Burning Man season












Its that time of year again. I am watching all the notes and emails start flying as VW folks prep for the trek to Burning Man.

Like I need another hobby......




So Cool!

KISS

NO blogging lately! Too much work lately - makes me grumpy. Whattodo? I am happy I have a job but this is starting to get on my nerves. 9 months of this and its just getting more Nutty McNutville. Eric took me to the KISS concert last night at Turning Stone. For a fan - ( which I am not...) it was a really great show. Eric's brother john and his son Noah also went and had a great time. Eric has some great footage of Noah jamming along with the band.

Eric managed to get us Second row seats. Which - for a fan..is a great thing. For a non-fan -
it presents a problem..... As opposed to sitting way in back and not feeling the need to hide your disinterest... sitting that close to the stage and the band ( 8 ft?) errr.. you are exchanging direct looks. I was trying my best to maintain a look of fun and interest.... but apparently was not doing a great job.

I know this because...well... Mr. Gene Simons himself let me know ( from on stage...) that I was not enjoying his show enough......

Mr. Simons ( I can confirm..) has "look" that I only thought was skill of my late mother...... And he gave it and I got it. The look basically translated as:

"What the #%$@# are you doing in the front row of my show if you think you have better places to be..?."

I was... embarrassed. and from then on tried to do a much better job showing how much of a KISS fan I wish I was. :O)

Defriend
The outing of the supposedly slick maneuver #34









It is interesting that now with Facebook becoming a near universal place for folks to connect ( at least here in the states..) - how former minor actions seem to become so much more socially significant. Just google "defriend" and it seems that this former insignificant act now justifies
major articles and public consideration

The emotions of a facebook defriending

I yanked the plug on an old friend 2 weeks back after a trip to the West Coast. I had a pretty full trip planned and had a little time flexibility - so I started thinking who I could look up while I was in town. Burning Man friends? Facebook friends that I has yet to meet in person? I chose to look up an old friend from High School who been in a tough spot due to illness in his family. So here's how it went on Facebook:






















If the above graphic is a mystery - it's an old maneuver - basically you do not respond until you know the person is out of range - there by saving you the trouble of honesty or tedium of doing something you don't want to do.

Sadly it is completely transparent and I have a hot button for being taken for stupid.

I mentioned on the phone to my sister mid weekend that I had not gotten a reply but "I am sure I'll hear back tomorrow after I have left town.." And sure enough - the reply note came Sunday afternoon precisely when I mentioned leaving San Fransisco.

So this post...while a bit of a rant - is also to maybe put to an end maneuver #34

Birthday boys

Eric's brother John and his family were up for memorial day last weekend. Also time to celebrate John and Noah's birthday with a BBQ at our house. Cookie cake and Cobbler. Yum Yum

Quick Camping weekend

Headed down to camp this weekend to help clean up our site. Not a big event - but sunday the weather was quite nice. I hope we have good weather for the 4th. Our friend Doug who owns the campground with his partner Steve showed us his birthday present! I think it is their 5th(?) trailer. Very neat.

Weekend Check in

( an overdue blog post that compensates in length and blah blah...)






















I had received an invitation to a BBQ at NIMBY in Oakland for Sunday (more on that in a moment..) , so it seemed a perfect excuse to spend the weekend with my friend Lynn in San Francisco. I ended up taking an evening flight on Thursday with Lynn "collecting" me at her local BART station around 12:00am and putting me to bed for the night.
Friday morning we set off to see non tourist parts of San Francisco Lynn wanted to show me. Aside from the BBQ - I had no specific agenda for the weekend - but I did mention "Food Trucks" and Lynn knows that Junk Shopping always makes me happy.

We set off Friday morning for Crepes and walking some very very neat neighborhoods of Glen Park while we caught up on life. A nice sunny day ( yet not warm....) while Mr Eric reported that it was 85(?) degrees back home. We ended up heading for "16th avenue Steps Project"




































An incredible art installation ( and a bit tiring..) From there - Lynn took me to the Rain Forest Exhibit with the California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park. An awesome living exhibit of rain forest habitat and its inhabitants. Highly recommended. We wandered from there to the Haight Ashbury neighborhood to grab some late lunch. Lynn and I parted ways as she headed to a Roller Disco Bachelorette party. From there and I walked myself over to the Castro neighborhood. I did not end up poking around much - my jet lag was catching up - so I grabbed a MUNI train back to Lynn's place and crashed for the evening.



Saturday morning - Lynn and I headed off on bike to the Framers market near(?) her apartment. I had some reservations about biking. It is Lynn's primary mode of transport in the city and enabled her to traverse the city fairly nimbly..but I am from the "strolling" old school of biking. The whole move-the-pedals-and-watch-the-scenery skool. ( insert bird song here) The idea of the Crank-the-bike-and compete-with-city-traffic mode ( insert heavy metal music here) I am not skilled in. It requires a mental trigonometry I find stressful. Did I mention I have not been on a bike in a year?? Lynn did a good job getting me safely through the city. After we left the farmers market - we headed to Lynns office space in an old warehouse in Bayview. A GREAT space for her freelance work and a neat facility.

