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November 29, 2004

this year

it's not too late early to look back on the year. right?

in some ways, it's been a very hard year. so now i will give myself only things that are good for my soul.

things that i know are good for me:

that is just a short list.

Posted by lisa at 09:48 PM

November 28, 2004

a bad day on ebay

sometimes over the long holiday breaks, i go into ebay mode.

things i didn't win, really wanted, and just made more expensive for other people with last minute bidding wars:

Posted by lisa at 09:36 PM

November 26, 2004

shoe lust

our latest installment in the ongoing series... shoe lust!

Posted by lisa at 10:52 PM

archie macphee is my pottery barn.

seriously, check out their new catalog. it's not just rubber chickens and devil duckies any more.

:|:

thanksgiving went nicely. my applesauce, mashed potatoes and pumpkin cheesecake all turned out well. mom and i cut the burned bits off the top of the cheesecake before putting on the topping and it was just fine. everyone had a piece and seemed to like it. mom also made this chocolate pecan pie that was completely deadly-- i got halfway through a small piece and had to stop. i proclaimed, "i've hit the carb wall." and it was true.

got gran there and back ok, but she is really having a lot of trouble now getting in and out of the spacepod because it is so low. the next time i take her i might need to find someone with a slightly higher car who could trade cars for the day-- or beg someone to come out from raleigh in wayne's tahoe. i think she can get in and out of it ok.

she is also slowing down a lot. she always makes herself walk as much as she can, to the point of pain, because she doesn't want to become a vegetable. i can definitely respect that and it makes me proud of her, although i wish she would cut herself a little break-- she's 95, she's allowed to sit down, you know? anyway, getting down the hall to the elevator with her walker wears her out now, which is a big change over the last year. mentally, though, she's still completely on top of things. and i can still make her bust a gut laughing, so i think that's a good sign.

i definitely over-carbed and didn't feel so great when i went to bed. today when i got hungry for lunch, i felt a little shaky-- like i was about to crash. so i need to play it a little safer for a while.

:|:

today i tore into a lot of tasks that have been waiting around the house and did manage to be highly productive. i got the eyeball collection cleaned out of the van and refilled the oil so i could drive it around for a few errands. i did try to drain the current oil so i wouldn't be mixing two kinds of oil, but i can't find my 13mm crescent wrench, and i broke my ratchet while trying to loosen the oil drain bolt while using an extender for leverage. and didn't loosen the bolt at all. what goliath tightened that thing? uh, that would be me. with a crescent wrench. guess i got it tight enough. (unless mark secretly torqued it or something-- but i doubt it.)

i've decided to start something new-- rather than always eating on the sofa in the living room while watching tv, i am going to try also eating at my kitchen passthru while reading and maybe listening to the radio. this means i need to keep that area clean a little more religiously, which would be a good thing. it also means the cat and i don't have to tussel over his behavior so much-- the line between eating area and living area will be a little more clear.

that is all.

Posted by lisa at 05:11 PM

November 25, 2004

crazy beautiful

one of my bug friends is the proud new owner of this stupidly gorgeous citroen 2cv:


Posted by lisa at 11:30 AM

November 24, 2004

shinyhappypeople

ok, i am totally procrastinating on making the applesauce for tomorrow so i am going to tell you (all one of you reading this over the holiday when everyone leaves, or tries to leave if the crippling fog ever clears) about my day.

first as i was driving to work this morning i happened to be running parallel down a large one-way street to xa and ra who were in fact leaving town for the beach at that very moment! actually, i think they were going to blue coffee at that very moment, but close enough. they looked very happy. ray had on his buddy holly glasses that i think make him look like elvis costello.

then as i was pulling into jesus chicken to get some breakfast, i called d. in his office to see if he would also like some jesus chicken. he sounded very happy about the idea and said he would like that very much. then i got him to transfer me to joe and i asked joe if he would like some coffee from java jive, and he sounded very happy about that and said he couldn't pass that up. check me out, i make two guys happy with just one phonecall!

