happy holidays!

i haven't decorated - and who knows how much i will, considering the state of this house - but that doesn't squelch my holiday spirit at all, as proven by this quiz, and this pic i couldn't resist taking last night.

What The Holidays Mean to You

For you, the holidays are about celebration. You enjoy all the fun and fellowship that the holidays bring. You celebrate the holidays in an over the top style. If something is cute, you'll buy it. People end up with a lot of gifts from you - and your house is like a holiday wonderland, full of decorations. During the holidays, you feel magical. You love all of the decorations and how happy people are. You like to sit back and take it all in. You think the holidays should be nostalgic and sweet. The holidays bring out your inner child. Your best holiday memories are of childhood foods and traditions. You secretly still wish you believed in Santa Claus.

What Do the Holidays Mean to You?

i also took the What Holiday Are You? quiz. guess which one i was? i'll give you a hint: it's in late december.

green makes me happy

as evidenced by this shot:

which was taken oh, 100 feet from where i'm typing. while there are plenty more pictures coming eventually, suffice to say that to my right is the 2nd half of this duplex, to my left is our amazingly verdant garden, a fence, and then a good mile or so of park, including the moss, leaves and trees seen above.

and while it may not be easy for kermit to be green, it's very easy for oregon because hello rain! it snowed a bit saturday morning and has been raining ever since. good thing i like rain.

what i also love is the internet, finally coming to my house. as well as the phone and cable. all three of those (well, mostly the first two) make it so much easier to look for and get a job. yes, i don't have one yet, yes i'm a little stressed about it but also this last month and a half has been full of so many miracles, i also have plenty of faith. for now, that plus the work of searching means i feel alright.

and so yes, it's been a little over a month since i had substansive updates. which means yes, YOI (ye olde internet) will soon be the recipient of substansive updates! and by soon i mean:

fri oct 19 – Last day of work

thu oct 25 – Realize bank account is fucked

sat oct 27-mon oct 29 – Rescheduling the earth because bank account is still f'd. Also order 401k disbursement on saturday since I realize the bank account may not be unf'd by the 7th, as wamu is currently predicting, and without that there's no way we can make our trip. Stay #1 in Beverly Heritage Hotel (BevHo!) on the 29th, because we prepaid. Oops.

Mon oct 29-thu nov 1 – Surprise, lots of packing. Additional lunch with liz, additional doc visits.

Fri nov 2 – 401k check arrives. Find check cashing place since I don’t trust screwU to not fuck up m’s account with it (either via depositing or cashing it directly). Wait forever at check cashing place, get freaked when at first they can’t authenticate with charles schwab. Notice insta-credit card option while waiting, as well as 1 and 2 party check cashing. Check clears – call landlord, truck, etc and set new exit date of nov 6. Put scrilla in m’s account – the only unfrozen one between us.

Sat nov 3 – More packing, rescheduling.

Sun nov 4 – Pick up the truck at 11. What a monstrosity. Takes so long (2 main tries, with a 2nd round of 10-15 minutes of grueling, slightly-scraping tension) that the cops come by to say – get this off the street or we’ll be back. Do you think I planned to leave the ass of this thing hanging out?

Meantime there’s minor skirmishes among the troops, but in the end thankfully all calmed down and around 1215 or so, we went to work on a house that was not fully packed. We got a lot done, though – min, me, liz, and a guy from craigsliszt (CL) whose name I’ve forgotten already but he sorta looked like AJ from the backstreet boys. Never heard from my 2nd CL guy, lover of pizza, flaker of gigs.

Liz left about 3, AJ got sent home by 5 with an agreement to come back the next day. Yay! Lori and Aaron came over in the evening and helped a little. Really appreciated it, too, when Lori said she’d be over early (10am) to help with the monumental hordes of items still to be packed.

Mon nov 5 – We’re supposed to be gone – ptoo! - by 2pm today, because that’s when the cleaners come. Which as you might guess, means the house has to be empty by then. We’d arranged for AJ and a friend of his to be there by 11am, figuring what with getting up at 8am ourselves, and Lori there at 10, maybe we’ll be ok. Well, we got up at 8...

Min went out for bottled water and god knows what (but whats that we needed) about 1030. at 11, still not back and no sign of lori or AJ, I called M. Where are you? Has lori called? Holy shit there’s no way we’re getting this done. Should we call someone else?

A few minutes later AJ called – car trouble but he’s coming soon. I decide to call Adrian, moving guy (another one of my CL respondents). Says he can be there by 12. Min gets home a little after 11, says she talked to lori. Apparently lori needed a breathing treatment (self-distributed) and would be at our place in a while.

Back to packing. AJ shows up a few minutes later and after we talk, he starts repacking the truck so all can be squoze in. around 1215, with no Adrian or lori (who I’ve given up on), I call Adrian again. Coming? Yes.

Adrian arrives around 1230, and after a thorough assessment of the entire house and truck, helps AJ redistribute the truck even more. Lori arrives in a face mask (this house seriously collected dust; there was widespread sneezing) a few minutes later, much to my surprise.

Right about then I realize I need to eat, so we get everyone’s order. M goes for food, and I put lori to work I the bathroom because – thinking ahead – I made it very straightforward, what should be packed or not. At least so I thought. I’d have figured maybe an hour, 90 minutes to pack the bathroom? But clearly I underestimated that since lori ran about 3 hours, including vacuuming in a room with tile flooring. Later I figured out she was vacuuming dust off the window fan.

Meantime, M returns with food around 1pm, so we eat and I realize there is no way in hell we’re going to be done by 2. M calls the cleaners AND the landlords to push cleaning and walkthrough to later tomorrow. This gives us the rest of the day to pack/load, which we really did need. Aaron came over around 8pm, for an hour or so, to help and then take Lori (and donatables – yay, one less thing to worry about) home. We stayed till 10 or 11, then back again to the BevHo where we promptly collapsed.

Oh and shit! I can’t believe I forgot this! Around 2pm we realized that M had lost her wallet. We deduced she had it whilst going for lunch – wallet was attached to her keys – but then at some point after leaving the car upon arrival home (across the street, really, since the truck left no parking at home), the wallet vanished.

Needless to say, what was left of the house was upturned, the streets were searched, over and over because apart from any $ she had (about $500, mostly in traveler’s checks, so at least we were able to recoup that) and her license, medicare cards and keys, that wallet also held our only functioning credit card since – as you may recall – my bank accounts were still fucking frozen.

As you might imagine, the prospect of making this ginormous trip with no credit card was more than a little daunting. But wait! I remembered seeing the insta-credit card at El Casho Checko place, plus the fact that we could still get $ from her (unfrozen) account. Either the bank would let her get it directly (we hoped, using what limited info we had to prove her identity), or – again, thanks to my eagle eyes – she could write me a check, that I’d cash at El Casho Checko, and then we’d get the insta-card. Problem solved.

So off we went to our – thank god – prepaid hotel room (a deal which the falcon of priceline truth hath approved) and crashed. Well, not before going to walmart, because we accidentally packed my dresser before I had a chance to get half of my trip clothes out. Oops.

yes i'm still here

albeit very sporadically on Ye Olde Internet. i hope to have regular access soon, suffice to say it's been a whirlwind and i'll give you all the salacious details at a future date.

greetings from the land of the weary

i'll post a more comprehensive update in the future, of course, but suffice to say:

- we finally left san jose on tuesday, nov 6th
- which means yes, we're in oregon now (a nice la quinta inn in wilsonville)
- speaking of which, if you don't have a wireless card, this is a nice place to still score free computer access in the lobby, especially if you like listening to saturday night live at the same time
- i am tired
- thank goodness we have 3 bank accounts and credit cards between the two of us
- it is cold
- my dad was so excited to see us that on the way to the car (to meet us for lunch), he tripped and broke his hip (no, i'm not kidding)
- paying an extra $117 so you don't have to drive a 24ft truck + towed car into downtown portland -- totally worth it
- craigslist help up here appears even better than SJ. proof will be tomorrow, though, when we unload the behemoth
- did i mention it's cold?
- even with all the fiascos and stress of the last several weeks, and stress to come in procuring a new abode, i'm still so happy to be here

that's it for now. time to check on the laundry. =)

please hold

there has been quite the flurry of activity since my last post. packing, sure. final appointments, disconnecting services, etcetera, yes. but one thing you might not have suspected -- and certainly i did not expect -- is that my bank accounts would be inexplicably frozen and slated for closure.

maybe i'm crazy, but i think this is normal, not expecting your assets to freeze. at least if you aren't a felon, calling card scammer or involved in fraudulent financial transactions. and me? well i'm in the last category right now, at least according to my bank, WaMu, or as i think i'll call them from now on, ScrewYu.

