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March 31, 2004
papa say he no fi foolish like he never been to school at all
lemme see if i can get the chronology straight.
early high school, i get bored with commercial radio and go digging around at the left end of the dial. i hear, through static, the strains of an exotic sounding beat. i think to myself, "i think this might be reggae." i mark the place on the dial with a red china marker. it later turns out to be wxyc.
the summer after sophomore year of high school, i attend the young writer's camp at UVA. one night, they take us to see a reggae band playing on campus. i think this was my first live show at a small venue. it was definitely one of the most intense musical experiences of my young life.
somewhere around this time, madness had their big american hit, "our house". (that would have been 1983.) i was totally hooked on the bouncy brit ska sound; i remember buying the record at record bar in cameron village, and immediately crushing on the band member i thought the cutest.
senior year of high school. i think. we hung out on hillsborough street after school all the time. mike connell from the connells was manning schoolkids records most afternoons (though we had no idea til later that we were buying all our wax from a big rock star!) in the cutout bin i found a most intriguing looking record... it looked to be ska, but ska from jamaica! from the 60's! who ever heard of such a thing? i could just tell from the cover that it was gonna be cool and i bought it. it was called intensified and that about described it. it was one of the coolest things i'd ever heard, lo-fi and dripping with exotic authenticity.
off to college and i meet my pal martha. she'd spent a year living in the virgin islands with her lover, a man named ishmael who was born and lived his whole life on the island. she had real mighty sparrow tapes-- you know, the versions with the really dirty lyrics that they don't sell to americans. she turned me on to that, and african music, "river deep, mountain high" by ike and tina turner (amazing song-- if you've never heard it, ask me to play it the next time you're visiting), and al green. around this time i found a copy of the soundtrack to the harder they come and played the crap out of it.
so tonight, some 16 or 17 years later, i got a chance to see that i still know by heart all the lyrics to the songs on that soundtrack. i noticed that screen/society was showing "the harder they come" over at griffith, and at the last minute decided to go on over. hank, the guy who runs these screenings, got up in front of the room and said, "i've been waiting a long time to see this movie..." and i thought, yeah, me too.
jimmy cliff's character isn't the most endearing in the world; in fact, i think even "anti-hero" is a slightly glossy term for this guy. for me, the recording sessions were definitely the highlight, especially seeing (presumably) the maytals doing "sweet and dandy". it was probably good that i went alone, because i found myself singing along to that one :)
i was hoping for more music, but still it was good to finally see it after all these years.
time between hearing those first strains of a reggae beat through the static til the day i finally saw 'the harder they come': approximately 22 years.
Posted by lisa at 11:39 PM
March 30, 2004
experience all the thrills of an xdu board meeting...
...without all the pesky sitting around and stuff.
(the pics load at a 1 second interval so you probably have to be on a decently zippy connection for this to work very well.)
Posted by lisa at 10:19 PM
so glenda is actually kinda dead
from what i can tell, there's a bad sector on the hard drive. i'm just guessing here, but that's what it seems like. the net effect is, the ipod isn't currently usable.
i believe the 1 year warranty has just expired.
i did read about a guy who had the same problem and was able to hide the bad sector using a disk utility, but the disk utility that comes with osx doesn't seem to offer this level of specificity. so, option one is to hunt for better software.
option two is to replace it. i'm finding that i really do not want to live without it.
- apple's "repair" fee (which really means they replace it) is $255. that's for a 10gb ipod.
- an ipod mini is $250 + tax-- but is only 4gb, and i already have more than 4gb of music, and my current iTrip won't work with it, so that would be another $30.
- a refurbished 10gb ipod is $250 + tax and shipping, but it's the newer model and i wouldn't be able to use my iTrip with it, either, so add $30.
- new, larger models cost $300 and up i believe, and again, there's sales tax plus the cost of a new iTrip.
while i'd love to have a little pink ipod, i even more don't want to be squished and constantly trying to delete music or deselect things i don't want on the ipod. so the "repair" is the best deal, or else i'll upgrade to a new, larger one.
Posted by lisa at 09:40 AM
March 29, 2004
crock pot!
i finally used my crock pot today. i got it for free from a co-worker, thinking that it would be a good way to get some healthy food going for dinner with little effort-- or with the effort concentrated in the parts of the day when i have more energy for it, rather than right after work.
i have to say that the maiden crock pot voyage met with success! i made crock pot sticky chicken; instead of a whole chicken i used a huge package of chicken thighs from costco.
i'm amazed by the amount of juice produced by the chicken; i think i may use it along with the package of red, yellow, and orange peppers i also got at costco, to make a pepper stew.
Posted by lisa at 06:47 PM
another collector... or not?
Vermont probes man with 70 goats in house.
at first i thought this guy showed signs of being an animal collector, and thought the religion angle might be an interesting variance on the usual. however, after reading the article, i'm not so sure that he is a collector in the same sense as other collectors. collectors usually seem to start with stuff, then escalate to animals. if he'd started with a houseful of stuff, they would likely have mentioned that in the article, and it would also be fairly difficult to get 70 goats into the house.
also, he admits that he cannot care for the animals, and wishes to find someone who can. that's very uncharacteristic of animal collectors, who usually live in deep denial about their ability to care for their animals.
this instead sounds like a case of someone who has become a victim of their own belief system.
Posted by lisa at 11:27 AM
March 28, 2004
getting out of the house
so my campaign to get out of the house has been going fairly well lately, and involved shopping, a play, and a movie. which doesn't sound very impressive when i list it all out-- maybe that explains my lingering feeling of restlessness tonight.
but i awoke saturday and immediately realized that i leave for roswell in just over two months, which means that it's serious crunch time. i don't want to skimp my way through doing the web site for the last time. how to lead a balanced life and still get everything done? how to work up the level of motivation and enthusiasm that i need for this project? i don't know. i really don't. it's spring, and i want nothing more than to be hanging out with my friends, making new ones, and chasing boys. but that's what i did last spring, and i feel that the site suffered.
the task at hand is a three column layout with header and footer, done all in standards-compliant code-- no tables for layout. i have to do the exact same thing for work this week, so that meshes nicely. but it's damned tricky, and i'm actually trying to work my way through relevant sections of the CSS2 spec. ugh.
Posted by lisa at 11:40 PM
March 27, 2004
the three ring circus of my mind
i dreamed this morning that i was at dbt's house. he was there with a bunch of guys with him, and he didn't look like himself.
he revealed an elaborate pattern stamped in concrete squares that covered his yard. then, he began sliding the whole sheet of concrete into position-- a sheet of concrete the size of a yard.
he told me that he was preparing the house to sell, and he was also moving, and asked me if i could start helping get loads of stuff to his new place. i knew i had plans at 1, so i asked him what time it was. then suddenly there were so many people arriving at his place, lots of kids among them, and he said they were also shooting a film. he wouldn't answer my question about the time.
then karen cirillo arrived. i was really happy to see her because i haven't in so long, but she was wearing strange blue sunglasses that completely hid her eyes, and when i said 'hi', she acted unfriendly and walked into another room. i decided she must be mad at me for not keeping in touch since she's left.
i was about to tell dave that i couldn't cope with all these kids and people and all the stuff going on, but then i woke up.
Posted by lisa at 10:35 AM
March 26, 2004
shoe desire!
oh, my! also, i want my foot to be airbrushed like that all the time.
Posted by lisa at 10:06 PM
cheap trick
i dreamed this morning that i was hanging out with cheap trick. the lead singer was actually Matthew McConaughey. he got very drunk and started throwing up, but in this really innocuous way.
i also dreamed that a male friend of mine was a physician and all of our female friends were going to see him, supposedly for professional reasons, but actually for prurient reasons. i wasn't one of his patients because i thought it would be kind of weird. but i thought maybe i should encourage pinky to go see him, because he's a very compassionate person, and she could use some compassion from a medical professional right about now.
