I cut out two of the pine trees in front of the house to open it up a bit.

Scott is headed to NYC for a few days to Di is going to come by to start giving me yoga lessons and Carmen is going to join us for movie nights.

Working more with the tarot these days. A friend of mine has put together a once a month group that meets every second Sunday.

The new version of Settlers of Catan comes out this month so I think I'll pick up the new set for our board game nights.

Two more Dr Who DVDs are on the way and I'll almost through the third Dr so that is still plugging along.

My mom is doing well, she is still making her projects up in Waukegan and still gets the odd call to her phone from the audience member that remembers the letters. She cheerfully gives them my new number and passes on the messages to me.

What the Bleep, Gay DD, We have a good weekend

Ok so this weekend was very full as well as fulfilling. Friday night Phil and Di came over as well as Carmen to watch a movie that we all dreaded watching, one called What the @&^%$ Do We Know. For those of you that have never heard of this movie it's that crock of shit that tells you that your mind can physically change the reality around you. It tells us that the Indians could not see the ships coming to American because they didn't know what a ship was so they couldn't see them and that all the matter around you is in chaos till you focus on it only then does it snap into place. The movie was so stupid it made our heads hurt. A few of our friends are really into that whole quantum theory shit so in order to be able to discuss it with them we felt the need to watch it.


So several people have now e-mailed me to ask what my take is on the whole announcement that Dumbledore from the Harry Potter books is gay. It took me by surprise but after reading several excerpts from the book about his past it does make sense. The timing is odd, but with no more books to explain things she needs to give out the random facts as they come up and this was just happen to come up. Do I think it was all a stunt? Not really because all this is going to do is hurt sales of the books with many parents saying that they aren't going to let their kids read them anymore. It does kind of make a big leap forward in acceptance for kids that grew up admiring and respecting that character, now finding out he is gay will in some small way shape how they view gays in the world around them. Not to get preachy here but hey what the hell…..


The rest of the weekend went great. We got the planting done out in the yard and the grass cut. We also started to trim down the trees which they really need.



I also was able to do my first Reiki session on a friend of mine. I got the basement all set up with oils, singing bowls and an area to lie down on and it went very well. We're going to do a few more over the week and I have two other people willing to let me work on them so that I can get practice in.



I got the new cast recordings in of Dance of the Vampires and Rebecca from Germany...god I love a good German cast recording. Bet you don't read that every day. Dance of the Vampires is one of thoes shows you have to see to know how fucking amazing it is. The music is by Jim Steiman, the guy that wrote all the Bat Out of Hell albums and gave us songs like Total Eclips of the Heart and is just this lush rock spectical that is fucking amazing to see on stage. Rebecca is based on the book that also was made into a movie my Hitchcock and is another great piece of theatere that I only wish I could see...*sigh*..oh well. Going to see In My Life next weekend.



Scott was a bit on the crabby side yesterday, but I think it's because work is a bit overwhelming right now. He's a good BF and I feel so lucky that were still going strong. Two and a half years and still no fight…go figure. We did our Sunday night ritual of watching Brothers and Sisters in bed. Man that show popped up out of nowhere as one of our favorite things to watch.

Ohmygodyouguys!!! Legally Blonde the musical has aired on MTV and it was fucking great. The show is mostly based on the MGM movie, but there are a few new things thrown in for those very familiar with the film. The staging is fun and keeps the action moving, and the dancing alone should have won the Tony this past year. The score is some of the best pop-bubble stuff since Wicked, and if you are a fan of one you will most likely love the other as well. Scott and I watched it Saturday night and we're both very, very surprised with how much we loved it. We've now watched it about 4 times.....*joy*

I took my first Reiki class on Saturday. It was fantastic. The class started at 9AM and went all day till a little after 5PM. We were taught the history of the practice and the theories if the morning . We were then taken through a very intense meditation. One of the most visual things I have ever been thought, and it was amazing. This was the first step to the opening of the energies that we were use that day. Then we did a initiation call The Dragon Breath that was just as intense as the meditation. We then broke for lunch before re-gathering to lean the 12 hand placements of the body. The center that the class was held was on a beautiful 6 acer wooded lot in Barringrton. The lot as a few stone labyrinths set up down by a natural pond and is a very soothing and calming place. This was the scene through the large windows that filled the long wall of the room as we laid out on the tables and took turns working. The class had eight people and five of us are returning next month for the next level. I have to say that I went in a little skeptical but at the end of the long day I was so excited about the next class.

My sunday was filled with out Tarot meet up in Borders where we sat with about a dozen and a half others drinking coffee and talking about the differences in desks and techniques in readings. After a quick spot of lunch we headed back to the house and had our book club, finishing up our reading up on Taoism. Next month we're on to voodoo.

The days are going good on the whole here. I was feeling a little under the weather last week, but cool-eeze and herbal tea and it went away. Scott and I are both kind of happy calms here in the house. We have a few friends coming over on Thrusday and it's fast becoming a favorite place for people to be. We here that people love the calm feeling and laid backness of the place. Hoping to bring back Catan nights soon

TV...now, then and to come
Watching Pushing Daisies right now and am just in love with the series. You got to watch it. It has that whole "Tell me a story" thing about it that I love. Very Tim Burton in style and the fact that the guy that read the Harry Potter books does the narration is just the icing on the cake. Please watch this show

Been watching Rock Follies as of late. It's an off beat series that aired in the UK in 1976-1977. It's a kind of musical drama about three girls that form a rock band and the struggles that come with it. Got both seasons on DVD from Amazon UK and just finished the first season. It's kind of good in a culty kind of way. There is one song called On the Road that really makes me long for the days of road trips and rocky horror.

On the TV to come MTV is showing Legally Blond the musical complete direct from Broadway. I'm VERY excited about it. I haven't seen the show live, but I have seen the first number and it looks like it is going to be a real fun show.

I baked some cookies the other day that I swear must be filled with crack because they are so fucking good. Been watching the episodes of Good Eats on baking and been using the tips he uses. Good Eats is the THE BEST show ever to come out of the Food Network.

We turned the heat on for the first time tonight, and life had moved to fall mode. We have a big sugar maple tree behind the house and I can't wait to see what color it's going to change to. I also started to make my own shampoo with the soapwort that I got. It was real easy, just boiling the herb in water for 20 min and there ya go. It works well. Just one more thing to replant in the spring. 3-16 should really start to take off next year. I have a bunch of mint harvested for tea this winter, and I'm going to be cutting some comfry root and make some ointments next weekend, this weekend is already full booked

Lord..first of two
Been a while I know but here is the scoop on the last new weeks of life.

