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February 29, 2004

ode to vogs - day five

i bought these about a year ago. the colors were wacky, but i felt sure that with some work, i could find a way to wear them. they come in black, but i decided i had too many black shoes, and wanted some shoes with color.

i finally did find an outfit they looked good with, but it wasn't until october. what i didn't realize all summer is that these are fall and winter shoes-- they are just too heavy and dark to work with summer clothes!

i was actually still somewhat entrenched in daily boy-wear at the time i got these, but a transformation occured rapidly after that-- my weight loss reached a point where i needed to start shopping for clothes, which quickly became a frequent occupation. suddenly, i could fit into clothes i actually wanted to wear-- and some of those fluevogs that had seemed hopelessly out of place in my wardrobe became quite useful.

these have a rounded toe, which is not popular right now, but i think it's adorable, and makes one's feet look small and cute. they're also very stable, but will hurt my feet if i stand up in them for very long.

in fact, i liked this style so much that i bought another pair of fluevogs in the fall of 2003 that are in the same family. we'll get to those next...

Posted by lisa at 11:08 AM

February 28, 2004

O.D.

i've overdosed on both chocolate and movies today.

too much, too much!

Posted by lisa at 11:01 PM

giving in to the whole oscars thing

so a friend of a friend of mine gives an oscars party every year. i've never gone before because it's such total bullshit, but this year i decided that i'd just take it at face value and have fun with it. so i'm going to the party tomorrow and i've been watching movies like crazy lately.

including...

of course, i'd already seen 'lost in translation' twice, which i absolutely loved. murray should win best actor, but probably won't because his performance is actually subtle.

so i've seen a bunch of movies i probably wouldn't have otherwise, and will be going to a very silly party populated entirely with women. stuff like this just gives me that "bread and circuses" feeling.

Posted by lisa at 05:41 PM

hackers love tommy tutone

thanks to sarah for leading me to this, my favorite of the batch.

Posted by lisa at 10:21 AM

ode to vogs - day four - the witchy shoes

well, i've skipped over a pair, chronologically, but that's because i have to save those for last.

as you can see here, though, i was getting a lot bolder.

style? check. lots of it. there's a part of me that's never let go of wanting to be a goth girl. not goth like it is now, but like it was then. a lot more Wednesday Addams-- a lot less blue and orange fake dreadlocks. and if these aren't wednesday addams shoes, well, then i don't know what are. i think it's also worth noting that they are quite pointy! yes, i actually had pointy shoes before everyone was going on about pointy shoes. not that i wore them much-- still don't, actually, as they are still slightly outrageous and a bit too large.

heel? oh, my, yes.

girly? actually, very girly. not in a cute flowers kind of way, of course. but no doubt, these are girl shoes-- very sleek, very feminine. nothing butch about 'em.

that goth girl lurking inside has also been eyeing these for some time, too, but they're too much. i'm pretty sure i could never get away with them.


miss mary mack, mack, mack
all dressed in black, black, black
with silver buttons, buttons, buttons
all down her back, back, back....

Posted by lisa at 10:06 AM

February 27, 2004

ode to vogs - day three

guest entry today from christa...

"lisa says these 'vogs didn't play a big part in her shoe development, but they made a huge impact on mine. in fact, i loved her pair so much, i got a pair of my own!

i'd never owned a pair of open-toed sandals before (my dad had a weird phobia about toes that he passed on to me), so this was a risky purchase in that regard. but also -- check out the big honkin' metal ring! the warning bell in my head kept ringing "risky risky risky!!"

still, i love them so much. i've had them for at least 5 years; they've been the most sturdy pair of shoes i've ever bought."

clunky though they may be, i think these did represent moving more toward the girly end of the spectrum, for me. and, as with all fluevogs, they have style to spare, and oddly seem to transcend trends (although i often think of fluevogs as quite trendy!)

mine are too big, i did manage to wear them all one summer, but have had to give them up since. i can't quite manage to part with them, though.

Posted by lisa at 08:26 AM

hell yeah!!

work is closed today! i thought for sure we'd be open, at best delayed.

snow day!!!!

upon closer inspection of the outside world, i think this may be just as well. my driveway and street appear to be covered in ice; i don't think i want to drive anywhere.

Posted by lisa at 07:36 AM

February 26, 2004

bored with tv

i'm totally bored with tv.

i mean, i still like the shows i like. but the filler stuff... whatever need i had for that before is gone now.

it makes me restless. i haven't quite figured out what i'm going to do with this extra time and energy.

theoretically, i should be working like crazy on all these hobby projects... and tonight, i am. but that's, i'm sure, not all i really want to be doing.

time for... something.

i think it's just criminal and wrong to be bored. and here i am, bored as hell! as my mom so wisely used to tell me, "bored people are boring".

dammit!!

Posted by lisa at 10:42 PM

yawn. snow.

it's coming down like crazy here in Cary right now, and sticking to everything but the road.

