new project: build to ride

so i’ve begun the journey of building my own bicycle.  ive been thinking about doing it and then while selling two bikes i’ve had around the house on craigslist, i started looking for frames… and sure enough… a guy had a 62 cm rebel contender frame for sale.

the price: “$10 or a 6pack of busch beer”

a good deal

i call, swing by the liquor store, purchase a 12 pack (come on, a 6pack is like $6, i can throw in a few extra), and head over to meet trent. not only do i get the frame, i get a seat and handbars. nice. 3 pieces down, many to go…  so i will be updating on the progress.

its always good to have a project youre working on…

Dear Chris

Dear Chris,
This is Gracie. I appreciated the note. I’m a little surprised
at some of your thoughts. You don’t think I can read? That
I don’t think and wonder in regards to your strange habits?
That I don’t cringe and run at the sound of that racket you play
with your friends on those instruments??!! Don’t worry, I don’t
hold it against you that you didn’t leave
enough food out for me one night. Obviously I took care of
things by helping myself to the entire bag. Just a side note
though, if you continue to say my name with a lisp because
you think its funny, I might just have to continue to keep
missing the litter box.
Love, “Grathie”

twenty-five dollar truth

im tired of truth coming after a night
of five dollar drinks and smokes. it wears
me out that i cant hear it straight from you
unless theres liquor on your breath.
its truth wrapped in spirits. but its not enough.
i want it sober.

dear gracie

dear gracie,
i know, this is strange, writing to you. maybe its partly due to a lot of time with just us two hanging out. and thats cool and all, dont get me wrong. but i thought id just jot a note down to you. sometimes i wonder about what you might be thinking at times. do you wonder where it is i go when i head out the door and dont come home for hours later? (by the way im really sorry for that time several weeks ago when i spent an unexpected night out and hadn’t left you enough food.) do you have a concept of time? are there times when youre thinking, “he sure has been gone a long time. i wonder when that door is going to open up again and reveal him.” do you ever get hot in the house and complain to yourself about why im insisting on “no A/C ’08?” do you dislike when i have band practice at the house? do you wake me early in the morning sometimes just for fun?  do you sometimes think of jami and want to see her? well, im not sure why im asking these questions. in fact im a bit surprised that i actually sat down to write this to you.  hope you are enjoying living here cuz i appreciate the company.
chris
ps. band practice tomorrow at 6pm. just a heads up.

lovin clouds

so maybe for the past couple years ive been really into clouds. sometimes
i’ll be outside or driving or something and i’ll look up and see some clouds
just popping out of the sky. like they are so formed and solid looking and
just stand out from the rest of the sky. im digging that. im really enjoying
clouds like those. some of them looks so hard and formed that i want to
climb them. scale them. 5.10+ or something you know?
i wonder if i seem them more often im missouri than in south korea since
we actually get thunderstorms here and just rain rain rain there. we get
rough storms here. lightening and thunder that rips you from dreamland.
so basically i love clouds. the end.

anger and loss

the other night at work had some frustrating moments. a quick description of the event that we were catering: 500 guests who paid a lot of money to be able to come to an auction/fund raiser to rescue dogs. there were baseball stars in attendance as well as the event being headed up by the manager himself. needless to say, we were all running around like crazy trying to keep all the buffet stations stocked, there are people mingling around, there are musicians on stage. my mission: keep the food stocked on the buffets. after having passed in front of the stage with a tray of hot food, i arrive, replace the empty tray with the full one of fried cannelloni. a lady suddenly appears, motions for me to come closer so she can say something. “next time don’t walk in front of the stage.” and with that she takes her slightly closed hand and gives me a slight upward rap under my chin. seriously?? i couldn’t believe someone would have the audacity to do that to someone, and not to mention in such a professional and upright event. who does she think she is? now, i don’t get angry often (this is the 2nd major time in 2 years that i can recall) when things happen to me in the sense that my mind is on fire, but this one did it. i couldn’t get anything out of my mouth and she turned around and off she went. needless to say i ended up being in quite an upset mood for the next several hours. and finally i let it go.

the second negative of the night was when i was loading the truck with all the equipment, the chain around my wrist with my japanese coin on it snapped and i couldnt find it among that stacks of crates. gone is my coin ive been wearing for perhaps 4 or more years. a loss it was. its almost as bad as the time i lost the completely unique and roughed up hand-hammered ring in the waves off the coast of hawaii years ago.

and still lives moves on.

vs.

interesting that one can feel emotions of hate and attractiveness towards the same object. or i guess, towards the same person for that matter. don’t get me wrong, im not expressing hating feelings towards someone. im speaking more towards an entity or part of culture. anyone else relate with feelings of attractiveness and animosity towards the same item/concept/person/thing?

