What doesn't kill me makes me stranger

PSA: Some friends-list cleaning

2008-10-02T00:38:16Z

I just unfriended a few folks who never post or reply. If I removed anyone by mistake, or you actually DO read my LJ, comment and let me know. Honestly? This is my journal, and I write about things that tend to matter to me. I like to know who is reading.

Damn, you go, Jesse.

2008-08-23T01:18:28Z

A great surprise in my Inbox this morning: An old friend of mine from back in the days of college, fencing, French toast, bacon, beer, and evenings out listening to music in Northampton, Massachusetts just released his latest CD. And what I've heard so far is really excellent- I kind of just want to put it on repeat for a few days. Jesse is a wonderful human being, a very talented musician, and he has come so far. You go, Jesse.

So check it out: Jesse Sterling Harrison, his new album is Jackhammer Soul, and you can hear and buy it on http://www.cdbaby.com/jsharrison. It's eclectic, interesting, and a lot of fun. Looks like he hasn't updated his website yet, but he is also on Myspace at http://www.myspace.com/jsterlingharrison.

Hot, sweaty, screaming, and in restraints

2008-06-30T20:37:05Z

Or, An Odyssey in Roller Coaster Questing - a joint post by apfelsingail and flexagon.

Roller coasters are, without a doubt, inherently kinky. Think about it: you are voluntarily strapping yourself into a large vibrating machine that is going to shake and throw you around, make you scream, and once you're in, you're in. There is no going back. You have ceded control. Nobody is going to care if you scream. In fact, it's expected and desirable. And you're going to be grateful to the engineer when you get off.

And so, one hot day in Atlanta, two hot women decided to ride all of the adult roller coasters at Six Flags over Georgia....

(1) Warm up roller coaster. Old school, wooden, slightly rickety, and definitely earned its screams- we had both forgotten just how scary roller coasters can be.

(2) The Georgia Scorcher. Standing upright with a padded thing in your crotch and a strange alien-head contraption holding our shoulders in. It was like a quickie in sci-fi space armor: quick line, quick ride, smooth, fast, and satisfying. Wham, bam, thank you, ma'am! As we waited to unload, though, we noticed that the buckles holding us in said FOR MARINE USE ONLY. For use only by the military? For use only in the water? What?

(3) Goliath. Huge. Swooping. For the first drop, you go up... and up... and up. You tell your friend how nice it was to know her. And at some point you realize just how steep and long that drop is going to be. It was easily a 70-80 degree angle- close to freefall and smooth as butter. There were no loops on this one, just long swoops and hills. We totally pulled negative Gs. And it was good.

(4) A green coaster tucked sweetly in the woods. It was the first triple loop coaster in Georgia, but only two of the loops were vertical. It was cool and arborial, and oddly peaceful. We swooped over a waterfall and through trees, a lovely cool, green blur. This was probably where we stopped being scared and screaming our lungs out, and started to just really enjoy the rush. (It helps that we had already screamed ourselves hoarse, so screaming wasn't as much of an option as it had been.)

(5) Batman, the ride. This was our first real wait in line, of close to an hour, most of it in poorly ventilated tunnels. For this coaster the seats were hanging from the tracks. Much fun, really twisty, very smooth, and it's the only ride to destroy our sense of which way was up. When we came out of this one there were pictures of us displayed for sale... most of the other pairs of people look scared or at least screaming, but the two of us just looked blissed-out and laughing with these huge, face-eating smiles. [Note: This is the ride that a kid was killed by while being incredibly stupid the following day.]

We took a break and rode the swings for a nice little change of pace. Lost! Hungry! Hot! Ack! But we wandered by The Crystal Pistol, which really should be the name of the best strip club in Georgia, but probably isn't.

(6) The Ninja. An awesome roller coaster with horribly designed seats. It was all over the water and was beautifully twisty, but the padding on the seats was TERRIBLE- you could probably manage a nice little concussion on this one. There's a nasty little neck-crack thrown in near the end of the ride, too. It's a shame, because otherwise we both would have gone back a few times for this one.

