First, screw the "new year". The shortest day of the year is Dec 21 and that's the eve of the new year. The next day is new years day, because the yearly cycle resets. Fuck this calendar.
This artificial construct we call "2007" measures a slipped-off segment of the illusory experience of "time" in which various contractual arrangements expire, commence, renew with regularity we apparently all agree on.
What did I do with mine?
For starters, I threw Lady Jane a surprise birthday party having accomplished the apparently impossible feat of getting her whole family together at the same time. So far the only time I've had to get nice clothes dry-cleaned from having a drink spilled on them in a restaurant by the wait staff, but also the first time I'd ever been inflicted upon by a person with the same first name as me.
I nearly had a nervous breakdown, probably from learning about too many different evils all at once while trying to feign interest in work I was totally burned-out on. I escaped to Phoenix for a week to visit my buddy and relax doing nothing for a week.
The very next week, after getting a passport in the most expeditious, expensive and complicated manner possible involving traveling two states away and sitting in a stuffy, metallic federal waiting room straight out of the movie Brazil, I took Lady Jane to Cancun and Chichen Itza. Too many stories to tell here, now. Unfortunately, and against all better judgement, we forced ourselves to leave when our damnable return flights were scheduled.
I started paying a person to listen to me while I explain myself, but only for an hour a week.
I bought a 1985 Honda Nighthawk 700s, which if you don't know is a 700cc motorcycle, Honda's precursor to today's rice rockets. It looks like something straight out of a movie about an Atari video game or something. I bought it months ahead of my scheduled MSF course.
LJ and I went from Maine to DC on her 1602cc Yamaha for Rolling Thunder, accompanied by her father and sheer joy of a mother riding his full dresser. We picked up some Vet buddies of theirs along the way, who we followed down 95 straight through Manhattan then over the GWB at 5pm on a Friday on a scorching hot day. Apparently the head of our pack, who was trailering his bike behind an Excursion, told his GPS to "avoid construction", and that was the next best thing it could come up with. Having ridden "bitch" behind a girl the whole way, I was affectionately referred to the entire trip as "Barbie" by a delightfully insane man who didn't let the fact that he grew up in Misourrah affect his thick Tennessee accent.
The following weekend, after two migraines and nearly hozing it at the last minute, I get a motorcycle endorsement on my license and as far as I was concerned, became a biker. I was told by many that this was not true.
LJ escorted me onto the road for the first time, where I promptly found a development of loop streets on which to practice and be repeatedly screamed at in the sweetest way by a terrified SO. Over the next week or so, I worked up the skill to ride home into the city and commute to the office every day.
We moved into a nice apartment. Apparently I have too much crap. Apparently I technically qualify as a "hoarder". You'll see someday. Someday the shit's going to hit the fan and somebody's going to need a 48-foot length of 4-pair copper telephone wire, and they're going to need to crimp RJ-11 plugs onto it. And they'll trade me some fresh arugula and half a dozen eggs for it. But not if I throw it out, baby. Not if I throw it out...
Lady Jane threw me a simple birthday barbecue at my place with a few friends. For whatever reason I wanted it small.
I went on a big ride of over 100 bikes covering almost as many miles through New Hampshire with the local Harley Owners Group. I rode my Honda with a plastic bag full of sushi rice taped to the back with the words "RESERVE FUEL" black-markered onto it, which several bikers seemed to appreciate. Nobody died, but 3 people were hospitalized. None of them were biker cops, who caused two of those accidents.
I cancelled my flight to Salt Lake City to attend an energy research conference and shoot interview footage, literally a few hours before departure, and surprised Lady Jane in a manner in which I shouldn't describe here.
I worked diligently on a MythTV box but got fed up with it in favor of productive uses of my time. At least until I can afford a nicer TV card...
I went to Laconia Bike Week and test-drove a Harley Sportster 1200 with Milwaukee plates on it, owned by the company themselves. I'll never forget the feeling of Lady Jane and I riding a pair of Harleys through scenic rural NH over fresh tar in the middle of a warm, sunny afternoon, or the thrilling sensation of realizing that A) There was a test-riding course you're supposed to follow, and B) I had not been following that course for nearly a mile, and C) The bikes featured live GPS fleet-tracking hardware which someone in a black pickup was watching from where we left. I can't be sure, but I think it had a gun rack.
I went to the New Hampshire / Vermont HOG rally where I fell in love with a shiny blue 1997 Harley-Davidson FXD Dyna SuperGlide which the rider was selling for way under book.
Due to lack of credit at all (which I consider as a success), my sister co-signed at my credit union for a loan and the following weekend, and one three hour ride followed by an utterly debilitating heat-induced migraine delay later, I was the proud and slightly-drugged owner of a '97 Dyna. I figured I must be a biker at this point and was once again corrected.