ive seen the way it changes people. i can read it in your eyes. its like a play in front of me.

rabbit lean-to

i took a study break today and went out to mow the lawn. yes, what an exciting opening to a blog entry. i decided to pull some weeds and trees that were getting out of control. i say “trees” because there is this weed/bush/tree that keeps coming back at the edge of our little fence and the neighbor’s  yard. so this thing has once again gotten out of control. i twist, cut, and get these pieces that are well over 6 feet tall. after mowing the grass i’m looking at the pile of weed/tree branches and i start getting the idea to build a miniature shelter and then take a picture of it and make it look like something that is much larger in scale. so i get my philippine machete (that has caused me a set of stitches at one time) and begin to cut some posts, then some support beams. i begin to thatch the roof with branches of leaves. just to give you the size, lets just say perhaps 2 rabbits could fit under it. 3 might be pushing it unless its a baby. so im having problems and decide to cut notches in the slanted roof poles. yes, thats better. but still they just wont stay up. so i try using some vines from nearby and connecting the roof branches for a solid piece but it keeps falling when i try to put it up. so i completely failed at my weed/tree rabbit shelter. *sigh*  but it was a good exercise. i imagined something, went to work at it, and failed. and thats okay. i have a couple pieces of mississippi river junk that i need to make into art before august 1st. lets hope i have more success with whatever i envision for them.

visiting your world

Have you ever had a good friend or family member move to another city or somewhere far away and you keep close contact with them? You hear from them about their work, where they live, what they are doing for fun, and who they now hang out with. Perhaps they’ve even moved to a foreign land where their daily life is drastically different. But no matter how much you hear about it, you can only grasp a certain amount of what their life is like. Even with pictures or video, although a lot closer, you don’t get a complete feel for their new life.

At different times my brother, mom, and dad came to visit me while i was living in South Korea. it was significant in that they could be where i was, put names with faces, experience the life sights, smells, tastes, and sounds of where i lived. they walked where i walked, met my dorm students who i lived with every day, and got a feeling for my korean neighborhood. They got to eat samgyupsal and kimchi, visit the singing rooms, experience the bath house, and see and hear the strange language in a way i would never be able to describe to them. my sister on the other hand never made the opportunity to make it out for a visit. how did she picture my life there from my descriptions? how close could her imaginations have been to what it was like? it meant a lot to me that my parents and brother were able to touch my korean world and i can safely assume it was significant to them as well.

I’m thinking about this because i’m flying home at the moment from visiting my brother in california. he has been living there about 5 months and ive heard a lot about his work, new friends, his housemate, fun times, confusing driving, surfing times and so on. I’ve seen pictures on flickr of some of the above as well. but compared to that, its great to be able to visit and put a lot of these things into place with experience. i was able to meet his housemate richard, cruise around the area, drive the highways, get smashed by the waves, see the dinglife.com work place, meet the people who run it, climb rocks out in the 110 degree desert heat, and overall enjoy meeting my brother’s current world.

its a good thing in life to be able to get out and visit new places, especially if its the world of someone that means a lot to you and you have been hearing about. theres so many places out there. so many people’s worlds where they are living their daily lives.

a time of climbing around in joshua tree national park, CA.

jerk

ive gotten sick of a certain type of comedy movies over the past years. more specifically its a particular sort of humor in movies that ive gotten sick of in the past years. the humor that has inappropriate sexual talk and general horniness of males going after women. i guess its funny because guys want to say such things to women and have good responses? anyways, tonight made me think of this kind of thing. at work tonight at a wedding reception, i was carving roast beef like a good caterer. at the other end of the buffet line one of my co-workers, an 18 year old girl, was bringing a fresh pan of food to switch out. a man made a very inappropriate sexual comment about her to the guy in front of him. (i found all this out after the situation had been dealt with). it disgusted her and she immediately felt uncomfortable. the man continued on like nothing and ate his meal and kept getting drinks at the open bar. her older brother who happened to be on the party heard about it and went to the bar and let him know he was cut off. he got angry, started cussing, and the brother sternly yet professionally told him what he had done and that it was crossing the line. thankfully this jerk’s friends near by pulled him aside and soon he left. im sure he thought he was being clever and funny to make such a remark about her to his buddy. she felt very uncomfortable, didnt want to go out on the floor anymore, and it made all of us upset. you dont say things like that about women, to women, and if you think it, keep your cake hole closed. id consider this co-worker of mine a little sister and would absolutely stand up for her. so yeah, it really bothered me to hear about this. and im not saying the movies are causing this, im saying that i dont think its funny cuz when it happens to girls i know, i hate it.