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November 30, 2003

bad tattoo nightmare

i woke up this morning in the midst of a very strange dream. there was a lot going on; my father and his entire side of the family, including my dead grandmother (who wasn't dead in the dream), made an appearance; i wandered around a shopping mall trying to find stephanie and my purse-- since i was on a road trip, of course stephanie was with me; and the absolute worst part, i think the part that woke me up, was that i realized i had gotten several large, very bad tattoos. i woke up wondering how much tattoo removal costs, and whether it really works. i also had thoughts of designing a very SMALL tattoo myself, something i would really like. but i probably won't follow up on that...

anyway, yesterday afternoon i went over to christa and ray's to help get christa's bedroom painted. joe came over to help too; he'd never painted before. i did a lot of the cutting in, including all of the ceiling. i didn't use tape, just did it freehand with a nice brush that christa had. i was pretty pleased, and christa said she thought it was my best edge work to date.

Posted by lisa at 11:43 AM

November 29, 2003

the up side of boredom

there's a part of me that really enjoys having nothing much to do. i find all kinds of interesting, creative things happening in that situation.

so my current personals ad is far and away my most sincere, and probably my least creative ever. and as you can see... it doesn't seem to be very successful.

so i decided to do a completely fascetious ad, partly because it was fun, and partly because i'm curious to see if creativity alone gets a response where sincerity does not. my sincere ad is still up there, but i don't think it'll be easy for anyone to tell that they're both the same person.

for those who are curious, the new profile name is "monsterthumb".

Posted by lisa at 04:14 PM

boring = good

oddly enough, today i didn't get bored, or depressed, or sleep too late, or not get anything done; i didn't feel anxious, or sad, or at loose ends. days when there's no work and no one around are sometimes bad that way, but not today.

this morning i made the rounds of the cats, then ran some errands and went shopping in raleigh.

came home and had a yummy lunch of tomato soup, grilled cheese with bacon, dill pickles and fresca.

and then just puttered around, watched the 'what not to wear' marathon a lot (no new episode today, but next week's looks like quite a doozy... the guy apparently has a wonder woman outfit in his wardrobe. um, i think he might be a little bit gay.) put a bunch of stuff in the attic. worked on a scarf i am knitting; i hope to wear it and a matching hat in the christmas parade next saturday.

somehow it was all very fulfilling.

oh-- the cute guy logged into the system a couple of days ago and didn't respond, so i don't think he's going to.

Posted by lisa at 12:45 AM

November 27, 2003

documentation and food

today at thanksgiving dinner we somehow got onto the subject of strange things the men of the previous generation would document.

my grandfather kept documentation about squirrels he captured in his yard and released in other counties. he'd write the county name down on his calendar.

wayne's father would write down every time he mowed the grass, on a piece of old cardboard that wayne found in the shed years later.

we don't know why they wrote these things down, but it gives me some clue as to why i sometimes feel the need to document things. maybe it's just a compulsion that's passed down genetically.

so, in the spirit of documentation, i will now document the most thorough and yummy thanksgiving dinner that my family has enjoyed in many years.

Posted by lisa at 08:47 PM

November 26, 2003

why i carry a pointed nail file

you'd think the reason i carry a pointed, metal nail file in my purse is because i want to be able to file down snags on my nails whenever they occur, but you'd be wrong.

that's why i carry a pointed nail file in my purse. i want to be more like nancy, jamie, and buffy.

Posted by lisa at 12:45 PM

November 24, 2003

i am evil

tonight i slyly planted the idea in christa's head that she should go to nyc with me around birthday-time to go SHOPPING.

maybe other people who like to SHOP should go with us. like, other people who are facing a significant birthday like we are.

heh. heh. heh.

