hitting the road

Everything we own is outside in a big yellow truck. We are packed and ready. My back is aching! After the glorious upgrade to the fancier truck, the load went smoothly--especially with the help from the four Bonanza men who helped us intricately place each item in its place.

Tomorrow's destination: Vega, Texas (9 hours from Tucson as the crow flies)

Thursday's destination: Springfield, MO (with a stop in Oklahoma City for lunch at Toby Keith's "I Love This Bar And Grill." (8 hours)

Friday we pull into Champaign after a stop in St. Louis at the ever-famous Arch. (6.5 hours).

We're only supposed to go 55 in the truck since we are pulling a trailer so it's gonna take us a bit longer.

There should be good Champaign folk to help up unpack when arrive.

See you when we get there.

Can't resist (but don't miss the new post below, too!)

just stumbled on this...

In my opinion, this is one of the best reasons I can think of to continue the pursuit of good music. Soooo pretty. Iron & Wine is my favorite.



And if you like bearded men singing tender songs, try "Golden" by My Morning Jacket:



This, by far, has been my song of the year. This has crummy video--just close your eyes and listen.

When we get to Illinois...

This has been the Stone catchphrase of late--our little "somewhere over the rainbow." I think the feeling of a fresh start isn't without some attention getting merit though. While I imagine that most areas of our life will remain the same when we get to our new destination, who's to say that a few things can't get better?

So, here's my list of what I hope does, if fact, get better:

1. My cooking. Life in the heartland should provide easier access to fresh fruits and vegetables--some of them perhaps even self-grown. I also plan on purchasing our first gas grill very soon after we arrive. We have gone FAR too long not to have one. The truth is, I guess, that it's just too darn hot to spend time outside grilling in AZ.

2. Exercise. Being at school everyday has one major health benefit for me: easy and free access to the University gym and pool. I swam almost every day that I was at school last year during my final coursework semester at ASU. I can do it again!

3. My guitar playing. I haven't written a new song in over two years. It's time to get cracking again. Being away from Jon Thwaits, my musical muse, will be tough. I will have to find new motivations for writing and also want to spend time adding popular music to my repertoire. How fun is it to have a guitar player in your midst if he doesn't know any familiar songs?

4. Being outdoors, in general. The AZ heat really sentences us, as mentioned above, to our houses. Tina and I have big plans for family walks and trips to the nearby parks.

5. Disciplined study of both intellectual pursuits and new hobbies. (This one speaks for itself--though "new hobbies" is fairly nebulous, I realize. Let's just say I bought a bird watching book last week. Who knows if that will stick, but I find within the birding hobby a great metaphor for all knowledge inquiry: the more we pay attention to, and seek to become familiar with the details that are already right before our eyes, the better accustomed we will be to knowledge acquisition in general. Midwest = pretty birds, am I right?).

As I think of anymore, I'll keep adding them. I should mention also that we use this phase to keep our kids excited as well. As far as Seth is concerned, Illinois is the land of milk and honey.

in the queue

When Jon T. and I were working on the material that would become the electronic iteration of our ongoing music project, I suggested we call ourselves "the Queue." I loved that it was both a word with a legitimate meaning and, of course, a letter. How many other letters can lay such a claim? (Ok, after some thought on the matter, it turns out that a whole bunch of them can: A, B, C, I, J, O, P, R, T, U, Y). But, it just seemed cool to me. Our music projects, in their various forms, have always had creative names, I think. Only Anything became U.F.O.A on our second self-produced album. Some time after that, we moved to "Lotham Scooter" which was reference to a cartoon show that Jon literally dreampt about. When I returned home from my mission, we started playing funkier tunes and called ourselves the New Moves. Which later became, ever so briefly Jonathan Marvel and the New Moves. Eventually, our electronica days became "Lancaster" after the street in Tucson where the Richins boys lived. But I still think about the Q. Maybe one day I'll go solo and call myself the Queue--people would probably line up to see me play. ;)

Anyway, I was writing to say that I have had this huge blog in the queue for over a week now about my summer reading and its general slack, but have had some trouble with the journaling software that I was using to write it. I wanted a journal that I could use on my laptop that could sync up with Blogger so that I could have a place to collect both my public and private writing. That way I would have an easy option for moving entries deemed share-worthy to my public forum. Alas, on the night I spent the most time trying to get the sync to work, the software failed and my ready-to-post blog was lost.

So, you'll have to wait a few more days for that. In the meantime, my I suggest that you dust off your old journal and put it back by the side of your bed? Consider this quote from Brenda Ueland (a probably very smart person that I have never heard of, yet whom was quoted by a smart academic person's blog I read [deep breath])

"We have come to think that duty should come first. Duty should be a byproduct. WRITING, the creative effort, should come first -- at least for some part of every day of your life. It is a wonderful blessing if you will use it. You will become happier, more enlightened, alive, impassioned, light-hearted and generous to everybody else. Even your health will improve."

