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November 26, 2002. Let’s talk about ME, shall we? KariYour first name of Kari has made you a friendly,
approachable, and generous person. Generally you are good-natured, though at
times you can be blunt and sarcastic. As you are naturally talkative, you
find it easy to meet and make friends with many people. This name inclines
you to be sympathetic and generous to those in difficult or unfortunate
circumstances. You can be firm, positive, and independent in your own ideas
and in reaching your own decisions, yet when it comes to taking action or
following things through to completion, you often need encouragement. You
respond quickly to kind words or any appreciation shown you. There are
artistic, creative abilities in this name that you could express through
music or singing, or, in a practical way, through sewing or interior
decorating. You enjoy freedom from monotony and are stimulated by unexpected
opportunities for meeting people, entertaining, or pursuing activities of a
carefree nature. In your work, you find it difficult to be neat and orderly.
You rarely plan things ahead of time, or follow a routine. Emotion and
feeling, the desire to be carefree, friendly, and happy, are the driving
forces in your being, rather than shrewdness, ambition, and material success.
You could experience headaches, or problems with your teeth, ears, eyes, or
sinuses. Health weaknesses relative to the functioning of the liver could
appear. or KarinaYour first name of Karina has given you a
very friendly, likeable nature, and you could excel in artistic, dramatic,
and musical expression. With this name, you desire the finer things in life,
but you do not always have the resolve and vitality to put forth the effort
necessary to fulfill your desires. Your emotional feelings are easily aroused
and you will always be involved in other people's problems as a result of your
overly sympathetic nature. You have many disappointments as a result of
extending a helping hand to others in need, and then not receiving any
acknowledgement or reciprocation for your generosity. After each experience,
you have to guard against feelings of despondency and self-pity. You have
lofty goals and high ideals, but must incorporate more practicality, system,
and concentration in order to materialize them. In health, this name affects
the nervous system and also the fluid functions, giving rise to kidney or
bladder weaknesses. ? |
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November 25, 2002. Crying Clowns, Potlucks, and the Virtues
of Not Dressing on a Sunday Friday night I saw
Comedian with Jerry Seinfeld. Matt
really enjoys Seinfeld. I don’t mind
the guy, but honestly, I don’t think that his show is the superfantastic
fabuloso thing that so many other people feel it is. That little disclaimer
said, I really did enjoy the movie.
It’s a documentary about being a standup comedian. It really shows how hard it is to be a
successful comedian, and the painful process you have to go through. The film showcased Seinfeld, who’s already
big and who is rebuilding his lineup, and a young comedian (Orny Arnold) just
about to make it big. They picked the
right young comedian to juxtapose Seinfeld, too. That was great casting.
The film was also incredibly hard and painful to watch. It’s freakin’ hard work to be a
comedian. You have to stand up in
front of all of these dumb drunk tools and tell jokes. And there’s always the 3 people in the
audience who think they could have been a comedian, and they’ve got their own
commentary to add. For someone who’s
ever been in front of an audience, it’s a scary scary proposition. And something else I
noticed? Comedian’s eyes are always
very very sad. They’re like those
porcelain crying clown figurines. Saturday I woke up early
to cook some squash. I was invited to
a pre-thanksgiving potluck party, so I wanted to make an exciting and
glamorous dish. This is it (from the
joy of cooking, and paraphrased): *
Bake 3 acorn squash, halved and face down in a baking pan with some
water in it, until soft. Let cool. *
Sauté onion in a buttery pan.
When golden, add and toast quinoa.
Add vegetable broth, cover, and cook about 15 min. (until soft). *
Scoop the insides out of 2 of the squash halves. Mix into cooked quinoa, add toasted
hazelnuts/almonds (I used almonds this time, but with hazelnuts it’s so
fantastic), fresh parsley, and a bit of parmesan cheese. *
Stuff the other squash halves with the squash-quinoa mixture. Sprinkle more cheese on top and bake until
heated through. So good! So glamorous! So sophisticated! Quinoa is a really
fantastic grain, by the way, it’s got nearly perfect proteins, so it’s a good
meat “substitute” and it cooks remarkably fast. Much faster than rice.
It’s good, and so texturally pleasing! Right, so I packed up my
double recipe of squashes (acorn and pretty carnival, which turn out to be a
sweet squash) into 3 pie pans, and was lucky to catch a ride with Matt to NJ
so I didn’t have to brave the every-2-hour bus ride to Nutley. I got there early so I could help out. The potluck was really
fun. The food was fantastic, and the
hostess was a sweetie. Really, she’s
the mostest. Mostest bestest! So Friend Doug drove me
home afterwards, which was super swell of him, b/c it would have taken hours
on the path to the subway combo (ok, not hours, probably just 1.5-2
hours. But we left at 12:30, so it
would have been very late getting home!).
And then, I went to bed. And I
slept until 12:30 the next afternoon.
And I got up, and stayed in my PJs all day long. I don’t usually wear the matching PJ set,
so that in itself was pretty cool. I
threw some laundry in. I sat on the couch.
I put in my contacts when John and I settled down to watch a PBS documentary
based on the book “Cadillac Desert,” we watched 2 parts of 4. Then John
watched the Giants game, and I knit on the couch. (I finished the scarf, and nearly finished stripy surprise item
#2!) When the game got tense and I
noticed that I was freaking cold, I got up and left John to his own devises,
and washed the dishes (mom was right, it really DOES warm you up…). Michelle got home just
after the football game was over, and we watched Moulin Rouge. Now, I don’t know what I was expecting,
but it sure as heck wasn’t that. It was
fantastic, and weird, and funny, and colorful, but I really didn’t expect it
to be like it was. It was wild! And after that? It was to bed. Um, not to sleep, but to start and finish a short novel.
