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January 31, 2004

oh, i am such a girl.

should there ever again be any doubt-- the next time you see me wielding a sledgehammer or reading a bentley manual-- just remember that there seems to be no limit to the number of times i can watch 'four weddings and a funeral'. and i cry every time matthew reads this bit from w.h. auden:

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

Posted by lisa at 11:25 PM

happy birthday, sarah!

last night i went to sarah's birthday party. it was quite lovely, i think just the right number of people, and all very nice and interesting to talk to. sarah seemed to have a really nice time. i didn't order her present until yesterday, so it will be a few days before i can give it to her, but i gave her some thumb monsters to tide her over :)

sylvia actually brought me a belated birthday gift as well-- a very nice diana ross record from her collection that she'd decided she was ready to part with. i'm starting to realize that sylvia probably has a treasure trove of amazing vintage stuff at her place, and i think she gets it all at thrift stores-- not places that cull the thrift stores and yard sales and then mark everything up, like the untidy museum and beggars and choosers. i mean, i love those places, but if i had the flexible schedule and salary of an academic rather than those of a programmer, i'd probably take the time to do the thrifting myself.

although, you know, thrifting (which i used to do a lot of) really seemed to result in me owning a lot of stuff that i couldn't quite use. like that orange floor lamp that's terrific-- but not terrific in my house.

anyway, i think sarah had a good birthday, and i'm really looking forward to giving her her present when it gets here-- i think she will really like it.

Posted by lisa at 05:29 PM

January 30, 2004

i am a designer.

today i, along with many other geeky people in the area, went to a seminar given by edward tufte. his field is the presentation of information.

i've always shied away from calling myself a designer. to me it has long meant, mainly, "artist and decorator". one who makes things look attractive, who develops a harmonious color scheme and picks just the right font to communicate an appropriate style.

but in fact, designer means finding design solutions to challenging presentation problems. (one hopes they're challenging, anyway.) and i've been doing that for a very long time. i have a knack for it. no formal training outside of seminars and conferences; most of what i know was learned on the job, in a couple of college art classes, or grasped intuitively.

there's a paper form that was used a great deal in my work when i first started working at sas. i was in the IT division; it was our request tracking form. the first iteration of this form was done on a mainframe, or possibly on a typewriter. shortly after i arrived, we got a mac in our lab, and i taught myself pagemaker. i'm not sure how it came about, but i wound up re-designing the form in pagemaker. my re-designed version became the standard that was used for many years, until the whole process went on-line.

i ran across a copy of that form recently. i'm still proud of it. the level of information crammed onto a letter-sized page is quite astounding. i could do it over better now-- i have access to much better fonts now, for one thing-- but even without making excuses like, "it was my first try", i'm still pleased with it.

during the tufte seminar, i started thinking about a couple of the projects i'm currently working on, and how to apply what i was learning. i thought a lot about one of his main points-- that high density (or "resolution" as he calls it) of information is desireable. when i've had my designer hat on in the past, i've always thought of this information density as a problem-- undesireable. but in fact, he's right-- if the information is all necessary, then the problem isn't that there's too much information, but that you simply have a challenging design problem in presenting it.

and i realized that, a lot of times, at work, it's up to me to come up with that solution. i do sometimes work with someone down the hall whose official title is "designer", but only on the really big projects. there's so much day-to-day stuff-- user interfaces for all the applications our group develops, mainly-- that comes only to me, not an official designer, and i "make it pretty" (as my co-workers have always called it).

i think i've long underrated my value to the group, but we've recently merged with a much larger group, and now i have the opportunity to work on UI's that will appear on the company's external web (until now, i've worked exclusively on the intranet). and what has become clear is that no one-- not one single person in my department-- can do what i do. other people have pieces of the puzzle-- programming skills, a knowlege of CSS, or the ability to cook up the way the UI should look, using a tool like powerpoint (oddly). but i seem to be the only one who can design the UI, put it in its correct context, ensure all the menus on the page are correctly weighted, that the links are properly labelled, that the style of the UI fits the style of the site it's being inserted into, create the CSS to accomplish this, ensure the XHTML is semantic, and, if i'm the programmer on the project, do the database design and write the back-end code for the application.

i've focused so much on those last two things over the years, and how i'm not as accomplished in that area as others are, that i've ignored the value of all the rest of it. now that i'm working with external web people, the importance of my design skills is thrown into sharp relief. and the nice thing is-- it's what i love doing.

anyway, if you're a web designer, you really have to check out tufte's stuff. he's the leader in his field. he's got three books, and aside from the seminar, they're probably the best way to get to know his work. the web site unfortunately doesn't serve as an introduction-- it's more a sales tool for the things you can buy from him.

i plan to recommend that every person in my department, as well as the folks who produce our internal company news, be sent to a tufte seminar at the next obvious opportunity. they sent a huge boatload of people to jared spool's seminar in RTP last summer, so i don't think its out of the realm of possibility.

Posted by lisa at 06:26 PM

January 29, 2004

states i've visited

via rick!

this is so fucking cool. i think i must have driven through Utah (christa, do you remember? on that trip with bob boster?), but I have no specific memory of it so i'm not sure and didn't mark it as visited. (red states are visited.)



create your own visited states map
or write about it on the open travel guide

Posted by lisa at 06:05 PM

gorgeous

it's sad, but i rarely come across sites any longer that i love the design of so much that i want to check out their source/stylesheet.

however, today i came across a site that struck me; appropriately, it's the site of the Web Standards Project.

i love the layout, which has just enough and not too much whitespace between its elements; i love the headers (that's text, not graphics-- Trebuchet with an uppercase transform); i love the subtle colors and the little boxes of info about each post at the top right.

oh, i suppose the content is worth exploring as well, but that's not what i'm here to write about :)

Posted by lisa at 04:12 PM

"tape"

tape dir richard linklater.

monday, feb. 2nd, 8pm, richard white lecture hall, east campus.

lemme know if you're interested in going with me.

worth noting (and i'll post this to the links on the right), duke screen society schedule. i wondered where all the interesting university film programs had gone...

Posted by lisa at 12:39 PM

sugar crash

i had a mild blood sugar crash right before lunch today; i think the combination of the chocolate ice cream last night (sugar-free though it was), a light breakfast, and two cups of tea this morning were what did it. (artificial sweeteners + caffiene + chocolate + too little protien and fat are just as problematic as sugar itself.) this probably means that the ice cream needs to be gotten rid of or i'll continue to eat it every night. dammit.

Posted by lisa at 12:08 PM

January 28, 2004

bong hit

you know, i could swear i had a dream recently where i took a bong hit.

i am sure i've had bong hits at some point in my life, but have no actual memory of any. very odd that i would dream that.

Posted by lisa at 11:15 PM

chocolate. now.

it doesn't happen very often, but every once in a while i have a serious chocolate craving. i had one today; it lasted all afternoon and reached a sort of fever pitch after work. i was really craving chocolate cake, but had to compromise with edy's no sugar added triple chocolate.

chocolate cravings were a little easier to deal with back when i ate sugar. now i have to be a bit more creative. i could really go for, say, a really high quality chocolate truffle. in fact, i haven't had any vosges truffles in a long time, and that would be so perfect. (if you've never had them, and you like chocolate, you owe it to yourself. and be adventurous-- wasabi and ginger truffles are better than you might think.)

of course, one day the world will catch up with the needs of the sugar-challenged, i am sure. or maybe i will decide that one little chocolate truffle isn't the end of the world.

Posted by lisa at 06:51 PM

buffy dream

i had my first buffy dream ever last night. i was reading seven seasons of buffy right before bed, so i guess that's why.

i recall being in a bedroom with angel, buffy, xander, and anya. angel was actually, secretly, one of those alien lookalikes from x-files-- you know, the kind with green blood that bubbles out and kills humans. i think buffy also had a secret evil identity-- maybe she was a vampire. anya was taking xander to the airport. i went to find a friend to help with this. i am sure i was supposed to find giles, but instead found a young woman. she suggested we hold a seance. since there was only two of us, we had to hold hands across a huge table with candles, which was awkward.

i remember thinking that anya would be in danger because she didn't know that angel was actually an alien.