(7) The Great American Scream Machine. Another wooden one, very much a large, old-school roller coaster, with beautiful long swooping drops. Rattly enough for flexagon to yell, "Bye-bye brain cells!" on the way down the first big drop. Definitely one to lean forward and ride- no way to just lie back and enjoy it.

(8) The Superman. Well, actually waiting in line for the Superman was its own section of the day. There was a crazy line, although it got shorter even when it wasn't moving- a lot of the church mission groups had to leave. This close to the end of our quest, though, we weren't giving up. We amused ourselves the old fashioned way: by trying to figure out how to turn off the amazingly loud and annoying TV monitors they had going. Flexagon's TV-Be-Gone remote might have worked. It spilled over into the alphabet game; the guys in front of us were clearly trying not to laugh too overtly as we spouted off sentences about moving to Australia riding Ardvaarks to become Acupuncturists. Hearing that girl on the other ride SHRIEK so loudly you could hear her over 28 screaming people on the roller coaster that was right over our heads was pretty fun. She isn't going to have a voice for a few days, but we admired the sheer talent on display. We then had a feminist discussion on the naming conventions of roller coasters. apfelsingail's all-female college education bled through: where is The Wonder Woman roller coaster? We had Batman, Superman, and the green thing. Everything else was unisex. And why is it always BatGIRL or SuperGIRL, not Batwoman or Superwoman?

As for the coaster itself- utter love. All the seats tilted forward so that we rode headfirst, looking down, like flying. The best line here was something like "I'm going to find whoever designed this thing and marry them!" from apfelsingail... which flexagon didn't hear, she was too busy laughing.

At the end of this one we hung face-down for a while, waiting for the techs to unload the car ahead of us. The boys behind us were having an animated conversation about which parts of them were taking body weight. "Wait until you hit puberty!" we heard in reply to some complaint or other. flexagon chortled loudly that it's good to be a woman. [Note: no bosoms were harmed in the riding of this roller coaster.]

(9) Repeat: The Georgia Scorcher. Just as good for a closing ride, but with even shorter lines.

As with other sweaty but fun activities, coaster riding is hard freaking work! We walked around chugging water and inspecting bathrooms all afternoon, and we were still totally exhausted by the time we got done for the day. It was also pretty cool checking out the differences between the hard-core roller coaster riders and the merely curious (who were stupidly wearing flip flops). Someday, we may write up some recommendations for coaster thrill seekers....

[Coming soon, to an LJ near you: flexagon and apfelsingail continue their exploration of adrenaline and the joys of being upside down with a trip to a circus class....]

Tomorrow, tonight, today.

2007-03-21T10:46:45Z

Whee! Tomorrow, I see my parents.

And in just a few days, I should be done with glasses and contacts for a very long time. Hard to believe something that has been a part of my life since I was thirteen is going to... go away. I'll just be able to see leaves on trees first thing in the morning, and correctly identify people from ten feet away. How odd.

Tonight? Frantic packing, vacuuming, and maybe even some scrubbing.

Today? Work. I'm on an assignment over on campus. At the moment, I'm a very confused admin assistant who would like to purchase a clue, please. And if you could throw in some improved face-name memory, I'd like to upgrade my current package.

Or, my life in bullet points and LJ cuts

2007-03-14T14:31:38Z

Busy month..... OK, here are the updates:

• Having Lasik in just over a week. I'm excited and a bit nervous. Mostly excited. The biggest surprise so far has been the eye doctor mentioning that CustomLasik can sometimes help people who see halos at night. My reaction? "Wait, I'm not SUPPOSED to see those?! I thought EVERYONE did! Oh.... no wonder I've never liked driving at night...."

The shock is almost as great as the one I got in seventh grade when I got glasses and realized that there really WAS homework written on the blackboard, I just hadn't been able to see it from the back of the classroom.

The worst so far? Having to wear my glasses for almost a month. This is the longest I've worn glasses in over ten years. I hate it. I have no peripheral vision. Contacts change the topography of your cornea, and the doctors (and I!) really want to know exactly what they're slicing away. They're funny that way.</a>

• My parents are coming for a visit- the ostensible excuse is that they're coming to hold my hand for Lasik and to pamper me for a bit afterwards. I've been busily saving up brochures of things to do in the area since I found out they were coming. The zoo is a must- I still haven't seen the baby panda. (There are some cute videos of her bumbling around on the Atlanta Journal-Constitution website.)