Posted by lisa at 09:42 AM
March 25, 2004
glenda lives!
glenda is the name of my ipod, and she's happy and healthy again. repair then erase with the apple disk utility did the trick. i probably didn't need to do both, but decided to be thorough.
yay! while having an excuse to buy a pink ipod mini would be fun, in a way, my internal budget miser is allowing no such purchases since the acquisition of this here newfangled powerbook, and really a mini isn't big enough anyway.
so i'm glad glenda is back in the game.
Posted by lisa at 10:52 PM
body rejects atkins
my body suddenly decided it'd had enough protien and fat today. my usual breakfast resulted in painful stomach cramps that lasted until lunchtime, at which point they promptly grew worse as i grew hungrier.
i ate three plain bagels for lunch, because it felt right. i feel completely better.
go figure.
(to be honest, i ate some stuff last night which probably didn't do my digestive system any favors and it just wants met not to tax it for a while.)
Posted by lisa at 02:16 PM
basement, water
well, the good news is that the plumber didn't find a leak.
the bad news is... neither of us could figure out where the hell all the water is coming from in my basement.
it's seeping up from the floor in four distinct locations, all in a line. sounds suspicious, right? but all of my plumbing is above ground, in the basement. if a line coming into the house were leaking, it would be spraying and we could see it.
he did test to be sure my main sewer line out isn't the issue, and it's not-- no water movement occured around it while lots of water was running in the bathroom.
the water meter isn't moving when everything is shut off.
so.. given that we've had dry weather for about a week, where the heck is it coming from? it seems to be some kind of ground water seepage, but the rate of seepage is astounding. i've cleaned up the excess water three or four times in the last day, left the dehumidifier on full blast, both fans on and windows open. normally this will dry the place right out in no time, but instead now it just stays wet.
NFC, as my co-worker tom says.
Posted by lisa at 09:47 AM
bad things.
my ipod is non-functional.
there's a growing body of evidence pointing toward a leak in the water lines under my house. tonight i determined that it appears to be seeping up through the floor in several locations. i was tipped off by a letter from the city stating that my water bill is, apparently, going to be unusually massive this time around.
Posted by lisa at 12:22 AM
March 24, 2004
crushes & boyfriends - post college
oh let's see, when last we left our herione, she had failed out of school (and dropped out, all at once!), hadn't been particularly lucky with the boys in school, anyway, so maybe that was just as well... took up residence with six of her former fellow students... started working at a movie theater... and discovered being out of school was surprisingly helpful in the guy department. you'd think it would be the other way around, really!
i can hardly keep them straight.
hasan, the beautiful-like-a-woman bisexual cellist who was in town for the summer for the eastern music festival; i was his first kiss.
evan, brother of my friend todd, in town for the summer. first, we were friends; then one night he confessed a secret to me about a sexual problem that he thought he had. that very evening i learned from personal experience that he actually didn't have this problem, but was convinced he did. fascinating. (that's evan over there to the right.)
it was with evan that i first noticed a strange thing that would happen when i was making out with a guy. i'd feel like i was outside of my body, looking at what was happening like a bystander. i didn't understand this very well at the time, but i thought it probably meant that something wasn't right.
bry. bry walked into the theater one night wearing a top hat and carrying a cane. he had a big personality and it was so easy to talk to him. he and his friend came to visit me one night while i was on the air; somehow he got his friend to agree to go out in the pouring rain for cigarettes and then bry kissed me in the stacks. we only fooled around a couple of times; once at his friend's house that night and then one day he just showed up at my place with a bottle of something in hand. i think he drank most of that bottle that night. the next morning he was throwing up blood and i didn't know what the hell to do. just as i was screwing myself up to take him to the emergency room, he walked downstairs and announced that he was fine. i took him home, and i don't think i ever saw him again.
crazy mike. i knew him from school. he had a brain chemical imbalance, a fairly profound one. he once told me that his brain behaved as if it was on acid all the time. one day he showed up at the theater with a couple of friends, for rocky horror. my shift was over before the movie, so i went in and joined them. somehow his medication was just right that day; he was clear, upbeat, you could talk to him. and my god i thought he was sexy! in this total white trash kind of way. long hair and dirty jeans. the four of us wound up driving around greensboro on some kind of mission, mike and i in the back seat flirting like crazy and holding hands. we got lost, and i could have gotten us un-lost, but didn't because i didn't want the ride to ever end.
i saw mike a couple of years later when visiting school with a boyfriend. he was startled to learn that i had a boyfriend. "I thought you were gay!!" he said he would have kissed me that night if he'd known otherwise.
it was during this time that i met ethan. i met him on new year's eve at a party in chapel hill. i spent that night in raleigh at my friend stacie's house; ethan lived nearby, and he walked down after he got home and he and i talked all night until morning when i called my mom to come pick me up.
i don't know how to talk about ethan without sounding like a big cheesey sap. in retrospect, it's clear that we both really, really wanted each other. crush doesn't even begin to cover ethan. but at the same time, i was terrified of being really close to him. he's autistic, mildly, but still. he rocks back and forth all the time. he has never learned to drive. being with him was simultaneously awkward, frightening, and deeply satisfying.
we wrote a lot of letters. i still have them, but they're up in my mom's attic. his letters would come scrawled on scraps of old paintings, applications for food stamps, or whatever was close at hand.
he'd find his way to greensboro a lot. he'd wind up at my house somehow, and stay over on the sofa in my room. one night he was there when i got home from my shift at the theater. i think there had been a party. i remember sitting on the sofa next to him, and he took my hand and held it. it was so the thing i had wanted to happen.. but i was caught completely off guard, and terrified. i blew it. i bolted out of the room. i can't tell you how incredibly i regret having done that. that was my only shot; he was so angry at me. the letters i got after that.. barely intelligible, but clearly my stupid panic decision wasn't a popular one. fuck.
he's married now. he lives in raleigh and has shown up at every freaking rock show i've been to since he got back. i still think he's unbearably hot. it's somehow comforting to me to see someone who has known me since i was 19 when i go out to rock shows. but we don't have much to say to each other anymore.
Posted by lisa at 10:26 PM
crushes
i've been thinking today about the general phenomenon of crushes, and specifically of my own crush-having.
sometimes i feel like the world champion of crushes. i've always got at least one, and i usually have several. at the moment i would say that i have two Primary Crushes, and a few Secondary Crushes. chances are that none of these folks have the least idea (or maybe they do.. some people tell me i'm hard to read, and other people say i'm obvious as hell. i don't know who to believe.)
crushes don't usually seem to be helpful. in fact, i think they actively hinder me from furthering my own happiness. being a live-in-my-head sort of person, crushes are, for me, a decidedly navel-gazey experience. they lead to a sort of disjointed experience; there's the world inside my head, and there's the real world, and the worse the crush the more out of synch they are.
i've got perpetual crushes that i nurse for years and years. i once had a crush on one of my best friends for something like two or three years, and didn't really give it up until he got married-- to the roommate i'd introduced him to. i had a crush on someone else for something like ten years.
i wonder if other people experience this the way i do. it's practically a hobby. i wonder if people have crushes on me that i don't know about. i think i half assume that they don't, but secretly think (and hope) that they might.
i'm curious to hear about how y'all experience crushes. is it a happy experience? do you live crush-free? if you knew that two friends had crushes on each other-- but they didn't know-- what would you do?
