2026/7/26 - Itchy

The best word to describe how these places smell is "itchy." They smell itchy. I guess it's the dust, whatever clung to the goods as they were exhumed from people's attics, basements, the closets of old bedrooms.

I was probably a young teen the first time I went to the used music and movie store in the small strip mall on the four-lane road that made any Main Street in this area functionally obsolete decades before. I wasn't sure what to make of it then. Well into my twenties, it was one of the only places I really liked visiting. Few people there were particularly nice, but sometimes they would be impressed with what you could find among the used CDs and that was enough.

It closed years ago. For a while it was a campaign office that never seemed to have anyone in it. I don't know what it is now.

There are other places like it, some making the corners of dying shopping malls feel more alive than when the malls themselves had fully functional HVAC systems.

2026/6/27 - Concrete

During my summer break from college I've been working as a construction materials testing technician. I mostly go to construction sites where they're pouring concrete for foundation footings or grout to fill block walls and I perform tests and make samples.

Both grout and concrete usually require a slump test. That's where you pile a bunch of the wet material into the small opening of a one-foot-tall, metal cone that is open on both ends. The base of the cone sits on a metal plate. When you lift the cone, the material inside slumps, and you measure the distance from the top of the cone to the top of the slump. This is to check water content. Each material will have a specified slump range that depends varies by application. Slump is important for grout because it indicates how well the grout will work into all of the tight spaces inside of a block wall. It's important for concrete because water content can provide information about the eventual strength of the material.

Both concrete and grout also require that I check their temperature. This provides some information about how quickly the reactions are taking place, which again correlates with the eventual strength of the material.

For concrete I also check air content using an air meter that looks like a handleless cooking pot with a bicycle pump on top of it. This also has to do with ultimate strength, particularly when the concrete is above the frost line and subject to freeze and thaw cycles.

For concrete, I make cylindrical samples by pouring the wet concrete into plastic canisters that are a little bigger than those giant Foster's cans.

For grout, I make rectangular prism-shaped samples by building what they call "pinwheels" out of concrete blocks and lining the square spaces at the center of each pinwheel with a cardboard liner. This is tricky, but I like the challenge of precisely positioning the the heavy blocks to make neat, square samples.

I like the materials. I like the concrete. It smells weird.

2026/5/12 1

The first of the two dime-sized jumping spiders I've seen in two days was clamoring around on the living room wall. Captured with the cup and department store ad method and delivered to the front yard.

The second had got into the washing machine. Its legs were scrambling around in the water that was rushing in when I noticed. It jumped onto my hand and was delivered to the safety of the basement floor. It turned to regard me and to catch its breath before slowly walking off under a contractor bag.

It might have been the same jumping spider returned from an unwanted detour through the front yard.

They have white markings on their black, fuzzy backs and, if the light hits them just right, little vertical stripes of shiny green on what a spider expert probably wouldn't call their fangs.

2026/5/12

What's more interesting than a post about itself, right?

The old site's been archived. I guess this marks the beginning of A New Direction. I still have all the drawings and stuff. Don't worry! I knew you'd worry. Nothing's lost.

After one of my trademark long absences, I opened my Neocities folder and felt it was all a bit confusing to navigate, which led me to wonder whether this site could be a bit lighter -- even more less, if you will.

So, we're going one-page (mainly). Llama Lite. The world only scrolls now anyway, so for now consider this your one stop for the latest news about the trees in my neighborhood.

I'm on break between semesters. That's what this is really about.