• On the job front, I finally got hooked into the Emory temp pool. My first assignment was FUN- one of twenty people reading 30,000+ high school essays submitted for a competition. I got paid to READ. 60% of the essays were pure dreck, but there were some powerful pieces in there. I now feel very in tune with the Youth of Today. The temp folks kept me really busy for the first few weeks, but it's now been a week with nada. I hope that wasn't a fluke, especially since....

• I'm moving in a few weeks. The Emory campus- which is where I really want to work- is a solid 30 minute drive from my current place, more with traffic. And that makes for a long commute with an older car, and for me being gone for up to eleven hours at a stretch, which isn't fair to Sable. The other thing is that it's time. Jason and I are still friends... but it just feels like the right time to get my own place.

So I did a bit of looking, and stumbled across a cute little 1-BR apartment just a few minutes from campus, in a neighborhood I like, with some garage space, pet-friendly, and so on. I'm pretty excited- this will be my first apartment sans roommates.

Book safari.

2007-01-31T20:41:10Z

Random daydream of the day.... I was emailing an acquaintance to see if she wanted to go used book hunting at some point, and all of a sudden, I pictured myself on a Used Book Safari. Stalking the rare and elusive Good Book through a forest of Not So Good Used Books. Spotting the wild Good Book and pouncing, wrestling it to the ground before triumphantly hauling it home in my backpack.

Better than a real safari, I suppose.

Or, What I want to be when I grow up.

2007-01-31T03:33:17Z

One of the good things about job hunting is that it's a great excuse to sit down with lots of self-evaluation exercises. I love those things. Kind of like I love taking cheesy quizzes in magazines. They're fun, sure, but a part of me always hopes that they'll actually provide some useful information about myself. Part of my whole job angst over the last couple of years has been feeling totally directionless and unfocused. I have plenty of energy, but it's like trying to drive on ice without snow tires, chains, or any of that. The tires are spinning... a lot... but I'm not getting anywhere. I just want some sand, please.

Anyway, while merrily tackling (yet another) exercise, the gerbil on the wheel in my brain said, sounding bored: 'You moron. What do you care about?' The question I HAD been focusing on was more along the lines of, 'What do I want to do with my life? How shall I live?'

And... the things I'm interested in, that I can always read another article about, that I care about, that get me worked up and excited... fall into two broad but related categories. I care about environmental issues; that one is totally an outgrowth of my UNH time. I'm particularly interested in sustainability issues, the development and dissemination of new technologies that address problems, outreach, and the use of social and economic tools. These in turn tie into my other big interest, which is human rights. I could go on about the intersections between the two.

All of a sudden, though, I feel like I'm finding a bit of traction- maybe enough to actually get somewhere. There are a lot of different ways to use the skills I have towards those ends.

So- anyone has any comments or bright ideas, I'd love to hear them.

Food.

2007-01-27T16:10:14Z

It says something that I think wandering around a supermarket is a lot of fun. After months of self-restraint, I finally checked out the nearest Whole Foods the other day- I had to. I was on a quest to find red lentils. It was.... amazing. They had at least six different kinds of mushrooms, and things like banana leaves, and other produce that I couldn't even identify. Four different kind of shrimp! Grouper as big as me! (Well, almost.) Fresh sausage! And the bulk section, lentils and orzo and flour and all sorts of yummy goodness. Then there was the (rather overpriced) wine section. I spent a very happy half hour just walking around. Fortunately, I didn't grab a basket going in, so I was limited to buying what I could carry. Outcome: red lentils, rolled oats, chocolate pretzels.

I've also decided I'd like to try keeping a food journal of sorts, just to keep track of some of my meals. You can totally tell I'm a fan of Gourmet.

Apricot chicken with almonds, balsamic roasted potatoes, and salad. This I would totally make again- the leftovers are great, especially sliced up in salad.