Posted by lisa at 11:35 PM

busting on bust

i generally love bust magazine , but there's an article in the most recent issue that pissed me off.

it's about the women of independent NJ radio station WFMU . i'll probably write bust a letter, but at the moment i think i'm gonna work out some thoughts in blog form.

this is one of the bits that i really object to:

"Maybe the techniness of radio has been daunting to women, or maybe the utter guy-ish-ness of record collecting has slowed their entry into the field, along with a helping of good old-fashioned marginalization and sexism."

now take this in combination with the fact that the article mentions college radio only once:

"Nearly every one of the on-air women has a background in college radio..."

and doesn't ever mention any other form of non-commercial radio (NPR? hello?), internet radio, pirate radio, microchannel... and whatever else i'm forgetting, so the premise that there's a lack of women in radio, except in certain types of roles which mainstream radio forces them into, is not a very well supported or well inspected one.

even if it were supported, the theories the author advances for why this might be are really pretty offensive.

now of course, my experience of radio is pretty much limited to college, and my personal experience extends mainly to wqfs, wxdu, and to some limited degree wxyc and wknc.

however, i can assure you that wqfs and wxdu have not had a lack of women involved at all levels for at least the last... um 15 years? and this article is all congratulatory toward wfmu because they've got a handful of female dejays now as compared to almost none five years ago.

"The other day, five of us gals were all in one of the studios together and it nearly blew station manager Ken [Freedman]'s mind," says Kelly. "He'd never seen that many girls in one place at the station before."

Oh, good for you, FMU. Five girls in ONE PLACE at ONE TIME! You deserve an article!

Posted by lisa at 06:53 PM

2 for 2

so i did write again to that personals guy that i'd written to before who didn't respond the first time.

it's been a few days; he's logged into the system. he's not going to respond.

the cute guy hasn't written back, but he also hasn't logged into the system, so there's still a ray of hope.

Posted by lisa at 06:26 PM

barf stories come in fours

just skip this if you don't want to up your personal gross factor today.

- the other day i watched friends forever , a documentary about a band. it featured a scene in which a friend of theirs vomits into a bottle, then drinks it.

- after dinner last night i was in the restaurant bathroom, and a woman walked in to the stall next to mine and started throwing up.

- poor christa got food poisoning today.

- i just read a personal ad which featured this story:
Most humbling moment: My first shower with a member of the opposite sex. I do not favor hot showers and the water and "action" was much too hot for my liking ( could have handled the action, but the aquatics did me in) thus making me a bit queezy. Vomit potential was raised to Defcon 5 and in my frantic operative to evacuate the tub I slipped, fell, knocked the shower door off track, cracked my head on both the sink and the floor, and hurled... pretty much in unison. I think my curtain call was "See I told you I don't like hot showers!"

ok, ENOUGH ALREADY. ugh.

Posted by lisa at 01:05 AM

November 23, 2003

painting at sarah & georg's house

yesterday i helped georg and sarah paint their living room. they've done a tremendous amount of work in this room; they had to remove fake wood panelleing, then use a heat gun to remove the glue that held the panelling to the wall. after that they had to repair the original plaster walls extensively with plastering tape and plaster, which then had to be sanded and primed.

however, underneath the hideous 1960's renovation was lurking an adorable early 40's cottage. i got to come in for the final stage-- painting-- which is the easiest and most rewarding part of the project. it's the part where the people who have been living with the ugliness for so long that they almost no longer see it finally get to see their house the way it's supposed to look, and i get to see the "oh WOW!" looks on their faces when we're done. that's my favorite part.

the room does look adorable now. sarah chose a pale golden beige color with white trim. there's a repair that needs to be made to the ceiling before it can be painted; i suggested that she try painting the ceiling the wall color since that might make it seem higher. they took down some bad brown plastic crown molding and don't plan to replace it since it makes the ceiling seem lower.

after we finished, we went out to sushi-thai for dinner, which was excellent. georg let us try some of his duck; i've never had duck before. it was yummy, but very rich-- i'm not sure i could eat a whole plate of it.

Posted by lisa at 02:15 PM

November 21, 2003

box, pandora. pandora, box.

uuuuuuggggghhhhhhhh.

it was so not a good day at work. pandora's box was fully opened and the contents spilled out all over on me. stress, stress, stress. stress in isolation, which is the worst kind, though i have to say that charles and dave were there for me when i asked for help.

in other exciting news, dreadlocks boy got his drain unclogged. OH yeah.

