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future fruits and flowers, accidental morel, my new Xoom

Listening to:	birds and wind
Reading:	The Lovely Bones
Weather:	64, breezy, mostly cloudy

If you get lucky enough to be in downtown Morgantown on the right morning, you get to see swirls of pink and white flower petals blowing across the streets and sidewalks. Just after the trees between the sidewalks and the streets bloom, if it's been dry and not too windy for a day or two, and you get there early enough that the traffic hasn't squashed or blown them all away, you get treated to quite a psychedelic show. I got that last week one day, between rainstorm days. Totally starts the workday off with the right headspace.

I got my trees I ordered from www.arborday.org and they really want to get planted, she said, anthropomorphizing a bundle of sticks with little green bits erupting all over them. My right forearm has been giving me mysterious grief for a few days, have no recollection of abusing it in any way, but it's been causing me pain and making me think I shouldn't grip anything with my right hand. This is not good timing for my 2 baby pear trees, tart cherry tree, damson plum tree, forsythia, red maple, hawthorne, and rosebush. Plus I have a gig in 3 weeks in Charleston playing bass for my buddies in Red Salt, so I need that arm and hand to get better.

But I took some ibuprofen and got the rosebush, one pear tree, and the hawthorne tree planted.

And while I was burning some brush and cardboard yesterday I looked down and saw a small gray morel mushroom at my feet! Score! Makes me want to go sniff around today for more. Wild wonderful West Virginia fungus.

In the news this week was a very sad story about a pair of bullied teenage girls who carried out a suicide pact by hanging. Made me extra thankful about the mostly content nature of my kids, and how devastating it must be for a parent to lose a kid that way. You'd have to second guess yourself. A lot. It also made me wonder if there's research on whether successful suicides among teenagers have any correlation with religious beliefs. While I know suicide is sinful in the Catholic church, I suspect a kid who really believes there's a heaven might be more inclined to off herself than one who knows there is not. A cursory googling revealed nothing serious on the subject.

I have been enjoying my new Motorola Xoom tablet. I got the wifi only version, no phone (and no phone bill!). It's a sexy little beast. Great battery life (10 hours of actual use), nice and light, perfect screen size (10.1 inch), pinch and zoom touch screen, accelerometer, gyroscope, gps, front camera and back camera, takes NH movies, all that. So far the down sides include: no really awesome case options, the only usable bluetooth keyboard (would be nice for typing things like blog posts) is like $80 from Motorola, no working GoToMyPC app yet, and the chat function on Facebook is a bit hinky. That last one no biggie for me, I pretty much hate the FB chat functionality, and usually ignore people when they open a chat window with me. But it'd be nice to have a kickass case rather than the tiedye drawstring bag I'm currently dragging it around in. Something likely to come out soon, hang on, Sloopy. I even shot some video with it last night at Grafton 123 and uploaded it to Facebook right then on their free wifi. Frickin cool.

I ought a nice little Aiwa portable cassette player. Yes, cassette. See, I have a trove of about 30 old cassettes from various live shows of me and old bands and friends and whatnot, and all my best laid schemes to digitize them gang aft agley when my last component dual cassette deck bit the big one some years ago. So I've been thinking I'd just get a portable player, stereo minijack it out to my most rockin Tascam digi field recorder, and perhaps a tiny bit of post editing and give'em back to the world in 1's and 0's. BUT. Not just any skanky lil walkman will do, gotta have some fidelity. So I found this Aiwa online for like $40 with shipping. And it's the bomb. And what's more, I unearthed the tapes of my final night at open mic in Bloomington IN back in 1989, and the soundman was at the top of his game that night! Surprisingly clean and well EQ'd. Great performance by my favorite songwriter out there Don Hawkins. Just awesome. Good tracks from my dear deceased friend Curt Purtlebaugh. Drunken other stuff from other folk. Oh, and pretty nice Oh Darlin with me on guitar and soundmeister Chris Ramsey on vocals. I can hear my dad's voice in the background, he had come to help me move. We got so hammered that night, Wild Turkey 101 was the Purtlebaugh drink of choice, and there was freeflowing beer chaser, as well. Mm mm mm. So that's on the project list, get those badboys chopped and uploaded.

Some of my apple trees have pink buds, and I'm hoping they quick bloom long before we get a last frost up here. Last year my big apple tree was covered with sweet smelling blossoms the night before the last killer, and I got not an apple. Those trees oughta be ready for major fruit this year, if the weather will work for me.

Aight, back outside to get another tree into the ground.

permalink posted by cat 1:02 PM

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