Whole-wheat spaghetti with broccoli, chickpeas, and garlic. I'm a fan of pretty much anything with chickpeas and garlic- I usually use more garlic than recipes suggest. The parmesan and lemon really aren't optional- they add a lot.

Coconut red lentil curry. Tasty but bland.

No-bake chocolate oatmeal cookies.
Courtesy of my big sister:
Boil 1/2 c butter, 2 c sugar, 1/2 cup cocoa powder, 1/2 c milk for one minute. Do not overcook. Quickly add 1/2 c peanut butter, 1 t vanilla, 3 c oatmeal. Stir, and immediately drop each cookie on wax paper (about 1 t/cookie). Let them harden and eat.

I liked them.

Yet another geek moment.

2007-01-25T16:23:38Z

For everyone who has ever wanted Star Wars-themed origami.... I bring you.... YODA.

http://www.pajarita.org/aep/internacionales/intern2-1.pdf

Less is more, folks. Less is more.

2007-01-23T16:32:08Z

On her trip through the Atlanta airport, Flexagon gave me the following (suspiciously healthy and virtuous) fruit bar:

How cool is that?

On a related note, I have a confession to make. I love pie. I mean, I really love pie. But I don't particularly enjoy making it. Every so often, I enter this weird, supermarket-induced trance and come out of it to find myself at the checkout with a pie in one hand and my debit card in the other. Walking past the baked goods section at the store is a bit like strapping myself to the mast of a ship and deliberately listening to the siren-song of PIE. This would be totally fine in moderation, but I always get kind of freaked out by the list of ingredients on the label. I've made pie before; I'm a tolerably decent cook. I know what should be on that list. But there are always at least 30 other mysterious things there.

On: handstands, the airport, and the Minotaur.

2007-01-20T18:24:12Z

On her way to Cancun for a yoga retreat, Flexagon had a layover in Atlanta. So we got to hang out in the airport for a couple of hours. I pointed out the jumbo ant sculptures on the ceiling, she showed me some of the cool handstand stuff she's been working on. Then we did acroyoga. We got a lot of stares. It was fun. We also got a chuckle out of some passing TSA guys, which I frankly thought was impossible- I thought they weren't allowed to have a sense of humor.

I also told her about this crazy, epic-length dream I had the other night, about the Minotaur and the Labyrinth. I dreamed I was at a party with some friends from college. One of them was the keeper of the secret to getting into the Labyrinth. Another had somehow become a shaven-head, fanatic priest who was totally obsessed with discovering the secret. It turns out the keeper had disguised it as a bunch of finely diced carrots and hidden them in a puzzle she brought with her. Crazy Priest figures it out, and forces everyone at the party to help him open a gate to the Labyrinth. First, though, we have to paint this gigantic, canvas map of the Labyrinth with green watercolors- it would supposedly help protect us from the Minotaur, by making brambles grow everywhere that would slow him down.

Once we made it into the Labyrinth, we discovered a huge city of semi-mythical people, all descended from people the Minotaur didn't catch or kill. We then shifted to a Caribbean beach, complete with sparkling white sand, clear blue water, and a pirate ship. Some of the group really wanted to check out the ship, so they swam out to the ship. A cannonball tore through one of the sails, and we figured the people on the ship were just being really stupid and goofing off. Then we realized that some of the Minotaur's minions had found us; someone on the ship had nearly persuaded one of his lieutenants to help us, but he was swiftly killed by one of the others. Dramatic cut to the Minotaur, sitting in a cavern below the Labyrinth on a stone throne, hearing the news that there were intruders.... and that one of his servants had tried to betray him.... Anger.... And my alarm clock.

So I don't know how it ended, but I then spent the next twenty minutes half-awake and thinking about the Minotaur. There are some pretty cool metaphors in the original myth.

Meanwhile, I've decided it's time to experiment with fresh pasta. (Well, actually, I just found a recipe for ravioli that I have to try, and I figure I should at least try something easier like spaghetti first.)

PSA on behalf of telemarketers and survey people everywhere.

2007-01-14T19:56:05Z

I've been on a fairly icky temp assignment this week.... working in a call center. Not quite telemarketing, since we're trying to get people to take a (paid) survey, but still. Icky.

