Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in salamander42's LiveJournal:

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Sunday, November 9th, 2008
5:30 pm	Writer's Block: Idiomatic Confusion Whether it's a canary in the coal mine or a waitress in the weeds, idiomatic expressions can sometimes stump us even in our own language. What common expression puzzles you the most? View 500 Answers The expression "Shooting the shit" has always stumped me.  I have no idea where or when it actually originated, but I always imagine that it was with a couple of cowboys hanging around at the edge of  a pasture talking and shooting at piles of cow dung to pass the time. As for the "waitress in the weeds"  thing that seems to be confusing so many people who answered this. . .  Hearing it phrased like that kind of confused me at first but once I read the explanation I realized that when I worked as a line cook we used "in the weeds" all the time to describe our situation when things got really busy.   It kinda sounds like a golf expression.  I wonder how it came to be so common amongst restaurant workers. (Comment on this)
Friday, December 7th, 2007
7:04 am	Stumbled across this video the other day: From the band Second Person.  They've got a pretty cool website too. . . http://www.secondperson.net/ Current Music: The Alphabet Song - Second Person (Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 25th, 2007
10:12 pm	A slightly belated festival post. Last weekend was Wild Magic at Lothlorien.  A good time was had by all.  It was wonderful to see some friends that I haven't seen nearly enough of recently.  And unlike Elf Fest, I managed to leave my anxiety (what little there has been of it) at home.  I just had an overall good time instead of an okay time punctuated by a few really good moments and a few really bad ones.  We were hoping to head down on Thursday night after we both got off of work, but we just didn't have it together enough to get packed and out the door by a time that would still let us get in the gate before it was closed for the night.  So we waited and took our time and headed out late on Friday morning and got there early in the afternoon.  We got unloaded quickly and got the car parked, then had lunch and took our time setting up camp.  It was nice to be able to slack off on setting up instead of being in a rush to get it done before dark, or fumbling around trying to set up in the dark.  I've gotten pretty good over the years at setting up in the dark, but its nice to avoid it if possible.  I crashed kind of early on Friday night. . . before midnight I think.  I went to get something from the tent and decided to stretch out for a few minutes and the next thing I knew it was starting to get light outside.  I think Nikki tried to wake me up at one point but failed and ended up in bed with me.  I found out on Saturday that no one ended up staying up.  It was just a low energy night.  Saturday was good. . . Didn't do much except cook and lounge around.  Made fried potatoes and eggs for breakfast, fried catfish and rice for dinner.  The catfish was fabulous and will probably be in regular rotation for dinner at home for a while.  Saturday night was much more lively.  I drummed a hell of a lot and my hands are still recovering to some extent.  I just don't play as often as I used to and I've gotten kind of soft.  We had some wonderful jams though, and it was well worth the pain.  I also found a lot more opportunity to play my frame drum than I usually do which was nice.  I had a little trouble getting through the early morning lull before blue light and discordia and the usual chaos that ensues, but I made it and had a very fun morning.  I think we had a good 20 people or so in the dome for Resh, which is pretty good.  Not the most I've seen, but there were a few of the usual dome rats who were absent this festival.  I didn't get nearly as much sleep as I would have liked before the tent got too hot for me.  We didn't stick around too late into the afternoon. . . got packed up and headed out and were home by about 4 or so.  Had pizza for dinner and went to bed really early. I know I've slacked off as usual and left out a ton of stuff.  I'm lazy, and tired. (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, August 12th, 2007
4:35 pm	Safe and sound. Just got home from the backpacking trip.  I'll post details later, but for right now I just need to chill for a while and maybe take a nap.   I will tell you that we had a great time though.  I'd been looking forward to doing that for months! Current Mood: exhausted (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, August 11th, 2007
2:52 pm	Heading out for a hike. . . Nikki and I are headed down to the Charles C Deam Wilderness in Hoosier National Forest for a hike.  We'll be heading out from the Fire Tower parking area and taking the Sycamore Loop trail.  I'm not sure if we'll follow the loop all the way around or just camp near the creek at the bottom of the trail and hike back out tomorrow the same way we went in.  Anyhow, it's a fairly popular trail, so if we have any trouble we should be able to get help pretty easily, but if I don't post again by Monday, would someone be kind enough to call the police and let them know there may be a couple of hikers in trouble?  I'm really not expecting problems, but better safe than sorry! Current Mood: excited (Comment on this)