Terrible habits I’ve got going here with the reading in bed stuff. I think it’s because when I was working so
hard I didn’t really get any down time at home, so I got in the habit of
reading for a bit in bed. And now I
need to break that habit! I have
sleep to get. Right now I’m feeling
terribly lightheaded, so I think I’ll leave work a tad bit early. I’m not sure what’s going on, but I do
think I’ll feel better on my couch.
I’d love to stop by a yarn store on the way home to get some double
pointed needles for my mittens, but … it just seems like such an effort to
get somewhere. I’ll give it a
shot. If I take the knitting bus home
I can cut across town to Knitting 321 and then take the 1st Ave.
bus the rest of the way home. That’s
not so bad! |
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November 22, 2002. Thunderstorms and Season-Appropriate
Weather. There’s a thunderstorm
outside! It started to Fall-rain
today. Something I have gotten used
to here in NYC is the rain that happens during the fall. Weather patterns are something that can be
so defined and in a region, but I hardly ever notice changes in them until
the expected weather pattern HASN’T happened. Like one summer when it rained all the time up in Albany. Maybe I thought it was raining so much
because I was kind of depressed, baby-sitting in a weird one-parent-staying-home
situation for the summer, or maybe the weather patterns were skewed. I really do think it rained a lot that
summer. I remember Albany being extra
lush and green, and I remember the shade of green that reflected from the
full trees to the low gray clouds and back down to unmowed grass. In NYC, it’s supposed to
rain in the fall, be cool for December and January, get really cold in
February, with not much precipitation during the winter. Then for spring it will warm up a bit and
rain at night only. Summer time has
thunderstorms with hard driving rain and hot muggy temperatures, sometimes
oppressive. Everyone walks around
sweaty. The sun is clear and
orangey-red, and it hits your shoulders in a heavy way. Today, I was surprised to
hear it start to thunderstorm. I
don’t really know where thunderstorms come from, I’m used to blaming them on
the summer, or the humidity, or the heat.
I’m used to sitting at my grandmothers’ in Tennessee during August and
watching the thunderstorm clouds roll around her hill, until they’ve gone
nearly all around us before suddenly bursting open and dropping a quick hard
rain that briefly shoulders the heat and humidity out of the way before the
sun breaks through the clouds and heats the wet streets until they’re like a
long sauna, surrounding everything. But I’m not used to these
fall thunderstorms. In the fall the
rain will come at night, and in the early morning. It will rain softly in the morning but so steadily that you can’t
leave the house without an umbrella.
The oil and dirt on the pavement will start to wash away, but won’t
disappear as quickly as you wish they would.
The oil will start to spread its sheen and will pick up the little
light afforded by the gray sky. Last
night it rained like this. It started
after work, and rained on and off all night long. The rain was cold, but not too cold. The clouds kept us warm like a wet wool blanket. The weather report for today said it would
rain on and off, turning colder overnight until we hit real November
temperatures for the weekend. Instead, today it started
to rain in earnest. The sky got
prematurely dark during the day until we remarked at 3 PM that it was
practically nighttime. But we didn’t
blame the weather, we blamed daylight savings time. And then I heard the rain slapping the window as it fell. And one loud boom of thunder surprised me
while I was on the phone. That was
all – the thunderstorm moved on through, and an entirely appropriate fall
rain stayed in its place. It wasn’t
too hard, but fell softly into puddles.
It got people wet. It was a
proper fall rain. Last night I went to a
birthday party for a friend of mine from school. It was lots of fun. I
was able to isolate myself from my classmates for the first 2 ½ years at
college, and then the few semesters I started being better friends with
them. I’m so glad I did, because I
really enjoy spending time with them.
They’re a classy bunch of people, full of smarts, sass, and fun. And after all of my tireds from yesterday
I managed to stay up very late, and get home very late, and not get enough
sleep. That’s ok, though, because
it’s the weekend tomorrow… |
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November 21, 2002. Cooking up
a Storm of Spicy Spuds! Today
is a quiet day in the office, with Lake Nasty meetings taking place sans Me
upstate. I’m
exhausted. Honestly, the last month
is catching up with me. I’m worn
down! Plus, I have been relishing my
home time this week a little too much – my evenings go something like this: -
Get home. Eat a little
something. It’s generally 7:30 or 8
by now. -
Sit on couch and knit and watch TV for a few hours. Favorite shows: 7th Heaven, That 70’s Show. Malcolm in the
Middle. Other fave. shows of various
roommates: Ed, West Wing, and others, including BBC world news. -
Around 10:30 start toddling around like I’m ready to head up for bed. -
Hit the sack around 11.
Read. Favorite books to read
in bed: trashy trashy romance
novels. Louisa May Alcott books. -
Speak to Matt around 11:30 or 12.
Go to sleep very late. All
that, and then waking up at 7:30 the next morning, on top of being pooped
from the wedding, and even more on top of being pooped from working so hard
from the last month, well, I’m a tired girl. Yesterday
I went straight home on the knitting bus.
That’s what I’ll always call it.
It’s a good bus. I love it.
From what I’ve read, knitting in public (or kip, if you’re down with
the knitting lingo used on the inter-web) is supposed to garner strange looks
and interested questions from strangers.
I barely ever get anything.
Maybe it’s that NY state of mind, where no one is supposed to look at
anyone else and NO ONE is supposed to talk to a stranger. Not that I’m looking for conversations
with strangers, really, but the non plused silence just isn’t what I expected
the first time I whipped out the knitting. When
I got home I went cooking crazy, with easy-peasy stuff. I made a pound of
part-whole wheat spaghetti and used some of it with the end of this fantastic
Thai peanut sauce that a buddy here at work made and gave me. It’s so good and spicy and gingery. I love it. That was for my dinner. On
the rest of the spaghetti I did my tried and true spicy standby: some chipotle-garlic spice tossed with
some parmesan cheese. (Michelle is a
saint for having a big bag of grated cheese from Costco in the fridge. It makes my throw-together cooking so much
easier.) I packed that for lunch some
day. We
had some left over ugly potatoes that weren’t pretty enough for the potluck
roasted potato dish, so I cooked ‘em up and mashed ‘em down. Mmmm.