So, on behalf of those hapless callers, here is how you get telemarketers to go away.... nicely. Because most of them are just trying to make some money and go home.

1) Say nicely, "I'm sorry, I'm not interested."

2) Don't say, "I'm awfully busy right now." The caller in question will keep trying to call you. If you don't want to take the survey or whatever, just say so. Saying you're busy does not equate to "not interested" in telemarketer-speak.

3) Don't give a fake name. Again, the caller will just. Keep. Calling. Until you tell them to go away (preferably nicely).

4) Don't tell them to call back at a certain time.... when the business is closed. It's fairly tedious and they will still. Keep. Calling. Until you tell them to go away (nicely).

Note: if the caller is from an organization you really disagree with- ahem, *cough* the Republican party *cough*- it's entirely kosher to waste as much of their time as you can.

Thank you, Ms. Amoeba.

2007-01-09T00:04:51Z

So this is the note found on my car door when leaving my temp assignment this evening:

Thanks asshole for parking so close I could barley get in my car. If you can't park maybe you shouldn't drive.*

Hmm. My car was definitely within the lines of my space, although at a bit of an angle. I parked in the only available spot, which was a tight fit between a pillar and a huge SUV. The driver of said SUV clearly was able to get in and leave. It wasn't the best parking job ever, but it wasn't truly atrocious.

So.... I'm the asshole? At least I'm not a passive aggressive wimp.

* Disclaimer: Typos not mine.

Geek moment: video of water boiling in low gravity

2007-01-03T15:28:09Z

Yay for NASA, water, and low gravity.

Morbid thought.... Doesn't it make you wonder how vampires would REALLY fare in outer space? Wouldn't the blood leak and go everywhere every time they tried to feed? Or would they need little baggies of blood and a straw?

Of hawks and the new year.

2007-01-02T17:59:26Z

How is this for a cool start to a new year: when I took Sable out for her first morning walk of the year, this hawk was just standing a little awkwardly in the middle of the road about ten feet away from us. Sable and I came to a dead stop- I really don't want her taking on a bird of prey, even if it is on the smallish side. We just hung out for about five minutes watching the hawk watch us- it would occasionally flap up to the tree in the median before flapping back down to the grass, staring intently at us the whole time. I'm not sure what kind of hawk it was, although I think it may have been a red-shouldered hawk- it looked a lot like the second picture down, the size looks right, and we're certainly in the right region for it. Either way, a really cool way to start the year.

College prophecy

2006-12-30T15:24:52Z

My dorm in college had some really fun traditions, not the least of which was coming up with wacky spoof prophecies, to be read aloud at the Senior Dinner before graduation. I found mine while I was cleaning my room in New Hampshire this morning. I think I have Hanah and/or Julia to thank for it? Enjoy!

Abby Joslin.... After graduating from Smith College, Abby has a brief affair with Stephen Kellogg and pursues a career singing backup for him. However, when Stephen decides that he has to stay married to his wife, Abby moves to Boston and takes a position as a food critic for the Boston Globe. Abby will reach such a high status in the food critic world that she begins to push for an effort to reform the dining and menu services at her alma mater. All of her efforts pay off, as Smith develops the Abigail Joslin Memorial Dining Room where Smith students can come and order whatever food they please and have it ready within 20 minutes.

Seeing that her work is done in the United States, Abby takes her commitment to bringing good foods to all people of the world. She begins in Italy.

In Italy, Abby criticizes the lasagna in a restaurant in Sicily- which she doesn't know is run by the mafia. After her scathing food review is published in the Sicilian Times- Abby is kidnapped and taken to the basement of a butcher shop. Three men interrogate Abby and inform her that no one messes with Dante's Pasta Co. One incredibly sexy Italian mafioso is assigned to take her out. Abby, with her guile and charm and Italian tongue lures in the mafia hit man- Armando.

Armando falls instantly in love with Abby and smuggles her out of the butcher shop. To escape the Mafia's wrath, Abby and Armando leave the country and hide out in Campton, NH- living in her parents' basement. For the first time in his life, Armando sees cows, and develops the urge to become a dairy farmer. Abby and Armando, along with her sister's family- settle into a dairy farm in New Hampshire. And they live happily ever after.