it all started with the deposit of my final paychecks from work. what with the hordes of PTO i'd accrued (and yes, i accrued purposefully), i deposited a tidy sum at the atm. yes, i have since been told that i should go into the branch for large checks, even if it's, let's say, from my regular employer, who issues me large (though not that large) checks on a biweekly basis.

what with the amount of scrilla, i figured it would take several days for the checks to clear. fine. what i did not expect is that 4 business days later, i'd try to use my card at longs and it'd be denied. wtf? so i head to the bank and am informed that my account has been closed due to suspicious of fraud.

huh?

it took the very nice lady at the bank about a half hour to figure out the source of trouble (el checkos) and when she told me that they expected they checks to be returned unpaid, i just stared at her. i worked for a *very* big company. these are not checks from some fly-by-night startup. why wouldn't they be paid?

that was thursday morning. suffice to say, from then til 6pm friday i was working with both my former employer and ScrewYu to get things worked out so that we could, i don't know, MOVE THIS WEEKEND.

as you might guess, things did not work out. i have both ScrewYu and wells fargo to thank for that. we tried to make arrangements for some temporary scrilla to tide us over for an additional week, allowing us to make our trip as scheduled, but no luck.

which means, barring divine and fiduciary intervention, we're probably going to be here another week and a half. the *only* good thing i can say about this is that it gives us more time to pack. we'd decided to pay for some packing help, and well, now we can wrap that up ourselves. goody!

movin' some scrilla

by way of an update:

- had a fairly successful yard sale this weekend, close to $450. i hear that's not bad but the problem is, when we had our moving sale in montana, we cleared over a grand. so as is often the case with life, i'm learning to adjust my expectations.

- yard sale, alpha and omega version: sure, i was tired and sore after all that. but more to the point, min was completely wiped and ended up sleeping a lot of sunday. thankfully saturday was the big scrilla day. this also meant she missed a going-away dinner with a few friends (bummer) but of course, i still had a wonderful time.

- i've had trouble getting (free) moving boxes lately. six months ago? sure, no problem. but lately, every time i respond to a post, even if it's the same day, all zee boxes -- poof. since we had to get some additional moving supplies anyway tonight (why hello, shiny saran wrap-like tube!), and our departure date is a mere week away, we broke down and bought some boxes.

- in case you were wondering, i was LOATHE to buy moving boxes. they are expensive little bastards! however, we went here. sure, they had new boxes for a decent price. used boxes for even better. but then there was our section, which i guess you could call 'shagged a few times but still worth a go'. these boxes were che-e-ep. and still in very excellent condition. which made me very happy.

- speaking of happy, i don't miss work at all. zippo. like this is a surprise. i almost feel like i've been let out of prison.

- also, did i mention i'm tired? and more than a little overwhelmed at all that's left to do before we pack up the truck NEXT SUNDAY?

- i'm not sure when i'll post again, in the whirlwind of a week i have ahead of me, but if it's a while... think good thoughts for the dykes in the 24' truck, and i'll post again when i can. :)

- ps. thank god for hand trucks.

bite my shiny, imperial-fighting ass

since it's been over a WHOLE MONTH since my last quiz, a week since i posted anything, and i'm too bleary-eyed to be very coherent now:

Which sci-fi crew would you best fit in with?

You scored as Millennium Falcon (Star Wars) The world around you is at war. Fortunately you know how to handle that with the greatest of ease. You are one of the best at what you do and no one needs to tell you that. Now if only the droids could be quiet for five seconds. Serenity (Firefly) 88% Moya (Farscape) 88% Millennium Falcon (Star Wars) 88% Babylon 5 (Babylon 5) 81% SG-1 (Stargate) 81% Heart of Gold (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) 75% Deep Space Nine (Star Trek) 75% Galactica (Battlestar: Galactica) 75% Andromeda Ascendant (Andromeda) 69% FBI's X-Files Division (The X-Files) 63% Enterprise D (Star Trek) 56% Nebuchadnezzar (The Matrix) 38% Bebop (Cowboy Bebop) 31%

p.s. tomorrow's my last day at work. i can't believe how giddy i am about it. i know, some of the giddy is just for the upcoming adventure in general but... i am seriously ready for a change.
p.p.s. futurama is not on the list of contendas! that's so wrong.

hello

i love you

a waking dream

i'm sure it will come as no surprise that i've been having trouble sleeping lately. excitement about moving also means stress about moving. if i wake up in the middle of the night to use the facilities, when i come back to bed i start thinking about all the stuff i need to do for our upcoming yard sale.

if i have trouble getting comfortable after i roll over, i remember i need to pick a hotel for our first week or so there.

and the list goes on. which means i do, too.

which means after a little while i remember a) you've got this all written down, stop worrying about it and b) it's time to invoke the Coast Snowfall.

now sure that's just a name for you folks. in my head i think, it's time to go *there*. Coast Snowfall's a fitting name though, because i immediately start playing the first snowfall (snippet here, courtesy B&N. nighttime version, courtesy of my internal ipod), and then go here.

imagine driving along this road, a series of trees in this light, and you can see how the dappled light could keep time with the beginning of that song (if you listen to it, hint). then we curve inland for a moment of dark and green, albeit not foggy in my nighttime film.

then we rise up the hill and crest to this, at which point i leave the car and become a bird, apparently, flying out and over the rocky shoreline. not a bad trick.

the song repeats itself at a certain point, and so do i, starting at the first image above. sure, sometimes it takes a while to progress from there to sleep, but i never get tired of this journey. or the song, which is saying a lot.

these flybys are a conglomeration of the many, many drives my family took along 101 in southern oregon, often at sunset. i've been using this little montage for probably 15 years.

incidentally, if you look at/listen to that song, you'll see it's an instrumental from a christmas album. what can i say? i've listened to that album a lot, which is KickAss. if you don't mind reverent *christmas* music and/or enjoy classical, i highly recommend it.

going to the salon is so old school

are you tired of having to explain what you *really* want to your hairdresser or barber? not to mention, shelling out for that haircut several times a year? well, thanks to this morning's internet, i offer you a possible solution:

THE FLOWBEE



as a bonus, apparently in your post-haircut bliss, you will get to see a vacuum hose and what looks like a giant flashlight fight to the death:



haircut clean up is only a suction away. please, act now, or else i will flowbee you a second time.

hello internet

i am tired. is it friday yet?

adventures in gmail advertising

while deleting in the spam folder:

Creamy Spam Broccoli Casserole - Makes 8 servings

enjoy!

sayonara (part 1)

yes this will be a continuing series but suffice to say, now i can say something i've been holding back for quite some time:

i'm quitting my job and moving to oregon.

to be precise, i'm not the only one moving to oregon. all living things (and oh, so many unliving things) in my household are moving as well. i haven't been able to talk about this before because there are a few people (hello!) from work who quietly read this blog. but now that i've given notice to the landlord and my workday overlord, now you're officially the last to know.

and yes this is partly why i've been posting less, mainly in terms of being verra busy on my weeknights and weekends doing prepwork. but honestly, the other reason is that work was just so damn crazy for quite some time.

as mentioned previously, i volunteered for bug czar duty on the previous push, in an entirely successful attempt to avoid javascript-happy specwork. the tradeoff, of course, is people pinging you night AND day. there's a certain thrill in people constantly clamoring for your attention, even if it's only for input on inane issues. however it does get a little tiring, being in the spotlight so long. and let's just say that the work for the current push -- while not involving much specwork, thank you -- has still been driving me crazy, although that's more about people and process rather than the actual work.

if you're wondering, no i do not have a job up there yet. there have been attempts, of course, and even a job offer earlier this year (yes, this has been in progress for quite some time). however the job meant living in corvallis and while that area has a few charms, for the most part it's the opposite of bewitching.

which is why we're moving to the general portland vicinity, preferably somewhere south/west/central. want to be close to my parents, but also, i want to be in a larger city. i want to feel that energy buzzing all around me, but at a leisurely, oregonized pace. our little family needs good access to all things medical, as well, and so again, portland beats out corvallis (or most anywhere in the state) by a landslide.

then there's all the great memories i have in portland. having chocolates and steamed milk with my mom at pioneer square, trolling through vast, verdant washington park, meandering through powell's for hours, walking in the light drizzle just about anywhere, with everything green fragrantly blossoming all around me.

those are just some of the reasons i can't wait to go.

as to when we go -- we'll be up there by the end of october. which means now i need to pack and finish getting ready.

um. holy shit.

for me loyal scallywags

happy talk like a pirate day!

and to those of you with kids, i offer this unexpected treasure from my inbox this morning. i mean, really...a chance to indoctrinate your younglings from the getgo? pretty hard to resist, i'd think.

plus, if you've ever wanted a badass name for your vehicle, the generator will set you up. for the record, i now drive "The Barbaric Cream Puff".

for a good time, call 1-800-BEAMEUP

from an email list's event announcement:

If you show up, you will be abducted.