Posted by lisa at 06:28 PM

November 20, 2003

three beers for freedom

so a couple of co-workers and i went out for beers after work today. mostly because we're happy that we're not working for our old boss anymore.

that's pretty much all i've got that's fit to print here.

oh, and i wrote to that guy on the personals. we'll see. i'm working on another one, too, but it's difficult because i wrote to him once before and he didn't write back. i think it's worth a second try though.

Posted by lisa at 10:12 PM

November 18, 2003

the thirty-fifth

since i will be the frontrunner for the 35th birthday that several of us will be experiencing in january and february, i am going to try to keep the rest of you appraised of anything you might need to know about turning 35.

first thing: you'll have to renew your driver's license. i got a little card in the mail today telling me this.

this message brought to you by the numbers three and five, and the letters OH MY GOD WE'RE SO OLD.

Posted by lisa at 11:47 PM

djing

me, on the air tonight. this is an animated gif so it's large-ish and takes a minute to load.

highlights amongst the new-to-me stuff:

i was also pleasantly surprised to see something new from japanoiz luminary kk null.

Posted by lisa at 11:20 PM

hmmm...

there's a guy on the personals that i'm considering writing to.

he's a computer geek, but that's not why.

he does list some music that i also like in his music stuff, but that's not why.

it's really just because i think he's cute. i mean, he seems nice and funny and all. we almost have stuff in common. enough that we could have a conversation. but my gut tells me that it's not really enough. (not that people aren't often surprising in that way.)

so.. i don't know. do i just come right out and say, hey, i think you're cute and that's a lot of why i'm writing?

or not write?

or attempt to cobble together some kind of note based on possibly having common interests or whatever?

advice from the field is definitely welcome on this one.

Posted by lisa at 07:14 PM

on air tonight

i'm finally going back on the air tonight after missing my last two shows.

playlist will be here

Posted by lisa at 07:08 PM

the mystery that is dreadlocks boy

ok so people sometimes mystify me. boys, especially. dreadlocks boy in particular right now.

our endless email correspondence continues. i let it drop for a couple of weeks; frankly, it's a little boring. but i decided to get back to it last night.

as always, his reply is instant. in fact, it had arrived before i even rolled out of bed (admittedly, rather late).

and it's a nice banal reply. cars, i'm sorry you were sick, blah blah blah.

and then for some reason, he decides to tell me about a plumbing problem in his house. apparently, his upstairs bathtub is clogged so badly that plunging and draino just made it worse. and he'll have to wait for it to clear before he can snake it.

i mean, keep in mind, my relationship with this guy consists of one date and about four and a half months worth of email. i'm not his wife; i'm not his girlfriend. i'm not someone he hangs out with. we're not housemates. we're barely even friends. why do i want to hear about his clogged drain?

i guess it was just on his mind.

Posted by lisa at 06:26 PM

tinyurl o' mine

my tinyurl: http://tinyurl.com/lisa - i'm rather pleased with it. (this is what the tinyurl people happen to have in their database already for "lisa").

in other geeking news, christa came over last night to burn a cd and demo charo's small-but-powerful speakers for me. (i don't really have room for my large but fabulous sounding speakers anymore, and i'm trying to find small ones that can compare.)

anyway, she saw iChat for the first time and said, "It's so cute !" i guess i've been immersed in OSX long enough that the cuteness doesn't come as a surprise to me anymore. but it is kinda cute.

the speakers, btw, sounded great, but still didn't compare with my big speakers. i'm going to go to the bose store and check those out, and i may also go back to the store where i got my speakers and basically say, look, i have a 10 year old pair of vandersteen b's-- is there a small speaker that i'm going to be happy with?