I rode it just about every day. I rode it the entire mile to work and back at least. I got a $240 windshield for it so I didn't get neckaches from highway riding. Then one sunny September afternoon after an idyllic organic sandwich lunch in the park downtown, some jerk who got his license from Wal-Mart ran over that windshield and never looked back as I rolled down the street beside him, shredding the flesh off my left kneecap and breaking an insidious little bone in my hand too small to immobilize and too critically-located to be anything but a constant painful nusiance. I was only trying to get around the guy before he caused an accident by weaving back and forth between two lanes in a shoulderless, curved corridor, but instead slipped on some sand which had collected on the side of the road conveniently where my rear tire needed to be to help me get around the dude. After being bandaged up and sat upon my couch with an ice pack and a fresh bowl of little green flowers, I was informed almost simultaneously by BB and LJ that now, indeed, I am a biker.
LJ spent an airline bump voucher to bring my buddy BB and his girlfriend home from Phoenix somewhat randomly for a long weekend in Maine. She's some kind of wonderful.
I kept riding until the snow started to fall, though even after I've had to convince myself not to go out on some warm sunny winter days. I'm actually a biker? A geek biker?
The girl had a two-week work travel assignment in Las Cruces, so I flew out to see her and go exploring through the desert, stomping around in Blixco's old stomping grounds, and see some sights. We went to White Sands Missile Range and went snowsledding in the White Sand dunes up past the range. We rode through the mountains to see some 800-year-old corn husks. I got to do one of my favorite annual treats when I pissed off the top of a mountain.
On the way home, I had a 3-hour layover in Phoenix which was spent driving around hanging out with my friend BB again, wearing his Blues Brothers t-shirt I packed when I left his place the last time, and left with it again this time, goddammah.
I went to Vegas for a week to attend a big web geek conference for free as I was a speaker/panelist. I've never done that before but people liked the unique material they hadn't had previously at that conference and I got at least one potential freelance gig out of it.
Lady Jane surprised me at my hotel that night on a brief layover from Las Cruces she extended into overnight plus a free upgrade to a Mustang convertible, so we toured the Strip with the top down which was awesome and went to the Hoover Dam which was underwhelming. Have I mentioned how awesome she is yet?
I bought, and returned a Roomba robot vacuum, because it didn't have automatic scheduling and I can't afford the one that does.
I realized that I've had a basic contempt for the entire world my whole life and I don't know where it came from, other than the sum total of my life experiences growing up in rural northern Maine surrounded by rural northern Mainers.
I realized I need to either hurry the hell up and start making a small fortune online while I still have a chance, or bait a sweet job offer that pays what I'm worth so I can afford to eat more real food by local producers, save some gold before it gets too expensive, and ultimately build a sustainable home for life to my stringent specifications, preferably in a place where my tax money will not support fascism or the economics of scarcity and control.
I realized that she trusts my judgement and supports me in all this, is eager to move to a new land and is even willing to leave the country should it come to that. I realized she has the technical aptitude to do a lot of stuff that I never get around to doing which would help me further these goals. I realized I have a life partner.
In "2008", the US' petrodollar economy will continue to crash in a perfect controlled demolition that most laypeople who don't follow financial news will think was an accident. Hillary the criminal warpig Token First Female President and her obedient party-line-towing Token First Black Vice President will win by a Deibold-provided narrowly-hacked margin despite Ron Paul / Kucinich having the obvious popular vote and the electoral vote according to exit polls, the discrepancy of which will not be reported. Either that or he'll win and be assassinated.
In "2008" a false-flag terror event of some kind, likely either bio or dirty rad, will strike some US embassy somehwere and will be blamed on barely-extant organization nobody realizes was actually founded and funded by the CIA.
In "2008", a comet will be destroyed before it destroys earth and nobody will know who wasn't involved. Elsewhere, critical science data will be permanently withheld by private NASA space-imaging contractors from a publicly-funded mission like they have every year before.
In "2008" I will begin making several thousand dollars a month online and convert that rapidly to gold as the dollar continues to decline, sending gold shooting up through the roof through simple pulley physics.
In "2008" I will spend more time meditating, less time reading and more time building important things.
In "2008" I will ride to DC on my own Harley and return safely to Maine. I will ride safe all season with no accidents.
In "2008" I will choose from a list of topics of great urgency for a documentary film and begin scripting and filming.
In "2008" Lady Jane will have found a job at her company that she loves that doesn't involve traveling 2-4 weeks per month.
In "2008" I will have decided on the overall scope and approach of my sustainable home design and will have a basic ballpark for financial goal-setting.
By the end of "2008" I will be paid nearly what I'm worth, just in time to quit because my web properties have outgrown my day job, unless we're talking enough money that I could rapidly pay cash to build that house without a bank loan.