ok, so i got home tonight and made that pumpkin cheesecake. sadly, it burned :( but mom and i figure that it'll still be just fine on the inside and next time i'll have to use a lower temperature. she sounded pretty happy on the phone when i talked to her.

then i decided to check the tivo. a while back i put in the names of some of the bands that i remember seeing in the early 80's on saturday night live. i'm kind of desperate to see these episodes of SNL again because they were very important, formative musical experiences for me. however, these keyword searches tend to result in a lot of junk on my tivo and very few cool old episodes of SNL. a few weeks ago i did get an episode with the cars, but they were way past their prime in this episode and it kind of sucked.

so i saw the SPARKS folder, that one tends to pick up a lot because a lot of show descriptions include the phrase, "sparks fly", and i was thinking "i should get rid of that search, it's no good" and went in to delete the crap and yes there it was, the 1982 episode of SNL with sparks playing 'mickey mouse' and 'i predict'!

oh man, that performance of 'mickey mouse' is really something. ron mael does geek weird to the extreme with a little monologue about mice beforehand and his performance during the song is funnier than the entire rest of the snl episode. russel mael is wearing the most hideous example of men's 80's fashion that i think i have ever seen-- a very oversized, bright green sequined suit with a red wrap shirt.

a couple of years ago i actually caught a pretty good run of these episodes and i've got them all on VHS. i've got david bowie, squeeze, blondie, kate bush, and that infamous elvis costello performance where he stops in mid-song and switches to 'radio, radio', which he'd been forbidden to play.

anyway, i think i need to start the tedious process of getting this stuff digitized so i can save it and share it and enjoy it.

safe to say-- i am happy.

now i go make applesauce, which will make the brothers happy.

Posted by lisa at 08:41 PM

November 23, 2004

snzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

you know that episode of star trek where everyone is all tired and grumpy but they don't know why, and then someone finally figures out that they're all being kidnapped at night and aliens are performing cruel medical experiments on them and then wiping out their memory and returning them in the morning, having been tortured rather than having slept?

i feel like that. i don't know why.

Posted by lisa at 10:07 PM

November 22, 2004

oh, the joys of flickr

it's my favorite new toy.

artcar
artcars
artcarfest
artcarparade

citroen
beetle
volkswagen

Posted by lisa at 11:54 PM

it's all about dessert.

so spicyleesh's post about pie reminded me that i needed to check with mom and be sure she was making pumpkin cheesecake again this year. and damn, it's a good thing i checked because she's not!

so i told her to give me the recipe and i'll give it a shot. i know it will be complicated but i'm kind of in the mood to do a really complicated dish. it has to be made in advance which is a good thing... that way, if i can't do it, or if it fails, i can tell mom and she can throw together a pumpkin pie at the last minute.

she'a also making a new pie this year, pecan with chocolate and coconut. my boyfriend of many years past who had been a professional baker put together this astounding pecan pie for us one year, the thing was like a giant, round candy bar, and yes, it had chocolate chips in it. we still talk about it every thanksgiving. mom says she was sad when i broke up with him, at least in part because that pie was so damn good. so anyway, i think this is her attempt to recreate that pie.

i think i'll be eating my fair share of sugar this week.

Posted by lisa at 05:18 PM

doing battle

comments are gonna be dicey for the forseeable future. maybe forever. this spammer has been taking his own viagra because the hardon he has for my blog is not natural.

Posted by lisa at 12:24 AM

November 21, 2004

ooh big changes here at ANP!

took the plunge and upgraded to MT 3.1. i think this is probably going to mean that the way comments work on this blog will change. i have to look at the different ways to set it up and decide what will be best to do. i don't want to create undue barriers to posting comments, because i love the comments. but the massive spam attacks i've had this past week basically amount to denial of service attacks-- they can bring a web server down, and did, the first time it happened, so clearly something has to change.

also, as you may have noticed (provided your browser window is wide enough), my latest flickr photos are now appearing along the right side of this page. too many? let me know.

