I thought the other thread on this topic of random topics was getting a little bulky and it was high time to lighten the load a touch, less buttons to push and such...

I have several to me interesting things on my mind at the moment that I'm going to share. My family just returned from an awesome camping trip to a Halloween themed campground. The weather was supreme. I brought my small scope and did a little stargazing, plus the Orionid meteor shower was happening and I saw about five good meteors. I was blown away at all the decorating, costumes, and pumpkin carving. We had roaring campfires at night that spurred ghost stories and good conversation. During that I started to put several kinds of bottles into our fire trying to melt them, my contribution was a Starbucks jar. A particularly interesting one was a blue wine bottle. When you do this right, the bottle comes out really abstract and almost sculpted. You have to warm the bottle up before putting it to the crucible, and when it comes out in the morning, it has to be removed slowly as well or it will shatter. Theresa, the lady who owned the bottle wanted to have it in the morning. Unfortunately, someone accidentally hit it with a stick in the morning and it broke in half. She didn't want it any more so I slowly removed it from the ashes. I thought it was wickedly beautiful and it made me think of Ray's story, The Blue Bottle. I took it home with us and I glued it back together with crazy glue. It worked and now it is proudly hanging in my office window where blue sun is refracted through it like a blue diamond. It looks like it has weird martian hieraglyphics all over it. I love it! Someone at the campfire asked what the melting point of glass was. I have since found out that it is between 1400 and 1600 degrees fahrenheit. That was a lot hotter than I imagined and a far cry from 451. We were burning good dry oak boards and logs in our fire. Two other things intrigued me at the campout. One was that there was at least three campsites who had a Wizard of Oz theme, I thought they were all well done and cool, audio was excellent. The other thing was that some people camping across from us had the cutest little camper. After asking about it, we found out it was a '63 Shasta. The guy had totally redone everything. On the inside, it had oak panelling. I can't tell you how nice and cozy it was. He originally paid $100.00 for it and has been working on it for about a year and a half and spent $1100.00 restoring it. Its a small one that is torqouise on the bottom half and aluminum on top. It had open up slat windows and a tiny airconditioner that the guy said would blow you out of there it was so cold. It also had real bullet holes in it from where someone shot it where it was stored. He left one still visible above one of the windows. I want one really bad now. What a fantasy life that would be to travel around in it and tour places. Sometimes I wish I could be nomadic, what an adventure that could be. Possible goal for retirement I guess.

Grasstains, on another thread, you mentioned The Matrix. I recently got some cash for my birthday to buy a winter coat. I have been wanting a long leather trench coat for a while. The ones I looked at were $350.00 and more. Someone at work suggested a certain thrift store that I called and sure enough to my surprise they had a large mens hanging in the window. I went there to try it on and it was like new except for a few loose buttons. They wanted $170.00 for it. I was going to get it when I saw a sign advertising a fifty percent sale on Columbus day but if I waited, I might lose it to someone else. I decided to wait and see. Sure enough, it was still in the window and I was able to get it for $65.00. I'm having the buttons fixed by a girl from work who sews stuff. Now all's I need is a pair of big Matrix boots and I'll be set for Halloween. Sorry to go on and on, just a few of my miscellany currently, hope y'all keep adding yours to the pile...

Yep, yup!

Matrix... way cool. Passed on it in the Wal*Mart DVD bargain bin the other day, though. Picked up AGNES OF GOD instead. They also had WOLFEN, written by Whitley Strieber. Speaking of whom... also wrote COMMUNION, which our dear Robo happens to be reading. I have the COMMUNION book-on-tape narrated (sp?) by Roddy MacDowell. He does an excellent job of spookifying an already very spooky tale. I'd like for the entire family to sit around the livingroom and listen to the story, but I'll have to give it another listen beforehand (this time with my 5th grade ears) in order to see if it's G-Rated enough for my little guy to listen. I seem to recall some cussing.

Robo mentioned Kerouac in an e-mail which reminds me of a story... back in the mid-80s I was partying in San Francisco at a small inner city school or park of some kind right next to China Town, just stumbling around with some friends (~#~) you know, and we look through the haze (not fog) and notice we're on Jack Kerouac Street! It was actually more of an alleyway than a street, which I think is only fitting. The only book I ever read by the guy was THE SUBTERRANEANS. I liked the slang, but that was about it.

