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Category: Life

O God It Burns, part II

2006-09-24 John Winkelman

060924_peppers

This is the most recent harvest from my pepper plants. 29 cayennes, 6 jalapeños and 8 habaneros. The cayenne and jalapeño plants are done, and there are maybe 40 more habaneros still turning orange, awaiting harvesting.

This will bring the total for the whole season to, I think, nearly 100 peppers from three plants. I am already planning a pepper garden for next year; at least a dozen plants and maybe half a dozen different kinds of peppers.

Point of interest: If you need to harvest peppers before they turn red, put them in a paper bag with a tomato. For some reason this will cause the peppers to change color.

Posted in LifeTagged food comment on O God It Burns, part II

Trees!

2006-09-18 John Winkelman

060918_trees

Consider the above photo.

The blue house on the left is mine. The house immediately to the right belongs to my neighbor Jeremy. Immediately in front of our houses is a row of four new Red Maple trees. Jeremy and I spent most of the day Saturday, and part of Sunday, digging out old sod, digging holes, planting trees, leveling ground, and laying in new sod.

Is It Not Magnificent?

Actually, Jeremy did the lion’s share of the heavy lifting; he had the trees in the ground before I returned home from Saturday morning practice. And he placed them so that, from a certain spot on either porch, none of our neighbors across the street are visible.

So now is the long, breathless wait to see if new leaves come in next spring.

As a side note, the paint job on the blue car to the left of the photo confounded me for a little while, until I realized that the different shades of blue are there to break up the visual outline of the car. The logic there being that if the owner happens to be driving the car in, say, the north Atlantic in late 1942, German U-boat skippers will have a hard time seeing how big the car actually is and which direction it is traveling, and will therefore have a difficult time aiming their torpedoes.

Pretty smart, that fella.

Posted in Life comment on Trees!

O God It Burns!

2006-09-13 John Winkelman

060913_peppers

This is the take from my pepper plants this afternoon. 20 jalapenos (I gave five to a neighbor) and five super cayennes. I also have a habanero plant which has at least 30 peppers, which I will pick when they start to turn orange.

I have been making my own salsa since I first began harvesting peppers about a month ago, and lemme tellya, a jalapeno fresh from the plant makes a fine ingredient.

2 large tomatoes, diced
.5 of a large (tomato-sized) white onion, diced
1 good-sized yellow bell pepper. seeded and diced
1 can of corn kernels
2 regular, or 1 humongously heaping, tablespoons of finely chopped garlic
2 jalapenos and 1 cayenne pepper diced to about pixel-sized pieces
1 generous dusting of black pepper
1 light dusting of salt
1 light dribble of balsamic vinegar

Mix everything together and eat! Also good as a garnish over eggs.

In the same sense that any soup with beets as the main ingredient is technically borscht, any mix of chopped veggies that is predominantly tomatoes and hot peppers is technically salsa.

I think that next summer I will plant about a dozen pepper plants and maybe use some of them to make anti-personnel spray.

Posted in LifeTagged food comment on O God It Burns!

The Soul-Sucking Bliss of Material Possessions

2006-07-31 John Winkelman

Have spent the past few days taking care of things around the house, and preparing for the arrival of a couple of new things. Just this morning I had the pleasure of spending an hour or so with the exceptionally talented Matt Van Heulen of Clear Advantage Mechanical, who got my air conditioner up and running just in time for (apparently) the Earth to plunge into the sun. I kid you not: I saw at least one dog burst into flames while being walked along my street this afternoon. Right now outside: 94 degrees and miserably humid. Right now inside: 78 degrees and dry.

On Wednesday I will receive my new (first,only) washer and dryer, which means no more trips to the laundromat. I think I will miss it, just a bit. Sunday morning is a fine time of day to be alone in a crowd with a notebook and a novel. Before I get those things up and running I get to play in the exciting world of installing a 240v line in my basement, hopefully without making myself smell like cooked bacon.

I just finished re-reading the Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson. When the books came out a couple of years ago, they were published at six-month intervals, so I read them at six-month intervals. A lot of the small details — and there were manymanymany small details — were lost. Having just read them (2700 pages!) back to back, I discovered that, taken in total, the Cycle is one of the finest stories I have ever read. If you have a couple of months to spare, I highly recommend putting forth the effort.

