So I’ve been buried up to my eyebrows with links and sites (physical and the web kind..) , books, forums, etc looking for genealogy for the past year off and on. I’ve been gathering names and dates, places, events concerning both sides of my family and it’s brought me to all kindsa new places. However, I somehow seemed to miss a particular site called Geni.
Geni is a social neworking site ala Myspace/Facebook for tracing the family tree and keeping in touch, planning events, etc. What a fantastic idea. I was looking at the Ancestry.com version a month or 2 ago (My Family I think it’s called) and wondered what the interest level would be since I had sent out a communication to some of my aunts and uncles asking for help and info and got no replies. Let’s just say I was more than surprised on Xmas eve when my Mother told me she invited me to the site. I explored in amazement. How could I have missed this?
The tree was started by my uncle Phil Stratton (thanks again Phil!) and people started logging on, me included. I joined the tree and immediately looked for and found details on how to add a GEDCOM file, since I’ve put together a decent sized tree using Family Tree Maker on my desktop. Since there wasn’t much up yet by Phil and David, the merge was relatively painless. Ok, there was some hairpulling and frothing at the mouth at the beginning I admit.. Now all my work is up on a platform that includes everyone in a very interactive and fun way. I’m excited to see the network grow and flourish.
It feels new, lots of buzzing in the forum about new ways to improve, bug fixes, work arounds.. Lots to come I’m sure. This is an exciting development More later ~S
Well kiddies, the message seems to be "When in doubt, eat tranquilizers"
Well, Xmas was a success. Small fun gifts all around, just enough to have a laugh and not get real wrapped up (no pun intended) in compeditive shopping or one-up gifting. Spent some time in East milly with the fam. Mom’s baked ham rocks as always. Nice.
Realized last night that I’d felt a little out of sorts all day because I hadn’t taken my Ativan both nights when I was home this weekend! A quick flash of panic preceeded the swift realization that I felt fine, in fact, I may only be loopy from the long drive home I thought.
So I skipped it last night as well. Once I finally got to sleep, I was amidst some of the strangest repeating dreams I can remember in a while. Tossing and turning all night, then salivating profusely all morning for no apparent reason to the point of near vomiting, I took a hint and munched one (I only take a measely .5 mg now). I felt better, but also way tired, pretty much immediately. Scarily so.
Not this time, but at least I know what layer of hell I’ll be weathering when the day finally comes for me to kick lorazepam outta my life for good. Now it’s time for a nappy nap and hopefully sound sleep. Weird dreams are still ok though, bring em on.
So, it’s been as cold as the proverbial witch’s tit for the past few days and today it’s actually warm enough to make me want to go outside but rainy enough to keep me from it. Maine. *sigh* Winter with its dark hours and gray days has been influencing my listening habits already.
For those who care, the Wintermix09 seasonal comp will be complete by New Years so check in and download if you like. I just wanted to show some love here for some stuff that may not show up on the comp that has been keeping my neurons all warm and tingly through the early winter bluster.
Click above to go to the official site
Thank you Sasha. You never dissappoint. I am so in love with this mix right now. Deep, melodic, varying beat formats, moody and just plain sexy sexy, I am giddy with this new addition to the catalog.
Click to learn more about Popgirl 23
Portland’s little secret, Jen “Popgirl 23″ Barnes is the wellspring from which the ripest tunes in our humble port town flows. She is one of the area’s most well-known and respected house dj’s. She should be, she’s only been at it for 12+ years now. This past year or 2 has seen Jen laying relatively low, but she has continued to put together spotless mixes that range from thoughtful and introspective to out & out stompers. She was awarded Best House Dj at this year’s 2008 We Push Buttons Awards. If you don’t already know what’s up, click above and get with it.
Come out and see for yourself on December 27th @ White Heart!
As I lay here at almost noon in bed in my boxers I ponder further my sadness of the loss of my sacred childhood ritual – Saturday Morning Cartoons.
My childhood years not being my favorite stage of my life, few shining moments shine thru the muck of that mire in my memory. Saturday morning is not only a bright spot but a continuous, reoccurring one that provided some needed escape on a regular basis.
It was with a near Xmas morning anticipation that I would wake as early as possible every Saturday and watch even the oldest cartoons I didn’t care for so much at first. Scramble to to cupboard for a big bowl of cereal (maybe a new prize dig?!), and take up my spot a few feet from the tube on the floor to see my favorite shows larger than life!
