HUD, part 1
(a continuation of yesterday’s entry. Every which way I tried to write this I soon realized it was going to get loooong. Expanding each HUD entry into a fully-formed thought will take pages and pages. Looks like I’ll be splitting this into sections too.)
So, HUD. [Heads-Up Display] is the organization method I use to keep my life moving. It’s my dashboard. I used to keep this kind of thing in a notebook or on a corkboard, but tossing it up on a blog just works better. It’s already become a productive habit.
Like a dashboard, it’s just a bunch of numbers and gauges of varying obscurity. Even if it’s obvious what an item measures, it may not be particularly obvious why I care about a particular number. I’ll try to answer that broader question as I go. Here’s an explanation of each, from top to bottom:
The first item is “Rad thing du jour“. A short answer question: What was the raddest thing you saw today? Phrase your answer in the form of a URL.
Posting this helps me think back and compartmentalize all the wonderful, fun and important things that I see on the daily, both online and off. I don’t think I’m boasting to say that I find the world we live in to be freaking amazing. We are awash in wonders every single day. “Rad” (as in “radical”) is my favorite word to describe this kind of thing.
I put this right at the top of the page, as a sort of antidote to all the boring crap beneath it.
Next, “flour milled“: This is the amount of flour that I personally produced that day. I’m the miller’s assistant at an independent, organic flour mill. Flour is my stock & trade. It’s the main way that I pay my bills & make a living. (I don’t get paid by the pound or anything; I just enjoying having the number to look back on at the end of the day.)
We sell flour in bulk (25- or 50-pound bags) and in cases of two-, five-, or eight-pound bags (a case weighs about 30 or 40 lbs). We have 13 different varieties of flour, so I sometimes use abbreviations. “UBW” is Unbleached White Flour, “WW Stone” is Stoneground Whole Wheat, “BW” is Buckwheat, etc.
For some perspective, 1 pound of flour = 1 loaf of bread. I generally mill 3000 to 5000 lbs of flour every day (Mon-Fri), enough to feed a few thousand people.
(continued tomorrow)
A weekend of words
I haven’t taken a day off in four months. For the rest of August and into September, I’ll be working 6 to 8 hours every day, Monday-Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. That’s obviously a tough schedule to keep. It requires major willpower and some personal sacrifices. What’s less obvious is A) I’m doing this intentionally, and B) it’s working out wonderfully. If you want the story of my summer in a sentence then there you go, but it’s far from the whole picture.
Every day I come home tired– typically *happy* and tired, mind you, and very rarely feeling exhausted, but when I’m tired the first thing to sail out the window is my ability or desire to type a creative sentence.
Related paragraph: I received a package(!) today from my aunt & uncle in Michigan that held a freshly-sealed jar of blackberry jam and a pocket knife, both very appreciated, especially the beautiful jam (To Jerry & Sue: Thanks!). In one part of the letter that came with it, my uncle wrote “I try to understand your Facebook and Beyond Metamora updates but I’m a bit out of touch with the lingo.” Which tells me that I should probably try to do more explicatin’.
To that end, I’ve cleared off the rest of my afternoon (ie post-gardening) schedule this weekend so that I can spend some time offloading some text, however poorly or tiredly, about the oh-by-the-way rocking good times that I’ve been enjoying this summer.
First, I should start off by doing a much-needed “Hey, WTF is this?” post about my Dreamwidth journal, [Heads-Up Display]. Other than the occasional blip on [Twitter], HUD is the only thing online that I’ve been updating regularly. Updates to that site are written in my wonky shorthand and– I cannot stress this enough– probably of limited interest to anyone other than me. But explicating HUD provides a useful window into what I’m actually up to this summer, and what I’m trying to accomplish.
After that, I’ll write a bit more about milling and gardening– ie the things I do for a living– and a bit about the hobbies I mess with in my leisure hours. Finally, I’ve got some fairly important and substantial news to share about what I plan to be doing next summer & beyond.
(*ding* part 1 done. barring calamity, look for part 2 tomorrow)
Heads-Up Display
Sorry for the distinct lack of updates here on ByM over the last three months.