This is the kind of ROI I can get behind.

could not resist

even though one answer was wrong (two answers were correct). see if you can guess which one!

You Scored an A

It's pretty obvious that you don't make basic grammatical errors. If anything, you're annoyed when people make simple mistakes on their blogs. As far as people with bad grammar go, you know they're only human. And it's humanity and its current condition that truly disturb you sometimes.

The It's Its There Their They're Quiz

48.0 LTS Keggar!!

that was the title of the skype chat we had going all night during last week's live code push at work, and yes i came up with the title, and yes i purposely mispelled kegger. consider it a token of my attempt to have a good time, even though i was pulling a 930pm-645am shift. for the record, on a normal day i probably roll in around 10am.

pre-push, i had grand visions of using this time to write several witty posts, which you may notice did not occur. while i did get some very minor reading done, fact was i was too busy talking to people all night, looking into prospective web dev issues. gratefully there were no actual issues for our team, but that didn't stop the powers that be from thinking we might be at fault. thus, the busyness. the morning came rather quickly, and then i got the rest of the day off. pretty nice.

in other news, i saw my sister and her cohorts yesterday. if you're keeping track, now the clan is up to 4. for quite some time there's been drake and mike. now there's also danni, who is actually mike's wife. long story? why yes it is!

suffice to say that the foursome has been in the making for quite some time, and a month or so into things, they seem to be happy campers. especially my sister, grateful to have another girl around. who can blame her? girls rule.

anyway we drove out to stockton -- a midpoint for both of us -- and met them at a marie callendar's 'because their salad bar kicks ass!' (said my sister, when i asked where she wanted to eat). she did put together a tasty salad, i'll give her that. i forgot how good their cornbread is, but to be honest i wasn't impressed with much else. however, we had a delightful visit, weren't pestered to leave even though we were there chatting for hours, and really, that's all i wanted.

that's it for updates. hey, that's more than you've gotten in weeks! have a little gratitude. sheesh. ;)

get on the bus

apparently this is not new, however a blog i read posted about it today:

and this tickles me in a way that, if loretta tickled me, i'd say..oh yeah. that's niiice.

i also am really enjoying the offer to bundle it with a purchase of the electric company. zoooom!

since it's been a while since i did a quiz..

and no the results don't surprise me. =)

also thanks to everyone who commented about the frisky situation. while i still don't like how that had to go down, the side effects (a much happier animal kingdom) have made it very clear it was the right decision.

we're nearing the end of an extremely draining spell of work. hopefully by the end of the month, i'll be able to stop feeling so completely overworked. i really would like to stop dreaming about work! it's sort of my fault, i volunteered for the bug czar thing again in an effort to avoid coding. well, mission accomplished but that doesn't mean i'm not working like crazy...

interloper

the dark fellow at right came into our life unexpectedly. frisky was his name and i really can't think of a better one for him, except maybe 'contradiction', which i'll admit is not catchy.

the contradiction here is that when frisky was loving, he was virtually irresistible. he'd charge right up to you, purr loudly, bump his head against you, knead his paws and nibble at your shirt.

the bad part is that these actions were rare. more to the point, the other name he came with (seriously) was 'trouble'. when i first heard that i went pthbbbt and said, 'we're calling him frisky.'

yeah, trouble is more like it. let me count the ways in which this was so:

- scratching all manner of mortals so as to leave scars
- badgering the cats while they ate
- or tried to use the facilities
- or walk across the room
- several times a day
- repeatedly got into closed rooms (by using his head as a battering ram) and made a mess

those are the ones coming to mind now, when i should be asleep because i have to get up really early tomorrow. but suffice to say, the clincher for frisky was the badgering, especially as relates to facility usage for our other two cats, muffie and dolce.

this, i'm sorry to say, led to various sections of the household being terraformed into impromptu litter boxes. the best part is that because we have a few stacks of old clothes, etc (that we plan to sell) around the house, and the house is a decent size, this terraforming went unnoticed for a couple of weeks. unnoticed until about a week and a half ago.

now ever since we acquired frisky we've been working on his behavior. the scar-inducing scratches waned. frisky got 'in trouble' -- sprayed with a water bottle, peeled off of another cat, taken off the kitchen counter -- several times a day, but the special thorn in our sides was the cat-on-cat action. in addition to the aforementioned terraforming, last week min caught muffie in the laundry room (where the litter box is), cornered by frisky. when muffie saw min, she wailed a heartbreaking little 'save me!' wail.

so i've painted a half-assed (mostly since i'm tired beyond belief) picture. saturday night (my birthday, incidentally) we came home to more terraforming. we said ok, that's it we have to take him to a shelter. he's not scaring the cats into terraforming the entire house into a litter box!

sunday morning i began the shelter research. sure frisky can't be with cats, or small dogs (yes she and frisky played, but pearl got food-intimidated too). what about with kids? a house with no pets? oh right, then he scratches his aggression all over the humans too. ok but surely a shelter will take a cat that's only good with medium or large dogs!

how about no. seriously, i got laughed at.

and how can you blame them? no-kill shelters have to be picky. and the other ones...well... so we talked to a vet at adobe. explained his behavior, how we've been working with him for 9 months and it's actually getting worse, was there anything we could do short of doping him up to death, what kind of life is that anyway and is it possible frisky was mentally ill?

first the vet thanked, praised us (via min, saint that she was to take frisky in) for working so hard with frisky. then she said that in all likelihood, frisky *was* mentally ill. frisky's mother was feral, making a bad start, and the first several months he was fending for himself. but his wild, obsessive tyrannical reigns, followed by a day or so of virtually hiding, was very similar to what you might see in a bipolar human (not on meds of course). and so with all this in mind, with no real treatment a possibility, with no reasonable expectation of frisky being able to find a new home, it was decided that the best thing was to put him to sleep.

i didn't want to believe we would end up here. on sunday, post research, when i suspected this might happen, i cried. i cried monday morning, before the vet. all day i hoped the vet would think up a miracle. all day i felt like i could hardly breathe. but monday afternoon frisky was gently laid to rest, and monday afternoon and evening i cried yet again.

i know some of you may think badly of us for doing this. hey, guess what? i hate having done it. so even though i still think this was the kindest thing to do, given the options frisky truly had, it doesn't mean i'm not riddled with guilt about it.

this little interloper wormed his way into my heart and the intensity of the loss i've felt has surprised me. i think it's because he was like an alcoholic. when he was loving, you forgot all about the earlier rages. the rages always returned, but that doesn't mean that i don't miss his joyful trill.

rest in peace, frisky. i hope now you're up trilling and snuggling with min's mother, the one person you really loved.

blogging in the shower

it can happen, folks. at least in your head. which is why:

58%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?
and now i really *must* get to work...which for the record, has kept me so busy lately that i barely have time to breathe.

a very late Fiver

sorry i forgot about this, wen, but thanks to dharma for only just responding, thus reminding me to do the same. ;-)

1. Five favorite days of the year:

* Christmas
* Any day where I get to read -- or write -- all day
* Any day by the ocean
* Christmas
* Any day where I make someone laugh

2. Five things you watched this week:

* The Colbert Report
* The Daily Show
* Pearl dance, bury her head under mine and snort
* Valerie whistle through a straw, with bonus spittle towards a cashier
* The curve of the hills as I head towards home

3. Five things you don't want to do, but should:

* Go to the dentist (hey, I went last month!)
* Save more money
* Pack
* Clean (goes well with item 3)
* Get up (goes well with items 3+4)

4. Five things you want to learn:

* Why Muffie yowls so much (sooo stealing that from wen. criminy!)
* How to construct a plot from the random ideas in my head
* How to be more patient with people
* Why polyester blends are so popular
* What makes you tick

5. Five animals you've had as pets or who have impacted you:

* Chrissy - My sister's, which then became my parents', dog. Dalmation/spaniel mix. Also known as "wigglebutt" because she had no tail. She had unbridled joy. My favorite memory of her is being caught eating a tootsie pop roll at Christmas -- lying on the floor, wrapper off to the side, pop neatly between her front paws, and a busted look on her face.

* Pearl - Our little shih tzu/poodle mix. Sure, sometimes she gets an irrational fear of the floor. But I swear to god she's the best dog ever. Yes I admit to being biased.

* Sweetie - A tortoiseshell cat who was almost named Rocket. Yes, a more interesting name than Sweetie, but would've been painfully ironic considering the lump she became in later years. She is the one who taught me (due to my love for her, and patient footing on her side) how to do a full body turn in bed without ejecting her from my body.

