Fun and Games Dept

Central Time, originally uploaded by iMachias.

I just completely lost myself in a Friday evening for five hours and I feel magnificent. Once again I was playing with my school clock collection, something I haven’t really done over the past year or so.

After restoring the clock from my elementary school my OCD kicked in and I could no longer accept the fact that there was one room in our house that did not have a clock from my clock collection, and that room would be the kitchen.

The reason I never put a clock in the kitchen was mostly by design but partly due to laziness, the kitchen walls (at least where a clock would go) are all outside walls and our outside walls are stuffed to the gills with insulation. The thought of fishing the necessary wiring for a clock in the kitchen was overwhelming; I have a hard enough time pullng wire through inside walls let alone finding my way through insulation, so I went with a quartz clock instead and left well enough alone.

Until tonight.

About a week ago I saw a beautiful clock from a Kansas school from 1919 or 1920. It wasn’t an ebay find, but rather I stumbled upon it through an online search (on Bing!). It was at an antique shop. I contacted the owners to see if they would ship it up here and a week later, here it is.

This clock is slightly different in design from it’s younger siblings in the house and uses a different mechanism than the others but a little wiring ingenuity and it’s clicking right along with the rest of the clocks throughout the house. Pulling the wiring through the wall only took about five hours and I didn’t even have to rip out the wall to do it.

The exercise of installing the clock was oddly relaxing for me and I feel great that accomplished something I couldn’t do.

I haven’t cleaned the clock up yet, aside from removing several layers of dust. The paint splatters from it’s former classroom actually match the paint in our kitchen so I’ll probably wait awhile before repainting it, if I ever do. I kind of like the history of the clock being on display like that. Earl told me this is one of his favorites in the collection. That’s always a good thing.

I think it’s one of my favorites as well.

190.365, originally uploaded by iMachias.

How relaxed do I look today?!? I am very relaxed. It was a successful weekend being off the grid. Who would think that a geek like me would find such comfort in being unplugged?

189a.365, originally uploaded by iMachias.

Earl and I are playing relatively close to home this weekend and I’m playing off the grid by not using my iPhone; no updates to Facebook or Twitter, no checking my e-mail on the road, no text messages to friends in far away places.

I have taken quite a few photos today. I started by exploring the land behind our house for the first time since moving in nearly six years ago. The few shots I was pleased with are available here, in addition to my “365 days” photo for today, photo #189.

This afternoon Earl and I went exploring around the Utica Marsh. I usually ride my bike through this area and I don’t really pay attention to what’s in the woods around me; today we walked the area and I snapped quite a few photos. They are available here.

Afterwards we scoped out a new section of the Erie Canalway trail; I plan on using my forced day off on Monday to ride this new portion and I wanted to make sure it was paved before I took my road bike down there for the ride. I’m really looking forward to riding it on Monday.

Being disconnected from Facebook and Twitter (and constantly checking various messaging services) is very relaxing. Earl and I have both commented on how wonderful we feel today.

185.365, originally uploaded by iMachias.

I did something I have not done in 2009 to date. I rode my bike for the second day in a row. Today I clocked nearly 21 miles on the “hilly route”, which ended in a two mile stretch at about 40 MPH. Riding after work is doing wonders to get me back to center. I feel the best I have felt in a long while.

I look forward to a ride again tomorrow, and I know I can do it.

I decided to take my daily photo in the woods tonight, because it is in the woods where I feel very connected to the universe. The winds are blowing gently, the moon is full yet somewhat obscured by the summer haze and the temperature is just perfect. Barefooted, I made my way across the creek in the darkness and found a tree to sit by for a few moments, meditate, then snap a photo.

Life is good. Don’t ever let anyone convince you otherwise.

Standard Electric Time., originally uploaded by iMachias.

This morning I finished the project of restoring one of my school clocks for my collection. This particular clock came from the elementary school I went to, more specifically, it came out of my sixth grade classroom.

The case and glass has several layers of paint splatter on it. I opted to paint the rim black to match the numbers and hands.

This clock was made and installed in 1955 by the Standard Electric Time Company of Springfield, Massachusetts. The hands on this clock are original, however, are not the style usually found on this style clock. As this clock was intended for a classroom in an addition to the school, I believe these hands were chosen to match the art deco stylings of the older clocks in the original part of the building, which was built in 1939.

