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September 30, 2004

i'm crap on toast!

ooh, thanks to pinky for leading me to this:

fish tacos
You are Fish 'Tacos.' You might think you're
exotic and worldly-wise, but in reality you're
just a bunch of crap on toast. Repeat after
me: 'just because you put something in
quotation marks doesn't make it so.' And
'taco' isn't Spanish for 'toast.'


What Weight Watchers recipe card from 1974 are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Posted by lisa at 01:06 PM

September 29, 2004

[halloweenies] click my boot. click it! click it, you little worm!

Posted by lisa at 08:32 PM

it's a good sign

it's a good sign, i think, that i'm pretty much caught up on everyone's blogs, including the nerve personals bloggers; that i frequently stare at the picture of the unbearably cute boy i'm currently attempting to chat up (often while i'm reading blogs); that my bedroom is in a state such that it seems entirely reasonable that i'll be painting it in a week and a half; and that re-decluttering my living room this evening took all of twenty minutes.

i should really get to bed earlier though.

Posted by lisa at 12:00 AM

September 28, 2004

[halloweenies] fantod

those who attended the earliest halloween parties at the charming english cottage of death may remember this gorey-ific toy:

Posted by lisa at 08:26 PM

September 27, 2004

[halloweenies] strindberg + helium

it's not october yet, but i feel that halloweenie feeling creeping into the air. creep. creep.

i bring you the first in a new series, "halloweenies". (name shamelessly cribbed from flossie and the unicorns.)

i'm just going to go ahead and give you the best first, strindberg und helium.

absinthe-and-women.gif

Posted by lisa at 11:39 PM

September 26, 2004

starlite fundraiser, part 1

i'd like to point everyone to the pictures i took at the car show today. much to our surprise-- they put our bugs in the car show! we think it was a mistake, but both our bugs are modded-- and we later added a limited edition snap orange to our little lineup-- so we didn't look all that out of place. we were a shoe-in with the 10-year-old girls, anyway.

i'll be heading out to the rock show at ooh la latte soon-- and carla says she's going to recruit me to work at the fundraising table. which is fine, i actually enjoy that kind of stuff. keeps me from standing around like a dork which is what i normally do at rock shows.

Posted by lisa at 05:41 PM

hysteria

19th century hysteria: sexual shame expressed as physical symptoms. example read in the nerve blog-a-log: a woman experiences paralysis of the legs as a result of feeling desire for her uncle.

21st century hysteria: girl has weekend of sex with a guy who turns out to be a real asshole and very toxic. enjoys it immensely. later convinces herself she's got various symptomless STD's, but, fearful of the results, never goes to the doctor. and continually chooses to stay safely at home or in the company of friends who provide insulation between her and the possibility of meeting any single guys. wonders what her problem is. reads a random piece of information on the web a year and a half later and wonders.. does she feel ashamed?!?

:|:

the one exception to all of this (self-induced?) celibacy sent me another postcard this week. him i just don't know what to make of. he breezed through town, showed me a good time, and then proceeded to... completely stay in touch with me throughout his year-plus sojourn across the states. go figure.

Posted by lisa at 09:29 AM

September 25, 2004

puttering

i took friday off; after being stressed and anxious to the point of panic attacks over the last month, a day off seemed like a good idea. and then of course it turned out that the weather was fabulous, so it worked out really well.

i've been accomplishing stuff in the house for the last two days, but in a very relaxed way, without stress. it's been pretty nice.

i did find a use for those shoeboxes actually! it turns out that Born apparently packs all their shoes in the same box, and since i'm a big Born fan, i had enough uniform boxes to re-organize the sewing equipment that had come to me from my grandmother. everything had been packed into old boxes that were falling apart, or shoved into plastic bags-- many of which were also falling apart. the Born boxes are so sturdy and uniform that even when I have a proper piece of furniture to store the sewing stuff in, it may remain in those boxes.

i also took a couple of smaller shoeboxes, cut holes in the lids with an exacto knife, and put some old candles that don't look pretty anymore in them. since the candles still smell nice, i am sticking the boxes into closets to make the closets smell nice. is that crafty or what? and if/when the power goes out, i've still got a ton of usable candles in the house.

my bedroom is now almost completely decluttered, which is a huge thing. it still has a little way to go, but i can actually clean basically all of the floor with the swiffer, which is great-- that room is always full of cat hair/dust that is so gross. i finally managed to get the dividers for an ikea cabinet that i bought years ago, pounded together correctly. they are made of four piece of wood that are slotted together. when i originally tried to get them together, i couldn't get them all the way into place. i bought a rubber mallet and had the brilliant idea of applying a little wd-40 to the situation. bingo! they came together perfectly.

