Yesterday Kelsy and I took our bikes to run errands to the bank and to Frye’s Electronics to buy some solder accessories. I purchased a MintyBoost Kit to keep my phone charged during our upcoming bike ride.

Fry’s is always a place of wonder, with untold possibilities sitting on it’s shelves. Our local Fry’s is science fiction themed. The main entrance hides below a Flying Saucer that looks like it has crash landed into the building. Inside the store, a jeep laser beamed in two greets shoppers. This particular day, we had no trouble finding most of the parts I needed to build the boost. The only thing they didn’t have was a “third hand”, clips on reticulated arms to hold whatever you need while you melt solder onto it. Anyways, we had most of what we needed and decided to check out, only to find we’d have a half hour wait to check out.

Instead of waiting, we left our merchandise in the top basket of a stack near the door, and road to the nearest “The Shack”. We lucked out, they had an appropriate third hand holder, but their batteries and other accessories were much more expensive. At this point, we got the third hand and rode home. Since Fry’s doesn’t close till nine, we’d go back later.

Later came, and we went back to Fry’s. Kelsy and I psyched ourselves up to get all the parts. We made a game plan and mapped out our routes. Once we got inside the store, on a whim I checked the basket we had left everything in and found that no one had disturbed it. We grabbed the basket and checked out, if only all shopping could be that easy.

The one fly in my Minty Boost ointment is that, apparently, Altoids (now owned by the Wrigley company) has discontinued making their gum. The same gum that the Minty Boost kit expects you to use for the case of their charger. So, now I can still put everything together, and it should work, but I still have to figure out how I’m going to keep all the pieces together on the ride.

First off, everything is going better than I could have expected. I’ve heard that the first two years are the hardest on a marriage, and while Kelsy and I have had fights and arguments, there hasn’t been any time where I worried about our future together.

Kelsy and I had decided to not live together before getting married, so one of the last things we did before heading off to Indiana for the wedding was to drive around looking for our first apartment together. She had fond memories of living in North Hollywood on a particular street, we started our search there. As luck would have it, we drove by a cute little apartment building with a plywood “For Rent” sign. We called the number and the owner of the property directed us to one of the apartments, to talk to “Bunny”.

The building had not one, but two apartments available. After reminiscing about moving refrigerators up and down stairs, we settled on the ground floor one. Two bedrooms would give us some extra space to set up an office and also host the occasional out of town friend or family member. After some phone calls and signing a lease, we began merging our stuff together. We left an apartment full of boxes to go get married in Madison, IN.

After we returned to LA, there was a week before starting a new job together, so we had to unpack as much as we could. We did our best, but it took a few months before we had the place looking presentable. This was probably one of our greatest stresses. We didn’t really take a honeymoon, and had to deal with working right away. Every night we’d come home to an apartment that didn’t feel like it was either of ours. Then, if one of us tried to take ownership in an area, by rearranging or setting up a “system”, the other would feel threatened or left out of the loop. As the year has gone on though, we’ve both learned how to accept the other and to “pick our battles,” as Kelsy’s mom would say. Even though it still isn’t as clean and tidy as we’d like, our little apartment has matured with us this year and has truly become a place that we’ve built together.

I find myself spending much more time on the sidewalk than I would like to as a responsible biker, but the roads just aren’t bike friendly. When I am on the road I try to stay on the foot wide swath of concrete between the sidewalk and pavement. Even that will have monstrous gaps and potholes, each threatening to toss me into traffic. The automobiles have been surprisingly generous, though they go much faster than me on the straightaways, I can catch up with them while they wait at the red lights.

The sidewalks on LaBrea are much nicer, and the few small roads between it and Highland are also a pleasure to ride. Each day I’ve been taking slightly different routes to reach my destination, finding different neighborhoods and people out living their lives has been refreshing. Only one more day of work for the next few weeks, but I look forward to coming back, knowing I’ll be able to bike it!

Oh, and don’t forget to check out KelsyAndAlburn.com for informations about our training ride for the California Coast Classic

Really fascinating to me (and to you too) is many of the devices and schemes that the humans in the book use to change Mars into Earth’s image are being used in the here and now. As I finished Red Mars, I came across this article about Russia planning to build floating nuclear platforms for oil drilling in the arctic. Being self sufficient for 12 to 14 years, these are exactly the mobile, self-contained kind of power plants which would be necessary in transforming Mars from a thin atmosphered rock into a water covered oasis.

