The Urban Pantheist

2013 in first sentences:

January: "On Saturday we drove to Vermont to see Alexis' side of the family for holiday type stuff." (This was a horrendous drive in the snow on bald tires. I've resolved not to drive to Vermont in winter any more. My mother in law asked me on xmas day when I was coming up again. I said "when the snow is all gone.")

February: "Turtle is a very special pit bull." He is indeed. Now his name is Bentley and he lives with his forever family. We had him for a long time, through heart surgery and recovery. Great temperament, great dog. We haven't seen enough pictures of him. We're seriously thinking about making a Facebook connection mandatory to adopt one of our fosters.

March: "I am back from Los Angeles and I have a couple hundred photos to share." I really enjoyed Los Angeles. Meeting Fiona was a real highlight, and I'm still not sure if I said/didn't say/posted something that offended her, or if she's just moved back into permanent lurker status. I also got to see my friend Lila, who I love so much, and her wonderland inside the Natural History Museum. Fiona got me and my brother and father tickets to see the Watkins Family Hour and a live recording of Jeff Garlin interviewing Aziz Ansari. Fiona and the Watkins learned one of my dad's favorite songs (Scotch and Soda) and played it. Desperately hoping that the Watkins Family Hour podcast of that show will come out someday!

April: "We went to the taping of NPR's Ask Me Another!" Speaking of awesome shows.

May: "So I was getting sick of the internet just now and was about to go to bed (I'm beginning to take pride in going to bed before nine--I'm such a rebel!) when I decided to go look at my Gilmour Ride Sponsorship Page." You guys reading this sponsored me in my charity bike ride! Thanks! It ended up being an ordeal, as my bike malfunctioned and I had to ride a knobby-tired mountain bike with no toe clips. I might as well have used a razor scooter to go 25 miles.

June: "Hey you two friends who have special posts coming your way in exchange for donating to my charity bike ride!" A month later I was apologizing--I promised special posts in exchange for donations. I made good on the giraffe one, maybe maybe not on the "hidden Boston" one.

July: "When we first looked at the yard of Contentment Cottage, one of the things we noticed was an abundance of bluish brambles--black raspberry cane!" Which finally produced fruit, two years after moving in. Kind of a lot of them this year, which was nice.

August: "I am resistant to including garden plants in this project, but this tomato plant insisted." A tomato sprouted from the side of our compost bin. Ridiculously productive tomato year.

September: "On the Saturday of this Labor Day Weekend Alex came over and enjoyed some Back Bay IPA." My friend Alex has been a real constant in my life. I should be careful not to take her for granted, because it's so easy and warm to hang out with her.

October: "In late September my deliberate neglect of the yard bears fruit." Speaking here of blue wood asters.

November: "So we've had this thing in our house for the week." Speaking here of Reed, a foster puppy that we had for a short time. He was with us to greet the trick-or-treaters.

December: "My dad came to visit yesterday and we decided to go to Revere Beach." My dad has visited a lot this year. It's been great fun, going to neighborhoods I never go to and exploring together. It wasn't long ago that I thought I was going to lose him, so I try to take any opportunity to spend time with him.

Oh yeah, I forgot I was doing this. Hope you aren't bored or annoyed by it. Well, you can always skip past if you are.

30 Day Song Challenge day 19 - a song from your favorite album


( Now playing! Avenged Sevenfold, James Kochalka Superstar, Sebadoh, Al Green, and yes once again: The Beatles! )

When you read this you're tagged! Take a picture of you in your current state, no changing your clothes or quickly putting on makeup. NO PHOTOSHOP. Show your F-List the real you!

Since I'm a posting fool today, I may as well share these book recommendations from a facebook meme. They are more interesting to the people who read this journal than to my facebook friends anyway.  I've already written about most of these in this journal, but it might be nice to have them all in one place.   The rules of the meme state that your first entry has to be the book you are currently reading.

Most of these are sciencey books but are written for the digestion of laypersons. No degree is needed to appreciate them.

1. The Ghosts of Evolution / I wasn't going to recommend it, but it is what I'm reading now. It's about the very fascinating subject of plants that evolved alongside seed-dispersing animals such as giant sloths and mastodons which are now extinct. It's not very well written, however, I like the subject enough that I'm digging through it. It's by Connie Barlow. 