Posted by lisa at 01:52 PM

January 27, 2004

silophone

i recall hearing about this some time ago. now a cd has appeared on the xdu playlist.

an artist known as [The User] has mic'd an abandoned grain silo in montreal. anyone can "play" the silo remotely via the internet or telephone.

http://www.silophone.net/

Posted by lisa at 11:30 PM

safe

got home safely from my radio show.. roads were still more wet & slushy than frozen over at 10pm. thanks to christa for the broad/club/washington idea; it was definitely less scary than markham.

tomorrow work opens at 10:30. dave is still stuck; both his driveway and his cul de sac are heavily sloped sheets of ice. so he's going to climb out on foot and i'll pick him up on a cross street on my way in.

i finally got my first mp4 archive of my radio show. i'm a bit disappointed because i went on early, but forgot to change the recording schedule to start early, so i missed a lot of good stuff.

i'm debating on posting it to the web. i wouldn't put it on the radio station web server-- the files aren't small and i don't want to cause legal trouble for the station. but i'm wondering just how illegal it would be, really, to post it to the web.

Posted by lisa at 11:18 PM

golly.

well, i'll be damned. they just plowed my street. i don't think that's happened once the entire time i've lived here.

Posted by lisa at 07:01 PM

two good things to do with spring roll wrappers

(the kind made out of rice, that you soak in water then don't cook)

layer on top of soaked wrapper:

fold in the sides then roll up carefully. (oh a little havarti is good in there too.)

the one everyone likes, that i made for the party:

Posted by lisa at 06:01 PM

ok, we're all going to california in may.

via joy

the Coachella festival

featuring...

( official site )

Posted by lisa at 05:43 PM

memories of my father

(and about three people in the world will get the music reference in the title...)

the ikea thing (specifically, the maze of twisty little passages) made me remember when my dad was working at cherry point, managing the install of a new mainframe there. of course, they had adventure installed and when my dad would take me in to work with him (because when you see your daughter just four days a month, you should be sure to spend at least part of that time at work), he'd sit me down in front of adventure for entertainment.

i wasn't really old enough to play very successfully, but i would try. the guys in the lab had drawn a map of the game, which helped a little.

that's it, that's the memory. geek training at an early age.

Posted by lisa at 04:42 PM

on air tonight

i'll be on tonight from 8-10pm. live playlist will be here.

i dug out my sidewalk and driveway this afternoon and went to the grocery store. my street and glendale are not so great, but washington looks as if it's been plowed. markham isn't very good, though, but it's the only way to get to the station so i'll brave it. hopefully things won't have frozen over too badly at 10pm when i'm leaving.

Posted by lisa at 03:39 PM

lunch ladies

i dreamed about the old lynch st. apartment again last night. as always, it was in need of some renovation. somehow i was now the owner-- but only of that apartment-- and i had decided to try and sell it. i think i was talking with a realtor inside the apartment. then i walked out, through an enclosed porch painted in ugly, dark colors, and i thought, "I want to give this whole place a nice coat of cream-colored paint. I'll go to the paint store and ask if they have a color called, 'vanilla bean', because that would be just perfect, a nice pale cream." by the time i finished that thought, i was at the end of the front walk, and two lunch ladies were walking up to the house. one was black and one was white, and they were wearing those puffy, translucent white hats that look like shower caps. the black one had two long buck teeth that stood out against her brown skin. i tried to make eye contact and smile, but they did not seem to be in a friendly mood.

i have no idea where the lunch ladies came from or what they might mean.

oh, and i remember thinking that that sort of house-- an old house divided into three apartments-- would be perfect for a family, each family unit could live in a different apartment, and be separate yet together.

Posted by lisa at 12:53 PM

i wish i was a pretty japanese girl

a long time ago, dave and i met a guy named dav. i don't remember how we met him. i think dave is my only friend remaining from that time who remembers dav. i remember dav came and worked on rob k.'s film with us, and i know he was one of the folks involved in the infamous trip to DC to see Man.... or Astroman?, during which a group of about seven of us went to record stores, ate ethiopian food, and completely missed the MoA show. then found we were locked out of the parking garage where we'd parked. maybe he was just an alt.music.chapel-hill regular at a time when you could put together a road trip to see a band just by posting to the group.

so dav is now living in san francisco, and he's got a blog, and one or the other of us found his blog a year or so ago. and now he crops up from time to time. bored tonight, i read justin hall's blog for the first time in a while.

(justin i learned about through a documentary called home page, and it turns out that he was a student at swarthmore at the same time dave was working as a sysadmin there, though he passed under dave's radar at the time.)

so justin had a party, and dav went to justin's party. i wrote to dave and said, "it had to happen sometime". i guess "it" is that someone we knew would wind up hanging out with justin hall, the man who may be considered the original blogger. or one of them. certainly the person who introduced me to the concept of the online diary.

so i went out to dav's blog and then on to his girlfriend's blog.

i think his girlfriend is japanese. as in, moved to san francisco from japan to be with dav. and, possibly, to work with the six apart people? she mentions in her blog, "hanging out with the six apart crew". (six apart are the people who wrote the software i am using right now to run this blog.)

pretty japanese girl. persued across not just continents but an entire ocean by a brilliant and nice-looking boy who ditched north carolina for the more exciting world of san francisco.

do these people live in another world or what?

i'm not saying that i really want to live in that world, when i really break it down and think about it. but on the surface of it, yeah, i wish i was a pretty japanese girl who apparently is so special, she is worth persuit across great geographies.

Posted by lisa at 12:23 AM

January 26, 2004

IKEA - a role-playing game

via boingboing

"IKEA is a fully immersive, 3D environmental adventure that allows you to role-play the character of someone who gives a shit about home furnishings. In traversing IKEA, you will experience a meticulously detailed alternate reality filled with garish colors, clear-lacquered birch veneer, and a host of NON-PLAYER CHARACTERS (NPCs) with the glazed looks of the recently anesthetized."

more =>

Posted by lisa at 11:33 PM

hm.

work will be closed again tomorrow.

it dawned on me this evening that i haven't spoken with another human being (except via email) since saturday night. i also haven't left the house except to get wood from the woodpile since that time as well.

it's possible that i should do something tomorrow, though i suppose driving isn't the best idea.

Posted by lisa at 07:58 PM

knife advice

my kitchen lacks a tool that no kitchen should lack-- a decent knife. i have a set of steak knives that includes what is probably supposed to be a vegetable cleaver, but is actually just a super-sized steak knife. that's about it in the knife department. they cut things, and they are an improvent over what i had before (three small, flimsy steak knives from my mother's attic), but they're not a lot of fun to use.

i find the whole nice knife thing really baffling. i think my stepfather knows a lot about this subject, but every time i try to ask him about it, he seems to assume that i know as much as he does, which doesn't help me much. he has thrown a brand name or two at me, but i can never remember what they are (i'm much better at remembering if i see something written down).

so, given that we seem to have some kitchen-savvy folks reading this blog, i'm interested in your advice. i want to get one nice knife. maybe, eventually, more than one. what should i get?

i've also realized that my vintage grater just doesn't work for grating finely. it's great (hah!) for slices and fat grates, but not for, say, ginger. i can't really justify having two graters (and actually, right now i do have two graters, so really three), so it'll probably have to go. which makes me kinda sad. i like getting use out of vintage implements.

Posted by lisa at 02:30 PM

the triumvarate of power

snow.

electricity (not off).

bacon!

(ok, and blackberry waffles but that makes more than three)

Posted by lisa at 11:46 AM

tank girl

from georg! girls paint tank pink. yay!

Posted by lisa at 11:45 AM

January 25, 2004

sweet!

work has already announced closing tomorrow. yay!!! snow day, sleep late!!

Posted by lisa at 09:50 PM

fickle upper body strength.

i'm very frustrated by this. sometimes it seems like i have more upper body strength than i should; but for the last 24 hours it seems to have deserted me. maybe i used it all up hanging the cd racks yesterday. i found myself requesting male assistance to crush ice last night (thanks jason for lending a hand, and feel free to tease me about my girly reliance on male strength, especially in light of my recent diatribe on this subject). then today i could barely crush garlic. how sad is that? actually, my garlic crusher has always been kind of sucky and i think it's gotten suckier-- i've had it for quite a while. still. ridiculous. i feel like such a girl.