Posted by lisa at 12:57 PM

ode to vogs - day two


My home DSL line appears to have gone down so in fear that it may be weather-related and I may not be able to simply reset it, I'm going to go ahead and post today's set of vogs.

I decided to try granny boots for my second pair of 'vogs. This was quite adventurous for me at the time. And again, the whole idea of "girly" had not quite sunk in.

I actually do still wear these, especially on snowy days; the color is an unusual warm gray, and they're quite practical and more trim than this photo (which exaggerates) makes them seem.

Posted by lisa at 10:50 AM

radio - saturday night

Looks like I'll be on-air saturday night from 10-midnight.

Posted by lisa at 10:50 AM

February 25, 2004

ode to vogs - day one

each day for about a week, i'll feature one pair of my fluevogs. why? because i love them so!

This was my first pair. They are quite beat up now; i wore them almost every day for several years. They are a testament to How I Used To Dress Like A Boy. Not very girly, eh?

I can't really remember how I found out about 'vogs. Now, whenever I go to a major city, I try to make it to a Fleuvog store. Although you can mailorder them, the sizes are wonky sometimes and trying them on is a safer bet. Happlily now we have a store in Durham that carries them-- the untidy museum.

I remember when I first got these, they seemed too hip and trendy for me to get away with wearing them-- like, who was I kidding? With those swirls on the sides.

My perspective is quite different now.

Posted by lisa at 06:25 PM

good show!

it was one of those radio shows where i feel unprepared, but somehow it winds up being a good show anyhow. i think playlist and i are agreeing pretty well right now; basically, there's tons of non-boring world music, which is mostly what i like to play these days. and happily, it all recorded just fine and i'm listening to it via iPod right now!

not a single call or email, except for this one guy who kept bugging me to send him a message over the web cam. :)

i've been working on my voicebreaks, and i think i'm finally meeting with success. when i'm speaking, it feels artificially slow and deliberate, but i hardly said "um" at all, and everything i said seems to have been lucid and "legible".

Posted by lisa at 09:42 AM

February 24, 2004

on air tonight

i'll be on the air tonight, 8-10pm. 88.7fm if you're in durham; wxdu.org online.

live playlist will be here.

Posted by lisa at 09:38 AM

i can still taste the garlic

since ray was at rehersal all night, christa asked mary charo and i to hang out with her on her birthday. charo couldn't make it, but mary and i happily stepped up to the plate.

we decided to go to the palais de pizza, seeing as it's christa's favorite place and all. i, too, am a huge fan though rarely get to enjoy a big, doughy calzone these days. birthdays are definitely times to make exceptions, however, so it was a couple of pitchers of beer between us and a big fat calzone for each of us, plus a very cute and friendly waiter.

oddly, the very person who introduced me to the pizza palace showed up while we were there; dave tilley, who is also the person who introduced me to wxdu. wonder if he is back to living in durham again.

afterward, we went back to christa's house to watch her favorite movie, joe vs. the volcano. i have seen it many times, as has christa, but mary and ray had never seen it. it's a sort of modern day fairy tale; at one point christa had to say, "suspension of disbelief people! come on!"

my favorite part is the trunks, both the part where he buys them and the role they play later in the movie. i guess i just love a good, useful gadget.

Posted by lisa at 09:35 AM

February 22, 2004

triplets of belleville

2cv.jpg saw the triplets of belleville tonight with christa. i liked it because a) it was good and b) featured quite a few citroen 2cv's (with elongated front ends). the music is also quite good. i highly recommend.

Posted by lisa at 10:40 PM

bras & activism & tongue

highlights of christa's party:

many more things that i will remember later.

Posted by lisa at 02:32 PM

nightmare user

i dreamed last night that i went to a hospital to drop off a sample for testing. there was a window with a person in it that i had to give (and explain) the sample to, but there were things blocking the window, making it quite difficult to get to that person. i was also embarassed about the nature of the sample (still am, actually, which is why i'm not putting that in here :) so i didn't want to have to yell the information out.

then there was a man also at the window, another hospital customer. he had a laptop that he needed to connect to their network for some reason. the person in the window kep trying to explain to him how to connect, but i could tell neither of them were very technical and they were miscommunicating. she asked him if he had a data card in his laptop, and he said no. he kept asking if he would be connected to the "comptron" (or something like that) which i intuitively knew must be a dialup provider. i said to him, "do you have an ethernet card?" and that he understood better than "data card". then i saw that he had an ibook, and i told him that it would be easy to connect his laptop to their high speed network.

i sat down with him to help him connect. he had a strange additional UI installed on his machine, something to help the very novice user use OSX. it had some extremely novel properties which i want to try and describe.

it seemed to have the concept of the entire screen being a physicall object that was floppy. it would flop down, but you could literally catch it with your hand and sort of flip it back up.

the dock was very strange. it would bend in an exaggerated manner, like a roller coaster, which i found made it quite difficult to use.

