Happy Father's Day! or Hints From Hoban

Say you're about to head out to a Father's Day brunch and your only clean dress shirt is the one with the collar whose tips always veer upwards because it's been through the wash one too many times and you never remembered to buy collar stays to tame it back into place and now you wish you had because if you go out to brunch in this rag you'll look like a doofus!! What could be worse (well, besides opening run on sentences?) Not much. But here's a quick fix and a fast way to get to those eggs benedicts:

1. Find a used up gift card. I chose a recently depleted Regal Cinema card. (Saw X-Men: First Class with the fam, and Super 8 on my own with it.)

2, Next, cut a strip of the card slightly narrower than the stitched "pocket" in your shirt collar. (Dimensions vary)

3. Cut a nice pointy end on one side of the new gift card stay:

4. Finally, jab that thing into the stitched "sleeve", trim the length to the desired dimension and round off the sharp corners. Repeat steps 1 through 4 for the other collar tip.

5. Done and done. Now, if I only had the good fashion sense to buy quality shirts that come with collar stays! (Oh well.)

Happy Father's Day!!

Recyle/Trash Picking Day: Out With The Old...In With The New Junk

Our township/municipality, Willistown, holds an annual "Drop-Off Recycling Event" for locals to unload their large junk at the township building. We've never participated in the offer...until now! Angela decided it was time to get rid of all her old computers dating back to the mid-90s. So, being the dutiful husband (and one with some new found time on my hand, yeah!) I packed up the techno-junk and hauled it up the road a click or three to the drop off event.

If you know anything about me, you understand (or at least accept, or even just look the other way) that I am a pack rat of sorts. I wouldn't go as far as to say that I am the next subject in A&E's Hoarders show, however I will continue with this cable television programming idea and suggest that I am more in tune with the guys on American Pickers (a great show!). I love thrift stores and flea markets. Garage sales are my sanctuary. And I'll whip over to the side of the road in an instant if I see some curbside crud worthy of a little investigation. What can I say. It's just one of my things.

So I pulled up to the township building, got in line behind a few other Saturday afternoon haulers and was directed around the back to...

...HEAVEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Look at that amazing junk! Now, I must come clean: these pictures were taken on the day after the drop off event, so they don't do the event justice at all! I didn't have my camera on the actual day, and I had high hopes that most of the large piles of computers, stereos, televisions and all other forms of electronica garbage remained, but alas, most of it was carted away.

Finding myself in this Mecca of Messiness, I was as giddy as Templeton the rat from "Charlotte's Web", hauling away his trophy rotten egg from one of the geese on Zuckerman's farm. The volunteers at the drop off event didn't take too kindly to us "poachers" sniffing around while they separated the worthless from the even less than worthless, but being that I brought by several old monitors and pc towers they looked the other way when I went a pokin'!

In the end, there wasn't much of anything to take home (Angela breathes a sigh of relief). However, the point of this sort of activity is not so much the thrill of the chase, but the fun of the rootin' around. Don't get me wrong, finding something so totally clutch is a nice end to the game and, in fact, I did find something amazing...at least to me: an old Realistic boombox, circa 1983 and weighing in at (probably) 20 lbs. It's really cool and it works! I like the old stuff, or at least the forgotten forms of media of yester-decade. Plus, it was totally FREE! and worth between $50.00 - $100.00 at auction on Ebay. Now how's that for some good old fashioned American pickin'!!!

Here's a video of my "diamond in the dumpster rough":





-Marty

Another Year Done, Another Notch

Phew! Made it.

School's officially over. Time to organize such summer stuff, indeed. Yesterday took the looooong way home and captured one frame of video for every second of travel. It's a fun view on its own [silent]:




...but more interesting with music pumping. I choose Cream's "Crossroads" for your listening pleasure:



To experience the full interactive extravaganza, click on both videos, pause the "Cream - Crossroads (Live)" video until you queue the "Last Day Drive Home" video to approximately 1:23. Hit play on both videos, expand the "Last Day Drive Home" video to full screen and enjoy the online mixed media moments!! (Mind you, it ain't no "Dark Side of the Rainbow", but there are some moments of speedy serendipity. And, the music ends at or near where I get off the Blue Route and trudge through neighborhood roads. This is when I normally turn off all music and meditate the rest of the way!! ;))

Another Pre-Summer Post: A Visit To Something Called "The Paradiso of Doctor Bogarian"

The purpose of this post is to merely link you to a video of my midday experience while walking across campus this fine, pre-summer day. Also, I feel I should point you to the best explanation for why such a spectacle is indeed occurring. Needless to say, there is no rational explanation for any of this!!



Visit: Occupation Anything for the concept behind such shenanigans.

The Return

Dear Readers:

As the school year finds its end, my summer blog site is primed for entries from the up and coming Summer 2011. Check back this season as I recover from a grueling school year and wander through the hazy crazy days ahead. For now though, I provide a video of nature at its best, a hopeful sign of a new start: a nest of baby robins outside our house in West Chester, PA. (Anna has yet to name them!) The stop motion vidage was shot on the last day of May from 4:30 - 8:30 pm. Cute.

Winter is gone, spring is nearly over and such summer stuff is just around the corner.

See you later, online!

-Marty