And, to tempt fate, I threw in some MORE chipotle-garlic spice, only I
used the HOT kind, not medium, and sauteed some garlic in olive oil to add to
the potatoes. Yum. Only, I added too much spice. Lord knows how hot they’ll be today after
the flavor sets! And then the Ever
Prescient Jen coined the term ‘spicy spuds’.
Mmm, spicy spuds. How many
times can I write Mmmm? I think I’ll
go for one more. Mmmm. Of
course, today when I got into work I immediately heated up my spicy noodles
and ate them for breakfast. Er,
brunch. I have a really hard time
when I bring my lunch to work – I just want to eat it immediately. I’d say I have about a 60% success rate of
waiting until lunch time to eat. So,
for lunch I went and got a sandwich.
Not the best way to watch what I eat. There’s
a mystery at work today – J. has roses on her desk! But she’s at the tiger team meeting (rowr!) with El B., so who
the heck knows where they came from! |
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November 20, 2002. What’s “on
my plate.” So,
Lake Nasty has temporarily slowed down.
I’m getting more time to spend doing what I like to do. I’m
knitting on my scarf for the battered woman’s shelter. That’s great, I really like getting
something like this done. I can’t
wait until it’s really and truly finished.
I
remember now that I got the bulk of the hat knitting done on bus trips home
after work. There’s a great limited
service (express) bus that goes from 10 blocks south of my office, to right
outside of my office door to near my home, and then on up to the upper upper
west side which runs until 7:20 PM.
If I catch that bus, it’s a quick easy trip with a seat guaranteed
because I get on at an early stop.
Lately I haven’t been able to catch this bus because I’ve been working
so late, but I’m going to make every effort to get back on the bus, and to
knit my holiday projects there. At
home I’ve been knitting stripy hats.
I have some really soft yarn from ebay, and I’m making them as
surprise gifts for people who don’t expect them. After I’m done with the hats I’m going to finish the lacey item
for a family member, and hopefully whip up some mittens for me. I have a long list of other knitting (hats
and mittens, mostly) for other people as gifts, so I’m just going to crunch
along on the list and see how far I get. I
may have to take a break from knitting at home to work on some of the
embroidery projects I have planned, though.
Embroidery isn’t nearly as portable as knitting! It gets too dirty in
my trashed canvas bag
(trashed because I rarely wash it, not through any fault of the canvas
bag. And, it’s link-o-rama!) But I’ve got some serious embroidery work
to do, too. Other
things I want to do include: 1.
Get my sewing machine fixed. 2.
Cook a really nice thing for a potluck this week, and another one in
December. 3.
Organize my winter clothes so I’m not storing them on my desk. 4.
Swiff the living room floor at home. 5.
Rehang my pictures in my room from the era of the crumbling ceiling. 6.
Figure out CSS so I can have styling and easily updateable webpages
sans using Word. Not
too bad! And now, I have to run so I
can catch the knitting bus… |
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November 18, 2002. Vegetables, Weddings, and Executive Secretaries. I
had a super fantastic weekend full of vacation and no rest. It was wonderful. Thursday
night was a potluck dinner for our CSA (community supported agriculture
group) to which Michelle and I brought dee-vine roasted potatoes. (We used dill, rosemary, thyme, garlic,
and parsley. They were so freaking
good. But I was surprised at how long
they took to cook!) A
word about CSAs: I think they’re
incredible. You join early in the
year, and pay up front for a vegetable share. The farmer gets all (or nearly all) of the money at the
beginning of the growing season; theoretically, the debt-cycle that the
typical small farmer in America is in can be broken. (The debt cycle is where the farmer takes
out a loan at the beginning of the season for equipment, seeds, and operating
costs, and hopes that the harvest will be successful enough to cover the
debt. This is one of the big reasons
so many farmers went broke during the dust bowl and had to leave their homes
to become migrant workers.) Around June
you start getting organic and seasonal vegetables. This is another good thing:
you get organic stuff, which is good for so many reasons I won’t get
into it, and you get seasonal vegetables, from a local producer. This saves transportation and storage
energy, and more abstractly, it keeps you in touch with the seasons and
earth-cycles around your neighborhood.
It sounds really crunchy-granola, but I appreciate this so much while
living in NYC. This spring I didn’t
notice it was nearly summer until I saw that the trees around me had full
loads of leaves in them – and when we stopped getting so much lettuce and
started getting other summer vegetables.
Our CSA farmer lives about 1½ hours up the Hudson Valley from New York
City. She has a family farm which she
works with her husband and her children.
She’s a cool lady with a great attitude towards life. She pays her kids to work for her, instead
of making them. She is entirely
supported by her 5 NYC CSAs. And she
came to our potluck! It’s
funny when the two of the few things that make me want to stay in NYC are our
great CSA and our snazzo Spanish Harlem apartment. Then,
my friend Julie from school got married this weekend, and I was in her bridal
party. So it was a fantastic excuse
to take Friday off – especially as I have been working so hard and late that
I wasn’t able to run any of my pre-wedding errands last week or the week
before. I had my lashes dyed and my
eyebrows waxed. I went to the Museum
of Natural History to buy jewelry for the wedding. I got a manicure, and immediately messed it up. I got a pedicure and didn’t hurt it too
much. And then I headed out for the
parties on Long Island. And boy, were
there parties. There was the
rehearsal dinner, which took like 4 hours, and was punctuated by a speech
made by the grooms father that was so long and happy and poignant that it
wore me out. There was the hair
appointment that lasted for 3 hours (for 7 girls, so not bad, really). There was trying to make Julie eat
something before she got her makeup done, so she wouldn’t pass out. And there was the wedding – it was
beautiful, and I didn’t trip down the aisle or anything. Me not taking communion wasn’t awkward at
all. I fit into my bridesmaid dress
despite the month of food and bad eating I’d done after the fitting. The reception was magnificent and they
took us in when it was cold and rainy, even though we were 1½ hours early. And the hors d’ovres?