* Sniffers - A tricolor kitten we only had for two months. Around the 8th grade, our family had to move into an apartment that didn't allow pets. He was so adorable, so beautiful, and the only consolation was that he was still so young, I'm sure he immediately got snapped up by another family.

* Stinky - A grey tabby who lived up to his name, unfortunately. Probably from all the birds he kept eating and leaving pieces of our back porch.

6. Five favorite pieces of clothing:

* Anything cotton
* The extremely worn out Thumper (disney) lounge shorts I have on right now
* Vader Gardening. I wore this yesterday and continued the trend of only guys commenting on it. I swear I've only had one (random) girl get it. Friends of mine don't count (of course THEY will get it, my friends are brilliant).
* ET Phoning Home. Sadly I can't wear the one I have anymore, but Min can. :-D
* Since it's summer (more below), a badass pair of khaki cargo shorts.

7. Five things you enjoy in the summer:

* WTFBBQs!
* Late sunsets
* Pretending I don't need sunscreen
* The promise of adventure in the morning air.
* Wearing cargo shorts. I loves me some plethora of pockets.

8. Five foods you don't like:

* Fish
* Anything burnt
* Sauerkraut
* Brussel sprouts (gag)
* Snap peas. I like regular peas, and green beans. But snap peas…ptoo.

9. You are given $50,000 to pass out to 5 people in $10,000 cash gifts. Who do you give it to, and why?

* My mom. Other than helping to resolve some medical issues, this could also help her go on a nice vacation, which is what I suspect she'd do, and really deserves.
* My dad. I would really like him to have some teeth. Sad but true. Also he could buy a badass amount of books to make him happy.
* Min. Hey, I'm reinvesting in my community! Seriously though then I could get her all the little gadgets she'd like.
* My sister. Who knows what the hell she'd use it for but I know she and her clan would have a sweet time doing it.
* My sister-in-law Wilma. That woman is amazing and works way harder than she should have to.

10. Five things that are not where they belong:

* MUST STEAL GEORGE BUSH. I mean, hi. He is SO not where he belongs.
* A million dollars (shouldn't you be in my bank account?)
* 50% of the clutter on my desk.
* 70% of the clutter around the house
* Me. Chores, I shall avenge you!

Five, Ten or Fifteen People you want to complete this:
Cop out, I know, but I'm not tagging anyone. But if you're interested, please... meme on!

while not the wittiest thing ever

you have to love a thread that makes you say this:

I'm sorry, I don't understand. I only know how to sacrifice the ultimate goal of letting things grow in.

people, they are very special sometimes.

and on a related (internet) note, today liz and i stumbled into a very geeky, very FlagSelfAmusementEnabled situation. we were on our way back from caffienieing and discussing Ye Olde Internet. the unix-based kind, where TALKing and fingering (hottt!) people was commonplace. we decided that after we got back to our desk, trying to TALK could be very entertaining.

i know, geeks.

well, there is no TALK. daemonpunkass sez no. but i found out there is a happy medium between that and mail: write. write works like an instant message. pops up on your screen (twice actually, once with an EOF, then later the actual message), then you can reply.

anyway, let's just say, there was a lot of write-ing going on. and the giggling, holy crap.

laugh at me. us. i don't care. it was stupid fun and if i am pro anything, it is stupid fun. i really don't think there can be enough of that in a workday. well, at least until the time i say it's time to stop because i really really have to work now. and yes, if i continue anyway, you are to pretend the previous statement was never uttered.

heaven is a used bookstore

yesterday morning i went to get some freecycled moving boxes from a woman in alviso. i've never been to alviso and didn't know what to expect.

what an odd little area. it started off with prefab condos and quickly moved into a collection of withered, stained homes. my boxes ended up coming from a place somewhere inbetween, an apartment complex with a very friendly grey husky tied outside.

it was pretty quiet, and being out on a marsh i can see why people would enjoy the relative solitude. but as i headed back, driving past a run-down cafe and grocery store, it seemed like the kind of place that could get unseemly at night.

on the way back i stopped at borders, planning to get scrumptious coffee and a new book. the coffee, superb. but after 90 minutes of delicious lingering over more books than i could count, seconds before a cashier offered to ring me up, i left empty-handed.

why? because i couldn't make myself pay $14 for a 176-page book. not when i was burning to also buy a $7 368-page book and $14 160-page book at the same time. not when i knew i could go to a used bookstore, spend the same amount (or less) scrilla to get twice as many books.

which is why i went home, got min and we went to recycled books, in san jose. i hadn't been there before, but it won my heart immediately by having an orange cat and a gigantic '$.99 and up' bookshelf just inside the doorway. in the end i got several books i'd been wanting, including one from a very funny fellow, and another promising one about old new york.

in the end, 7 books for less than the price of 3. hard to beat. plus, i love the smell of used books. they have a history. sometimes you even get a peek at it, like the complimentary local-oregon-bookstore bookmark that popped out of my new york book.

i know that authors don't get any royalties off used books. yes that bothers me. but to be honest, not having something to read bothers me more. if i were *really* a skinflint i'd only use the library. i'm still doing my part for capitalism, and in the meantime, i'm learning which authors are so good that i'll even buy them new. if i want you enough, i WILL have you. first run.

and now, the rest of the story (6.16-6.17)

the final installment...

6.16 935am
yesterday was a blast and to prove the point i am sore from head to toe. i finished the FT around 7, then i took the ferry back to boston (was in charlestown) but not before having a nice convo w/m since i missed the first ferry by 30 seconds. she lost another tooth, no surprise. cracked before i left. soon she will have no lower teeth. :/

today i'm going to cambridge for a festival and just to check the town out. possibly go to a museum but can't say. i blew some of my 'museum' money on photo stuff ($25 or so) so not really sure we can afford that.

but i'm not going to worry about $ now, just enjoy being here. which i am, SO MUCH. i think i would adore living in new england or the east coast (especially mid/north) because of the history. i could tell i started to tune out a little yesterday, basking in so much, but even so i felt in love with the whole wide world. everywhere i looked i saw something beautiful. which is why i used 3 rolls of film yesterday. :-p

ok time to get going.

checked my email downstairs, then went to cambridge. only partly on the subway though, due to some unexpected construction i believe. the good news is that a bus ride to the MIT stop, though slower, let me see more of the city, and i bet you can guess how i felt about that. ;-) anyway, once i got to cambridge and oriented myself, i spent oodles of time in the cambridge coop (a delicious bookstore). got some sunglasses (i lost them during the farmers market debacle the day before), and some lunch. walked down JFK street to the festival, and after i'd walked all the way thru, sat down to write.

6.16 322pm
well i just sat down to comment on how awesome the diversity of community vendors was, when i got asked do to a survey on the festival! so i got to give feedback on that (albeit briefly) but still. how cool! and i got two starburst as reward, which i am now enjoying. my favorites actually, lemon+strawberry. =)

the view here is amazing. i'm under two large trees overlooking the charles river, a very large, old building on the other side, and a groovy old bridge just down to my right. earlier i had lunch at a great little bakery called au bon pain. scrumptious little roast beef and herb cream chese sandwich on tomato parmesan bread, right in the middle of harvard square. i'm going to go over that way again later today, almost done with the festival here but i'm glad i came.

back to the point that led me here - the community groups were amazing. sure, women's groups, homeless, cultural - the usual. but we also had ones about archeology, linguistics and a few other ologies i forgot about already. criminy! i'm so jealous of this environment. and it's so lovely. no wonder i'm enjoying it so goddamn much.

i know it would be difficult to live here. i'm sure very expensive, and i can tell it gets muggy as shit. it's only supposedly in the mid 70's today but the humidity makes it seem like mid 80s. i forgot what that was like. this would be hard on my skin long term although i've done ok so far, amazingly.

incidentally i've also noticed a preponderance of white people and i mean WHITE. just as white as me. it kinda cracks me up. but as i said, makes me feel a little more 'normal', not that i let that get to me much in general.

being here also makes me really glad we plan to move. because being somewhere new is really doing wonders in the whole AG department. as in not thinking about her, because i'm not surrounded by the places where i have a history of musing in her direction. at any rate, this makes me hopeful. i know it's avoidance but that's all i've got. i am a total sucker for her and i know it.

ok enough. i got some more walking to do, sights to drink in.

even though i was in the shade when i wrote that, i got pretty hot a few minutes later so i stopped for what turned out to be badass ice cream. standing in line for the ice cream led to yet another incident of me being pleasantly surprised by how nice everyone was. not like i think everyone in california is a brat, but..my whole trip, everywhere i went, people were randomly talking to me, so i'd end up talking to them. just about mundane, nice little things, but still. it made me feel very welcome.

made my way back to JFK. found a badass comics shop, walked around harvard and its wobbly sidewalks, then ambled my way back towards the main subway stop. en route i hit another bookstore because at this point i was on the prowl for a new book. i knew i would finish my snoozer in short order. didn't find a cheap+interesting enough book for me there, but a block from the subway was a man selling tons of books, propped up in 20 or so boxes, on the sidewalk. all books, $2.

this is a man after my own wallet. so i browsed and browsed and finally found this. i read a brief interview with the author a long time ago and it struck me as being interesting, but obviously not enough for me to get it until today. i did my usual -- back flap, inside flap, a page in the middle, a page at the start -- and decided it met my standards for wicked observations. i started it on the way back to the hostel and immediately felt crabby that i still had the other book to finish first (i can be methodical).

back at my room, i couldn't decide what i wanted for dinner, so i consulted an area map and then started wandering. i came upon a whole foods and was very disappointed, but did procure an extremely yummy peach. circling back on massachusettes ave, i landed at a burrito place i'd seen before. had a very tasty but too-spicy mango burrito. lucky for me a wendy's was down the block, where i discovered the tastiest frosty known to mankind. back at the hostel, i said hi to y'all then crashed upstairs, hoping to finish my mediocre book.