i thought i might try to assemble the cabinet, but ran into a small problemo: i can't find the hardware and instructions anywhere. i dug through many drawers with no result. i guess i'll have to continue to clean out parts of the house, and hope i run across that stuff somewhere along the line. my hope is to use that cabinet to store the sewing stuff; although the sewing stuff is more organized, it's just kind of floating around my bedroom and will become clutter again before long.

this afternoon i read through parts of 'herb gardening for dummies'. i think i have a list of herbs that i'd like to grow and which will do well here in NC. i don't plan to try planting anything until spring, and then i will buy seedlings to plan rather than trying to start my own seeds.

in the backyard, there's a bed that was extremely disorganized... almost like a place where elizabeth randomly planted a bunch of stuff, or stuck things she was moving from another area. i didn't really like anything, so i've razed it. the only thing left is a shrub that i thought was a tree-- my tree guy was the one who set me straight on that. why the hell would someone plant a single shrub in the middle of the yard? it is as mysterious as many other things she did-- like the butterfly bushes in equally random positions, which i gave to my mom because i was tired of mowing around them.

well, it dawned on me today that since i have a single shrub in the middle of an oval bed, i could do a very nice geometric design of herbs around the shrub, perhaps in concentric circles. use herbs more as decorative plants than as kitchen plants, but the oval is small enough that i'd probably be able to tend and harvest everything i planted.

i envision still planting herbs in the bed at the side of the lot, that has also been razed-- but needs to have approximately one metric ton of lily rhizomes pulled out of it-- they're sprouting up eagerly again despite having been sheared to the ground a couple of weeks ago. honestly.

and, finally, i want to do tulips in a border along my front walkway. there's one tulip that sprouts there every spring-- so i know they will grow there despite the shady conditions, and even perennialize. those will need to be planted before thanksgiving according to the 'north carolina gardener's guide'.

i've finished watching the first season of 'dead like me', which i highly recommend.

Posted by lisa at 09:12 PM

September 22, 2004

halloween dudes

Image sent: 200409221250

Posted by lisa at 01:33 PM

it is nice to clean.

so last night i had no obligations and no eleventh-hour deadlines from the starlite fiolks. oddly, i did have the energy to clean, and clean i did.

funny how piles of clutter that look quite small can take a surprising amount of time to sift through. besides laundry, that's almost all i did last night-- and it was only piles of clutter in the living room, which is the least cluttered room of all. and i didn't even finish!

well, come to think of it, i did box up all my summer sandals and pull out all the summer clothes i know i won't be wearing again til next year. so between that and the extensive laundry-doing, my clothes are quite organized right now.

shoe boxes: i really have too many. i keep feeling as if they should be useful for something, that i should be crafty, and paint them or cover them with flowered paper and use them for storage. storage of what, though? i try to store all of my shoes in racks so i can see them and not forget any, so for shoes i only need enough boxes to store out-of-season pairs.

a problem with using shoeboxes as storage in any solid organizing effort is that they're not all the same size, so they don't look neat and tidy and they won't necessarily stack well.

i know you guys find this just so fascinating.

another issue that i have now, which you all might actually find interesting, is my records.

now, please, keep in mind that my records-- my 12" vinyl-- are very emotional for me and suggestions of "obtain it in digital form and get rid of the vinyl" will fall on profoundly deaf ears.

i do have enough storage for most of my records. there is a category of records, however, that have a slightly dubious purpose and if i were to cull them, i'd probably have enough space for all of my other records.

that category is: records that would be fantastic to sample from should i ever do audio collage again.

now, it's been a few years. a lot of years. many years since i did any collage. but it's the closest i've ever come to being a musician, and music has been near and dear to my heart since i was a wee tiny winkle. there's something quite magical about actually producing your own original stuff after years of fantasizing about it. so it's kind of difficult for me to accept the idea that i might never do it again.

my thinking last night was that i should separate those records out, and see just how many i'm dealing with. see if there are any i could let go of. then see if i can purge enough books to make some bookshelf space for them in the back room; they don't need to be in the living room the way the records i actually listen to need to be.

yes-- interestingly-- i would rather give up books than records.

i'm also looking askance (in my mind) at my large-ish collection of mass market sci-fi paperbacks. maybe i should cull those, too-- just keep the ones i recall as being favorites.

in the meantime, i have decided that i will dress up as one of the gashlycrumb tinies for halloween. but which one? that i have yet to decide. the brilliance of this idea is that i can re-use it for twenty-six years in a row, and yet still be a different person every year.

i also have some home decoration ideas which might actually cause some fear in my party guests. is that bad?

