What's your idea of a good day?

[KenA55]

I went up to Menahga Mn yesterday afternoon, for the purpose of attending the recurring fabled matchup of the Nimrod Gnats vs the dastardly Huntersville Horseflies, a twilight start under the lights. I was treated to the all-too-rare pleasure of seeing my son get the start, and he lasted a solid six scoreless innings before giving way to relief, to earn the win, 4-1.

But things heated up from there, as the late innings in the drizzle provided an interesting turn of events that would reshape my evening. An exquisite young lady rather suddenly blew into my life. She was both poignantly pregnant and terribly terminal. She offered no strenuous objections to accompanying me on the 2-hour journey home to spend the night with me. In return I will raise her orphans for her.

[KenA55]

Here she is, the image tastefully blurred and softened, since she modeled in the nude. Also because I got the camera a bit too close no doubt.

[KenA55]

Her wingspan, tip to tip, is about 4-1/2 inches. She is what's known as a Polyphemus moth, named because of her prominent eyespots on her hindwing, after the one-eyed greek mythological giant. She, being of the family saturnidae, is biologically cursed with no means to feed herself. She is enjoying roughly a seven day adult lifespan. There is no time for playing coy and hard-to-get in this family- you mate, you lay your 200 or so eggs, and you die. For a brief window every spring these large nocturnal critters can be seen occasionally fluttering clumsily around outdoor lights, their bodies are simply too heavy for them to fly straight and fast. The male's antennae, as opposed to what you can see on the young lady, are about as wide as they are long and are much more sensitive to chemical pheromones in the atmosphere. The guys can smell their women out from distances exceeding 5 miles- for which they've earned guinness' best sense of smell in the animal kingdom award.

About a dozen or so of her eggs are plastered to various surfaces inside my car. I will make good and raise these orphans away from the normal long shot survival picture in a world full of parasitic fellow insects and feathered flying lizards.

[TI83]

all that i have to say is i was very shocked when i got to the first sentence where you mentioned raising her orphans....then i realized you were speaking of a butterfly... :D

[KenA55]

Haha, who says I have no love life??

[TI83]

no one, i was just amazed becuase my first impression told me that you met a women and two hours later you agreed to take care of her orphans...of course after i read on i understood

[KenA55]

Unlike most of her six legged counterparts, she will go to her grave having experienced Led Zeppelin- II, !V, & Houses of the Holy.

[minibee]

This is possibly the most random, yet adorable thread I have ever seen. Thank you, Ken, you have made my day. I love moths... from a distance... but they're alright.

[KenA55]

I'll send you one of her cute, fat little green babies.

[Filipe]

This is possibly the most random, yet adorable thread I have ever seen. Thank you, Ken, you have made my day. I love moths... from a distance... but they're alright.

Do you want the dead one that I found in my closet? :eek:

[MoMo]

Nice, KenA.

It reminds me of the famous James Dean recipe:

Live fast, die young, leave a good-looking
chrysalis.

;)

[100% Ozone Safe]

A good day for me is:
1.Sleeping to noon
2.Eating a big bowl of Cinnamin Life, followed by another!
3.Running a nice easy 7, then skiing for about an hour and half easy (each of these with at least one friend)
4.Shower
5.Grab a bite to eat at White Castle.
6.Then going out with friends and finding something/somewhere that is extremely cool, and then chilling there... while constantly exposing myself to near death situations (climbing cliff type stuff, not doing heroine type stuff).
7.Hit up some subway
8. Return to step 6
9.Pick up my paycheck from work and head home.
10.Get a brick of swiss cheese and some chocolate milk.
11.Get on computer with my food in front of me.
12.Get on dyestat & talk to people on aim
13.Take a nice shower around 1:30 am.
14.Then go to bed and wake up the next day really late...

That would be such an amazing day. It's been a long time since one of those have happened.

(edit: are we supposed to post our perfect day??? or just respond to how ken's perfect day is???)

(edit2: ken, thats awesome.... :rolleyes: )

[minibee]

A good day for Minibee would be:

1. Waking up around 10 and realizing my parents have already left (and didn't wake me up!)
2. Making myself breakfast, preferably an omelet or french toast
3. Playing piano or singing for an hour
4. Calling up my friends and driving into Santa Fe (to shop) or into the mountains (to hike).
5. Taking black and white pictures of everything we do
6. Going to my favorite spa for a massage.
7. Going out to dinner (Indian!)
8. Driving back home
9. Calling my favorite boy and talking for an hour (or two).
10. Renting some indie movie and falling asleep halfway through.
11. waking up sometime early in the morning after the moon's gone down and driving out to the overlook, where there's no light pollution to look at the amazing New Mexican stars.
12. Going back to bed and doing the whole thing over again.

