Month: April 2003

I saw two things today that made me a little sad.

– To Make Them Monumental
– The story behind Robin McKinley’s Rose Daughter

The first stanza of the poem in the first link is pretty much where my head is right now, after having several dreams in the last week featuring someone I’d just as soon not be dreaming about. It’s not a good sign, I don’t think, that the dreams make me so happy.

There are only
so many people
that you
can talk to,
and they arent
here.
It took you years
to uncover them
and then they disappear.
And then you disappear.

And the other McKinley Beauty & the Beast novel was a book that Thao gave me when we were precociously serious children. I haven’t seen Thao in so long. I sent her a postcard, a while after we moved, to what I thought was her mom’s address, but I haven’t heard from her. Maybe I’ll pick up a copy of Rose Daughter and send it to her, sort of the way she sent me Weetzie Bat when she found out that I’d gotten married.

Oh, and I went to see how to spell weetzie, I realized that I think I must’ve sold my copy of Beauty several moves ago…sigh. I was almost thinking about rereading that book, and I don’t own it, not even my old battered copy.

we bought an HP all-in-one (print/scan/copy, no fax) the other day, and this evening I finally hooked it up and tried it out. darn easy…I think they’ve finally gotten that plug and play thing worked out. 😉 (as opposed to the ongoing madness with our home network modem/router scene, which is almost back to square one. yes, C. reformatted his computer recently…he can find the network, but not the internet. dang.)

it’s kinda squeaky, but it works quite well. I copied C’s letter from the chancellor – he got on the dean’s list for last quarter! – to send to his folks, and then printed out one of my pictures from the digital cam. (one that’s not on the web yet.) both turned out quite nicely, especially since I printed on some random resume-style paper that we happened to have laying around.

now I just need to search to find what I did the last time I was having network trouble, and our computer scene will be all happy. (found it! I think power cycling might be a good place to start, but I’m not in the mood quite yet.)

I think I finally got my photo album script put together the way I want it with my latest album – good alt text, finally, and thumbnails instead of a list of titles. yay me. 🙂

okay, so if I let my hair air-dry, it actually looks pretty good. (god help me, I got a compliment on it yesterday.)

I hope tomorrow is nice weather, ’cause it’s procession of the species (could they have more sliced images?!) tomorrow afternoon/evening, and I want to go. with camera, of course. (must make sure to have enough blank disks!)

if you’ve been visiting of late with anything other than Mozilla, I must apologize – I’m sure it looks particularly strange – the home page most of all. I keep meaning to finish my tweaks, but that’s pretty low priority at the moment.

I haven’t had my hair cut in something like seven or eight months, except for my bangs, which I cut once myself, then had professionally trimmed, then trimmed myself several times up until about two months ago. today I went to a hair salon around the corner…

initially, a great experience: I’d forgotten how much I like getting my hair done. and it felt wonderful to have all those frizzy split ends snipped off.

but then I realized that something was quite strange, and the hairdresser (one Eric) admitted as much, that my hair had been quite uneven, and strangely layered. all those home trims, I guess. he tried to be as gentle with it as possible, but just to get the front & sides even, and then to get the top cleanly trimmed, I ended up with fairly short sides and significantly more “bangs” than I really wanted.

I was standing in the bathroom at home, staring at my hair, and said “I look like a 70s rocker” (almost glam, I was thinking). and C said, “yeah, I think it’s a mullet.” crap.

it’s hair; it’ll grow. and with the right hat, it looks pretty cute, because now the long bits are smooth and clean and even. I’m figuring I’ll grow it out for a couple of months, go back and get the very front and very back trimmed again, then a couple more months and it’ll be where I want it.

that’s my hair: a long-term project.