the colors were bright-- windows XP colors, actually-- and there was a set of extremely cartoony icons. in the dream, i recognized the artwork-- now i think they may have been based on 'nightmare before christmas' style artwork, but with bright, primary colors.

this guy would periodically step out into the hall and get into huge arguments with people. he was very agressive and dramatic in the way he would speak to them. stuff like, "YOU. CAN'T. TOUCH. THIS!!!!" but he was pretty nice to me. still, i was having a hard time getting him set up, and was afraid i'd have to endure one of his outbursts if he got frustrated with me.

after trying to figure out his computer for a while, i realized that i simply needed to bring up the network control panel. however, i couldn't navigate his computer well enough to do it myself, so i had to try and describe to him what we were looking for and how to find it. i thought i had seen it flash by on the dock, but it wasn't there.

just as i realized that we should look under the apple menu, i woke up.

Posted by lisa at 12:05 PM

February 21, 2004

it's fun to watch lisa buy meat products

(comment from mary as we shopped with christa at costco tonight.)

yes, i have seen (and helped select) the party food, and let me tell you... yum! not to give too much away, but there's everything from goldfish to little pastry thingies. and lollipops.

Posted by lisa at 12:09 AM

February 20, 2004

the advantage of liking strange people

there's a woman in my office who is a little odd. a little bit of an outsider. well, in a geek office she'd be a little bit of an outsider; my department is equal parts geek and marketing, so that makes her even more of an outsider.

but you know, i do love the ousiders.

i think most people avoid striking up friendly conversations with her. i've almost never seen her talking to anyone about anything but work-- except me. i know she eats lunch alone with a book every day (except one day when she sat with me and dave).

i was kind of scared of her at first, too. not because she's intimidating, but because she really is kinda strange. at times she seems to be brilliant, and at others almost autistic in her inability to communicate or understand spoken instructions-- being in a meeting, or a training class with her can be an extraordinarily exasperating experience.

one day, and i can't remember how it came about, she found out that i had a halloween decoration that i was procrastinating hanging, because i realized i'd need help. it was getting quite close to halloween. she said, "I'll help you. Let's do it right now, don't procrastinate anymore."

and so we did. and i think she said something very smart about procrastination, something that impressed me at the time. i realized then that i kind of liked her.

recently, i've begun working with her in small ways. there's a group of project managers, and there's a group of applications developers. my new manager is using me as a sort of "translator" between these people; someone who can take the project manager's complaints about a UI, design a solution, come up with the markup to implement it, and pass something usable along to the programmer to plug into the application code.

she's a programmer. i'm starting to get the feeling that the project managers have a hell of a time communicating with her. i'm not sure that i'm doing any better, but i'm hoping that having already established a small acquaintanceship with her will turn into a surprise advantage in this situation.

Posted by lisa at 04:16 PM

February 19, 2004

dan @ home

went to mom's house to drop off the applesauce and visit at lunch. dan has been confronting the situation with school and is feeling really discouraged. (i was startled to discover that his intro to programming course is taught in fortran. what the??)

he's also still very weak and has no energy. ncsu engineering isn't exactly a cakewalk, and dan has always had to work hard to do well in school. he doesn't want to drop out, and engineering seems like the right place for him-- mom told me a story about how a piece of equipment in his hospital room broke and he fixed it making creative use of other objects in the room. but this is a pretty tough situation.

i wish i could help him with fortran-- but i think at best we'd be learning together, or more likely, he'd be teaching me!

Posted by lisa at 12:59 PM

February 18, 2004

applesauce

how to make Sister Lisa's Wonderful Applesauce:

(this is more of a method than a recipe.)

start with one bag of red delicious apples. this is important because it's basically your only ingredient. don't use any other kind of apples. the riper and sweeter the better.

peel, core, and slice the apples.

cook them over medium heat in a large, deep skillet, covered tightly.

after 20-30 minutes, when they are soft, mash them in the pan with a potato masher. don't mash them too much; the texture is everything! that's why i bother to peel, core and chop by hand rather than use a food mill after they're cooked. if there is too much juice, cook some off, but don't let them get too dry.

add a good dose of nutmeg and cinnamon. it's difficult to add too much cinnamon, really. i usually add another few dashes right before i serve it and swirl them around so there's like streaks of cinnamon all through it.

Posted by lisa at 10:42 PM

low carb surprise at kim son

(ok, this is for the carnivores only :)

had dinner tonight with jason at kim son; i didn't expect to find anything particularly low carb, but i was happily surprised. fried chicken with broccoli; the chicken was fried without breading, but so the skin was perfectly crispy and puffed away from the meat. there was a little scoop of rice, but it was hardly necessary or even tempting.

and for the record, dalat also has an awesome accidentally-low-carb meal as well; simply called chicken with stringbeans, it's a huge pile of just that, combined with tons of carmelized onions and a thin, garlicky sauce. it too comes with a scoop of rice which i never feel tempted by; the chicken and green beans are much more engaging.