Posted by lisa at 12:27 PM

September 21, 2004

a helpful suggestion

we should just ask bob not to re-open the theater, because people undoubtedly have unprotected sex during the movies. closing the theater could really impact HIV rates in durham!

(that's sarcasm. you got that, right?)

Posted by lisa at 11:11 AM

September 20, 2004

new cute thing

one of the things i love about my cat is that he changes his Methods of Cuteness from time to time. it's magical enough that a creature could remian cute well into his elder years; it just knocks me down that, in addition to that, he continutes to invent new ways of being cute.

so his new cute thing is this: he will lay down next to me while i sit on the sofa. first, he'll just do Modified Loaf Position... that is, with his hind feet out to the side, and his forelegs out to the front, with his head either up or resting on his forelegs.

he'll sit like that for a while, and then suddenly he'll gather himself up, and hurl his head against my leg whilst streching out into the fully sidewise position-- ie, both hind and forelegs out to the side. he'll rub his head against me and look up at me adoringly, purring.

it's terribly difficult to describe, but trust me, the cute factor is huge.

Posted by lisa at 04:32 PM

shoes

today at lunch i bought a pair of kenneth cole reaction patent leather flat mary janes. so cute!! i just love black patent, and it seems to be a small trendlet this season.

zappos has these pointy menswear-style brown heels on sale... i think they'd be a really great addition to my shoe wardrobe... except they are kinda similar to another pair i own :( and even on sale, they're damned pricey.

untidy museum has those black lace-up boots that i've wanted forever, on sale. i've always thought they were too 19-year-old-punkrock-goth-girl for me to ever get away with, but seeing them in person made me reconsider. i might go back and try em on, but i'd have to be sure i had at least one skirt i could wear them with before even considering buying...

Posted by lisa at 01:29 PM

it has a name

unexpectedly discovered in an HCI (human-computer interaction) themed blog that i recently started reading, "OK/Cancel"... in an entry on enjoyment bandwith, ie, the amount of data a human can reasonably enjoy within a lifetime, in the first comment is this happy tidbit of information:

"Volumes have been written on syllogomania (an obsessive-compulsive trash-hoarding disorder) - maybe there's some "digital parallel" to be found there?"

syllogomania.

Posted by lisa at 11:14 AM

byrnaerobics

saturday was kind of a sucky day; i mostly worked on the starlite site and kind of moped around and stuff.

i had a lot of mixed feelings about sunday; sometimes, when i have a lot of plans, instead of looking forward to them, i see them as obligations and dread them instead. that's at least partially how i was feeling about my grandmother's 95th birthday party and the whole byrne-stravaganza.

but, as always, when i'm actually doing the things, i have a good time and my mood improved a hundredfold by the end of the day. just call me little ms. mood swing!

gran's birthday party went really well. i have photos that i won't have time to process until later. mom put out a great spread, and gran was surrounded by tons and tons of people. we had residents from the retirement home, old friends of hers from the neighborhood, younger members of the neighborhood, and all of her grandchildren were there. we haven't all been together for probably fifteen years. my stepbrother keith even came; we got to meet his girlfriend june, who i liked.

it's probably not obvious from the way i speak about her, but gran is actually not a blood relation of mine. she's my first stepfather's mother. however, she's been like a grandmother to me since i was a little kid, and we have found it simplest just to refer to each other as "grandmother" and "granddaughter".

so one of the most amusing moments of the day came when my mom's friend deborah was standing next to me and inspecting some beautiful old photos of gran that mom had done up on a piece of posterboard. gran was a redhead and has fair skin, like me. deborah said to me, "I can see the resemblance!" and then when we all started laughing at this, she said, "OH! wait, you're not related!"

at the end of the party, i relented and had a very small piece of cake, and a glass of punch to wash it down.

big mistake.

i'd had a sandwich earlier, but apparently that wasn't nearly enough; i went into full-on hypoglycemic shock, which hasn't happened to me in quite some time. nausea, the shakes, etc. i took my folks up on their offer of dinner at cracker barrell. my favorite meal there is actually pretty sensible-- grilled chicken tenderloin sandwich and a salad, and by the end of the meal i was feeling much, much better.

after dinner, i went over to christa's for the pre-byrne cookout, which was lots of fun. corn-dog was there and he was all over me! odd, i think that little dog likes me or something. as he was clambering into my lap i said, "don't you know that i'm a cat person?" apparently these distinctions are lost on him. cutie.

the byrne show was great! we occupied basically the entire first row and part of the second, and the first row was thisclose to the stage-- i was literally holding on to the stage for balance and leaning up against it at times.

