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SomDay ’08

SomDay is the day every year where we celebrate Som Juan rising from the dead and giving fireworks to all the little boys and girls. Or something like that, I don’t really remember. The last real SomDay celebration we had was two years ago when zombies invaded Main St. Last year I was at Bonnaroo on June 16th, so there was no coordinated celebration (that I know of). I took a picture of the celebration I had at Bonnaroo, but it didn’t come out, so I guess that’ll be lost to the ages.

I’ve got an idea for this year though. June 16th is a Monday this year, so in order to get more people involved, and get more people to see us, SomDay should probably be observed the day before (Sunday the 15th). The idea is to have ninjas fight up and down main street. I know ninjas (and pirates, and robots) were ideas we were kicking around after doing the zombie invasion, and that’s probably where this is coming from. One group of ninjas dressed in white, another dressed in black, on opposing sides of the street. When the crosswalk tells us to, we run into the middle of the street, and fight until it goes back to “don’t walk”. That’s when all the ninjas retreat to their respective sides, trash talking and threatening the other side until the next chance to go. We can work our way up and down Main St like this, and I think it would be pretty cool. So that’s something to keep in mind.

Spring Weekend

Kaleidoscope by Bela Fleck and the Flecktones
[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/bfft2006-03-31.flacLev8/bfft2006-03-31d1t02_64kb.mp3]

So this weekend, starting today (or really, yesterday), is spring weekend. Let’s see if I’ll lose faith in humanity. I don’t remember if I did last year, but I probably did.

Other than that, I’ve got a huge paper due a week from today, and with any luck, that’ll get done. It might. Lots of distractions and my laziness stand in the way.

Allergies kicked in today. I mean that as literally as possible. Prior to today, I felt nothing: no runny nose, no itchy eyes. But today – BAM! Allergies. I’m glad that things are finally green again, and stuff is blooming, but my head is not happy.

300

Boys Don’t Cry by Ben Sollee
[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/sollee2007-11-09.ZoomH4.flac16/sollee2007-11-09d1t06_64kb.mp3]

So I want to try something new. This is my three hundredth post on this blog, and its been running for three years ish. I don’t post too regularly, just when I feel like I’ve got something worth saying or remembering. That averages out to about a post every four days. For the next month I’m going to try and do a post every day. I’m almost certain that I won’t have anything worth saying most of those times, but I’m interested in what it’ll be. Who knows, it might be good.

Sponsors

Yes We Can, Can by Animal Liberation Orchestra
[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/alo2006-05-04.flac16/alo2006-05-04d1t07_64kb.mp3]

So apparently today is Earth Day. On Fairfield Way today there were all these folks who set up booths about their environmentally friendly businesses or products, so I went around and talked to a bunch of them to see if they would be interested in helping out the tour.

I went over to some folks proclaiming the wonders of their Green Roofs, and asked them how that would play out on a bus. (For the record: I think I only mentioned a green roof for the bus once, but that idea really caught on, and I kept hearing about it for months. It is probably not going to happen) These folks had some really pretty and impractical green roof solutions. Their stuff is modular, so it comes in these little blocks that you put on your roof. Long story short, there are way too many reasons that this (and really any green roof solution) isn’t worth it (for the bus). I’m putting a deck or something on top.

Next I went over to a UConn professor who is doing work on mass producing biodiesel. Just to clarify for those who don’t know, biodiesel is derived from veggie oil, but through a chemical reaction, is made pure enough to run through an engine without modification. My approach is to just heat the veggie oil to have it reach the necessary viscosity to run through the engine. He isn’t very interested in that, and I’m not very interested in bringing a chemistry lab along on the bus, so odds are we won’t be able to help each other.

Last I went to the solar guy’s tent. I talked to a guy from Sunlight Solar about a potential sponsorship of the tour. He said it would have to go through the dude who owns the company, so I shot off an email. I’m not really expecting much to come from it, but it would be nice. If nothing really happens, there are hundreds of companies who do solar that would be interested in helping us out. We just need to find them.

Festivals

Journeyman by New Monsoon
[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/nm2004-03-13.shnf/newmonsoon20040313d1t3_64kb.mp3]

So it looks like waka gave me the cold shoulder. They’ve emailed the folks who they want to volunteer, and I didn’t get an email. Pretty sure it didn’t get spammed either, so that’s a bummer. I applied again, just in case, but I’m not really expecting anything. It’s weird because I remember last year, a week before the festival they were still looking for people. Guess things picked up. Or they really don’t like me.

So I’ve been looking at other potential festivals. I’ve ruled out Bonnaroo because its huge, and I was there last year, but honestly its still better than a lot of alternatives. The only thing really keeping me away from there is the volunteer deposit they require (so you don’t take your wristband and ditch). I don’t have money, which is why I’m volunteering. Summer Camp requires a deposit as well, and 10,000 Lakes doesn’t even seem to have volunteers. Gathering of the Vibes is close, and is accepting volunteers without a deposit, but the lineup sucks (so far), so I don’t really have a reason to go. All Good is looking like the best option right now, so I’m waiting for them to send out volunteer apps. All Good is the week before Grey Fox, so that would be a solid two weeks of festivals, without stop. Cool.

ENGR 100

Wasting Time by Animal Liberation Orchestra
[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/alo2006-05-04.flac16/alo2006-05-04d1t03_64kb.mp3]

First semester of Freshman year, we had a class called Intro to Engineering, which was a one credit class that didn’t really tell us anything worthwhile, and generally wasted our time. I think the idea behind it was to expose engineering students to everything the school of engineering had to offer, but most of us were decided on a major, and didn’t really care what else was out there. So we ignored the class, and just went with it as much as we had to. The class never really required much of us, just attendance and a project at the end of the semester.