Posted by lisa at 08:48 PM

snow days are good for watching too much james bond.

so when brosnan is retired as bond, i'm hoping that clive owen gets the role. you know-- the guy who was in croupier. (he crops up in gosford park, as well.) partly because i really like him, and think he completely has the look and the manner (the guy looks better in a tux than chow yun fat ), but most of all because he looks just like my favorite bond, george lazenby.

although, come to think of it, chow yun fat would make a fantastic bond. i mean, hong kong was a british colony-- why not?

Posted by lisa at 07:35 PM

the frisky

ooh, i can't believe i forgot to blog about the frisky! thanks to sarah for reminding me!

it's just whisky and fresca; i tasted the one i made for ray and it was good. i forget who suggested the fresca and whiskey combination (mary, maybe?) but i do remember that christa came up with the name. thanks to christa and ray, we had really nice whisky to make it with.

Posted by lisa at 06:57 PM

england

i had a dream last night that i was supposed to fly to england, but i was completely unprepared. i was at the airport, but i couldn't find my ticket, or my passport; i hadn't packed, and time seemed to be going by much too fast.

Posted by lisa at 01:34 PM

party!

we had a good time playing with the giant glowing eyeballs (thanks sarah and georg!! and thanks everyone who came and gave me nice pressies and brought me popcorn and ice cream and everything.)

group eyeball fun

he-male? or SHE-male?

glowing boobs

Posted by lisa at 11:19 AM

January 24, 2004

tea

at the start of the year, i gave up coffee for tea. i didn't really plan it; i knew my sugar-free (and sometimes not so sugar-free) latte habit had to go, but that was all the thought i gave it. but somehow, over the break, i became quite the tea fan.

a good while back my (now ex) bf decided to encourage me to drink tea. so he made me a little tin of different nice teas. i've had it on my desk for over a year now, basically untouched and unused, but in the last month i've finally started using it.

every time i open it and take a little flat packet of tea out, i think about how it was this nice thing he did for me. it's difficult now to remember nice things about him; a year later my memory of him has been distilled into a bitter, old before his time, frustrated and angry young man who hated his job, his family, and people in general.

obviously he must have had a bit more going for him than that, but right now i can't remember what.

it was nice of him to make me the little box of tea, though.

-:-

nobody liked him. i didn't know it until later, but no one liked him. he was unresponsive to the overtures of even the nicest and most likeable of my friends; he said less and less with every social gathering. he would sink into corners and dark rooms, trapping certain very nice friends of mine in conversations about doctor who.

even my mom, who goes out of her way to be Supportive Mom most of the time, said to me recently, "I tried to like him. I really did." he never understood that family can be friends, that hanging out with your family can be totally fun.

of course, no one is going to say anything. how can they? i tried to make a pact with one friend, that he would tell me if i start dating another person that no one likes. but i know of course that he won't. you just can't say that to a friend.

i'm terrified of getting into the same situation again. i know some danger signs to look for now-- if they don't have friends, if they don't like their family... well, that's bad. but i've never had much luck finding guys to date that are in my social circle, or who fit in with my friends. so i dunno.

Posted by lisa at 12:09 AM

January 23, 2004

goodbye, captain kangaroo...

bye bye.

Posted by lisa at 02:55 PM

kreme

every friday, my company provides a small breakfast. it's either bagels or doughnuts.

this morning i walked into the breakroom and was dismayed to discover boxes of krispy kreme's. i really wanted one-- but that's the worst possible thing i could do right now, right on up there with drinking a regular dr. pepper or eating lumps of brown sugar (which i have actually done when in the throes of a really bad sugar craving). i've been ignoring the doughnuts and bagels for over a year now so i can definitely do it. just this morning it was a little harder than usual.

there's a woman i work with who has a perfect figure (as women judge other women's figures, anyway). petite, slender. her clothes always fit perfectly; her hair is always curly and not frizzy, tousled in a flattering, expensive-haircut kind of way. her complexion is clear, her voice muted.

and she's standing there, shoving a krispy kreme into her mouth right there in the breakroom.

whatever.

Posted by lisa at 09:49 AM

January 22, 2004

sliding doors.. and cabinets... and chairs..

i've been shifting a lot of stuff around in my house this week. it's like a puzzle, one that has no right answer, though i can never quite convince myself of that. but i have finally come to the realization that if i have an idea, i might as well implement it, without worrying too much whether it's the right way to do something.

except i couldn't quite bring myself to drill holes in the floor to run cables, so i now have cabling run across the floor in a most awkward way. try not to trip if you come over. i did tape them down, at least.

but the nicest thing is... i'm making headway in the back bedroom. it's the place where the clutter goes to die, a room that has been largely non-functional almost since i moved in four years ago. it needs purging, which won't happen this week, but what i'm doing now will make it easier to purge in the next week or so.

i took a chair out of that room and added it to the living room; it looks hideous. but if i take the non-functioning sewing machine to goodwill saturday, then it can go in my bedroom, where it will look nice!

see, it's like a puzzle.

i now have the stereo in the sideboard that sits in the middle of the living room. the turntable is on top of the sideboard. i like this arrangement, because it makes it very easy to just walk up to it and put a record on.

buffy note: has anyone else noticed that robia la morte, who played jenny calendar, is now in a new york times commercial?

huh. it also turns out that she's on the cover of a prince album.

Posted by lisa at 11:23 PM

new moveable type - helps block comment spam

moveable type 2.661 has been released, and has some comment spam blocking/throttling measures in place.

Posted by lisa at 04:39 PM

January 21, 2004

my tivo got me something nice for my birthday

i just discovered that my tivo got me a nice birthday present-- it recorded "big top pee-wee"!

"Vance."
"Vance, wake up, you'll be late for school."
" Vance. "
" VAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNNCCCCCCCCCE!!!!!!!!!! "

Vance is, of course, a pig.

i also got several other nice things today, including:

Posted by lisa at 10:29 PM

must... finish... decadent... cheesecake...

so today is my birthday, and i'd decided that i hated sticking with the diet so much last year on my birthday that i'd give myself the day off today.

now i have the difficult problem of a piece of very rich cheesecake that i can't just save til tomorrow.

it's funny, when i have sugar and starchy stuff, i get this weird taste in the back of my mouth later, like when i've been in a smoky club and i feel like i have smoke coming out of all my pores and up from my lungs the next day.

dave and i went to IHOP today, which we'd never done before. i dunno, it just sounded good to me-- and he's always up for breakfast food. i had a big ol' grilled cheese and fries, my favorite!

mom and wayne took me to cheesecake factory for dinner; they were able to stick to their diet (the south beach diet, which is, oddly, both low carb and low fat), and i had fun going off of mine. i didn't care for my mojito, however-- it was big and too sweet, and not minty. my mom, who apparently makes excellent mojitos, tried a small taste and agreed that it was no good. shoot, i should have had her go up and teach the bartender how to make one :)

Posted by lisa at 09:35 PM

January 20, 2004

a thorny friendship

so after i got back from the license renewal adventure, and had dealt with the emails and voicemail that had come while i was gone, though not with the guilt over being away from work all afternoon and the stress of being in that place, i was attempting to clear away a mass of unneeded windows when my mouse focus was abruptly stolen by a message from my friend j.

j. who has not responded to most of the messages i've sent her in the last year. whether our friendship withered because she wanted it that way, or because of something i did, or circumstance, or what, i don't know, but we didn't really make it past the birth of her second child.

sometimes i wonder if i'm an unwanted tie to her former life as an artistic free-spirit; for a long time, she seemed to be being pulled reluctantly in the Beige World by her husband and by the realities of motherhood.

anyway, i find her strangely demanding now, and often incredibly irritating. she'll ask questions based on incorrect assumptions, which i have to correct to be able to answer the question, but because she's an INFP like me, she's very sensitive and it can be difficult to do this without hurting her a little.

she speaks in metaphor and flowery language which i have to sort through to understand what she's saying. it takes a lot of energy.

earlier this year i came up with a theory about INFP's. i think we often attach ourselves to someone with a different temperament who is our bridge to the practical world. someone who becomes part of our everyday life, who can say, "hey, we need to clean the kitchen," or, "hey, we need to buy your mom's birthday present this weekend, because we won't have time next week." by nature, we really suck at things like cleaning and planning. we're dreamers, we live in our heads a lot.

but some of us remain unattached, and we have to learn to be practical on our own in order to survive. i feel that i've become increasingly practical during my adult life; people who have known me for some years can attest to this, i think. and now that i've developed the non-dreamer parts of my personality, i find being around someone who hasn't almost unbearable.

