4.10.02: 8pm – i feel a redesign coming on

the tech process of fuddy meers has been less tedious than usual because one of the computers that i’m using for sound cues also has internet access, so while we’re holding to work out light or set issues, i can sit up here in my bat cave and write email and blog and such. i’ve been reading webmonkey.com tutorials this evening. webmonkey has been reprimanding me for all the lazy design choices i made with slithy tove and, being the perfectionist wanna-be techie that i am, i feel compelled to start cleanng up the code. also, i’m getting a digital camera for my birthday, and hope to start illustrating my point here with lots of amaturish photos, so….i feel a redesign coming on.

4.10.02 – full of vim and vigor

did an interval workout at the gym that kicked my ass this morning, and then followed it with weights, and the end result is now that i’m back home, ready to start the day, i just want to lay on the couch and not have to raise my arms over my head. so much for that exercise-will-energize-you stuff. isn’t it weird that we invented machines in order to eliminate physical labor and now we have to invent machines in order to get enough physical labor?

4.9.02 – thanks for joining NakedMail!

i have a junk mail box that i use for those web sites that won’t give me the info i want until i register, but that i don’t trust not to sell my name to herbal viagra companies. since most of the mail i get there truly is junk, i often forget to check the box for weeks or months at a time. yesterday i was going through there looking for an invoice and got the following message:

Thanks for joining NakedMail, the finest adult-oriented email subscription service in the world! Here is a summary of the benefits you’ll now enjoy as a member:

…blah blah blah…

So sit back and enjoy! Your first email will start in approximately 6 days.

the title NakedMail gave me this mental image of a letter looking ashamed about the fact that he’s been caught without an envelope on.

4.8.02 – a very merry unbirthday to you!

turns out i have the same birthday as buddha. cool.

my day rolled by without too much excitement, since it was the first day of tech and i had to be in the theatre all day. no complaints, tho. cards and phone calls from far-away friends brightened the day, and the cast sang happy birthday to me in three-part harmony. birthdays stopped being really exciting after number 16. i missed the significance of 21 completely; i had been living in england for months, so the legal drinking age thing wasn’t significant, and besides, david and i had been thoroughly poisoned in spain a couple of days earlier and spent most of the day rolling around clutching our stomachs.

my grandfather called earlier today to wish me a happy birthday. i love my grandfather, but he is nothing if not square. imagine my suprise when the last thing he said to me before getting off the phone was, “if you ever need a place to crash, we’ve got a pad here.” who taught my grandfather to talk like that?

4.7.02 – it’s a really weird feeling

the whole world turned green overnight. yesterday all the grass was still brown, the willow trees had just the slightest spring haze, and the trees weren’t even thinking about budding out. this morning, i woke up and everything was green. the willow trees are big clouds of pale green and all the trees are in that about-to-burst-out-in-leaf moment of anticipation. since i’m never awake in the morning anyway, i love the shift to daylight savings time, when all the light is concentrated at the end of the day.

i took a nap on the sofa this afternoon, and serra (my parents’ golden retriever) came and slept on my feet, and zeke flopped out on my stomach, so that i literally had an animal blanket to sleep under. i think that zeke is left-pawed. he always attacks with the left-paw in the lead. i’ve realized that zeke is a not a good starter-cat. one who has never owned a cat before should probably think about starting with a slower, fatter model than zeke. he’s endless amounts of fun, but requires the sort of respect that non-cat people take for arrogance. today, in an effort to catch the toy mouse i was holding, zeke ran along the outside of the banisters in the upstairs hallway. that went fine until he tried to squeeze between the newel post at the top of the stairs and the first spindle on the stairs – and he got stuck. the space between those two posts is narrower than the others, and his head, front legs and belly fit through, but his pelvis was too wide. i had to lift him up, struggling and clawing at me, to a wider part of the railing in order to get him through, because if he’d backed up he would have fallen to the tile floor 12 feet below. cats should come with a rating when you adopt them. zeke would with an advanced-cat-owners-only certification.

tom petty on behind the music:

“i don’t know if you’ve ever had someone try to kill ya, but it’s a really weird feeling.”

