[
good
]
2001-12-30
Happy, happy, joy, joy:
Things are going really spiffily. More details later. :)
[
books
]
2001-12-20
I'm just hanging out:
so don't worry about me. It's a nice day today. I think I'm going to hang out and read the lovely book I got about Oliver Sacks, entitled Uncle Tungsten. Then I might go for a walk.
[
random thoughts
]
2001-12-18
Eek.
I lost connectivity for a whole day because Austin's Road Runner cable modem service (or at least the part of it that gives me service) was down. I hate it when that happens.
After talking with my roomie Chris, I called the tech support line. I was on hold for at least a half an hour. I talked with the first-line tech support guy, who said he didn't know about any network downages in my area. So he sent me up to the next level, and I talked to a lady who *did* know about the network being down. Heh.
Anyway, it's fixed now, as you can see. Yea. :)
[
random thoughts
]
2001-12-16
Blah.
Haven't been writing much. Feeling kind of blah. I stayed in bed all day today, falling back asleep and dreaming strange dreams.
I woke up and did the dishes, made some crescent rolls and juice, and drank my last pepsi. Now I'm watching a Nature special about ravens.
I don't feel so good.
Met someone last night, and it was ... okay I guess. I don't understand why he kept tickling me even though I warned him to respect my personal boundaries. I don't think I will be seeing him again. The movie we saw was good, though (Ocean's Eleven). I wish they hadn't spoiled most of the good gags by showing them repeatedly on tv beforehand, though. I hate it when they do that.
What's with the media blitz on that movie, anyway? It's starting to get creepy when the media machine of these mega-conglomerates really kicks into gear. When you hear about a movie from three different directions, it's one thing, but when you hear about it from *seventeen* different directions, something downright weird is going on - our tastes are being manipulated. It's insulting, really. I mean, a decent movie should be able to stand on its own merits, but we're not even given that chance - it's force-fed before anyone has a chance to get an idea of whether it's any good or not.
This show on ravens is really quite interesting, by the way. I highly recommend it. They just showed a raven rolling down a snowy slope, for fun. Heh.
Maybe I'm getting sick. My tummy doesn't feel so good. And I'm coughing.
Holy crap, they're showing a raven who is reeling in a fisherman's line and stealing the fish at the end of it. Damn, that's clever.
Blah.
I must be getting sick, I just don't feel right. I think I might eat a salad or something.
Being lonely tonight doesn't feel very good.
Oh. My God. They just showed a raven who undid a padlock holding it inside a pen. Okay, the padlock was unlatched, but still. Geez. This pet raven is hilarious. He likes going for a drive in the car with his owner. Heh. Hahahahhaha! He turns off the ignition in the car when she gets out of the car to open the gate!
Oh, cool! She puts the top down on her car, and the bird flies along next to her. That is so incredibly wickedly cool. Then he comes in and lands back in the car.
Okay, the coughing is really getting out of hand now.
I feel so un-creative tonight. And lazy.
I guess that's enough of an update for now. Later.
[
the net
]
2001-12-11
Long live Usenet!
Daniel has informed me that
Google now has 20 years' worth of Usenet postings. That's pretty much everything, as far as I know.
I went through and found a bunch of stuff I posted. Yikes.
It's even got stuff one might not necessarily wish not to see again. As Daniel says, "Google is god. It dispenses light, dark, and nothingness in equal quantities."
I'm rooting through it even as we speak...
[
books
]
2001-12-11
Santa, please!
Well okay I'll probably either buy it myself or read it in the bookstore, but Oliver Sacks has a new book out called Uncle Tungsten, and I want it! By the way, he has
a spiffy website too. :) Now if only we could get him to write a weblog...
----later----
I've had a chance to check out the website now, and I really like
this excerpt from his new book.
Okay, I think it's decided: I have to go and read it today. Every time I think that I'm going to get control of my pile of Stuff To Be Read, something jumps to the front of the line! Sigh. :)
[
mental
]
2001-12-10
I got dumped.
So I'm feeling rather sad lately. While I was away in Colorado, Anthony told me that he didn't feel we should be dating anymore. Oh. Gee. Well.
So when I got back to Austin, I went over to his place and picked up all my stuff.
I'm feeling kind of low about the whole situation right now. Last night I felt really bad, but today I'm doing a bit better.
Even though it wasn't perfect, I still miss him. And talking with him last night, it's clear he doesn't miss me. Sigh.
Yesterday I stayed by myself inside all day. I didn't even open the door. I guess it just took awhile to really hit me or something. It just hurts to feel rejected, especially when there isn't a clear reason, nothing you can point to and say "well I'll be sure not to fuck up in exactly the same way again, or I'll at least try as hard as I can not to". There was nothing like that in this case - he just said he didn't feel right about us dating anymore. Uh. Okay.
I know I'm still a worthwhile human being, but sometimes it's hard to believe it when I tell myself.
I shouldn't let it get to me so much, right? Aw, hell. I can't help it. I don't like being alone. I like having someone around that I can talk to.
I don't even have a pet. I have stuffed animals and pictures. And jigsaw puzzles.
