Month: June 2004

been back to work three days, though one of them was telework (so no commute), and already I’m wiped out, not doing anything much more strenuous than typing & mousing. bleh.

there’s *got* to be something I can do about this: more sleep (so hard when it’s just getting dark at 9:30 *and* we are on compressed summer schedule and thus coming in a half-hour early), better diet, more exercise? something entirely different?

sigh.

instead of spending time at my computer(s), I’ve been bicycling, arguing, and doing manual labor. more later, possibly with pictures.

(oh, and the fine people at Qwest accidentally shut off our landline phone for 2 1/2 days, so even when I wanted to go online I couldn’t!)

sometimes I forget how lucky I am in my stable middle-class life…and frankly how much luck I’ve had in the weird twisty bits that got me here.

I like between-quarter breaks because it’s so quiet and peaceful.

I hate them because the cafeteria and the coffee cart are closed, and there’s no food in walking distance except vending machines.

(yeah, I forgot my lunch.)

so I got a bike 2 weeks ago, right? and two weeks ago, I wasn’t sure if I could even *ride*; that first night, we went down to the library, and I went through a series of little freakouts all the way down and up (as much as I enjoyed it at the same time).

today…I got home from work, and C was out, and I didn’t feel like doing housework (too damn hot for us Pac NW wusses), so I went out for a ride: a variant of what’s now become a familiar jaunt, out to the vicinity of the San Francisco St. Bakery, then over to a little housing development and back by South Bay Rd. (this time I cut back on a slightly different route after consulting the bike map.) all of which probably amounted to a couple of miles, mostly flat with some gentle hills.

got home again, stripped off my bike clothes and jumped in the shower. C got home shortly after I got dressed, while I was starting to think about reheating some leftovers for dinner, and said, “let’s bike downtown.” and y’know, that didn’t sound like a half-bad idea. so back into bike-able clothes, hair back in the ponytail, and back out onto the road.

downhill on the same route we took that first night, only this time I was happy and confident, relaxed; thoroughly enjoying myself. we decided to bike around Capitol Lake; at first I hesitated, thinking about going back up the hill, but I thought, “what the hell.”

and the ride around the lake was lovely in the long warm sunset; on the way back into downtown, we saw a couple of guys with some sort of giant kite, trying valiantly to get it up into the air. (failing miserably, but still.)

I think I like riding around downtown Oly, too, even with the squirrelly little streets and the appearance and disappearance of bike lanes.

we stopped at Starbucks (Batdorf & Bronson, alas, had long been closed) and had enormous chai frappuchinos while reading bits of the New York Times. then, as sunset gave way to dusk, we headed back for home…a slightly different route, tackling the big hill a little more headon. I went into lower and lower gears until I just failed out entirely, just barely avoiding crashing into someone’s lawn. took the next couple of blocks on foot until we got up onto our plateau; home again as darkness fell, and back into the shower.

and I feel lovely. (yesterday I biked to the Chehalis Western Trail and halfway to the Yelm Highway, back via Fred Meyer. I can get from Fred Meyer to the house in 18 minutes.)

I think what I’m getting from bicycling is generally a better sense of my own connection to physical reality. I’ve always been over-precious about my own fragility, nervous about being physical. bicycling is such a high — an honest-to-god euphoric experience — that it gives me the courage (?) to let go, or push myself, or something.

today Mark Pilgrim posted his thoughts about the clean sweep quiz. I tried it myself….

23-25. (varied depending on a couple of marginal items.)

gah. my house is a mess; my relationships are few and conflicted; I’m not taking care of my physical health terribly well, and my finances are wildly disorganized.

on a happy note, I’m now exercising every damn day. (stretching, strength exercises & a little run in the morning, a walk around the lake at noon most days, and now either yard work or biking in the early evening.) which is giving me the energy I need to even think about the rest of it without collapsing into a sobbing heap of uselessness.

(oh yeah, that’s just great.)

there are a few items that I find ludicrous, or not important, or baffling — even if I were perfectly happy with my life I’d never score 100 on this quiz — and the assumption that completing it will bring happiness is a trifle odd. but it points me to some things I want to do…..

* improve my physical environment. this means filing my papers, keeping my house and clothes clean, decorating what can be decorated and remodeling what should be remodeled.
* take care of lingering physical problems. I’ve made two big steps in that direction this spring, between going to the chiropractor for my headaches (which are much diminished) and getting more exercise. next is getting a new dentist in Olympia and probably PT/OT for my hands/wrists/arms.
* getting a social life outside of the Internet. (not that I’m entirely sure how to go about that, and frankly, the idea scares me a little.)
* financial planning and organization.

I’ve always been a list-driven person. my paper journals are full of to-do lists, whether it’s just things that I need to do today, or goals for my whole life. so I suppose the list format of this little quiz appeals to me as a way to organize my thoughts.

oh, and items I’d add:

* I regularly give my time and/or money to charitable projects.
* I express my creativity. (yeah, I stole that from someone in Mark’s comments.)
* I am aware of political issues in my community and act based on my views. (or something like that.)

my mail.com account had some sort of crazy outage — I’ve only been able to get at it one try out of 10 the last week or so, and this morning I had this lovely message in my inbox:

Valuable User,

We apologize for the problems you have been experiencing while
attempting
to access your e-mail account during the past few days. We have
restored access
to e-mail messages you have received since Tue, 8 Jun 2004 14:56:29
-0000 and are working
to restore all of your data that was stored prior to that day.

Do not worry NO DATA HAS BEEN LOST. We are working extremely hard to
resolve
the problem and once it has been resolved, we will be able to restore
your
account to its original state. ALL your stored e-mail messages and
Address
Book entries are SAFE and will be restored to your account within the
next
few days.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you.

Sincerely,

Member Services

so…if you sent me a message, you might want to try again; that, or send it to my other account. (K, I’m looking at you…I know you sent me a note with a picture, but I didn’t get a chance to look at it very closely, nor to respond.)

and this is why I’m so eagerly jumping to a new email account.

not too much to report; it’s been a few days since I’ve done any coding, but I’ve been using the thing in the meantime and I’m happy with my work so far. 🙂 seriously, I find it’s more seamless with my preferred process and mental model. that, and I’m actually using more of the existing features!

because now I can’t remember where I left off the last time, and something broke horribly, so I had to go back farther than I wanted to…this is for my personal record.

* new items for feed link goes to the right place
* settings page exists, but doesn’t do anything

my computer came back yesterday, and today I started in on the task of finishing installing software and setting up my files, preferences, etc., etc.

the tech guys left it with the default color scheme, which I may tweak a little, but not that much, because today I had the happy coincidence of running into a beautiful photo of Mount Hood and the moon by Tim Bray, which coordinates perfectly with the default background blue. 🙂

I’m trying very hard to make my folder structure well-organized this time around, and to keep my desktop clean. it certainly helps to have such a pretty picture to look at when I minimize my program windows; I’m reminded of Japanese painting: the sparseness of the composition, the delicacy of the colors, and the shape of the thing.

::sigh::

I feel just as out of it as I did when I came back from my cold last month.