Sunday, July 22nd, 2007
1:32 pm	Aeon Flux I forgot to mention in my last post that Nikki and I had just finished watching the Aeon Flux complete Animated Collection. I got it from the library. It has 10 full length episodes plus all of the shorts and some other special features. We still have some of the special features to go through, but we've watched all of the actual episodes. We also had a fun little blast from the past with some other Liquid Television shorts that were on there. I remember staying up late as a kid to watch Liquid Television and 120 minutes back in the day. Fun stuff. (Comment on this)
Friday, June 29th, 2007
8:31 pm	Everyone's doing it. . . Book meme 1. Grab the nearest book. 2. Open the book to page 123. 3. Find the fifth sentence. 4. Post the text of the next 4-7 sentences on your LJ along with these instructions. 5. Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest (unless it's too troublesome to reach and is really heavy. Then go back to step 1). ---------------------------------------------- From "Mort" by Terry Pratchett: And a hand grabbed his hair and dragged him to the surface, which was suddenly full of pain. Ghastly blue and black blotches swam in front of his eyes. His lungs were on fire. His throat was a pipe of agony. Hands - cold hands, freezing hands, hands that felt like a glove full of dice - towed him through the water and threw him down on the bank where, after some game attempts to get on with drowning, he was eventually bullied back into what passed for his life. ---------------------------------------------- It really does say "glove full of dice" but I think it's supposed to be "ice". Good thing I left this sitting on the table next to my computer, otherwise the nearest book would have been the phone book. Of course there is also a bookshelf within 6 feet of me with at least 150 books - mostly sci-fi and fantasy novels - on it. Current Mood: tired (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, May 5th, 2007
6:56 pm	No festival for me. . . Well, here I sit at home, lamenting my poor van, and wishing I was at Our Haven's Beltaine festival. This is the first one I've missed in about 5 years. *sighs* I need to get out into the woods sooo bad. Current Mood: melancholy (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, May 4th, 2007
1:25 pm	Friends. . . I apparently need to make a point to check periodically to see if anyone new has added me to their friends list. I usually make my posts friends only, but being somewhat distraught about my van when posting this morning I forgot to do so and got a comment from someone very dear to me and who I love very much, but who I've been more or less out of communication with for WAAAAAY too long. And when looking into that I found that there was another old friend who had added me as well. It made me feel all warm and fuzzy. . . I miss my friends back in Ohio, and I wish it was feasible for me to visit regularly. I've been feeling kind of trapped here in Indy due to my vehicle not being fit for long trips, but maybe I'll have a new vehicle soon and a little more travel will be possible. I'd like to move back to Ohio someday, I just don't know when that's going to be possible. *sighs* (3 Comments |Comment on this)
10:10 am	. . . Well. I think my transmission is finally dead. It seemed to be working a bit better this morning when I dropped Nikki off to work, then it just stopped shifting out of first gear. So now I'm stuck at home trying to figure out what to do. I called a transmission shop. They obviously can't tell me anything for sure without looking at it, but the guy seemed to think that it was a good sign that it will still move both in forward and reverse, it just won't shift. He said that it might be bad sensors or something. . . Best case scenario if he's right would be about 300 bucks. Worst case scenario if he's wrong would be between 1400 and 1800 bucks for a rebuild. But it's $60 just to do the diagnostic, and since I have a feeling that it's not just the sensors, I'm hesitant to spend that since I know I can't afford the $1400-1800. . . I just don't know what to do. . . I guess I'll think about it for a while and see what I come up with. Current Mood: anxious (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, April 28th, 2007
7:25 am	Sunrise time! Why is it that through the week when my alarm goes off at 7:30 or 8:00 I can easily hit the snooze button or turn it off and fall right back asleep, but on the weekend I often wake up on my own at 7:00 or so and can't fall back asleep for anything? And I was up 'till 2:00 this morning or something like that! I don't actually mind though. Early morning is probably my favorite time of day. I've got coffee brewing and even though I missed the actual sunrise, I'm going to go sit on the patio and drink coffee and watch the birds. . . especially the ducks. Nikki told me that the first baby ducks were out for a swim yesterday, but I haven't seen them yet. Current Mood: awake Current Music: chirping birds outside (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 7th, 2006
