Am trying out this doo daaah. Maybe it will be a superduper way for me to keep this page updated… wouldn’t that be fantastico?
I’m trying to bring in my old entries to this format, and henceforth: anything older than this is copied in. Not so many with the images, because I haven’t figured out the best/easiest way to do that yet.
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I rule! I skipped the month of March. Ahem. And by rule, I mean, boy have I been busy, and then on top of that my computer and the school dial-up service may or may not be getting along. Or maybe it’s just itunes which hates my internet connection. Sometimes the computer works, sometimes it freezes pretty much constantly. I’ve just started using Opera instead of Explorer in the hopes that it will solve the problem. I don’t really want to wipe the computer and start over, but I might have to if it doesn’t stop freaking out.
I think it’s pretty telling that one year ago in February was when my excessive posting ended and my sloooow decline to a monthly update status began. So let’s just say I was celebrating by taking the entire month of March off, and by doing that I’ve stopped the decline and will once again find this a fruitful space full of interesting observations and stories. Absolutely.
How about some news?
To celebrate the leap year Michelle and I threw our housewarming/leap year party. It was great. We made leap year resolutions, which are especially hard because you have to keep them for 4 years. I made two: 1. to be really good to my plants. And that includes Michelle’s plants. And 2. to be more timely in my correspondence. I started a correspondence journal and started writing letters. I love getting mail, and I know other people do too.
Also, to celebrate the new leap year I cut all of my hair off. I’d been growing it for quite some time and it was falling to halfway down my back. It was beautiful (if I do say so myself) but it was also incredibly hard work. I’d been growing it out for locks of love, and decided that Leap Year was the time to get rid of it all! A photomontage of my new hairdo, if you please? (did you know photomontage was one word? Thank you MSWord!) I think the cut makes me look very much younger than I used to.
The month of March was pretty much a blur of: working hard at school, working hard at work, running out of money, finding out my tax refund will be of a very pleasant size, making gooey chocolate cakes and eating them all up, planning baby shower gifts for my stepsister and not starting on them, having a nice spring break and seeing old friends, reading 6 months of back Martha Stewart Living magazines, washing windows and enjoying it because the weather was so pleasant.
Spring makes me want to adopt good habits. I’ve started working on schoolwork much earlier than usual, reading books from the library, and knitting while I watch tv. It’s good for me. I’m planning for the Summer of Fun. I’m planting things in old yogurt containers with holes poked in the bottom. I’ve got my worm bin bought, and when the Tax Refund of Financial Security comes in I’ll buy some worms to stick in there and eat up my leftovers. Michelle and I are excited to pull together a little seating area on our back porch (currently a big cracked and heaved concrete slab) with chairs and a little table made out of a wire spool, and I can’t wait to have cultured summer living with cocktails on the back porch and a little charcoal grill making yummy simple food. I want to buy Capri pants and high heeled flipflops, and I need to start sewing my apron collection for my hot summer accessory of choice. I guerilla planted some meadow flowers down the side of our driveway to see if the very old seeds would still grow. I write postcards to my nephew almost regularly. And the big news is that I’m staying at school until December thanks to a very generous grant and some research to work on. So the CSA that we’ve joined was the absolute right decision, and I feel like once those vegetables start coming in my entire world will change for the better. And it’s pretty good already, so that will be even more Wonderful. You see? Summer of Fun, on its way!
(in case you’re interested, I’ve updated the knitting page in crafts. Springtime good habits abound around here. Mahvelous.)
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So sometimes I do a little internet stalking, you know, trying to keep tabs on my name and where it’s getting. It’s a morbid kind of fascination, to plug your real name or your internet alias or a nickname into a search engine and see what comes out. There’s some records with my real name up on the interweb from different schools I’ve attended, or jobs I’ve worked at, and there’s a couple of searches that lead you here.
Someone keeps finding my site by searching for “pixelicious!” But you know, my handspring flaked out hardcore just when I started to think about taking more pictures. And even though the mister gave me his handspring, which he apparently not taking full advantage of in its wonderfulness, well, I just haven’t gotten out the eyecam. So sorry, pixelicious-searching-dude. I don’t have what you’re looking for. Maybe one day I’ll be pixelicious again, but now, well, I’m just not.