Life is good


that's about it



The house is fantastic. We had a great gathering here over Labor day and did our first cook out. Everyone that sees the place loves it ,and two or three have even threatened to move into the basement. I have to say I like the fact that people like our place, as not a week goes by without some gathering or another going on it's good to know that people are comfortable.

We started to chop out some of the front trees this weekend in order to open up the front lawn. They had planted about 5 evergreens in the front of the yard, and now they have gotten to big to be next to each other... well they were to big about ten years ago, but hey what can you do.

We saw The Producers at Lincolnshire about two weeks ago and laughed our asses off. Hands down the best show that they have done in about three years. The cast was fantastic, almost better then on Broadway, and they did an amazing job staging it.

In the world of theatre those that know my fetich for bad musicals will be happy to know that you too can see the strangest show you will ever see right here in Chicago. End of the month In My Life opens for just two weeks here. It is the show about the girl with OCD that falls in love with the guy that has teretts , but that's normal because, as the cross dressing angel will tell you, they are part of god's first reality opera complete with pirates, a number with tap dancing skeletons and a whole musical number about an exploding brain tumer......*joy*...I saw the broadway run of this show and am going to be there opening night to see the new production. When it was announced on the message boards the reaction was that pigs were flying. It lasted only 42 shows on the Great White Way.....*sigh

I'm looking into taking massage classes as maybe a side hobby. I'm taking a Reiki massage class this weekend to see if I like it.

We decorated the house for Halloween yesterday. Not over the top, just nice and tasteful. Our first real holiday here.

We have birds...lots and lots of birds. I put out a feeder when we first moved in and it was like throwing out one loaf of bread to a tribe of starving Eathopians. Now we have about half a dozen feeders and play host to a bunch of wildlife including a black squirrel.

The new Terry Pratchett book came out. it's called Making Money, it is a follow up to Going Postal a book I think everyone should read, because you'll laugh your ass off. To fill space before that came out I burned my way through a series called Tales of the Otori, that starts with the book Across The Nightingale Floor. Good, a bit on the light side, but entertaining.

After seeing the fantastic trailer for it we went to see Across The Universe a few weeks ago, and walked out two thirds of the way threw it. It was awful, but looking forward to seeing Sweeny Todd this christmas.


I'm going to eat some cookies more later...

How to build a work in 7 + 2 days...or how I moved

Well week one here is done. We are moved, re-floored, re-painted, and unpacked. I have put in the lavender bed and started the healing garden in the back...yes my friends we have a home. The last 9 days have really and truly been like hell, but in a good way.



The Day of Closing:


Neither of us slept well the night before the close, it was just a nerve wracking thing for some reason. We got to the lawyer's office about fifteen minutes early, as we always are, and just hung around waiting. We knew we were not off to the best start when both our mortgage broker and our lawyer were both about 20 min late. Once we all were there we sat down at the table and began to sign our lives away. It took about 20 min before we were home owners. Woo Hoo!!! Scott had to head back to work and I headed over to our new home to start the process of repainting the basement. For those of you that were over at our last place and recall the Zen room that paint job got recreated here for what I am now calling my "Inner Earth Sanctuary". Walls got primed, painted, and re painted, as well as radiators all the while the guy was upstairs ripping out the carpet and getting things ready for the hard wood floors. It was here that I discovered a few new things.




1) That I am a very unhappy primer. I hate putting primer on walls more then eating virgin pussy. Now give me a tray of pretty colors and I'm all good to go. I understand the reasons behind priming, I just hate doing it.




2) Never try and stray paint a radiator in the house…the paint gets everywhere. I know this sounds a logical thing, but my projects were on the fast track around my brain and it was not until I had gotten the coat of brown stray primer on the thing did I notice it was going all over the boxes. Now came the first of many trips to Home Depot for supplies. I picked up a pack of plastic tarps and made a little medical tent around the thing, plopped a tarp over my head and dived into copper painting the fucker within an inch of it's life. The copper works well with the deep oaker and bronze tones of the walls. The rag finish turned out very well and by end of the day it was really looking like home down there.










The Next Day:


Saturday came and I was over at the house at 7 AM as we had the flooring going in at about 8, tile in the bathroom. This day was the day when we ripped up the carpet in the office to see if we could get the cat pee out of it. We had been told by the previous owners cats had an accident or two in that room. As Scott ripped it up we got the horrible stench that can only come from wood soaked in cat piss. I few accidents my ass, I think someone must have just poured piss by the gallon on that floor. The carpet would, over the next few days become a wet mess of urine that would make its presents known to whom ever was in 50 feel of it. Now it was off to Home Depot to see what we could do, and we found out there that you can get rid of it by pouring pure bleach on the area and letting it soak in. So Scott took care of that, the new bathroom floor went in upstairs and Sunny and I built a hall bookcase to go over the stairs. This is a nice 7 foot long three foot high piece that is going to be more like a built in then anything. It's got four sections with one or two shelves in each section. It took a while to do with all the measuring, cutting, screwing and painting but as the day ended we both were very proud of it.






The Day After that:


Sunday came with its constant rainfall, so what do I do? I go rent a truck and load in every fucking box out of the apartment all by my lonesome. Scott needed to stay back at the house to paint. I had planned on doing this later in the week, but for some reason I felt the need to get it done that day, so for almost 5 hours I lugged boxes to and from the truck. Scott was able to help me unload it, when thankfully it stopped raining, but still it was miserable work. The worst day of it all. Could I have called people to help, well no, because everyone said that they would be able to help out the next weekend when we had actually planned on moving so this was just one of the many plan changes that happened. It was here that I think I started to feel the full weight of all I wanted to get done this week. There was so fucking much to do, lighting, painting, unpacking, new furniture to buy, plants to put in, cats to move and so much was just getting done by one person, all because I had no real plan on how to get it done other then to do it. This all ends with us going to Sears and getting the new lawnmower, grill, bird feeder and all the other lawn items we need, because of course we need to also get the grass cut for the first time this week, if it would ever fucking stop raining long enough for the grass to dry out a bit.