Posted by lisa at 10:11 PM

space girl lisa linn

i finally set up web log reports to run last night. i was delighted to find that reports automagically ran for every month i still had logs for, so i was able to get a nice picture of what's been going on since november.

anyway, checking out the search strings people use to find my sites has long been a happy pastime. i used to find quite strange ones leading people to my allpods site, though sadly that no longer seems to be the case.

it made me happy though to see that one person entered:

"space girl lisa linn"

and reached me that way. because really, who else could that be but me? there may be a burgeoning porn star named lisa linn who is getting all the linkage these days (i'd like to think i'll outlast her though), but there's really only one space girl lisa linn.

if you're curious, you can peruse the loggy goodness here.

Posted by lisa at 09:03 PM

the pagan hierarchy

via jason who got it offa boingboing... this is too damn funny not to post.

the pagan hierarchy

i believe it's equally offensive to almost everyone :)

Posted by lisa at 09:42 AM

late for a very important date

i dreamed last night that i was a bridesmaid in a wedding; anxious not to get ready too early, i waited much too late and they almost didn't let me walk down the aisle. the dresses were simple black chiffon shifts. i was wearing my black witch shoes. i threw on the dress; no time to find and put on a bra, which i thought would be extremely obvious in that sort of dress, but i hoped it might be interpreted as sexy. i got halfway there and realized i only had one shoe on; ran back to get the other one and didn't have time to buckle it, which looked quite messy. no hose, no makeup; i was a mess. i don't remember walking down the aisle but they did let me. my old boss sally was there direct the bridesmaids.

then i dreamed that moses and i were on the road. we stopped at a mcdonalds to get a tea bag. then we were at a house and the yard was filled with snakes-- snakes everywhere i looked! i somehow got out of that part of the yard to a snake-free part of the yard. moses was anxious to get down, so i let him. i thought, "he's a cat, he can take care of himself, he knows not to go near snakes." i went inside the house to inform the owner that they had a snake problem. looking down on the yard from an upstairs window, i could see all the family pets-- several cats and two dogs-- sniffing around a row of snake holes which were quite clearly visible from my current vantage point. i regretted letting moses go off on his own.

late for a wedding and a yard full of snakes. y'all feel free to have a freudian field day with those dreams :)

Posted by lisa at 08:18 AM

February 17, 2004

mollifier. obfuscator.

at work, i sometimes (often?) take the role of middlewoman. i mollify; i placate. i listen sympathetically. i attempt to explain the behavior of the offending person to the offended. i try to get each person to understand what the other is trying to tell them.

suddenly today i realized that that's not a strategy i can use any longer. there's a deep communication gap between two of my co-workers that i've been attempting to fill without even really realizing the extent of my role. today after an edifying discussion with one of the parties, i realized that i have to stop.

and when i stopped, things got bad. bad, bad. i hate conflict. i avoid it studiously. that's almost certainly my main motivation to be the middle person.

i also wonder if this is a gender thing. it's a traditional female role to placate, to listen and sympathize, right? i'm the only woman now in a small group of five.

i realized too that my attempts at being the in-between person have served to hide the extent of the problem between these two. that's surely bad.

i haven't felt so anxious at work since the days when martin was in the group. (martin was as close to truly insane as any co-worker i've had. it turned out that he was an undiagnosed diabetic which was definitely part of the problem. his irrational rages still live in infamy. he once for some reason felt it was ok to tell me that he'd had a dreams in which he'd had sex with his mother.)

i don't know what will happen. my hope is that from the flames of the current conflict some kind of new understanding between these two can be forged, something that wasn't possible with me standing between them.

i have a squirrley bug to fix tomorrow and i just want to be able to concentrate. i guess that's my choice, though.

Posted by lisa at 10:20 PM

can you hear me calling you?

arrived in my physical mailbox today:
power, corruption & lies
flashing echo: trojan in dub 1970 - 1980

arrived in my 01 mailbox today: a friendster invite from my old friend marsh, who is in fact the person who introduced me to new order. how very odd that i never owned a single new order record before today, and that he should contact me today. i probably had my first blissful listen to this very record in marsh's room at age 16 at some impossible volume.

as usual, i couldn't get logged into friendster, so i mailed marsh and asked if he'd like to join orkut.

i suck at maintaining long-distance friendships; marsh is a little better, he updates me whenever he has a kid so i get updates every couple of years. well i guess that will end eventually but maybe FOAF will fill in the gap. i wonder if i should be adventuresome, try to get some of the old, out of touch people to join up? well, why not?

which makes me think of jonathan, i spoke with him the other day; he thought he needed my help creating a logo for fixing radio a conference he and susan are running. he wanted it to look like the logo i did for the xdu site. i called him back too late to be of help but was quite interested to find out that the Seattle IMC, which is the original IMC, the source and beginning of it all during the WTC protests, has shut down all operations for a period of three months. he didn't have time to tell me the story but i will have to pry it out of him eventually.