Last Sunday I took a break from Stephenson and read the latest installment in the Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind: Phantom. It is a decently good book. Not Goodkind’s best work, but far from his worst. He seemed to reach his nadir a couple of volumes back, using his work as a platform for his political views at the expense of the story he had been telling. With the last two books he is back on track. Definitely worth picking up in paperback, or hardcover if you are a die-hard fan.

The big giant work project wound up today, which means relatively low-stress days for the next couple of weeks until the next big thing lands on me.

Time to go to the beach.

Posted in LifeTagged books comment on The Soul-Sucking Bliss of Material Possessions

I Am Prime!

2006-06-05 John Winkelman

Today is my birthday. I am 37 years old. To celebrate, I am working from home today.

The martial arts demo on Saturday was rained out. Very disappointing. I guess I can’t complain too loudly, though; I think this is the first time this has happened. We managed to sneak in a single tai chi form down in the underground entrance to the city center, then security shut us down before the golfball-sized hail hit the city.

Well…Whattayagonnado?

Posted in LifeTagged martial arts comment on I Am Prime!

Upcoming Martial Arts Stuff

2006-05-08 John Winkelman

This year Master Lee’s School of Tai Chi Praying Mantis and Tai Chi Jeung will be performing at the Grand Rapids Festival of the Arts on Saturday, June 3 from 7:00pm to 8:30pm. Pictures of last year’s performance (and others) can be found here on Master Lee’s site.

We have just received word that Midland Open Martial Arts Tournament will not be held this year. This is disappointing but not surprising; the tournament has been growing steadily smaller for the past few years. I imagine that the economy and rising gas prices played a significant role in this decision, considering several schools travel from as far away as Texas and Massachusetts to attend.

Oh, well… maybe next year. On the plus side, this means that I have a free Memorial Day weekend for the first time in about five years. That hasn’t happened in so long that I have no idea what I will do. Maybe spend the whole weekend sleeping on the beach out at Grand Haven.

More details about our Festival performance as the day approaches.

Posted in LifeTagged martial arts comment on Upcoming Martial Arts Stuff

Impermanence

2006-04-26 John Winkelman

This past Saturday I visited From the Heart Yoga Center, where the Venerable Thupten Tsondu Tashi of the Gyudmed Monastery was performing a peace blessing. I arrived a few minutes after the start of the ceremony, and sat quietly in a corner until the ceremony ended, at which time Rick introduced me to Tashi, who floored me with this:

“I know you.”

The first thing I thought of was that he remembered me from when I was in India back in February 2001, during the Losar celebration at the Zongkar Choede monastery. Gyudmed is just up the road from Z.C., and many of the Gyudmed monks had come to Z.C. for the Cham dance portion of the ceremony. I don’t recall if we were introduced back then, but it is entirely possible.

It wasn’t until a day later that I remembered that he had been in town a couple of years ago on another tour, and that he and I had attended a gathering at the home of Anisa. He and Anisa had met several years earlier when she was a driver for the North American leg of a tour by a group of Tibetan monks from the Gyudmed and Dzongkar Choede monasteries. When I mentioned that I knew Anisa, Tashi became quite excited and asked that I tell her about the other events which he would be holding throughout the week.

This evening I attended the dismantling of a sand mandala which Tachi had built over the past three days. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, he said. Eight in the morning until five in the afternoon. Twenty-seven hours, by himself, building a two-foot-square mandala by himself, a grain of sand at a time. He finished at 5pm today, and the dismantling began at 5:30.

This particular mandala was the Mandala of Manjusri, the bodhisattva of wisdom, whose symbols are the sword and scroll.

The ceremony began with Tashi explaining the different parts of the mandala; why there are certain colors, why the mandalas have specific number of specific design elements, and why the thing is built out of sand in the first place.

After the questions ended Tashi set out his tools and began a prayer chant which lasted around fifteen minutes.

When the prayer finished Tashi began to very carefully dismantle the mandala by cutting precise lines into the sand with a dorje.

Once the lines were finished and the mandala dismantled, he began to sweep the sand into the center of the mandala, again following a specific pattern, counter-clockwise around the mandala, a section at a time.

When the brushing was complete Tashi offered each of us some of the sand from the mandala to take with us as a blessing. He said that traditionally a little of the sand is sprinkled on the top of someone’s head (around the crown chakra) in order that, when that person dies the sand, which has been blessed by being part of a mandala, helps the spirit to depart to the next world so there is less of a chance of being stuck in this one. It also acts as protection against evil spirits.