Posted by lisa at 09:55 PM

no comments

i got another massive comment spam while i was at the xdu benefit last night so i've disabled comments again, and probably won't re-enable them until i do some more drastic stuff, which i really don't feel like doing right now (mainly because i don't feel like doing anything right now). feh.

email me though if you like. feh at spacepod dot org will do it.

Posted by lisa at 12:18 PM

zyzzybalubah!

so i've reinstated my sunday morning ritual of waffles and pee-wee. i woke up kind of depressed this morning so i was hoping it would cheer me up. i guess it did a little.

it's been so long since i've done this that my waffle meal has changed radically. of course, i still use my grandmother's old waffle iron, that hasn't changed.

then:

bisquick waffles with butter and fake maple syrup; vegetarian sausages; tea with honey. pee-wee on VHS.

now:

low carb waffles with homemade sugar-free syrup (butter, cream, and sugar free hazelnut sweetener); bacon; strong coffee with hazelnut and lots of warmed milk. pee-wee on DVD.

the show still blows me away. it's incredibly demented. i just watched pee-wee make cowboy curtis put on a fake mohawk and teach him how to pogo, complete with a background of punks in a graffiti-covered warehouse. i kid you not. i can't believe that we once lived in a world where this show actually existed.

Posted by lisa at 11:16 AM

November 20, 2004

my family

pictures from gran's 95th birthday

featuring my many half- and step-brothers.

Posted by lisa at 06:13 PM

Halloween photos

Some pictures i took of my halloween decorations-- the bad dollies and the room of mystical divination. Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of the eyeball van. Or of any actual people.

They're on my Flickr account.

Posted by lisa at 04:58 PM

November 19, 2004

superbad comment spam

i've disabled comments for the rest of the day due to being slammed with spam...

Posted by lisa at 02:14 PM

November 18, 2004

at last, at last

i now have in my posession the complete seasons one and two of pee-wee's playhouse.

Posted by lisa at 03:36 PM

home again

MORE...

Posted by lisa at 10:00 AM

pundit? ewwww.

via pinky.


You Are a Pundit Blogger!

Your blog is smart, insightful, and always a quality read.
Truly appreciated by many, surpassed by only a few.
What kind of blogger are you?

Posted by lisa at 09:17 AM

November 17, 2004

What to do when a Supreme Court Justice retires

NARAL is distributing this PDF of actions to take when a Supreme Court Justice retires.

Posted by lisa at 08:17 PM

ungh

MORE...

Posted by lisa at 07:54 PM

sickness dreams

being sick = much sleeping

this morning dreamed that i bought two more old vw's. an old bug, convertible i think, trashed exterior but i think it ran. i don't remember much about that one.

the other one was a brown vanagon just like mine, except i determined that it probably wasn't diesel. the engine compartment looked funny but i couldn't really tell what was what. the paint was really nice on it and the engine cover was painted metal, not crappy trashed fiberglass like mine.

it ran, but the belts were really, really loose-- so loose that had this been real life and not a dream, it would not have run, or at least the water pump wouldn't have worked and driving it would have killed the engine eventually. my mom decided she wanted to drive it and i was having a hard time stopping her even though i knew i needed to keep her from driving it with those loose belts. the console-- speedo and stuff-- was off to the side and there was a sort of table in the very front. i was kind of worried about anyone driving it with that weird setup.

:|:

later i dreamed that i was at the cafe where you cannot get what you want!

let's see. to begin with, i think i ordered potato chips, chocolate pie, and a diet pepsi. maybe something else.

first the woman working there said she wasn't sure she could give me potato chips, with the lunch rush coming up-- she might not have enough for later customers if she gave some to me now. somehow, the notion of french fries as a replacement for the potato chips came up. however, she discouraged me from getting the fries, "because they're kind of greasy." i finally convinced her to give me some fries, but she only gave me a very few. i mean, i like fries all kinds of ways, i don't care if they're greasy.

then i kind of stood there for a while, waiting for her to take action on the rest of my order. she ignored me.

so i asked for the diet pepsi again. she seemed annoyed. she walked into a back room and brought me a soda but it wasn't diet and it wasn't pepsi. so i got her attention again with some difficulty and asked for a diet pepsi again. she looked completely annoyed with me. i looked down and realized it was a pepsi. then, after she'd started to walk into the back room again, i realized it was diet. i tried to stop her but didn't succeed.

i woke up.

