I think because of our prostate or some shit it gets harder to pee so you gotta give it a little more oomph and well . . .

Had glorious weather on Saturday and went for a bike ride on a bit of the Interurban trail before looping back to our favorite nice day brewery and then biking home a little bit tipsy.

Man, on Market Sunday, my neighborhood here in Seattle is just a cluster of people slowly driving around looking for parking.

There’s parking right around the market area, but it’s mostly paid, so people look for free street parking, and their interpretation of a legal spot can be interesting.

Give bikes a protected lane and people a nice wide sidewalk and cars can eat our scraps.

*a fun thing is that this path is blacktop and has several parking lots along it and I've not infrequently witnessed cars exit those lots turning right directly onto the path thinking it is the road. Fun times.

I get annoyed at both the people blocking the path & the bikers who zip thru too fast and too close to those people. I get buzzed by bikes when my gf and I are walking on it and I when I'm biking I can't get around oblivious families/running groups going 4-5 wide across the path.

There's a shared bike path that can't officially be called a bike path* I ride down often that gets lots of foot traffic + a really popular brunch place along it with lots of people loitering outside waitingfor tables.

That's really it. Why are bikes and people so often forced to share the same infrastructure in so many places, when cars basically get roads(and the majority of real estate) all to themselves?

Grackle

*Despite the fact that “grackle” is a really fun word to say.

I once spent a long lunch on the deck at Blue Agave (rip) in Tahoe City watching a grackle dive bomb every single woman who walked by on the sidewalk. Just women. My gf and I speculated the men were generally wearing hats so it was visible hair it hated? Anyway, low opinion of grackles* since.

As my good friend said of her Australian Shepherd the 1st time I met him, who was (rightfully) anxious and barking at the strange man in his Mom's house, "He's never bit anyone . . . which is exactly what you say until he does." We were cool within a day, but I appreciated her awareness.

I love dogs, I really do . . . but that doesn't mean I want to sit at dinner while your dog beg stares at me for my food, who the server has to step over/around, or yelp barks with anxiety in an enclosed space s/he doesn't want to be in, or jumps on my clean clothes with dirty paws.

About 15 years ago, when I was living in NYC, I met some guys at a friend of my gf's art project, and they were talking about the oral history work they were doing regarding the LES and the epidemic(which they lived thru), it was devastating to hear about all the people they lost.

Seconding pretty much everything mentioned so far, so I'll add: Non-professionalized children's intramural sports and hobbies. Like, Park district, not traveling clubs that cost $$$. And just doing stuff for fun, not to build your future college resume.

I mean, making the playoffs, going up 3-1 and then losing game 7 would be an improvement over the last 10+ years at least.

Sinking into the weekend like

A painting of a calico cat looking directly at the viewer and laying in loaf form on the keyboard of a half-closed laptop. The background is a shade of blue and the painting in done is a style somewhat in the vein of Cezanne, the painters favorite painter.

A calico cat looking directly at the camera sits in loaf form on the keyboard of a half-closed laptop on a wooden table with a sewing machine and small red table lamp in the background.

post the best picture you have ever taken of your pet (if you feel like it): Pt 2

My favorite picture of Derwyn that I myself took, among many. After Derwyn died, my Mom's best friend surprised me with a painting commemorating this(next post)

post the best picture you have ever taken of your pet (if you feel like it):

Not the best photo but a favorite & technically taken by my Mom. My Mom let her cockatiel, Tweetie, out to fly free often, so Derwyn decided the best way to "make friends" was to climb in her cage and wait . . .

"just yet."

Fire these people straight into the sun.

Next to is to slowly start buying this stuff on CDs again so I own it outright, and get my iTunes library back up and running. I effed it up a few years ago moving it to an external drive and haven’t bothered getting it working again since, because streaming is so easy.

A resolution I’ve actually kept since December is listening to actual albums again. So much good music I hadn’t listen to in forever. I’ve discovered “new to me” music via the Apple Music algo (it’s kind of my radio now?)but when I like a song I make sure to listen to the album too.

Much better. #mountainsout

This is so cool. Thank you for reminding people what the internet was and is supposed to be for.

Mancow. There’s a name I haven’t heard in forever. Him replacing bill and wendy mornings on q101 in Chicago felt like the end of the 90s (ie my youth). Q101 relaunched as an alt rock station with a cure concert when I was 17, and mancow felt like the bookend in my 1st post college year.

Just made myself the 7th hold on the 5 copies my library has on preorder.

Oh no. I'm so sorry. It was so fucking hard to let my girl go when it was time. You did everything you could and you are doing the most loving thing you could be doing for him now.

This was excellent.

Another reason Defector is with a subscription.

Last week in IA people everybody did the “I guess you guys brought this rain with you from Seattle” bit, but now it’s feels like we brought some Midwestern weather back with us here. Those were some tornado-looking skies for a minute there.

I always say I wish I believed in hell so I would know certain people are or will someday be rotting there but I like yours better a much more positive way to think about it.