There is the living room tree for 2009.  My roommates picked it up yesterday afternoon.  It is either 8.5ft or 9ft tall, but still ended up being 6″ too tall for our room.

Right away I am on a ladder shearing off the top with a serrated edged kitchen knife.  I know you handy guys out there will shudder to think that this is the best tool a house with 3 guys living it it would offer, but that is the way that it is.

Last year I lived my myself and had a 6ft tall plastic tree, the kind with the lights already embedded in it.  Assembly was difficult, there was a brown level to assemble, then purple, then red.  All the levels needed plug-ins to align properly to put together the next ascending level.  It was fake, but it did add holiday ambiance.  It also fit in my place, but somehow didn’t manage to fit back into the box when I put it away.  Always something.

This year the place is much larger and so is the tree.  The smell is real and it is fresh.  Now I guess it is up to me to make sure something ends up underneath it.  Oh, that tree pressure.  It is like negative space in art.

Well, I don’t know how many of you have your trees already…but it doesn’t seem to matter where I am; I always seem to be near early tree acquisition.

Don’t panic, we decided to watch TV rather than finish decorating last night.  I am sure it will be splendid.  Now how to you get a star on top of a tree with only microns between it and the ceiling?

Here is a look at my pretty daughter Campbell. She proudly put on a full face of make-up to show me last night. She would occasionally ask me how to apply particular elements. Unlike many Dads, I actually wear make-up as part of my job and was able to offer some helpful advice.

OK, eyeshadow? Not going to be much help there.

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Our perspective is amazingly small.  Most of us huddled in front of a computer see about 2ft in front of us.  If you are lucky and work in a larger room like me, perhaps looking around gives you the vista of about 20ft.

We are consumed with things which happen very close to this range.  Change and movement happen in small and digestible bits.

As a matter of perspective Pluto is 4 billion miles away moving 4.7490 kilometers per second.  Light from our sun takes 5.3 hours just to get there.  That is in our solar system, just part of the western spiral arm of our galaxy which has about 100,000,000,000 stars itself, part of hundreds of billions of galaxies containing that many or more stars.

So, existence is big.

Lets dial it back a lot, but still blow your mind with some numbers.

Take a look at the population clock.  I am blown away by the number of people on the planet, but more so I am amazed what happens if you hit ‘refresh’.  A new hoard of people are unleashed.  Each a product of 9 months of careful assembly.  The numbers are amazing and addicting to think about.

Want to see something a little less real, but more fluid?  Try the U.S. Debt Clock.  It tracks every kind of debt: consumer, mortgage, social security, state, etc.  It also shows war debt and how much we all owe all in real time.  It just keeps moving.

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I feel entitled to write about this because I deal with temperature as a part of my profession.  The picture above is the thermostat in the apartment I stayed at in Big Bear Lake this last weekend.  Everyone has their own temperature scheme.  Mine is: I like to be warm during the day but cool at bedtime.  This picture was snapped Sunday morning.  I left the heat off at night, and woke up to a pretty frigid room, 54 yikes.  I think I actually let out a yipping noise as a rushed to turn it on in the morning, panting as if it were the control for oxygen to the room.

This is a device where I can control the temperature, I think some wish I could do this with my forecasts.

At my house, my roommates live upstairs and I live downstairs yet there is only one thermostat (located outside my room).  The upstairs runs warm, and cold air (because it is dense) makes my room like a meat locker.  There is no happy medium.  I should also note that the downstairs doesn’t have the window space like upstairs, so even during the day it runs terribly cold.  The upstairs also features a nice fireplace, which doesn’t do me a lot of good.  My roommate came up with a solution, rather than run the heat for the whole house why not use a space heater for the room I occupy when I need it?

So, that is what I am doing now.  It works for the most part.  As I write this I am upstairs while the roommates are out.  I had the fire going earlier, it is nice and toasty.

Do you wrestle over the control panel?  What about when you are driving?  Do you have a split household over heat?

Love to hear your stories about it.  I have this sneaking suspicion I am not alone.

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An personal history of foosball and more pics avilable at davehovde.com

I think we are all fast to saw we hate ‘fake people’, but most are referring to the personality or perhaps even the body type of a living/breathing human being.  No, what I am talking about is things like the animatronic creation pictured above.

I found this guy outside a discount clothiers in Big Bear Lake.  You can see he is in authentic frontier garb with his hand moving up and down while his dead eyes dart right and left.  The skin is hardened plastic and the color of someone with renal failure right around the corner.