at the first rockin' song he played, christa stood up, the rest of us in the front stood up, and then a little ways into the song i looked back and the rest of the house had gotten up too! we ran into our old pal dave t. after the show; he said he was up in the front of the first balcony, and he could recognize us from there. i think he said we basically looked like crazy people. HAH! we are crazy people! it was a total blast. i was actually airborne through parts of the show-- lots of jumping up and down.

when we were talking to dave, we decided that it would be great if we could get a big room with a video monitor and do byrne-aerobics, because that stuff is just great to dance to!

after the show, a few of us decided to stick around. we went back and hung by the tour buses, and sure enough we eventually got to meet the band and david.

see, i can call him david now, because for a few moments he and i stood next to each other in companionable silence. i successfully resisted all stupid fangirl impulses to babble, because it was pretty obvious that he was tired and kind of down and not up for a lot of fan crap.

we also got to meet the folks from the string group, the bass player, and the rest of the band.

we waited for a while to see if david would come back, but it was getting late, cold, and my body was starting to feel the ill effects of eating badly all day-- i was feeling kind of sick. so we took off around 1am.

Posted by lisa at 07:56 AM

September 19, 2004

new drool

just when things were looking grim... i've found these. i'm just a sucker for a quasi-victorian boot, i guess.

so help me, i am seriously digging on these, too. but what would one wear these with??

Posted by lisa at 01:17 AM

September 17, 2004

the gun shop.

ruby posted about the gun shop

since this is the second time this has come up, and since my blog has been devoted to a lot of starlite stuff lately, i've decided to go on record with my position on this in my blog, rather than just posting a comment to ruby's blog.

first, it really is rather insulting for anyone to assume that the save our starlite folks have not "thought critically" about the gun shop. i made my peace with the gun shop long ago, back in the mid-90's when i ran my first WXDU fundraiser out there. it's not my favorite thing about the starlite, but it honestly doesn't bother me that much.

i think it's also important to clarify the financial relationship between the gun shop and the theater. i haven't asked bob about this because honestly, i don't care that much, but i am certain that the gun shop subsidizes the starlite-- as does the video store and the flea market. the theater doesn't make enough money to support itself just by showing films, so he uses the facility for other businesses.

so at worst, the two have a symbiotic relationship-- the starlite provides the facility for the gun shop, the gun shop helps pay bob's living. however, i think it's more likely that the gun shop subsidizes the starlite and makes it possible for bob to keep showing films there.

so that means that letting the starlite slip away into oblivion won't necessarily also cause the gun shop to go away... but getting rid of the gun shop probably means that the starlite will go away.

so... by helping to rebuild the screen at the starlite, i am not affecting the gun shop one way or another. i'm not "supporting this drive-in/gun shop" because combining the two in that way is disingenuous and misleading. i'm not helping to keep the gun shop in business, because it would stick around even if the starlite screen were never rebuilt. i'm definitely not subsidizing the gun shop, which is how one person put it to me in an e-mail several days ago.

:|:

i first moved to old north durham about 10 years ago. i was a renter. gunshots were a regular part of life-- at least weekly i'd hear a few rounds go off, then a car go rushing past on mangum st.

after a while, the gunshots started to go away. now they are almost never heard. five years ago, i bought a house in OND. i love that neighborhood very much. it makes me thrilled to the core to see derelict houses being restored, to see that the reports of murders on 300 Trinity have dwindled to nothing. to see that the neighborhood can come together to make that block a better place for the people who live there-- most of whom are renters.

a couple of years ago, i finally heard the story of the gunfire in OND and how it went away.

there was a small block of apartments near my place on lynch st that were occupied by drug dealers. the gunfire was centered around those apartments. a group of OND residents banded together, bought the apartments, evicted the tenants, renovated the apartments, and now i believe they are usually occupied by TROSA guys. the gunfire went away.

essentially the same thing happened on 300 Trinity. the landlord was threatened with having his property taken away because of neglect. he's cleaned up his act. the neighborhood also went in and put in permanent plantings with stone surrounds, and had the city take action to get people parking on the street instead of on the grass (which is really just compacted dirt at this point). things have really improved-- and by things, i mean that people don't get shot on that block every other month the way they used to.

so the point i am making at great length here is that the solution to gun violence is not to shut down a tiny gun shop out in east durham. ond residents didn't approach our problems by shutting down one gun shop, or all the gun shops in the vicinity of ond, because it wouldn't have done a damn bit of good! we still would have had just as many guns in our neighborhood, just as many people dying from gun violence.