And apparently, if you do a msn search for k a r i I’m number 316. sweet. Another weird thing! Person who looked through 316 webpages before you found mine, was I who you were looking for?
So last entry I raved about fontifier.com. I just found out they’re CHARGING. Man. I just snuck in on the tail end of that free service! I didn’t pay for my font, and now that they’re charging I’m not going to go beef up my old one. I’ll just stick with it as it is, and write everything VERY LARGE in points greater than 26.
I started cutting out the orange felt for my sparkly skirt. I am having a hard time, because while I do have a nice a-line skirt to follow it’s kind of tough getting the felt to hang the way I want it to. Plus, when I pin it together inside out and slip it on the pinned edges stick straight out and it’s hard to see what it looks like. I’m excited about it anyway, though, because it’s going to be nice and stiff and I’ve got some snap tape to fasten it with. It’ll be really cool if I ever get it cut right. I saw a classmate wearing a very sweet skirt that changed every preconception I had about what I was going to make out of the orange felt: her skirt was longer, non-orange, and had the coolest pockets I’ve ever seen. I might have to try to make up the orange skirt like that.
February is turning out to be a very busy month. I wanted to clean out one box/bag/flat surface in my room each week but I haven’t done that for quite some time. It’s a shame, really. I have so many good intentions and instead I’m going to musical concerts and field trips to brownfield sites and having out of town guests and looking forward to parties and fun at the end of the month. And now I’m working very late on some homework, and I have an interview tomorrow. Because, you know, I’m graduating. In May. And my new motto is non-student loan debt free in 2005! So I actually have to get a steady source of income, and you know, practice my trade.
Some vignettes, to keep you busy while I keep on with the good work (and by good work I mean my edumacation):
A Haiku for a fine fellow:
Who’s the host with the
most? It’s John, who will set out
fresh towels for you.
Story from the streets of Pittsburgh.
It’s very very icy here. It snowed and snowed and snowed, and then it melted and rained and melted and snowed and melted. So where there was once 8 or so inches of snow there is now a slippery wet slab of ice. And we didn’t have a shovel, so our walk is a slippery wet slab of ice.
Today it was weird and warm and rainy and snowy and melty. And, Michelle just bought a shovel. So I thought I’d take advantage of my late morning today and hit the steps, shoveling them off so the ice would really vanish by tonight. I opened the front door and thought “I didn’t THINK it had snowed that much…�? and then UpstairsNeighbor spoke to me from the sidewalk, asking me not to shovel the from steps or the walk because snow would be better to walk on than ice and in fact she had just tossed all that new snow onto the steps. Goodness! Now, we’ve kind of had this conversation before, and I kind of didn’t know what to say. But when I got home tonight and the steps were icy and treacherous I went ahead and shoveled half of them and left a note essentially saying that with my bad knee and ankle I need a flatter slippery surface to walk on and if she’d like I would only shovel half the steps.
Another story from my street: there might be a water leak under it. There was a river going down the hill. It’s winter, and Pittsburgh apparently has the most freeze/thaw cycles of any other place in the country. Maybe. Apparently I also have a bad habit of over exaggerating statistics. And by exaggerating them, I mean making them up.
An email I got recently:
“I just searched in Google for apartment in nyc tiger and found karinajean.com ranked 26. I have a related website about Real Estate – General that’s purely informational (so I’m NOT a competitor of yours) and I’d like to link to your site.
I consider my site to be one of the best resources for this type of information. I get a decent amount of visitors to it so if I link to you, your site should get some decent traffic from it.
I only link to good quality sites… I think you’ll find my site to be high quality as well. In exchange, I would ask that you also link to my site. I’ve already linked to you and will keep it there for a few days until I hear from you. Please let me know asap if you’re interested and i’ll send you my information.
Thanks!”
It sounds cool, no? But I did a google search and I got nothing. Not even number 36 was me. Wouldn’t it be neat if I were affiliated with nyc tigers in apartments? Sorry to disappoint, kids. I’m not.
Incidentally, I did a google search for karinajean and my pataki letter popped up. Not the journal entry, but the actual letter file. I wonder how those crazy websearching robots find this stuff?
Stories that aren’t mine from the streets of New York:
The Mister tells me of some weird things going on downtown in the big apple.