Weird week.

2006-12-17T14:13:59Z

Well, this week has been just plain weird. I swear, I woke up every morning thinking, 'it's Friday, right?'

The car update is that I have my car back. It looks suspiciously clean and shiny. I'm under strict orders to not take it to a commercial car wash for at least three months. Given that I haven't EVER washed my car, I think I can do that. I also went to court on Friday after work to deal with my ticket. It's a cliche, but it was a lot like seeing the gritty, oily insides of a machine at work. I got lucky- they couldn't get the heat on and the air conditioning off, so the judge was suspending almost all of the fines. Including mine. Yay! So hopefully this will be the end of my accident-related stuff. *knocks wood*

And today I'm off to church, which should be an experience. Barring the occasional wedding, I haven't set foot in a church for a very long time. I'm really not religious. At all. But my boss invited me. And he's a good guy, and has been good to me. And it matters to him. So I'm off to church. (Besides- if he's right and I'm wrong about the whole God thing, I might as well hedge my bets a bit.)

...I was also bad and signed up for a one-month World of Warcraft subscription, after a six month break. It's addictive. I'm freezing my membership again at the end of the month. I really enjoy playing, but it's so easy to get sucked into playing for hours on end. At the end of the day, the in-game accomplishments are cool, but what have I gotten done for me, for real? It gets kind of empty.

Vintage bike lust.

2006-12-04T14:17:06Z

I have a motorcycle. I love my bike. Hopefully it loves me, especially since it's been getting plenty of use puttering around town. But I still can't seem to stop checking out the craigslist motorcycle section. I don't need or have the space (or time or money) for another bike. I just keep seeing ads for dirt cheap vintage bikes in need of a little TLC. It's not like I have any idea how to get a really old bike up and running, or do any restoration or repair one would need- although it would be fun to figure it out. I want one anyway. Does this make me unfaithful to my bike?

Such a week.

2006-12-02T16:07:03Z

Anyone who has never read Judith Viorst's book, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, I highly recommend picking up a copy. It pretty much sums up my entire week.

Highlights include:

• Completely failing to make any weekend plans at all, in spite of running ideas by most of the people I know down here. Why does having any kind of social life take so much work?

• Sable completely tearing apart the kitchen trash... twice. This was further compounded by being unable to find the dustpan (say it with me: eeeww!) and later discovering dog vomit on the (white) rug in the living room.

• And last but not least, my very first ever car accident on my way home from work last night. Happily, minor, no injuries, but it sucked. It was just a stupid fender bender, probably my fault, although I'm not going to swear to it. The other driver barely spoke any English and totally refused to take my insurance or contact information; he insisted on calling the police. He wouldn't even pull into the parking lot twenty feet away. After an hour of waiting in my car, I had contacted my insurance company, set up the assessor appointment, and discussed everything with my dad. I didn't dare drive off, since that could have gotten me in trouble for leaving the scene of an accident when and if the police showed up. I finally called the police myself- they of course had no record of his call, but said someone would come by soon. Meanwhile, the other driver finally got an English-speaking friend on the phone, who wanted me to follow his friend to the body shop he worked at so we could sort everything out. Um, no. Follow some guy I don't even know to some random place, by myself, after dark? Not happening. An hour later, a passing patrol car eventually stopped (it says something that in two hours on a busy main road, ONE police car drove by). So I ended up with a citation and a court summons for December 22.... the day after my flight to Boston. So... I'll probably get fined on top of higher insurance rates and all of the other stuff. For a minor fender bender, when even my insurance company didn't care if there was a police report. Three hours after leaving work, I finally made it home.... and Sable promptly bolted out the front door, and dashed around madly in the street for a few minutes before slinking back looking guilty.

And those are just the highlights to a generally sucky week.

Today: I will start to get into the holiday spirit or BUST. Cleaning the apartment, tree, and baking.

Time to spread the love.

2006-11-03T16:22:00Z

Right, it's my turn to spread the love:

The first five people to respond to this post will get some form of art made by me. I make no guarantees about quality or type, but whatever I come up with will be unique, one-of-a-kind, and yours only. The only catch is that you should extend this offer in your own journal as well.