:|:

i went to a quaker college for two years, and the experience solidified my position as a pacifist.

i have held fast to this position, particularly in the aftermath of 9/11 when the word "revenge" was on the lips of half of america. i reconnected with old guilford friends at that time just because we all needed to be in touch with other people who believed in nonviolence.

when i first met ray ubinger, who is a libertarian, and who is a great believer in the right to bear arms, i vehemently disagreed with the notion that, in our modern world, an arm-bearing populace would ever be require to ensure liberty in this country.

as of the last two years, i'm not so sure about that. particularly now that tom ridge pops up in the news from time to time saying that the terrorists may want to disrupt our election-- so therefore he'd better be ready to postpone it!-- i'm extremely wary of this administration in a way i've never been about our government before. i think the libertarians may not be crackpots after all.

i think the possibility exists that an armed revolution might be needed in this country, even in this modern world, because our checks and balances aren't checking and balancing any more, and i see a risk of our right to vote being removed under the guise of keeping us "safe".

would i participate in such a revolution? i don't know. i don't honestly know if i could bear an arm against a fellow human being. i might not. i might be a pacifist so deep through that i could not. but i would sure as hell want those who are able to do so, to do so, should such a need arise.

my belief that we still require a constitutional right to bear arms has evolved. i think that's still a good thing to have in the constitution, and therefore, i do want it to be legal to sell arms.

Posted by lisa at 09:53 AM

September 16, 2004

you better believe it, baby.

i am blogging this

Posted by lisa at 11:30 PM

old starlite photos

this is pretty cool. the dude who is helping me with the web site extracted these from the starlite folks the other night and scanned them in. old pics of the starlite from the 1960's, when it appears to have been temporarily derelict.

Posted by lisa at 11:19 PM

on being "sensitive"

i spent about the first half of my life-so-far being sensitive.* or "over-sensitive" according to others. i was made aware that other people often found my sensitivity frustrating. they wished i'd develop a "thicker skin", that i would let things bother me less.

i have responded to this pressure on the part of the people around me, who have included everyone from my grandmother, to my sixth grade teacher, to friends and other family members and, indeed, managers at work, by making myself seem less sensitive.

it does not actually seem possible to make oneself less sensitive. instead, i can only control my visible response to that which bothers me.

yesterday, i started making a list in my mind of the things that cause me stress at work. they include: the sound of a--'s voice (she's in the office next to me, and her voice is loud and often carries an edge of panic to it), the temperature of the building (it's usually too cold, and never within my control), the hideous starkness of the walls, the way the men have ego conflicts all the time, the way the water tastes in the breakroom, the way other people behave in the bathroom, the sound of people coughing (i always wonder if they're really throwing up), worrying about my pager (will i hear it? will i forget it? will i feel it vibrating in my pocket?), using my pager, the way my arms hurt sometimes, my back hurting, being interrupted when i'm concentrating, worrying if i will offend someone in an email, having to call people who are overseas and may not speak english well... etc.

that's an awful lot of overhead. i don't really know if these things bother other people or not. over the years, i've successfully adjusted my threshold of irritation-- i can endure more of this without showing many signs of being bothered. however, it still bothers me.

i had an anatomy teacher in high school-- actually, he was one of my all-time favorite teachers-- who said that the definition of being alive was that you are "irritable". not irritable in the sense of being crotchety and a pain in the butt, but irritable in that you are sensitive to stimulus, that the world around you can get a response from your nervous system. this was probably the first day of class.

i don't really have anywhere to go with this. i'm glad i've gotten other people off my case for the most part. i didn't set out to be sensitive or cultivate it. i have noticed that other people are more sensitive than i am and somehow get away with living that way. maybe i should have been more strong-minded and not tried to suppress my responses. i think working in an office environtment for years on end had a lot to do with it. my main point here is that i can't actually make myself less sensitive, i can only make myself appear less sensitive to others.

i might get into a whole discussion of how my first manager here wanted me to be more "receptive" all the time (this was back when i was a secretary), and the lasting influence that's had on my personality. i guess that's another topic altogether although i will say that i really hate that fucking word.

* some might argue that i'm still over-sensitive. to that i say, "bite me".

Posted by lisa at 03:36 PM

frost circus parade

(that's a little xtc reference that no one's going to get...)

frost level: WHITE (perfectly frosty).

last night the starlite folks decided they wanted to do a t-shirt for sale at the fundraisers on the 26th. carla decided that it would need to be done by this morning, and their plan was to have the designer of their flyers do the shirt.

i didn't think the flyers were a very strong design. flyers are one thing; they're ephemeral. t-shirts are quite another. they're around for a while, and people have to pay money for them.

i offered to do the t-shirt design.

i was up too late, but they seem to be pleased with what i did, and although i'd like more time with it, i won't be ashamed to see it on a t-shirt.