Posted by lisa at 11:19 AM

November 17, 2003

van guy redux

turns out van guy never left town sunday; we met up at the broadcast show and a nice time was had by all.

it's good when the personals actually work out well, which isn't always the case.

i got a picture of his van. it's diesel!.

Posted by lisa at 04:47 PM

jimmy carter in the house!

jimmy carter will be at the regulator this thursday evening

i'm trying to decide if i would actually want to meet him or not. i'm a huge fan, but that doesn't necessarily translate into needing to meet him.

Posted by lisa at 04:42 PM

November 16, 2003

van guy

i had spotted a guy on the personals recently who was traveling around the country, living in a diesel westy. on a whim last week i decided to write to him, though i didn't think much would come of it, given that he'd obviously be moving on soon and we didn't have much else in common besides an interest in diesel vw camper vans.

well it turned out that we actually did have stuff in common-- some music stuff, and some general lifestyle stuff-- in fact i think it kind of freaked him out a little. oh and it turns out he used to be a database programmer back in the early days of the web.

so anyway, last night i went to this art opening with georg and sarah, then we went to dinner. van guy wound up meeting us at the restaurant.

turned out the art opening was two doors down from the new location of the untidy museum , so we went down there for a bit after the show. i spotted this excellent twiggy-style cloche hat and got sarah to try it on ; it was so damn perfect for her. she says she's going to go back and get it.

so van guy showed up after we'd finished eating, but georg and sarah were good enough to stick around for a while, which was nice for me because meeting new people like that always makes me really nervous and anxious.

anyway, he and i stayed and talked for a long time after they left; in fact, we closed the place down, then went out to the van and talked til about 2am in the van, which is like a little studio apartment on wheels.

i'm going to get into some vw geek stuff here so just skip this next bit if that's not your thing :)

the van is an '82 diesel vanagon camper. he said that although vw claims to have imported diesel campers to the US in '83 and '84 as well, no one has ever seen one that isn't an '82. it's woefully underpowered-- they basically stuck the rabbit diesel engine into it. the engine is in the back, but of course being a diesel it needed a radiator which is in the front (i don't think there's such a thing as an aircooled diesel... anyone care to set me straight on that?).

in addition to being unique for being a diesel camper, it also has a little diesel powered heater which doesn't drain the battery (i assume), and he said that those are actually quite unusual.

the van as a whole is in excellent condition-- startlingly good condition, actually-- and he said he decided to not drive it over 55 since, well, a) most of the time he can't and b) it would kill the engine in a year or two most likely.

so i told him that if he ever sells it to let me know cause i would almost certainly buy it from him if it's still running :)

it was a great little place to hang out; there's a bench seat in the back that's like a little sofa; he'd put an mp3 cd player in as the stereo, which came with a remote, so he could play music without having to get up; the little diesel heater was actually quite effective, and he pulled a couple of beers out of the fridge (it's got a fridge, stove and sink).

stuff he added to it includes an extra battery under the front seat which charges off the engine, and runs the auxilliary stuff-- stove, lights, fridge, and a power inverter that he added so he can plug in his laptop and stuff.

anyway, it's too bad i didn't write to him sooner since he's at the end of his time in NC, but i guess it would just be frustrating anyway, since we seem to get along, and have stuff in common, and will probably never see each other again.

Posted by lisa at 12:44 PM

November 13, 2003

lancome liz

so i had this experience on tuesday which, at the time, i characterized as being overwhelming, but in the context of abruptly changing managers it kinda pales.

recently christa decided that, if she was gonna fix up her wardrobe, she should also fix up her face. so she went to the lancome counter and got a "make-under" (ie, a makeover that doesn't look she's wearing any makeup).

well, i've never done anything like that, so i thought i'd give it a try. so on tuesday i went with christa, mary, and sarah to the lancome counter and we met lancome liz. it was quite the party.

i have to say that i've never seen my face look like that. it looked good, but just very different from what i'm used to. i have pretty strongly held ideas about what colors are right for me, for instance, and liz didn't stick with my little internal rule set at all.

i guess appearance is strongly tied to identity-- at least for me it is-- so to have your appearance changed by someone else is somewhat disconcerting.