[running high]

10 easy to follow steps

1. Wake up at 5 AM and realize 'I'm not tired!'
2. Eat a banana and a PB&J sandwhich, with a tall glass of OJ
3. Run 14 miles by majestic scenery with my training partner
4. Do some glorious pushups and situps listening to switchfoot
5. It's now 10 AM and I can browse dyestat/ read race results to kill time
6. Go to eat at Panera with all my friends from student venture
7. All afternoon make a funny fideo for kicks!
8. For dinner eat pasta with my family and then play Clue with them
9. Go to my friends house and play LOTR Risk until 4 AM!
10. Come home and read a book (Redwall, the bible, or Daniels Running) til I fall asleep!

Wow, just one day, that would be awesome.

[Filipe]

A good day for Minibee would be:

12. Going back to bed and doing the whole thing over again.

So you don't want that moth? :p

Good day for me:

1. Waking up and realizing I don't have to go to class or work.
2. Running or doing some other sort of cardio training
3. Showering
4. Eating breakfast
5. Doing yardwork
6. Eating lunch
7. Doing another run
8. Showering
9. Eating dinner
10. Doing some sort of weight training or core workout
11. Watching a good movie
12. Saying hey to some people online
13. Going to sleep for 8-10 hours.

[Dyenimator]

1. Watching college football all day long.

That's it.

[Filipe]

Seeing Detroit beat Miami tomorrow night.

[flukerun]

Seeing Detroit beat Miami tomorrow night.

'nuff said.

I'm going to write a novel of my perfect day and then post give me some time...wait, how much time is in this "perfect" day?

[KenA55]

The 'heavenly day' is "as a thousand years", according to Peter. So go for it, fill it up. May your perfect day be a balloon that doesn't burst, instantly stretching to fit whatever you would place inside.

[minibee]

'nuff said.

I'm going to write a novel of my perfect day and then post give me some time...wait, how much time is in this "perfect" day?

isn't it usually, i don't know, say, 24 hours?

[Filipe]

isn't it usually, i don't know, say, 24 hours?

You got to it before me!

[Kalaby]

Maybe he's from Venus ;)

[jaygray]

A good day I had recently --

Jet Propulsion Laboratories (or JPL) had its annual open house recently in Pasadena. They're the guys who control all the deep space probes. I drove down the 1 1/2 hours to LA on a Sunday, and spent a day there. It was extremely cool, because the actual project scientists were out there talking about their work. It was not like the patronizing, watered-down science you get at Disneyland. These were the real guys (and gals), and you could go as deep as you wanted. Oh man, it was like a kid in a candy store experience for me.

For example, they had full scale working models of the Mars rovers running around outside. The deputy project manager was outside answering questions. And they showed us the "In Situ" lab where they were trying to work on getting one of the rovers out of a sand-trap. They had simulated Martian sand, right there on the floor.

Another exhibit talked about measuring the accuracy of the gravitational constant, G. The guy working on a space-based experiment to do that, was very happy to dive deep into the Cavendish experiment, the Casimir effect, and the extremely fine measurements they'll be doing in orbit.

One of the coolest things I saw was plans for space-based interferometers to be launched in about 5 years which will improve planet detection to the point of being able to detect earth-sized planets around (relatively) nearby stars. This will involve picosecond timing in their lasers, which is just astounding. Totally cutting-edge stuff.

I talked at length to an engineer who writes some of the software for the probes! I died and went to heaven. He described for me in loving detail what the problem was with Opportunity, the Martian rover that they nearly lost because of recurring crashes (it had to do with flash memory, and running out of inodes...), and how they worked around the problem. He apparently wrote most of the software for Gallileo, and trained the people who wrote the code for Cassini. I found out from him that most probes are in fact vulnerable to hacking -- their command sequences are sent in the clear. You'd just need to hijack one of the big dishes to do it :). I also found out that upper management is just as clueless in the public sector as in the private: they're thinking that Java is the language of the future for these probes (!!!!). As if, you can shoehorn it into a real-time, rad-hard operating system, and use it to talk to the hardware (like C or assembler).