Posted by lisa at 12:01 AM
March 23, 2004
on air tonight
i'll be on tonight from 8-10pm, 88.7fm if you're in durham, or listen online from wxdu.org if you're not.
live online flowsheet will be here.
dave borrowed a bunch of cd's from me over the weekend and brought them back today. a lot of stuff i haven't listened to in a while. it makes a nice assortment of items from my collection which i would not have pulled myself. not actually random, but as close as makes no difference. i think i'll bring that set up to the station with me.
Posted by lisa at 02:53 PM
rock on, richard and perry.
Gay couple file complaint after marriage license request denied.
Posted by lisa at 02:02 PM
it's like this rule. i get drunk when i'm oncall.
if i'm oncall, you can bet there will be some social situation that involves drinking. i brought my laptop with me last night, though, so i didn't have to worry about driving home should i need to fix something.
xa and i went to mary's to analyze her shoe wardrobe.
as i explained to mary recently, she is "micro view" and i am "macro view". we can look at a row of five pairs of shoes, all of which look essentially identical to me. i can see the differences, but they're not important to me. but to mary, the differences are crucial. one shoe is a little more dressy, or a little better for walking around a city all day, or... whatever. and to me, they're all basically black mules of similar design.
but she realizes that she doesn't have room for all the shoes she has... so we were pretty successful in getting her to see redundancy, or shoes that were simply not flattering or too worn to hang on to. in the end, she'd accumulated a big laundry basket full of shoes to get rid of.
i'm up next. i'm a little scared; i've continually culled my old shoes as i've bought new ones. christa has already said she'd never ask me to give up my fluevogs, but i think there's one pair they're going to want me to get rid of. maybe two. and right now, there's almost no redundancy or dead weight in my shoes (that i am seeing), so i don't think i'm going to want to get rid of anything.
maybe they'll just help me see what needs to be added. yea, right!
Posted by lisa at 11:45 AM
March 22, 2004
gay marriage license in durham
just got a mail that the president of the OND neighborhood association and his partner filed for a marriage license today and were denied. they'll be at jo and joe's tonight from 5-7pm to visit with friends and answer questions.
clearly, i need to start reading the OND list again...
Posted by lisa at 02:38 PM
The American Astronaut
i'm planning on going to see the american astronaut at the madstone sometime this week, maybe thursday or friday. if anyone wants to come with, let me know.
this screened at the most recent... nevermore? and i missed it. sounds like these guys are big eraserhead fans, which is enough to get me to see a musical space western.
Posted by lisa at 02:09 PM
Get your picture taken at Durham Central Park
Ok, apparently there's an art project/installation at Durham Central Park right now, due to be taken down on Sunday (I think). Not sure what the installation is about; the Old North Durham list has been more than i can keep up with lately. Apparently, there's some controversy involved.
Anyway, some OND folks are interested in compiling a photo gallery of people who have their picture taken with the installation. I've set up some software that's going to make it easy for them to put the gallery up on the web.
it includes info on where to mail photos if you have them taken.
Posted by lisa at 01:15 PM
eat at joe's
you guys probably aren't reading eat at joe's, but this week you should be.
Posted by lisa at 10:48 AM
March 21, 2004
xdu staff meeting
note that child has been given an RCA cable to chew on.
Posted by lisa at 10:23 PM
the three cousins
one each from each of the three sisters: maggie, daugher of dede. bill, son of betsy. judy, daughter of kay.
Posted by lisa at 11:05 AM
the three cousins
Posted by lisa at 11:01 AM
wayne photographing the cousins
Posted by lisa at 10:30 AM
nanny mac, betsy, and grampy mac
Posted by lisa at 09:42 AM
grampy mac, the guy everyone looks like
Posted by lisa at 09:40 AM
nanny mac, aka florence macdonald nee macleod
Posted by lisa at 09:39 AM
betsy and bill
Posted by lisa at 09:38 AM
cousins as kids: jim, bill, joan, judy & two unknown friends in NJ
Posted by lisa at 09:37 AM
March 20, 2004
me on the balcony at night
Posted by lisa at 11:13 PM
wayne, david, maggie, mom before dinner
Posted by lisa at 11:11 PM
david, maggie, bill, pattie, mom-- cocktail hour
Posted by lisa at 11:10 PM
mom and wayne at dinner
Posted by lisa at 11:09 PM
wayne, judy, pattie and bill
Posted by lisa at 11:09 PM
david and maggie
Posted by lisa at 11:08 PM
pattie and mom
Posted by lisa at 11:07 PM
murphy bed!
Posted by lisa at 11:07 PM
murphy bed!
Posted by lisa at 11:06 PM
murphy bed!
Posted by lisa at 11:05 PM
pattie and mom
Posted by lisa at 10:13 PM
bill eats dessert. yum!
Posted by lisa at 10:12 PM
Saturday
Much of day spent w david at car show. duh. saw a cord. my first time ever. david likes the detroit stuff muscle cars. i like old stuff, exotic stuff. too cold to swim now.
Posted by moblisa at 05:28 PM
enjoying the sun
Posted by lisa at 04:02 PM
futuristic chrome
Posted by lisa at 03:44 PM
beautiful interior. can't remember what it's the interior of!
Posted by lisa at 03:44 PM
old hot rod
Posted by lisa at 03:43 PM
corvette interior
Posted by lisa at 03:42 PM
nice ass. david's favorite corvette.
Posted by lisa at 03:40 PM
chrome. and me!
Posted by lisa at 03:39 PM
'37 cord. very unique car, i had never seen one in person.
Posted by lisa at 03:39 PM
cord, front end.
Posted by lisa at 03:37 PM
cord insignia
Posted by lisa at 03:37 PM
chrome
Posted by lisa at 03:36 PM
deco era hood ornament
Posted by lisa at 03:35 PM
why do we not have hood ornaments like this anymore?
Posted by lisa at 03:34 PM
jeepster.
Posted by lisa at 03:33 PM
MG, one of very few imports we saw.
Posted by lisa at 03:32 PM
ok, you recognize this one right?
Posted by lisa at 03:31 PM
the older the better!
Posted by lisa at 01:59 PM
nash.
Posted by lisa at 01:57 PM
nash insignia
Posted by lisa at 01:56 PM
eyeball insignia
Posted by lisa at 12:51 PM
good headlight chrome.
Posted by lisa at 12:49 PM
my hands down favorite. gorgeous hood ornament.
Posted by lisa at 12:48 PM
corvette back end - chrome bullet detail
Posted by lisa at 12:47 PM
pink cadillac. in case you can't tell, this thing is literally resting on the ground it's so low.
Posted by lisa at 12:45 PM
gorgeous.
Posted by lisa at 12:44 PM
silver convertible.
Posted by lisa at 12:42 PM
david begins breakfast, part 1.
Posted by lisa at 10:27 AM
now on to breaksfast, part 2. biscuits and gravy.
Posted by lisa at 10:22 AM
March 19, 2004
our canadians
finally met our canadians. likeable. maggie is mom's cousin; david her husband. guy has a lot to say but all entertaining. his accent is almost irish at times. they say "newfoundland" differently, more like "nwfnlaaaaaaand". david loves regional food, has apparently been dying to get sausage, biscuits and gravy all year since they were here last year. i'll bring a camera to breakfast.
maggie brought amazing old pictures of the three sisters (kay-- my grandmother-- dede, and betsy. dede is maggie's mum.) oldest picture we have ever seen of grandma-- as a young teenager, walking a dog. picture of grandpa mac (macdonald-- mom's grandfather), whom i have rarely seen in pics, and never met, though he is a family legend. rigid, predjudiced against all religions except presbyterian. we laugh now but he must have made life hell for a lot of people. mom's cousin bill talked about having many long conversations with grandpa mac. they all look like him. mom has said that before, and it's very true. mom, maggie, bill, all of mom's siblings, the three sisters-- all look like him. i don't :) mom says i don't look like anyone! but i look like the linns, no doubt.
i can't hardly keep up with the names so i am sure y'all won't. i'll try and get those pics though...