Monday, I unpack alone:


Scott had to go back to work on Monday, but I had it off and started to put the Sanctuary together. Comcast came and hooked up cable and the hardwood went in upstairs. Box after bob was unpacked. One has no idea the amount of shit they have till they have to move it...well I do have SOME idea. I've moved quite often over the last ten years and know that I'll always have close to 30 boxes of books and another ten of CDs, records and DVDs. The basement was filled with such boxes waiting for me to give their contents a home and I worked diligently till the bulk was done and I was able to look upon my new Zen room with the pride and love I've always looked upon it with. It proved to be another late night as I schlepped my ass home about 9:30. At least things were kind of going on schedule. My hope was to get the basement done by mid week and half of it was complete. The floors upstairs look astounding, they are a dark walnut that runs in both rooms and complements the slate tile in the bathroom. Now if I can just get the workbench and media rooms done on time, the light hung and electronic equipment hooked up I'll be good to go. Oh and I have to get the wiring in for the upstairs speakers in before Tuesday so that the carpet can go around them…damn more shit to do






Tuesday the day from Hell:


Here we reach the high point of my week. Not only are we having the carpets replaced, but we are also expecting deliveries from two furniture stores as well. My only saving grace is that the furniture is not to arrive till later afternoon. So since the bulk of the house is not able to be worked on, I dig up about 50 feet of earth and get it ready to become a lavender bed once the plants arrive. I must pause here to say that we have some of the best soil I've even seen. It's beautiful, deep rich soil that has more worms in it then one can shake a stick at. I had thought of renting a tiller from Home Depot to till it up, but after testing it with a shovel and seeing that cut through like a knife through butter I just went to town. In about an hour I was able to get it all dug up and ready. I also manage to plant the comfry in the back healing garden before the day is out. Late afternoon I get around to cutting the grass for the first time and somehow manage to get a third degree burn down the side of my hand....go figure. I was adjusting the blade height and touched something hot on the side of the mower, and before I knew it I had a blister swelling up on the side of my hand. The carpet people were just finishing the final tacks in the floor as the furniture was coming up the driveway...woo hoo for timing! So we have a new dinning room set, tv stand and chairs for the living room.

Then...stupidly... at about 6 at night I decide to hang the new stained glass fixture in the dining room. That piece of shit took almost two hours to do, all the while Scott was getting the upstairs ready to paint. Morel: Never hang light fixtures at night. I have to say that it is the one thing that REALLY makes the place. It's the first thing you notice when you walk into the dining room area and it is worth every penny and curse word needed to put it in.






Wednesday back at work......


need I say more






Thursday oh the woos of being ill:


I wake up at 6:00 to go to work and I can barely even focus. I've been up

at 6:00 and out of the house by 6:30 every day with a new car load of boxes and not stopping till about 9-10:00 each night. I can't even remember to eat and I am just run down so I end up calling in sick and going back to bed. I get up about 9 and head back to the house and finish up the painting upstairs and continue to unpack the endless piles of boxes. This was the night both Scott and I planed on taking it easy. Even though we had help from Sunny and Carmen we are still bushed from all the work. We take the night off and go out with a few friends for dinner and drinks. We all it an early night as we have to pick up the U-haul at 9AM in Waukegan to get the furniture from my Mom's place.






Friday…frustrations mount:


Well Scott had made a reservation at U-Haul about a week ago via their online site for a truck on Friday morning. We called and got a confirmation number and an email on it. The location was about ten miles up the road from my Mom's in the town she used to teach in. We get there and end up driving up and down the road for about 20 min because, as we find out, the place is no longer in business. So we start calling U-haul booking offices to see what we are supposed to do. We drive over to the Waukegan store that was about 2 miles from Mom's and, after seeing every kind of man ugly the world can make, got a truck and got the furniture. We were able to make it over to our apartment and get the rest of our stuff from there before the day was out. We moved the bed and with that came the cats. Joey and Chandler were not happy to move. They liked the apartment with it's staircases and windows, but a few hours in the new house and Joey was like a kid in a candy store. He was sitting on the porch staring at the birds and running up and down both sets of stairs. While I got stuff unpacked in the downstairs Sunny and Scott got the bed together so we could go to bed. That night we fell asleep in our new bedroom. It's a nice sage-y green and white. The bed covers are white and look real good with the contrast of the dark wood floor. With the sounds of hundreds of crickets and night incects drifting in from the open sky light we slept well.






Saturday… End of Worlds:


The movers were to come at 8 AM on Saturday. I have this thing for early morning work I guess. They were fantastic, despite being about 45 min late. They got the big heavy pieces down from the upstairs and into the new place in record time. Once they were gone Scott and I headed out to breakfast before going back to the last stages of moving. He worked on the upstairs, getting all the closets ready, and I worked on the downstairs with the electronics and all. It was long hours of not talking to each other, but we got the work done and by Saturday Night we were able to enjoy a movie in our new living room…which by the way has a sound to rival that of your local milti-plex. The cats have now forgiven us for moving them and are just out in full force showing us love at every possible opportunity.






Sunday… A new day


We woke up and had breakfast on the porch watching the endless parade of birds flying to and from the bird feeders, and even have a chipmunk we have named Merv. It was nice…very nice. We did the last bits of garbage hauling, unpacking and arranging. By Sunday night we were done. Every last box was taken away, and every room was done. This is what it was all about. Sitting in the vaulted living room watching a movie as loud as we wanted to, going out and sitting on the three season porch and enjoying the night with no bugs, and knowing that it was all ours.

Good Earth, HAIR and Stardust
Well my week has been quite a busy one. For work I had to head up to the Twin Cites for a sales show. I started out on Friday morning at about 9Am for the long 6-7 hour drive up there. Truth be told I do love the drive. For a nature guy like me it's a joy. I gathered up a few good CDs, packed a bag and the laptop into the car and headed up. The drive takes me through most of the upper regions of Wisconsin. Here is where you will find places like Black River Falls, Crystal Cave, and Black Bear Forest. It truly is breathtaking as you drive up steep hills that then lead you windingly down into valleys full of growing corn, and cows then though giant stone out croppings and into miles and miles of forests. I put on the Book of Secrets CD and Zened out for a good three hours of the drive, just gazing deep into the valise and forests. Once there the whole thing just kind of falls apart. We are in our showroom from 9-6 each day and then your on your own for the night. I took this time to get all my files of projects sorted out in the laptop so all the writing and creative bits are in order. Not wishing to spend too much money while I was there I had brought a bunch of books to read and DVDs to watch, but I did go out to eat one of the nights. This was to a restaurant called Good Earth. I guess it's been open there for almost thirty years and has always been an natural and organic place to eat. It is a wonderful place to go. If you are ever in the area they have amazing food and one of the few pie crusts I actually think is good. So for the last four days I've been sitting in a hotel reading, cleaning and working...wow life is grand.