Writing = good health. yay! So even this arguably pointless post did something for me. Sweet.

Maryn's Second

Here is a great picture of Maryn on her birthday last week--darn, TWO weeks ago. Check the website soon for more...

Fighting in the Google-ution

This afternoon marked the first Tucson rainstorm of the summer. As is typical during monsoon season, the day started off sunny and hot—barely a cloud in the sky. At around 3pm, the sky turned gray and it rained. Boy did it rain. I went outside for a few minutes and watched it. Smelt it. There is nothing like the smell of desert rain.

Summer has been chaotic. The accommodations have been fine. Sleeping at John’s house has been really fun—a treat to be sure. Ironically, we haven’t spent as much time together in the past years that we have lived so close. The three nights a week in Gilbert with the Heidenreich’s are somehow like nights 15 years ago we spent in “the fort.” I’m glad to be back in the fort—but also like then, the fort’s not home.

The feeling is similar at the Bertoglio’s house. We love being near Grandma and Papa. They are so sweet. But alas, it’s not home. I’m anxious to get on. To be home—even though home is now miles and miles away.

***

That said, I have to mention the little revolution I am having in web-land. Slowly—very slowly-- but surely I am learning how to actually use computers and the Internet. I know that sounds silly, especially to those who know how much time I spend in front of the screen. But I imagine that it is like they say about our brain. Most of us only use a small percent of it. In the past few weeks, I discovered that Google is much more than just a search engine. It started a month or so ago when Nick showed me what an RSS feed was. I know, I know. Get with it. For those of you who, as I was, aren’t with it either, an RSS feed is basically a text broadcast that your blogs give. RSS feeds are also broadcast from popular websites that you might visit—especially ones that are updated regularly like daily news or entertainment sites.

Anyway, there are a lot of things you can do with an RSS feed. I played with them first as a part of my web browser’s tool bar. The idea is that you can see, for example, if a blog has been updated with out actually visiting the blog—your indicator announces the new blog title and you can click it as a link to read the blog in full.

So that’s an RSS feed. Then I started messing around with some of the Google tools that I had heard a little about. I downloaded Google Desktop for my work computer (a cool tool if you have a lot of RAM… my home computer couldn’t handle it). At it's core, Desktop is a search tool. If you install it, you can run "google" searches for stuff on your hard drive and on the web. Desktop includes “Gadgets”—basically “Widgets” , if you are familiar with Yahoo's fun desktop tools. One of the Gadgets is an RSS feed tool—but this one is more fancy. When you click the title, a window pops out and you can read the blog update right there—without visiting the webpage. Cool.

This is getting a bit long winded… basically it all led me to a cool tool that Google offers called Google Reader. Google Reader is pretty much the coolest thing I have seen on the web for a long time. Imagine that every blog you read is an email, and every time that someone posts something new, Google Reader collects it, indicates to you of its newness and then puts it on the screen for you. So if Nick, Michelle and Brandon all have a new post on the same day, all you have to do is be watching on Reader and you can read each of them in the same location, one right after the other. Oh--and I forgot to mention that Reader and all of the things I mention below are accessed with your gmail login (gmail is also, of course, made by Google).

This tool may be a bit impractical if you only read a few blogs—but wait, there’s more! As you surf the web, you will see the little RSS feed button all over the place. You can add page after page to your Reader and save yourself from having to click through all the links you have in your bookmarks. I have added feeds from all of the news sites that I read, all of the entertainment and art/design sites that I frequent, I have even gone looking for new blogs that I might just want to read. It’s so easy to read them—I am anxious to learn, see, discover.

You can tell I am pretty excited. Reader is pretty sweet. But it's not the only great tool. You can also individualize Google’s news site. See that "Individualize this page" button? Click it and go crazy. By using key word searches, I can search for any article being published on the web with the following (or any other) words: Champaign-Urbana, Street Art, University of Illinois. It’s really cool.

Picassa is another awesome tool by Google. This one is used both to organize the pictures you have on your computer and also publish them to the web. If you are tired of your computer’s picture organizing software (I am thinking of you Michelle), check it out.

Finally, you can use all of these tools on a personalized Google homepage called iGoogle.

So there’s a big commercial for you. Enjoy.

Suburbian Warp Zone

Opportunities for art are everywhere.

Experimental Post

So, I have never actually posted video to this blog before and thought that I might try today. As such, I am posting a video about a piece of Kinetic Sculpture--though I thought at first what appears in the video was computer generated, I am now quite positive that it is, as it appears to be in the film: manufactured.




Did it! It took a minute to figure out how, but I am on it now. More to come.