6:00 pm	So much to do, so little motivation It's been tough the last few weeks for me to find the energy and motivation to do a lot of things that need done around here. . . mainly getting my finances figured out and doing housework. I also need to find/make time and find money to do a little more work on my van and get a couple of new tires before the weather turns to snow and slush and ice. I have managed to do a couple of things that I've been wanting to do for a while. Last weekend I spent some time getting one of my remote controlled airplanes repaired and batteries charged up, but haven't been able to fly it yet because the weather has been uncooperative. The weekend before that I built a stand for my upright bass using a conga stand as a starting point. It's kind of ugly but it serves it's purpose and you can't see much of the stand when the bass is in it anyway. My project for this weekend I think is going to be to build a small workbench and make a space for it in our "dining room" area. If I do it right maybe it can even be used as a small dining room table. It'd be kind of nice to have a place to sit down for meals with Nikki occasionally instead of mostly eating on the couch or in front of our computers. Once I have a workbench I plan to work on either my other r/c airplane or my r/c helicopter. . . probably the helicopter since I only have radio gear for one or the other and I can play with the helicopter indoors during the winter. But I never had much success flying the helicopter before, so we'll see what I decide when the time comes. We're getting pretty well settled in to out new place. I still have about 3 or 4 largish boxes of stuff that spent the last year in Molly's basement that I need to sift through to find the few things that I REALLY want or need to keep and throw away the rest or give it to goodwill. I've already gotten rid of quite a few things and it feels good to be lightening my load a bit. I'm such a pack rat sometimes. Okay, all the time. We still haven't really hung any decorations or anything. . . once we do that I think it'll really start to look nice. . . it already feels like home, we just need a few more little touches to make it really cozy. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, October 7th, 2006
4:59 pm	I'm so proud of myself. . . It took me probably somewhere around 12 or 14 hours over the course of about a week and a half, but I fixed my van that hasn't been running for a couple of weeks. All I had to do was replace the water pump, which on some cars is easy, but on my van was such a pain. . . I had to remove the alternator, the air conditioning compressor and the power steering pump, drain the cooling system, remove the coolant overflow resivoir, remove the right side engine mount, the timing belt covers and timing belt, and last but not least, the water pump itself. I really debated weather or not to do all of that and run the risk that there would ultimately be somethning else wrong that would cause the van to still not run. . . I know it has plenty of other things wrong. . . it has over 185,000 miles on it. . . but nothing that is currently keeping it from running. Now that I've done this though I know I could do it again in a fraction of the time, and my confidence in my mechanical abilities has skyrocketed. Unfortunately we now live in an apartment complex where they don't want people working on their cars in the parking lot. I should be able to get away with a couple of the more minor things I want to do though, like puting in new spark plugs and distributer cap and rotor, and as long as it's drivable I can always go over to Molly's to do anything major I'm sure. Current Mood: content (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, September 25th, 2006
10:43 pm	A total waste of time. . . . . . But so much fun! I was sitting here eating dinner and wasn't seeing anything on you tube that looked interesting, so I went to google and typed in "entertain me" and clicked on the first result that came up. . . and have spent the several hours browsing links on http://www.digyourowngrave.com/ I've looked at really cool optical illusion sidewalk art, videos of funny animal companions like a cat and a crow that are best buddies, Sesame Street martians that just about had me rolling on the ground laughing. . . and a bunch of other stuff. Check it out if you're bored and have some time to kill. (Comment on this)
Friday, September 22nd, 2006