Posted by lisa at 10:13 AM

September 15, 2004

frost status report

i would say that overall, i did remain frosty yestserday, although there was one situation in which i had to repeat my "stay frosty" mantra to myself a few times.

i have been doing some major flaking out though; so far it's just been amusing, but i do have this niggling fear that i'll do something truly dangerous or harmful in my flakitivity.

there have also been more minor flake things, like missing a beltloop and not noticing for half the day, and some other stuff that, not surprisingly, i can't remember.

yesterday joe convinced me to go home an hour early; he said, "you'll just be misreable all week then take a sick day next week," after i complained of being exhausted. turns out he was right; last night i slept a lot and did only the most minimal, urgent starlite things; made myself a most excellent dinner of pork chops, broccoli, and fresca, watched some tv and petted my cat.

i feel pretty damn good today.

Posted by lisa at 12:57 PM

September 13, 2004

frost status report

i am pleased to report that it was a very frosty day. i didn't have anything too difficult slung my way, but i was quite tired and irritable.

i spent most of the evening hanging out with jason at the station, ostensibly helping him get the office mac fully OSX functional, but really i was escaping another night alone at home obsessing over the starlite web site.

tomorrow i will continue to try and stay frosty.

Posted by lisa at 11:14 PM

stay frosty

so here's my deal for this week. just because i love to elicit sympathy:

i just keep telling myself... stay frosty.

Posted by lisa at 01:50 PM

little paw series notes

i have now published all that i have written already in the little paw series. as many of you have no doubt surmised, these are stories from my cat moses' life, told from what i imagine might be his perspective. all of the stories are of things that actually happened.

as i remember more interesting stories, i will probably write more. maybe one day i will seek a publisher for this material. perhaps it could be a children's book.

the installment that folks commented they found scary and suspensful, i unfortunately don't have anything more to say about. we went walking in the woods one day and then suddenly, the woods ended and we were on some land that had been clear-cut. my landlady told me that her neighbor had had the land cleared to sell the wood on it. it was really a shame, and kind of a freakish experience for me.

the one thing i wish i could get across in this series that i really cannot is what a wonderful, sweet cat franny was. most of you never knew her. everyone who met her fell totally in love with her.

Posted by lisa at 01:11 PM

little paw and the very cold night

it began to get colder each day.

one night it was very cold. very, very cold. little paw could see mist in the air near the girl's face. she slept with her body buried in many thick things.

little paw put his nose under the thick things.

then he put his head under.

it was warm!

he put his whole body under the thick things. it was warm and good. the girl lay curled on her side. he found a small space against her belly that was the warmest place. he curled and tucked himself into the warm space and purred and slept. his mommy fell asleep on top of them, outside of the warm, thick things.

Posted by lisa at 01:03 PM

September 12, 2004

little paw walks in the woods

one day, little paw, the girl and his mommy were walking in the woods.

then they were walking in a field.

suddenly, the girl snached little paw off the ground. when he looked down, he could see a black thing coiling in the dead wheat of the field. little paw struggled to get down. when the black thing was behind them the girl let him slip from her arms.

they walked and walked. through the field and through the woods.

then suddenly there were no more woods. little paw and his mommy clambered over broken bits of tree root and mud. the girl stopped and said something slowly. they stumbled onward a little ways and then turned back.

on their way back, little paw's mommy stopped and tried to pee, but she didn't pee.

Posted by lisa at 02:30 PM

as the starlite turns

i didn't really mean to spend all day yesterday working on starlite stuff, but i did.

well, i did also fit in a good morning's sleep, a trip to goodwill with tons of crap (with a stop at nice price along the way that left me $5 and one vw friend richer-- the dude in the store wanted to talk about the westy), a nap, and three decent meals that did not originate from fast food restaurants. so i can't complain.

went to ooh la latte to work on the starlite site; it was time to move it forward a little. my latte was subsidized neatly by my trip to nice price. as always i can work well there, even despite annoying people well within my range of hearing making comments on how "sad" it is that people "drag the internet with them everywhere" (in reference to a comment his companion made about how cool it was that people had laptops with them).

in the late afternoon i went out to the starlite to help carla with some e-mail management issues. bob's place is like this huge hangout scene for all these people, and carla and i got to talking, so i wound up staying for a while.

there's also all this soap operatic stuff going on in the starlite fundraising crowd which i guess i won't air out here in public. it's fascinating though i have to say...

anyway. so when i got there, robin's daughter sam, who worked at the starlite, and her best friend were... playing with handcuffs. good clean family fun! and then robin started telling me about what good friends those two are, since they were little, and how they still sit on each other's laps. "Anyone who didn't know them would think they were... you know." everyone laughed and the young dude said, "Friends with benefits." sam's friend said, "really? that happens? with two women?"