Yum. The families all know how
to have a great time, with the dancing and kissing and hugging and clapping
and smiling. It was a really good
weekend. I felt like I was on
vacation! Then,
today, I got back to work and dove back into Lake Nasty and the impending
document publication. There are
“tiger team” (rowr!) meetings coming up which include the primary authors and
commenting agencies, and I’m not going to have to go to them. I have very mixed feelings about
that. On the one hand, they’re mostly
“these are how we implemented your comments, is it OK, and by the way, this
other agency said this, just so you know” meetings. I don’t imagine I’d need to be there, because our editor will
be there, and El Bosso, and the client project manager. I don’t need to be there to take notes, or
edit documents, and truth be told I haven’t actually read every single word
in these reports. But at the same
time, I feel like I’m doing all of the work with none of the glory. It’s pretty sad when a tiger team meeting
= glory. Here’s
a few of the silly (and irrational) things I thought when I realized I wasn’t
going: 1.
So, well, what’s my job again?
2.
No glory. (See above
statement regarding glory.) That’s
ok. I’ll just stay here and format
tables. I excel at excel! 3.
Oh, he just doesn’t want me to go because I’m no fun to travel to
Albany with, always running off to stay with my family! It’s a conspiracy to keep me from my
familial seat! The
thing is, and this is where I get whiny about my job again, I don’t really
know what my job here is. I didn’t know what it was before, and then the Big
Company bought us, and now I really don’t know what my job is. This
is my work timeline: I
started just out of college. I was
regular junior level staff – El B.’s private engineer. I went to project management meetings with
the client every week, and wrote big book reports about potential hazardous
waste sites around Lake Nasty. After
working here for a year I started to feel kind of dissatisfied and
bored. I spoke to El B. and told him
that I needed more responsibility, and also to feel a little bit of
attachment to the project. So he told
me that he’d felt I was his deputy project manager, and that he would give me
more responsibility. He did, a
little. I told my mom I was deputy,
and she said I was Deputy Dawg. After
working here for two years, I started to feel a little dissatisfied
again. I felt like this deputy stuff
was platitudes, and really meant “someone to drive to Albany with for monthly
project meetings.” I got a little upset,
and a little stressed out, and spoke to El B. seriously this time. He told me there was a big hazardous waste
site that was super nasty and was a continuing source of contamination for
Lake Nasty. He told me I could manage
that site. I was so excited! That was a big deal. He also said he’d need a lot of help from
me to work on the Lake Nasty documents.
And then we zipped into that process, and it’s been a whirlwind year. Except
they cancelled the monthly project meetings. And I didn’t know what was going
on in any other aspects of the project.
And I spoke to El B. about it at about year three, asking what I
should do when people asked me about other aspects of the project that were
going on. He said he didn’t have the
time to fill me in, and I should call this other person if I wanted to
know. And that’s when I started to
distance myself a little from work here.
I am not the deputy. I never
have been, really, except for maybe a nine month period when the progress
meetings were really useful and comprehensive. I’m no less micromanaged than the other people here. So, now, with no glory and only hard work,
I am not sure what I should do about this job. As I was compiling the hardcopy of the report and getting it ready for other people to take to the glamorous meeting this week, I realized that an executive secretary might do what it is that I’m doing now. If I were an executive secretary, I might take notes at meetings. I might edit excel tables. I might edit text. I might write stuff for my boss to check and elaborate on. The only difference would be the salary, and the wardrobe. If I were an executive secretary I might make twice what I make now, and I’d be able to afford the wardrobe. Rowr! |
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November 13, 2002. Vietnam Veterans Memorial
There are TVs in my elevator at work. It’s a brave new advertising strategy that
is designed to target captive, young and rich audiences (we are, apparently,
are on average: 39 year old professionals, 60% in management, with 66%
graduating from collage and a household income of $105K) on their hazy
commute to and from work. Now, it’s
not all advertising, there are fun facts, and polls (you can vote at their
website! It’s interactive!), and the
word-of-the-day, but mostly it’s just a fantastic excuse to not have to talk
to the other person in the elevator with you without feeling awkward. The company’s name is Captivate, and the
silly TVs are, apparently, a vehicle to reach the target audience during the
part of the day where they are already making purchase decisions. It’s very subliminal, in a not at all
subliminal way. This is called
“Captivate time.” I call it “I don’t
know that person from the 5th floor, though I’ve seen them around,
so instead of making awkward small talk, I’ll be very interested in how Lyle
Lovett and Anthony Kiedis were born on the same day. Imagine!
Lyle Lovett is 45 years old!” I read this morning on the TV in the elevator that
the Vietnam memorial opened today in 1982.
I remember going there with my family when I was younger, and my
mother looking for the names of people she knew. She was in the army around the time of the Vietnam war. Knowing that the memorial opened in 1982 makes a
lot of little things snap into place. I knew it had opened during my
lifetime, but I didn’t realize that when we went in 1983, or when I was in 1th
grade, it had just barely opened. I
remember the memorial being very crowded, with people silently reading the
wall, and red roses everywhere. I guess
until now I thought it would always be that way, the black gash in the ground
filled with silent and somber people.
When I went back during high school while attending a conference in
DC, I was surprised at how few people were there – I know now that maybe
that’s probably just the way it is these days. I also remember a conversation between my Mom and my 1st
grade teacher, who was also a veteran.
