2005 June

I designed and built this site for the studio where I take Yoga classes. It uses TYPO3 for content management, featuring news, email subscription, and a nice class and event calander. I like this two-column CSS layout the best of all the sites I’ve done so far. Getting the calendar extension working was the toughest part, and I collaborated a bit with Alexander Langer, the author, to get some fixes into the code. I wish I’d taken a screen shot of the old site - it’s quite a contrast!

After another exhausting day of moving, we pile into the Subaru with essentially no preparation to see Olga Kern play Rachmaninov’s 2nd piano concerto at the Gerald Ford Ampitheatre in Vail. We’re delirious. We don’t even bring a sweater, we’ve been so continually hot these past days. When there is something resembling a snow shower on Loveland Pass, we begin to realize our lack of foresight. We lived in the mountains last summer, and now we have driven back for an outdoor event with barely a stitch of warm clothing between us.

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This was a good way to unwind from a long day of moving. The material I’d expect was all there, and still funny, but the timing was a bit off or something. It didn’t quite click along like the radio show. Of course it wasn’t twelve hours long either. The sense of bewilderment at the universe and one’s own capricious survival in it is fairly well conveyed, and I did leave wondering where I might find a good pan-galactic gargleblaster.

Moving into Moby Jane is not easy, but there are pleasant surprises. There’s room for some books, files, pictures, the KitchenAid, and quite a few clothes without even hitting the outside storage. The more we move in the freer we feel.

We can’t resist trying to put the awning up without reading the instructions. It almost cost Ann a finger, but the result is pretty pleasant! I repair a sewer hose and drain the water tanks, getting familiar with the operation of these things. We learn that we’ll need to feed the microbes in our ‘black water’ tank with bright blue powder and biodegradable TP. There are lots of fans and vents to play with. We even have TWO television sets.

It will be a very different life, but it feels comfortable. Even T-Rex quickly found a spot to take a nap. We have a view of the big Colorado sky so we can watch the thunder storms roll through. Our only worry is that even though Moby Jane has accomated a surprising amount of our stuff, there is much more back at the house. It still seems impossible that it will all fit.

The closing on our new home almost went badly. It started well - when we turned into the Heron Lake RV park on Friday afternoon our new fifth wheel was headed through the gate right in front of us. Suddenly, being almost ours, it took on a sudden, lustrous beauty. The white land whale was not beached but gliding gracefully down the road, her natural habitat. Don backed her into our spot, showed us how to level her, and we all headed for the bank.

I had called in earlier to ask what I needed to bring to the closing, and the credit union officer said pretty much just my ID and checkbook. Ann prodded me to get a cashier’s check and proof of insurance, but I let it slide. Of course we ended up needing both. At 5 pm on Friday Ann got someone to keep our bank open late for her, and while she rushed off to get the check I left messages for our insurance agent to fax the insurance info. This was thankfully good enough for the credit union, Ann returned with the check, and we were soon off to celebrate a successful deal and learn how to hook up the sewer system!

The populations of Namib, Pre-Namib, and Kalahara deserts are examined in astounding anthropomorphic detail. I think I had heard of this film because of the footage of animals getting drunk on rotting fruit, but there is plenty of other amazing footage. If I didn’t know the film was made in 1974, I’d swear some of the scenes were created with computer graphics, they seem so impossible.

One movie was not quite enough for full yard sale recovery, so we set our laptop theatre up on the back porch to watch Sideways. I’d heard that this movie was credited for a big boost in Pinot Noir sales, but I couldn’t imagine how a movie could have that kind of influence. I still don’t know how the effect was achieved, but we both found that the movie made us feel like we’d been drinking right along with the characters (well maybe we’d had a margarita or two, but the movie made it feel like wine), and it made us want more. Soon we were ripping into Ann’s Wine of the Month Club delivery, when we discovered to our horror that this month’s red selection was none other than … A MERLOT! NOOOOOoooooooooo! (I hate to say it, but it went down quite well with the movie).

Ann and I were both impressed by this character drama about a white woman from a fictional African country working as an interpreter in the New York UN building. The setting is interesting, and the characters stay pretty real. Ann, having grown up in Zaire, was irritated by a detail here and there (the one I recall is that people from African nations don’t talk wistfully about Africa as a whole, but would refer to their home country or province), but it was not nearly as bad she expected.

On a side note, I have to say that the Cinema Saver 6 theatre where we watched this movie rocks. The show started on a big screen after one preview at $2 a ticket. I’ve sworn to boycott all the other theatres in town, which charge way more, play 20 minutes of commercials, cancel scheduled shows, and pack you into shoeboxes not much bigger than our living room. Why do people put up with it?

Stage 2 of our possession liquidation is complete! We got a good taste of the garage sale culture in Fort Collins, got rid of quite a bit of stuff, and made a little scratch. There was a distinctive first wave of persnickity bargain hunters starting at about 7:30 am. One guy switched some price tags, and these people were sort of unpleasant to deal with in general. Almost everyone after that was interesting and pleasant, and a few were really fun. Our neighbors hung out for a while, and we felt sorry we didn’t get to know them better before.

We still have a lot of stuff to eliminate. This week will see a lot of trips to the thrift store. On Friday we close the deal on the Excel, and can start moving into it!

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I haven’t read a page-turner novel in a long time, and this one was supremely satisfying. I’ve read some of Jung’s case histories with fascination, but it never occurred to me how a powerful a ficional device psychoanalysis could be. Combined with a good story and enheartening values, I’m impressed enough with this work to forgive a few cliches and some reveling in the power of omnicient narration. For a novel with substance, this is also very entertaining stuff.