INFP's are drawn to each other; there aren't very many of us (how many oversensitive dreamers does the world really need?), and we can sometimes give each other a level of understanding that others just can't. i miss the way j. and i used to be friends, but i just don't know what to do with her anymore. i hope i wasn't short with her when we messaged today, but i probably did manage to hurt her feelings in some way. oh well.

Posted by lisa at 06:44 PM

license obtained.

mood: filthy.

when you go to renew your license:

one of the women who worked there said, "it's going to be like this until february 2nd". so i asked the woman who helped me, "what happens on february 2nd?", and she said, "we don't know."

Posted by lisa at 05:13 PM

same lisa time, same lisa channel...

looks like i'll still be on from 8-10 every other tuesday, now splitting with georg. (tonight is my off night).

i got my hands on a copy of the "man with a golden gun" soundtrack, and there's some really hot stuff on the second side that i'm sure you'll be treated to if you listen.

i also found a copy of "this is reggae music, part 2". i've had my hands on the first volume for a few years; there's a great lorna bennett song that i play from time to time called "breakfast in bed". well, i listened to part 2 for the first time last night, and was amused to discover a response to her song, by her husband! (the song is all about infedelity, although it sounds as if lorna's male visitor is the person cheating on his wife or girlfriend, with no mention of lorna's own status). i have to say, though, it's an awfully good-natured response. it's hard to understand what he's saying-- he's basically just talking over a recording of her song, in a thick jamaican accent. after responding to lorna for a while, he starts berating the guy who is with him in the recording studio (also in a fairly good-natured way).

Posted by lisa at 10:07 AM

January 19, 2004

willowgate

so yesterday i happened to catch the ninth gate from the beginning. in the first scene, corso's total lack of conscience and morality is quickly and elegantly established, and i found myself giggling with a certain wicked glee.

why? why do i take joy in the portrayal of such calculated behavior?

i watched that episode of buffy recently where willow and anya accidentally release a troll from a crystal. this episode is one of the many where we see willow's burgeoning disregard for morality when her own desires conflict with what is right; she steals supplies from the magic shop freely, disregarding anya's protests.

far from taking any pleasure in it, willow's behavior really bothers me, because she's in denial that she's doing anything wrong. corso knows exactly what he's doing when he bilks a mute parapalegic's family out of tens of thousands of dollars; willow admits to no wrongdoing for many years until xander finally prevents her from destroying the entire world.

i think the thing that really bothers me about willow's behavior is that i worry about that kind of thing sneaking up on me. my moral compass is attuned enough that i think i'm in no danger of attempting to destroy the world, or even steal supplies from the magic shop, but sometimes i look back on things i've said or done and i'm a little horrified.

one of them was actually spilling water all over rick's floor friday night and not offering to clean it up, though now that i've heard about the beer-soaked pillow i feel slightly less bad, but only a little. there have been numerous rude things i've said and realized only later how terrible they were. that makes me think there are many terrible things that i never realized i've done.

i guess i don't have anywhere more to go with this.

Posted by lisa at 10:28 PM

food to try

ok, i want to remember this, which i came up with tonight:

eat with chopsticks.

seen tonight on the surreal gourmet and i want to try:

cook covered with foil. chicken thighs are supposedly very forgiving; they never dry out. maybe this would be a good crock pot recipe.

also seen on the s.g.; maybe i can create a low-carb version, because they looked so yummy, and you can stick it in a pineapple and it looks very tiki.

coconut shrimp lollipops

put peeled, deviened, dried-off shrimp in little pinwheels on skewers.

batter:

heat 3/4 full deep saucepan of peanut oil to frying temp (test with a cube of bread)

dip shrimp in batter, then in coconut. then fry! then, stick them in a pineapple so they look cute.

Posted by lisa at 09:57 PM

linn

sometime this weekend i had a dream about a guy that i'm somewhat interested in; in the dream, i kept trying to catch up with him, but always seemed to be trailing behind. (gee, what could it mean? sometimes my unconscious mind is very obvious.)

anyway, i remember seeing him get in his car, and at first i thought it was a honda del sol; then i realized that it was a blue mazda. the license plate said "LINN MRX". i thought, he must be a big fan of linn audio components, and i imagined going to his house for the first time and seeing a linn turntable, and saying "even my family doesn't have this stuff!"

not that we're actually related to the linns that make linn audio components, but we probably were hundreds of years ago; i mean, there aren't that many linns in the world.

Posted by lisa at 08:36 PM

oh, hell yeah.

who is the queen of the clean and organized closet? you got it. i am. me! i totally wailed on my front hall closet tonight. guests can now be invited to hang their coats there without fear. also, i can find things.

the giftwrap crap was distilled into three small, labelled bags that fit on the shelf.
bags & brollies hang on pegs on the wall.

Posted by lisa at 08:31 PM

craps.

spotted in one of those annoying mega crafts stores.

Posted by lisa at 08:20 PM

January 17, 2004

first roswell anxiety dream of the year

sometime during the night-- probably around the time of my 6am cat wake-up call-- i had my first roswell anxiety dream this year. the dream usually goes like this: i'm in the car, going to roswell, and i've made no preparations, the web site isn't ready, and i haven't even brought my laptop or packed any clothes.

this one was slightly different, though, because somewhere in there i thought to myself, "oh, i'm having my roswell anxiety dream. ho-hum."

Posted by lisa at 08:35 PM

...the midday sleep of the mildly and justifiably hung over

actually, i made an effort to eat really well before rick's party last night, so i wouldn't get messed up like i did at mary's party. and that worked out pretty well. split a thermos full of cosmo's with christa, and got some little bottles of fancy sparkling water for sarah, since she was nice enough to drive us all over town last night.

before the party, georg, sarah and i went to a/v geeks. sometimes a/v geeks is hit or miss; sometimes there are boring moments, or films that don't quite work for everyone-- but last night was... bad. really bad. skip showed a film called the war game. sarah has done a good job of describing it for which i am thankful, because it means that i don't have to relive the memory of that film in order to describe it. i'll just say that i could have lived happily without ever hearing someone describe, in detail, exactly what radiation poisoning does to the human body.

he also showed two other films which were meant to balance it out, and failed to. one was an animated short called "the great snit". i thought some of the drawing bore a more than passing resemblance to yellow submarine so i attempted to look it up. in so doing, i made the dismaying discovery that the voices of the animated characters in yellow submarine are not the beatles themselves, but actors! that makes me very sad. i still love the movie, though.

at the party, i found i was having trouble with the question, "so what do you do?" i mean, props to rick for having a party where strangers actually talked to each other. but i couldn't stomach that question. i had sarah and christa practically (but not literally) rolling on the floor with laughter, but unfortunately i'm afraid that ricks' roommate lauren didn't feel like she was in on the joke. i told her that i was a cultural anthropologist; then i told her, "i play soccer". sarah told her that i own an art car (and had the chance to get in a jab about the independent's art car), and that i design tarot decks. we should have told her that sarah works at WCPE, but christa had already given a serious answer to the question, so it was too late.

actually, i should have told her that sarah drives out to roswell every summer for a convention. duh!! oh well, next time... of course, the great secret that we didn't let her in on is... we all do the same damn thing!!

sarah wore the dress, and i wore this sort of all-fuschia knit ensemble; in a party full of people wearing strange and flamboyant clothes i believe we may have been the most brightly dressed. jason chose to wear the star wars t-shirt that ian had given both of us, and it kind of gave me the wiggins to have something very ian-like present in the room, like a sort of ghost walking around amongst us.

surprise buffy-related piece of information from alicia; joss' father teaches at UNC! niku said that he may try to bring joss to guest lecture at the buffy course that is taught there.