Any takers?

...And my outer not-punk adult is bored, too.

2006-11-01T21:26:02Z

Well, no boss at work today, and unfortunately for me, everything on my list of things to do needs in-person, boss-style input. Since he also has the phones forwarded to his cell phone, there really isn't a lot for me to do, other than fend off the occasional strolling salesman. It's a judgment on me for daring to venture out without a book in my bag.

So prepare for a rather rambling post.

Lately I keep being surprised by the most random things- stuff like, the week really goes by fast when you're working 40 hours a week. It's so easy for time to just... slip by. I mean, wasn't it just September? Where did October go?

I didn't end up doing anything special for Halloween- it's totally one of my favorite holidays, but I just didn't feel at all inspired this year. The best costume idea I came up with was pretty lame- to hang a sign around Sable's neck that said, 'Cat' and one around mine that said, 'Bad idea.' Since walking most cats on a leash is generally a bad idea. There's nothing like a popular holiday to make you realize you're in a new city while your best friends are on the other side of the country.

So instead of going all out for Halloween, I went to a nearby garden center. I emerged five violas, one Louisiana iris, one (free) pumpkin, and one bag of dirt later. The drainage on the back patio is bad enough that I'm going to have to do container gardening if I want many plants out there. I'd like to see if those poor things I planted survive, though. Acts of fire, flood, and Digging Dog are beyond my control, however.

The other (completely unrelated) thing that keeps surprising me is the realization that this is actually a pretty conservative country. I guess I'm very much a product of liberal schools in the northeast, but it seems like everything I learned emphasized how radical and unique the whole concept of the United States is- that individuals have the right to live how and where they want, that we believe in freedom of speech and the liberty of the media. And having grown up overseas, there is a fair amount of truth to all of it, but there is also a strong streak of religious conservatism present that really seems to contradict all of those values that I was taught to cherish. And I guess that while I can accept contradictions, I despise hypocrisy. And so much of the political scene and commentary out there right now is pure hypocrisy.

My inner punk child is bored.

2006-11-01T13:49:15Z

Once again, I've been a total slacker about blogging- it seems to be going around. A lot of it is spending 8 hours in an office. At the end of the day, I want a cup of steaming, hot tea and to curl up on the couch for a bit with a good book and a fluffy black dog. The computer is upstairs and off.

My inner punk child- yes, she is in there- has been howling with boredom lately. Maybe it's living in a well-to-do, professionally white, semi-conservative neighborhood. Maybe it's boredom with the whole professional attire, business casual thing. But lately I've been craving fatigues, combat boots, and crazy hair like never before. I'm tired of having to think about how whatever I do to myself might affect my job hunt. I guess I just feel like my insides don't really match my outsides right now.

That was one of the really cool things about living in Northampton- wretched weather aside, it was so easy to reinvent yourself whenever you felt the need, or just wanted to flirt with being a punk, or biker, hippie, goth, preppy co-ed... whatever. It was all cool. I kind of wish I had realized how unusual that was at the time.

Life and A Tale of Two Puppies

2006-10-21T15:10:49Z

Yikes, I just realized it's been a couple of weeks since I posted anything public. It's been crazy- a two-day temp assignment that has now gone on for almost three weeks- I can tell you surprising amounts about petroleum deliveries througout the southeastern United States. They like me. They feed me- a nearby bar does smoked meats and my boss ordered a couple of trays of smoked wings last week. I'm not ordinarily a huge wings person, but these were really outstanding. Lots of cooking. A major Stargate SG-1 binge, courtesy of Netflix. Seasons 1 and 2 got me interested, but Season 3 is the one that really got me hooked. Dithering over my back patio, and what sort of gardening options I should try. I'm thinking primarily a container garden, since the drainage is terrible and space is limited, but I may try some bulbs in one corner.