Posted by lisa at 08:51 PM

ms. films rocks your world!

msfilms.org - who wants to go to the Hot Dog Man movie??

from one of the event organizers:

"Workshops include: DocuFemmes, Super 8, Life of an Independent Animator, Cameraless Filmmaking, Toning, Lighting and Sound Technique, Works in Progress, Animation, and a new event we are adding this year; a screening discussion session. For our finalsession on Sunday afternoon, we will get together with filmmakers, workshop presenters, and audience members to talk about the film screenings, ask questions, and talk to filmmakers.

Films include: "Hot Dog Man: A Case Study" (about our very own Ninth Street Hot Dog Man, by Joyce Ventimiglia of Durham, NC), "Tahini and Tears" by Shashwati Talukdar, original animation by Francesca Talenti, faux 60's horror by our Canadian visiting filmmaker, Thea Faulds, a riveting piece by our featured visiting filmmaker, Pat Doyen, and 20 other great films you might never otherwise get to see!

Ms. Films is affordable for the indy film lover! Just $15
for a full weekend pass, which includes all screening and workshops, and a copy of the "Down, Dirty, and DIY Guide to Film and Video". $8 gets you a screening pass into any two screenings, and $6 will get you into any one event."

Posted by lisa at 09:53 AM

February 16, 2004

dialup

sometime this afternoon, my DSL line went flakey and slow, so bad that it's essentially unusable. after a lot of troubleshooting and a long phonecall to earthlink, the determination is there's something wrong with my local line, something verizon will have to fix. and it'll be a day or two before they get to it.

so then i proceeded to tear the house apart looking for the data cable for my cellphone. my cell connection is so good and so easy to use that i don't mind it at all. but i can't find the damn cable anywhere.

and then, finally, i remembered our old standby... dialup. i get free dialup time with my DSL account; might as well use it! took a little creativity (and a call to the earthlink modem in Roswell, NM) to get a local number, but now i'm connected, and i'm amazed at how not-bad it actually is.

of course, i'm still completely screwed if i get paged and have to go online to fix something for work. i haven't had a working dialup connection to sas in years.

let's just hope that doesn't happen...

Posted by lisa at 09:37 PM

angel cancelled

i was horrified to learn this morning (via dave who read it on slashdot) that angel will be cancelled after this season ends.

ok, so it's not the greatest work joss has ever done, especially not this season, but it's distressing to find that the buffy franchise is going off the airwaves completely.

here's hoping there's movies or another spinoff in the offing... the long-rumoured "ripper" series wouldn't be a bad place to start...

Posted by lisa at 11:24 AM

it seems wrong

such beautiful snow. and we're going in to work. it makes me very sad.

Posted by lisa at 08:12 AM

February 15, 2004

strange...

it's been an awfully strange weekend. i've spent it sleeping and daydreaming and reading, no patience for tv or running errands or chores or work on the computer. i feel directionless; maybe the many directions i was going to pursue this weekend just combined into a blob of directionlessness. maybe i'm just burnt out from the unusual stresses of the week.

i used to do this all the time. i'd spend hours a day, entire weekends doing almost nothing but daydreaming, staring at the trees out my window, reading, watching the fire burn. during times like this i write in my head a lot. the nice thing about a blog is that the stuff i write in my head, some of it actually has a place to go now.

i wonder if i ever live with someone, will this be tolerated? will i be criticized and made to feel lazy and guilty if i just want to lay on the bed and stare at the trees, if i want to avoid the many things that need attention?

maybe i'll be lucky enough to wind up with someone who will just come spoon me instead.

Posted by lisa at 05:54 PM

slightly less fat cat

about two months ago, i decided i'd had it with moses being so damn fat.

well, if my bathroom scale can be believed, he's lost an entire pound! of course, weighing a cat is a dicey business; even if you're holding the cat and weighing both of you at once, it's a little uncertain. but it makes me hopeful.

Posted by lisa at 09:45 AM

February 14, 2004

...and then poof!

goes all my motivation. like being pricked by a pin.

hate it when that happens.

Posted by lisa at 04:47 PM

February 13, 2004

nature girl

tonight i was watching 'the bridges of madison county' (don't laugh). it's filled with nature.. big nature sounds, the insects at night, especially.

it made me think about my old cabin in the woods. i lived there for three years, back in the early 90's.

imagine if you were very religious. that you loved god with all of your heart, in a deep, instinctual way. that going to church gave you an indescribable satisfaction that you craved when you were away from it.

then imagine that you got to live in church, and be surrounded by god all the time. that god permeated your entire life and made you deeply content.

that's what it was like. it was like living in church. i miss it.

Posted by lisa at 12:10 AM

February 12, 2004

the gleaners and i

sarah says it all, better than i can

but i will add that a) i'll take recommendations from rick with a slight grain of salt in the future and b) if i needed more encouragement to go for it and edit my roswell video together into a film, i got it by watching this film, because i know i can edit better than this woman can. jesus.