Afterwards we headed to a House-parts-recycling place "Building Resources" to look for any interesting project starters. It was there that I told Lynn of my workshop FULL of interesting-yet-not-started project starters. The Room of Failure I like to call it. It going to get me on one of those Hording shows on TV soon I am sure.... We headed on bike all the way down to Valencia street to do some shopping after we tracked down some Food Trucks. These were on my ToSee list. Between numerious online articles, Friends blog posts and folks on Face book gushing... I wanted to experience Food Truck. So we found a bunch on Valencia street and we skipped the Filipino and headed right for the GARLIC NOODLES. yum yum.


From there - we started hitting up the retro antique stores. One place - Stuff - had lots of good stuff and I was trying very hard to stick to the script and not add to The Room of Failure. It helped that the store "does not ship" - bit I did find a great lamp for our house that Lynn is now going to act as shipper for me.

We then met up with Lynns boyfriend and headed out for Soul Food for dinner. After all the red meat - I called it a night.

Sunday - I returned to Valencia street to look at more stores and search for lost sunglasses. NO luck finding them but I got a chance to stroll over by Dolores Park and take pics of some great houses that...I would find acceptable to buy...... :O)


Lynn, Kenneth and I headed over to Oakland to tour Crucible. An amazing facility that is the number one reason I would contemplate a move to the Bay Area. Lynn's friend Steve gave us a great tour and Lynn kept telling me that if I lived in SF - I could make this place my second home. So Tempting!! Pics of the Crucible facilities...







We then headed over to NIMBY for a BBQ thrown for the fundraisers. NIMBY is another cooperative art facility. Very different from Education focused Crucible. Crucible - much more of an organized education facility and NIMBY - a more punk-based performance space.


The party was an interesting lesson in itself. I have noted the vibe before at Burning Man events. Whereas a group of folks advertize an event to the public or wider circle - but then remain in the smaller private circle mode. It ends up making you feel like you are crashing or intruding. No one in the original circle makes a formal effort to engage anyone outside the original group. I think it is fair to expect that if you advertize to a wider group than your own - that you sign up to engage the newcomers you invited. Otherwise everyone is just gravitates to talking to their friends and you are just standing around. My notion probably stems from previous experience with COAP in Rochester where new folks were always stopping in and we thought it was important to take the effort to make the people you invited actually feel welcome. I was not put out by the vibe at the party... I was happy to hang out with Lynn and Kenneth. But the party did crystalize a nagging impression from various Burning Man events. I think the new insight will be helpful in the future.

After a stop at another house parts place - Lynn and Kenneth drove me back to pick up my stuff, exchange farewells and it was off to the airport for the RedEye. A great weekend.

She blinded me with Science



The Felice Clan came to visit us in Syracuse for the weekend. My Niece Carolyn was competing in a Central New York Science fair here in town on Sunday. So after she set up Saturday afternoon for the Sunday competition - we headed to dinner. Afterwards, Mr. Eric gave the family a little spin in our basement disco.




Sunday afternoon - the family headed over to the local community college to support our brilliant 7th grader and see her science presentation on plant growth.



Way to go Carolyn!

TalksWithHands



Forget DanceWithWolves. Kevin Costner's got nothin' on me.

Van movie

"The Bus" Trailer from Damon Ristau on Vimeo.

I have not even watched this trailer yet .... but I wanted to post it so I did not lose it.

Escape from SyberiaCuse'
















We headed out for our annual winter escape with our friends Greg and Joe this past week. We decided to try Ft. Lauderdale this year and skip the West coast. So on Thursday, we all trekked down on separate flights to Ft. Lauderdale to stay at The Cabannas Guest house for a long weekend. We had beautiful weather - which was sorely needed. The long cloudy weekends tend to put me personally in a funk by the end of February. Combined with a rather extended nutty streak at work - I was really really ready to get out of dodge ( or the frozen gulag..) Our friends Gerry, Matt and Tom C also joined us for a nice calm weekend with no particular schedule - other than maximize use of the 3 pools at the resort. The weekend went a little too quickly, But Eric and i did manage to catch up with our friends Tom B and Eli as well as poke around some antique stores to look for "things" to use with the house.

Random pic for house ideas

Holidays in Syracuse.

Our first party in the new house this past December. Lots of friends and family helped us celebrate with the famous gift exchange and only one broken glass! My sister Cathy came this year to help me with the hors d'oeuvre production and our friends Allan and Ken arrived early to get caught in the pre-party whirlwind. ( Thank you!) Our friend Gerry was the evening photographer and did a great job capturing the night with both our party veterans and new friends!

( Click on any image to enlarge)









Thanks to everyone for coming out on such a cold night!

All the party photos on Flicker here