$disanpoter

it looks grey but it's really green

so facebook has this 'wellesley flyer' thing. i'm not sure where it's getting the content for that - i assume all y'alls other colleges also get facebook flyers too - but regardless, today's flyer is about this do-it-yourself ink cartridge refiller. Both eco-friendly (in enabling you to reuse your cartridges) and cost-cutting, it looks pretty nifty. if only i were an office using ink with a frequency to justify the $150ish cost of purchasing it.

post script on the facebook flyer...you only get them if someone's willing to pay to reach you as a target demographic. comforting, aye?

even better than inventables

instructibles!  i found this site searching for how to polish silver without harsh and toxic chemicals. it reminds me of the wikiDIY  idea on meta wiki except that it's all orange-cream styled and makes me happy. :} that's all. just thought i'd share.

Programmer's Desktop

It was a bit nippy at 70 degrees (not so much for the temperature as for the impossible to locate (apparently/incidentally neither unlocatable nor unplaceable are real words) draft in my apartment this afternoon so I put on a duraflame log. It yielded much comfortable warmth before collapsing forward suddenly into a heap of flaming ash at the front edge of my hearth, causing wave upon wave of smoke to escape the draw of the chimney and permeate my livitchen / kichingroom with a visibly grey haze. Fortunately, I'd been diligent earlier about spritzing the Caush [?] whenever he tried to climb the screen so neither of the kittens were nearby. So that was a bit of an event.

Meanwhile, I've been returning to the thoughts i was working out at Random House regarding more flexible information architectures [this space left intentionally to represent the long winded extrapolation on exactly what needs such architectures would respond to]...gotta run...

the cats are in the toilet again

okay. well maybe not the toilet, but that sounded so much more intriguing than 'the cats are in the bathroom again.' the 'again' isn't so accurate either, but the cats (well, kittens, actually) are in the bathroom. i have very mixed up feelings about this. it would be one thing in they were locked up in my mother's bathroom (which is nearly the size of my bedroom at my last apt), but they're not. They're locked in my bitty bitty bathroom because they would not figure out how to use the litter box when they had the run off the place. i tried. i picked them up and put them in the litterbox. i tried to praise them when they used it, gave them kitty treats even (though that was in part to clean their breath). i even tried to pre-emptively scoop them up with they seemed about ready to use another spot. but to no avail. so now they are trapped in the bathroom until they figure it out, and i feel very conflicted and torn and bad-kitty-motherish about it.

acoustic somedays

Can I say again how much i love my mom's new house. it's just an amazing space. this morning we're all in higher spirits. my mother's still a nag, but kim's just spinning into a ribbalding joke each time. it's these times that i love this family...

they've latched on to a radio station out here, and sunday mornings it's got a program 'acoustic sunrise' that we all agree is great. it's kind of like a real home, you know. the past is the past and nobody's trying to dredging it up or trying to bury it. like the comment kim mad about me when my mom mentioned to him i'd argued with katherine. "well, lindsay has a way of saying things that make people crazy." it's true, but at the same time, it's because when i'm pushed to lash out at someone, as my mother pointed out, i use what's true about them and i don't buffer it. it actually felt good to hear that comment. not that it's a great trait - but it was nice to be known so well. also, as far as bad habits go, i'd rather be known for delivering difficult truths than for throwing out ridiculous claims.[matthew sweet and someone else have a new album of covers out called 'under the covers', says the radio. i'm thinking this'll be my next purchase unless kim gets it first.] either way, i'm really the only person who gets hurt when i lose my temper. it's a very rare thing to find someone receptive to the idea of working on the deeper shortcomings in their life. plus, it's just not my job to change people and it doesn't matter that i'm just trying to help them have a happier more fulfilling life. i'm rambling.

anyway. it's a pleasant morning, here with the cool ocean breeze blowing in. this morning i'm going to prep some less expensive sound system options for my mom. oooh...a nice version of mr jones is on right now with some bluesy freestyling interludes. we like this song, this family, because it expresses our fantasy of being cats instead of humans. really, who wouldn't rather be a cat. i want to be a cat the way the mother in east of eden wanted to be alice falling into the rabbit hole.

anyway. back to 'work'

[painting] slip slop

6 Jul 06

My doctor thinks it's excellent that i'm trying to pick up painting, though the conversation itself went in another direction:

-that's excellent!
-really?
-of course. do you really think it might not be? why wouldn't it?
-i don't know. i just feel the need to preface it with a disclaimer that i certainly don't expect my paintings to be good.
-why?
-well, i'm wary of coming off as thinking too highly of myself, because just because i don't expect them to be great, that doesn't mean i don't care about trying to make them as good as i can.
-i don't think anyone would think about it that much. people aren't that interested in other people, they like to think about themselves.
-i know...i just don't want to seem pretentious.
-but do you enjoy it?
-oh yes. i painted all day thursday and friday. it was great.
-you know you can paint just because you enjoy it. it's okay for it to just be -
- fun?
-yes, fun.