i started thinking about it later, and i can't remember a particular moment when i learned that "that happens with two women", or with two men for that matter. odd.

without recounting the whole story behind this, i would like to mention that bob is the kind of guy who, when he has lost his partner of 28 years, his father, and his business in the space of one year, will give you his favorite pen just because you said you liked it. and when you refuse he will insist until it becomes too embarassing to refuse any more and you have to take it. that's the kind of guy he is.

i went home and proceeded to work on the starlite site until 1am, missing chicks rock entirely, which was not at all my intent. i really bogged down and slowed down on my work pace in the evening. there's still more yet to do, and i feel it's not as nice of an overall composition as what sarah originally came up with, but i do feel that i've done a good job of taking the look and the style she gave me and staying consistent with it as i've added more graphical elements.

which is to say, the page is different now.

donations through the page are slowing down and only netted about $1500. if anyone can think of a way we could promote the site that we're not, please let me know.

Posted by lisa at 02:23 PM

September 11, 2004

little paw climbs a tree.

one day, when he was bigger, and alone in the woods near his house, little paw climbed a tree.

he stayed in the tree for a long time.

he felt very safe there.

it got dark.

he could hear the girl calling the name she had given him. "moses, moses!" she called.

he was not very happy in the tree any longer, but did not know how to get down. he wanted to be in the warm house with the girl and his mommy and have his dinner. he started to cry.

the girl and his mommy found him and talked to him from the ground. he wanted to get down but didn't know how, so he just cried.

the girl and his mommy left.

they came back in the morning. now little paw was desperate to get down but he still did not know how.

he started to climb down, and then he fell. he fell through the branches, hitting some of them. he landed on his feet.

the girl was upset but little paw was happy to be down from the tree. he ran home and the girl gave him the good food and hugged him fiercely.

that night little paw pushed his mommy out of the way and slept very close to the girl in the snug, warm bed.

Posted by lisa at 12:41 PM

September 10, 2004

little paw gets a name.

one day the girl opened the door of the house and let little paw and his mommy walk out on the grass.

the grass was high and little paw stumbled along in his baby way. he and his mommy were careful to sniff everything and move very slowly through the grass.

suddenly a scary monster came into the grass! it was larger than little paw, his mommy, and the girl all put together. two boys got out of the monster.

the girl said to the boys, "This is moses and franny."

Posted by lisa at 05:30 PM

September 09, 2004

status update

i met with the dood and it was good. of course. in person things are different.

to be honest, i am really pretty disturbed at my emotional reaction to both of those things which really, were disproportionate to what was said. i think. this stuff is so damn subjective.

Posted by lisa at 09:25 PM

current status

words that describe my internal state over the course of the last week:

stressed, anxious, distressed, livid, apoplectic, lonely, sad, depressed, exhausted, insecure, threatened, upset, obsessive, fatalistic, sarcastic, defeatist, negative, paranoid, emotional, fragile, guilty.

i meet tonight with the starlite dood who has critiqued my setup. it is my job to have a constructive conversation with him and suppress all of the above, then to go home and pay my overdue bills, and try to get to sleep at a reasonable hour without obsessing well into the night.

Posted by lisa at 03:49 PM

little paw and his mommy go to live in the woods.

one day a strange girl visited the house where little paw and his mommy lived.

little paw was shy and climbed behind the sofa.

another day the strange girl came back and put little paw and his mommy into a box. he didn't like being in the box and tried to get out. a lot.

she took the box outside. it all smelled very strange. little paw panicked. he tried to get out of the box even more than he had before. the strange girl forced him back into the box.

little paw could feel himself moving although he was not running. he became so scared that he tried to hide inside the box and not move or call attention to himself. his mommy did the same thing.

then the moving stopped and they were in a strange smelling place. little paw could smell many other animals, animals that he had never smelled before.

finally the girl let little paw and his mommy out of the box. they were in a house made entirely of wood. little paw and his mommy spent many hours carefully smelling the entire house. the strange girl gave them food which was very good.

then it was night and she carried them upstairs. she said, "twoooo kitties!" she sounded like an owl hooting. they all slept together in the small place upstairs on a soft bed.

little paw started to feel ok about this new place that had good food and many interesting things to smell. when it was dawn, he was excited to smell everything all over again, so he woke everyone else up.

Posted by lisa at 12:33 PM

September 08, 2004

a good deed? unpunished? oh, we'll see about that!

between the anti-gun-shop lobby and the "i'm going to critique the way you've structured the site" lobby, i'm wondering just what i've gotten myself into here.

you guys might just get to watch me have a nervous breakdown in real time, because my ability to respond rationally to these situations is at an all-time low.

oh, and the personals guy i wrote to hasn't written back. it's been about 48 hours so i consider myself ignored.

i am not feeling so good here in chez lisa tonight.