As in: the man who pulls up, pulls a stack of boxes out of his car and waits. Someone leaves the building and gets into his car and drives away without saying a word. Dude checks the gun he’s carrying in his pocket, picks up his stack of boxes, and enters the building.
Or how about the fellow the Mister was chatting with outside who suddenly walks away, embraces a woman, and then leaves the plaza in an opposite direction from her?
I sat in his plaza once. I read a little book, took my shoe off and fixed my ankle brace. Not so weird apparently.
I’ve been knitting the Misters xmas present and it’s going very well once I get a chance to sit down and knit. I also have made tremendous use of my yarn ball winder and the yarn swift my mom gave me over xmas. It makes a huge difference, before I’d hang the skein of yarn around my neck and wind loops off, throw them on the floor with some semblance of order, and then stop and turn the yarn ball crank. It worked but took forEVER. The swift is an incredible quality of life addition to my fiber arts.
Mmm, that’s all. I have some homework to do. It’s Fun! Glamorous! Exciting! At least it ought to be when I’m done and I can tell stories about how I walked uphill both ways to school drop off my math homework.
But before I go, I love fontifier.
It’s a new year, and just like the student I am I don’t consider it beginning until the new semester begins. It’s so rewarding to have a real definite start date for a new bunch of classes and new learning – much nicer than going to work, having a day off, and coming back to the new year in the office.
I had a good winter break. I drove up to see the family and the little car made it just fine.AND, I had pleasure of finishing nearly all of their presents before Christmas day. That’s something very unusual for me, usually I’m handing out at least half of my gifts unfinished. Ok, so, I still haven’t given Kelly+Mariss their gifts, because I haven’t finished them. And I just finished Michelle’s yesterday, and started the beau’s gift this evening. But on Christmas eve I was able to give my mom her gift entirely completed. And on Christmas morning my stepsis, her hubby, my stepmom AND my nephew all opened entirely completed gifts. And my other stepsis opened a ¾ completed gift, and Poor Dad was the only one who had to open something that wasn’t even started. And even better, I finished the gifts before any significant distance was put between myself and the recipient. I whipped out the last stitches of the wrist warmers for stepsis before she left for home, and I finished the last couple of embroidery stitches on stepmom’s shirt (ok, I didn’t ENTIRELY finish hers when I wrapped it up. But mostly!), and I entirely embroidered Dad’s shirt before pulling out of town even though it required me getting up way earlier than I wanted to and working frantically until finished. The early was nothing compared to the 3 nights of 4AM crafting I put in. What was tough was how I was giving out 4 gifts in the same genre of stepmom’s, so I couldn’t work on hers while she was around.
I also realized that the holiday season is one of those seasons full of unmet expectations. Not to be morose, but I don’t know that many people who honestly look forward to the season with unchecked joy and anticipation. Not anyone over 12, anyway. It’s a time that we’re supposed to buy buy buy our way to the perfect gift, but don’t worry, it’s also about family love and it’s really the thought that counts. I love giving people things, and I love making them even if I am a grouchy crafter and I stay up until the early morning cursing and watching TLC and trying not to bleed on my home made creations, but I always feel like I’m not meeting someone’s expectations. I walk a line of trying very hard not to disappoint anyone. And I think a lot of people feel that way.
To change that mood killer, check out my nephew in his incredibly cute hat that I made for me and that fits him just perfectly:
Anyway, it’s the new year, all spanky and clean. It’s been cold here in the steel city and I do appreciate it. Probably because I haven’t been out waiting for the bus yet – we’ll see how I like it tomorrow morning when I get up and at them and on my way to school for my first class of the semester. And in the spirit of Me and the New Year, I present you with two lists:
My Crazy New Years Resolutions.
* To cuss less. I am not a sailor. I am a lady. I must remember the distinction.
* To do my homework in a more timely fashion. I mean it.
* To continue watering my plants.
* To spend more time crafting while I watch silly TV shows.
* Budget. And successfully.
* To have more dinner parties, or at least, to have more time with friends. Especially Kelly, who is so rock’n’roll she deserves her own special shout-out sans hubby. Really, you put the love in Pittsburgh, my dear.