Next we moved down to the west bank of the Grand River where Tashi perforned the final steps of the ceremony: casting the sand into a river. This serves multiple purposes: the sand can never again be used in a mandala; the mandala of which it was a part can never be re-created; and the sand itself is an offering to the spirits of the river, and are said to help still angry waters and make for safe journeys. Each of the different colors of the sand represent different gems and precious metals — yellow for gold, white for silver, red for rubies, etc — so this is truly a precious gift.

After a final few minutes of prayer Tashi cast the sand into the river — carefully making sure none of it blew back onto the bank — and washed out the cup from which he had cast the sand. Then he performed a final, short prayer, and the ceremony was over.

The Venerable T.T. Tashi is currently touring the United States in to raise funds for the Buddhist Mind Training School in Mongolia, where children can receive a good education in a safe environment. For information on tour dates and locations, contact Heidi Ragchaa at heidi@ziacreative.com.

Namaste.

Posted in LifeTagged Buddhism comment on Impermanence

Seems like I was here a year ago…

2006-04-24 John Winkelman

I am currently sitting in Room 429 of Kendall College of Art and Design. Today is the first day of finals week, and the last day of my career as an Adjunct Professor of Web Design. I am in the middle of performing post-mortems on the final grades of my students for the semester. They handed in their final projects last week and I spent the weekend tallying grades and writing critiques. Now I am telling them why they got the grades they got.

The semester ended at the perfect time. Work is ramping up to the point that I no longer have time to duck out for several hours in the middle of the day. I expect this will continue for at least the next four weeks, at which point I will, I think, take a much-deserved and much-needed vacation.

I have been thinking about re-designing this site. Nothing too extravagant; just make it look a little more professional. Despite the fact that I am a fairly hard-core programmer I do have some small sense of aesthetics, and right now the current design bores me.

Now that I have the whole summer ahead of me without the oncoming storm of the next semester as motivation, I find that I really just want to be lazy, sit on my porch, and read and write. I look forward to the days I work from home, sitting outside with my laptop and a tall glass of beer iced tea, watching the world go by.

Posted in LifeTagged Kendall College of Art and Design comment on Seems like I was here a year ago…

It Is Ended II

2006-04-19 John Winkelman

Today at 5:00pm I received from one of my students the last of the final projects for this semester. I am done. The teaching is over. All that is left is some grading, and then fourteen short post-mortems on Monday.

I have decided to take the next year off from teaching. I have too many other places where that time could be better spent, and given the choice between the time or the money, right now I would rather have the time.

For my students’ benefit, I will leave the class website up, and maybe even add the occasional tutorial as the mood strikes me. And of course, I am still available to them for advice and references and what-not.

Will I miss the experience? Absolutely. Teaching is fun, and fulfilling, and very entertaining. And apparently, some people think I am pretty good at it.

So: what to do with the new free time? First, spend a couple of weeks loafing. Once I have that out of my system I have a few things which require my attention. Like my house and my social life. I would also like to (re)design this site, and rebuild Master Lee’s site. There are a couple ideas for games rolling around in my head which I will take a closer look at when I can stand being in front of a computer on my off hours.

And I need to practice more.

Posted in LifeTagged Kendall College of Art and Design comment on It Is Ended II

I Don’t Have Time for This

2006-04-07 John Winkelman

The diabolical Bock — who just launched a new version of his website — recently introduced me to a wonderful new game: Travian.

Travian is a free, browser-based Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG), in which you are the ruler of a small tribal village (Roman, Gaul or Teuton). The first part of the game involves resource management and building construction — think the first couple of hours of Warcraft — aaanddd that is as far as I have progressed.

The world is persistent, and couple that with it being browser-based, means that you can start building something, go surf the web for a while, then log back in and see how your tribe is progressing. This is a good thing, because building construction generally takes in the neighborhood of 30 minutes. The more powerful/important the building or unit, the longer it takes to build, the more resources it uses, and the more prerequisites it requires.

Once you have a good base set up, you can begin trading with/raiding your neighboring villages, or building new villages. There appears to be a finite amount of land, which means you need to sign up NOW NOW NOW!!!

I have two user accounts (which is expressly against the rules) : “Levendis” and “Zartog”. You can only have one user account per email address, which can be a pain unless (like me) you have a domain name with a catch-all email address, and (like me) you might be inclined to do this sort of thing, and (unlike me) you have time to play this thing all day.

Many instructions and helpful tips can be found at the Travian Wiki.

Remember: It takes a viking to raze a village.

Posted in LifeTagged games comment on I Don’t Have Time for This

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