By the end of "2008" I will be writing about how the power of intention has brought me success on all these points in ways I didn't expect or see coming, except the one I subconsciously already know won't happen, for the best.
This artificial construct we call "2007" measures a slipped-off segment of the illusory experience of "time" in which various contractual arrangements expire, commence, renew with regularity we apparently all agree on.
What did I do with mine?
For starters, I threw Lady Jane a surprise birthday party having accomplished the apparently impossible feat of getting her whole family together at the same time. So far the only time I've had to get nice clothes dry-cleaned from having a drink spilled on them in a restaurant by the wait staff, but also the first time I'd ever been inflicted upon by a person with the same first name as me.
I nearly had a nervous breakdown, probably from learning about too many different evils all at once while trying to feign interest in work I was totally burned-out on. I escaped to Phoenix for a week to visit my buddy and relax doing nothing for a week.
The very next week, after getting a passport in the most expeditious, expensive and complicated manner possible involving traveling two states away and sitting in a stuffy, metallic federal waiting room straight out of the movie Brazil, I took Lady Jane to Cancun and Chichen Itza. Too many stories to tell here, now. Unfortunately, and against all better judgement, we forced ourselves to leave when our damnable return flights were scheduled.
I started paying a person to listen to me while I explain myself, but only for an hour a week.
I bought a 1985 Honda Nighthawk 700s, which if you don't know is a 700cc motorcycle, Honda's precursor to today's rice rockets. It looks like something straight out of a movie about an Atari video game or something. I bought it months ahead of my scheduled MSF course.
LJ and I went from Maine to DC on her 1602cc Yamaha for Rolling Thunder, accompanied by her father and sheer joy of a mother riding his full dresser. We picked up some Vet buddies of theirs along the way, who we followed down 95 straight through Manhattan then over the GWB at 5pm on a Friday on a scorching hot day. Apparently the head of our pack, who was trailering his bike behind an Excursion, told his GPS to "avoid construction", and that was the next best thing it could come up with. Having ridden "bitch" behind a girl the whole way, I was affectionately referred to the entire trip as "Barbie" by a delightfully insane man who didn't let the fact that he grew up in Misourrah affect his thick Tennessee accent.
The following weekend, after two migraines and nearly hozing it at the last minute, I get a motorcycle endorsement on my license and as far as I was concerned, became a biker. I was told by many that this was not true.
LJ escorted me onto the road for the first time, where I promptly found a development of loop streets on which to practice and be repeatedly screamed at in the sweetest way by a terrified SO. Over the next week or so, I worked up the skill to ride home into the city and commute to the office every day.
We moved into a nice apartment. Apparently I have too much crap. Apparently I technically qualify as a "hoarder". You'll see someday. Someday the shit's going to hit the fan and somebody's going to need a 48-foot length of 4-pair copper telephone wire, and they're going to need to crimp RJ-11 plugs onto it. And they'll trade me some fresh arugula and half a dozen eggs for it. But not if I throw it out, baby. Not if I throw it out...
Lady Jane threw me a simple birthday barbecue at my place with a few friends. For whatever reason I wanted it small.
I went on a big ride of over 100 bikes covering almost as many miles through New Hampshire with the local Harley Owners Group. I rode my Honda with a plastic bag full of sushi rice taped to the back with the words "RESERVE FUEL" black-markered onto it, which several bikers seemed to appreciate. Nobody died, but 3 people were hospitalized. None of them were biker cops, who caused two of those accidents.
I cancelled my flight to Salt Lake City to attend an energy research conference and shoot interview footage, literally a few hours before departure, and surprised Lady Jane in a manner in which I shouldn't describe here.
I worked diligently on a MythTV box but got fed up with it in favor of productive uses of my time. At least until I can afford a nicer TV card...
I went to Laconia Bike Week and test-drove a Harley Sportster 1200 with Milwaukee plates on it, owned by the company themselves. I'll never forget the feeling of Lady Jane and I riding a pair of Harleys through scenic rural NH over fresh tar in the middle of a warm, sunny afternoon, or the thrilling sensation of realizing that A) There was a test-riding course you're supposed to follow, and B) I had not been following that course for nearly a mile, and C) The bikes featured live GPS fleet-tracking hardware which someone in a black pickup was watching from where we left. I can't be sure, but I think it had a gun rack.
I went to the New Hampshire / Vermont HOG rally where I fell in love with a shiny blue 1997 Harley-Davidson FXD Dyna SuperGlide which the rider was selling for way under book.
Due to lack of credit at all (which I consider as a success), my sister co-signed at my credit union for a loan and the following weekend, and one three hour ride followed by an utterly debilitating heat-induced migraine delay later, I was the proud and slightly-drugged owner of a '97 Dyna. I figured I must be a biker at this point and was once again corrected.