Originally ran by a pendulum master clock (like a grandfather’s clock) in the principal’s office, the clocks in the house operate as originally intended with the click-click every minute, but are run by the Linux server in the basement. They click in unison and are synchronized to the atomic clock via the internet. I think it’s pretty nifty that a 55 year old clock (and it’s older siblings scattered throughout the house) are synchronized through modern technology.

This is the second newest clock I have in the collection. The oldest is from 1917.

169.365, originally uploaded by iMachias.

It’s almost time for bed. Earl has already hit the hay as he is getting up at 5:45 tomorrow. Jamie is in bed as well because, well, Jamie went to bed. He has meetings at school tomorrow in preparation of the upcoming semester. I am finishing up a few things before calling it a night. My MacBook Pro behaved somewhat poorly when it came to networking while we were on vacation. I have wiped it out and reloaded everything from scratch. It’s taking a while to do this. It should be fully functional 24 hours from now.

Earl and I drove around 2,455 miles during our eight day journey. We enjoyed every moment of our much needed vacation and we feel rejuvenated and re-energized. I hope the feeling lasts.

St. Louis, Missouri is amazing place. I dislike it when folks on either coast refer to that area of the United States as the “flyover states” or the “flyover cities”. St. Louis and her midwestern cities are just important to the fabric of the U.S. as the bigger cities on the coasts. I mentioned on my Twitter feed throughout the week that St. Louis jumped a few notches on my “list”. I was referring to a list of potential places to live someday in the future. The climate, location and amenities of St. Louis make it a very desirable place to live in my book. It’s exact placement on my list deserves a separate blog entry someday, once I have had the opportunity to compare and contrast a bit with the others on my list. And yes, I do keep track of the pros and cons in a little file on the server. I’m just like that.

Tom was very happy to be home after I picked him up from Dad and Karen’s. He complained about the ride home for the duration of the entire trip, but once he checked out his native territory he started purring and immediately got back into his routine. He’s pretty flexible for a 14 year old cat.

Tomorrow starts a week of on-call duties. For the first time in a long time, I don’t find that to be too disturbing. I’m ready to handle it.

Ohio., originally uploaded by iMachias.

Today has been all about driving. Earl and I left St. Louis at 10 a.m. CDT, drove through downtown and then it became all about Interstate 70 as we crossed Illinois, Indiana and half of Ohio before turning north along Interstate 71. After 9 1/2 hours of driving, we have settled on Cleveland for our stay for the night. We have about six hours of driving left. We should be home at a decent time tomorrow.

My mind wandered a bit as we drove merrily along and I have to say that I’m the most relaxed I’ve been in a very long time. It’s a great feeling.

Earl and I just had dinner at the bar in the lobby, we might go out for a drink before calling it a night.

Earl and I are packing up our little one week home here in St. Louis and getting ready to head back east. We have a long drive ahead of us and who knows what adventure we’ll find on the road. We are always looking for adventure.

Today is my sister’s birthday. She has been and always will be one of my best friends. I am proud to be her big brother. To celebrate I share a picture from our childhood days. It’s one of my favorites of us.

Earl and I went to the Missouri Botanical Gardens for most of the day today. We took a ton of pictures, in fact Earl took so many that he drained the battery on his camera, and I’m going to try to post them on Flickr¹ when I get a few moments.

Instead of just snapping photos randomly and hoping for something amazing, I concentrated on what I was trying to capture and how I wanted it to look in a photo that will be around forever. This dragonfly photo is an example of me messing around in this manner. I already know a number of ways I could have improved this photo (especially if I was carrying a camera with a viewfinder) but I thought it was a pretty good start.

A dragonfly at the Missouri Botanical Gardens. July 17 ’09.

We never made it to Branson, Mo. contrary to the suggestion to do so from our friend Shirley; when we went to dinner with Leigh last night she told us that Branson isn’t the most gay-friendly place in the world, so we decided to skip it, what with us being gay and all.

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that during a drive from Toronto to the 1000 Islands (on my way home) along Southern Ontario that I had some sort of settling of the way I feel about things, almost like a reboot of attitude. When I’m driving is when I do my best thinking. I’m now realizing that this reboot was only partially complete, as the rest of this nebulous, indescribable alignment of my outlook on life has finally clicked into place during this vacation.

And we still have two days of driving left to get home!

J.P. and Earl, still very happy after all these years. July 17 ’09.

¹ I actually ended up posting the photos on my MobileMe account. You can take a peek at them here. These are the photos that Earl and I both took.