Posted by lisa at 09:35 PM

so, work gets interesting...

so today, with basically no real warning, for only the second time in fifteen years at the same company, i changed managers.

i'm a little freaked out, but that's mostly because change is stressful. it will be very interesting to see my response to having a manager who is not a dysfunctional, unpredictable, inflexible woman. well, of course the only thing i know for sure about my new manager is that he's not a woman (i have a weird radar for transsexuals so i can tell you for sure that he's a man). but by all accounts he's not unpredictable and seems to be pretty flexible.

we'll see.

i started trying to sort through the restrictions that i think i've been working with-- or around-- which might dissolve as a result of this change. what opportunities do i have now?

i'll be interested to see what coping behaviors we've developed which we won't need now. i already called dave on one; in him they're not difficult to pick out because he goes from looking totally relaxed to having this weird scrunched up strained smile on his face.

i'm sure i probably have a similar strained smile which i'll be all too happy to give up.

Posted by lisa at 09:12 PM

web design practices

some useful research on de facto web standards, and just how de facto they really are: web design practices .

Posted by lisa at 04:53 PM

November 12, 2003

my boots are a cruel mistress

first day wearing the boots to work. they're still tight enough that they're a bit uncomfortable, especially, oddly, around the ankles-- but it wasn't torture. i did bring my pliers just in case i needed to take them off and get them back on during the day.

i did get a sort of compliment, though not on the boots specificially.

i go out to garner every so often to fill up with biodiesel. the women who work at this gas station are not generally the most fashionable people i've met, and in fact sometimes i feel as i've driven 20 minutes and magically wound up in some rural county deep in eastern NC.

so anyway, i went out there today, and when i walked up to the register, the woman working blurted out, "Where do you get them kinda clothes ??" we had a whole conversation about how she used to wear stevie nicks skirts (my term, but she agreed with it wholeheartedly) (and btw, i would not characterize my skirt as a stevie nicks skirt, but whatever), but now she can't find them anymore, clearly much to her chagrin.

Posted by lisa at 07:10 PM

November 11, 2003

the efficiency of patterns

ever since i discovered christopher alexander's a pattern language (via brian eno), i've had a mild fascination with the idea of patterns.

patterns seem to exist at the edges of modern-day computer science, like a sort of cult that we tolerate but don't quite trust. there's only one person in my department who has any real expertise in programming patterns, despite the fact that there are plenty of people doing object-oriented coding.

once you stray from programming into the world of information architecture, patterns are a little more accepted, and probably a little more useful and common-sensical. i've been catching up on my IA reading lately, and ran across Patterns for Personal Web Sites.

what this amounts to is a fairly efficient and organized account of the standards that i've intuitively grasped over the last six years of web site creation. if you're wishing i could help you with your web site, and i'm not available, go read this and (provided you can figure out how to apply it) you'll have basically gotten the same benefit that you would have had i been around to help.

of course, if i am available, i'd probably be delighted to help you fix your site. especially if it really, really needs it. in fact, the people who do the slayage site should email me now. oh my god.

Posted by lisa at 04:24 PM

November 09, 2003

the power of mt

i don't talk about geek stuff very often, but this has me excited. thanks to this article, i think i'm pretty close to getting the old north durham web site set up so that it's all driven by moveable type. this will mean that the non-tech folks who provide all the content will be able to update the site via the very friendly moveable type interface, from a web browser, without help from me.

Posted by lisa at 09:38 PM

pergo

today, christa and i finished putting in the pergo floor. yay! we rock.

Posted by lisa at 08:34 PM

kill

saw 'kill bill' with georg and sarah last night. a lot of people die.

got home and christa had sent me a flash movie called "the meatrix" which is all about how horrible mass farming of animals for food is. because i was a vegetarian for a very long time, then about a year ago started eating meat again, things like this give me a serious case of angst.