Posted by lisa at 11:27 PM
cars, cars, cars
there's a huge street rod show in town so you'll be seeing a lotta car pics.
Posted by lisa at 10:03 PM
'61 ford falcon i was behind on the way down
Posted by lisa at 09:46 PM
posted from my phone
Posted by lisa at 09:44 PM
'46 ford fleetmaster
dreadlocks boy had one of these. too sweet.
Posted by lisa at 09:43 PM
ghia front end, squareback back end?
or maybe just a squareback.. dunno. mustang lurking in the background.
Posted by lisa at 09:42 PM
view from my balcony
Posted by lisa at 05:54 PM
MB
No free calls from room dammit! But i like this place, many kinds o pools, large friendly canadian population.
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Posted by moblisa at 05:19 PM
meeting the canadians
tomorrow, i travel to the exalted destination of myrtle beach with my mom and stepfather to meet my mom's cousins from nova scotia and from tenessee.
i've never met these folks, so it's kind of exciting.
but why the heck are we going to myrtle beach in march?
well, the story is that my great aunt dede, my maternal grandmother's sister, is the matriarch of the canadian branch of the family, and she would go to myrtle beach every year in march. to her, this weather was warm, and she would apparently swim in the ocean while there. it was her summer vacation!
now, my memory of myrtle beach is that it's pretty much a hellhole. but we're staying where dede used to stay, and from the web site it looks pretty nice. and it should be fun to hang with the fam.
so anyway. that's what's going on for the next few days.
Posted by lisa at 12:26 AM
March 18, 2004
deep fried crack
Posted by lisa at 12:35 PM
your secret desire to completely change your life will manifest.
Posted by lisa at 12:30 PM
seminar on salvage yards
via the old north durham email list:
Please be advised that the seminar on salvage yards
and automotive repair shops has been confirmed for
Tuesday, March 30 from 6:30 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. in the
3rd floor conference room at the main branch of the
library. Please share this information with members of
your pacs and other community interest groups. Please
contact me if you have questions or comments. Thanks.Lenora S. Smith, MS
Project Director
Partnership Effort for the Advancement of
Children's Health (PEACH)
NC Central University
PEACHLEAD@aol.com
sounds fascinating, though i'm not sure what junkyards have to do with children's health. if anything.
Posted by lisa at 09:59 AM
March 17, 2004
q shack.. drooolllllll....
that was the theory anyway.
the time seemed right. it'd been months since i'd been to the q shack. after work i was hungry and cranky and it really seemed like the perfect time. you know how stuff you like is always better when you haven't had it in a long time? more intense? that's what i was expecting. a religious q shack experience.
maybe my expectations were too high; maybe the problem was getting takeout, so the food was a little cold before i ate it. at any rate, i was disappointed. it was kind of a waste.
oh well.
Posted by lisa at 06:50 PM
arguments which i entered into today and did not win
- whether or not we should put an animated .gif on the top page of our intranet. i took the position that we should not, for a variety of extremely lucid usability reasons. i lost.
- whether or not the discussion email list at xdu should be replaced by forums. i took the position that it should. so far, i am losing.
- whether or not pointy-toed shoes are appropriate for all foot and body shapes and sizes. i took the position that they are not. stalemate pending further investigation.
Posted by lisa at 04:12 PM
March 16, 2004
posted from my phone
Posted by lisa at 05:39 PM
now we're getting somewhere
search strings used to reach this site during the month of march:
sugar shoes pointy whale
old lunch ladies
cadaver dogs and durham police
clogged drain
driade 33 speakers
gamekeeper's thumb chicken
infp irritating (why yes, WE ARE!!)
sabatier thiers-issard (eh????)
and of course, the eternal mystery:
clinton kelly gay
so glad to be of service on all of these important issues! the next time you clog your drain with a pointy whale, you know who to turn to for irritating cadaver dogs. the durham police!
Posted by lisa at 12:01 AM
March 15, 2004
crushes & boyfriends - college
in 1986, i was seventeen and left home to go to a small quaker college. my first or second day there, i met dbt. he was wearing a wxyc t-shirt; i'd never met anyone before who listened to xyc unless i'd introduced them to the station. during high school, music was everything, and xyc was my lifeline. seeing that shirt was enough to break me out of my usual painful shyness for a moment, and i started talking to him.
we became friends; he showed me his vw gti and then laid the smooch on me. a week or two later, he broke up with me in the nicest way possible. and then, most importantly, he encouraged me to become a dj, and trained me when i finally decided to.
and then college became a seemingly endless dry spell. i was even part of the "sexual desert walkers' club". i kid you not. this picture might serve to explain. ok, i was a little cuter before i shaved all my hair off.
the female members of the SDWC all lost their membership within the space of 24 hours. it was "serendipity", the annual spring festival. i somehow hooked up with a swedish security guard. i tried to get him to speak swedish to me, which i discovered was quite sexy, but he didn't seem to get it. in fact, he didn't seem to be very comfortable with the whole situation. it didn't go very far.
so for two years, that was it. i developed a bit of a complex over my lack of attractiveness, both physically and as a person. i decided that i must have a deep character flaw which prevented men from wanting to love me.
somewhere in the first semester of freshman year was james. oh my, this guy was some piece of work. he would lead me on, snuggle with me, tickle me, have deep provacative conversations with me... then tell me that he didn't find me attractive. he claimed to be having an affair with his mother's best friend. he said that they never kissed, because she didn't want to fall in love with him. he'd tell me about how gorgeous my friend meg was, and what a crush he had on her. this guy was pretty much evil. didn't do much for my confidence.
and i think in there somewhere was my one kiss with suk. i was home on a break, or something... we went to a movie with this girl who later stole a boyfriend away from me while she was in spain, and suk and i were holding hands and touching each other's arms all during the double feature ('uforia' and 'repo man' at the rialto). and then when i was dropping suk off at her house, and we were hugging goodbye, fiercely because she was going off to oberlin and our friendship was starting to end, she kisssed me, a big huge french kiss. and that was it, i think it was after that that she started to blow me off and i was angry at her and it was all bad. a couple of years later she told me that i was the only woman she'd been interested in in that way.
and then i dropped out of school, moved into a house with some of my college friends, and started working at a movie theater.
i developed a very interesting relationship with a security guard at a local car dealership. he worked nights; i'd pull all-night shifts at the radio station. he'd call me, bored, and we'd talk for hours while i was on the air. this guy was the only actual male nyphomaniac i've ever met (to my knowlege). he was really the real deal. he slept with every woman he met. he'd carried on with his best friend's wife for years. ok, maybe he was full of crap, maybe he told me a bunch of lies.. but i believed him at the time, and looking back, i think i still do.
but hey, guess who he didn't want to sleep with? there was one woman whose platonic friendship he valued so much that he didn't want to ruin it with sex. i'll give you one guess.
this did nothing to help my little complex.
Posted by lisa at 11:19 PM
ugh.
although i did go shopping with shayne and sarah, i came out of the weekend feeling as if i'd spent it on my own. also worked at home today, to make Car Stuff more manageable. so i feel very isolated.
i've realized that the social things i do are all very safe and closed, like yes or no questions. going shoe shopping with the girls, while fun, isn't going to introduce me to any new people or really satisfy my desire for sociability. i have the growing realization that this is becoming a serious problem, and i'm going to have to force myself to do some stuff that i don't feel very comfortable doing.
i've always admired my friend jonathan's ability to build a social network in every new place he's moved. a lot of that can be attributed to his stellar communication skills-- he's so damn easy to talk to. but i also realized at some point that he meets a lot of people by spending lots of time in a coffee shop.
it's something i've always been hesitant to do-- go to a coffeeshop and settle in for a good while with my laptop and do some work. but i could. blue coffee has wireless internet. i would be out of the house, anyway.
the more time i spend alone, the harder it is to be with people. it's a catch-22.