* To read more books, and make full use of the library that’s right on campus and right next to my building for pete’s sake! Also, see number 2.
My Crazy Crafting List (in no particular order, really).
* Sew my beautiful orange glittery felt skirt.
* Sew my very elegantly beautiful woolen skirt.
* Sew my glamourous silk and tulle skirt.
* Knit the 3 hats I’ve been thinking of: swim cap ala fits me, bobble hat that may or may not give me carpal tunnel syndrome (see above), and easy peasy regular hat with the Incredibly Soft Yarn I bought online at least a year ago and don’t know what to do with yet.
* Knit me wrist warmers. I love them. And I made them for everyone else so…
* Finish my photo album and help Michelle make me a new one from the Kennedy Family record album I picked out.
* Fix my webpage. Catch up. Put up pages of our amazing transformation from hovel to home.
Sound good? Happy new year, dahlinks
Right, so, a couple of people have pointed out to me that I haven’t updated for a while. Yeah, I know. It’s not the way Pittsburgh was supposed to work out for me. I was supposed to have lots of time for updating, and also for overhauling my crappy ‘making web page using Word because it’s free and easy to figure out’ system. Word is just fine if you’ve got a lot of time on your hands and an easy connection to the interweb. When you’re sans modem/hookup, and not so eager to sit at the computer at home after trying to do school work all day it’s a little bit harder. Excuses, I know. I try hard to make have excuses but there you go. I slipped.
Anyway, in the spirit of excuses, you may be interested in some things that have happened to me.
* I fell down and hurt myself. So I’m always taking my time getting around, you know, walking slowly and trying to be accommodating to other people’s schedule so I get rides.
* I have become a knitting fiend. It seems to happen every fall around this time of year, I guess. It’s good, I finally finished my xmas presents from last year and started up on this year’s presents – which are going very well. I wish I could post pictures of them! But I can’t, because IT’S NOT CHRISTMAS YET. I’d spoil the surprise.
* I’ve been doing lots of schoolwork. Probably not as much as I should be doing, but working nonetheless.
These don’t sound like good excuses when I try to list them. Whatever. Excuses never sound good. It might not be the easiest way to get through life but I really do try not to make them unless they’re really a good reason. “Make excuses” sounds like a cop-out anyway. People may look at me funny when I don’t actually explain why x, y, or z did or didn’t happen, but that’s OK by me.
Oh, so there’s one picture of my knitting I can show you. It was my selfish making-something-for-myself-instead-of-working-on-either-other-presents-or-homework hat. So I worked hard on it, and quickly, and used up some of my stash yarn from a very old ebay purchase and when I finished I realized that it was way too small for me. I thought I was making an adult medium which would be marginally too small as it were for my massively large head, and through yarn substitutions and needle substitutions (I never seem to have the right tools around when I want them) it ended up being a probable child’s medium. So I have a present completed for my cutie pants nephew, I guess:
oh, heck. My handspring isn’t working. It works just fine when it’s on the charger but not at all when it’s not. Heck heck heck. So no digital pictures for a while. Heck. I wonder if I can track down a new handspring visor edge battery for cheap/free? Heck.
And speaking of snow, there’s a wonderful nor’easter that barely hit us. We only got around 6 inches of snow or so, probably less. I think the east coast got dumped! That’s so great. I love bad weather. We had a little moment when we weren’t sure if we could get out of the driveway and then down the scary lane with the miracle bamboo that just hasn’t died yet, even though it’s been so cold, and even though it’s thoroughly weighted down with snow right now and drooping far over the driveway. But we did. And then I nearly got the car stuck outside of school when I parked in an extra slopey and slushy parking space but I just left it there and trusted I’d get unstuck when I got back, and I did. Maybe the ice firmed up enough to provide some traction for me. Last night I thought I’d go over to a classmates house to watch the neighborhood Christmas parade, but after braving the roads to get some taco bell (no plowing, extra slipping) and realizing my new insurance card hadn’t come in the mail yet I decided to stay at home with the box wine, taco bell, and some Friday night TV.
So I’m trying to update a little. There’s a couple of new entries up that I haven’t put up in a timely fashion. Heads up, anything after July that isn’t from 10/1 is a secret update that I haven’t been very forthcoming with. So’s you know
This thanksgiving was at the same time busy and not busy. It was wonderful.
