A few quotes that have struck a chord in me lately:

“Don’t be afraid to suck.”  -Mur Lafferty, among others

“Forgive yourself [...] Then forgive your enemies.”  -Jesus (paraphrased), most recently by Joel Johnson

“Nothing is more important than that you see and love the beauty that is right in front of you, or else you will have no defense against the ugliness that will hem you in and come at you in so many ways.” -Fraa Orolo, from Neil Stephenson’s Anathem.

So, do you think perhaps I think I’ve been a bit too hard on myself?

There was an additional phrase in today’s sermon that caught me as well, but unfortunately I’ve forgotten it.  Hopefully it will come to me again.

The combination of sewer problems, cleaning up the resulting mess in the bathroom, then preparing the bathroom for fix-up, planning and postponement of a vacation and finally a 35th birthday party ate up July. So it goes.

But all of that has made me rather thoughtful about time management. In particular, I’ve been trying to compare my time management now with that of myself 20 years ago. Or to put it another way: how on earth did I do so much stuff when I was in college?
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So this little beastie, plus another two feet of the same, was filling up our sewer line:

When the plumber told us we had a rootball, I was thinking something like what you might find wrapped in burlap, at the end of a sapling at a tree nursery. Apparently when you’re dealing with plumbing, “ball” is a relative term.

So the end result is that we got a completely new sewer line. And a big cut out of our driveway. And a big hole in our yard. Bonus!

So last night we went to the Bulls game and got in our fireworks there. And that was for the best, really, because the actual Fourth hasn’t been much to speak about. It started when Mur did some laundry, and the drain water started coming up through the toilet. Well, we shut off the washing machine, got out the plunger and the Liquid Plumber and got to work. After an hour of this, it was draining slowly. We had to run some errands, so we let it sit until we got back (it’s a good thing we didn’t try to run the washing machine then!).

Once we got back, Mur really wanted to start the laundry again, so I reluctantly said okay, assuming that someone would be around to keep an eye on it. I then proceeded to wander away and forget about it. A few minutes later I come downstairs to find water flowing over the top of the toilet and onto the bathroom floor. I quickly shut off the washing machine and headed to the basement, to find Niagara Falls from the water flowing between the floorboards. Fortunately we have an old carpet down there, so all I needed to do is get everything out of the direct path of water and let the carpet soak up the rest. Then Mur called the plumber.

End result: the plumber found a blockage somewhere in our sewer line — where, he’s not sure. Apparently the “kid” has the camera. But it’s looking like a bad one. Hopefully it’s not under our driveway, but it’s not looking good. Until then, our “grey water” (and “night soil”) is flowing out of the cleanout onto our lawn, so at least we can get our business done. But it’s not looking like a fun weekend.

And now here’s a Friday picture of a cat, to take your mind off of all of that:

It’s been a busy week and a half.  Mur and I and the Pink Tornado were up in Buffalo visiting my family, and then from there we went to Columbus, OH, to attend the Origins Game Fair and Expo.

One stop we made while in Buffalo was at the Butterfly Conservatory near Queenston, Ontario, where we met this little guy:

Origins was fun, as usual.  We gave ourselves an extra day there this year, which was good because we were pretty beat that first day.  However, we managed to get in a game of Arkham Horror, a game of Pandemic, and got to try out China Rails (not recommended when you’re introducing people to crayon rails games — better to choose geography they know).

And the Pink Tornado won the costume contest again. All in all, a good time, but it’s good to be home again.

The narration in this strip from the online comic Ozy and Millie sums up my attitude right now — and the feeling I’m trying to capture with this blog.

I feel that in the last twenty I have lost a good part of my purer self, and so I’ve drifted a bit off of course.  My goal now is to figure out who that self is, and to start living up to the potential I had in the first twenty.

Or maybe it’s just to be “totally unsupervised.”  Whichever is more fun.

It figures that during the first big heat wave of the year, our A/C poops out.  In the grand scheme of things, it’s not that surprising: the first big heat wave is the first time the system gets a serious stress test.  I went out and checked it last night after it cooled down a bit — looks like it’s pumping air from the house but the fan in the outdoor unit isn’t running.  I managed to find a technician that will show up before Thursday so hopefully we can get it fixed today.  Until then, we have a (loud!) window unit in the kitchen, the relative coolness of the basement, and the whole house fan to blow the hot air out at night.  Well, and the community swimming pool.

Mm, good on a hot day

Originally uploaded by jvsquare
This little guy (gal?) showed up outside NVIDIA one day last year. For next few Fridays I’ll be sharing pictures. Given how hot it is, this one seemed appropriate.

Today I caught a fly with my bare hands.  It was just flying by and I reached up and grabbed it.  I’m not sure whether this has anything to do with my recent push to get in better health, but it was pretty cool.  As far as the “better health” regimen goes, I rode 6 miles today, as part of building up my strength to ride to work everyday.  Too bad I’ll have to give that up when the PT heads to summer camp, but for now it feels good to get out there.

In the creative-type news, the hops are coming in pretty well, but something seems to be nipping at them.  It might be rabbits, but I thought I plugged up the hole under the fence.  Maybe birds?  I also saw a cool spider in a hole, with little baby spiders riding on its back.  Maybe it’ll get big enough to eat whatever is eating the hops.

And the sauerkraut is doing its thing in the basement.  Now to make some corned beef…

Welcome to my new blog.  This mainly exists so I can do something with the jimvanverth.com domain, and this seemed the best thing.

Mostly I’ll be talking about the creative projects I’m doing — that was the original intent.  But that didn’t seem to be enough.  So occasionally I may throw out a philosophical or introspective thought — hence the self-improvement bit of “the next twenty years.”  Maybe it’s a bit indulgent, but we’ll see.  Hopefully people will find it interesting.