Posted by lisa at 10:47 PM
posting from fone primitive but
posting from fone primitive but effective..
Posted by moblisa at 06:27 PM
posted from my phone
Posted by lisa at 04:58 PM
posted from my phone
Posted by lisa at 04:52 PM
conscientious objector
G.I. seeks conscientious objector status
(phil, if you're reading, correct me if i'm wrong on this stuff...)
this is interesting. when i was at guilford (which is a quaker school) i learned a little bit about what quaker men do to prepare for the event of a draft. since quakers practice nonviolence, they are conscientious objectors in the event of a draft. they actually still serve in the military, but do not carry weapons. sort of like hawkeye in M*A*S*H, but it's more official.
quaker men collect documentation throughout their lives to establish their religious status and to prove their belief in nonviolence.
now, for someone to voluntarily become a soldier, serve a tour of duty in a combat situation, then decide to become a conscioutious objector is something else again. i hope this story stays in the news, because i'm not sure what the military's response will be to this. i would not be surprised if they were not particularly understanding of this guy's stance.
Posted by lisa at 02:45 PM
March 14, 2004
pavarotti
in one of the most infamously bad dates i ever had with my ex (which involved me walking half a mile in driving rain, losing craig, and sobbing uncontrollably when i finally found him), i actually saw pavarotti perform. i'm not a huge opera fan, but nevertheless i'm pleased to have seen him.
Posted by lisa at 11:52 PM
ooh!
there's a new david mamet film. excellent.
Posted by lisa at 08:55 PM
can you say "vanity blog"?
ok, i'll admit it. i'm totally fascinated with pictures of myself from when i was a kid. actually, i'm totally fascinated with pictures of my friends and family from when they were kids, too. i'm sure i'm not the only one. a long time ago, when my brothers were little kids, i showed them a picture of mom as a baby. it blew their minds! they ran around saying, "baby mommy! baby mommy!" for an hour afterward.
but i'm not going to pretend that my posting pictures of myself to my blog is anything but vanity.
i was a total dork. still am. it might be slightly less obvious most of the time, though.
my princess di phase. still a total dork.
yep. i was a horse girl.
probably my first time wearing vintage clothes. you can tell it's halloween because my little brother is dressed up like superman.
Posted by lisa at 01:20 AM
March 12, 2004
another friday with the fam
today was mom's birthday, so i went into raleigh to have dinner with the folks. since we're all going to myrtle beach next weekend to meet the canadians, we'll wind up having dinner together three fridays in a row. unprecedented!
after dinner, back at the house, i dug out some old photo albums to see if i could find a prom pic with both george and i, or any other useful pics. turns out the prom pics are at the beach house for some unknown reason, but mom and i both got really engrossed in the photo albums which we had not looked at in years. i showed my brothers some very early pictures of their dad, who they don't really remember (he died when they were six). when i showed them one of his very early pictures-- he looked to be maybe 8 or 9-- i said, "do you know who that is?" and daniel said, "is that me?"
i also found the class picture from my montessori pre-school-- but it turns out it's of not my class! my mom was a teaching assistant in the other class, and it's a picture of her with her class. it does have the names of all the students on the back, but no indicator of which school it was. however, mom realized that her old friend pat folk, who we met through that school, and who still lives in the area, may well remember the name of the school. so hopefully we'll find out for sure if sarah and i were in pre-school together!
we also made the interesting discovery that my first stepfather, richard (stuart and daniel's father) may have owned a VW beetle when he was young. we do know that he had a close friend in college who owned a beetle, and wrecked it and was killed in it. i have what looks to be a photo of that beetle now. that's significant to me because it was one of the primary reasons i wasn't allowed to have a beetle as my first car. i also have a photo of richard at the house with a very new-looking black beetle-- possibly his. we can ask gran if he did indeed have one.
finally, i saw a project that wayne has been working on with old, old photos of his family. he's scanned them, enhanced them, printed them and is matting and framing them for display at the beach house. one is a priceless shot of his mother as a young woman holding a sign that says "WE WANT BEER". for those who have visited my house, she's the one who collected all the crazy salt and pepper shakers. wayned printed a copy for me and i'll frame it and hang it next to the shaker collection.
Posted by lisa at 10:41 PM
maybe i'm not really a night owl after all...
via boingboing.
TV and computers screw up your circadian rhythms...
why this article focuses on kids i'm not sure. if there's something to this, then it explains a lot, for me. also for my brothers, who both stay up all night playing online games, all the time.
Posted by lisa at 10:53 AM
March 11, 2004
crushes & boyfriends - senior year
senior year is big, blurry wash of friends, crushes, sexual identity-finding, and all kinds of heady adventures.
friends were crushes; crushes were make-out partners; friends were make-out partners... nothing was serious.
we couldn't keep our hands off each other. not sexually, usually-- just hugging, hugging, hugging; holding hands and snuggling and that sort of stuff. gender was no issue; or rather, it was an issue of great interest. some of us turned out to be gay.. others just toyed with the idea. at the center of all the sexual identity exploration was rocky horror. the content of the movie had a lot to do with it, but so did having a reason to stay out late on friday nights, having a meeting place for all the freaky kids, dark corners of the theater to make out in, and an opportunity to meet some of the freaky college kids, too.
so, let's see... there was marsh, who i'd actually known for years, though not well. we were great friends, and actually are still in touch. i had a terrible crush on him for most of senior year, i guess. then there was groves; i had a terrible crush on him, too. there was suk, she was my best friend. there was some kind of weird vibe between us, too. and then there was george.
george started an animation club. we produced a very charming little hand-drawn animated film on super-8. fascinated with the film technology, i helped george shoot the film, so we spent a lot of time together.
for some reason, we were all reading the kinsey report, too. maybe george got us started on that. this is how really geeky people learn about sex, i guess. first we read up on the topic-- get some good research under our belts. only then are we prepared to move on to real life experience.
the chronology is blurry, but i remember george asking me to the prom. i said no at first, on principle because i thought the prom was deeply wrong and lame. friends convinced me to go anyway, so i later said yes. (i only have a picture of me in the dress... no picture of me and george.)
the whole year we'd been working on this idea of a "lights out party". a bunch of us would sneak out and gather in marsh's room, turn out the lights and see what would happen. did we really think we'd have an orgy? no, of course not. we all hoped we'd hook up with that one person that we were really interested in.
and amazingly, we did it. groves wasn't into it; maybe he was a little too mature for such silliness, or just a little more serious in the way he wanted to treat girls. though i think he stopped by before the lights actually went out. but george came by, and surprised the heck out of me. all i did was sit in his lap, and all he did was run his hands over me. but it was an incredible experience. i don't even think we kissed.
then came prom. we spent maybe twenty minutes at the prom, then george took me to the most perfect make-out spot which he'd picked out and planned in advance. we had a nice time until he asked me if what he was doing was doing anything for me (it wasn't) and... i answered honestly. oops. that was that. he didn't want to touch me again after that.
we remained friends, and we've kept very loosely in touch; he wrote to me a year or two ago to say that he'd finally found a girl that "stuck". george is a very odd person, and i'm sorry that i've failed to give any kind of flavor of who he is in this account. i just don't know if george is someone i can summarize, but i can say that he's remarkably intelligent, yet struggles with living in the real world.