8:14 pm	Cars and Moving. . . Well, we're down to zero working cars now. . . and we're supposed to be moving next week. . . which means we'll have to rent a u-haul. . . which will make things easier, but is yet another unexpected expense. I'm tempted to just give up on cars for a while. . . save up some money over the winter and get something somewhat decent in the spring. . . I've lived without a car before, it's actually pretty nice not having to worry about insurance or gas prices or maintenence or repairs. . . there's plenty of places that we can get to from our apartment via bus or foot, the only problem is that my job is on the other side of the city and there's no good way to get there by bus. . . Indy's public transit system is pretty mediocre at best. It just so happens that someone I work with lives in the apartment complex that we're moving to, so I guess I can probably hitch a ride with him for a while until Nikki and I either find another car or get one of ours fixed. . . I THINK I know what's wrong with the van. . . I'm pretty sure it's the water pump which is only $20 to $30 but it's a ton of work to change it because you have to remove so many other parts in order to get to it, and I'm worried that I'll do all of that and end up having a van that still doesn't work due to some other problem that I haven't diagnosed. I have a pretty good record for fixing my vehicles once I know what exactly needs fixed, but I often have trouble diagnosing the problem. Well, all of that being said, if anyone knows of anyone with a cheap car for sale in the Indy area, let me know. . . and when I say cheap, I mean REALlY cheap. . . 500 bucks or less. . . just as long as it runs and has no known major repairs nessecary. Current Mood: surprisingly calm Current Music: Morphine - I'm Free Now (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 3rd, 2006
11:41 pm	stuff I'm sooo looking forward to the festival coming up this weekend. Normally I would have managed to get out camping at least once by this time of the year, but with working two jobs and trying to spend as much time as possible with Nikki I just haven't made it. I'm hoping I'll be able to make it down to a work weekend at Lothlorien before Elf Fest, but I doubt that it'll happen. I need to look at my finances and figure out how I'm going to pay for Elf Fest. . . could be problematic. . . maybe i should look into getting a barter or partial barter now before it's too late. Why is it that I go brain-dead when i sit down in front of the computer? I swear I think of all kinds of interesting things during the day that I think I should write about in this journal, then I get home and I can't remember a damn one of them. I need an mp3 player with a record function so I can take it out and record a memo to myself whenever one of these ideas comes to me. Or I could be old fashioned and just carry a little notebook. . . I just want an mp3 player. Oh, and speaking of work. . . I went over to work at the warehouse that I like so much more than the one I usually work in on Monday and again today. I love going over there, but it's starting to feel like I have three jobs instead of two. I wish they would just move me over there permanently. Hopefully it'll happen sooner rather than later. Enough for now. . . it's bed time. . . got another 14 hour day tomorrow. Blah. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, April 30th, 2006
11:01 am	A long overdue update. . . Where to begin? Everything is going okay overall I guess. Things are going really well with Nikki, and we're still planning on moving in together at the end of her lease. We were looking for an apartment, but it looks like we may just stay here with Molly for a few months before we get out own place. Spencer is moving out today. He's going to Bloomington for a week or two I guess, then down to Lothlorien for a while, then I don't know where. Polly is going to be moving in here, maybe for just a few weeks or maybe for a few months, she's not sure. Festival season is starting up. Next weekend is Beltain at Our Haven, then Elf Fest at Lothlorien May 27-29 then the Solstace Reunion at Lothlorien June 23 - 26. After that I don't know for sure what I'll be doing before Wild Magic in September. I wanted to go out to Burning Man this year, but I don't think that's going to be feasible due to financial constraints. I'm kicking around the idea of trying to go to Brushwood in New York for part of Sirius Rising and maybe Starwood. Let's see. . . The new job is going well. It gets pretty boring at times, just doing the same thing all day every day, but every now and then they have me go work in a different facility in a newer building that isn't so dungeon like and I get to do different jobs and they have the radio playing. . . I want to transfer over there full time. It probably won't happen anytime too soon but I think I have a good chance. The supervisor seems to really like me. I just hope I don't have to go on third shift to get in there. I can handle second shift for a while, but I don't know about third. Okay, just had my train of thought interrupted by a phone call. . . more later maybe. (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 21st, 2005