Posted by lisa at 08:28 PM

November 08, 2003

blindingly white

what is the current obession with tooth-whitening products? there's been an explosion of whitening commercials on tv lately.

i feel strongly that i'm going to draw a personal line in the sand on this one. my teeth do not need to be blindingly white.

if everyone else would kindly please do the same, i think we'll all be quite happy looking at each others' nice, normally-colored teeth.

Posted by lisa at 05:28 PM

definitely time i left the house

still don't feel all that great in general today. just kind of lethargic and my back hurts for some reason.

i got myself good and depressed yesterday, between the cold medicine, staying in and watching tv alone all day, and reading a bunch of this.

decided not to go to the xdu benefit last night, partly because i wasn't feeling too social, and partly because i didn't think smoke would mix well with the cold.

the fun never stops next door; my crazy neighbors may have moved out, but for the last two days there's been a repairman there who is listening to a book on tape at absolute top volume from his truck, which is parked about three feet from my living room windows. it's loud enough that the sound of my tv doesn't cover it.

the computer that i'm selling pat tomorrow is all boxed up and ready to go, which was the one thing that i really had to do today. i'm meeting georg and sarah later for a movie, but i think in the meantime i should get the heck outta this house for a while.

Posted by lisa at 04:08 PM

November 07, 2003

still sick & watching tv

ugh. stayed home from work again today. i think the cold medicine i'm trying is making me feel tired, but isn't clearing up my runny nose very well. i tend to have bad luck with cold medicine for some reason.

i guess i am paying the price for eating really badly all summer. as long as i was actually following atkins, i was eating a lot of veggies and probably getting a lot of good nutrition. now that i'm sort of coasting, i don't bother to eat a lot of vegetables out of sheer laziness, and apparently my body is unhappy about that.

i've been trying to improve the things that my tivo records on its own. on dave's advice i cleared all of my ratings and started again, being very sparse with the thumbs down.

so far i'm getting a lot of children's cartoons-- maybe because i gave the simpsons three thumbs up? surely tivo can distinguish between adult cartoons and children's cartoons?

i watched eliza dushku's new series for the first time last night-- it's called "tru calling". it's boring, which is a shame because dushku can be such a treat to watch. in the buffy dvd commentaries, the directors talk about having to ramp her intensity down to keep her from upstaging everyone else on the screen.

and as long as i'm preoccupied with tv, i might as well mention that vw has created another commercial where i want the boy a lot more than i want the car, which is, believe me, saying a lot. it's the jetta ad about the guy with two different sized feet.

for those who don't memorize all vw ads, the previous ad that fell into this category was the "speak now or forever hold your peace" jetta ad, featuring a very cute guy trying to reach a wedding in time to stop it. that ad produced a certain amount of commentary amongst the women on the new beetle list.

Posted by lisa at 12:17 PM

November 06, 2003

matrix

went and saw 'matrix revolutions' with a bunch of folks last night. it fucking rocked! ok, the first little bit was boring, talk talk talk plot plot plot "neo i LOOOVVVEEEE you" (trinity is so boring), but then the action started up and it was good from there on out. some good female warrior action to help make up for the boring helpless stand-by-her-man lameness that is trinity. way funner than the last one.

Posted by lisa at 09:54 PM

November 05, 2003

what i look like with tons of makeup on

1/5 of the readership of this blog asked to see this picture. i got bored recently and decided to see what i'd look like with tons of makeup on. somehow in the picture, it doesn't look like so much-- but trust me. if you saw me like this in person, you'd be shocked.

oh, and i decided to get my bangs off my face, too.

please excuse the utterly pretentious, "i'm so serious" expression. i just can't pull off much of a smile if i don't have someone there making me laugh or something.

Posted by lisa at 11:45 PM

hey, this sleep stuff really works

so i took a 5 hour nap, and am now realizing that i have very little in the way of cold symptoms. crazy.

i need to go eat hamburgers now.