We lived right up the hill from the school in Oak Ridge and sometimes
she and my baby brother would walk down to get me at the end of the day. I recall waiting on the front steps of the
school as she spoke with him about our visit to the memorial. I think it must have been just before we
went to the memorial. I thought that
people of my mother’s age, especially Vietnam vets, just talked about this
stuff with others quite freely. I guess that’s not the case really. I have
always felt very strongly that the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was the best
memorial that could have ever gone up, because I have seen the way my mother
and other visitors reacted to it, but I am always shocked to remember that it
wasn’t always there, and it wasn’t an easy thing to be built. This must be a belated veterans day entry,
hey? Happy Veterans Day, Mommy. |
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November 11, 2002. Brick House meets Immovable Object. It’s a bizzaro heat and rain day today. Now, I love the humidity, because I’m a
weirdo from the south. And I love the
rain, because it’s wet, and breaks up the humidity, and it washes the streets
clean, and it scrubs the air, and I’m a geek, so I love knowing how the water
runs through a watershed when it rains, and I love knowing that reservoirs
are filling and wetlands are forming, and acting as giant sponges. I love all of that. I don’t so much love being in NYC during
the rain. Today I was heading back
to the office with my lunch, and this little man with an umbrella nearly as
wide as he was tall was walking towards me.
His umbrella was so large, and so red. He was chattering on his cell phone, and as I came abreast of
him his umbrella whacked mine. It
whacked it! I spun around and stared
after him. There weren’t many people
on the sidewalk, and I guess I could have moved aside for him, but I must
have underestimated the small mans size. Then I thought as I walked
away, I should have yelled! Shouted! Yelped!
I had a full body flinch, and it’s a known fact that in NYC the silent
killer is umbrellas. I react sharply
and suddenly to my cell phone going off in my pocket (well, it vibrates, and
it startles me!) and I should cultivate that sudden reaction for when people
whack me (and my umbrella) as we walk past each other in the street. But then I imagined what
it would look like if I did yell – it’s raining, not too hard, and tall me
(with my little pocket sized black umbrella), walks past short man (with his
huge, red, red, red, umbrella). We
pass each other. He whacks me with in the umbrella as he talks on his cell
phone, and continues walking down the street. I reflexively wince away from him, and yell. Maybe I’ll yell a word, maybe “hey!” or
“ouch!” or maybe it would just be a loud “aaaah!” noise. I’d stop short, spin around. And stand there yelling at him as he
walked on down the street. Maybe the
person on the phone with him would ask what that yelling noise was – and
maybe they wouldn’t. See, I’m invisible here in NYC. It’s hard for me to understand why, I
think I’m a pretty obvious person.
I’m just over 6’ tall in my shoes.
I have wild red hair. I look
people in the eye. I have a pink and
white face. My hair is so wild that I
must repeat myself: I have wild red hair.
But no one ever looks at me, unless it’s summer, when my clothes are
skimpy and I encounter the “privileged male gaze.” They walk right into me in the street. I can be on a crowded sidewalk, walking
towards a group of people 2 or 3 abreast, and they won’t move but will walk
into me. But, that’s ok. Once, in high school, some guy walked into
me. He bounced off of me and landed
on his keyster in the middle of the hallway.
You see, I’m a brick house.
Yaow. Last night Matt and I had our very special anniversary dinner – we had great Italian food, and then he gave me the best present ever: the Crossroads DVD. It’s my first DVD even! He’s got a real knack for finding things that I secretly want (cowboy hat, Britney Spears movie) but that I wouldn’t really buy for myself, and getting them for me. He’s so awesome. AND, he watched it with me! And sang along during the special “Sing along with Britney” karaoke feature at the end! If I weren’t in lurve before… |
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November 8, 2002. Work related illness and how much I
love knitting. Oh, the weekend is tomorrow! I can’t even imagine what my life will be like
when I’m done with this project. Our
next big big deadline is Monday night, and Tuesday? I may be very sick. You
know how it goes, when stress and adrenaline keeps the tiredness and sickness
at bay and when all is over, you suddenly explode into sleep and sickness and
sniffles and coughs and tired and stay in bed? That’s what’s going to happen.
Knowing how I have reacted in the past to constant work I could
probably hold off illness for a few days, but then the baseline exhaustion
won’t go away for months, no matter how much I sleep in on weekends. It’s the western approach to medicine, though,
that will make it hard for me to stay home on Tuesday. I am so used to waiting until I am very
ill it’s hard for me to say “this is a preventative measure, therefore, it’s
valid and appropriate.” The only things that are keeping me going on this
project are: I have forgotten what I would usually do in the
evenings when I don’t have to work late. Stress, consistent lack of sleep, and more
caffeine than I’ve drank in the last 3 months. (I think caffeine gives me gas. Not stinky, gross, hide the children gas (or, as I’ve been told
before, that’s what I think), but just plain old air poots. Weird!) The faint hopes that my suggestions will be acted
on and at the end of the year all team members will get t-shirts that
say: “Nasty Lake: Our Science is Tight.” Last night was so wonderful and fun. I left work mostly early and met some
glitterati at a coffee shop by Union Square to knit scarves for a charity
scarf drive – we’re going to make scarves and give them to a woman’s shelter
for the holiday. Their kids get stuff
from toys-for-tots type charities, so wonderful cowgirly thought we should
give something to the women. I stayed out later than I had planned to, because
the company was fantastic and I rediscovered how much I love knitting. For so
long I’ve been working on little dinky projects – gifts for people,
mostly. It’s been kind of exhausting
to pay attention to patterns, or to deadlines. And I was terribly nervous about knitting the scarf because I
hate knitting scarves – they’re so long, and boring, and tedious. I always feel like I have a lack of
gumption, or something, because I’m terrified of getting bored during a
project and never finishing. But I’m
working with this lion brand homespun yarn and it’s knitting up really
fast! I don’t know if it was the fun
company and sassy conversation, or if it’s just because the yarn is a little
thicker than I’m used to using, but I’m really zipping along and I’m starting
to feel 100% better about scarves.