7:20 pm	hurrah for the solstice The longest night of the year tonight. . . days start getting longer again after tonight. YAY! Molly and Spencer and I are going over to Bart's for a little drumming and celebration. Should be fun. More later or tomorrow. Current Mood: okay (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, December 19th, 2005
8:07 pm	I shouldn't be this tired. . . I had the day off, didn't do anything terribly strenuous. . . well there was the application I filled out at Fastenall that had the friggin' math test as part of it. . . simple stuff but it required me to prod a part of my brain to life that's been dormant for quite some time. . . Hope they hire me, sounds like a cool place to work. Anyhoo, I'm tired and my back hurts and I think I might do something crazy tonight and read instead of staring at my computer monitor all night. I picked up a couple of books today at a used bookstore not far from my house that I had never realized was there before. I thought it was new but when I asked the lady working there she said she'd been there for like sixteen years. *shrugs* Its amazing how many little places like that exist right under our noses. It'd be interesting to try spending a period of time without going to a corporate/franchise/chain type establishment and seek out their privately owned counterparts instead. Bet you'd end up discovering some amazing places and people. (Comment on this)
Saturday, December 17th, 2005
5:46 pm	On the verge Don't know what exactly I'm on the verge of. . . could be good, could be bad. . . My head has been full of spiraling thoughts. I'm trying to figure out where I'm going to go from here. Trying to formulate a few goals for the next few months and maybe once I get those figured out then I'll think about the next few years, and eventually try and come up with a long term plan for the next decade or two. My number one goal has to be to get myself the hell out of debt. I'm going to turn all of my energies to getting a second job. . . I'm going to try not to be too picky, but there are a few things I'll probably refuse to do: fast food, gas station attendant, any kind of repetitive factory type thing. . . I'd really like to get a warehouse type job again. . . driving a forklift is fun! But hell, I'll wash dishes somewhere if I can't find something better than that in a relatively short time. . . I remember wondering about dish-washers when I worked as a line cook. . . they always seemed a little off. . . I wasn't sure if it was just the kind of people that got hired to wash dishes or if something about the job made them that way. . . something in the cleaning chemicals maybe. Will people think I'm a little off if I work as a dish-washer? Thinking about dish-washers reminds me. . . there is a weekly show on NPR called This American Life: http://www.thislife.org A semi-regular contributor to the show goes by the name of Dish-washer Pete. . . he moves from town to town on the greyhound. . . gets a dish-washing job to buy food and save up enough for a ticket to the next town. . . maybe it would be fun to do something like that for a summer. Okay, enough with the dish-washing thing. . . first things first. . . I can't go much of anywhere with almost ten thousand dollars of debt holding me down. I'm going to get a second job and focus all of my pay from one job on my debt and all of the pay from the other on regular expenses and rent and hopefully at least a little on savings. I just hope I can maintain the willpower and focus to do this. . . it's going to mean I won't have much of a life for a while but I can probably eliminate a large chunk of debt in 6 months or so and maybe make a road trip towards the end of the summer. . . I REALLY want to go to Burning Man at the end of August. . . http://www.burningman.com/ 35,000 people in the middle of the Nevada desert creating art and community in some of the harshest conditions imaginable. . . sounds amazingly wonderful to me. . . am I crazy or what? One of the principles that keeps cropping up as I read the articles on their sight is "radical self-reliance" and THAT is one of the most appealing things to me. I want to achieve that in my every day life, not just for a week in the desert. . . I know that to a certain extent we all have to rely on others. But I want to do for myself as much as I possibly can. . . maybe even eventually hunting to provide at least some of my own meat and gardening and living off the land. . . when/if I have my own piece of land. . . That's a long term thing tho. . . Anyhow. . . my short term goals are: 1. Get a second job 2. Work on paying off debt and saving a bit of money 3. Try to take a month or so off next summer/fall to travel and see some of the amazing people and places that exist in this country. I'm not gonna think much beyond that right now. . . I don't know if I'm going to give up on my dream of flight, or if I'm going to try to go back to school. . . I'll deal with those when the time comes. . . right now I'm just concerned with getting out of debt and I can't go to school and work two jobs so. . . it's going on the back burner. Current Mood: quixotic Current Music: all 9000+ of the songs in my library on random (Comment on this)