2. I'm also reading The New Kings of Non-Fiction, edited by Ira Glass. I got it when I donated to NPR. It has short pieces by lots of different people, including many of the authors on this list, and famous New Yorker essayists.

3. Song of the Dodo / Rather tomelike but entertaining piece on island biogeography, and how all biology is becoming similar to it, by David Quammen. I would recommend reading anything by Quammen, who recently has been writing stuff about Darwin for National Geographic. Let me take this opportunity to link to his essay Planet of Weeds, again.

4. Beast in the Garden / A natural history book that reads like a pulp crime novel, about the way the world is has changed in such a way as to put mountain lions into dangerous proximity to humans, by David Baron.

5. Dogs: A New Understanding of Canine Origin, Behavior, and Evolution / A sensible and pragmatic approach to understanding dogs, based on a much more likely alternative to the "cavemen stealing wolf puppies" origin of domestic dogs.  By Ray and Lorna Coppinger.

6. Parasite Rex / About the vital role parasites have played in the evolution of other animals, and how parasites can manipulate the behavior of other animals. By Carl Zimmer.

7. The Omnivore's Dilemma / Hard to imagine that anyone who has heard of this book hasn't already committed to reading it or to avoiding it, but I heartily recommend it. Utterly compelling, and very important; by Michael Pollan (I also recommend The Botany of Desire by the same author.)

8. A Short History of Nearly Everything / Best introduction to the natural sciences ever written. Fully integrates Cosmology, Physics, Chemistry, and Biology, with a bit of gossiping about the personalities involved in developing these sciences. By Bill Bryson, who has written a bunch of stuff that people have recommended to me that I haven't read yet.

9. When You are Engulfed in Flames / The latest book by the 21st century Mark Twain, David Sedaris. I've read everything he's written (I prefer the semi-fictionalfamily memoirs to the fully fictional plays and stories with animal characters) and have the laugh lines and split sides to prove it.

10. Dear Mr. Mackin and Thank You for your Continued Interest / Two collections of letters to and responses from corporations, by my former classmate Rich Mackin. These letters highlight the absurdity of modern consumerist culture; he's speaking truth to power, and power's response is pretty hilarious.

Haiku2 for urbpan
i guess this would have been appropriate for me but i can't blame
@ aboutmylife.netadvogato.orgblogger.comblogs.gnome.orgblogspot.comdeadjournal.comgreatestjournal.cominsanejournal.comlivejournal.commyspace.comspaces.msn.com
Created by Grahame

I refreshed several times to get ones I liked. It goes together as a story poem about my life, my wife, my family:

seldom see on this
day in 365 urban species
bird's nest fungus

and expensive from
a predatory earthworm
like animal june

i read about the
whole plant is toxic to
some swooning woman

as i like that is
to prove it she sent me a
good time a great place

with pretty strong winds
fortunately alexis
and i thank you all

me and my dad's
house tomorrow afternoon
it will be enough

...........


And a little something for soylent_screen fans

i recommended
murder party 2007 kingdom
of the spiders 1977

I've been tagged! Usually I pretend not to notice, but this one dictates that I post one thing per day that made me happy that day, and that's a good thing, considering how often this blog devolves into complaints.

I was happy today after I installed a new sprayer for the kitchen sink! Also I found a cool Pneu-Dart baseball cap at work that seemed to be abandoned. It's a nice quality cap, all hunter's camo and the pneu-dart logo on it. And Alexis texted me to say she was delighted to have finished her project at work, and I was happy for her.

Is it too early to look back at 2008 and try to figure out what it was all about? Nah, let's take a look at the first text posts of each month and see if it adds up to something. ( Read more... )

In the interest of posting something about nothing at all, here's a meme. It's a list of one hundred life experiences, most of which anyone could do if they had the money, some of which are misfortunes, and a few require courage or gumption. I have no idea who compiled this list or why. Things I have done are in bold. Some of them I've actually taken pictures of, and the links are in there. Whee! ( Read more... )

This is a pretty cool tool. You just type in an address, and it tells you how "walkable" the area is, in terms of how close different services and stores are. My neighborhood scored an 86, which is pretty good but makes me wonder what neighborhood could possibly get a 100. Maybe if you lived in a shopping mall, or in certain parts of New York.

Also, it's clearly not a perfect program, as it told me that my closest bar was an Orange Julius. I wouldn't have moved here if that was true.

Tell me what your neighborhood's walkability score is!