Well, maybe 78% better. I
still don’t like doing something that takes so long, and requires so little
concentration. Now, dishcloths? The
perfect project. Really! They’re so
fast and easy. Instant gratification. When I was walking home from the subway station I
felt kind of euphoric. I don’t think
it was just b/c I had left work “early,” but also because I realized again
how much I love to knit. I guess I’d
forgotten a little bit. It was so
nice to sit there and watch the scarf grow as it fell from my needles. |
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November 7, 2002. The Fun Ruiner. I got caught twice in the last 10 minutes having
fun today! Oh, El B., how I’ve failed
you… Michelle and I used to joke about our professional
wrestling names. I was going to be The Fun Ruiner, and I’d bust out in a cape
and say in a deep, scary, Andre the Giant voice “Mothers, Hide your
Children. I am here to Rain On Your
PaRade…” She’d be my sidekick, The Purple Grape, and her wrestling move would
be The Steamroller (which I’ve seen in action, and it is surprisingly
effective). At about this time we’d
start to crack up so hard that we couldn’t really continue. I can’t remember why we were talking about
being professional wrestlers, probably it had something to do with the movie
“Billy Madison,” but with us, there’s really no telling where a whacko idea
comes from. Example: a
paraphrased and probably incorrectly recollected conversation from our drive
cross-country: Michelle (looking at map): “Hey, there’s a town
called Lolita coming up!” Kari (driving):
“Libido? Weird.” Michelle:
“Burrito? No, it’s called
Lolita!” And then we’d chorus the next few days “Lolita?
Libido? Burrito?” and crack up. This
was really helpful when we didn’t have a tape deck or CD player to listen to,
b/c the jerks in San Francisco had stolen both of them, and all of Michelle’s
CDs. Between the never ending Ricky
Martin songs, that really dirty Jordan
Knight song (“Give it to you”) that was playing constantly that summer,
and the rousing renditions of Figaro performed by Michelle, it was good to
have something we could repeat to each other over and over that would never
lose it’s humor. While I’m repeating conversations from cross
country, here’s a golden one between my brother and I, when I called home
after the car had been totally burglarized in San Francisco to find out what
kind of info insurance would need: Kari (very sad, in hotel lobby): “Oh, DanAaron,
They broke into our car and stole everything!” DanAaron: “Who did? . . . Never mind, you don’t know. Oops. I’m sorry!” Kari (sniffle): “It was the JERKS!” And then we both started laughing, which I really
needed. Other things said (but might not have been
conversations): Thing Rob-at-work has said today that crack me up: “Politics is gouging the price of V8 today.” Only he really said “the man in the box is gouging
the price of V8 today.” I can’t decide which is funnier, the real one or
the kari-one.
(And Rob isn’t nuts, there are men in boxes here
in NYC who sell us things to eat.
Like Bagels and Coffee in the morning. Really, they’re in Tin Boxes.
Now, he may be referring to guy who isn’t actually in a box as a man
in a box, but that’s just an eccentricity – he’s definitely not nuts.) |
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November 6, 2002. A very grouchy morning. But a very happy
day. I’m a big grouch today. There’s no reason why –
just being tired, and being at work, and dark dank weather. So, I think I’ll ignore it. Or, pout and stamp my feet until I crack my
own self up at how ridiculous I can be. Maybe I’m grouchy because cnn.com sent me a news
article and it had the subject “TOTAL CONTROL.” I’m a little nervous about the next 2 years. OK, maybe more than a little nervous. But lately, and it’s a terrible form of
cynicism that’s been developing, lately I find my self thinking “ok, so,
everything will go down the tubes.
That’s ok. Cause after it’s
all fucked up, maybe people will start thinking straight about how to
actually FIX things and GET THINGS DONE.”
I wouldn’t be so concerned about the election results if I didn’t know
that certain political parties will see this as “The Voice of the American
People,” sanctioning a hateful and poorly explained (and often personal)
agenda. In the last two years I’ve
been too disgusted by politics to really follow them, but I think I’ve gotten
over it. I’m going to start paying
attention again, and start educating those around me. Today is my three-year anniversary with Mr.
Matt. We have been seeing each other
for three years, following a good 10 months or so of serious crushing on each
other. Everything I can say about him
or being with him sounds trite and mushy.
Oh, and also, I feel (kind of superstitiously) that writing about your
love on your website has the potential of turning out like getting their name
tattooed on your person. Y’know. A little observation about 7th Heaven –
is there someone out there who really really really thinks this is a funny
show? I mean, some of the weirdest,
most bizarre, most non sequiterial things happen on this show, like,
characters who are “in love” and are “going to get married” slowly drive each
other insane, almost on purpose! And I know someone sat down and wrote these
words. I know that person thinks
they’re humorous, or that they create some kind of story line, and the make
total sense, but when I watch the show?
I’m not watching it because it’s funny, or interesting, but because
it’s freakin’ weird. Really, really
freakin’ weird. I almost wonder if
the people responsible for 7th Heaven are also responsible for
those strange strange Sprint PCS ads (really, read this sentence out loud,
slowly: “you were a little bored so you thought you’d try some kung fu.” The hell?) |
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November 5, 2002 PM. And another thing. This is why I need a blog,
or something. The web page requires
so much work to write twice in one day!