:|:

i was so out of it when i went out this afternoon to get kleenex and movies that it was kind of like a dream, too. right now i'm watching '50 first dates' and drew barrymore is driving around in a bright yellow vw thing with a big hibiscus flower painted on the side. it is SO making me want a thing, or possibly a convertible old bug or ghia. but mostly, a thing.

Posted by lisa at 03:01 PM

home. sick.

MORE...

Posted by lisa at 09:00 AM

November 16, 2004

s'mores fixins FOR YOU!

i've got everything needed to make s'mores at my house, unopened. i'm starting to look at this stuff and imagine what a s'more would taste like and to want one.

please take these evil things out of my house before i eat them.

included:

and if you really need them, i will even loan you the toasting sticks i bought to toast the marshmallows.

also, if you take them, i might come over and have one. ONE.

Posted by lisa at 03:46 PM

November 15, 2004

the price of the party life

it does appear as if i am coming down with something. sore throat; significantly more grouchy and depressed than i ought to be. lethargic.

saturday night i did briefly attend the evil genius party, it being a mere two blocks away and all. had a nice time. left when the house threatened oversaturation with 20-something hipsters. damn cute house, too. best costumes i saw were the stay puft marshmallow man and general zod. many incidences of people trying to read my t-shirt without appearing to be staring at my breasts.

no one asked me what a likert scale was.

sunday i mostly stayed in. attempted to go see a movie and decided the parking lot looked too crowded and left. watched many movies at home instead.

Posted by lisa at 11:40 AM

November 14, 2004

jesus, he slipped that one right by me

ok, the problem with dating (or failing to date) guys who are extremely pop-culture literate is that sometimes, they really slip one by you, and you don't even know until a month after they've blown you off and you're re-watching the movie they referenced and realized what it is they actually said to you.

mr. metaphor made his initial advance by suggesting that we communicate via instant messenger. i explained that i was not really down with that as a medium by which to get to know someone.

so he asked me for lunch, quoting john cusack in 'high fidelity':

"It was like trying to borrow a dollar, getting turned down and asking for fifty grand instead."

here's the entire quote:

"Sometimes I got so bored with trying to touch her breasts that I would try to touch her between her legs. It was like trying to borrow a dollar, getting turned down and asking for fifty grand instead."

we could create an interesting map out of this. picture a diagram of a nude woman. very unerotic, like a line drawing out of a textbook on human reproduction.

her breasts are labelled, "Instant Messenger".

her mons pubis is labelled, "Lunch".

ok, sorry, that's gross. i'll stop.

Posted by lisa at 08:33 PM

November 13, 2004

damn.

man, i have been tired all day. tired.

also, i could swear there's a song lyric that contains the phrase, "endless cups of tea" but i can't place it and neither can google. squeeze maybe? something british surely.

i seriously tapped myself out this week. yet i am still missing out on things... hanging out with my new pal j. last night, also sharon jones at kings last night, shark qwest at ooh la tonight and while it looks as if i will make a brief appearance at the evil genius shindig occuring nearby, i think the key word there will be brief.

my hope for tomorrow is that i will have the energy to take in a matinee. possibly, i might clean up a week's worth of crap in the kitchen if i feel really energized. oh, and the starlite people are clamoring for an update to the site, which is only reasonable.

i did go out for a bit today, some reading at ooh la (coffee boy was not wearing his hat! a fact on which i felt the need to comment.) and got into a brief conversation about dionne warwick and walker texas ranger with coffee boy and a guy sitting at the coffee bar, drinking a pbr. that place is one weird scene and i love it. bought sox at target and a huge, heavy loaf of bread at great harvest, which i've not done in years. yum.

otherwise i have been one with the sofa, either napping or watching movies, including the original 'alfie' with michael caine. one of the good caine movies of the 60's, it's got a surprisingly frank section about abortion in it, and i can't say that it comes out clearly on the side of either pro-choice or pro-life. what do you know-- a gray area. a concept we don't understand in this country. i guess because then, it would be difficult to legislate every aspect of people's behavior and we'd just have to trust them to use their judgement.

ok, all of this typing has exhausted me and i have to rest up for my big evening out.