Posted by lisa at 11:09 PM

little paw is born.

little paw was born on a cliff. he was the runt of the litter.

one day, his mother, who was very young, pushed all of his brothers and sisters off of the cliff and they died.

for some reason she did not kill little paw, too. maybe she couldn't find him because he was so small.

he fed on her milk and grew very large.

Posted by lisa at 05:14 PM

the dough boy

the dough boy has been moved to an office near mine. within earshot.

i can hear him.

for someone who seemed so quiet before, he is surprisingly calling attention to himself.

will he smile and say hello now in the halls? or will there be no change?

he surprised us all by being one of the most interested people in my tufte presentation. he brought a garish, color-coded map of golfing sites for critique. no one else understood tufte enough going in to do that.

that was months ago... still no more than the barest acknowlegement in the halls.

Posted by lisa at 02:41 PM

September 07, 2004

crabby craberson.

it makes me crabby to have cockroach corpses all over my floor.

it makes me crabby to have someone not helping with the starlite stuff tell me what i ought to do.

it makes me crabby when my cat wants to get all up in my face when i'm eating my really perfectly wonderful grilled cheese. although the sandwich made me less crabby.

grrr.

Posted by lisa at 07:40 PM

September 06, 2004

How can you help the starlite?

It doesn't take money, or even much time. You can simply BLOG THIS:

SaveOurStarlite.org

yes, the site is ready for prime time! two words: plywood sponsorship!

hugebig thanks to joe and phil for having already done this!!

Posted by lisa at 04:09 PM

September 03, 2004

yay, the past!

i've been designing web sites long enough now that the wayback machine now has something to take me way back to.

this one is especially meaningful because, well, it was meaningful, and because the site has since been taken over by someone who is not such a great web designer and threw out the previous designs.

here it is, the first roswell2k site.

pity the images are gone but i'm glad this record exists. it was a damn cool site, if i do say so.

Posted by lisa at 09:41 PM

"I wish I had a dollar for every child conceived in that back row."

heraldsun.com: Wish list sparks renewal drive for fire-ravaged Starlite Drive-in

if nothing else, read that last paragraph.

they're linking out to the saveourstarlite.org site, which isn't really ready for prime-time, but prime-time is here so we're as ready as we can be :)

it'll have an online donation link just as soon as some banking stuff gets straightened out, and a more stylish look and feel is also on the way.

Posted by lisa at 03:40 PM

round cars vs. square cars, steel cage match!!

that's right, the two lisa's will duke it out, round car vs. square car!!

ok, seriously, or slightly more seriously, i felt the need to respond to pinky's comment in the form of another post.

"That has to be the largest collection of cute cars all in one place that I've ever seen. On your page, I mean. Does that Citroen look like a bug from the front, too?"

the front of the citroen is actually more bug-like than the bug! but the messerschmitt has the most insect-like demeanor of them all, i think.

the microcar museum web site has a much larger compendium of cuteness and roundness. they are located just south of atlanta, so a road trip is becoming inevitable.

the voisin biscooter that they have is giving me all kinds of dangerous ideas for how i'd really like to change the finish on the van. screw this blue paint idea, i want an all metal van...

Posted by lisa at 11:28 AM

September 02, 2004

disabused of silly idea #33,465

now i do get a lot of ideas. i used to make christa crazy when i'd go into "idea hampster" mode. sometimes i desperately want to act on my ideas. sometimes i do act on them. and sometimes i practically give myself a nervous breakdown trying to follow through.

however, it is possible to nudge me away from something, especially if i kind of want to be nudged. so props to jason for nudging me when i wanted to be nudged. (not that kind of nudging, people. c'mon, he's married.)

so yeah, i decided not to do the crazy car show for the starlite. but i am going to continue with the web site and lots of good online promotion for the various other fundraisers that are planned, like the rock show that might now be two days long, and the car display-only show that carla was already planning.

:|:

now it did get me to thinking about "lisa's ideal car show". something i'd inevitably think up, right? and i realized it on my way home-- it would be all round cars! all of the cars i really love are round.

the citroen 2cv.

the vw beetle (early version)

the porsche 911

the bmw isetta

the messerschmitt

the subaru 360

the fend flitzer

the holy grail-- the peel trident! totally adorable movie of tridents coming out of the factory. sarah needs one of these. seriously. of course, she'd need sidecars on either side, one for lina and one for thirteen.

Posted by lisa at 05:45 PM