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I finished Communion this very morning. I'm off work till Wed. and have been catching up on my reading and...laundry I didn't know he wrote Wolfen too, I'll have to check that out. I remember when I was in fifth grade in 1973 that we were all caught up in the ufo hype. There was a camp that we used to go to with a friend down the street called Spooky Hollow and it backed up to a nature reserve. It was really beautiful and serene and it had two lakes with about twelve cabins surrounding them. Anyway, we went there with the neighbors kids and just knew we would see something, anything. We had a campfire going one night and we looked out over the lake which was shrouded in fog. Just above the lake in the dense fog, we saw a large glowing blue green orb. Man, were we excited! Misty, our friend Mike's older sister got on her little dirt bike and road over to the caretaker's house to see if he had a camera. By the time she returned, it had faded. I always attributed it to some kind of swamp gas or something natural, but ya never know.

My mom is reading "The Grays." Scary stuff.

Welcome back, Grasstains.

I just want to let everyone know about a totally awesome astronomical event coming up. Nasa notified me yesterday(no, I don't work for Jet Propulsion Lab or anything, I wish, I work in a bookstore but signed up for e-mail notification)that there is to ba a Mercury transit of the sun on November 8th. at around 2:30 p.m. EST. You don't want to miss this. Find someone with a telescope that has a protective mylar cover over it so you can observe the pinhole dot that is the planet making its way across the massive disk of the sun. This really gives a size perspective of our system. I've seen two other transits, one of Mercury and one of Venus(most spectacular). If you can't get to a scope, you can make a pinhole in cardboard and project it, but I think it would be much harder to discern due to the tiny size of Mercury. This event is going to be particularly interesting as the planet is going right across the center I beleive of the sun. It will last about 5 and a half hours so we on the eastern coast will be interrupted by darkness I'm afraid.

I just registered to this and I cannot wait to try it out, it sounds so cool! Check it out.

http://www.bookcrossing.com/home

Sorry folks for being a tad presumptuous and or prolific on here lately. I go back to work tomorrow after being off for six fun-filled days and I will decrease my postings/annoying unrelatedtoBradburymusings and go back to lurking/readingandappreciatingothersideasforachangeinsteadoflisteningtomyownhornblow with an occasional post.

Robot Lincoln, you say "Back to work?" Have you checked you eyes lately? This is actually for anyone. This is quite amazing. The test gets really tougher and tougher.

http://www.myschool.com/SWF/ColorBlind2.swf

quote:

Originally posted by Robot Lincoln:
I just registered to this and I cannot wait to try it out, it sounds so cool! Check it out.

http://www.bookcrossing.com/home

Although I think book crossing is a wonderful idea, I could never bring myself to just leave a book like that. It would be like abandoning a friend or relative!

(Unless it was a terrible book, in which case I wouldn't want to leave it for an unsuspecting passerby to be disappointed by it.)

I know what you mean Phil. However since working in a used bookstore, we get so many books in at the buy table and many that we don't use gets donated to institutions both locally and abroad, but if the spine is broken or something minor is wrong with the book, it just gets tossed in the garbage can. We call the dumpster out back "The Grisham Institute". I have "saved" many a book from the jaws of that dumpster. That aside, many people, me included, either have multiple copies of favorite books or books they no longer read. The attraction for me is like the message in a bottle. You release the book into the wild with its number and information on what to do when its found. Hopefully it is found and read and the person responds by acknowledging it on the website. Books are intrinsically objects that are not thrown away when found. I may even try to release a Bradbury book.

Broid,
uh, thanks, I think...

Yeah, nice?!*

Well, late last night I decided to "release" my first book into the wild and hopefully track it as explained above. I have about three copies of Frankenstein and having just read that, I chose it for release. I put all the info. on it after registering it and I made my own tags and taped them to it. Then I put it in a ziplock baggy because it was raining and put it on a bench of a bustop near my house. Nobody was around and it was a little creepy plus I felt sneaky but it had a real positive vibe to it too. Then I went back online and wrote details of the release. I hope karma gets it to someone who needs it at the moment....

I'd be interested in knowing what the "tags" are.