Posted by lisa at 09:23 PM

November 12, 2004

oh, ok, that's enough

so i bailed on my plans for tonight, since this would have constituted almost my eighth consecutive night of leaving the house and talking to other people and whatever gland i have that secretes the hormone that makes me want to do that kind of thing had receeded again and i was left with the overwhelming desire to lodge myself deep in my sofa and stay there for many hours.

so i did.

it was groovy.

Posted by lisa at 11:18 PM

my new favorite shirt!

however, i was very sad to discover today that both of the ok/cancel guys have girlfriends :(

but i still luv my new shirt.

Posted by lisa at 06:50 PM

one of the few situations in which i might actually enjoy death metal

so yesterday my buddy ariel writes and says, come see this crazy shit with me. he had correctly gauged that the robot factor would get me out of the house-- i agreed.

when the robots had been fullly revealed on stage, i commented that it reminded me fondly of the old wifflefist negativland days.

it really was quite the thing, especially given that its apparently the efforts of one man. well, one man and a large robotic band that hurls insults at him throughout the show. kind of like if you took the torch marauder and put him on speed most of the time. he might come up with something like this.

i have to admit that although he really did rock out, after a few songs the schtick was played out and i was a little bored. add in being kinda tired from my crazy rock-n-roll lifestyle this week, and the astoundingly poor air quality inside kings, and i was ready to roll long before the show was over. still, the final tune, which was done in dancehall style, was kinda worth sticking around fer.

time for the first meeting of the day. probably the first of many.

Posted by lisa at 09:59 AM

November 11, 2004

that's better-ish...

so it turns out that getting drunk with jason and having an explicit, detailed sex conversation with sylvia in the studio while poor jason tried to do his radio show was apparently what i needed to lift my spirits. go figure.

of course, physically i feel like crap now, but emotionally, i feel slightly better.

Posted by lisa at 10:58 AM

November 09, 2004

boundaries

this is not entirely safe for work, as it describes some of the gross things that cross my personal boundaries, so click the MORE link at your own risk....

MORE...

Posted by lisa at 10:27 PM

here we go...

all those years of reading, going to conferences and seminars, being the "make it pretty" girl on the team, learning how to run usability tests, learning how to be a database programmer (of sorts), all of that is suddenly being brought to bear, all at once.

it's intense. i'm not sure what will happen next. possibly they will need to clone me.

:|:

and outside of that world, i am being highly social, but it's not really giving me the lift i'd hoped for. i still feel kinda down, and fear tapping out all of my social energy in one week-long burst. i think about all the people i've ignored or partially ignored this year and i think, "now is the time to do something about that", yet i still don't have the energy for additional people. i want to put it all into the current ones.

i consumed a lot of sugar around halloween, and some more this weekend, and i think i'm paying a price for that with my mood. i think sugar in general brings me down a lot, not necessarily in the form of a direct crash with the shakes and all, but just in a general way. so i'm hoping that a return to my former sugar-free lifestyle is going herald a return to my happy-go-lucky self. you remember her, right? good, because i kinda don't...

i did experience a hell of a crash in asheville, and it was actually from caffiene on an empty stomach in the morning, not from sugar. mary watched me go all non-verbal and glassy-eyed in the early girl before the OJ kicked in; i said to her, "i am crashing", because i could tell she wasn't getting it, and she said, "wow, i've never seen this before", and looked at me in wonderment. i guess it's been a while since anyone has.

i told her the story of crashing in asheville with craig and realizing that i had to do something about my hypoglycemia. then my cheeseburger came and all was right with the world again.