Posted by lisa at 11:23 AM

January 16, 2004

lunchrospection

so today i did a very odd thing. i drove across the street to wendy's and got the exact same thing i would have gotten had i walked to the company cafeteria, except it wasn't as tasty, and cost more. and involved driving rather than walking.

it wasn't until i returned to my desk to eat it that i really gave much thought to what i'd done, and why.

and i think the reason why walking to the cafeteria alone and getting a salad and bringing it back to my desk and eating it alone is so unappealing, is because i had no choice but to do that for many, many years. and now i just don't want to.

for the first seven years i worked here (this is now my fifteenth year), i maintained phone coverage from 9-5, usually switching off with just one other person. between the two of us, we had to be sure those phones were answered by a live person during office hours. and usually, that person was the only person i really knew very well, well enough to eat lunch with. and we couldn't eat lunch together in the cafe-- because one of us always had to cover. so we ate at our desks, out in the hall, in front of the bathrooms, with big mobs of tech guys passing by on their way to lunch, sticking their noses into our plates and asking, "what's for lunch?" every damned day.

ok, so i didn't have the greatest social skills. i could have done better with the lunch companionship if i'd tried harder. but that's the way it was for a long time.

now i'm kind of addicted to lunch companionship and/or freedom. i can come and go as i please; any of my co-workers can go with me. it's nice.

Posted by lisa at 12:29 PM

ilovemycarilovemycarilovemycar!

ilovemycarsomuch!

i didn't even realize how much i missed him until i got him back.

mary was asking me about him being in the shop, and i told her that i am hopeful i can take him to 300k miles, he is running so good at 100k that this seems very possible. and then when he reaches 300k, he can retire completely and i will put him in a museum. the Museum of Spacepod. and then we will be listed on the roadside america web site, and people caravaning to roswell in the year 2020 will stop by the Museum of Spacepod to see the car that helped start it all.

and i will even have his original release bearing to display in the museum.

Posted by lisa at 12:19 PM

January 15, 2004

spacepod is home!

had a nice long chat with mark (who assures me that i have no bad clutch habits that need breaking-- in fact he said this is the first late model TDI that he's replaced the clutch on without needing to also replace the flywheel). he also introduced me to his friend jackson who recently moved to town and is now working at maxwell. he said, "this man is my HERO! he kept me calm through this whole thing." so yay for jackson who is, may i add, rather adorable and very sweet. let's hear it for hottie vw technicians!

mark gave me the wayward release bearing which does not normally have a big groove on the top.

and the broken bolts, which are normally several inches longer.

mark also got the parts guy to pull out my dead clutch and showed it to me. can you spot the broken tooth? it's not the big gap...

he also showed me the clutch plate and showed me that i still had a few millimeters before it was worn down-- he said maybe another 20 - 30k of wear left.

and then we talked for a while about biodiesel and my web site-- everyone got a kick out of the fact that i wanted to photograph the clutch. i also asked mark about the turbo-- and he assured me that the biggest killer of turbos was not changing the oil, and that my car is not smoking at all, really, so no need to fret.

he said he'd also remarked that the car was running really well when he was test driving it, and that it had very little diesel smell, which we figure is due to the biodiesel. well, personally, i think my car runs really well because i maintain it and because i have a great mechanic! but the biodeisel is supposed to lubricate the engine better, so a case could be made.

anyway, it was all to the good. i am happy, and so is spacepod.

the clutch is really light now and feels totally different. in fact i almost stalled him out at the first light, just like i did the day i picked him up :)

Posted by lisa at 06:35 PM

spacepod all better now.

got a message from jeff; spacepod is ready for me to pick up.

whew. i thought i would hear from them earlier, so i was afraid something else might be wrong. i'm relieved.

Posted by lisa at 03:10 PM

January 14, 2004

little darlings

i'm happy to have happened upon little darlings, a film i dimly remember from what must have been my early adolescence.

how can you not love a movie that features kristy mcnichol kicking a guy in the nuts in the first five minutes of the film?

and-- surprise! cynthia nixon in her film debut, as a blonde hippie girl.

i've gotta remember mcnichol's approach. she paddles a canoe up to a line of boys sitting on a dock, and calls out to matt dillon. he swims out to her. she says, "Get in, sucker," smiles, and hands him her cig once he gets in. and then paddles off with him to the woods.

simple, effective.

Posted by lisa at 11:48 PM

house dreams

when the pager woke me up this morning, i remember being in the midst of a house dream.

i have house dreams a lot, and they almost always take place in one particular house.

it's my grandparent's house in upstate new york. this was a huge farmhouse; someone once told me it was built around the time of the civil war. my grandparents bought it sometime after all four of my uncles were born. it was situated on a good sized plot of land, most of which was rented out to a local farmer named bruce who took me on his tractor once when i was a little girl (so little that i think i was only wearing underpants).

the porch was inhabited by dozens of farm cats in the summer, mostly kittens. across the street was another patch of land covered in woods; my grandfather would mow a path through the woods leading down to a stream paved with large, round cobblestones. when i was little, and even when i wasn't so little, "across the street" was a magical fairyland inhabited by sprites and nymphs; the kittens were my playthings, and a favorite went with me everywhere.

there were dirt roads behind the house leading out into fields, looping around in ways that seemed strange to me; crumbling outbuildings with mysterious farm-specific purposes, some inhabited by the alluring carcasses of old cars and other tantalizing junk. "across the street" was also the graveyard for many old cars-- maybe spending time in the presence of dead triumphs and volkswagens during my formative years has something to do with my old car fascination now.

the house itself was so large that you really could wander through it, much as i do in my dreams. there was a room specifically for the grand piano, furnished with a formal portrait of my grandmother and an antique sofa; there was a darkroom and a tuba room and my grandfather's workshop where he built tuba mutes and restored old cameras. there were attic bedrooms with slanted ceilings, a front and a back staircase, and a front door that no one ever used. there was a cedar closet that stayed cool in the summer, and a formal front hall that housed the organ that now resides in my house.

the tv rested on a large, low table that someone once told me was used for butchering pigs. the porch included a room, decrepit and falling in on itself most of my life, later restored, call the "cheese room"-- i guess cheese was once made there.

i can remember more detail about this house than i can almost any other. in my dreams, it changes, and rarely looks the way it did in life, but i always know when i'm in that house.

anyway, in last night's dream, it actually looked pretty true to life. i don't remember much, but i think i was looking for a bathroom (and sure enough when i woke up, i had to pee). Crazy Guy Who Dissed Me-- you know, the schitzophrenic guy i went out with a couple of times last year-- was there, oddly.

Posted by lisa at 07:59 PM

"...but he did save your transmission."

kind of weird to find out after the fact that one's entire transmission was in danger of needing replacement-- because of two badly engineered bolts-- but that one's mechanic has saved it by spending the morning drilling said bolts out.

so replacing the bolts, which hold the transmission in place, is a little more, but there ya go. i kind of want to bring mark cookies or something; he didn't have to drill the bolts out, he could have just said, to hell with it, she can buy a whole new transmission.

jeff sounded even sadder than usual when he told me all of this, and kept saying, "i'm sorry".

he said the clutch plate would have gone in about 10k miles, so this was coming. at least it didn't happen while i was on the way to roswell... which is where i'll be in about 10k miles, i think.

yeah, i don't even like to think about that...

Posted by lisa at 02:38 PM

feh. feh.

4:54 am. pager goes off. it's something that requires attention so i get up and dressed and log in. 2 parts out of a dozen in a system that has a lot of redundancy are down; it doesn't actually require my attention.

5:17am. pager goes off. it tells me that a particular server is up.
5:18am. pager goes off. it tells me this server is down.

i got the pages in reverse order; all is actually well with the server.