Posted by lisa at 02:26 PM

80's lyrics test

ok, everyone i know is taking the 80's lyrics test.

the highest score i've seen so far is jason, with 120.5.

me? i suck at it. 30.5. maybe i'm just a little too old? maybe i didn't go to 80's dance night at... uh, that place in raleigh... often enough?

whatever.

Posted by lisa at 10:29 AM

November 04, 2003

boot update

(a quick recap of the Boot Saga can be found in the "read more" section for those who are not up to date)

i've had the boots back from the cobbler since saturday. they didn't seem to have been stretched much when i got them; i still couldn't zip them, even with effort. but i was tired of waiting; the cobbler had had them for about two weeks.

that evening i made a discovery-- i could zip them, if i used pliers to help! how perfect-- tools and fashion, working in unison!

so i've been wearing them in the evenings and i'm happy to report that as of this evening, i can zip them both without the help of the pliers, and they are fitting pretty nicely. i think they will mold a little more to my calves but i could wear them now with a skirt and they'd look fine.

so it turns out the best way to stretch boots is on your own legs, if you can just get the dang things zipped up a couple of times.

now i need to go skirt shopping!

MORE...

Posted by lisa at 11:49 PM

sick

i'm sick.

i'm like, never sick.

Posted by lisa at 07:31 PM

beetle talk

so i took spacepod in to the hoity-toity "auto spa" in cary-- a special treat that we get to have less and less often, not because it's especially expensive (for $10 they clean him both inside and out pretty thoroughly), but because it just takes so dang long these days.

anyway, the clientele generally runs to soccer moms with huge SUV's, retirees with huge SUV's, and the occasional cellphone-wielding young man with a BMW sedan. i don't think i've ever seen another bug there-- but yesterday a silver bug pulled up right behind me-- and the owner noticed that i have a diesel and said he wanted to ask me some questions.

his was also a tdi, as it turned out, and he wasn't sure that it sounded right. he said he was bothered by the noise. now, i've always loved the way spacepod sounds-- a little more butch than your average car, but not downright agressive. i realize that this might just be a tdi fanatic thing. but from what he said, his auto tranny was not downshifting properly when going up hills and the engine was lugging.

we wound up having quite a lengthy talk. he had an interesting perspective on the car-- he said he wanted to keep it for a very long time, and was very pleased to see another silver bug with over 100k miles and the paint still looking really good. but he's clearly not into car modifications or showing the car, or having the car as a sort of museum piece. i think his desire to keep the car in good shape was more to save money and the environment.

at the end, he said he felt a lot better about things; he said he'd try driving it a little more agressively to see if that gets better performance out of the auto tranny.

RRRRRR! yeah!!

Posted by lisa at 07:00 PM

November 03, 2003

vote/radio

a) please vote tomorrow

b) i'll be on the air tomorrow from 8-10pm ET at wxdu, 88.7fm in durham, nc. playlist will be here, updated live while i am on the air.

Posted by lisa at 04:56 PM

November 02, 2003

costume ideas

sarah and i were batting around the idea of getting a bunch of people to dress as buffy characters. but later i thought of a another idea-- to get a bunch of people to dress as the different versions of *willow*.

- "the softer side of sears" willow
- terrified opera singer willow
- evil twin willow ("because i'm shy. yeah.")
- hippie lesbian willow
- black willow
- white willow

are there other willows? which willow are YOU?

Posted by lisa at 11:52 PM

and on the second day of halloween...

on saturday night, the 1st ("All souls day" as Ray informed us), i had some folks over to watch 'the nightmare before christmas'. i've always been a huge fan of this movie; i didn't know until quite recently that both Ray and Georg are fans of it as well. Sarah came as she is also fond of it, and Joe came-- turned out that he'd never seen it before. In fact, he said he'd never seen a Tim Burton movie before.

it was a nice time, i got to show off the new living room, and we ate gingerbread and pumpkin pie and drank cider.

today i am actually doing pretty much nothing. as i put it to jason recently, all of my time-dependent obligations are finished, until roswell.

of course, it being the fifth anniversary of roswell, and the last year for allpods, that's not going to be a small project. david is giving me a free booth on the vendor floor, we're going to team up with val to do some video stuff, and steph, bj and i are going to bring the trivia game to roswell since it was so popular at nbeast.