-i don't know about that...it is fun...but i don't know how i feel about the whole no goal thing. i don't know it i can do that.

that wasn't the end of the conversation, but the rest is less topical, just about my plans for the rest of the week. the parting advice, however, included "and maybe work on that having fun thing, okay?"

and i did. i painted all night. well i painted for 4+ hours, from when i got home till 1ish. 'course what i painted started out looking quite nice and ended looking rrghmgrm. non-satisfactory. i'll be trying to fix it tonight.

[the MC] no i will not!

this morning involved no calls, but i did receive a sweet short note assuring me we'll find something fun to do on the fourth. that's how it works.

***

this morning's call included the choice phrase "you're taking a week's vacation time to see your father!?"

- I love you, but... it's my vacation time! It's not yours; you don't get to decide how i spend it.

you would think this crucial bit of reality would be obvious. how many years do you have to hold down a job to understand out that the person who puts in the hours and gets the paycheque gets the vaction time too? and why do I have to end up feeling shitty anytime i visit anyone? i don't deserve it. I deserve to be able to enjoy time with my freakin' family without feeling like I've slighted someone else. and I deserve to have an actual vacation once every few years...clearly that's not going to happen this year (or at least this season)...

Reality Sucks, Read the Onion

okay so it doesn't....but still I love the Onion. Like this headline : Amazing New Hyperbolic Chamber Greatest Invention In The History Of Mankind Ever. How can you not enjoy that?

Another think i love about the onion - it's absolutely made up of the same people who spent the mornings doing cross-word puzzles in my math classes, put out Hierarchy of the Zucchini People, and otherwise entertained and amused all of us.

Anyway. I've been interested in things this weekend. I didn't get to go to that gallery show i wanted to, but hopefully i'll be able to sometime this week. First I was looking into movable type, then i was looking into the new top-level domains they've got out there, then i was trying to figure out some organizational changes to get my stuff put a way. then i had to regroup from having to fund a variety of moving issues that have cropped up for my mother. i'll get it all back of course, but things are a little tight, and i really really need groceries.

other than that, it's just trying to finish things up, get things clean, do something - before the weekend's over. and scheming up plans to make the world run better, you know, typical me stuff. and now...a fried egg, sourdough roll dinner. yum

underwhelming

• i'm thinkin' i may get something sweet and yummy at starbucks and spend part of the afternoon reading in the part/columus circle...really, i should already have left the office, but no i just keep working on stuff. In other news I screwed up the nerve to ask this guy if perchance he and his fiancee enjoy games and he said "I love board games." So they're getting invited to the next. Even better they're thinking of moving to park slope...i don't know why i'm so enthusiastic about cultivating couple friends. i think maybe it's the allure of stability. maybe it's simply a way to reduce the odds that a relationship i've invested in will become complicated and fall out from under me... 
• my dream last night was not as strange as they sometimes are. i dreamed i was at some convention at a large round table meeting about minds matter. the convention resembled some blend of all the common areas and cafeterias I spent my high school saturdays in. not so surprising that. some exchange in the dream prompted me to mention 'i kissed someone once in this cafeteria who was quite intelligent. it didn't go anywhere, but later he turned out to be gay, so i wasn't to bothered by that.' this is actually not true. i don't think i ever kissed someone at a speech meet. i'm not entirely sure i ever even kissed someone in the school building...but that's high school for you. what is true is that my team teased me mercilessly about the boy who seemed to follow me from one event to another over the four years we competed against eachother....
  but returning to this dream - i was speaking with rissa, who'd asked about my interview had gone. i related it to her frankly, but it turned out she already knew. it was a bit of a test. then she said that she too was favoring this other applicant due to her experience in establishing writing programs. though i brought up my own experience in assisting others with their writing, she sustained her judgement. and i deferred to her judgement. if they both thought i was not the strongest candidate than i should not be given the position.
  what's strange about this, to me, is that i essentially had a dream about not getting what i'd really hoped for and feeling okay about it. feeling like it was just and fair. that's a strange thing to feature in a dream, no?
• there was something else that was supposed to go here....we'll see if i remember. something about integrity and what a watershed issue it is for me. there's nothing that makes me want to sever all ties with someone so quickly and so unappologetically as an indication that that person might be deficient in integrity.
• also, the summer's employee free books opened today. i already ordered my 5. one's a graduation gift for my mentee...

hmmm

i think i might need a new bed - or at best a new futon. last night i was finishing up some computer things in bed, and the steep of my laptop from the edge of the bed toward the center was at least 20 degrees. This could be why i've been so tired, or it could be the reason i keep waking up at 4 or 5 or 6 convinced that it's 8 or 9 and my alarms didn't go off or didn't wake me up (which in turn could be the reason i'm so tired). but i'm hoping this undesirable incline is only an indication of the futon getting packed down unevenly and not of a broken midbeam...

other than that - i just want to go to sleep.

and other than that...my grandparents are missing. they haven't responded to my emails; they haven't called me back. where could they be? have they snuck off on a trip somewhere?