HAIR

A CD I took with with was the OCR of HAIR, and as I was listening to it it struck me that this one album has had the greatest impact on how I live my life. I first heard HAIR back in 85 when a friend of mine ,Steve Mac. (Hi Steve) gave me a tape of it. First time I listened to it I had no idea what it was. It had a few good tunes like Aquarius, Air, and Let The Sun Shine In, but that was about it. It was one night when I put it on in our living room back at home that it truly became more then another cast recording. My mom was not crazy about it, but she let me play it and while we listened to it she told me stories of life in the 60s', of burning bras, protesting the war, and all the turmoil going on all hither unto unknown to my 10 year old mind. Those stories still stick with me to this day. It was a few years later in my teenage years when I fell into my Rocky Horror crowd that I found others that liked it and I began to seek out as much information as I could on it. I became a groupie of a tour that came into Chicago back in 98. I saw it, and pretty much was in it every night for over two weeks. My friend Kelly would come with me some times and we were decked out in colorful gear and I had my hair long back then and we became fast friends with the cast. Night after night I was lead onto the stage and was part of various scenes such as the Be-In where I got naked on stage, Let the Sun Shine in where some times it was so intense I was afraid of passing out while up there. I have met about a half dozen of the original broadway cast and even still email Michael Butler, the shows original producer, every now and then. Now I have close to a dozen books on it and over 40 recordings of the show, and it still has the power to take my breath away and wrench my being . But more then looking at what I have collected I look at my world on a whole, Zen meditation. earth awareness, sex and drugs...well a little past that......and other things that speak back to that piece of music. I never would have thought that my life would reflect art to any degree, but there it is. Anyone else have something like that in their world?


Stardust

One thing I did do while up in the Twin Cities was go and see Stardust. I read the book about five years ago and remember liking it, but am blurry on the fine points of the story. Neil Gamain is in the same pompous camp as George Lucas for me, but I respect Neil a little more because at least his ideas are original. Lucas on the other hand just knows how to take everyone elses ideas and package them better, once he gets a truly original thought then I'll give him a break, until then.... well. Neil is a good ideas man. He can come up with great visual ideas, which is great for his graphic novel medium, but for me he has never been able to really successfully sustain a novel. He tends to come up with a string of cool ideas and places but pretty much leaves us feeling kind of 'eh about his leading characters. Take his last film of Mirror Mask. Fantastic visual film, but the story was kind of dragged out and one never really cared about the lead character, you were just wondering what next weird thing was coming around the corner. Stardust is Neil's most polished story for me, maybe because he is drawing on familiar themes and one never really IS supposed to care about fairy-tale characters that much. That said I did think this was a fantastic movie. The first 20-30 min felt over rushed but after that it is one heck of a good romp on the screen. It benefits and suffers from the Peter Jackson syndrome that is happening to fantasy movies these days. I benefits do to the lush details in the sets and costumes, suffers from the camera shots that look copied almost movement for movement at some moments. Still I totally recommend that people see it on the big screen, trust me you will not get the same feeling at home with this one.


Going to be posting a few pics of the move later on tonight so you all can see what living in boxes is like. Only three days left till we become home owners. Some how I never thought that I would be doing this, but here I am about to put down roots.

Been a while and I've gotten a bunch of people asking me all the same questions so I'm going to answer them in mass.

What did you think of the end of Harry Potter?
So many of you know that I've been reading Harry Potter since book one and have heard the stories of waiting outside Barns and Noble in the DAYTIME for books to come out before they did the whole midnight thing. Now we come to the end. Yes, I did go to the last midnight party. This was the first time for me going in costume. After Scott and I saw Hairspray (more on that below) I got dressed in my ren-fair best and got to the book store at about 8:30 to wait with the rest of the fans for the magic midnight hour. It was a great time, I saw people I knew and met new ones. I made sure to take a moment to just stand and observe as I knew this was going to be the last of it's kind. Then I got the book, went home and promptly went to bed. I had to work down in the city that weekend so I had to get SOME sleep. On the train to and from the show for the next two days I devoured the 764 pages. My verdict... I loved it. It was by far the most different of the series and it was what was needed. I felt that it was well paced and I really enjoyed all the little threads of plot getting tied up. It was the first book I felt was too short. I felt that it could have been about 50 pages longer and been better. All in all a good end to the series.

One thing I STILL don't get about the books is this: On the flap of the dust jacket it states that this is the last book in the epic story of Harry Potter. For some reason I never got the epic feeling from these books. Are they good books; hell yea, but are they 'epic'...naaa, not in my book. The books that make up His Dark Materials of Lord of the Rings are epic, Harry was just a great story that I almost felt was intimate. It almost all took place within the walls of Hogworts and most of the action took place in the past so good, yes..epic...no.



Have you seen Hairspray yet?
Ummmmmmmmmmmmm think about that. I've seen the show 4 times on broadway and am a John Waters nut..I don't feel the need to really answer that one. I thought it was fantastic. Bright, fun, tune filled and the best movie they could make of the show. I've seen it twice and might be seeing it again this week . GO SEE THIS MOVIE!!!

How goes the move?
We're living in boxes for the most part here right now. I walked into the downstairs bathroom a few minutes ago and forgot that we had put the new coat rack in there because we have no other place to put it. We have so much new stuff going into that house I've forgotten half of what we have gotten, it's not even going to seem like ours yet. Down to the bare things now, and waling around piles of boxes and new furniture. Very excited about getting out of here. Made our last rent payment to the complex and are getting butterflies as the big day draws near. We close next week Friday, the 17th, and as I head to a sales show out of town end of this week I have but 6 days left to spend here. It's going to be a week of hell moving, unpacking, building, painting and planting. I have so much that I want to get done right off the bat. I know I can wait, but while we have the time and money now to do it there is no reason not to get it done. I have a great deal of plants that have been growing here in little pots that I'll be needing to get into the ground I have most of the week off following the signing so I hope to get a bunch of it done before the official move on the 25th. We're looking at having our house warming BBQ over Labor Day weekend, so I have to get SOME stuff done.

How goes the 3-16 project?

Very good actually. This weekend we went to the WI state fair with my mom and grandmother. When we dropped grandma off she loaded us down with bags and bags of peaches from her trees in the back yard so Scott and I blanched, pealed, cut and vacuum sealed about 8 quart bags of peaches for pies this winter today. This on top of the 36 cups of red and black raspberries that we have picked from mom's yard. We have enough organically home grown fruit to last the winter. We have apples coming next month. I did my first batch of home made tomatoes for lunch this week with the first fruits of the season from mom so we will see how that al works out. The next big step for this is to get the almost 80 plants growing here into the ground for the fall so they can get roots for the winter months. Gotten Scott to take up all natural cleaning with a book called Talking Dirty With the Queen of Clean. She has tones of natural cleaning tips in the book that work amazingly. Scott has taken to it like a fish to water and we're perfecting the techniques for when we move so that we don't have any chemical cleaners in the house.

