In the moments before the lawn is mowed

[gurdonark]

I spent the morning on idle detours, went to the Connemara nature preserve retreat five minutes from our house, but the retreat parking was pretty crowded, and as my idea of a retreat involves actual escape from others, I contented myself with stopping by Target discount store, and then with driving to the K Mart, whose going out of business store placed an instamatic camera at virtually give away pricing, listening to a church service on the radio, from a church that eschews musical instrumentation, a gorgeous a capella congregational refrain "Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?", but I only caught a part of the sermon, which began "I want to speak to you today about something you may not like to hear. That something is Sin. You hear folks call it nowadays Error or Mistake, but the Bible is clear, and the Bible calls it Sin", and I reflected on what I call it, and then went on to a stop by the Dollar General and the Big Lots, in search of bargains in merchandise so unpopular that even Wal Mart didn't move it, landing it in the dollar stores, then I heard part of a different sermon by a sonorous voice about raising my children, which was good, though I'm childless, and then driving about listening to Odetta on Prairie Home Companion, not twelve hours after declaring that though I'd never seen Odetta, I think she's be a concert worth flying to, planting a post in my back yard, and re-hanging the bird feeder, in hope of attracting a bird or two, watching my marigolds in the terrarium, which are not thriving two weeks into the project, and may be on their way out,
placing it in the sun for a final attempt to rally them, failing in my quest for a dirt cheap twin deck cassette boombox, instead settling for 15 dollar single deck number, wholly inadequate to any recording purpose, but in fact I recorded
both a series of kazoo ambient sounds and my
delicate autoharp rendition of "Kum Ba Yah",
to the accompaniment of an impressive amount of cheap cassette recorder tape hiss, and soon I'm destined to mow, so that the neighbors don't post "wild weed refuge" signs on my front yard, not that they would, but it's a nice image, I think.
A yard mow, a quiet walk in the neighborhood, a second walk for my little pal lhasas (never my *children*, by the way, notwithstanding the trite phrases when I pick them up at the vet's, but always my "friends" or "our pals"), and then
some document drafting for work, and some rest,
I'm eager to rest, but now the mower calls.

Comments

Vault.com Posting

[(Anonymous)]

Robert,

I saw one of your postings on Vault.com. The relevant quote is here:
"Author: gurdonark
Date: Feb 28, 2002 7:36 PM EST

I had said earlier that I was thinking about a website or book, in which all my 12 useless repetitive ideas could be in one place.
Lately, I have just set up a
"journal" at www.livejournal.com; it's just much easier to manage than a website.
...
I'm beginning to think that I will write an inexpensive guide, put it on ebay, and put my tiresome thoughts into tiresome prose (or, for that matter, free verse)."

If you needed help I could you set up a password protected area where you could post an electronic book (using PDF or something like that.) A service like ClickBank.com could process credit card orders and using a combination Perl/PHP script you could automatically issue passwords... After the book was online you wouldn't have to do much more work other than some updating of your material.

I'm not a webdesigner by trade... I'm going to law school this year (univ. of chicago) and have been doing a lot of reading on the net. I'd be pleased to help you out. It wouldn't take me more than a half-hour to a hours work to hook you up with something.

Your investment would be about $99 a year for webservice, plus $8.99 for a domain name. ClickBank.com charges a % fee per transaction.

As for me, I'd just like a free copy of the book, and a link from your website. I think it'd be really cool. You've obviously contributed alot to the Vault.com board, and perhaps you could contribute more.

By the way, I'm a PHP hobbyist so maybe we could build more stuff on the site to get more traffic you.. i.e., message board, links to law schools etc.

I don't know.. just a thought.

Dexter
dds135@yahoo.com

Re: Vault.com Posting

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Dexter--

very thoughtful of you...it's something I have thought about...I may take you up on it...

Back in business

[gregwest98.livejournal.com]

I take it your cold is better and your tire is less flat?

I think I caught the same cold. Either that or pollen; this time of year it can be hard to tell which.

Re: Back in business

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure my cold was fatigue related, based on too much social activity in the prior weekend.
My tire is less flat, though my checking account is more flat. They were nice at Goodyear, but they did cost.

I hope you get to feelin' better.

Cheap Cassette Players

[gregwest98.livejournal.com]

Go ahead and spend $60 on a boombox. You can get some blinking lights along with the somewhat-reduced tape hiss. Ours recorded some passable piano accompanyment to a song that the Brownie troop sang once.

But that's it. My brother-in-law the musician tells me that to get better quality than that requires many thousands of dollars so it seems there is a point of diminishing returns.

Re: Cheap Cassette Players

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

Your brother's advice tracks my own research.
What I need now, though, is a dual deck that costs 60 dollars rather than 300. They used to be plentiful, but now folks get tape and CD rather than dual deck.

I'll keep lookin'.