As much as I hate government waste and pork, big science like this, whether it's at JPL or at Fermilab or Brookhaven, I am really patriotic about. I love it, too, when these guys come up with creative ways of maximizing what they already have, when faced with minimum funding. I'm going to go again next year, if I can.

[harrier12]

I went to the JPL open house a couple of years ago, that was incredible!

[flukerun]

isn't it usually, i don't know, say, 24 hours?

I dont know, I though my perfect day could be as long or as short as I pleased...anyway here is my perfect 24 hour timespan:

Wake up 6am
Grab a Bagel out of the fridge
Eat bagel while putting on running shoes
Out the door by 6:10am
10 miles by myself just letting my mind to drift
Back from run at 7:15
Shower
Grab some water and a book (a running book of course) and sit on the back patio with some SRV or Clapton playing until 9:15
Check up on some stuff on the internet until 10:00am (45 minutes yeah right)
Strech while watching one of the Pre movies with some good company
Head on out to a Tigers game in which the beat they Yankees 1-0. Both pitchers throwing perfect games until DimitriYoung hits a walkoff homerun off of Randy Johnson in the 11th (the pitchers wouldn't make it this far but I can dream)
While at the game have 2 hotdogs 1 Bag of cracker jacks and 1 big bottle of water
Come home home change for a 5 mile hill run (I heart hills)
Shower and eat dinner that consists of BBQ ribs, baked potatoes, caesers salad, milk with homemade warm cookies
The rest of the night relax by a bonfire and chill with some good company that can talk about anything

(not a novel, but eh best I could do)

[KenA55]

Sounds like a good, full day.

First four babies were born today, not quite as big in dia. as a round toothpick and about 3/16" long. They'll be raised on the leaves of soft maple, one of several of their foodplants that's plentiful around the neighborhood.

[Sebrle]

I also found out that upper management is just as clueless in the public sector as in the private: they're thinking that Java is the language of the future for these probes (!!!!). As if, you can shoehorn it into a real-time, rad-hard operating system, and use it to talk to the hardware (like C or assembler).


That's pretty funny, never underestimate the appeal of buzzwords like "object oriented", "web friendly", or fancy UI's when it is completely uneccesary (see the M1 Bradley), does nasa still code in low level assembly?, I honestly believe that job deserves its own level in hell (so many interrupts and exceptions :o ).

[Wolverine318]

1. Watching college football all day long.

That's it.

Ditto

mine would be:
-get up at 6 am for a nice long run of around 10-18 miles
-nice hot shower afterwards
-get dressed up in my hoodie to go tailgate/go to the bars with my fiancee
-eat some burgers and brats while drinking a cold beer
-scream my butt off in the student section during a college football game in the big house
-Michigan kicks some butt
-go back to my apartment and spend time with my fiancee
-go into my lab to run a few tests and analyze some data
-read a few journal articles while eating a big plate of pasta
-fall asleep with my fiancee

[luv2run]

A good day =

-10 mile run, give or take, with a bunch of friends
-go swimming to cool off
-play tennis or basketball or something
-go swimming again
-eat pizza for lunch
-dyestat
-read a good book
-8-10 miles (with friends of course)
-spaghetti dinner
-ice cream
-dyestat
-watch an awesome movie

[Milesofsmiles15]

-Wake up at 6:00 and do a long run with the team
-Take a nap
-Make/eat chicken breasts and pasta
-Play frisbee golf
-Swim with friends
-Get dinner at Outback Steakhouse
-Get a late night 5 mile run in

[Oh yeah!]

wake up at 12.00
run 5 miles
eat a quarter pounder with large fries and a coke
do stuff with friends
eat a steak dinner at a japanese resturaunt where they cook in front of you (hibachi) with fried rice (lots)
then just chill till midnight and get a good solid night sleep (i am a man who loves to sleep)

[KenA55]

Sleep is good. I should get some one of these days (nights?).

[harrier12]

Good day for me.

-Wake up at 5:30, run Oak-Ridge-Challenger
-Grab a smoothie on way home
-Listen to NPR when I get home
-Spend an hour working on my architecture project
-Read Running w/the Buffaloes cover to cover
-Pasta for lunch-fettucine in a light marinara
-Photography for team at track meet
-Run 3000 steeple PR
-Enjoy track meet
-Argentinian food for dinner w/friends
-Grab a couple beers
-Talk to my best friend on the phone (she's at Northwestern)
-Read myself to sleep

[jaygray]

That's pretty funny, never underestimate the appeal of buzzwords like "object oriented", "web friendly", or fancy UI's when it is completely uneccesary (see the M1 Bradley), does nasa still code in low level assembly?, I honestly believe that job deserves its own level in hell (so many interrupts and exceptions :o ).