5:27am. i am starting to drift off finally. there's a large crashing sound in another room. i decide to get up and make sure the cat is still alive. he is; in fact, he looks like he's having a pretty good time.

5:54am. pager goes off. it alerts me to the fact that the system that paged me an hour ago is now ok.

went in to work; gave up. home now. cold is kicking my ass.

Posted by lisa at 11:41 AM

January 13, 2004

this is why i read the 19th floor.

over there on the right, you'll see a link to a blog called "the 19th floor". it's written by a man who does not have the use of most of his body. i believe he writes by puffing air into a tube.

anyway, some of it is just day to day boring stuff, but he's extremely intelligent and insightful, and is a lawyer working in the field of disability law, and every so often he blogs about something related to his field or about his experience as a disabled person. like how his neighbor complains about the noise his ventilator makes. you know, the machine that keeps him alive, that he must rely on 24-7? nice. and i thought my neighbors were a little lame.

this is a good example of the kind of post that makes me continue to read his blog long after most people who found it via boingboing have given up.

i love his insight into the life of disabled people.

he also blogged something interesting recently; that disabled people refer to non-disabled people as TAB's. Temporarily Able Bodied, i believe. This is in recognition of the fact that sooner or later, some kind of disability is going to get you, if you live long enough. Even if it's just arthritis-- your body is going to let you down in some way as you age.

everyone hates that, but as joy has recently stated, one must accept it.

Posted by lisa at 11:07 PM

feh.

see, the nice thing about the blog is i can whine, and you don't have to read it.

commence whine:

paged at 5am. bogus page. fell back asleep.
paged at 6am. not even a page, the pager just mysteriously went off. sort of fell back asleep.
alarm at 7am.
work.
work until 7pm.
eat the insides out of two chick-fil-a sandwiches in the c-f-a parking lot. yum, dinner.
dash home; burn cd; feed cat; change clothes; explain to cat that although he is cute, i have to go. note in passing that my internet connection is hosed, think nothing of it.
radio show. show actually rocks pretty hard despite the fact that i feel sicker and more dizzy and out of it as the night wears on.
attempt to buy a diet coke to snap me out of it. the machine is out of diet coke and won't give me my money back, so i get a dr. pepper and stare at it longingly until bendte arrives.
give dr. pepper to bendte, for which she is grateful because she has not had dinner.
get home. realize that the fact that i have no internet means that my show didn't record as scheduled. dammit!!

end whine.

Posted by lisa at 10:48 PM

on air tonight

from 8-10pm.

playlist will be here

Posted by lisa at 04:10 PM

January 12, 2004

another gem from Woody

from the fella on the bug list who is cannot write worth a damn. posted specifically to make jason apoplectic again.

the topic at hand is extended warranties, and the companies that offer them.

"Hello folks

Back in the mid 70's they were introduced, most all went upside down. At
least those I was familiarly with. With the
introduction of the bunny and a little time, there debt was so great, even
our dealer and a lot of others in No Calif
dealers did. So far the only warranty I know is with the purchase of a used
VW. It's called a VW Certified. I know
this, as I used it. A complete long block (eng) and a power steering
pressure hose. If you want an extended
warranty be very careful, they are expensive and also look for coverage and
a deductible."

now, i am guessing that "the bunny" is a reference to the vw rabbit.

Posted by lisa at 09:28 PM

narrowing the car thing

i think i've narrowed the car ideas down a good bit and am trying them on for size, mentally.

i'd prefer the latter, but i would definitely have to find some good back roads to take to and from work. even the back way that we discovered years ago is getting a little busy. i took it today, and imagined what it would be like to drive that route in a car without much in the way of acceleration or braking power, a car that i wouldn't want to take over 55mph. it was a little scary.

i like the aircooled idea because i want to learn how to do my own work on a car. it's been making me crazy that i'm helpless when it comes to something i depend upon so heavily. aircooled is by all accounts the easiest system to learn on. it also means-- hopefully-- very little cost overall.

i like a beetle, ghia or thing because i know i could tow any one of them with spacepod.

and i like a convertible because... well, because it's a convertible!

but of course, i am sure i'll change my mind again in a few days. just watch.

Posted by lisa at 08:43 PM

but my horoscope SAID it...

according to my em & lo horoscope.

"If you'd stop feeling sorry for yourself for, like, five minutes, you'd notice that your friend is trying to set you up with someone. Who knows if this will lead to yet another dating disaster, but at least then you'll have a new story to whine about. Because frankly, we're bored of your current sob story."

i'm pretty sure i haven't been whining, but if someone is trying to fix me up with someone, just go ahead and hit me over the head with it. you know i'm dense that way.

oh, what's that you say? horoscopes are bullshit?

ok, whatever. nevermind.

Posted by lisa at 08:23 PM

starlite passing

i was poking around on drive-ins.com today, and was very sad to read this on the starlite page

"I wanted to let everyone know that Kathy Bernardz, Bobs Girlfriend of 28 years died 9/16/03 at their home. Kathy will be missed by all."

xa and i got to know kathy when we set up the first starlite night for xdu. i know she was in poor health then, but had started look a lot better in the last few years. i'm very sorry to hear that she is gone. bob is a sweet guy and i hope he's ok.

Posted by lisa at 02:04 PM

NC DL renewal

for those of us with Significant Birthdays coming up...

i'll probably try the Cary office one day this week if i can.

Posted by lisa at 12:43 PM

January 11, 2004

working girl

i'm watching 'working girl' on tv.

the first time i saw it was in the theater when it was released. i saw it with a very strange guy that i met through the radio station in greensboro. he didn't work at the station; he was a listener.

he had this bizarre fixation on women with very pale, translucent skin. i'm pretty sure he was actually gay.

he didn't like the movie, but i sure did.

Posted by lisa at 05:15 PM

slim fast

whoopi goldberg NEEDS TO LOSE THE GLASSES.

Posted by lisa at 12:16 PM

daily driver

ok, i am facing the reality that sometime in the forseeable future-- like before the end of 2004-- i'm going to need to have a new daily driver so spacepod can get a break and go into semi-retirement.

problem is, i can't make a decision about what kind of vehicle that new daily driver should be. sarah asked me what i was considering, and i wrote out the whole long list, which i'm going to re-post here, more for my own records than because i think it will be of great interest to other people.

too expensive to buy and/or maintain:

may not be reliable, but i could learn to work on it myself. not safe in a crash by current standards. would have to wake up earlier b/c driving it over 55 every day would spell an early death to the engine:

same issues as above, but with higher initial cost and may be harder to work on myself:

other options:

Posted by lisa at 10:49 AM

January 10, 2004

camper desire

i really want a vw camper van. i love the utter utility of them; they're like gigantic, breadbox-like swiss army knives.

but to say that the many versions of this vehicle are confusing would be a mild understatement. vw fans have a tendency to assume that you know as much as they do about the subject, and even though dreadlocks boy gave me "bus 101" once upon a time-- which included a foray into the vanagons-- i can't say that i'm much the wiser. for some reason, i find it totally confusing that there could be either an aircooled or a watercooled engine in what is roughly the same body style (the early vanagons).

so i was delighted to find this page, which pretty much explains it all.

sigh. i'm working myself up to the idea that i'm going to have to have a second daily driver sometime fairly soon. i don't know that one of these things would really be suitable though.

i should just buy an inexpensive used honda. but i'm kind of addicted to the vw thing now.

Posted by lisa at 09:12 PM

'the gleaners and i'

the gleaners and i

i have it now; if you'd like to come over and watch with me, drop me a line.

Posted by lisa at 08:25 PM

use for dead rope lights?

it looks like most of the rope lights that i took down from my living room a couple of months ago are now dead. i'm not quite sure how that happened, but they definitely don't function as lights any longer.

if anyone has any ideas on a useful purpose that they could be put to now, i'd love to hear them. i've got nothin' but i sure as heck don't want to throw away all this plastic.