I get to see Elena in a little while, and I'm hoping that will cheer me up some.
I'm so sick of being lonely. Sometimes I worry that there is really something wrong with me. Well, there is - I mean, there are *lots* of things wrong with me. But I mean sometimes I feel like there's something so wrong with me that I'll never find romantic happiness. Not the lasting sort, anyway.
I hope that's not true.
[
beauty
consume
]
2001-12-10
Hey look, my dad founded the internet!
Well, okay, not really. Just
a guy with the same name (well, *almost* the same - my dad has a different middle initial). Pretty interesting, I suppose.
I came to that page from a page at thinkgeek with
posters of the early internet that Daniel pointed me to.
I wandered around there and found
this cool button that says "90% of being smart is knowing what you're dumb at". I like that. I also like
this cool perl sticker. I'm not sure what I would stick it on if I had one, however. Maybe my car? I am a little wary, since my car has never had anything stuck on it before.
Well... not on the outside, anyway. It's just got my little clingy Colorado School of Mines emblem on the inside back windshield.
And then there's my American flag...
Let me tell you about my American flag. It's the coolest flag in the known universe. It lays flat on the horizontal surface behind the back seats. It's made of this corrugated plastic stuff, and it's got the traditional red stripes and blue field, but the parts that are usually white are this reflective silvery stuff that they have on holographic stickers. What this means is that when the sun hits it, it reflects really beautiful colors.
It's hard to describe, but it's gorgeous. I'll be driving along and notice that it's reflecting, say, deep green ranging to blue. Then I'll turn right and it'll shift towards red and orange. I'll turn left and it'll go through blue and green and all the way over to purple. It's just plain lovely.
It was sort of an accident how it came to be in the position where I could see the colors. I originally had it propped up with some beanie babies that someone gave me, so that it could be seen through the window. Then Elena saw the beanie babies and grabbed them. It turned out perfectly, I think. :)
[
body
canoe
mammalog
]
2001-12-09
And the misadventures continue:
So last night, my bed broke. This may have had something to do with Elena jumping up and down on it repeatedly. Okay, she's only like thirty pounds, so maybe this theory needs some work.
At any rate, I didn't feel like dealing with it last night, so I just slept on it all kind of sloping down toward the broken corner.
This morning, I fixed it first thing. It took some trial and error, but I got the futon frame put back together. I had to bash it with my hand a few times, and I got a bit of a bruise, but it's not too bad. I think it'll hold, at least for awhile. Some day I'll have to get a new futon frame, methinks. Ah, well.
Yesterday morning I headed out to outrigger canoe practice, and it was all rainy and cold out. I figured that no one would show up, that it would be cancelled, but it wasn't. There were five of us, so we headed out for a trip up to the island and back, which takes about a half hour. I sat in seat two and stroked (set the pace for the people behind me).
It was tough, and I was not wearing rain gear so I got all wet. Especially, alas, my bottom. Oh, well, I survived. It wasn't all that bad, actually.
I decided to bail when we got back to the dock - I need to take it easy as I get back into shape. I'm not as young as I once was, and I haven't paddled in about a month. It felt good to get the old muscles moving again.
Today I'm sore in my arms, back, and upper back thighs. It's not bad, really - it tells me that things are going to get stronger.
After practice, I changed into some dry pants (thank goodness that I brough some with me!) and headed to the bookstore, where I proceeded to spend... uh, too much money.
I couldn't resist two of the jigsaw puzzles they had. I'm going to start one of them in a few minutes. It's of the celestial planisphere, and has diagrams of constellations and all kinds of stuff. It's a thousand pieces, and it looks pretty tough. There's a lot of formless black void around the edge, for one thing. It'll probably take me awhile to do, and I'll probably glue it and hang it up.
The other one is of some lions stepping out of a book, then on to a table and into a picture on the wall. It's quite beautiful. They had about twenty puzzles that I'd love to have. I'll have to put them all on my xmas list. :)
Spencer called me while I was at the bookstore, and suggested that he and Elena and I all go to see Harry Potter. So we did. Elena was restless, running all around the theater. Sigh. I think she's too young for long movies. I had to take her to the potty three times, and she went two of those times. Pretty good I guess. She's doing better and better with her potty training, by the way.
We hung out here at Chris's house afterwards, watching movies and stuff. I read her some of the Terry Pratchett book that I bought, The Last Hero. I liked it so much that I even put a new quote at the top of my weblog from it. :)
She fell asleep on the way home, and a successful Sleeping Transfer was made. (That's when we move her from the car to the house or another car without waking her up. Spencer and I are getting pretty good at this, actually.)
Oy, I have so much to do! I went through my inbox and dealt with a bunch of stuff, but of course there's always more. I'll do more later. I have tons of links and stuff to write about in the log here, but it'll have to wait til later.
I've got a puzzle to work on first...
[
random thoughts
]
2001-12-07
I'm soo tired:
And I'm not quite sure why, considering that it's not late tonight, and I got a lot of sleep last night. One might even say too much. I woke up at a reasonable hour, then went back to bed and slept some more and had really odd sort of disturbing dreams (but not horribly so - mostly weird).