Not all time is spent on work or the house we did go out to dinner with a bunch of friends on Friday night. About a dozen of us had dinner and drinks. We had to call it an early night as we were heading out bright and early for the WI state fair for cream puffs and sweet corn. It was a pain driving there this year with the road construction, but we had a good day and ate our fill of sweets and fair food for another year. So life here is going on. Hopefully I'll get to play Catan after we have moved as both Carmen and I are both having withdrawal from it. The group and I are also going to be watching all the Best Picture of the Year movies in order from All Quiet on the Western Front on once we're settled into the new place, and everyone is invited to watch with us.

Just finished the first season of the Third Doctor, and I'll have more thougts on that in a bit as Project Who still roles on....

We locked our rate!!!! Now we are “clear to close” according to Glenn and all is good. So this means that in about 28 days Scott and I will be home owners. Gosh it’s kind of an exciting but scary feeling. We’re living in boxes right now, because we have so much energy to move that we feel the need to put into a box anything that isn’t nailed down. So here is our time line for the week that we close:

Aug 17: is THE day of signing and the day we get sign away our souls for 30 years. I’ve decided to take the day off since I KNOW that the minute we’re out of there I’m over at the new place painting.

Aug 18-19: The old carpet is taken out and the wood for the upstairs floor is delivered. As well as the day we should finish painting the basement and I start to move in the boxes and boxes of books records and shit. I predict that since I have the 20th off as well the place should be done in three days so that is one floor taken care of

Aug: 20-21: The new carpet and floors are put in as we are having the bathroom tiled, hardwood in the upstairs and carpet put in on the downstairs.

Aug 21-23: We are moving the boxes of kitchen stuff and cloths over and getting them all unpacked. This is the after work projects that will keep us busy till the weekend.

Aug 24: The day we get a U-haul and head up to my mom’s and get the antiques and tools she is bequeathing to us and get those into the house and into place

Aug 25: The movers come at 7AM to move the heavy pieces and we move the lighter stuff thus finishing the move.

So provided nothing goes a rye we should be good to go with everything. Housewarming sometime over the Labor Day weekend for anyone wanting to stop on by.


Hairspray opens in movie theatres around the US tomorrow and we are there at 6:00 tomorrow night to get an early show in before I make my final midnight pilgrimage to Barnes and Noble for the last of the Harry Potter books. It’s going to be about a week of media black out for me as I read it. I know there are those people that are saying “I’m going to have it read in three hours of getting it” and it’s kind of like a pissing contest about who can read it the fastest, but as I have to work at a show this weekend I’m not going to be able to just lock myself away. I’ll be I-poding it all week with no TV, Radio, Newspaper, Internet or anything that might have a reaction to the book. It’s been 10 years in the making and I really would hate to have it ruined by some dumb ass news reporter.


Scott and I have been addicted to My Life on the D list and watch it almost nonstop these days. We both have always loved Kathy Griffin, but something is just really clicking right now. Last episode next week. We are also finishing the last season of Flootballers Wives….sigh..the end of trash TV as we know it.

I repotted house plants last night…damn I hate doing that. I have a few plants that are about even years old now and they are getting pretty big so a repotting is a lot of work. Were looking at having the plants in the living room so I got some rather nice pots to put them in. I’m hoping that were going to start working on the herb bed the first weekend in September and get in what I have growing, if not I may lose most of what I have done this year. No matter I guess, I’ll just restart things up in the spring. I have to remember that the herbs and lawn need not be done all at once. I know this I just need to keep reminding myself every so often.

House, Oz and Plants
I know it's been a heck of a long time since my last post but life has just been fuller then one can imagine these days. Getting a mortgage is no fun that's all I have to say. It's not that Scott or I have bad credit or anything like that it's just that I am not good at keeping paperwork so getting copies of things has been what has been filling up my days. Today the best thing happened and that was that we finished it all and got the commitment letter from the bak that means that we have a motgage!! In between paperwork Scott and I have been buying stuff for the house in spades. We have new stained glass fixtures that are going in, new chairs for the living room, the coolest coffee table ever and tones of other stuff that everyone will get to see when we move...heck we'll get to see it when we move as everything is just in boxes in the Zen room. One of the cooler things we have is a real working crank victrola that will play 78 RPM records..it's complete with big horn and everything.

We saw the new Pixar movie last week and were just blown away by it. Funny and entertaining and hands down the most beautiful CG movie ever made. I can't wait till Hairspray and the new Harry Potter open. I'm just finishing re-reading book 6 so that I will have everything fresh in my mind for the last book....**sigh** my last midnight line......

I did something I haven't done in a long time last weekend. I bought an Oz book. Now I'm not sure how many of you know of my collection of first edition Oz books dating back to 1903, but I have quite a few. I've been collecting them since I was about 10 and have got a good sized collection. Just google Oz books and you will find the list of nearly 40 official books and almost 200 small press titles that make up this collection. It's the main 40 that one day I want to have a good collection of. Getting the books is hard to do, not because they are hard to find..any good antique bookstore will have one or two, but it's identifying a true first edition from other editions. Most books printed before the 1960s were not required to give any edition or copyright other then the date the text was copy written. So all copies of say Ozma of Oz printed before 1960 will say that they have a copyright of 1903 so people not knowing what they are selling will sell a copy as a first edition based on that date. Where as true collectors know that there are tones of textual points to check out before you can safely call a copy a first edition. The next thing is ...well money. Any good copy worth investing in...yes I do mean invest as the ones I have bought over the years have gone up signifagently... a good edition these days will start about about $300. Not small change so touching the book and seeing it is the best way to know your getting your moneys worth. So having a little extra cash this month Scott and I headed over to a wonderful old book shop in Evenston called Bookman's Alley and I got a fantastic edition of Ojo in Oz that is now sitting among my collection. Were getting a nice book case just for those books in the new house.

Evenston, for those that have never been, is a quaint little collage town near the city that still made up of just a ton of small eclectic shops and eateries. I love going there, and would consider the only place near the city I would live if I had to love close to that damn thing.

Been reading up a storm these days as well. Gotten thought three good sized books this month. Fun summer reads. In the fall my little Pagan book group are going to read the Gnostic Gospels as part of our research of other religions. The group has calmed down a little these days sticking with the members we have and not adding any is helping. Were headed to the Ren Fair this weekend for opening day....really I'm going for the wind chime seller and my essential oil lady whom I get to see only once a year there.

the 3-16 project is growing along. I have many plants growing in little pots outside our front door, to our neighbors distaste I'm sure, so the next steps will be taken later on this season when tomatoes come in for canning. My mom is giving us her spare freezer so that we can store things in. She has also picked us 36 cups of black raspberries to so we can start making our jellies. It's going to be a fun time getting things all set up once were in the new place. We want to put in a rain barrel, a compost heap and the herb garden before it gets too late in the season so that the perennials I have planted have time to root.

