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.