Posted by lisa at 04:24 PM

radio slush

i dreamed this morning that i was covering the station all night through the slush storm we were supposed to get last night. i had rearranged the station so i wasn't facing the clock (or the board) while i was djing. i finally looked at the time and it was 2:12am, which meant that i had missed the legal id and gone for over an hour without talking.

i went to do a voice break, and the slush had started to accumulate inside the station. i tried to brush it off the PSA cards but could hardly read them. then i realized there was slush and snow on the board, which i tried to brush off. i was worried it would short out.

then i woke up and looked out the window, and was quite disappointed to find that there was no slush or snow to be found.

Posted by lisa at 10:05 AM

sleep

so i was reading this thing today about how to look one's best, and it said to get nine hours of sleep a night.

now, i know all of you are gasping, because i don't know anyone who actually gets a consistent eight hours, much less nine. at least, i don't think i do.

but this is one of those questions that interests me. how much sleep do you get? and how much is enough?

does getting enough sleep make up in increased productivity the time lost to sleep?

btw, i determined that in order to get nine hours a night, i'd have to kiss my social life, my hobbies, and my cat goodbye. you people will just have to live with looking at my less-than-fresh, sleep-deprived mug.

Posted by lisa at 10:02 AM

February 11, 2004

a gorey death

rick finds all the best web stuff....

Fit fit fits.
You will perish of fits. Repeat this to yourself:
"Things can work out even if I don't get
my way. Things can work out even...."


What horrible Edward Gorey Death will you die?
brought to you by Quizilla

Posted by lisa at 06:12 PM

February 10, 2004

on air tonight

i'm on tonight from 8-10pm ET, wxdu.org or 88.7fm if you're local.

live playlist

Posted by lisa at 06:56 PM

women's clothes sizing

ok, xa and i hit upon a baffling subject today-- the distinction between juniors, misses, and women's sizes in clothing.

here's my understanding:

but now that i write this out, it doesn't entirely make sense. xa says misses is cut for flatter hips than women's is. and that does make more logical sense.

however, i suspect that logic actually has little to do with all of this, and the fact that most women seem to find this subject confusing is not an accident.

so do any of you readers have more of a clue than we do? i did some halfhearted googles for an explanation of this and didn't get anywhere.

Posted by lisa at 02:57 PM

everything's a project

so i posed the question to the newbug list... should i claim the repair for my beaten-up front-end on my insurance? or not risk a rate hike or being dropped, and pay for it myself?

and i realized that the answer i wanted was, "claim it." because that's easy. i drop the car off at the body shop, the insurance company hooks me up with a rental, all no problem.

of course, that's not the advice i got. most of the advice i got was, "fix it yourself", which i'm pretty sure i can't do. corollary to that is, "search junkyards for the parts you need." which is probably sensible.

but that means that this is a project. the projects are fast building up. the month of may is going to be largely spent travelling, which means i need to be ready for june (roswell) by the end of april.

there are many roswell related projects to accomplish in february, march, and april; but there are also many non-roswell projects as well. the xdu site, the nbeast site, and the old north durham site spring to mind. i suppose further work on the house will have to be put off and that i must, reluctantly, now start prioritizing and putting aside things that can wait.

sigh.

Posted by lisa at 10:19 AM

February 09, 2004

hoarders

my co-worker charles posed an interesting question when we were discussing the hoarder.

do people hoard e-mail?

i bet they do.

Posted by lisa at 01:57 PM

another hoarder, oh yeah.

via boingboing.

somethingawful reader posts pics of garbage house he shares with his mom.

at least he realizes something is wrong, even if his mum doesn't...

the scary part is that when collectors get started on animals, things tend to get really bad. she's got five parakeets and is looking for a sixth... so i think it's fair to say that she's started on animals.

Posted by lisa at 01:07 PM

salad days

this weekend sarah and i made the odd discovery that we may have gone to pre-school together in delaware.

when i was 6 months old, we moved from DC to delaware; we lived there until i was in second grade, at which point we moved to NC.

although we lived in newark, i went to a montessori pre-school and kindergarden in wilmington-- which is where sarah grew up. she happened to mention to me this weekend that she also went to a montessori pre-school, and since we're the exact same age, it seems likely that we may have coincided.

she was able to pinpoint which school she went to. unfortunately, my mom couldn't remember any details about mine, but i think there's a class photo somewhere from that school. i'll have to try and dig it up the next time i'm at mom's house.