And then- A Tale of Two Puppies. I've been coming home on my lunch break to give Sable a chance to get outdoors while there's daylight. Well, Wednesday, I spotted a tiny dog just running around in the middle of the street. It was pretty clearly a lost pet and I couldn't just leave her to get squashed by a car (or passing squirrel or cat) so I picked little Isabella up, took her home, and started trying to call the numbers on her tags. Neither of them was in service. (BAD mystery owners, BAD.) I called everyone I could think of, but figured I would probably have to hang onto this intrepid adventurer for a few days while I tried to find her owners, and then call Animal Control. Part of me was definitely wondering if I might have acquired a second dog. Meanwhile, my lunch break was long over, and I really had to get back to work- temps are rarely financially rewarded for good deeds. So I made little Isabella a nest in the spare bathroom- she wasn't totally housebroken, and while Sable was being awesome she can be territorial- and went back to work.

This story does have a happy ending- her owner turned up on my doorstep later that evening while I was having supper. Moral: make sure your pets are chipped and have current tags, even if they're primarily indoor animals.

Isabella was a really sweet little dog, but Sable and I were both relieved.

Yet another reason bodies are cool.

2006-10-03T02:51:47Z

Over the weekend, I finally hauled myself out to check out a couple of taekwondo schools. It was weird- I was all for trying a different style of martial arts until I sat in on a couple of aikido classes. And they were cool, but they also made me acutely aware of how much time and energy I've devoted to taekwondo over the years. It's been a year and a half without taekwondo. I've tried going to the gym, I've tried running. And I miss taekwondo. I miss being that fit, I miss that body, I miss being able to go work out on the punching bags at the end of the day. I badly needed a break- I was close to a major injury of some kind, completely aside from whatever I did to those hip ligaments, not to mention the strained hamstrings, sore knees and other assorted aches and pains. I was burned out. And I was tired of dojang drama. Watching that aikido class, though, made me think what a shame it would be to totally abandon all that work. So I signed up for a three month membership at a school in Decatur. We'll see how it works out- it's a very different school.

I had my first class tonight, and it was so cool- my body really does remember all those hours of drilling and bag work. It remembers the stationary exercises when Mr. Hwang would come by and twist it into the correct (and generally somewhat painful) position. I was slow and on the sloppy side, but it will come back. My body is so cool. Kudos to it for having a better memory than my conscious mind.

One REALLY good thing about this school is that they do a full, fifteen minute warmup. In Boston we were lucky if warmups took five minutes. No wonder I was injured all the time. I just wish there was a ballet bar- it makes working on techniques easier. The people seem really nice, too- one woman about my age works at a nearby climbing gym, and a bunch of us were talking about getting a climbing group together. Fun, fun.

Tired... long week...

2006-09-29T15:25:27Z

TGIF. It's been a long week. Plenty of good stuff, including an interview for a three-month temp assignment- yay for maternity leaves, and yay for good temp agencies! I didn't get it, but I'm starting to think the universe may be trying to tell me something. This admin position? Supports researchers working on air quality monitoring and tracking, focusing on fine particles. First AIRMAP at UNH, now this.... Of course, the logical assumption is that air quality and climate researchers are already aware of the coming issues related to fine particles and airborne toxins, and so ongoing monitoring is becoming more widespread. I still think it's pretty cool- I wish I had gotten that one.

Meanwhile, I am down with a head cold as of last night. Ick. Especially since at a temp assignment yesterday I was asked to take my nose ring out, which meant a trip to a piercing place on my lunch hour since I hadn't taken that ring out for almost ten years and I wasn't sure how to do it. Honestly, it's been on my list of things to do for a while- there are times when it's inconvenient, and it bothered me to not know how to remove a piece of metal stuck into my body. So I can now remove and replace my nose ring as needed. I threw myself on the mercy of a really nice woman at Virtue & Vice and even splurged on a new ring- a totally adorable white gold star with a (fake) diamond in the middle. It's even less obvious than the old one, if possible. The down side is that I haven't played with this piercing much for years and it's a bit irritated. You see why that could be... unpleasant.... when you throw in a cold?

Back to bed with me. Ask me which way is up and I could probably guess the right answer, but put it this way- I spent all day yesterday answering phones thusly: 'Good morning, thank you for calling Company .' This morning when I called in sick I couldn't even remember Company X's name. Hoo boy. Brain spaz.