This is nothing new.  Ever heard of “Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln”?  It debuted at the 1964 World’s Fair in New York, and now haunts Disney.  There are thousands of other examples.  They may not be human, but the Chuck E Cheese performances with animatronics is disconcerting to me too.

Some people don’t like clowns.  I am fine with them, at least I know they are people with paint on them.

I think I just found it odd that this guy was in a town which took great pains to control how it presents itself.  Even the 7-11 in Big Bear Lake has the roof over the gas dispensers resemble a tree canopy.  The houses lists max occupancy and the total number of cars than can park outside them.  Clearly, this is all in an effort to avoid being over-run by the allure of modernization.

Then you have this guy.  Well, at least it makes for a good picture.

(more blogs from the trip here)

Remember the movie Accidental Tourist where William Hurt is a travel writer who more or less figures out how to pack so efficiently that he more or less takes the mystery out of travel?  Well, that is me.

I am planning to get out of town this weekend, and have vowed no phone or e-mail.  However, that doesn’t mean that I don’t plan to pack my leg pillow, fan, laptop, favorite sleeping shirt, and more clothes than I could ever need.

OK, I will bring my laptop just in case.  Well, maybe I will want to upload some pics.  That is easier from my phone.  See what is happening?  Do you do this?  I bring my whole environment with me wherever I go.

I am sure I will want to write about the experience not too long after having it, yet another reason for the computer.  And with Skype you can bring the whole world with you if you want for the whole ride.

I guess what I am saying is that I will be far but yet so near.

No, honestly…I have a nice weekend planned, I hope you have a nice one as well.

I watch watching the movie Scream last Sunday night with my roommates and saw Neve Campbell trying to navigate her way around what in hindsight was a ridiculous scheme of revenge by some college-aged kids.

That made me wonder whatever happened to her?  I always thought there was a slight resemblance between her and Jennifer Capriati, then I wondered what happened to her as well.  Then the mind really starts to spin.  Basically all you need to do is put your mind back in the mid 90s and think of just about any star and I think you might be frightened how fast the once mighty have fallen.

I will give Neve Campbell some credit.  She didn’t go to the reality TV market to find the edge of the spotlight again.  I know Dancing with the Stars is entertaining to the masses (though I don’t quite get it), but it is definitely closer to the end of the road than the beginning.  Good for Emmit Smith, you got to dazzle us with you moves again…I wish you the best whichever path you go.  I just know it will be a far less visible one.

As for Neve, we don’t have to think too hard.  IMDb tracks even the most minor moves in Hollywood and pre-production of Scream 4 is in the works (no, I am not kidding).

As for Jennifer Capriati, I have no idea.  Maybe she is hanging around with Matt LeBlanc.

I am sitting here Taco Bell writing a post, no there is no WIFI here.  I am using my new HTC Hero at a tethered modem.  No, it is not as fast as WIFI but it works.

I am not really making the pronouncement on the technology front as much as I wanted to talk about Taco Bell as a writing environment.  I am sitting in the sunny corner facing SW.  The thin low angle light off fall almost makes it seem like sunset.  Just now a bus driver from San Luis Obispo sat down right in front of my window, and I am trying not to watch her eat.  No one should spend too much time watching others eat closely.  The problem is if I switch my attention to my ears, all I hear is the ice dropping into wax lined paper cups, some unidentifiable hiss, and the two guys having quite the religious discussion right behind me.

I considered putting in my headphones, but that only adds more sound to try to wipe out background sound.

“Order 292!!!”

Am I wrong about this.  Are coffee shops better?  The hiss of a latte being made is pretty loud.  At Starbucks you are more likely to hear Sting pouring out of a speaker somewhere because they are pushing his disk at the counter.  Still it is noise.  Sipping is better than chewing to watch, though I know people who find sipping and slurping to be quite offensive too.

Well, it was a free blog topic.  Food was cheap, and a I learned a lot.  The two guys behind me have the whole universe figured out.

I got a report back from our web director that this blog is seeing really great readership, almost double from last month.

It buoyed my spirits.  It makes me want to make sure these posts are good because I know you are reading…and hopefully keep that look on my face in the picture from coming up anytime soon.

Thanks for the support everyone.  You made my day!

BTW the first podcast will be coming soon, so stay tuned for that.