Posted by lisa at 07:36 PM

more swag for YOU - vhs and beta(!) tapes

i cleaned out my collection of VHS tapes last weekend. i have about ten quadrillion tapes which i used to record buffy and other shows, which i now have no use for. they can be yours! just let me know if you want some.

i also have some titles on vhs which are so amazingly crappy, i won't be able to sell them to nice price. you are also welcome to them. they include:

(for the record all but two of these were given to me by an ex-boyfriend who got them at a game con. if you would like to guess which two were not bought at the game con, i would be interested to hear what your guesses are. one is obvious; the other, less so.)

and this amazes even me, but i also have a sealed, blank beta tape, as well as two beta tapes which bear the labels "easy rider" and "harry connick jr., dec. '89". i can't believe i actually had access to a working betamax vcr as late as 1989, or that i had the poor taste to record harry connick jr., but there it is. i guess i did.

Posted by lisa at 05:25 PM

yummy stuff from my pantry that you can have!

ok, i don't know if this is tacky or not, but what the hell.

avid followers of this blog (all both of them) may recall that i recently cleaned out my pantry. i have several things which are still quite good, but that i don't want anymore. and i'd just love to give them to YOU!

let me know if you are interested in any of these things.

Posted by lisa at 05:16 PM

time for a new clutch.

i was right, it's the clutch. mark says the release bearing definitely has to be replaced, and he figures he'll have to replace the whole clutch once he's in there. it's not cheap, and most of the cost is labor. jeff says it's a full day job. so if anything looks like it'll need replacing any time soon, mark might as well go ahead and replace it now.

mark said he felt no slippage so it should not need a new flywheel-- which is good because that would be an additional $800.

jeff hooked me up with a really nice loaner jetta. he says it'll most likely be tuesday or wednesday before spacepod is ready.

big props to dave for rescuing me the other night-- and to christa for taking me to get the loaner yesterday.

Posted by lisa at 04:06 PM

January 09, 2004

kitty!

my home office comes complete with a kitty in a box.

he's looking very cute in the collar i knit him, today, too.

music: divaville on my ipod! (i got the "tivo for radio" thing all set up and it works great.)

Posted by lisa at 01:33 PM

even better.

sometimes i just love technology.

i recently got a little doodad called an "iTrip". it plugs into the top of my iPod and transmits the sound over a low-power FM signal. it works much better than any of the similar devices i've used in the past, because it has a digital tuner and you choose the exact station via the iPod itself, not with a dumb little wheel.

so i turns out it works from the kitchen. so now i'm sitting in the kitchen, working, listening to the stereo in the living room but controlling it remotely (volume and all) via the iPod.

Posted by lisa at 10:59 AM

home!

dave and i got partway in, the truck in front of us hit a big pile of slush and completely blinded us for several seconds, and i said, "um, maybe we should go back home."

so we did.

i'm sitting at the bar in the kitchen working from home wirelessly. sas STILL isn't closed. honestly.

i asked a co-worker who did come in to transcribe some post-its for me; that's my system for tasks when i have an overwhelming project. my coworkers all hate it; they want me to use something electronic. but it mostly works really well for me.

anyway, i forgot to warn him that there were also 100 million post its in other parts of my office-- i only need the six that are stuck to my desk. he freaked.

that'll teach him to come in to work when it's snowing :)

christa was told to stay home

joe hasn't been

sarah hasn't weighed in yet but she always stays home :) georg says he's at work.

Posted by lisa at 10:48 AM

snow!!

it's SNOWING! it's beeeyoootiful. i can't believe they haven't closed work. i can't believe dave is actually going to drive in this, but i haven't heard from him, so i assume he'll be arriving at my house in a few minutes to pick me up. who knows.

mo is sitting in the window, watching the snow, his tail switching very gently back and forth.

Posted by lisa at 08:28 AM

January 08, 2004

the picture says it all.

it was shifting great when i pulled out of the lot this afternoon, so i decided to try running some errands. after the second stop, the gears clenched up again. i finally got it completely stuck in reverse and it wouldn't crank at all.

called maxwell and they said they'd never heard of anything like it. me, i think it's the clutch. we'll see.

Posted by lisa at 08:07 PM

...and now it's fine again.

so apparently before i drive it, i need to have someone come look down in the hood with me.

charles went out and had a look at it with me. i wish i had my bentley manual with me; charles noticed that it looks like the xmission linkages are just cables that can be adjusted, possibly without tools.

we also found some loose black foam rubber floating around below the xmission stuff which i pulled out. god knows what the hell that was.

Posted by lisa at 02:11 PM

yep.

finally decided to cave in to char-grill craving at lunch; car decided we weren't going to char-grill, or anywhere much.

same problem as last night... can only get it into gear with great effort.

interesting new facts: the problem goes away completely when the engine is off. starting the car while in first with clutch pushed in results in hesitation while starting and rough idle.

i'm guessing clutch problem, but what do i know?

maxwell can't see me til tuesday (Stupid New Guy answered the phone, dammit. I hate talking to him.) so this may be my big chance to try the new place in cary.

this stuff really stresses me out.

Posted by lisa at 01:13 PM

January 07, 2004

whew.

i'm delighted to report that the car has magically fixed itself. on the advice of the newbug list, i had someone come over to work the gears while i looked at the linkage with a flashlight. nothing down in there-- and ray had no trouble shifting. i tried it; no trouble. drove to the mall and back; no trouble.

hope it stays that way. maybe something got down in there but was knocked out by the bouncy entry into my driveway, or my final two-handed push into first to get it INTO the driveway.

Posted by lisa at 11:17 PM

the car knows it's out of warranty.

suddenly, on my drive home from work, i could barely get spacepod into gear. it seemed to get worse as the drove wore on. by the time i was pulling into my driveway, i was trying to get him into first (after trying to just coast in while in neutral) with both hands and couldn't do it until i really put some muscle behind it.

this is all gears, though 1st, 2nd, and 3rd are the worst. this is definitely sudden. i've had some troubles getting into first in the past but shifting into second then first usually was quite easy. in fact, i recall doing some of that this morning with no problems.

i tried putting the clutch in and out multiple times with no improvement, and i'm definitely getting the clutch all the way in.

crap crap crap crapcrapcrap.

i just know this is going to be expensive.

Posted by lisa at 05:54 PM

energy

me: you know what's weird? i've been feeling like a need to exercise.
dave: that's not weird. a lot of people feel that after christmas.
me: no, like a physical need, not a moral one.
dave: oh, that is weird!

at lunch today the line for the entree was astoundingly well-populated. as i was in the (much shorter) salad bar line, i thought to myself, "i wonder what they're having that's causing such a long line?" and then i thought, "crack." and then i thought, "no, deep-fried crack." and then i started giggling and trying not to giggle, which probably made me look like a total crazy person. but when i told dave about this internal conversation later, he giggled too so i felt like less of a freak.

and then a few minutes later, while dave was shaking his salad (which he always does), i thought of it again and started giggling uncontrollably. dave said, "what, my salad shaking is that funny?" "no!" i was giggling too hard to get any other words out. "what, did i spill something on me?" which made me giggle even more furiously, so i started waving my arms around and trying to say, "no, no, it's not you!" i did finally manage to say that and the ever-reasssuring, "insecure much??"

me: (as the elevator takes an unusually long time to arrive) big elevator day, i guess.
dave: guess so.
me: you wanna take the stairs?
dave: really?
me: yeah! see, i wasn't kidding when i told you i had way too much energy.

sound track to the day: trojan back catalog gems d/l from itunes.
time waster of the day (besides blogging): researching "tivo for radio". a promising hardware solution, sadly not yet available: the radio shark. a promising software solution: radiolover. can't wait to go home and d/l. maybe i can catch jonathan's show, which is in the middle of the night for me here on the east coast.

Posted by lisa at 12:58 PM

January 06, 2004

bubba ho-tep

via alicia, bless her.

Saturday, January 24th, 7:45pm, Carolina Theater.

From the Bubba Ho-Tep web site

"Based on the Bram Stoker Award nominee short story by acclaimed author Joe R. Lansdale, Bubba Ho-tep tells the 'true' story of what really did become of Elvis.
      We find the King (Bruce Campbell) as an elderly resident in an East Texas rest home, who switched identities with an Elvis impersonator years before his “death”, then missed his chance to switch back. Elvis teams up with Jack (Ossie Davis), a fellow nursing home resident who thinks that he is actually President John F. Kennedy, and the two valiant old codgers sally forth to battle an evil Egyptian entity who has chosen their long-term care facility as his happy hunting grounds… "

help make my birthday special and happy, go with me to see this movie. and we can get drunk at my house afterward!