Posted by lisa at 11:40 AM

still good...

mom reports that grandma got a pacemaker this weekend, which required only local anesthetic. she is now back at the retirement home, but in the nursing section until she regains her strength. now hopefully she'll return to normal and be able to go back to her apartment, but sometimes people do have trouble recovering and get stuck in the nursing section, which would be bad.

in slightly more cheerful news, mom reports that the canada branch of the family are upholding my great-aunt de-de's tradition of vacationing in myrtle beach in march! i met de-de many years ago and was very impressed by her. mom and wayne went up for her funeral and a family reuinion last summer. i desperately wanted to go-- i've never been to canada or met any of the canadians besides de-de-- but i couldn't work out the timing. so this could be very cool.

mom showed me pics of nova scotia when they came back-- it looks just like the Isle of Skye in Scotland, which I visited many years ago. I remember having this strange feeling when I was on Skye that the unusual landscape felt very... resonant, somehow. On my grandmother's side (also de-de's side) everyone is MacDonald and MacLeod, which both have their clan castles on Skye. The section of Nova Scotia that my family lives in is extremely remote; it could not have been easy to forge a living there. I have to wonder if they chose that area because of similarities to what they were used to on Skye.

Posted by lisa at 09:33 AM

February 08, 2004

paint queen

the paint queen of old north durham rides again... this time a few blocks down the street, she deigns to dip her toes into fancy ol' duke park to help out a friend. three rooms in two days, deep golden tan and even deeper cinnamon red. quite handsome. some of our best work to date.

also managed to work in a firefly sesh with sarah and shayne; the pilot wasn't that great (we see now why the network wouldn't air it first) but by the end of the second ep i was starting to get engaged with the characters. i never quite watched it when it first came along; and when the ex dismissed it as joss "doing existentialism" (whatever the hell that means) it didn't do much to make me want to make more of an effort at the time. the premise seems to be novel to some folks, but the melding of western and sci-fi actually seems less than novel to me. maybe i read enough sci-fi to know that it's been melded with every possible metaphor and genre ever1. and the dirty, dusty, backwater colony moon was only fresh when khan was living on it.

more eating/blood sugar stability frustration today; ate a decent breakfast, worked hard. felt hunger pangs at an appropriate time but by the time we sat down to our meal i was crashing hard, tired, queasy. no sugar, just one cup of tea. xa says it's just because i was working hard for two days. maybe so. i hope so. my yearly checkup should be soon; i will have to discuss the possiblity of type 2 diabetes with them i think. feeling, oddly, as if i must be sure to eat enough in one day. feeling highly addicted to strawberries, now prominently displayed at wellspring, i think due to some holiday or something.

saw master and commander with xa, ray, pinky and mr. pinky, whom i was friends with a long time ago, via the station-- we are reconnected now through the magic of blogs, which is nice.

russel crowe is very hot, particularly when he lets his hair down.

1 it should be noted that sarah has probably read at least as much sci-fi as i have, so maybe that doesn't hold water...

Posted by lisa at 10:29 PM

February 07, 2004

quirkyalone

not so sure how i feel about this concept: quirkyalone

but it would certainly seem that i am one. i scored 99 on the little quiz (out of how many, i am not sure. 100?) and they rate me "very quirkyalone". the additional diagnostic signs basically describe me to a "T".

whatever.

Posted by lisa at 08:45 PM

February 05, 2004

cookie torture

my co-worker joe, who is not always know for being kind, sweet, and gentle, knows that i am hungry and knows that the enormous, homemade chocolate-chip cookie that he was waving in my face a moment ago is waaaaaayyyy off limits for me, for about a million reasons.

(as joe puts it, sugar = cranky lisa. cranky lisa = bad.)

so now he's sending me instant messages about how good it is.

i actually don't even WANT a cookie. i want, like... a chicken sandwich. a burger from char-grill. stuff that is actually pretty much ok for me to have.

but i am stuck here at work, with peanut butter as my only option.

Posted by lisa at 04:14 PM

time to face the peanut butter.

except that i can't.

it's that time of day when i start to get hungry, and i'm working on a problem that requires serious brainpower. normally, i'd have a spoonful of peanut butter and it would see me through (kinda) til i get home.

somehow, today, i just can't do peanut butter.

i need a new snack!
(and wasn't low carbing supposed to make me not be hungry all the damn time?)

Posted by lisa at 04:07 PM

so far so good.

mom reports that grandma was tested up, down, and sideways and they couldn't find anything. her GP wants her to have a pacemaker anyway; the cardiologist does not, but wants her to have a horrible invasive test which can cause serious/deadly side effects (blood clots).

mom says, get a second opinion. we don't much like either of those.

Posted by lisa at 11:30 AM

February 04, 2004

TTA

dave and i have been trying to carpool lately. me, because i want to reduce the number of miles i put on my car in a year; dave because he hates driving.

out of curiosity, today i decided to see what it would take for us to ride TTA buses from our neighborhood to work.

we would have to take two buses, and catch the first one at 6:45 in the morning. we'd have 5 minutes of leeway to catch the second bus, and if we missed it, we'd be stuck because the next one wouldn't be until 3:15pm.

we'd be riding the bus pretty much straight from 6:45 until 8:35, at which point we'd have to walk to our building from weston pkwy (right across from cary academy, i think)-- something like a 30 minute walk.

incidentally, the TTA site kind of sucks. the bus maps and schedules are extremely poorly presented. of course, it doesn't help that i'm all about Tufte these days-- he'd have a field day with the site. but then, so would just about anyone with an interest in web site usability.