6.17
sunday my master plan was to explore newbury street for several hours, get lunch around there, then zip over to the airport, but holy shit. mugginess off the charts. had a crappy lunch (johnny rockets) at the airport and then my plane got delayed. so:

329pm
interesting how i keep writing around the same time each day even though i'm doing something different every time.

well it's my last afternoon in boston. i'm at the airport and have been here much longer than i planned because it was too damn humid to lug around my luggage all day. i'd planned to lunch and shop on newbury street. instead i barreled through half of it at a breakneck pace in order to get to the closest subway stop and hightail it over here.

and i'm grateful i did, just to stop sweating. and keep my bag from tipping over.

i got checked in, gave my subway pass to a family of 5, and finished reading that dreadful iles book. ok, it was fair. but there were no real surprises and several of the characters were annoyingly stupid. the only thing i really liked about it were the illicit possibilities with the protagonist and his hot babysitter. sure, it had SOME suspense but not nearly enough for my taste. and the writing style - so bland. but it really takes an atrocious book to make me stop reading. the atrociousness, in this case, stopped about page 20 so i kept on.

i am reading a more interesting book now. girls guide to hunting and fishing, which i heard about a long time ago. i got it for $2 in cambridge yesterday, from a street vendor with way too many books. this book is interesting because it skips around but more so because it is funny in an offbeat, unplanned kind of way. which is the way a lot of my humor works so i like that. also, it's rather real in its vignettes -- like seeing a series of commercials, or getting the cliff notes version of a relationship (or series of them). it's mostly coherent, plus witty and insightful enough that i am devouring it. well that and just being a fast reader helps.

the protagonist in this one is a girl who grows up (at least at this point) to be an associate editor at a publishing house in NY. so of course i connect with this fairly well as a writer and someone who, at one point, could've gone that route herself.

i have thought that a couple times this weekend -- about what would've happened if we'd moved to NY like we talked about at one point, for grad school. so many paths my life could've taken. the astronomer, the engineer, the psychologist, sociologist, the recording engineer, producer, writer and journalist, and the one i fell into, the webhead. which works but the former and most persistent one, the writer, keeps rearing her pretty little head.

i know i will come to that eventually and by that i mean, give more of myself to it as time goes by but i must say i long for those days to come. when it envelops me more fully, like now. it makes me realise - remember? - how complete i feel inside myself. how i'd probably be fine with part time lovers rather than a wife, just due to my need for solitude. how much i actually enjoy it! enjoy and delight in these isolated forays, which then often lead me to writing.

but that is not the life i have. and there are many things i like, love about that life. things are going pretty well between the two of us. way better than they were. not perfect of course - what is - but sooo much better than before.

ok time to read. things are filling up around here, and jeez if i'm not surrounded by pp/eb employees! but that's amusing, too, in its own way.

i ended up reading the rest of my book while waiting for that 2nd airplane. then i jet blue'd home (getting to watch the mediocre 4400 season opener) and then here i was.

so that's it. not too shabby really, especially considering i spent about $250 for the whole deal (not including the airfare, which was free to me). and in case you were wondering, i heart boston. for me, it was full of delightfully friendly people, wonderful food, rich history, gorgeous architecture, and i would go there again in a heartbeat. and thanks for slogging thru my recaps. ;-)

a random series of events

since i haven't posted much by way of a real update in the last several weeks. not that i'm making promises about this post, either. ;-)

• went and saw the new harry potter yesterday. i won't give anything away, but i will say that i enjoyed it much more than the previous movie, which i thought incredibly tedious. there was some tedium this time as well, but also more mystery, and a little darker. it also was the first time that i actually *wished* i had read the book (haven't read any of them) because there were a few references that didn't make sense. a couple times we went 'huh?' but just let it go.
  
  incidentally we saw the movie on a digital projection screen (for those of you nearby, oakridge mall) and WOW the picture quality was amazing. the screen is normal size but none of that occasional blurring, popping, or any kind of film distortion at all.
  
  
• started seeing a chiropractor. yes for the first time ever. i've always thought of being double-jointed a nice perk, but apparently the official term is hypermobility and if you extend that mobility a little too far, it can kinda mess you up. well, i extended my shoulder and wrist too far a few weeks ago (lugging around stuff in boston, then holding a baby in the same position for about 90 minutes straight). oops.
  
  as someone who's always done their own cracking, the visit was a little odd. but good of course, since she was able to get to a few places i never have. and naturally, learned about a few ways i've been accidentally making things worse. oops part deux.
  
  
• june was a bit of a writing dry spell, which i deplored, but i appear to be on the upswing. i mention this because the response i had to one piece kind of surprised me. i'm on this fab fab list called writerspark (if you like writing, i highly encourage you to join) whose main purpose is to send out a series of writing prompts each week. people send in their responses, critique...it's a fairly low-volume list these days due to people like me, who mostly lurk and hoard the prompts for later.
  
  well the other day one came in that just grabbed me:

  “It was the kind of promise…”
  Compose a piece of reasonable length that begins with or that includes the phrase above.

  immediately, in popped a little scene: mildly seductive banter (from me! can you believe it?) with two people in a coffee shop. but more to my upcoming point, it was a first person narrative where the actors were only identified as "i" and "she".
  
  now i would think, if a woman (that's me) wrote this, that people would assume this was a girl-on-girl encounter. apparently not. almost everyone i got feedback from assumed that "i" was a man. this in turn makes me wonder (assume?) that my readers were all straight. because i have a hard time believing that someone queer, reading my post, would make the same assumptions. i also would add, i think anyone who knows *me* would assume it was girl-on-girl action. because you know that's how i roll. ;-) anyway, it was an enlightening, if accidental, exercise in interpretation.

that's all for now. hope y'all are having a good weekend!

let freedom ring (6.15)

the bostonian adventure continues...

6.15 10am-ish
i slept so hard. which i needed.

i hope i remember to take a pic of the view from (one!) of my windows. but the view du jour is across the street, a brownstone with endless bay windows and flower boxes, and little trees.

it's quaint in words i don't know how to describe. but it's the kind of thing that makes me think i could've been at home here or in NY since at one point that was an option. anyway it seems soothing and makes me look forward to today, when i will be seeing so much more of the same on the Freedom Trail, with some deviations of my own intent. we'll see what i have time and energy for after that. =)

there is a free 'breakfast' here but for me it sucks. raisin bagels, weird prepackaged muffins and sad looking coffee. so i had an energy bar - thank god m thought of me bringing some! and now i'm trying the cookie/bars i brought from ebay live last night. cookies - breakfast of champions!

so, got up, showered, made my way down boylston street, heading towards boston common, which is where the FT starts. i was not yet upon trinity square when i realized i was perilously close to closing out my current roll of film. still penny pinching, i got one roll of film at a CVS pharmacy. i had another backup for the day, and another one back at the hostel, so i thought that'd be enough. hit starbucks and a few blocks later, south church/trinity square. which is where i seriously started falling in love. snap snap snap.

back onto boylston, then hit the boston public garden (enjoying history en route), then onto the common and the beginning of the road i would follow carefully for the next several hours. first up was the massachusetts state house, which i enjoyed much more than expected with all the stained glass windows, and wishing i could've seen an actual house or senate debate. apparently they were in session, but NOT for me.

next i went past park street church (renovating), and down to king's church, which was less thrilling than i expected, although i did enjoy seeing the oldskool velour boxed seats. if someone knows the proper name for those please tell me, i'm really curious. the church was pretty full with tourists, but it wasn't loud. there was a quiet, reverent energy, which perfectly matched how i was feeling about my day.