Posted by lisa at 06:43 PM

pink!

pink pink pink pink pinkpinkpink!

ipodmini.jpg

Posted by lisa at 02:30 PM

sleep

christa wonders what happens while she's sleeping.

i've always wondered what happens when i sleep, and i've considered videotaping myself, but i'm afraid to. what if i talk? that would be creepy, like some strange other person, not me, surfacing when my guard is down.

when i was a young teenager, i had surgery on my jaw. when i first came to after the surgery, while i was still half out, i went wild. they had to get an orderly to restrain me and they had to put me under again. i wonder if that strange wild person takes over when i sleep.

Posted by lisa at 12:50 PM

January 05, 2004

hoarders and collectors, addendum

i was just thinking about the recent (?) formalization of "scrapbooking" as a hobby. i thought it was completely absurd until i saw a clean sweep ep. in which a woman basically just had a big bin of stuff that triggered particular memories for her. of course, in a bin they were doing her no good; she never looked at them, yet was dead set against giving any of it up. so the origanizer got her to commit to putting them into scrapbooks, so they'd be organized and easily enjoyed. (like all the work my grandfather did on family photo albums with captions, that told the story of our family history.)

the attachment to physical objects. the organizers are fond of saying, "this represents the memory. this isn't the memory." people buy that, but i don't; the physical object triggers the memory. that's why i like to keep certain things around that have no practical purpose.

you'll pry my europe journals out of my cold, dead hands, no matter how badly they're stored, or how infrequently i read them (for the record, they're stored very well right now, and i ran across them just this weekend.)

Posted by lisa at 01:52 PM

hoarders and collectors

my favorite subject!

dave and i discussed this at lunch. there could be a great documentary in this.

Posted by lisa at 12:56 PM

January 04, 2004

night

oh man, it is such a beautiful night.

i'd be ashamed to admit even to my closest friends just how much telly i've watched during the holiday (i go back to work tomorrow for the first time since the 24th). but the gorgeousness coming through the living room window right now has made tv and all other forms of noise seem quite tacky and unnecessary.

i also saw 'lost in translation' again tonight, on impulse. it just seemed like the sort of night for it. and a good way to salvage my last day of freedom. i happened to see rick, up in the booth as i was walking in. it's nice when someone you know is the projectionist. like they're showing the movie just for you.

this holiday hasn't slipped through my fingers like others have. i've gotten a lot done, and i've spent a lot of satisfying time alone. (perhaps a little too much.)

last night we went to mary's birthday party. phone cam pics are up here. worth noting is the rather amusing cake, on which mary's name is spelled wrong. (but it was delicious cake, and everyone found it quite funny.) Mary was serenaded by her gothy friend whose name i should know, but don't.

it was distressing at times to be one of only two single people at this fairly well populated party, and i fucked myself up pretty well by drinking wine, eating cake, and not much else during the time between 6:30pm and 2am. i woke with a bizarre sort of hunger hangover, but nothing a liter of water and a good breakfast couldn't fix.

there was a guy there named steven who i used to know about eleven years ago. he dated one of my housemates for a few months, and i haven't seen him since. he actually moved away a year or so after that, and only recently moved back to the area. he's now married to one of mary's old college friends. it was interesting to catch him up on what's happened to those people since then, and to recall certain very specific memories i have of him, both of which actually involve me feeling embarassed. as is almost always the case, when i told him where i worked, he said he had a friend who works there too. however, it almost never happens that the friend works in my department (as his does). so that was odd.

i don't think i've ever seen christa and ray stay to be the last people at a party. i kept waiting to get the sign that they were ready to go, and it wasn't until well after all the other guests had left that ray came over to say they were ready. at some point scott had moved the coffee table out of the living room, and started with the dancing. when was the last time i've seen christa dance? jeez, i don't know. we all were. and ray and scott bonded over kiss, yelling the lyrics, waving fists, and air guitaring furiously.

it was nice, in a way, that in the end it was just us. me and ray and christa and scott and mary. well, scott's roommate sean and his girlfriend were there too but you know what i mean. like, just the core scoobies :)

(and btw, ray is so totally hooked on buffy now. i've told him to pace himself, though, since the season six dvd's won't be out til july. he's about to start season three. i think once he gets to four, sarah and i will want to watch 'hush' with him. and we'll definitely want to watch 'once more, with feeling' when that rolls around.)

Posted by lisa at 09:54 PM

January 03, 2004

swimmingly

i dreamed this morning that i was taking a college course, i think in information architecture. i remember the professor was a very appealing man, and i thought i'd seen him on the personals and passed him over, and wondered, if he was my teacher, if it was ok for me to respond to his personal now.

the entire class was on a huge sofa, very deep, and very, very wide. jason was sitting behind me. at some point, the sofa became immersed in water-- it was actually situated along the edge of a large swimming pool. i could see the lane markings in tile along the floor.

the professor had an infant, which he had to get to his ex-wife. i was disappointed that class was over, but pleased that he knew my name after just one class. i felt quite comfortable speaking up in class, which is how he knew me.

i remember thinking he was a very good teacher.

Posted by lisa at 09:47 AM

January 02, 2004

the kitchen project

over the break, i've been gradually attacking my food pantry, which has been a huge project.

not the least of it has been the spices. over the years i've accumulated (and subsequently hidden in mounds of clutter) many little jars and baggies of spices. in the last week, i've unearthed all of these, thrown out lots of them, added an additional spice rack to accomodate everything, and stored them all in labelled glass jars.

because some of the spices were quite old, i had the opportunity to see what a difference glass jars make in keeping the spices fresh. the little plastic baggies that you get at wellspring are the worst of course-- most of that stuff had to be tossed. the plastic bottles from the grocery store aren't that great, either. really aromatic stuff like cinnamon and dill survive ok, but more subtle things just lose all their pretty smell if kept too long in plastic jars.

to give you some idea of just how old some of these jars were-- when i went to recycle them, i found that some of the plastic jars didn't have recycle marks on them-- so they had to go into the trash, sadly. (i really wanted to think of a way to re-use them, because they're so cute, but i couldn't think of anything.)

here are the old spice jars, cleaned and drying.

now, the original set of spice jars came from sarah bell and claire ashby. yep, rock star spices! i moved into their apartment, about a million years ago, and they left some stuff behind that they didn't want anymore.

i'm not sure why sarah left the spices behind; in fact she told me that she always thought that having a spice rack meant that you are an adult. one thing that has always amused me is the jar of star anise. why they would have whole pieces of star anise is beyond me; i've never seen it called for in any recipe. i did once use some of it for an aromatic collage. so i did decide to keep the anise, even though i may never use it. unfortunately, sarah's hand-written label had faded and peeled so badly that i had to replace it.

so here's the mostly-completed project (a few additional jars are drying after washing.) it looks so small, but it probably took me an entire day, all together, to do this.

those who have fed my cat can attest to what an improvement this is... but the really scary part remains-- the floor of the pantry, which is full of... i'm not sure what, actually. well, i have some idea. i'm kind of afraid. i know there's a bottle of floor wax that i bought about eight years ago and never used. not quite sure what to do with it now.

Posted by lisa at 09:02 PM

bob the bunny

i dreamed this morning that i found a bunny named bob living in my bedroom. moseman got him away from me to "play" with him, but i got bob back in time. moseman did hurt bob's little foot though.

don't worry bob, i will take good care of you.

when i woke up, i scolded mo for try to kill bob.

(i also had a horrible dream that chris reappeared and wanted to go to a show with me and was acting all lovey dovey. i almost fell for it, but then remembered how awful he was and didn't. i also got a small dream revenge on him-- his always-perfect hair looked terrible. hah!)

Posted by lisa at 11:02 AM

January 01, 2004

want to run movieminder?

looks like ross is looking for someone to take over movieminder.

Posted by lisa at 07:00 PM