I’m staying away from the whole voice/lies/literature thing that’s been bouncing between burningBird, Jonathan, stavros, etc. (My only contribution directly is to say that maybe Dorothea had something, talking about learning to read too early, and that I was reading at three as well.)

instead, I’m turning towards something that I finally read today which turns around in entirely the other direction: To all the guys I’ve f[*]cked before. I had clicked on it originally, from Joe Clark’s home page, not thinking that he meant it literally. but he did; there is a list, by description rather than name, with the brief story of his interaction with the man in question. wonderful evocative writing that doesn’t shy away from the intimate (and sexual) details. there’s an “explication” at the bottom (linked from the title, but I didn’t notice that at first), which goes into his philosophy of life as a person in the modern world:

But what has not been recognized is that mores have evolved yet further so that the former order is inverted. Young people disclose or discuss things unless they have a fantastically persuasive reason not to, and that standard is considerably higher now that almost nothing is embarrassing or shameful anymore.

I find the idea liberating, compelling, and terrifying, in something of that order. I have a story not entirely unlike Joe’s (okay, quite unlike, but not dissimilar, if that makes sense), which I have told, but only in person, to friends. There are details that I think make great story, and people who were fascinating characters. (I’ve even already been thinking about stories of the past that have yet to be told, not all in the vein of Joe’s.) and like Joe, I find I can’t not write, despite my last entry; there are almost always words forming themselves in my head, even if they’re not anything more than a retelling of my day.

on the other hand…I worry about what other people think. I know, it’s old school of me, but I spent most of my “real” life around people who are not part of the generation Joe describes. (that thought, in and of itself, deserves an entry that will never be written.) I admire people like Joe and Mark, but I’ve not yet the trust in either myself or my world to follow them. I am too shy, too self-consious, too closeted about half-a-dozen things that probably aren’t even worth the effort.

I can’t tell you how sad that makes me.

I’ve been surfing a lot, and reading, and watching movies, and playing a little Tropico. (which turns out to be quite entertaining) oh, and cleaning, making food, going to work…yeah, all that fun stuff. I’m again in one of those phases when there just aren’t any words in my head. and since I happen to be up on a Saturday morning, and not in the mood for cleaning, and it’s still a little chilly for gardening (because I’m a wuss), and I’m waiting for my cheep crappy phone to recharge so I can call my sister because I think we’re going to hang out & watch old live-action Disney movies this afternoon or my neighbor-round-the-corner because I want a recommendation for a hairdresser because if I don’t get my hair cut soon I’m going to chew off my bangs…um, where was I going with this?

yeah, I’m putting some words on the screen. neat, huh?

but I still feel like I don’t have anything to say. doesn’t help that I have a bit of a sinus headache, of course.

maybe I’ll just go putter in the yard while the phone recharges. there’s plenty of morning glory and blackberry to tear out. yeah…why don’t you go look at the new tulip pictures?

now the album listed as current is generated by a directory-reading script, instead of being manually entered…I just need to find a way to make the title look a little prettier than the directory name.

I want to do a few other things – for one, I don’t like how short the blogroll box is; for another, I’d like to actually show a photo in the album box, and for a third, it looks stranger than I’d like in IE. but those things almost certainly won’t happen right now. (off to the library!)

it’s been a full couple of days. Friday evening I went up to Seattle for a meeting of uwebd folks – there were eight of there, including two partners (yes, C. came with, and was quite charming). good conversation, and excellent Chinese food.

then I stayed over at Kat’s because she was moving. or something. she’s been staying with a friend, who’s moving in with her boyfriend, and Kat is taking over the apartment. so there was a storage unit full of stuff which had to go to apartment #1, which was still full of stuff that had to be put in the truck and taken to apartment #2. I left before they finished that last bit, because getting home involves a long bus ride. but all I can say is that I think Kat has a very cool apartment, but when she moves again, she should hire people. (3+ flights of short, uneven stairs with lots of turns.)

oh, and they just finished painting in the building, so all this up and down was accompanied by fumes. bleh. but I’m happy to see her moved…it’s a nice pad.

I was gonna post a new photo album (tulips a-go-go!), but the latest version of my album-making script is on a zip disk, and my computer’s zip disk is being excessively wiggy. so no album yet. maybe tomorrow?