afterwards i was going to stop at the athenaeum (history! books!) but i was getting worried about time, light, and wanting to make my way over toward faneuil hall before having lunch (had picked a restaurant out ahead of time) but a few blocks down, near old south meeting house, i realized i was going to collapse if i didn't eat NOW. so i plopped down to eat and write:

6.15 345pm
i just finished lunch. not where i wanted, although my heart wasn't set on it (black rose?), but i was hoping for something more interesting than a bagel sandwich. some local outfit called brueggers, near the old south house. tasty but a little boring.

i'm only 5 stops into a 14 stop tour (FT) and it's taken me about 3 hours, give or take. at this rate i'll get back to the room by midnight. and shit the official tour takes 90 minutes. 90!!! i'm glad i didn't shell out, i'd be annoyed at not getting to dilly dally. i waited too long to stop is how i ended up here, and because of the sugar crash, i'm trying to give myself a few minutes to recoup. before i get my coffee across the street, that is. SBC! mmm.

i am having the best time, wandering, taking pics of whatever takes my fancy. i only get annoyed at my capacity and the limitation of my cameras. i just had to buy more film (3pack) but i figure this is better scrilla spent.

i'm still too tired. every time i stop i realize i'm jelly. but that's what coffee is for.

seriously, Best Time Ever.

got my coffee, then back on the trail. it's late afternoon now so by the time i make it to some of these places the museums have closed. oh well, i probably wouldn't have shelled out anyway. for some reason i feel especially charmed around the exterior of the old state house.

i continue on to faneuil hall, which has charmingly turned itself into a touristy shopping center. however it did have some modestly priced, modestly tolerable trinkets, so thank you, city planners. while attempting to continue, our little trail ran right into a farmer's market. on the other side of it was a wide expressway. hrm.

after trudging through the market, i cannot find the trail, and consult several of my maps (most have the FT on them). i come upon a probable course of action, at which point a friendly local asks if i need help.

'i just figured out where i am!' i say.
'great!' he replies, 'you've got GPS built into your brain!'

which for the record, is true. anyway, it took a few blocks to get back on track but then voila! magic red bricks appeared and i was shortly in the north end.

the north end is just beautiful. seriously. well, almost all i saw of boston was beautiful but the north end and charlestown (coming soon) were just cobblestone dreams. i only took one shot of the paul revere mall on my phone, but honestly, it was a perfect intersection of history and nature. peaceful, and again, reverent, which is good since it was right next to the old north church.

which was also closed, so i trotted downhill and over the charlestown bridge, into the blinding sun and down towards the shipyards. surprisingly even this area kept me entertained, both with humor and interesting textures. then i backtracked a bit to go up to bunker hill, winding thru more adorable neighborhoods with their flower boxes, gold doorknobs, and weathered lampposts. even just walking past random houses, i was filled with a sense of walking through history. probably because of all the 'historical registry' signs.

made it back downhill to the docks and narrowly missed the ferry back to boston. good time to try calling home again! had a good talk with m, then hopped on the new ferry. spent the ride back enjoying the sunset and picking a dinner locale using guidebooks.

found a couple of possibilities, which all seemed too expensive once i got there. so i wandered down the street to the place i'd wanted to go earlier in the day -- the black rose! an irish place, where i gambled with fate by having my first whole lobster, and a beer. the beer sucked. tasted like garbage. but the lobster...drool. then popped on the ubiquitous subway back to my hostel room, where there was again, much reading and then zzzz.

speaking of publishing

apparently i felt the need to write another post today. i've been having fun here this evening. yes, i am embracing my inner librarian.

honestly the most time consuming part this evening was gathering my random links and lists of books that i want but do not yet own. incidentally, many of these were discovered on my recent trip to boston, when i was a little short in the scrilla department. so what'd i do? in a perfect blend of literary and technical nerdiness, i took pictures of them with my phone. insta-list!

and yes i've also heard about librarything, but they have a 200 book limit before you have to shell out. goodreads - free. i like free. anyway if you are an avid reader and like to share your reviews/see what your friends like, check it out! and add me, of course. :-D

uh, i've been published

so there is this company called schmap, which publishes travel guides (they have an online and offline version). for many destinations, the photos are pulled - with detailed, limited licensing and individual agreements in place - via flickr. because the people, they know where to go (and take pictures), right?

right. well, they just published their san francisco guide, and they used a picture of mine for a restaurant review. that's right -- the picture i almost didn't take was destined to be my first foray into photographic publishing.

for the record, i've had my writing published several times. but...salad? huh?

ocean's 13

should've stopped at 11. i'm just saying.

also, seeing the movie for free does not make it better. it does, however, remove the possibility of guilt from your wallet.

overheard in a meeting

Let’s use the test harness to complete the flow.

feel free to use this line for all your harness-related needs. i know i will.

leavin on a jetplane (6.13-6.14)

ok folks here is part 1 of my boston adventures. the rough draft for the whole trip? 5259 words. that's why i'm breaking this shit up, for you AND me. there are some repeats between what i wrote out here, plus what i included from journals on my trip. hopefully they are entertaining, and still read well the 2nd time around. :-p

also i must say, it's been a lot of fun writing this on independence day, since so much of this trip's history revolved around the american revolution. to visit so many sites from such a formative period in our country...it truly filled me with patriotic pride, and believe me, that's saying a lot.

wednesday, june 13
god what a crazy day this was. i wisely arranged to work from home, both due to my nighttime departure and that min was getting an endoscopy that day. although the endo took much longer than planned, it was also MUCH smoother than the previous time (which was almost a complete disaster) so even though it messed with my planning for the day, having her test go well was a real blessing. even if the results of the test were not great (she's probably going to need more surgery on her esophagus).

after that we got her sister lori (who stayed over while i was out of town) and we got home maybe 2 hours before i had to leave for the airport and i wasn't even packed and showered. somehow i pulled it off and we got to the airport at 720pm, 90 minutes or so before my flight. it was baking hot that day so i couldn't stand the thought of eating dinner, at least not until i got into that air-conditioned food court.

i did this trip on the cheap, in the extreme. we had just spent a lot on our cambria trip so i was a little strapped. anyway i mention this now because i started off cheap: a kid's meal at burger king. :-o

that was more about being mildly hungry than frugal, but believe me, i can pinch pennies. i have been poor, i know how to squeak by. afterwards i figured i might as well get the security checkpoint business over with. i'd left everything questionable out of my carryon bag, although i got points deducted for forgetting to take out my cell phone on the first pass, as well as not remembering to take off my shoes.

Security Chick: Shoes.

Me: Yes?

SC: [points to my feet]

Me: What about them?

SC: Take them off.

Me: [blushing]

blushing because this is when i remember liz telling me to wear shoes that come off easily, because i will need to be sansashoes. oops.

on the other side of security was my boarding gate. at that point there were plenty of seats so i decided to write.

6.13 750pm
i'm waiting at gate c8, flight leaves in an hour. meantime i'm having fun people watching. got the burgeoning female exec with her laptop and too many bags trailing behind, plus a baggy floral print shirt drenched in sweat. now there's another female exec, buttoned-down, trim with 2 tiny, expensive bags hanging from her hands, and white blonde hair striking against her uber-tan skin, bordering on red.

i am a little red today. my veins are still popped out from the heat, which was an unwelcome surprise today. it must've been at least 90 degrees today, but whatever the temp, it just about killed me with all the running around we had to do. min had her endoscopy today and as these things go, it went swimmingly. she didn't feel anything during, barely even the IV since they got her in one poke. one! she's starting a trend, i believe that's the 3rd time in a row.

just saw a budding rock star - or more likely, country. cool, blonde hair, goatee, and a good sized guitar case, which means acoustic. no metallica for you.

the girl behind me is resting her head on my shoulder. it's an accident of course but it's sweet.

this really is a good way to see a cross-section of folks. at least, folks who can afford to fly, which i have to imagine is a $100 minimum.

well, now a woman just walked by who looks like she couldn't even afford that. disheveled hair, long and greyed, older than old sweatshirt and bag, muttering to herself. hmm.

a puppy! terrier or maybe griffin? i forget the name, but tiny (smaller than pearl), shaggy and grown. mom was holding her close, now she's in a soft carrier. so cute.

so we have everyone here. young, old, short, tall, wealthy, poor and critters.

time to fly. and so i say: jetblue, i love you. you are comfy, you have good snacks, and you let me watch the best shows ever without leaving my seat. also later, while unsucessfully trying to sleep, i also found out how to make money on the internet. a truly compelling program.

thursday, june 14
finally we arrived in bostonia around 6am. since i planned to subway my way around, i got me a 7 day pass outside the baggage claim and headed over to the subway shuttle. the subway station was actually kind of nice. high glass ceilings, beautiful light coming in, and down where the trains came in, endless brick. my first taste of bricky love.