I've been working hard on organizing my stuff since I got back in town. My room is mostly clean, believe it or not. And I've started making my bed again.
Tonight I finished reorganizing my cd's. I went through and made sure everything was in pro-sleeves (thin little sleeves from Case Logic), and doubled up cd's two per sleeve for the ones where I had two cd's from the same artist, or where it just made sense to (because the cd has no booklet with it or something). Before, I had it where I just put them in singly, the cd on one side of the sleeve and the booklet on the other side. My cd collection was rapidly outgrowing the boxes I have it in, so I figured I might as well economize on space and on pro-sleeves.
Yesterday I went a little crazy at Target and the Container Store. I have a bunch of new storage bins and such, so I'll be containerizing more of my stuff (much of it is currently in boxes or just very disorganized. I'm quite proud of the stuff that I've already containerized - it makes it *so* much easier to find what I need.
I bought a shoe tree thing at Target that goes over the door and holds twelve pairs of shoes (but of course I cram more in there, with my thin slippers and various types of flip-flops). This frees up some space in my bookshelves where the shoes had previously lived. So now I can bring out some (or maybe even all) of the books I've got in boxes.
I also hung more stuff up on the wall. I hung up my Catholic calendar and crucifix, and some postcards from Colorado. I put my computer sideways against the wall so that one big flat side is towards me, and I put the crow picture on it along with a really neat black & white 3d pic of the continental US and a moon calendar for 2001. All of these items are monochrome; it makes for a nice combo, methinks.
I still have so many papers to go through. Ugh. Mail stacks up like crazy when one goes out of town. Hopefully much of it will turn out to be junk mail and I won't have to worry about it.
I went out to lunch with Deborah today, and we caught up on what's going on with each other. It was cool. She was particularly shocked that Anthony threw out my plumeria (as was I when it happened). Luckily I rescued it from where he had placed it next to his garbage bin in the street.
He threw it away (or tried to, anyway) because he thought it was dead after there was some cold-ish weather while I was away in Colorado and the leaves turned all brown and yucky. I'm glad I went over to his house that night, otherwise the thing would be gone and I'd be pissed as hell. But I put it in my car when I saw it, and then brought it to Chris's house with me and put it in the garage. After I set it down, I felt a strange tingling on my left hand. "Hmm", I thought, and looked at my hand.
To my dismay, there were several fire ants on it, about four of which had already bitten me. I uttered some four-letter words and looked at the plumeria's container, noting a fire ant mound that I had previously not noticed. It was covered with furious ants. Acting quickly, I found some fire ant killing powder in the garage (thanks, Chris!) and shook a ton of it all over the little beasties, urging them to die, die, die!
I then went to my car and surveyed the damage - there were maybe forty or fifty ants in my car. I just didn't feel like dealing with it right then, so I left them there. I figure they'll slowly die. I hope. I found one today, and killed it before it bit me. I'm now keeping scotch tape in the car so that if I see any, I can kill them using my preferred method (which worked great with the infestation at my desk at Lotus). All you do is stick 'em with the tape when you see em. Works like a charm and it's strangely satisfying.
I have so much stuff to do, so many projects. It's dizzying. I'll get around to everything important, though maybe not in the most optimum order. It'll all come out okay.
One of my major projects is to write some more, and having this laptop all nicely set up now is definitely going to help with that.
I also need to revamp my website, majorly. It's embarrassing how much it misses the mark on what I feel it should be. Ah, well. All in good time, I think.
Now it's time to head to bed, since I'm about to just fall over. I'll try to read a little before my eyes slam shut like a pair of portcullises. The current book I'm reading is The Dancing Wu-Li Masters. It's actually quite fascinating, but it has an almost magical ability to put me to sleep after about two pages... I'm not sure why. It's sort of like the movie "Brazil". I've tried to watch it at least three times, and every time I conk out before it's over. One of these days I'll see it all the way through...
Okay, enough for now. G'night!
[
random thoughts
]
2001-12-05
Just some stuff:
That I've come across, or that Daniel has sent me links to (he doesn't have a weblog himself, so I've got to post his links here!)...
- First Monday is a peer-reviewed journal about the net.
- Stargazer Ranch School is just a placeholder for the school I wanted to start at my mom's house (we'll have to eventually find another location)
Uh, that's a short list. There's more, but I've been busy putting a new OS on my laptop and dueling with the network card (I finally won, btw!), and so I've had this window open too long. Now it's time to shut the darn thing so I can reboot this machine (so I can share my files).
[
random thoughts
]
2001-12-04
I'm baaaaaaack!
That is, I'm back in Austin (well, Cedar Park). I left at around 2:30pm on Sunday, and arrived at around 6:15pm on Monday. I spent the night in Raton, New Mexico, and got an early start yesterday. Then I made about 700 miles in about ten hours or so.
My typical cruising speed was about 95 mph, when I wasn't slowed down by being stuck behind people on two-lane highways. All in all it went well, though my back was really hurting when I arrived.
I'm glad to be back. I have a lot of net surfing to catch up on, then I'll probably make some more log entries. :)