The project was to reverse engineer something. Anything really, but for sanity reasons we were advised to keep it simple. Ryan and Ryan had decided on reverse engineering a skateboard, and Eric and I had decided on a microscope. I remember a few weeks before the end of the semester the Ryans had a skateboard in their room, and they were working on that project.

Eric and I had planned on doing something similar, but we had a hang-up. It turns out neither of us had a microscope, and we didn’t want to buy one. So we started asking around, if anyone we knew had a microscope. It turns out Joe had one, and he was awesome enough to take pictures of it, and send them to us. So we included pictures of a microscope we didn’t have along with a bunch of other stuff we didn’t really know (there were a couple random physics equations we included because we figured they were appropriate). In the end, we completed the entire project without ever touching a microscope, or really knowing anything about one.

In the end, we got a D-, which was a higher grade than nearly everyone we talked to. Even the Ryans, who spent more time on it and had a physical object to work with did worse, and we couldn’t have been happier. I learn such great things in college.

Storms

Isabel by microphone FLy~
[audio:http://john.paganetti.com/wp-content/uploads/Isabelle.mp3]

One of the things I’ll probably miss most about the old location for Grey Fox was the storms. It might sound weird, but they were so incredibly central to the Grey Fox experience. Nearly every year (we can remember two exceptions) there was a good sized storm that rolled through during the festival.

One of these storms prompted my dad to ditch camping in tents and buy a trailer. It had been raining all night, and a section of the tent’s roof had started to collect water. When my dad woke up, he pushed it to knock the water off the tent, but his hand went right through it, and he got a nice cold wake up shower.

The first year I was ever on the mountain, I was about 10 weeks old, and my parents carried me up the mountain, because they had closed the road due to the rain. I obviously don’t remember this, but I’ve been told many times about that year.

I watched a dome tent roll down the road, blown by a strong wind. After a beat, a half dozen people appeared, chasing after it.

I can remember standing on top of the hill after we thought the storm had passed us, and looking at the massive cloud over us, we realized that it was just circling above us. It is really incredible to see. It ended up hanging around our general area for a few days.

In 2001, we nearly didn’t go to Grey Fox. The Tall Ships were coming through, and I guess it was a big deal, because we went out to go see them during the first part of the week of Grey Fox. Late in the week, I started to bug my dad about how we oughta go for the tail end of the festival. He talked to some of our friends already on the hill, and they told him it was rainy, and gonna stay rainy. He checked the forecast, and it said 8-10 inches of rain over the course of the weekend. We went up anyway, and slept in the back of the Pathfinder. The mudfest that year was actually caught on tape in A Bluegrass Journey.

But the one storm I hope I never forget was a few years ago (three? four?). I remember it was a beautiful afternoon, but as evening approached, I noticed some big clouds in the distance. We climbed up on someone’s RV to get a better look. I had never seen a wall of clouds like that before – it was really incredible. It looked like a tidal wave, visibly moving closer and closer to us. When it reached us, we found it that it was a really powerful electrical storm, and they actually had to close down the main stage for a while, something I had never seen happen before. The sound of thunder when you’re outside, in the middle of a gigantic thunderstorm, is not to be missed.

I’m incredibly bored.

Kick It Open by Moonalice
[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/moonalice2007-06-02.Moonalice2007-06-02.flac/Moonalice2007-06-02d1t04_64kb.mp3]

I’m bored to a point I haven’t been in a long time. It isn’t good. I dunno, maybe that’s not true, but it feels like I’m incredibly bored. I have school work that I could be doing, but it is very little, and only one of those things is actually necessary. I’m doing better in school that I ever have before this semester, and I’m at a point in the semester where I can’t actually screw that up. So school work is out.

I went over my bandwidth yesterday (or the day before, I forget), but that isn’t the reason for my boredom. I’m not so addicted to the internet that one to two days without it renders me useless. I’m almost there, but not quite. No, the real reason for my boredom is the lack of people to hang out with. And even when there are the people, there’s a lack of time. It seems that I’m the only person who has this amount of free time on his hands, so I get to spend most of it alone.

So I think I’m going to start telling stories. I’ve been meaning to do this for a long time, but I’ve never quite gotten around to it, probably because I had better things to do. But I’ve run out of those better things, so its time I got crackin. It’s gonna be weird though, no real rhyme or reason behind the order they’ll be coming out – my memory comes and goes as it wants to, so those stories will as well.

Rhino

Joe: someone told me the other day about their former pet iguana
Joe: who exploded
Joe: the iguana was constipated, so they took it to the vet
Joe: the vet took it in the next room, and came back to report that it had exploded
Joe: if not for the mess, i would have loved to be that vet
John: …I’m trying to wrap my head around that
Joe: don’t try to understand the exploding iguana
Joe: just enjoy the image
John: that’s easier
John: what if it wasn’t the iguana’s fault?
John: what if the vet put it down on something, like a grenade, and then it exploded
Joe: hahaha
Joe: those grenades are necessary for vets to have around
John: sure
Joe: they didn’t make sure that “vet” was short for veterinarian
John: haha
John: I’m told they usually use them for playing fetch with the annoying dogs
Joe: lol
Joe: or to show rhinos who’s boss
Joe: first thing you gotta do when they bring in their pet rhino
Joe: establish dominance
John: that’s where I always go wrong