In the meantime, I’ve been keeping a very minimalist “daily dashboard” blog over on Dreamwidth. It’s called “Heads-Up Display”. You may want to have a look:
http://mwkelley.dreamwidth.org
( or plug this link into your RSS reader of choice:
http://mwkelley.dreamwidth.org/data/rss )
Waiting for a normal day
So I’ve been waiting for a normal day to catch my breath and write a comprehensive update, but I guess normal has been in short supply lately.
For the curious: I’m now fully moved into my new place on the other side of town– a house we’ve decided to name “the Satellite of Love” (an Mystery Science Theater reference, if you’re a total nerd)(or a Lou Reed reference, if you’re not). I turned in the keys to my old studio downtown on the 31st. Took my car key off the keyring this week too, since the house is right on a main busline, and it’s getting warm enough to bike around. Feels nice to be down to just two keys now. In my experience, “Number of keys” tends to correlate directly with “Level of stress”.
Things are in full swing at the greenhouse now– it’s been cold and miserable on the last couple of weekends, but plants are popping up everywhere. Business at the mill is still humming along– though it’s showing signs that the orders may soon be sloping off for the summer. Plus, the City is tearing up the pavement right in front of our front doors to bury power lines, so it’s going to be a scene of mass havoc for awhile.
I’m happy as ever. Enjoying sharing a roof with my new housemates just like I thought I would. Still working out a new daily routine. I’ll try to bash out some more details soon. Here’s the new mailing address, if yr interested:
Mike Kelley
c/o the Satellite of Love
1540 E Maryland St
Bellingham, WA 98226
Taking stock, pt 2: Home and refocused
So, I returned home yesterday from a trip w/ my sister to Central Florida. We were visiting our parents, who I hadn’t seen in more than a year.
It was quite lovely. On the same day that I stepped off the plane I was photographing manatees in Blue Springs with my new camera. I got to see a pre-dawn Space Shuttle launch (sadly, the last). I got to watch the Superbowl with my dad. My mom gave me a sewing lesson and I stitched a hole in my favorite sweater; it’s good as new. I paddled a kayak through a mangrove swamp with my sis, mom & aunts. I won four games of ping-pong, three games of Scrabble. Climbed an orange tree, and scrapped-up my hands leaping out of it. (plus, the oranges I picked were under-ripe and mercilessly bitter. oh well, it was fun anyway.) I saw hawks, herons, huge pelicans, ibises, ospreys… birds of all shapes and descriptions, everywhere. Watched some charming films: Up in the Air, Pixar’s Up, The Hangover (also, an old favorite: Jean Reno & the 13-y.o. Natalie Portman in The Professional). Just a fun week all around.
Last year my family went through some serious upheavals, so– most of all– it was good to get back together with my sister & parents and see that each of us is falling into our new routines pretty well.
Now I’m back in B’ham. Mostly ignoring the big Winter Olympics hubbub going on 50 miles to the north of me. I may wander over to the brewery later this week and do some spectating, but right now I have other things on my mind.
Since it’s been such a warm winter here in Whatcom County, folks at the greenhouse are talking about planting even earlier this year. I could be starting my “summer” weekend job this month(!), maybe even this weekend. That means going back to a no-days-off schedule again– kind of a bummer– but I’m excited by the prospect of two more paychecks each month. If my budget stays on track, I could have more than 50%(!) of my remaining debts paid off by October.
In the off-hours, I have my usual spread of pursuits and hobbies. Getting more serious about practicing on my guitar and piano again. My friends & I are still playing a lot of MtG, and I’ve also started playing Pauper Magic on MTG Online, which is a surprising amount of fun. I bought a new-used camera (a Canon G10) with the intention of improving my photography and getting back into Flickr. I’ll be restarting Nodeslam.com this week, finally. I’ve also been recording myself reading The Silmarillion outloud, purely for my own amusement. (I may upload the recordings at some point, but in a more out-of-the-way location. I don’t want to run afoul of the Tolkien estate. I’ll let you know.)