The cats are doing wonderful. They are loosing weight, which is a good thing, and neither of us can wait to see how they will like there new home.

Well it has been a long time since we have talked and ALOT has been going on first off the 3-16 initiative is coming along great. I have trays and trays of seedlings sprouted and growing. I have been collecting old canisters for storage of the clippings when the season comes. About 7 of the 12 herbs planted this year have been transplanted and the comfrey roots have just grown like mad. I can't wait to get them all into the ground...and that's the big news, and a major reason for the lack of updates. Scott and I have bought a house. Our new place is in Algonquin IL right along the Fox River. It's a house that was built in 1920, and sits on a two acer lot.

Scott and I were out driving last Sunday and while he was looking for another house to show me we stumbled onto an open house. The place is a little A frame house set far back on the double lot with fantastic old trees. We loved it for the get go. It has a three season porch, fire pit, two car garage, great landscaping and tons of charm. We thought that it was going to be out of our price range, but were floored to find out that it was right in the middle of it. The nice couple that lives there has owned the house for the last 17 years, and he used to work for Enesco..ho cool is that. We were VERY excited about it and started calling around to out realtor and loan advisor as to what we should do. So on Wednesday we went back to do another walk through and after that we went back to the realtor office and wrote out first offer. Less then an hour later we were standing in Kinko's getting my latest project printed out when we got the call that they accepted our bid. We were floored, and so happy/scared that neither of us got much sleep that night.

The next day Scott worked with a mortgage guy that he had worked with last winter when we were thinking of buying. I got on the phone with the guy that I had worked with back around that time as well. Well Glenn, my guy has come up with a great rate and all, and were now about 2/3 of the way through getting the house bought. We can't get out of our lease here till mid August, which is perfect, because they wanted to move out about mid-August. So yes folks I think we have a winner. I'll have pictures up of some of the yard and porch in my photos section so take a peek.

We also had time to see the new Pirates and Spider Man movies over the last week. Pirates just rocked. It was big, fast, and over the top just as it should have been. I can't wait for parts four and five to come out. Spider Man on the other hand was a miserable pice of wet toast. Just MST3K bad with some of the most embarrassing scripted lines we have ever heard. A bunch of us went and so it turned into one of those evenings that we won't forget soon.


We stopped up by my mom's for her birthday last weekend as well. This year we gave her somthing that she can really use...a 30GB Ipod and CD speaker dock. I don't think I have ever seen her mosr scared of a gift, but we showed her how to use it, and by the next day so was calling us up to tell us that she had used it on her morning walk, taken it out cutting the grass and just had it going all day. She has over 8000 showtunes in it so it should keep her going for some time


I promise I'll be more regular in my postings, as a bunch of you guys have written me wondering if I am still alive. Yes, but getting the mortgage is just a pain and a half and I can't wait till it's over. We're going to have a big house warming party so be ready for it.

Well we're back from vacation and what a week it has been. It started back last Thursday when I went over to my friend Di's place to help her plant her pots of herbs. She has never planted anything before and wanted my help. So we sat there replanting plants and starting seeds in trays. I got seven trays of seeds planted and got the Comfry root potted into big...big pots. There were just these little things. It was great fun as we talked about things. So home came the trays and into the fridge with some and onto the window sills with others. The pots of comfry are on the upstairs balcony. Then Friday night Scott and I packed for the week at Disney and The Island. Packed were all the pairs of shorts and short sleeve shirts, a few good books and my spirit flute. I was not able to sleep Friday night, which was a short night as it was because we were to be up at 4AM to get to the airport. Ya know 4AM is a crappy time to have to start a vacation, but hey it is sometimes the thing you have to do. We got to the airport and checked in and on our way with no problem. We left a 55 degree morning and landed in a 82 degree afternoon in Orlando FL.

Day 1: A glassy day, a new book and I get drunk
Our first day there was kind of a lazy day. We got there about 10AM and slowly wondered the area. Scott used to live there so he took me around to some of his old haunts. We then stopped at the Tiffany Glass Museum that is down there. That was VERY cool to see. It really reminded me how much I can't wait to get the house and pick up that hobby again. We saw the stained glass chapel that was made for the Chicago World's Fair that Devil in the White City was written about. We got to see how he did some of his techniques. We wiled away the afternoon there then headed over to our hotel. It was a beautiful room with Sleep Number beds and a view of the huge pool and saunas below. That night we met up with Scott's friend Judy for dinner at a local place to eat. While we were waiting for her I was able to stop in to the Border's across the street and there I found a herbal book I had been wanting to take a look at, so I plunked down some cash and walked out with a fantastic new book. Dinner went well. To the shock of many of readers I got waited at dinner. The bar had my alcoholic vice and it was yummy. We headed back to the hotel and passed out that night.

Day 2: Lions and tigers and ...well now bears but we got to see wort hogs
We started our trip at the Disney parks with the newest one; Animal Kingdom. It was fucking amazing. The park is like a huge jungle with this massive tree in the middle called The Tree of Life. It is a sculpted tree with huge animals and birds carved into it. The roots of the tree sprawl out over the whole middle of the park and the whole thing is just breathtaking. We took the safari ride and saw tigers, work hogs, elephants, gorillas, lions and many, many other animals in this wonderful savanna that they made. Truth be told I was not looking forward to going to the parks but that soon changed. The park was engrossing and fascinating. The weather was perfect and the day was awesome. The only bummer was the fact that we got into see Finding Nemo the musical and it got canceled do to technical issues. Judy met us at the park later in the day and hung with us till the park closed. That night we were very tired and just headed over to Chick-fil-A for dinner. That night we headed down to the hot tub and just soaked for a while before heading up to bed.

Day 3: Yea it really is that cool
We awoke early to make our way to The Magic Kingdom. Our plan was to do the Kingdom in the morning and Epcot in the afternoon. We headed over to the park on the ferry and I actually got a little giddy seeing the peaks of the park come around the bend of the lake surrounding the park. It was made that way so that you could not see the park from outside. That way it was if you were entering a whole different world, and you truly do. Now I am not a massive Disney supporter, but this park was truly magical. The level of detail in the buildings and landscaping was so incredible that you really have to see it to believe it. We took our picture in front of the castle and went on all the rides that you are supposed to; Pirates of the Caribbean, Haunted Mansion, It's a Small World and all. It was wonderful. There is no way to explain it. Out of the four parks we went to Animal Kingdom was my favorite, but The Magic Kingdom was the most incredible.