Scooby, Speed Buggy, Bugs, Daffy, Droopy, Rocky & Bullwinkle, Stooges, Starblazers, Space Ghost, the Hurculoids, Little Rascals, Speed Racer, Voltron, Tom & Jerry, Dungeons & Dragons, GI Joe, Transformers… On and on
Hey, where'd he go?!?
I still enjoy these shows when I can catch them. I watched them to, I daresay, an abnormally older age. When execs got together to discuss the inception of CN’s Adult Swim my pic might as well have been emblazoned on the cover of the marketing proposal with a big red target on my forehead.
I later found other things to escape into, for better or worse… But I still still watch cartoons with the same fascination I had as a child, though I still miss that special time.
“Delayed reaction from this weekend: No I haven’t lost weight. Stop asking every time you see me.”
Not much else needs to be said here I guess, hence the simple beauty of twitter. I wonder at what point this trend goes from annoying to just plain insulting. It’s starting to tip the scales.
Even a simple, albeit vapid, “lookin good!” [*wink* and/or * thumbs up*] would be better. Pointing out sore spots isn’t complimentary. Save your sentiments for when you can actually, genuinely see a difference, then I’ll appreciate it.
Well, he did it. Trent topped my lofty expectations once again. And that’s saying a lot since I’ve been waiting for this tour since Year Zero came out 2 years ago. With Teeth was not my favorite album he’s done and the 2 shows I caught during that tour (one at the beginning, one at the end) were good but didn’t compare to the Fragility tour in my eyes.
Maybe because it was the first time I was able to make it out to a Nails show, it just seemed so… perfect. The Fragile was/is my favorite album and the live performance floored me. The light show was intense and well executed and reflected the mood of the new material while pacing the rest of the night through the obligatory back catalog. The focal point was the three tall rectangular jumbo LCD panels that showed video segments, strobed, moved up and down and panned vertical to horizontal during various parts of the show. The Great Below always gives me the chills now. I don’t know how many times I watched the DVD when it came out to try and relive a little of that night.
Ghosts desert scene
Lights in the Sky was incredible. I had to stop and do a double-take every so often when the scenes changed on the LCD screen/curtains, especially during the Ghosts segments that essentially brought the accompanying images from each tune to life in several layers, placing the band within them. It was remarkable. I found myself distracted at times trying to figure out how in the hell they were actually doing it! Echoplex featured a drum machine tracker as the back drop, Freese walking out to lock in the beat like Vanna flipping letters. I giggled like a schoolgirl.
Abe, Ryan and I talked ad nauseum on the ride there about doing something combining some sort of art installation with live music Ryan had envisioned. We bickered and brainstormed about what that would look like, how we could accomplish it, whatever it was. On the ride back we were utterly silent about the topic. Having seen what I can only explain as the best possible outcome of that basic idea, we just shrugged and scratched our heads. “Yup, we’re all set I guess.” “There’s no approaching that.”
Yep. Spent the weekend up home at the hunting camp for the annual Partidge hunting trip. It was just as I hoped and expected, as it always is, a refreshing disconnect. And a reconnect with nature and family and my best friend Clay who works to much and lives too damn far away!
Hunting camp is clean and beautiful as ever. Besides a little trouble with the propane heater on the first night, all ran smoothly. It was a pretty chilly weekend, well, four days rather. I was home from Wednesday night until Sunday afternoon. All were nice and sunny except Thursday, which, compared to the forecasts was pretty nice, just drizzling and gray. Leaves were just past peak and falling in a steady yellow rain.
Sunday morning, out the front door
Flooding was pretty severe this past spring and the East Branch being one of the largest drainages in the Northeast, it washed out a lot of vital areas that limited our access to favorite hunting grounds. Whetstone bridge was washed out so badly on either side that on Saturday, Clay and I had to take the Interstate out to Sherman and enter the Sherman Lumber Company Rd from the mill. The extent of the cutting up there was dissappointing to see once we got there too. Around camp has grown in nicely now, I hope it stays that way for a while.
Leaves were still falling but most of the brush and undergrowth was still very alive so it made picking birds out difficult. Flushed a lot, they spooked pretty easy. No flocks either, all singles. Saw probably 15 or so in 3 days, in varying times of the day. Actually had our best luck in mid afternoon on the two nice days! I personally only got 3 the whole trip which is kinda dissappointing but it’s not all about that anyway.
Disturbing lack of squirrels this year, maybe saw 5 all weekend! Saw a Fisher for the first time which was cool. Maybe the two correllate! Saw a few deer, a spruce partridge, and
Ryan at Camp
my brother saw a bear. My uncles talked about the 8 bald eagles and a turkey vulture they’ve seen in Medway near where someone had cleaned their moose or something (?), that’d be cool to see!