4.5.02 – only communists use mechanical pencils

i am settled in at my newest job: running sound for boise contemporary theatre‘s production of fuddy meers. it’s nice to be back at a theatre where everyone still likes what they’re doing. this afternoon seth & i wrote cue sheets until my eyes nearly bled. okay, it was only a couple of hours, but i have a short attention span. anyway, the pencils we were using weren’t just any pencils. they were Ticonderoga pencils, which, according to the box, encourages potential pencil-users to, “revolutionalize your writing with the pencil rich in history.” not only that, but “using only the highest quality materials, the Ticonderoga pencils have been securing freedom for your thoughts for generations.” what more could you ask for in a pencil, really? i mean, a self-advancing mechanical pencil that never needs sharpening and comes with spare erasers and a rubberized grip sounds pretty good, but when you compare it with the task of upholding my right to freedom, it pales in comparison.

4.4.02 – when you move like a jellyfish rhythm don’t mean nothing you

my current musical love affair is with jack johnson. ex-surfer-turned-filmmaker-turned-song-writer that my younger brother introduced me to. matt, who was once the purveyor of awful punk (both other people’s and his own), went off to college and suddenly has fabulous taste in music of all sorts. my brothers inherited all of my mother’s musical talent; i got my father’s tone-deaf ears. with zero natural musical inclination, the only way i learn to play instruments is through sheer brute force. music theory only makes sense to me if you break it down into mathematical principles, and by then it seems like you’ve destroyed the soul somewhere along the way. i’ve been trying to learn to play the guitar, but i get easily discouraged. i don’t want to learn why a D flat diminished 7th chord does what it does, i just want to sound like ani difranco.

4.3.02 – it’s not you, it’s me

X-From_: wsmith@wordsmith.org Wed Apr 3 2002

Date: Thu, 4 Apr 2002 01:36:18 -0500

From: wsmith@wordsmith.org

To: slithy@slithy-tove.net

Subject: Your unsubscription request

This is an auto reply to your unsubscription request. You’ve been removed from the list of AWAD subscribers.

Would you please fill this short feedback form and send it back to anu@wordsmith.org ? Thank you!

Reason(s) for signing-off:

[ ] So much email, so little time

[ ] Know most of the words

[ ] Words too esoteric

[ ] Changing email address; re-subscribing at the new address

[ ] Going offline

[x] Other: I just can’t take the disappointment, Anu. Every evening Eudora plays that happy little tune and my heart leaps in anticipation of a message addressed to me, and then I discover that it’s just an impersonal group message. I’ m sorry, but I just don’t feel that Wordsmith and I are connecting anymore. It’s not you, it’s me.

Regards,

Anu Garg anu@wordsmith.org

4.2.02 – where have all the flowers gone?

in response to my 3.31 question of where did all the good guys (who like hacker chicks) go, i received the following reassurances:

p.s. I assure you, the people who find hackers sexy are still out there. The trick is finding them, because they’re all in their basements working on their own computers.

Hey, if it makes you feel any better, I think chick nerds are totally sexy! other than the fact that I am married, we would never be compatible because I like macs and you like pcs…

and, from someone i don’t actually know…

guys still like hacker chicks. guys like good looking girls. you are both. so, imho, if you are experiencing tactical and environmental problems in the guy area, it is temporary. girls like you do not remain single for long.

hope I’m not being creepy.

hmm. looks like all the guys are 1) married, 2) in the basement, or 3) stalking me on the web and trying not to be creepy. i should look into that basement thing.

4.1.02 – i am the tax maaaaaan

who would’a thunk that it would take all evening and a full half-inch of paper to print out my tax forms, considering that last year i made about as much money as those guys who pick through your garbage to recycle cans, and i don’t own anything, not even my car, let alone a business or something. i didn’t even itemize deductions. this issue of having to file in 3 states is pretty sucky.

my favorite sign of the day: For Rent: 555-5555 location: taped in the back window of a yellow vw bug. who exactly rents out their car?