After a short morning there took the monorail to Epcot. Yea... Well Epcot is the park that I remember hearing most about growing up because it was new, and that silver dome thing is just so cool looking. The front part of the park is Tomorrow Land and it was lame.....very lame. The dome...lame... The only saving grace there was the gardens that they had. Plants... good. The park looked pretty much like a bust to me, but we were waiting around for Judy to meet us there later that day so we had to stay. Then things turned around as we went through the back of the park. The part some people call Drinking Around The World. It's this massive semicircle that has sections from around the world such as Mexico, Norway, Germany, Italy, Japan, England, China, France and on and on. Each mini area is staffed by exchange workers from that country and had shops, restaurants, and bars featuring the native food, drink and items from that country. Here we saw a celtic rock group called Off Kilter that were fucking amazing. They had guitars and bagpipes...me happy. We sat down to watch them for a set and then walked our way around the world. That was fun. All the different people, items, food.. it was allot of fun. Once again we headed back to the hotel and unwound in the hot tub before heading off to bed.

Day 4: We FINALLY see Nemo and are board off our ass.
This was supposed to be the easy day. All we were going to do was go to the last park; Disney-MGM Studios. So we thought this would be a good chance to see if we could catch the Finding Nemo show back at Animal Kingdom. This was a big point for me as the guys that wrote Avenue Q also wrote the score to this show and I really wanted to see it. We got there at 10:30 for the 11:30 show and about thirty minutes into waiting we were told that it was canceled, but was assured that the 1:00 show would be going on. So I plunked my ass down...now at the beginning of the line...and waited till 1:00. Scott took off to go on some rides and joined me back in line in time to go into the theatre. The show went off, and was well worth the wait. It was a 45 min show and it was a joy from start to finish. The show is much like Lion King with people working with puppets, but so much better.

After that we headed to the MGM park. It was the lamest yet. Dull..boring and just no reason to see it again. We wondered around for a while waiting for the fireworks show at the end of the day... and it was a long day. By the time we got back to the hotel we both were well parked out and set to relax.

Days 5-7: We do nothing

We woke up and drove the two hours to the small island that would be home for the next three days. The beach house we were renting was massive. Three huge bedrooms each with it's own special bathroom featuring something different like a claw foot tub, whorl-pool tub or huge shower. The kitchen was fully loaded and the privet pool had a waterfall. in less the one minute you can be at the beach with ultra soft sugar sand and water so clear you can see to the bottom even 50 feet out. Here is where for three days we just laid out in the sun, ate at quaint little beach side restaurants, and just had a fantastic time. We got 90 minute deep tissue massages and just plunked our asses down and did jack shit. We loved it. The weather was perfect every day and we watched the sun set over the gulf every night we were there. We loved it so much we want to rent the house again next year and bring people with us. The dam place can sleep 8 and we can all spend a week at the beach, grilling, swimming and hanging out. Over the days there I did read a bit of my new book as well as translate the first chapter of The Tao Ti Ching and play my flute at sunrise at the ocean. Such a great way to unwind. Sadly the time there did have to end and we packed up and headed home.

Back at home many of the seeds have started to sprout, which is amazing given that it had only been a week. The Comfry plants are almost 8 inches tall and have leave all over them and I harvested my first herbs: dandelions. These are very good for cleaning out the digestive system. So I harvested about 10 plants and am making a ticture out of a few of them and the rest of them are hanging to dry. The rest of today as been spent playing with the kitties and doing more jack shit. Back to work tomorrow after a week off so we'll see how things went and then back to the grind of projects and plants.

For the last two weeks I've been busy researching and preparing for a very lofty goal. It's a plan I'm personally calling the 3-16 initiative. This began a year ago when I started to eat all natural. That kind of became eating all organic and now this. What is this? Later on this fall or early winter Scott and I will be getting a house and with that comes a yard. By planting sixteen different herb plants and three fruits and vegetables I hope in 18 months for that date to be able to derive almost all my daily personal care and a big chunk of my food intake from what I grow. Thus cutting down on the amount of garbage I generate.
By researching plants and their uses I will be planting herbs from which I will be able to make shampoo, face cleaners, skin moisturizers, simple cold care, headache medicine, and all that I need for my sacred quests. So far here is what I have going in:

Soapwort root (20 plants) - by boiling this whole pant in water and then reducing the mixture by half you get a nice, mild shampoo. You can add rosemary or chamomile to it for sent. It’s a great white flowering groundcover as well.

Comfrey (3 rootings)- One of the most useful herbs out there. The herb contains allantoin, a cell proliferant that speeds up the natural replacement of body cells. This means that it will promote the swift healing of damaged or injured tissues, as well as maintaining cell growth and preventing diseases. Comfrey has been used to treat a wide variety of ailments ranging from bronchial problems, broken bones, sprains, arthritis, gastric and varicose ulcers, severe burns, acne and other skin conditions. A salve of the roots of this plant is easy to make out of a decoction of the root and adding beeswax.

Mint (10 plants) - Ahh mint, one of my favorite plants. I’m a huge drinker of mint teas as well as using mint oils in cooling lotions. It’s great for burns and upset stomachs.

Lavender- (80 plants) - Yes that does seam like a quite a bit of lavender till you know Scott and his love for the sent. Now truth be told I’m much more of a sage person when it comes too sent, but lavender will do. This number of plants will allow the making of lavender oil for scenting laundry soaps, pillow sprays. I’m going to make the knot hedging of the garden out of this.

Rosemary- (10 plants) - One of the best cooking herbs out there when fresh it also, when combined with Skullcap makes for one great tea for getting rid of headaches.

Skullcap- (10 plants) - So named for its blue skull cap shaped flowers this is the second part of the tea for headaches.

Vervain- (10 plants) - A beautiful purple flowering herb that is a very good sleep inducer. Combined with chamomile it makes a wonderful bed time tea.

English Thyme (5 plants) - The first of the cold cut trio I’m planting it’s also a great cooking herb. The real reason for this plant is to make the cough syrup with it, Hyssop, and Elecampane.

Hyssop (5 plants) - Part two of that trio it works well on it’s own as a tea for getting rid of fevers. A plant that butterflies love, it has brilliant blue flowers.

Elecampane (10 plants) - The last of the boys of winter this plant has its roots used so that is why the double in plants. The roots can only be used after the second year of growth. It is a powerful cough suppressant.

Chamomile (20 plants) – this little bugger spreads like wildfire I know and makes a wonderful groundcover. Aside from that it’s well know to calm nerves and smells very good. It’s getting made into shampoos and teas.

Sweet Basil (20 plants) - cooking, cooking and more cooking. Being used in 52 quarts of cooking…need I say more.

Oregano (10 plants) –the other cooking, cooking, cooking plant

Sweet Grass (3 plugs) - a sacred grass to the Native Americans and a plant that grows and grows. I use it in incenses and after a year I’ll be making three harvests a year on it. This will allow for the starting of basket weaving.