The scary part is that while in Red Mars the scientists had to contend with UN oversight on their various terraforming projects, here on Earth there is no such oversight. We’ve been dumping carbon and nitrogen into the air since the Industrial Revolution. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been until fairly recently in our history that we’ve come to question the repercussions of our actions. Robinson’s book makes terraforming Mars seem like a real possibility, and even though I probably won’t be alive to take advantage of the Martian frontier perhaps one of my descendants will be Martian. I just hope there’s still an Earth for them to send their snapshots back to.

The day after reading, I saw Mitchell Joachim on Colbert, also a lot of similar technology one would need to terraform Mars.

So yesterday Kelsy and I went to the fabulous store Calumet. I’ve rented lenses from them before and the staff is always friendly and pretty knowledgeable about cameras and stuff. Recently I added Strobist to my Google Reader, so I’ve been aching to do some off camera flash.

For around $40 I picked up a hot shoe mount and a flash trigger cord. Unfortunately the cord was only about a meter long, so getting really interesting off camera flash would be difficult. Fortunately I just saw an article on Make about extending flash cords with cat 5. $5 at home depot got me two cat 5 wall jacks, an hour later I was cooking with a cat5 cable that came from some piece of network gear I’ve bought. I wanted to go the whole nine yards, so I took some cat5e that I’ve had for a while for wiring my apartment network, measured out 50 feet and terminated the ends.

It didn’t work.

So I cut the cable down to 30 feet. Eureka! That’s a lot of room to move around with the camera and keep the flash on a tripod with an umbrella. It’s quite a bit of fun shooting this way, and I figure all in I spent about $50 to $60 on the parts needed to achieve this. I could have spent $190 each on a pair of Pocket Wizards (one transmitter and one receiver), but I think for now I have all the tools I need to have some fun. You can see some of the early test shots by clicking on the photo above.

I’m shooting on a Canon Rebel XTi I got for Christmas 2007. The flash is a Canon Speedlite 430 EX I bought open box at Best Buy for $100. The tripod is a random tripod I have (I think I have 3 or 4 of them floating around), and the umbrella is part of the Lowell DV Creator Kit Kelsy bought a few years ago. My Cat5e isn’t shielded or of the highest quality, so I bet if I got a little bit nicer cable I could extend the reach to 50 feet or so. All in all it was a fun little test and I’m hoping it’ll help me in taking some more interesting photos in the future.

My two weeks of daily blogging hit a snag when I got to Lancaster. There are always too many friends to try and see so I didn’t find the time to write or to read.

In this coming year, I hope to find the discipline to spend more time on self improvement. I’ll try and keep this blog updated more with both the specifics and the broad strokes of this endeavor.

Best of luck to everyone in 2009!

Kelsy,

I love you.

I don’t know how many times I can say it, but it’s never enough to do justice to the love I have for you.

Our love has mostly been an easy love, one without need for letters or notes.  We  haven’t been more than a stone’s throw apart since our earliest days of flirtation and infatuation at Park la Brea and the LAFSC.  From there we’ve seen each each other every day save two weeks at Christmas time our first two years together.  You’ve pulled me through in the worse times for almost three years, and I hope I’ve done similar for you.  Our love has mostly been an easy love.

That’s not to say that loving me hasn’t been hard, Lord knows sometimes I can be difficult.  I can’t say the same about you. Every pout, every cross eye, every raised voice only deepens my love for you.  I once told you so and you couldn’t understand.  ”That doesn’t make any sense,” you said.  It doesn’t have to, just know that loving you is easy.

I’d be crass or hollow, sometimes not at all nice.  You’d still forgive me and wrap your arms around me.  I knew everything was going to be all right.  Thank you for making it so easy to love you.  Without you I wouldn’t be a quarter of the man I am today.  Your honesty and love make me want to be the best person I can be for you.

Thank you again, love. I love you and I hope you carry my love with you wherever you go. Always know I love you. Even when you don’t have a letter saying it, I still do.

I love you.

Alburn

My Sailor Dad is illustrated by Kelsy’s uncle, Marvin Jarboe. Marvin is an artist living in Kentucky. His usual medium is stained glass windows, but in this book he paints scenes from navy life. While I may not agree with America’s recent use of military, My Sailor Dad would be a great title for any child who’s parent is in the armed services. All politics aside, the book does a good job of explaining to the reader that even though Dad may be gone for many months at a time, he still loves his children. The illustrations are painterly and carry a rhythm with many different borders and inserts focusing on different parts of Navy life. They have a life and style unique to Marvin.

I got to know Marvin and his wife today as we shared dinner and holiday spirits. They’re both great people, very friendly and warm. Marvin showed me around his studio (yes, he’s a mac user) and his home (he even has an Apple TV). The more I get to know Kelsy’s family the more I’m sure that I’d be happy to join them one day.