CaptainOrange

I watched " I am Legend (imdb)" again last night, so the above quote comes from Bob Marley, through Will Smith, me, and onto you... With Christmas guests all but a memory and my famous post-birthday-blues (2006 post) setting in, I've embarked on a number of projects to keep myself busy. Todays tidbit is on my grow-table. In the fall of 2008 a theatre friend gave us a grow-table that her father had made for her 30 or more years ago. It had been sitting unused for more than a decade and she was trying to find a good home for it. Mission accomplished. We used it to start our garden seedlings last spring, but I thought I would try a few things earlier this year. I grabbed some soil, perlite, and plant food and got busy. In November, garlic was really cheap. It made sense at the time to buy one of those big bags with a dozen bulbs of garlic in it. By making a lot of pizza I managed to get through most of it, but some of the bulbs began sprouting towards Christmas. ...

Perhaps there is a school you can attend that will teach you how to find perfect gifts for your friends. I haven't been there, but I know someone who should be lecturing. From the hands of the man who brought me lock-picks, Swiss army knives and countless... Liquid Metal ... dangerous (previous blog entry) Prince Rupert's Drops ... adventures !(another old post) I give you Shape Lock , which is a brand name for something more generally known as "friendly plastics" or polycaprolactone (wikipedia). We had loads of fun with it the first day, but had to keep it on a shelf for a few days to allow me to speak directly to other humans. Even then concentration was difficult. My mind raced constantly thinking of cool uses for this stuff. Eventually, when the Christmas hubbub was dying down, I settled on a project that I've wanted to attempt for a long time -- making a custom attachment for my Gorilla Pod . Before we go any further, if at any time you find yo...

-- guess I forgot to put a link to the great review we got in the StarPhoenix . Ever since working on Cinderella (capO), Leora has been on my case to do more community theatre. When she heard the possibility that Gateway would be doing To Kill A Mockingbird (wikipedia), she would not let me rest. I had to repeatedly check the website for any hint of auditions. When we saw James Hawn (who was to direct it) there would be questions about when auditions might be scheduled, etc... Eventually, there were auditions. Wendy, Leora and I all tried out for roles and Anwyn hoped to work as a crew member. Anwyn got her way, as did the rest of us. Short of patient, reliable children, James H. eventually convinced Anwyn to also take on a couple of roles in the show. So we were all in the show -- a first for our family. We were excited, yet trepidatious. I know how hard it is for the family with just me in a play. For this to succeed we were going to have to take special measures. I took time off w...

Despite a lingering fear of larger specimens, I absolutely love spiders. When information about "vegetarian" spider started to circulate in October, I was thrilled. I've been busy working on the show and not had much time to look into it. Now that I have the week off during our performance run I've listened to a great radio interview and done a bunch more reading. For the overly interested: In this 10 minute .mp3 , Bob McDonald of Quirks and Quarks interviews Dr. Robert Curry (villanova.edu). Here is a .pdf copy of Curry's article published in Current Biology . Here is a supplemental paper and some videos of several spider specimens.

Yes, Leora's birthday was in the beginning of November. Let's leave it at that. Leora and Anwyn think that it is their pleasure in life to come up with increasingly difficult cooking challenges for me. This generally culminates with their choice of birthday cakes. Leora, in particular will spend hours pouring through the dessert selections in our cook books. She currently limits her choices to things that have a great picture. I am frightened of what may happen once she can visualize the outcome just from the recipe. Leo's inspiration this year was from a great garage-sale find of 10 or more years ago, Time Life's The Good Book: Classic Desserts (Amazon.com). It's part of an awesome series, of which I own several. They give wonderful descriptions (with informative photos) of classic techniques followed by a series of recipes in the back to which those techniques can be applied. For anyone who has consumed it; my fudge comes from the companion book entitled "Can...

I did my campus-tower-home run in my Vibram 5-fingers for the first time about a month ago (and several times since). Let me tell you, I was nervous. My last major run in them, the 10km with Jaime last month, resulted in 3 days of serious stiffness in my calves and not a little whining. I recognize that (re)training my lower legs and feet is a process of undoing 37 years of unwitting damage. Atrophied muscles aren't going to strengthen and flourish in a month or two. However, I do feel that I am well on my way. I have started to think of running barefoot as a type of physiotherapy class taught to me by my own feet. I have found three distinct running styles while I am barefoot. When on grass, I jog with a typical "heel strike" method. Such as you would do all the time in running shoes. On harder surfaces, I run landing on the padding between the arch and my toes. This is what really gets the calf muscles working. When my muscles are feeling sore, or I am at a slower than ...

This last QNY Dave off-handedly invited me out to Calgary to climb a mountain with him. I said that it sounded like a summit would be a great place to have a celebratory game of chess. Dave insinuated that should I bring the necessary gear to play chess, the act of carrying it up any mountain he chose for me would make it likely that I would leave the board and pieces on the mountainside out of sheer exhaustion. I didn't take a chessboard, but after five months (and very near the end of my summer holiday) I managed to make it out on a tight schedule (if there is any other kind) to spend a fantastic day with a very old friend. Dave drove out from Canmore to meet me at the Lac des Arcs campground at 7:15am. I was prepared to leave earlier, but Dave assured me he had not planned an overly ambitious hike. I pressed a quick bodum of coffee and we headed into the national park. This is Bow Peak. I had to take this picture the next day after a lengthy debate with Dave over where th...