White Sage (10 plants) - Great for cooking and awesome as an incense to get rid of unwanted energies. This also makes great cleaning soaps when combined with orange oil.

Mugwort (5 plants) - A good mind opening herb when drunk or burned. It’s really there just for that.

As for the food thing, many of you know that everyday for breakfast I have pasta and tomatoes. Del Monte makes an organic: tomatoes with basil, garlic, and oregano. I eat a can a day of this for breakfast/lunch. I've done so for years and I hope by planting the tomatoes and garlic and using the basil, oregano from the herbs I grow I hope to be able to can enough myself to not have to buy then again. By planting about 25 tomato plants and about 25 heads of garlic I should be able to produce way more then needed to can 52-60 quarts of the mixture. I’m trying out different recipes this year on mom’s tomato crop. It's not really the money that it will save, but I hope to not have the packaging waist. I eat one can a day 6 days a week. That is 312 cans a year. By canning things in quart or half gallon jars I can reuse them and therefore being better for the environment.
The third fruit in the 3 are two apple trees, do to my apple fetish, these too can be frozen or canned. This means that pretty much only one meal a day I will have to get from elsewhere. Were planting more in the way of veggies, so that we can freeze them things like beans, peppers, beets and carrots. This means that if we do things right we should only be buying minimal stuff from the store. Savings wise, I’ll be cutting out about $1000 a year off of the food budget. The seeds for all this run about $30 dollars. When we look at the houses I know that the yard is a big part of our decision. This weekend I'll be starting the almost 300 herb plants needed to start the herb garden next spring up at my mom’s place. I’ll be planting them out in an organic soil mixture in the long seed trays. Then in about a month I’ll head up there and transplant the little things into 4 inch plastic pots for the summer. This will give them a year to grow in their pots before getting planted our yard.
Scott has agreed to let me rip up most of the yard and turn it into a traditional English Herb Garden, complete with pebble paths. I'll be keeping a hell of allot of notes on this and how the things work out so forgive the occasional dull post about plant germination, syrup distilling and canning that may pop up from time to time.

Shade and Sweet water
Edmund

Well it’s been a long time since we have sat down for a little chat. The world of EdmundLand has been filled up with a bunch of interesting things going on.

Friday night Carmen dropped by for our first game of Settlers of Catan in well over six months. Its not that I have lost interest in the game, on the contrary I’m drooling over the new Rome set, but life just got way too full. So Friday night Carmen came over to spend the night and we broke out the game and played as people came in and out of the place. Sunny stopped by for a while as did Amy. It was a good night filled with wine, extra sharp white cheddar cheese and good times.

Saturday morning came a bit early, as we got to bed about 2am. We were up at about 8:00 to get over to Sunny’s for our field trip. Seven of us descended on Sunny’s place chattering with the caffeine of morning coffee. We loaded up into her SUV and headed off to our field trip to the Bahai Temple: http://www.bahai.us/bahai-temple It was fantastic. We had a good hour and a half each way in the car to get there so it was filled with good tunes and conversation. The sun was shining bright and we had the windows rolled down. Carmen and I sat in the cargo area in the back and we all got into the groove of the day. We got there about 12:15 as we wanted to make the 12:30 devotional to see what they did.

Once we were there everyone was amazed with the outside of the building, which you really need to see to believe. I had seen it many times as my friends Jenny and Ginger lived in that area in my Rocky Horror days, but I had never been inside of it. The building itself is make of quartz and cement and is just dazzlingly white in the morning sun. It sits right along side the lake and has trees and fountains around it. We walked up to the front door of the great dome and were just shocked by the complexity of the outer carvings that went all the way though to the inside. The building consisted of only one great chamber made up of nine sides. The windows faced all directions and the vast vault of the dome towered over us in a tapestry of stone and light. It was breathtaking. There was no alter, just a speaking podium to the front. The vistas of windows had sayings of their prophets above them.

We took seats off to the side and waited for the devotional to start. There were only about a dozen people in the temple including us went the devotional started. Seated at the front near the podium were a small group of people that were obviously there to hold the service. One by one they each went up to the podium and recited, what I imagined was part of their scriptures. Some was in English other parts were in Persian. It was a little odd, as there was no visible form of leadership to the gathering. Some hesitated a bit before going up checking to make sure that none of the others there were going to head up first. It was only about 15 min long and we all sat there when it was over wondering just what it was we had just seen.

Down below the dome on the outside is the entrance to the visitors center, and it was here that we decented after the service. We noticed a man talking to a small group of people I a lecture room off to the side so we quietly sat down and listened. For the better part of an hour we listened, asked questions and learned about this most interesting faith. That lecture was the most interesting part of the day. I asked for a recommendation on a book that would start one off learning more about the faith and he gave us a few titles to work with so we’re going to choose one of them to be our next reading for book club. About 2:00 we piled back into the car and headed back.

Now the last half of our day was to be played out at Phil’s place up in Island Lake. Once we were all back at Sunny’s we loaded up into our own cars and caravanned out there as none of us were sure as to where it was. Turns out that Phil is less then one block from T and P’s place, so of course Carmen and I had to bound over there to bang on the door…but no one was home. Back to Phil’s we went. Amy joined us at this point and we started doing Practical work.

Here we sat making Pagan projects, eating pizza and brownies and practicing our divination. It was hours of interesting chatter with all of us giving our interpretations of cards and opinions on decks. The place smelled wonderful as we had also played with essential oils. All this lead up to our doing our New Moon ritual starting about 10:30, which went very well. It was the first time the new writings I have been doing were used in a group setting and everyone gave it very high praise. The day wound up about 1am and so Carmen and I loaded stuff back up and headed back to my place to pick up her car and I went in and just about crashed on the rug I was so tied.

Yesterday was a very quiet day. Scott and I are headed to Florida next month on the same day that he, mom and I have show tickets so we went over to exchange them and winded our way back home by looking at houses and getting a better feel for where we want to move to in the fall/winter. Took a nap in the afternoon, read some of my book and basicly did nothing. Watched more of Planet Earth last night and crashed hard.

CALLING ALL SCI-FI GEEKS!!!!!
We ALL need to head on down to the Music Box Theatre on Saturday May 5, They are having a Sci-Fi fest from Noon-2am. Here is the line up:

METROPOLIS.............

Forbidden Planet

The Day The Earth Stood Still

La Jette

THX1138

SERENITY!!!!!!!

Mad Max

The Termator...

All this for $14!!!!!

Then coming for one week only is the backstage story of WICKED, AVENUE Q, and TABOO called Show Buisness:

http://showbusiness-themovie.com/