I rode it just about every day. I rode it the entire mile to work and back at least. I got a $240 windshield for it so I didn't get neckaches from highway riding. Then one sunny September afternoon after an idyllic organic sandwich lunch in the park downtown, some jerk who got his license from Wal-Mart ran over that windshield and never looked back as I rolled down the street beside him, shredding the flesh off my left kneecap and breaking an insidious little bone in my hand too small to immobilize and too critically-located to be anything but a constant painful nusiance. I was only trying to get around the guy before he caused an accident by weaving back and forth between two lanes in a shoulderless, curved corridor, but instead slipped on some sand which had collected on the side of the road conveniently where my rear tire needed to be to help me get around the dude. After being bandaged up and sat upon my couch with an ice pack and a fresh bowl of little green flowers, I was informed almost simultaneously by BB and LJ that now, indeed, I am a biker.
LJ spent an airline bump voucher to bring my buddy BB and his girlfriend home from Phoenix somewhat randomly for a long weekend in Maine. She's some kind of wonderful.
I kept riding until the snow started to fall, though even after I've had to convince myself not to go out on some warm sunny winter days. I'm actually a biker? A geek biker?
The girl had a two-week work travel assignment in Las Cruces, so I flew out to see her and go exploring through the desert, stomping around in Blixco's old stomping grounds, and see some sights. We went to White Sands Missile Range and went snowsledding in the White Sand dunes up past the range. We rode through the mountains to see some 800-year-old corn husks. I got to do one of my favorite annual treats when I pissed off the top of a mountain.
On the way home, I had a 3-hour layover in Phoenix which was spent driving around hanging out with my friend BB again, wearing his Blues Brothers t-shirt I packed when I left his place the last time, and left with it again this time, goddammah.
I went to Vegas for a week to attend a big web geek conference for free as I was a speaker/panelist. I've never done that before but people liked the unique material they hadn't had previously at that conference and I got at least one potential freelance gig out of it.
Lady Jane surprised me at my hotel that night on a brief layover from Las Cruces she extended into overnight plus a free upgrade to a Mustang convertible, so we toured the Strip with the top down which was awesome and went to the Hoover Dam which was underwhelming. Have I mentioned how awesome she is yet?
I bought, and returned a Roomba robot vacuum, because it didn't have automatic scheduling and I can't afford the one that does.
I realized that I've had a basic contempt for the entire world my whole life and I don't know where it came from, other than the sum total of my life experiences growing up in rural northern Maine surrounded by rural northern Mainers.
I realized I need to either hurry the hell up and start making a small fortune online while I still have a chance, or bait a sweet job offer that pays what I'm worth so I can afford to eat more real food by local producers, save some gold before it gets too expensive, and ultimately build a sustainable home for life to my stringent specifications, preferably in a place where my tax money will not support fascism or the economics of scarcity and control.
I realized that she trusts my judgement and supports me in all this, is eager to move to a new land and is even willing to leave the country should it come to that. I realized she has the technical aptitude to do a lot of stuff that I never get around to doing which would help me further these goals. I realized I have a life partner.
In "2008", the US' petrodollar economy will continue to crash in a perfect controlled demolition that most laypeople who don't follow financial news will think was an accident. Hillary the criminal warpig Token First Female President and her obedient party-line-towing Token First Black Vice President will win by a Deibold-provided narrowly-hacked margin despite Ron Paul / Kucinich having the obvious popular vote and the electoral vote according to exit polls, the discrepancy of which will not be reported. Either that or he'll win and be assassinated.
In "2008" a false-flag terror event of some kind, likely either bio or dirty rad, will strike some US embassy somehwere and will be blamed on barely-extant organization nobody realizes was actually founded and funded by the CIA.
In "2008", a comet will be destroyed before it destroys earth and nobody will know who wasn't involved. Elsewhere, critical science data will be permanently withheld by private NASA space-imaging contractors from a publicly-funded mission like they have every year before.
In "2008" I will begin making several thousand dollars a month online and convert that rapidly to gold as the dollar continues to decline, sending gold shooting up through the roof through simple pulley physics.
In "2008" I will spend more time meditating, less time reading and more time building important things.
In "2008" I will ride to DC on my own Harley and return safely to Maine. I will ride safe all season with no accidents.
In "2008" I will choose from a list of topics of great urgency for a documentary film and begin scripting and filming.
In "2008" Lady Jane will have found a job at her company that she loves that doesn't involve traveling 2-4 weeks per month.
In "2008" I will have decided on the overall scope and approach of my sustainable home design and will have a basic ballpark for financial goal-setting.
By the end of "2008" I will be paid nearly what I'm worth, just in time to quit because my web properties have outgrown my day job, unless we're talking enough money that I could rapidly pay cash to build that house without a bank loan.
By the end of "2008" I will be writing about how the power of intention has brought me success on all these points in ways I didn't expect or see coming, except the one I subconsciously already know won't happen, for the best.
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