I knew you'd get it, Sebrle. They do their stuff mostly in C with a little assembler. And they use an off-the-shelf RTOS called VxWorks (at least on the rovers).

[KenA55]

My idea of a good day is any day where my brother doesn't call me a "Fat stupid b!tch" or tell me to "Shut the f*ck up you stupid bitch" for absolutely no reason at all. Actually, my idea of a good day is whenever my brother is at least 50 miles away. He's a horrible human being and an absolute failure and I'm at my break point.

Haha, where's the reward for clamoring to his defense in the now infamous West Chester bus driver incident of- '03 was it? Consider it sort of a precursor to the joys of parenting- reward can be a long time coming for devotion in some cases. Siblings can be a challenge, I had six of them, and we fought llike cats and dogs, non-stop sometimes. I'm surprised endlessly that my own sons never did much of that, and still hang together most of the time.

How old is he now?

[KenA55]

Careful then, there is probably a rebellion occuring that may involve having an accomplished older sister providing a difficult model to measure up to. Any negative judgements you brand him with will likely become his mantra for the time being at least, so absorb whatever you can from him without throwing abuse back- to whatever extent you can.

Too soon to brand him anything so permanant-sounding until a few decades from now at least. You may find that your impending absence from his everyday life gradually engenders a whole new attitude towards you, and it may work both ways for that matter.

In the meantime, enjoy your final months together with the precious little one.
:D

Woah, cretins no less! You fat stupid b***ch you!
:D

[KenA55]

Just funnin' ya Layla, I do know better than to mess with a woman's ire once aroused, when I'm within a few hundred miles of her. The illusion of safe distance has me feeling unusually brave here, foolish man that I am.

I agree it's time for you to get out on your own and revisit these things later on from a distance. It's so much easier to forgive people their trespasses when they're not occuring right under your nose.

[TrackDaddy]

Haha, where's the reward for clamoring to his defense in the now infamous West Chester bus driver incident of- '03 was it? It was my opinion then that some serious disciplinary measures would be useful.

I got yelled at for saying it though. :(

I hope he gets his issues resolved (I'm sure he'll be fine) sooner than later and that Layla can hang in there until she departs for academic bliss.

[Sebrle]

I knew you'd get it, Sebrle. They do their stuff mostly in C with a little assembler. And they use an off-the-shelf RTOS called VxWorks (at least on the rovers).

On a bit of a related note http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050621/ap_on_hi_te/obit_kilby

[jaygray]

Thanks for that -- I missed the news.

I may apply to those guys (JPL)...we'll see.

Where do you work, may I ask? Are you with "The Company"? ;)

Frankly though, I've got a bit of ennui for the field. It's time for me to do something else. It's funny that every time you go into an interview, they ask you the same stupid programming questions, like "insert a node into a doubly-linked list" or "write a recursive routine to search a sorted list of numbers" or "find the error in this bit of C++ code that has a misplaced ampersand somewhere". J. H. C., nobody does recursion except in school, so the only place you write stuff like that is in stupid interviews. Software just doesn't cut it any more. And what I said about managers, understates my disappointment.

So yesterday I took a couple of preference-type tests to see where else I could end up, what careers would be appropriate given my answers. It was surprising what popped up. Highest on the list was attorney (!) [go ahead, laugh Zat], second was minister/rabbi (!!). Here I was, hoping for "heavy metallurgist, zeppelin rank", or "surfer evangelist", or "rhetorical bad-a$$". Or how about plain old "spook"? One needs to have one's fantasies. But maybe I should be a canon lawyer. Fug, as Normal Mailer would say. There isn't a fitting category.

[Zat0pek]

So yesterday I took a couple of preference-type tests to see where else I could end up, what careers would be appropriate given my answers. It was surprising what popped up. Highest on the list was attorney (!) [go ahead, laugh Zat], second was minister/rabbi (!!).

I wouldn't dream of laughing. And it's probably the most versatile degree one can obtain.

As for the "spook" comment, many/most FBI agents have law degrees. Two guys from my class are with the FBI now.