I had thought of taking a little trip to Albany to visit the family seat, but I heard that 1. it takes 8 hours to drive and 2. Michelle wasn’t sure if she’d have Friday off from work and 3. I had a big chemistry test on the Monday following, and I don’t want to get a C in chemistry. C does not stand for Chemistry, as far as I’m concerned. I’m pretty sure B does, but would be pleasantly and shockingly surprised if I found out later that A stands for chemistry. Not likely!
So, I decided that in light of my terrible schedule I’d just stay home. And in light of my terrible ankle injury, it’s a darn good thing I did. I can drive the stick shift around a little bit but lordy I don’t need to do that for 8 hours straight. So we made plans to go to Aurora’s house for a big sumptuous thanksgiving meal, prepared by herself and her culinary school fiancé. And Gabulo came out for thanksgiving as well.
And also, I was asked to care for two cats and two turtles. By two turtles I mean feed one turtle and “check in on Claire while you’re at our house doing your laundry, ok?� So I was waltzing around with 4 other-persons keys on my key ring. As waltzing as you can get while you’re on crutches!
Wednesday night Michelle and I went to Mariss and Kelly’s to do laundry. That was great. We ordered in ridiculous sandwiches (why do warm sandwiches in Pittsburgh have lettuce on them? That’s so strange) and sat around until very late. And then I locked up and went home.
Thursday morning Gabulo showed up and we went over to Jared’s to feed his cats. Now, as I may have mentioned before, I’m on crutches. That means Clumsy. So I dropped my keys on the way out of his apartment. Then home, where we mashed up about 3X too many potatoes and whipped up a green bean casserole: one of my favorite foods, but also one I cannot justify making for myself and myself only. And it’s a pretty special food that I can’t justify making. The dinner was wonderful and the spread amazing and the company super duper. We played parlor games afterwards and went home a tiny bit too late in a gentle snow.
And then I realized that 2 of the 4 other peoples keys were missing. Yikes!
So I tore through my bag, and through all of my pockets, and got the flashlight and crutched down the driveway to see if when I had moved my car the keys had fallen. And I checked my car and Gabulo’s car and no key. It was terrible. Luckily I was totally exhausted so I was able to get to sleep ok, but when I woke up on Friday morning too early I could not get back to sleep at all. I kept going over in my head where they keys could have fallen off of my key ring. This was especially frustrating because I don’t usually lose keys. I’m a very good person to give things like keys and pieces of identification and other things to. And worse, one of the keys’ missing was to Mariss and Kelly’s house, and they’re so nice about letting us use their washer and dryer that I didn’t want to have to tell them that their key was missing.
I figured the key’s were in two of three places: either in Jared’s house near the table I’d tossed them on when we first got there, out side of his apartment where I dropped the keys, or gone for freakin’ ever. We got up and went out to lunch at our wonderful and super and delightful new café and then headed over to Jared’s where first Michelle tried to ‘break in’ to his apartment through a window (all locked) and then I started buzzing people. The first guy I buzzed came out all disheveled and sleepy and I said “you don’t know me but I’m supposed to feed come cats upstairs and I don’t have the key, can I come in?� and he kind of grunted and stepped back. Yay! I we went up up up and . . . There were the keys! Right on the floor where I’d dropped the whole right. I was so happy, and we all stayed and petted Jared’s cats for an hour or so before heading over to feed the turtle.
That night we went back to our new café for some live music. It is a fantastic place there. It’s just a few blocks away from our house and is right on the edge of several incredibly different neighborhoods. The proprietress is a cool lady and fun to chat with, and the coffee is the best I’ve ever had, and definitely the best I’ve had since Puerto Rico. Is it strange that I only like really strong coffee? I hope we’ll have a chance to go back there often, and really, I think it’s so great to have a local place with live music and a good atmosphere. After 4 years in Spanish Harlem it’s especially appreciated.
Saturday we spent all day doing laundry. It was amazing. And then we went to an Ouve show, starring Friend Bruce. They’re fantastic, they always are. Sunday morning we had brunch at the coop (another wonderful local place) and saw Gabulo off. Michelle and I went back to Café Bliss and spent a few hours doing work there, and then I regrouped for Chemistry Fun with my classmates. After, you know, I locked Jared out of his apartment and he had to break in for real. Yikes! I’ll never be asked to watch the cats again!