My newfound allergies were in full swing after the first night and ramped up a little as we switched to the wood stove from the ill-functioning propane heater. I toughed it out and didn’t let it ruin my mood though at times I felt pretty exhausted from lack of deep sleep. My diet, having been recently changed to the betterment of my finicky lower GI tract, was turned on its ear with generous portions of pasta and bacon & egg breakfasts every morning. The outhouse on a cold October night is an eye opener I’m here to tell ya!
Clay at Camp
I look forward to it every year and this year did not dissappoint. I would like to thank
Remington Nitro Mags (Blister ‘ems)
My Combivent Inhaler
Beef Jerky
Bicycle Playing Cards
Smartwool Socks!
Lowered Gas Prices
Sirius Satillite Radio (Lithium, Howard, Raw Dog, Backspin)
and my brother’s expert cooking skills for making this trip a success.
Well folks, here it is. For those of you joining late here on my invisible blog, I make a compilation of tunes every season. I pick em and pack em together with no real glue, no mixing, no unifying genre, nothing too fancy. Just music I dig. Shit I’m listening to real heavy at the present moment, shit I rediscover for one reason or another, and shit that reminds me of seasons past.
I love summer. Spring is cool too. And well, let’s not talk about winter. But fall is my favorite time of year. It’s a curse that it is so short and that we all bitch a lot toward the end cause we know what’s coming.. I tend to get a little nostalgic right around now, so past mixes have seemed quiet or somber. I think this sticks to that trend but with a little more verve.
I hope you can easily download the mix from the Box.net widget on the right margin of this blog and unpack it using winrar or a similar program. I am looking into another easier way to share these for next year. But until then, please let me know if you have any questions and I will try to help you or even send you a hard copy. Track listing is as follows:
It’s that part of the show where Shawn is old enough now so that he has to get his prostate checked every so often and even more unpleasantly, get a colonoscopy. Pretty exciting I know! Glad I shared?
I have been having some hellacious cramping and um ..urgency for 2 or 3 years off and on and I finally got tired of just dealing with it and went to a Gastrolenterologist. He did exactly what I thought he would, tried to blame dairy, prescribed me Bentyl and called for a colonoscopy. It’s not the discomfort of having a long tube shoved up my pooper that’s got me fretting (well not entirely), I mean I’ve been through a few fairly intrusive surgeries. My new health insurance Deductible is 5 bills so I was hoping there was some other way. I kept a food diary and returned a month later, the doc and I still mystified decided it might be best to just go ahead with it.
Over the past 2 weeks I decided to try something I hadn’t thought of yet. My brother’s answer to everything I say about my health is always what I eat. I eat bad Ryan I get it. I think it clicked somewhere in my stubborn head this time that I needed to try soemthing new, namely Ryan’s staple food group that we tease him so much about – Fiber! Well, my system has undergone a renaissance these weeks. I haven’t been this long without the ol ‘yucky guts’ in a long time. FiberOne, by the way, makes the best bread ever.
I’m going to forgo the spelunking trip and see where this takes me. What a relief, seriously.
Well, it’s been a year now since I’ve moved into the “blogosphere” and I’m amazed at how different things can seem after just one year.
A test in follow-thru, I’ve managed to keep up on this project just enough lately to post maybe 3 per month of various lengths. Not too bad considering I’ve left similar projects in the dust after only weeks. I haven’t managed to do many of the things I wanted to with this thing yet though. I have been slipping on a lot of things lately and on the list of projects to feel guilty about neglecting, I suppose this blog has been further down.
I always fall into thinking that I just don’t have the time to post anything, imagining that each post should be something grand and important, thought-provoking and profound. So I never get around to it at all. I do the same thing with those “catching up” phone conversations with people I haven’t seen in a long time. Knowing it may take a good while to get up to speed before any headway in the conversation is made (not to mention the slow motion awkward mode that usually accompanies), I put it off and put it off until I can devote this huge mythical chunk of spare time… and it never happens.
So I should probably pick up the phone (or get on this bitch) and at least say a little something before I think myself out of something potentially enlightening… or just fun.
-ps. For those of you who actually download my seasonal mixtapes, Fallmix 08 is nearly complete…
My name is Shawn and I live in Westbrook, Maine. I'm an artist, music snob, heckler, ENFP, omnivore, GenXer, Blogger, reluctant adult, Twitter & Blip.fm addict, & all around sarcastic shithead. I enjoy food, music, humor, and all things bizarre/nerdy. Welcome!
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