[Zat0pek]

Back then he really wasn't a jerk and his bus driver was psychotic. A lot has happened since then including a few arrests. He's 16. Of course my parents are idiots and refuse to punish him for anything. A few days after he was caught buying marijuana in the school bathroom my parents let him to go Maryland with his friend, you know, on his 10-day suspension. And they never once drug tested him. They just bought his bs story about how it was his "first time trying it".

I am so glad to be leaving these cretins in five days.

Here's a scary thought: Some day you'll be settling up the estates of your parents and making decisions regarding their nursing home care with the same individuals. That's the thing about siblings; they're the family you have the longest.

[TrackDaddy]

So yesterday I took a couple of preference-type tests to see where else I could end up, what careers would be appropriate given my answers. It was surprising what popped up. Highest on the list was attorney (!) [go ahead, laugh Zat], second was minister/rabbi (!!). Here I was, hoping for "heavy metallurgist, zeppelin rank", or "surfer evangelist", or "rhetorical bad-a$$". Or how about plain old "spook"? One needs to have one's fantasies. But maybe I should be a canon lawyer. Fug, as Normal Mailer would say. There isn't a fitting category.LOL

[lasseviren]

my perfect day would be in june in eugene.
wake up around 7 and run for an hour, nice and easy, probably 9 miles, somewhere quiet.
eat breakfast consisting of hasbrowns, choc. chip waffle, and an omelete.
go back to sleep until i wake up.
wake up and sit outside in sunny place enjoying a good book (currently working High Adventure by Sir Edmund Hillary about the first documented climb up Everest)
around 4 go for another run, this one for another hour but the middle 30 minutes as a tempo, probably making 10-10.5 miles.
eat some seafood, preferably fried.
enjoy a few microbrews (preferably from sierra nevada brewery, i like pale ale) on my back deck while enjoying led zeppelin or pink floyd or CCR or bob dylan or neil young or some local artist that i happened across.
get to bed around 11 for a good night's sleep.

OPTION 2, takes place in the mountains, preferably rocky or sierra or cascades, not such a fan of the appalachains, but they are nice.
wake up with sun.
eat a quick breakfast.
hike all day ejoying magnificent mountaintop vistas, cool snowfed streams, high alpine meadows, paitent wildlife, fragrant trees and cool shade.
nap after lunch until i wake up.
hike until it gets dusky.
set up camp and make dinner.
enjoy the mountains coming alive with the passing of the day.
lay on my back in a meadow and attempt to count the stars.
get to sleep when i can't hold my eyes open any longer.

[Dyenimator]

Layla, what ever happened with that West Chester bus incident? I know it was a year ago or so, but I remember wanting to know what happened.

[patti]

Good Day!

I thought I'd venture out and see what else is going on the threads. This is the first time I read this thread and it's fun.

I'd thought I'd share my idea of a perfect day.

My idea of a perfect day has happened to me every now and then...and when it was happening I didn't know until it was over.

Memories, gotta have them....gotta love them.

I have noticed that most of you have mentioned that waking up was the first thing to a perfect day! LOL! Yes, that is the same for me and my kids, (I asked them).

So, ok, I wake up..and go do the day...each and every one of my days is the same more or less..what with 3 labbies, 2 kids..10 birds..chaos can reign here and at times it does. We all manage to do the things we have to do with some kind of semblance of having a loving attitude towards each other..

Each member of the family has a different idea of their perfect day. (I asked the kids). Bottom line, hands down...the perfect day is when mom doesn't LOSE IT! It is when she doesn't have to say umpteen millon times...practice your piano... do your math, let your dog out...don't let the cat out, keep the bunny away from the cat...get the cat away from the bird's cage...no you can't have cookies for breakfast...no you can't have peanut butter and chocolate frosting for lunch, did you make your bed? You have to eat something else besides cereal. Please do your chores...who left the butter out? Who left back wash in the milk container AGAIN..uck...who did the dishes? How many time have I told you....pick up the towels off the bathroom floor, please put the seat DOWN. please FLUSH...turn off the lights....don't put that in the microwave...what science experiment? Please no more frisbies on the roof...watch the dogs, they're eating the socks again...how many times do I have to tell,would you please LISTEN TO ME! uh-oh

We are all here at the computer laughing our heads off...so we are on our way to a perfect day! Thank you! ;) LOL!

[Wolverine318]

My idea of a great day is today when the NHL and NHLPA agree to a collective bargaining agreement!!!! I missed watching the Redwings so much. :D