i think it was that very night that marsh and i fooled around. after my disappointing and distressing experience with george (which also resulted in the worst hickey i have ever had, jesus), i felt the need to be with someone a little more in tune with me. so i called marsh, and snuck out, and went to his house, and climbed in his bed. that was the only time we did anything like that.
it wasn't until later that things would happen with groves and with suk. that'll have to be another entry, because there was one more person of note in my senior year. that was art decco.
at rocky horror, as previously stated, we met some freaky college kids. in particular, we met jeff jung. he fell for suk, and somehow she and i wound up spending a lot of time at his place, which was walking distance from the school. art was one of jeff's roommates. he was a scrawny, pasty redhead; published a mostly political zine that i can't remember the name of, and had this whole bookish anarchist vibe going on.
one night, jeff invited all of us back to his place after rocky horror. he and art shared the basement. i somehow wound up climbing into art's bed. we just made out... he wanted to go farther, but i didn't, and he was nice enough about it. we did wind up having one of those weird situations where all he really wanted was someone to fool around with, but never said that; i wanted a boyfriend, and was jealous of jeff's growing devotion to suk. so i stopped hanging out with him after i'd made a bit of a fool of myself over him, but he was always very sweet to me whenever i saw him after that.
art decco was of course not his real name. i remember his real name but there's no need to mention it here.
Posted by lisa at 10:20 PM
which buffy season are you?
thanks, alicia for finding this one!
Season One - You're the beginning of greatness,
witty and scary, but a bit on the shallow side.
Don't worry, though, you make up for it with
"Prophecy Girl," your best episode.
Well, it is one of my favorite seasons :)
Posted by lisa at 09:57 PM
an unexpected metaphor
i started out with the Very Large Array, and somehow it would up sounding dirty... IM convo with a friend:
[me]: the Very Large Powerbook is calling to me... i miss it!
[me]: it's saying, "lisa... i am very large... obscenely so... come make funky fresh designs on me all night long..."
Posted by lisa at 04:48 PM
byrne-ing fever of rock
it appears that i will be down with quite a few rock shows in the coming months; the mind boggles, given that i'm such a lameass stay-at-home in general, especially when it comes to rock shows.
- rasputina, april 12, cradle
- the fall, april 14, cradle
- stereolab, april 21, cradle
- einsturzende neubauten, may 16, orange peel
- david byrne, carolina theatre, june 8
Posted by lisa at 12:52 PM
March 09, 2004
sacrifice body for computer
not the first time i've done that, and it probably won't be the last. i spent all the time today that i'd normally spend finding or making and eating decent meals for myself driving around trying to obtain something that fedex was holding hostage.
but i did succeed, and it's here-- an obscenely large powerbook. i decided, finally, that doing design on a small screen is for the birds. of course, there's work to be done before i can really use it. but i'm hopeful that it'll make as big a difference in my day to day computing life as getting my first laptop did. well, that's probably too much to ask :) but a big difference, anyway.
still, i just see it as a tool. my first ibook was more than that to me and i find now that i can't let it go. the current ibook and the powerbook will be easier to sell when the time comes.
Posted by lisa at 11:14 PM
on air tonight
i'll be on tonight, 8-10pm Eastern. 88.7fm in durham, wxdu.org online.
live playlist will be here.
it should be noted that i'll have a trainee who will be on for 1 hour of that time, and will probably lead me to being quite distracted during the other hour.
Posted by lisa at 01:05 PM
sneaking out
phil says:
"Sneaking out -- did you listen to the This American Life feature about the girl who made up a family that she "babysat" for, so she could get out of the house?"
i'm interested in other people's teenaged sneaking-out experiences. i did it constantly my junior and senior years in high school. sometimes i'd just go for long walks by myself, though usually i had some social agenda. my friend marsh lived in what was meant to be a separate apartment attached to his father's house, so it was very easy to go in and out of his room as we pleased. his father also seemed to be deaf or a heavy sleeper, because we could have a dozen people in that room and music at close to normal volume and he never seemed to notice.
so tell me about yours-- how often? why? were you ever caught?
Posted by lisa at 12:07 AM
March 07, 2004
crushes and boyfriends - jason
i'm going to skip past quite a lot of depressing, unrequited crushes, social anxiety, and general angst and hand-wringing and just head on into my very first boyfriend-- jason. this was my junior year in high school. i guess i was 16 and my little brothers were still infants, less than a year old.
he was highly intelligent, strangely virile for a computer geek, tall, played basketball a lot, incredibly nerdy with that typical nerdy corny sense of humor (he introduced me-- with endless repetition-- to "well..." "that's a deep subject!" sigh.) and surprisingly sweet. i could never decide if he was quite ugly or quite handsome. (i can't find my high school yearbooks, so i can't post a picture.)
i remember giving him a cookie on valentines day on the bus. i remember sitting with him in the burger king after school; he held my hand in order to inspect my class ring, which made me flush with desire, though he seemed to be unmoved by touching me.
i remember sitting on the bridge in the park next to him one afternoon. i think he told me that i was gorgeous and then he kissed me, my first kiss. it was terrible and dry. i was terrified.
we kissed a lot, and never had any privacy so it was always in public. we did other stuff too. i'm a little shocked now at how far we went, especially given that it was all happening outside in public. i did sneak out one night to meet him in the park. i thought i would be more comfortable doing more with him under cover of night, but still didn't. i guess i was impatient to be ready for more than i was. one day he wanted to do something particularly, um, advanced to me in my bedroom while my grandmother was looking after my brothers in the other room. i couldn't hack it. i remember feeling bad that i couldn't be more uninhibited.
the reason i remember breaking up with him was because he was "too weird". i think i might have tried to get him back a while later, but he was angry at me and wouldn't have anything to do with me.
now the really interesting thing is that he found me online and contacted me about a year ago-- to apologize. he said he remembered being "a cad" and pressuring me, and said he'd always felt bad about his behavior. i didn't remember it that way, although i guess maybe he did come on kind of strong now that i think about it. anyway, he's doing well after many hard years, he's chief engineer at a games company in the area, married and has a kid.
sneaking out to meet jason, btw, started a huge career in sneaking out which continued for the rest of my time at home. i was never caught, and my mother apparently never knew until a few years ago when i told her. sneaking out, in turn, started my love affair with nighttime.
Posted by lisa at 10:38 PM
alone
there was a time in my life when i craved a lot of solitude. or at least, i got a lot of solitude, and i got something out of it sometimes that was very fulfilling. not always though. i was actually lonely a lot of the time, and craving human companionship. unfortunately, i wasn't very skilled at getting it.
living in town, not out in the woods, helps. living in the same place for a long time also helps. as the years go by, i accumulate more contacts and friends. i get a little better at conducting some kind of a social life.
still, i wind up with weekends like this, where i don't have a conversation for two days. it makes me jumpy and restless. i find myself stalking around the house with no purpose. stalking around the neighborhood for a while at least makes it possible to sit down for a minute and write something or do something focused, but a need unfulfilled has a way of coming to the forefront and getting in the way of other things.
when i had a boyfriend, i used him as a convenient cushion against unwanted solitude, but that had drawbacks. the first fine weekend after we broke up, i worked in the garden for hours, longer than i had probably in a year. i realized that i let him take up energy that i should have been using for other things-- that i let my life get out of balance. maybe that should have been a clue that things were not right with the two of us.
for some reason i look forward to nightfall. i feel more comfortable in the dark. last night i took a walk because there was a full moon that i wanted to look at, and some good clouds. stuff like that does make me miss the cabin because the buildings get in the way of the moon.
anyway.