Posted by lisa at 05:58 PM

November 06, 2004

we're gonna trek this shit around

i'm dimly aware of a band playing on stage.

i buy a tour t-shirt, something i have never done before in my life, that i can recall.

we've each got half a bottle of red wine and half a bottle of cold, unfiltered sake (recommended by the astoundingly foxy waiter) in us. i'm as drunk as i have been in a while and i'm having one of those drunken clarity moments, when my inhibitions are down, but i'm still quite lucid, and there's some kind of stimulus-- in this case a very loud band and a warehouse packed full of hipsters-- and my brain goes into overdrive.

unpacking those thoughts now, they actually are as lucid as i thought they were, but of course now i've lost the boldness that accompanied them. that's not a problem; i can still make use of what i learned then.

the bass player looks like crispin glover as a member of kraftwerk, yet is the most adorable man on stage. his bass is low slung in the extreme and he steers it around the stage like the prow of a ship.

this morning we ate at the early girl, which lives up to its reputation, then found exotic chocolates and beautiful clothes which were too small for even the smallest of us.

i'm to go eat a great deal of brazilian meat right now.

Posted by lisa at 05:52 PM

November 05, 2004

it's hard to watch

MORE...

Posted by lisa at 11:58 AM

my sweet latte

this morning i discovered the new hours at ooh la latte the hard way... they're not open until 11! augh.

i thought, well, i can go elsewhere. blue coffee, although i don't trust them to get it right. the regulator, but i don't know if they have sugar free stuff.

i thought, well, i could ask mary to get me coffee when she's on the way over. that's when i realized the real reason i was reluctant to go elsewhere... i love the place, i wanted to set foot in it. i wanted coffee boy (even though he does have a girlfriend) to be all sweet and friendly with me.

it's like when i used to go to kallisti, not just because the food was so great, but because i enjoyed having that sweet guy make a calzone just for me. there was an emotional component to it.

it kills me that these places i love often struggle and go out of business.

Posted by lisa at 10:31 AM

i'm eeeeevil!

a co-worker told me that her father, who lives in cleveland, received the following phone call, at around 6:30pm on Tuesday:

"Please vote. Please vote Republican. We need to keep evil out of our government."

i ran around for the rest of the day saying, "I'm eeeeevil!!" and making little tents with my fingers, a la Monty Burns. or, alternately, little horns with my fingers, on my head, a la the devil.

because, you know, i am.

Posted by lisa at 12:40 AM

November 04, 2004

wardrobe notations

"These shoes hurt my feet. But I love them." - carrie bradshaw, 'sex in the city'

Posted by lisa at 10:46 PM

chapel hill christmas parade

This year I will be riding in the Chapel Hill Christmas parade again, along with sarah, some other art cars, and a decent assortment of beetle folks (it's looking like we'll have red, green, silver, green, and orange!).

The parade is on Saturday December 4th in the morning; anyone who would enjoy riding along with me is more than welcome to be my co-pilot.

There's a very outside chance I might have 9 Westy in art car condition by then, and if so, i would enjoy having both of my vehicles in the parade... and so would need to locate a second driver, to drive the pod.

Anyway, contact me if you're interested! Or, at the very least, come out to Chapel HIll and check us out!

Posted by lisa at 12:30 PM

November 03, 2004

i do not adhere to the strict father model.

i'm totally depressed.

later i am going to write a lot of very specific stuff about why another four years of bush makes me extremely depressed and fearful, which is something i should have been doing all along.

topics to be covered will likely include:

stay tuned.

Posted by lisa at 08:54 AM

November 02, 2004

today is the day we will elect john kerry.

GO TEAM, GO!!!

Posted by lisa at 10:18 AM

November 01, 2004

i have no response to that.

so today on friendster a guy i don't know writes to me and says, "didn't i see you recently?" and i say, "ummm, i don't know, did you?" and he says, "on second thought i guess not. we should change that. by the way, i cook...."

i just have no idea how to respond. advice? ignore him? jesus.

Posted by lisa at 07:26 PM

i don't understand your mental model.

MORE...

Posted by lisa at 05:01 PM