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

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[ ] 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?

3.31.02 – silicon jesus

spent the past two days with my brothers, fully dorking out over computer stuff…we bought matt a new cell phone/palm and configured it, i bought a printer, installed it on both of my computers, made my laptop play nicely with the desktop machine and share files, took apart the box and re-secured the motherboard, figured out that the power supply was faulty and switched it out for a new one, which required drilling new holes in the case to mount it, nearly toasted my ethernet card but we eventually repaired it, installed 2000 on my laptop even tho the disk was corrupt and a funny little hack was necessary, tweaked with the BIOS till everything worked again, sync’ed and archived files, tweaked with the house network settings…the list goes on. it’s good that i don’t work with computers for a living anymore, because it means that playing with them is still fun. nick dropped by to give me the w2k disk i needed and shuddered at the thought of spending a beautiful spring sunday taking a computer (much less two) apart, but that’s because he has to face computers all day long. of course, archiving and organizing files led me to reading old email and digging up files i hadn’t seen in years, which is why i’m still awake at 3 am.

sigh. whatever happened to those guys who thought a smart girl who knew computers was sexy? this shtick worked for me in high school…

3.29.02

job-related unrest is making me antsy and very very boring. back soon.

3.26.02 – boise, id

today: wyoming, utah, idaho. 753 miles. time to stop traveling. it’s warm here, in a way that makes me believe that spring will actually come after all – the farmland i drove through today is starting to turn hazy green, and the fields were full of baby animals. there’s a special bitter cold reserved for east coast winters that you don’t find in the dry desert air around boise.

am hanging out with the family this week – everyone is either on spring break, between jobs, or taking vacation time, so the house is filled with the happy chaos that always characterizes family gatherings. the plan is to drive up to sun valley tomorrow and ski, however, i still haven’t decided whether i’m going to chicken out. i haven’t skiied since i was injured two years ago, but so far i’ve been able to put off the decision by being too busy/injured to really consider skiing again. i don’t really feel like looking the whole ugly mess in the face tomorrow. maybe i’ll hide in the lodge and blame the weather.

3.25.05 – cheyenne, wy

today: iowa, nebraska, wyoming. 738 miles. saw: 3 wild turkeys, about 10,000 blue heron, a herd of donkeys, 1 camel (the one-hump variety), and 0 curves in the road. nebraska isn’t a very exciting state. had an 8 am breakfast date with paul (in the two years that we dated i don’t think i ever saw paul awake at 8 in the morning, so i’m honored that he was willing to meet me that early). tonight i am in a motel near the train tracks; every time a train whistles, zeke runs to the window and peeks under the curtain at the train rolling by.

3.23.02 – the last night in buffalo

the last night in buffalo. haven’t been posting because i can’t seem to access the blogger page via my isp and haven’t had time to really wonder why that is. tonight i’m just posting brute-force style, by editing the index page that blogger usually writes for me and ftping it back to my server. not that you should be terribly interested in the mechanics of how i post to slithy tove. haven’t had much to write, anyway. my life has been filled with the mundane details of packing, saying goodbye, returning borrowed items, finding new homes for the stuff that won’t fit into my car. zeke is openly traumatized by all the change and movement; he spent large parts of the day hiding underneath the papisans. inwardly i feel equally traumatized; if i had the option of hiding under the furniture until this is all over i probably would do so as well. i can’t figure out why moving is so psychologically difficult. i mean, i put all my stuff in boxes, mail them off to my next home, clean the apartment, put zeke in the car and we go. this time i’m even headed back to my hometown for the summer, so it’s not like i’m headed out into the great unknown or something. but something about the process just makes me tense and anxious on a very subconscious level. somewhere during college i adopted a rather unhealthy coping strategy in which i’m not longer aware on an intellectual level that i’m experiencing stress, but rather i internalize it, express it through my body, and only realized that i must be stressed out when my stomach starts acting up or my shoulders begin to ache from being held hunched so high. i don’t think this can possibly be good for me, but i’m not sure that there’s a way back.

is this wanderlust a part of some self-defeatist attitude? i know that i crave stability and a sense of belonging, yet i continue to place myself outside of those comfortable boundaries, in the hopes of, what? finding something, i guess, although i’m not quite sure what that something is supposed to be yet. maybe i’ll just learn to settle down eventually. maybe this is a massive the-grass-is-always-greener lesson that i have to learn. but maybe there’s something else waiting out there for me to find it, and that’s why my furniture’s been given away, clothing packed, and tomorrow i’ll hop in my car and set out for idaho.

hannah and i took a late-night walk to walgreen’s to get her some trashy magazines to read on the plane tomorrow. the cold air cleared my head, tums calmed my stomach, and besides, it gave us a final chance to shoot dirty looks at the security guard who hassles everyone late at night. i’m really going to miss having hannah as my roommate. i’ve had wonderful roommate karma. in college, while everyone else was seeking the highly-coveted senior single, lmo and val and i were trying to snag the only triple in the french house because we genuinely valued each other’s company over our own need for personal space.

a while back, musing on the topic of moving and new places, i wrote that theatre seemed to be the constant in my life, and that everything else was transitory. i kind of had my head up my ass while i was writing that (but then, what’s new?), getting all intellectual and thinking about the parallels between a transitory art form and a transitory lifestyle devoted to said art form. my life is full of constants that i take for granted – some good, some bad. it’s a constant that zeke will be waiting for me at the door when i come home, which ever door that is. it’s a constant that i get anxiety attacks the week before i move to a new place. i will always stay up late, regardless of what i say about going to bed early. movie theatre popcorn sounds like a good idea before you eat it, not after. white russians taste good, martinis taste bad. exercise always makes me saner. sleeping alone isn’t much fun, but you get better rest that way. but most importantly, there are incredible, special people in my life and they are not transitory. our relationships are always changing, because we ourselves are not constants, but i am incredibly blessed that they are in my life, and they are not expendable.