Posted by lisa at 04:42 PM
March 06, 2004
hanging out with the fam
|
my aunt joan is visiting, on her way home from her yearly sojourn to sarasota, so i went to dinner with my mom, wayne, and joan tonight. we went to the... uh, i think it's called the duck and dumpling. it's a trendy chinese restaurant in downtown raleigh. actually, it was quite yummy and we had a nice time. we walked around after at artspace, it being first friday.
aren't they cute? almost like twins now, although they are a few years apart. i've always liked joan a lot. when i was a little kid, she had long, perfectly straight blonde hair, down to her waist, which i greatly admired. she also had a poison ring which i enjoyed opening and closing (she later gave it to me). and she was always very nice to me, even when the rest of the family treated me like a kind of pariah. |
Posted by lisa at 12:37 AM
odd work habits
well, the doodling, everyone does that. i never stopped doing that.
the paperclip sculptures i haven't done in a long time. just found myself doing them again recently-- that's always the way. i'll sit there with a paperclip in my hands and not realize it until it's a twisty little sculpture. my desk was covered with them when i first started out, but it's been years since i've done them.
either i'm bored or i just have more paperclips floating around my desk right now.
Posted by lisa at 12:13 AM
March 05, 2004
crushes - 6th grade
well, once christa told me about her idea i knew i wouldn't be able to leave it alone for long. and so here we go.
will it be a catalog of many love interests, both successful and unsuccessful? will it be a catalog of only unrequited crushes? tempting, but depressing. i don't know. we'll see.
the first crush i really recall was john greene in the sixth grade. sixth grade was hell; i'm astounded my spirit wasn't so crushed that i was actually able to have a crush.
i confided it in a girl i thought completely trustworthy. she told other girls and soon the whole class knew. i was mortified.
that was that.
oddly, to this day i cannot resist telling at least one person about almost all of my crushes. i have never been able to keep that information to myself. apparently this early negative conditioning had no effect.
Posted by lisa at 02:59 PM
my first club - closed now
Storied Brewery club closes quietly.
i grew up in raleigh, and the brewery was very important to me once upon a time. i saw my first show there. i think it was probably a reggae show. i remember a very cute guy with baby dreads asking me to dance, but i was too young and stupid to even know how to dance with a cute guy and he gave up. (unlike christa i was a bit of a late bloomer.)
i saw a lot of all-ages hardcore punk shows there as well. it's where i met kevin lane, at a circle jerks show. he became my pen-pal for many years (he lived in south carolina). he later left home and landed in greensboro at the time i was at guilford college. i guess he came to see me, and just kind of stayed. we wound up making out one night in my dorm room but it turned out we didn't get along that well in person and we didn't hang out much after that.
there was a friend of my mother's who was a lot younger than my mom, but several years older than me. her name was frances. when i was in high school and my folks went out of town without me, my mom would have frances come hang out with me so i'd have something to do. frances once took me to the brewery to see a band-- heck if i can remember the name of it. anyway, the opener was snatches of pink, one of their first shows i think. frances and all her friends hated snatches, but i really liked them.
i also saw crash worship there for the first time. it was like suddenly, accidentally finding that one band you've been looking for since forever. it was a wildly dangerous show, with fireworks inside the building-- in the crowd-- and a fire in an oil barrel.
like most folks i had completely given up on the brewery in the last several years. there were no shows worth seeing there. it never occured to me that it would close, but that's probably because i just never thought about the status of the brewery one way or another. it's a pity, really.
Posted by lisa at 08:55 AM
March 04, 2004
shiny!
my co-worker joe told me that my hair is "movie star quality shiny" today.
guess i'm just livin' right.
Posted by lisa at 04:31 PM
sleepy now...
interestingly, i'm not bouncing off the walls again today; yesterday it did seem to reach a sort of fever pitch and i probably burnt myself out. i've also got an allergy thing, i think, which is putting a bit of a damper on things.
suddenly wanted to listen to interpol on endless repeat starting yesterday evening. i think it was this time last year when i finally took some notice of them; it was so exhilarating. their web site says they won't even start recording until the end of this month, so the new one won't be out until fall at the earliest. boo :(
Posted by lisa at 12:52 PM
March 03, 2004
wheeeeee!
christa joined me on my walk today, we went down to duke park and played on the see-saws and other fun stuff.
i walked for an hour and actually kinda wore myself out a little this time. i'm sure i'll be bouncing off the walls again tomorrow, though...
Posted by lisa at 06:54 PM
you really don't know until you try
i was talking with my regular lunch companion today about the effect my dietary changes have had on my life.
going back to the fruit thing... it occured to me at lunch today that the hypoglycemia might have been part of my whole problem with fruit. it just never seemed like food to me-- at best, it was something to have in addition to the other things i needed to have-- at worst, it was a snack that was going to make me feel even worse after, if i ate it alone when i was hungry.
and i think, too, that the hypo had a lot to do with my being such a picky eater. i've known that for a while. when you feel like you're collapsing every time you get hungry.. well of course you don't feel like being particularly adventurous. ever. every meal has to be counted on to rescue you, and risks-- trying something new-- seems like a bad idea. i always felt like this was a character flaw on my part-- that i should be more adventursome. that that was an admirable quality to cultivate. but it never occured to me that that quality might naturally come about if i fixed my food problem.
dave also commented that i don't stress and obsess over meals the way i used to. i can't quite remember how he phrased it... something to the effect that i used to worry about it a lot. i really did. on any given day, almost nothing would "feel right" to eat, and i'd feel guilt over the things that did "feel right". (and i should give dave props for being pretty patient with me over the years in this regard.)
i've also had the growing feeling, for maybe the last two months, that i may have achieved real moderation. i am losing weight, but very, very slowly. since i've heard some freaky stories about people with unstable weight developing fatal blood clots, that's just fine with me. i don't adhere strictly to atkins; i don't feel deprived. and i don't feel like going nuts with any one particular food. i just don't feel the need. i think fixing the hypo problem probably has a lot to do with the binge/guilt cycle being finally, i hope, broken.
it's kind of startling the implications. my initial goal in kicking sugar and eating meat again was to just not spend three evenings a week trying to recover from a late-afternoon hypoglycemic crash. i didn't think beyond that, but it turns out that that was only the start.
Posted by lisa at 04:52 PM
radio anxiety
i had a dream last night that i was on the air and could not figure out what to play next. i kept wandering through the stacks and picking up stuff and then realizing that it was terrible, too terrible to play. finally the song that was on ran out and there was just dead air, silence, and i kept wandering through the stacks, my mind a total blank.
at the same time that horrible guy chris had called the station to make a correction to the concert calendar. he didn't say who he was but i recognized his voice. so the whole time i was wandering the stacks, i had the phone to my ear, waiting as he researched the correct information, which was taking forever. he wasn't saying anything, but just being on the phone with him was dividing my attention. i think i finally hung up on him without saying anything.
i think rick was there, too, and i felt very self-conscious about choosing just the right music, since he paid me such a nice compliment after my last show. of course, the self-imposed pressure to do a Really Good Show was crippling and was much of the reason my mind was a total blank as i thought about what to play next.
Posted by lisa at 02:14 PM
March 02, 2004
spring
the spring weather is making me crazy! at least i'm getting something good out of it; my desire to be more physically engaged with the world is leading me to go walking a lot. of course, it's just a substitute for what i actually want to do, but in the meantime i'll settle for building a little muscle tone.