There's about a million other things that i *should* do today. but to hell with that. i'm doing nothin'.

Posted by lisa at 04:20 PM

halloween

halloween is a big deal for me. christmas is nice, but i'm not a christian, and there was some stuff a while back that made it kind of suck for me for a while, so it's not the big deal it was for me when i was a kid. easter is kind of a joke to me; it amuses me to see christians participating wholeheartedly in a supposedly christian holiday that also includes bunnies and eggs, without questioning for a moment where these pagan fertility symbols fit into the resurrection of christ. I'm not particularly patriotic, so fourth of july doesn't do much for me. I'm not Jewish or Muslim or any other religion, so that eliminates a whole host of potential holidays. Thanksgiving is ok, but there's that whole decimation of Native Americans thing that kind of sticks in my craw and all.

So yeah. That pretty much leaves me with Halloween, which I adpoted as my official favorite holiday sometime in the mid 90's. Halloween is a holiday that I can make be however I want, and I don't have to politely tolerate other people's religious observances, I don't have to drive my grandmother anywhere, I can dress in all the black I want, and I can have ALL of my friends over for a big, fun party.

Except this year I didn't. I had taken on too much in the month before Halloween and I decided sometime in the beginning of October that it wasn't going to happen.

When the day came, I was kinda sad. Sad enough that I even started planning the party that I will have next year. It'll be on Saturday the 30th, and you're probably invited if you know about this blog. I'd like to get some outdoor elements happening, so I might finally research night blooming plants and the like. I have a whole year, so that definitely gives me time to plant a garden specifically for the party. seriously!

So on the night of, I made last-minute plans with sarah and georg. They brought over pulled chicken and brisket from the q shack (YUM!), i steamed up some green beans and drenched them in butter, and we fielded my trick-or-treaters until the candy ran out, at which point we went to a nearby block party and hung out at Joe's house for a while.

I finally had a chance to break out a couple of really choice vintage items that I've gotten in recent years; a black velvet half-cape that's in astounding condition except for the rather decrepit fur trim, and a black parasol that's in an advanced state of disrepair. paired with a long black skirt and pointy black shoes (fluevogs are the shoe of choice for halloween yet again!) it gave a nice victorian effect.

After Joe's place, we headed out to carrboro for a party thrown by someone we know from the radio station. it was truly the geekiest party i've ever been to. how geeky was it? well, there was a guy with a shirt that said, "There's no place like 127.0.0.1". how geeky am i? not only did i get it, i thought it was damned funny and complimented him on his shirt.

(for the non-geeky: 127.0.0.1 is the IP address for localhost-- ie, "home".)

Posted by lisa at 04:07 PM

and then, a million years later, she wrote in her blog again.

it's been a demanding summer.

in fact i feel like the blog is kind of backing me up on that, since i stopped writing in april, and now in november am back again.

to summarise:

- chased boys (to little good end)
- went to roswell
- participated in a biodiesel relay
- began running the pod on biodiesel from garner
- helped pull a tree off christa's house
- saw the fall
- saw interpol
- reunited with relatives in maryland
- went to my first big vw show, the manassas bugout
- helped run a car show
- helped with ongoing renovations to christa's bathroom, including demolition, drywall, and pergo
- bought a lot of clothes
- went to seattle
- went to a wedding of some radio station folks
- have my own bi-weekly radio show now
- decided to grow my hair out
- painted my living room deep burgundy, which looks incredible
- did not have a halloween party :(
- finished an application at work that had been dragging on for two years, including working actual overtime and everything
- bought a g4 cube system complete with flat panel monitor
- bought an actual dress. a dress that fits! (dresses are normally too big on top and too small on the bottom for me)
- broke every low-carb rule ever made, failed to gain much weight at all. ok, some.
- hung out with my homies

Posted by lisa at 03:47 PM