Posted by lisa at 05:57 PM

grandma

mom told me this morning that my grandmother is in the hospital. it sounds like it may not be too big of a deal, but the last time i heard one of my grandmothers was in the hospital with something that shouldn't be too bad, the next thing i heard was that she was dead. still, i am strangely not freaked out. maybe i've reached a point where i've had enough people die on me that i've learned not to freak out about it in advance. or maybe the sleep deprivation is just numbing my responses.

at least my mom remebered to tell me.

Posted by lisa at 09:42 AM

i got to see william h. macy's balls

actually, i really liked "the cooler". there were times when it seemed to be headed for predictability, but in the end there were a satisfyingly large number of moral gray areas explored to make up for the hackneyed mobster speech patterns and cliches. or maybe that stuff was on purpose and i missed a whole level of the movie.

i'm in that unhappy state right now where i'm exhausted, and because i'm exhausted, i can't sleep. i even went to bed for a while, and got back up. my point here (besides that of making an all too obvious plea for sympathy) is that my analysis may be a little off.

Posted by lisa at 12:42 AM

February 02, 2004

calling comic book geeks!

i think i may attempt to adopt a graphic novel/comic book style for the allpods site this year. this is a bit silly because i have never been a huge comic book reader :) but i think the style would be very suitable for the tone i want to set this year, the look i want to achieve, and because it's an unfolding narrative.

i know that some of you are comic book readers, however! if any of you would be willing to supply me with some examples-- ie, loan me some comics and/or graphic novels-- i'd be totally grateful.

Posted by lisa at 01:29 PM

February 01, 2004

personal services

several years ago, i helped design the structure and labelling for the large collection of links housed on the top page of our corporate intranet.

as many of you already know, sas does a lot to keep employees happy-- and to keep them from leaving campus. we've got on-site health care, a gym and swimming pool, day care, and a host of what we eventually decided to call "personal services". massage therapists, a hair salon, dry cleaning pickup, etc. we balked at the label "personal services", because it seemed to have some weird implications. but it was the only thing that fit, so we used it.

foots.jpg recently, i've availed myself of some personal services, something that i don't do as much as i should. i went to the dentist, and had plenty of time to meditate on what might make someone want to become a dental hygenist. (i still can't quite figure that one out.) and my friend shayne took me to get a pedicure, as part of my birthday present.

this is the first time i've ever had a pedicure. i've never been to a nail salon for anything before, actually. this was one of the many places where there's that airbrushed woman in the window (you know the one-- i can't remember the artist's name) and rows of manicure tables visible from outside.

the pedicure, if you've never had one, goes like this: you sit in a big chair with a little foot-sized jacuzzi at the base of it. your feet soak in warm, blue-tinted water, which i guess is a nice way to make sure they're good and clean before the staff have to handle them. it also feels really nice, although it is a little weird.

after a lot of soaking, the pedicurist proceeds to do an amazingly large number of things to your feet, involving a lot of lotion, oil, and abrasive pads. she'll remove callouses, too-- and that's the bit that gets me. surely that has got to be a sucky thing to do, even on the cleanest and prettiest of feet. i mean-- now that's a personal service.

anyway, after your feet-- and legs-- have been smoothed and massaged and properly mousturized, there's a nice bit of nail polish to finish it off. and you're left with the lovliest feet you've ever had.

it's all quite baffling to me. manicures i can understand. i would probably enjoy giving people manicures, as long as their hands were reasonably clean. i understand the desire to neaten, tidy, and beautify. but scraping things off of people-- be it plaque or dead skin-- man, that just gives me the wiggins. i'm glad as hell that there are people who are willing to do it. and i think they are just built differently, mentally, from me. or maybe with the proper motivation-- say, a total lack of other job skills and a need to provide for myself and others-- it just wouldn't matter in the grand scheme of things. but the me of right here and now just doesn't get it.

my feet look pretty, though.

Posted by lisa at 11:47 PM

monstrous

slept in (clean flannel sheets, mmmmm), went to see monster with xa today. ate horribly all weekend except for dinner tonight. the combination of sleeping too much, eating badly, and the movie left me feeling fairly icky, so i decided to finally break out the yoga mat mom gave me for christmas and try some yoga.

the yoga was difficult, more than it has been in the past. just means it can do that much more for me if i stick with it, i guess :) drank a ton of water, made a decent dinner and i feel much, much better. hopefully the movie won't give me big anxiety when i'm trying to fall asleep tonight, it was pretty horrifying.

funny thing was, at dinner i was really craving some tea. i hadn't had any in a while, and it somehow seemed like something that would make me feel better. i am sure a good meal was the main reason i feel better now, but i think the tea did a little something as well. just seemed right.

Posted by lisa at 07:58 PM