while waiting, i see that my line's final destination is wonderland. i really wish i would've gone there, i was so curious what it was like. i'm grooving on the names of everything, they're so old. like alewife. then i think, ciderspouse rules?

since i've never ridden the subway before, and i have to take 3 lines to get to the hostel, i was a little nervous. it really was so simple though, they really do a great job with the directions. by my middle stop (switching to green, government center i believe?) i have already seen my 5th dunkin donuts shop. those guys were everywhere.

exiting the subway and into the light again, i am loving the smell of the city. sure it's a little dirty, old, and tired - but there's also this reverberation of energy. the pulse of life zooming and angling around me.

i check my map like crazy to make sure i'm going the right direction. see the berklee college of music where my college roommate kelly went briefly, i believe. i hope she is still playing music, i haven't heard from her for a few years.

i turn down the block, another left and voila - hostel! i register, check out my bunk and locker, freshen up briefly then out the door and back on the train to do my service!

and by service i mean the convention i'm supposedly out here for, eBay Live. security incorrectly routed me and several other folks to the wrong side of the building for registration. finally got there though, and met more...inefficient planning in the self-registration booths. anyway, that complete, i called the other coworker who's on this trip. she's running late, so we agree to hook up later. i went to a class, then down to the booths to meet Coworker. we chat, and talk about meeting for dinner (we never did). i go get lunch, attend another few classes, then hit the booths. since now i'm killing time until the keynote ceremony, i sit down to write:

6.14 227pm
well just like yesterday we have an amazing amount of diversity here at the show. people are determined to affix Every Button Possible to their shirt, coat, suitcase, lobster hat or colonial outfit. or maybe stick it to a crazy tall hat with dangly things on them. apparently this is the place if you want to dangle.

there is a preponderance of significantly overweight older white women here. sure there's kids, couples, white, asian, everything under the sun. but there are a TON of the chubby older white women in their gaudy floral print shirts, roller backpacks trailing behind them, blinking away with swag.

there are also just a lot of people who are really excited to be here. crowds hovering intently around a new credit card booth, others fixated at the possibilities offered by a drop shipper, and still more entranced by keyword optimizers. all completely uninteresting to me, but they are riveted. in that way, this is about what i expected and i am definitely bored, so i'm glad i never bothered going to this before. i'm glad i came of course, just to see it. this other world is stunning.

at lunch i overheard a couple discussing what they'd learnt so far that day. mostly the man was being pedantic to the woman ('everyone knows how to do 'x'') but beyond that arrogance it was fascinating the attention they were giving this topic -- idiosyncrasies of international shipping and their payments -- as if it were the most compelling topic on earth.

which it is not. at least not to me. but wow.

oh and additional swag is ribbons! indicating your ebay prowess as a buyer, seller, whatever. some of these ribbon banners go to the floor. pretty awesome.

finally it was keynote time, through which i got free dinner, woo! score one for the penny pincher. and finally got to try dryer's (edy's) nibs. oh my. those are dangerous. i found out that there are people with over 100k feedback. holy shit.

got bored to tears with the wooden speeches and value adds, plus hi, i'd been going nonstop since yesterday morning at this point, so i bailed at the end of the paypal speech. subway'd back to my room where i thought i'd crash but apparently i needed to wind down. and wind down a lot because i read this for at least 2 hours before going to sleep.

compelling book? not really. in fact, i almost put the book down because of tedious dialogue and a typo (their/they're) on page 9. yes, even 3 weeks later i remember it was on page 9. that's how much typos cheese me.

i also talked a bit to my lower bunkmate, a fellow conference attendee and budding ebay seller, from philadelphia. she said in the latter part of the keynote, they kept talking about win-something.

me: what?
her: you know those things you get when you feel real good?
me: ...
me: you mean, endorphins?
her: yes! but they called them windorphins
me: somebody's been thinking too hard.

anyway after talking and reading, i finally crashed. sleeping wasn't too bad although going to the bathroom in the middle of the night was tricky (down ladder, don't forget room key, amble down hall, come back, remember how to use key, grab ladder appropriately so as to not fall, put key back in easy to remember spot). then i woke up and it was time to write again.

another interesting diversion

although i am, in fact, working on my boston post. have a draft entry and everything. but in the meantime, i've been tagged...

* What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?

for me personally, it's knowing that some unchangeable part of me causes pain to someone i love. i can't even describe how much that sucks. then couple that with not being able to change that part of yourself... man! i'm so lucky.

* Where would you like to live?

i would like to be where She Who Tagged Me is: the general vicinity of portland, oregon. and if a little luck and determination have anything to say about it, we should be up there within the year. i really, really miss my parents. and oregon.

* What is your idea of earthly happiness?

lounging in a breezy cabana, overlooking an azure sea, and thinking up a snort-worthy witticism

* To what faults do you feel most indulgent?

probably musing (hence the title of this blog). sure it can be entertaining. sure it can lead to deep thoughts. but it sure can get me into a mess.

* Who are your favorite heroes/heroines of fiction?

gosh. i guess karen eiffel and harold crick in stranger than fiction, for completely different reasons; whoever the lead girl is in oranges are not the only fruit (what can i say, it's been so long since something i read really resonated with me). i also used to have a ginormous thing for jean luc picard. yep. it me, trekkie.

* Who are your favorite characters in history?

not to be cheesy but jesus is right up there. say what you want, he or his ghostwriters wrote some good stories. radclyffe hall. any pivotal feminist really (like how i'm covering my ass - and my memory - with that one?)

* Who are your favorite heroines in real life?

as in current day? any living feminist. :-D actually you know, i'm going to pick my mom. i don't know how she puts up with all her physical ailments AND my dad's AND is still so chipper and silly every time i talk to her, hardly ever complaining.

* Your favorite painter?

i am really not refined enough to answer this. i have some favorite photographers on flickr tho: whileseated, photo fiddler and heather (not me).

* Your favorite musician?

this is impossible. but some favorites currently coming to mind: indigo girls, jars of clay, crowded house

* The quality you most admire in a man?

a brilliant, liberal, devastatingly witty mind. so thank god for this.

* The quality you most admire in a woman?

same as the dudes, but throw in some sexy and you're just perfect.

* Your favorite virtue?

another tough one, but i will go with faith. because i think we could go so much further with a little more faith in each other (and yes i know this goes along with hope, another virtue).

* Your favorite occupation?

of jobs i've actually had? any writing job. for a dream job? starship captain.

* Who would you have liked to be?

see last dreamy answer.

* Your most marked characteristic?

snarkhood

* What do you most value in your friends?

snarkiness and loyalty

* What is your principle defect?

obsession. thankfully most of my stalkees have been beyond my reach.

* What is your dream of happiness?

i answered this in #3, but suffice to say it involves some brilliance.

* What to your mind would be the greatest of misfortunes?

to never learn, and never grow from what you've learned.

* What would you like to be?

blessed with scrilla, but only so that i could focus on writing, erasing all my debts and generally spoiling friends and family.

* In what country would you like to live?

right now, here. but i wouldn't mind a trial run in sweden or the UK.

* What is your favorite color?

blue and green are interminably tied.

* What is your favorite flower?

stargazers. had them in our wedding, so lovely.

* What is your favorite bird?

i'll say seagulls, only because they remind me of the ocean.

* Who are your favorite prose writers?

jeanette winterson and a new one, susanna clarke. that book is looong, but oh! so worth it.

* Who are your favorite poets?

i know i have enjoyed some of the big lesbos: chrystos, adrienne rich, leslea newman. but to be honest that was years ago, i don't read poetry anymore.

* Who are your heroes in real life?

kinda said this before, but my mom. anyone who can successfully navigate this world with a blend of compromise and asskicking.

* What is it you most dislike?

blind hatred

* What natural gift would you most like to possess?

courage. not that i'm bereft, but i wouldn't mind a little more.

* How would you like to die?

in my sleep, after that day at the cabana.

* What is your present state of mind?

tired (it's after midnight now, my brain is entitled to be mush), hopeful, depressed, goofy, bored, and excited. what, i can't be all those things at once?