I would get some kind of blog script going, but I have a very limited
hosting plan… I am so frustrated with
work. Honestly, I feel like I
need a 12-step program to deal with El Bosso! Here’s a constantly
repeating scenario: I’m on my way
somewhere: the printer, the bathroom,
obviously I’m GOING somewhere, b/c I’m walking pretty fast and
purposefully. He’ll holler out of his
office “Karina!” so I’ll stop by. He
will be ON THE PHONE, with Someone, and will be talking about some aspect of
the project that a task manager under him has directed this someone to work
on. He will get upset, b/c he doesn’t
know exactly what’s going on, and the task manager isn’t immediately
reachable, and Someone has called El B with a question. He will start sighing loudly, sometimes
pounding on his desk, and flipping furiously through the report in
question. He will start making rhetorical
statements about how x should have been done, and y should have been done,
and everyone has known about this since z happened. He won’t listen to anything I or Someone has to say, because
he’s too busy explaining how this is entirely Task Manager’s fault, because
he (El B) was very explicit in his direction, and nothing has been done, or
it’s all been done wrong, or it all seems to not be done or to have been done
wrong. He will talk over us. He will roll his eyes. But it doesn’t help! It doesn’t help at
all! This makes me think a lot
about my place in this workplace. I
want to call Someone back, after all is said, and apologize for El B! But that’s not my job – I’m not paid
enough to do that stuff. I worry that
I’m being an enabler by allowing him to get away with this kind of reaction
to a simple question. I worry that my
own reputation is harmed by my non-action, by how I just stand by in the door
jam of his office while he tirades. I am frustrated that he is not a
professional person, and that he reacts more than he listens and thinks. This is what I would like
to happen: I’ll be going
somewhere. He’ll holler Karina. I’ll say “Sorry, El B, I’m on my way to
the ladies room” and I’ll keep walking. Or, if I stop, he’ll start with the rhetorical
questions and I’ll say “I’m sorry, but I don’t really see how this is helping
us to find a solution.” Or I’ll say
“that may be so, but it’s not Someone’s fault, and it doesn’t answer
Someone’s question.” Or “you don’t
expect us to answer these questions, do you?” But these responses are not professional! I don’t feel they’re the right way to deal
with a coworker! And it really
frustrates me to question my own professionalism in these situations, and to
worry about being brought down to his level. I guess luckily for me, it’s not my job to teach
him how to live. It’s not my job to
teach him how to interact with his coworkers. It’s not my job to explain to him the precepts of good
management. All I can do is my real
job, picking up loose ends, answering questions, and formatting tables. And hope that he’s not the norm, and the
next place I find myself spending the bulk of my waking-life at will be
different. My dad called just now, and I got to hash this all
out with him. He’s very
understanding, and helpful. But
sadly, he wasn’t able to assure me that this is an unusual El B
situation. Ugh. I just wish El B was a vicious, nasty
person with an obvious agenda. That
would be so much easier for me to deal with. |
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November 5, 2002 AM. Voting and a Very Special Birthday. Happy Birthday Mariss! I have no idea if he looks
at my web page, but I’m immortalizing now, in the interweb and in the G00gle
cache, how freakin’ spectacular a guy Mr. Mariss is. I wish I was there to make
you elaborate and wonderful birthday cupcakes, but I’m not. Maybe next year? Happy Happy Birthday! Voting day today – I’m
very lucky where I live – it is very easy for me to vote. The polling location is down the block and
across the street from my apartment, right on the way to the subway
station. I go in, there are nice
people to help me remember my district number and to chat with me as I’m
waiting, and it’s very exciting to work the election booth. I remember being
little and going into the booth with my parents (either one, at different
times). I always wanted to work the
switches or levers, but they usually didn’t let me. Today, however, it wasn’t
so easy to vote. One of my building
neighbors was voting when I got there, and there was something wrong with the
voting booth. One of the lines was
broken – the state senate. So you
could vote for everything else, but not state senator. The election people were walking around,
trying to figure out what to do. The
line started to grow behind me. Two
election guys got into the booth with my neighbor (which I wasn’t very
uncomfortable with, personally, but she seemed to hold her own) and tried to
force the booth to work. It didn’t
work. They decided the problem was
that the state senator was running on both the republican and the democrat
ticket (all tickets, actually, except for the working families party). “You can’t split parties” one man kept
saying, but you can, because there were at least 10 other people on the
ballot who were running as both republican and democrat. That wasn’t the problem. A person in line before me left and lost
her vote (she’d already signed the book), because she was late to work. Finally the site supervisor came back
(from phoning headquarters, I assume) and said we could fill out paper
ballots if we wanted to vote for state senator, and do all votes on the
ballot, or we could vote from the machine, and not vote for the state
senator. But my neighbor couldn’t
vote in two places, so she lost her chance to vote for the state senate
candidate. So I decided to use the
paper ballot. I waited for my
turn. I was thanked for my
patience. I got a standup piece of
cardboard, a number two pencil, and a ballot. And I voted. As I made
sure the circles on the ballot were filled in completely and darkly, I
thought to myself “democracy is hard!” and then I realized, no, American
democracy? That’s easy. Hard is worrying about vote fixing. Hard is dodging bullets on the way to the
polls. Hard is to vote while thugs
stand outside of the voting booth, in silent reminder to vote for the
strongest candidate. Hard is walking
for miles and miles and miles to stand up and be counted. Hard is voting, and knowing that no matter
what you vote, and what your family votes, and what the country votes, the
vote will always count up to 100% for the guy in power currently. But still, I feel a little disenfranchised. We’re supposedly the “IT” democracy in the
whole world. And in Spanish Harlem,
at least two women lost their votes because of a poorly functioning voting
booth, and a society that feels voting should be squeezed into a normal work
day, and is something people get around to doing, and not a civic right and
responsibility to be exercised freely and proudly. I guess what I’m saying is, go vote! |
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November 4, 2002. Sunday was a very cold day for working, but perfect for
running. Back to work today. I have to say, it’s not so easy to get back into the working
swing of things after you’ve gone off and worked all weekend, too. And also please note that I was not
the one running this weekend. That
refers to the NYC marathon. I started to get out my
towel project for gifts this weekend, but I didn’t have much time to work on
it. Actually, I started to, and then
managed to knock a glass off of the ironing board and it fell, and I had a
"nooooo!" moment, and then it smashed. So I needed to clean that up, and by the time I did, Michelle
had gotten up and we had a fun morning filled with pastries for breakfast
instead. I’m getting kind of stressed out over my planned
Christmas projects. Lake Nasty is
ruining my life! I should be at home
parked on the couch by 7 pm knitting my little heart out as I listen to the
washing machine scrub my clothes clean, but instead, I’m working until 9 or
10 pm every night, and wasting time in the morning hunting for my last pair
of clean black tights. Or, I was last
week. I don’t think I can maintain
that kind of pace this week too! Tonight I hope to get home at a normal hour,
and I hear from our computer folks that Wednesday the server will be
inaccessible from 5:30 to 8:30 pm.