Posted by lisa at 09:00 PM
i eat fruit now.
i've had some interesting things happen as a result of giving up vegetarianism and sugar, and spending the better part of the last year or so on a low-carb diet.
the first is that i really like fruit now. i just never did before. i'd eat it sometimes, but never understood why other people liked it so much. i mainly liked it in combination with sugar-- apple or cherry pie; strawberry shortcake; apple dumplings. this was a preference that i held basically from birth-- i was infamous in my family for not eating fruit. my mom spent a lot of energy trying to get me to eat some fruit, any fruit, on a regular basis. i never did unless forced.
i'm not sure why i like it now. i think part of it is because of the elimination of sugar. i eat plenty of artificially sweetened stuff, but i think the sweetness of fruit, in combination with its wholesomeness, has an appeal that artificial sweeteners don't compete with the way sugar did.
i also never drink fruit juice now-- for me, that would be almost as bad as drinking a coke. so i probably crave the nutrients.
the second is the phases i've gone through with meat-eating. around this time last year, i could not get enough red meat. i craved it, all the time. the cravings lasted for months, and then went away. i know the vegetarians out there may not like to hear this, but i think my body needed something that it had not been getting for a very long time. it wasn't iron; the planned parenthood technicians always told me that my iron levels were very good back when i was a veg. my guess would be some amino acid. i'll grant that i wasn't the healthiest eater as a vegetarian; i ate a lot of junk and processed food; had many meals where i'd substitute starch and fat for protien; and of course consumed tons of sugar and never enough vegetables. i still believe that a vegetarian diet can give the body everything it needs, but there's a lot less room for error-- you've really got to fill up on high quality foods and skip the junk.
over the last year or so, i've definitely come to see a lot of food that i once considered staples as filler and junk. pasta, rice, potatoes, bread. really good bread and really good french fries certainly have their place in the world of Foods Worth Eating, but mostly that stuff is so unnecessary. there's just no reason to eat it.
finally, sometime in the last few months i lost my ability to taste the chemical aftertaste in most artificially sweetened foods. this is disturbing, but also convenient. i can tell a difference between natural sugar and artificial stuff, but that aftertastey-ness is gone for me.
it's been interesting to find that this is really a progression, not a state that i will reach and stay at. that's helpful to me, too, if i get really caught up in eating something that i think is bad for me-- like oh, say, bacon? :) now i have every reason to believe that it's a phase and i'll pass through it and on to a healthier habit later.
Posted by lisa at 04:07 PM
ode to vogs - day seven - the spacegrrl shoes
as promised, i've saved the best for last. these are the third or fourth pair of 'vogs i bought.
i honestly had no clue how high these were going to be. it had been years since i'd worn-- or bought-- heels.
i had no idea how amazing they'd be, either.
i originally wanted them in gray. well, silver. of course. the way fluevog's mailorder works is, your order goes to the closest store and they handle it. the boston store called me to say they didn't have them; they'd call the NYC store. NYC called me to say they didn't have them, either, but they'd call more stores.
the next call i got was from john fluevog himself. he said they'd never actually made that color, and apologized. i told him i'd take them in blue, instead.
it's a bit difficult to tell from photos-- this was a surprise to me when they arrived-- the heel is made from translucent blue lucite.
walking in them is a bit odd, but entirely possible. surprisingly possible. i don't like to wear them often, however, because i don't want the soles to be worn. i've never worn them outside, except one time in roswell. i figure if any ground is going to touch them, it's appropriate that it be roswell ground.
to me, they are little works of art. hopefully one day i'll have a good way to display them, up on a wall, with a little light behind them so you can see through the heels. i love looking at them.
Posted by lisa at 09:37 AM
some people just like being married
clearly, i'm not one of them.
i have a friend named val who i know through volkswagen stuff. steph and i visited her in austin after roswell last year, because she wasn't able to make it to the car show and we wanted to see her. she'd just moved back home after divorcing her husband.
while we were visiting, of course we wound up discussing boys and girls and dating in general. val showed us the personal ad of one guy that she was interested in, but shy about contacting.
well, we kinda talked her into writing to him.
and now they're getting married.
i used to be quite judgemental of people who wanted to get married; perhaps as a result of my family history, i had a rather jaundiced view of marriage. it seemed at best unnecessary; at worst, a trap that kills the soul of the participants.
i've mellowed out a lot over the years on the subject. oddly, i think i got a lot out of watching 'mad about you', which is essentially the inspection of a marriage. it's fascinating to me that two deeply flawed people-- as all people are deeply flawed-- might choose to stay together, not because they cannot survive on their own, but because they simply wish to.
that's the modern face of marriage, of course. women can be completely independent for their entire adult lives if they so choose-- they don't need a man to support them. men don't need a servant at home to run the household. we have our urban families to keep us company. and yet, people continue to choose married life. and some people even thrive within it.
anyway, congratulations to val and her fiance. hopefully i'll get to meet him in june.
Posted by lisa at 09:35 AM
what does it mean when the dreadlocks are gone?
thinking about dreadlocks boy last night, it wasn't surprising that he cropped up in a dream; in the dream i remember travelling with him and two other hippies in a tiny, oddly shaped, unusual vw. we arrived at a hotel, where there was a sort of business-person's networking party going on. i realized that he'd cut off all his hair and was wearing nice slacks and a sweater vest. he snubbed me at the party and i realized that he was trying to change his life and become more conventional, more of a yuppie. so i took off and had one of my usual "travelling" dreams where i go through many halls, stairways, rooms, and other building features.
Posted by lisa at 09:10 AM
March 01, 2004
ode to vogs - day six - the boots
i went to seattle in the fall of 2003 for a conference. happily, the conference was mere blocks away from the seattle fluevog store. of course, i went there the very first day.
oh, what a time i went through with these boots! they had to be stretched. i decided to get the store in seattle to stretch them for me. weeks upon weeks passed. i got a postcard from the girl at the store to say that it was taking longer than expected. finally, they arrived.
they didn't fit. they'd been stretched out of all recognition. christa said they made my legs look deformed.
i sent them back and told them to send me an unstretched pair. to their credit, they were amazingly cool about it. i doubt they could have sold those crazy stretched out boots.
i took them to a cobbler. in the end, i'm not sure they were really stretched much at all. i finally took them home and found that, with pliers, i could get the dang things zipped up ok.
they're fun as hell to wear. they almost seem too sexy for work, but aren't, quite. people comment on them all the time. they make me feel like i own the fucking world when i wear them.
i thought they'd be good to wear on a date. i'd have the guy at my feet in these things. but sadly i've not been on a date since i got them. oh well!
Posted by lisa at 10:50 PM
duke park mad with birdnoise
first walk of the season, i practically ran out of the house after feeding the cat and it was like i couldn't walk enough. i still don't feel tired after a good 40 brisk minutes including that last push up e. mangum, the hill that does me in sometimes.
crocuses are up, daffs are budding.
Posted by lisa at 06:32 PM
ms. films
i would like to add here, in the hopes that this will help me remember in a year how i feel now about spending a lot of time and money doing oscars-related things, that my time and money would have been immeasureably better spent at the ms. films fest.
i actually kind of hate myself now, for that specific misuse of my time. though it's worth noting that i don't regret spending extra time with my friends, which is mainly why i did it anyway.
Posted by lisa at 04:48 PM
the oscar life
cold mountain was pretty good. jude law, as always, is well worth looking at. i thought the woman from texas (renee zelweger) got the southern accent a little better than the woman from australia (nicole kidman) and the guy from england (law), but hey. it's hollywood. what the hell do they know about accents? and that doesn't matter so much anyway, as long as it's passable.
the oscars party was what it was. i am an ill-mannered brute who feels the speeches are mostly worth missing, as are the commercials and all the performances. so basically, all but about five minutes out of four hours are worth a miss. it was my first time ever watching the oscars, so i didn't realize i'd feel this way until it was happening.
i don't think i was too rude.
Posted by lisa at 01:16 PM