* What is your motto?

live free or... ;-) ok, probably some version of the golden rule + be as silly as humanly possible. yes, that's perfect.

alright, tagtime! immediately coming to mind are my sunday lunch dates (kelly, samantha, karen), but i would seriously love to hear from anyone who made it this far.

incidentally, sunday folks: in case you were wondering why i was a little subdued, i had a badass headache all day. know that i had a good time and hopefully we can try again someday. :-)

my presidential weekend, and a quiz

i know, i know, i'm not talking about boston yet. soon, i promise.

this last weekend was half about working, half about fun. having been away a lot over this month, i had a backlog of both freelance work and errands. but i did plan in some fun, too. thursday on ba-scrappy there was an offer of free tickets to this chippie saturday evening at the warfield. i've never been to the warfield, but free tickets to someone billed as being a little snarky? sounds perfect.

well think again. that woman was seriously the most unfunny AND offensive comic i've ever seen. we stuck it out for about 20 minutes and then gave up because we'd already heard her use about every racial slur known to man (ok, maybe half of them) and used them to give the audience (or her ex boyfriends) shit. cursing and slurs made up the punchline to every single "joke" and while i don't mind a little fuck now and then, i don't think it works as a noun, adjective AND verb all in the same sentence.

so! we departed and began trolling around union square for a restaurant. ended up at a mediocre mediterranean place nearby, went to urban outfitters and scored some sweet, cheap shirts, and then i wanted some sweet, sort of cheap dessert. i was thinking ice cream since there was a coldstone creamery up the block.

as we approach the store i see a huge crowd. it's about 10pm so i figure this is because coldstone is the only place to get fresh ice cream if you're jonesing. but as we get closer we see a black limo off to the right, and that the people are in a bubble(!) shape around the entrance, and many of those people are holding up their cellphones. this is when someone says very loudly, 'bill clinton is in there!' and you know what? he was.

min pushed her way up near the front of the bubble and waited, as we all did, for clinton to exit. he gave his ice cream to one of the secret service agents, waved to us all, let a few pictures be taken, and signed a few autographs. then he got his ice cream back and headed down the street, right past me, maybe 4 feet away. actually on the way he smiled at us (min was back at that point). a couple of people yelled out, 'we love you!' and then he was gone.

once inside to get the ice cream, we found out he'd posed with the entire staff and given them a $100 tip. pretty nice eh? i miss that guy being in the white house.

sunday was more worky, but when i finished we went up to SF for the tail end of pride. that was ok - it would've been nice to go to an actual *event* rather than just mill about - but again, we followed it up with ice cream (this time at ghirardelli square) so really, just perfect.

now for the quiz. it's long (112 questions) but if you're a true harry potter fan that's nothing compared to the tomes rowling puts out. i accidentally deleted part of the auto-results but suffice to say i am severus snape and i can live with that because he is a real badass (but good guy) and that sounds right up my alley. plus alan rickman is just cool.

Severus Snape 88%

Hermione Granger 84%

Luna Lovegood 84%

Albus Dumbledore 75%

Remus Lupin 69%

Neville Longbottom 69%

Draco Malfoy 66%

Percy Weasley 63%

Sirius Black 63%

Ron Weasley 59%

Harry Potter 59%

Bellatrix Lestrange 50%

Oliver Wood 50%

Lord Voldemort 38%

Take the Harry Potter Character Combatibility Test

adventures in camping

it feels *so* very long ago, but yes, we went camping the first weekend of june, at san simeon state park. i had not camped since i was a teenager and while for the most part it was just like i remembered, the one thing i'd forgotten about was bugs.

now, i am officially the Bug Killer in the house, so it's not like i'm deathly afraid. however there is a difference between an errant bug on the wall (when you know it's an anomaly) and having to fight to keep all of God's Winged Insects from flying into your polyester abode everytime you need to take a leak. incidentally i was worried about how hard the tent would be to put up -- it wasn't that bad, which is good since i did it twice (moved to cozier site).

anyway. i did not anticipate these critters and their relatives would constantly hurl themselves at the tent, presumably moving toward the all-night lantern because i was caught in the throes of an entirely too gripping book. i witnessed not only the sound, but the sight of the miniscule indentations in the tent where these Foul Creatures relentlessly pounced, inches from my face.

note to self: if camping in an area with a lot of bugs, take a boring-ass book. you will fall asleep instantly, instead of being ruthlessly yanked away from your otherworldly thriller, only to assure yourself that there are no demons inside your cage.

bugs aside, we had a very lovely trip. i discovered the edible joys of butterfinger frappaccinos, i kid you not. well, their equivalent anyway, at a local coffee shop. i had one every single day because i just could not resist. well that and i wasn't sleeping that well due to a badly chosen floor mat. why yes, a better one IS in my future!

we sort of went to hearst castle. the park ranger told us that on monday (or whatever the hell day it was, i've already forgotten), Tour 1 was free. so we rolled in around 3 and due to the joys of Rental Cars That AutoLock, the keys (and min's wallet) were accidentally locked in the car. due to the joys of sending in our AAA renewal late (again accidentally), there was much confusion as to whether or not we were actually still members. so after an hour or so of phone calls and paying the renewal fee again, we finally got a guy out there about 20 minutes later. around 5pm we went inside to enjoy our free tour and hey too late. however we had a good time in the gift shop (a lot of pretty stuff) and enjoyed the ocean on the way back.

there was much, MUCH enjoyment of smores. omg seriously. so much so that we whipped out the at-home smore maker upon our return. yes it works. slower than using a campfire, but it still works. really, anytime you have ghirardelli, you can't go wrong.

so that sums up the trip. bugs, smores, ocean love and a too-good-to-put-down book. well, and i got a sunburn because i wasn't paying attention with the sunblock but hey - molting is sexy, right?

until i have the energy to write a recap

please enjoy the photos i uploaded, since that's probably all you'll get from me (boston-wise) for at least a week. ;-)

and someday…someday, i will get (online) the rolls and rolls of oldskool film i shot over the weekend. if anyone has a good resource for digitally processing APS film, feel free to pass it along. meantime, google, watch out!

hello from boston

where i am insanely tired even though it's only 9pm because i've spent the last 3 days walking around this most beautiful, lovely city.

more later of course just felt the need to say hi. :)

wagons east

as some of you may have seen on ba-scrappy, i'm going to boston next week. parts unknown! at least unknownst to me. either due to the late hour or my being lazy, i'm at a loss for words to describe how excited i am about this trip. it's not because i've been nursing the unbidden flames of boston love in my heart. no, i'm excited because:

- the trip offer was a surprise
- boston is full of history (i have a mild history fetish)
- i haven't been to boston before

and to a lesser degree, i'm excited because i'm going by myself. sure, i'm going for work, and i'll put in my time... but it's unmetered time. there's a conference and over the few days, i just need to show up periodically. which means i get the rest of the time to explore, go wherever i want, whenever i want.

speaking of want, while making dinner tonight a fantasy excursion popped into my head. how far is it from boston to new york? could i attend a taping of my favorite show, hosted by my secret man crush? ok maybe not so secret now. alas, this excursion was not meant to be. it's too far away and unsurprisingly, almost impossible to get tickets for. the man is hot. yes i am 99% speaking metaphorically. altho judging by the last picture, in the eyes of jane fonda and gloria steinem, the hotness is more literal.

moving on! i already have a long list of places want to explore in boston -- more than i have time for. however, if any of you have suggestions for what is must-see-or-do, please let me know. i adore discovery.

showing my white bread stripes

i got this from wen the other day. honestly most of these don't make sense but sharing the playlist is fun.

How do you feel today?
closer - nine inch nails

What’s your outlook on life?
breakfast at tiffany's - deep blue something

What does your family think of you?
way you walk - papas fritas

What do your friends think of you?
holiday - green day. i hope that means some people think of me as fun, at any rate. ;-)

What do your exes think of you?
hurting each other - carpenters. ouch.

How’s your love life?
indiana jones theme - john williams. actually that's pretty damn funny. or would be if it actually involved jumping onto trains and rescuing artifacts.

How will your love life be in the future?
smells like teen spirit - nirvana. ok this is a disturbing trend.

Will you get married?
since you been gone - aretha franklin. gee.

Are you good at school?
will you still love me? - chicago

Will you be successful?
big sur - the thrills

What song should they play on your birthday?
scooter boys - indigo girls. hah! both wen and i got IG on that one.

What song should they play at your graduation?
it's not unusual - tom jones

The Soundtrack of your life?
sign your name - terence trent d'arby. uh, yeah so not.

You and your best friends are?
cream - prince. um.

Happy times:
drive - incubus

Sad times:
brave and crazy - melissa etheridge

Every day:
stacy's mom - fountains of wayne. hah! actually twisted a bit, that's not so far off.

For tomorrow:
let it ring - amy ray.

For you:
river constantine - jars of clay.

What does next year have in store for me?
sara smile - hall & oates

What do I say when life gets too hard?
shattered dreams - johnny hates jazz.

What song will I dance to at my wedding?
what a fool believes - doobie brothers.

What do you want as your career?
on your honor - amy ray

Your favorite saying?
things can only get better - howard jones

How will I die?
if only she knew - michelle branch. great, i'll die at the hands of a woman. i suppose that's appropriate.

ok, anyone else who wants to do this, consider yourself tagged! and yes i'll be posting about my camping excursion soon. i'm still catching up...meantime i did upload pics. :)