Ha! Technology can be so
helpfully broken sometimes. I’ve been wondering if I can take a piece of
roving (combed fleece for spinning) and draft it out so it’s thin and fluffy,
like unspun yarn, and use that to knit on very big needles. I want to make
some charity scarves with glitter this week, and want them to go fast. Highlights of this
weekend: Seeing Mariss and Kelly,
who have moved far far away. Seeing Jen from work running in the marathon. Yay!
Michelle, John and I were so excited to see her that we stayed and
clapped for another hour, cheering on strangers. Marathon runners are tough and stubborn. They’re so cool. Non-highlights: Working for 7 hours on
sat., and another 4 on Sunday. I knew
they turned off the heat in here on the weekends but didn’t know they also
turned off the hot water as well. I kept going to the bathroom to run the hot
water over my freezing cold and sore hands, but it never got hot! Brrr.
At least this justifies all of the expensive tea from www.adagio.com that I bought. Warm tea = warm hands. The chicken at the new
tacquerita around the corner from me.
I will eat just about anything, even chicken backs with those nasty
black neck bones when we were poor, but this chicken was, to quote Michelle,
“gacky.” |
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November 3, 2002. What it is exactly that I do for 40+ hours
a week. Work. I am an environmental engineer. There are a few kinds of environmental
engineers. There are the waste
water/waste management environmental engineers. They make our water safe to drink, and our poop stinkless. That’s not the kind I am. I work with hazardous waste. Not with my own two hands, though I’m
certified by OSHA and the federal government to do that if I need to, but
from several hundred miles away. I work on a nasty hazardous
waste site. I’ll call it Lake
Nasty. We’re busy quantifying the
wastes, and figuring out how it affects people and animals. Next, we’ll figure out how to clean it
up. It’s an interesting project – one
I could build a career from if I wanted to. It’s hard for me to
explain exactly what I do and why I am working so hard lately. Maybe this will help: I am involved in rewriting a 7-volume
report. Each volume is 4 inches
thick. I have to look at every
table. Every figure. Reformat everything before it goes
out. I don’t spend lots of time on
the science, but I am still coordinating some of the work. These reports are due at the end of the
year, but there’s a big (and nasty) internal review process that requires us
to finish the report completely three times.
The reports are so big and involved, and so open for dispute, because
the site is several square miles big, and there are at least three different
kinds of toxic chemicals which have been historically disposed of onsite (and
not in nice easy to manage barrels, either) over the last 100 years. Plus, we’re working on a court-ordered
deadline, so we can’t even beg off for exhaustion, computer problems, lack of
data, or insanity. So I’m working really
hard. I’m a consultant, so it’s kind
of the way things are to make the junior level people do all kinds of huge
work because they’re cheap. It’s kind of common to have a couple of well paid
PhDs doing the thinking, and for each PhD to have a couple of lower level
scientists or engineers at their beck-and-call to make tables and figures to
help well paid PhD understand the data quickly, and to write the text for
them to check. Yep – I’m a peon.
For 40+ hours a week. Time to
go back to grad school, so I’ll be a well paid and glamorous PhD! |
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November 2002. New things for
Karina Jean.
I’ve been working on my
webpage! Originally, and this might be the dorkiest way to
end up with a webpage ever, but Originally, I had a space.com mailing
address. I loved that address. Before Originally, I had a chickmail
address, and I loved that one too.
But then chickmail went defunct.
I searched so hard for a cool, fun, funky web-based email address. I did NOT want yah0o mail or h0tmail,
because they are terrible spaminators, and I wanted a less common name. When I found space.com I thought it was a
perfect match, because I love outer space.
We had nearly two glorious years together, and then my Space mail went
defunct too. I was so upset! Frustrated! Angry! So I thought
maybe I should buy my domain, because I had heard one could get cool webbased
email, like I was looking for, and hey, maybe I DID want a webpage. I didn’t know if I should
actually purchase anything because I don’t have a computer at home. What I do have is a visor handspring edge,
with a stowaway keyboard, and a desk job as an engineer with a handy
computer. I thought it would be silly
to have a webpage and no computer at home!
But, I also thought, what if someone else took karinajean.com? They’ve already taken my nickname and my
last name and my first name… so I took the plunge. I bought the domain. Now, some kind of general
explanations in case there are any questions. I don’t know html, and my
cheapy hosting doesn’t include any bells and whistles so I’d have to
hard-code everything. Therefore, I’m
making these pages using word. Yeah,
yeah, I know, word sucks, it’s clumsy, and my source looks nasty. But until I get a computer at home, I
don’t think I’ll be able to spend any time learning html. I don’t really know what
to write in this area – I just want to get writing. I don’t write much at all
anymore. I used to keep a multi-volume journal, called my cooter. But that was when I could write and write
and write in class and it looked like I was taking notes. Those days are over. I don’t take notes
any more. Not in class, anyway. It’s all a big experiment! And it is the interweb, so I know that
nothing is private and there is the possibility this page will float around
in the great google cache memory for ever and ever. |
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