fractured reality

Holy crow, the snow.

So, Friday, the weather forecast was for 3-6 inches of snow, and instead we received something that looks like 14 inches. So Saturday morning involved much more shoveling than I had first anticipated. Somehow, it all got done, and it was sunny besides, so it was actually very rewarding.

Sunday, I curled like utter crap for the first four ends or so. Disappointing. Also, my teammates weren’t, shall we say, the heavy sweeping variety. So if I threw light, they could not quite carry the stone as far as my Wednesday teammates can. Double bleh. Frustration was further compounded when, in the 5th or 7th end, one of my sweepers decided that my stone was heavy and wasn’t going to follow it down the ice. This unfortunately meant that she stopped walking to watch the stone, while I was sliding on the ice behind her. The resulting collision of our feet as I frantically tried to steer out of her way caused me to lose my balance and I fell rather hard on my left hip. Triple bleh.

But on the plus side, killing zombies with friends and family was really good.

+E

But first: Wednesday I probably had my best personal game of curling yet. I made over 90% of my shots, and we managed to win against a very well-matched opponent. I curl again Sunday, and cannot wait.

Yesterday I had a supremely lazy day with mindless movies (specifically, Men In Black and My Cousin Vinny), games and so forth.

Until recently I had not ever read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and I am glad to finally have done so. I also read the mindless brain candy of Iorich, Brust’s latest Vlad adventure. No idea what to pick up next, but with as little reading time as I’ve had lately, it almost doesn’t matter.

Speaking of: tonight there will be delicious nachos, Lost, Catan, and probably some Burnout Paradise or other such silliness. Tomorrow, we have very few plans other than to kill zombies with Tom and Emil (and maybe Chris) in the evening*. Probably need to do a bit of food shopping, and cleaning and so forth. Whee! Sunday, my curling team has a bye this week, but I am subbing for another player on another team, so I will play anyhow, which will be good, provided the weather doesn’t shit all over us.

Random note in my notebook from a couple years ago, which I just flipped to:

p. 30 – I do not agree that the void is reason to despair. AS darkness is needed to cotnrast light, nothingness is needed to truly appreciate existence. Eternal existence is (apart from evidently [ed: from evidence] being not true) BORING. The void is comfortless, maybe, but comfort isn’t a property the void can express. It’s a VOID: there is no comfort, nor pain, in it. I abhor his conclusion that the void is a beast whose presence necessitates either eternal life or despair.

And with that, I have a few things to finish before I leave work today.

++E

*This is another one of those “holy hell” moments to me: that I can play a cooperative game with a friend in the United Kingdom, and my brother who lives in Georgia, in real time while hearing their voices in exclamation and laughter. Thank you, technology!

Oh oh oh.

At long last it is February. Nevermind that the strongest snows of a few years ago were in February, this month always feels somehow less Winter, to me.

This weekend was pleasant and good and began with in-house Happy Hour with snacks and cocktails and movies and so forth. Saturday I slept in as I hadn’t in some time, and the remainder of the day was largely laziness and mirth, including some brother-assisted zombie killings. Sunday was the first game of the Third Event, and we brought it back from two down to tie, which was good enough for our first time playing as a group. Our Vice and Skip were sure throwing light for the amount of frost that was apparently on the ice, and we swept like crazy the entire game. Very tiring, but good.

So much for the weekend.

More later, I’m sure,
+E

Stupid cold weather.

I couldn’t bring myself to get up early enough to shovel snow before work today. It was too comfy in the warm house. The sun, however, is out right now, so that’s nice.

I’m hoping for a nice relaxo* weekend. Maybe I’ll make some brownies, and I curl Sunday, but that’s about it.

+E

*co-opted from The Simpsons, from Rancho Relaxo, where Marge goes to de-stress.

So my brother sends me this blog title in a message, saying that the ringtone is one that he cannot place, and it’s driving him crazy. “it’s a melody that I know dad used to listen to all of the time/ I think it was played on an electric cello” he sends.

So I have him record the thing and send the music file to me. I utterly cannot place it, even though it’s familiar, all right.

“just imagine it with an electric cello and some other stuff in the background” he offers, helpfully. I listen to it about 14 times on repeat, and then I give up and head to my secret weapon: Musipedia. I type in the contour, humming the melody to myself, *RRUDDUDRUUDURRUDDUDRUUDU, and hit Enter. First result? Liszt, Franz: étude No. 6 Ami piano on Paganini’s caprice

Gah! Paganini!

Having identified the essential piece of music (Caprice no. 24) I look for variations that might have even possibly be played by Dad when we were younger. Yo-Yo Ma? Possibly, but no.

Then I spot it: Andrew Lloyd Webber. I find the Variations 1-4 on the second disc of Song and Dance and shoot the file to Tom.

“yep, that’s it exactly” he says.

Now the mystery, at least to me, is: did Dad even own that record? Was it part of a Collection Of album? What the hell kind of random thing is THAT for my brother to remember? I didn’t remember it, that’s for sure.

+E