When I was little we had to go around the table and say what we were thankful for this year. There’s so many things I’m thankful for, but this weekend I was most thankful I’d found the lost keys and that I had good friends with me to look for them.
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I’m totally injured over here. I have a bad knee and a sprained ankle! It’s positively tragic.
A couple of weeks ago we went out for some much delayed dancing fun. We hit the strip and went to a fine specimen of bar/dance club called Chemistry which was complete with attendant in the bathroom, perhaps-professional dancer in shiny red satin pants (pleated!) and an equally shiny blue shirt with some kind of small metal decoration studded all over the collar, and crazy dancing man who stood on the highest flat surfaces around and demonstrated the most flexible midsection I’ve ever seen on a fellow his age. And, it was fun. I was dancing around like an idiot and then:
My knee went out, and I fell. Someone screamed! I couldn’t stand up. My whole left leg was beat up, and I was in so much pain. Michelle helped me to a stool and I put my foot up on a bar table and sat there for a while, cup of ice on my knee and an ice pack that the best bar back ever brought me.
Long story short, I sprained my ankle. Short story long:
And then, we needed crutches for me! I hopped all over the place on Sunday, asking people for rides and jumping around like a fool. I had to go to school to do work, and then to a study group at a classmates house, and while I was away Michelle reconnoitered the scary basement and found a pair of crutchers to use. It was so relieving.
The next day my trip to school was excruciating. I had to get in early to finish more homework, so I caught a 6 AM bus. It was awful. It took me 15 minutes to crutch the three blocks to the corner, and I am sure I don’t have to tell you it was nearly dark out then. I ran into my chemistry professor at the bus stop but neither of us noticed the other, really. I got off at the stop before the short cut I took, which wasn’t really a short cut. It took me 40 minutes to crutch across campus on the I’m-not-really-sure-it-was-a-short-cut short cut. And then I climbed 3 flights of stairs, because that’s where the trail took me and I sure as heck wasn’t about to go around to the flat side of the building. An hour later, I was in my office. The trip involved some angry muttering, some frustrated tears, and two monster blisters on the palms of my hands. After that, I looked for rides where ever I could. Tuesday I got a ride from Paulina who has a 10:30 class. Wednesday there wasn’t any school, and that was just fine with me. I drove in to take care of some errands. And then it was thanksgiving weekend and visiting Gabulo could drive around (and show off her new hybrid civic in the process! V. nice).
And for those of you who really want to know what the doctor said: Monday they thought about sending me for x-rays. I reminded them that I had opted foolishly for plan 3 health coverage, which includes a very attractive and as yet virgin incredibly high deductible. They told me to come back on Wednesday. So I did, parking illegally in a fraternity parking lot across the street and crutching my way over. They said perhaps I had structural damage in my knee (yuck) but that my ankle was doing fine and here are some exercises to try out. They also said acupuncture was not a bad way to go, but it wouldn’t help with my structural injuries which I should totally get checked out when I had a real form of health insurance (goo).
Want to see some totally pixelicious and nearly indiscernible pictures of my ankle? These are from 12/2/03, which I can do because this is an entry that I wrote after the fact and put up even later than after I took pictures. So the swelling is MUCH better than it was, and the bruising is MUCH better than it was too.
It’s kind of hard to see, isn’t it. These are the two big bruise areas.
This is where my ankle bone used to live. It’s swollen!
Big fat ugly bone. Big fat ugly swelling.
Here’s more bruise. You know, if you’re into that kind of thing.
So that’s the tragic tragic story of my falling down. Usually I just tumble, and don’t hurt myself badly. Remember the “are you an athlete” story? That’s usually how it goes for me. But not this time. It’ll take a little bit longer to clean up from this one.
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I’m really enjoying my new home.
Pittsburgh has got a spectacular public transportation system. It’s no New York City, but it’s no Albany New York, either. It’s very easy to get in and out of downtown on the bus. It’s easy to get from one part of the city to another. And best yet, people use the buses a lot.
Now, perhaps I haven’t gotten to know the bus system yet. And I do have a car, which makes things easier, and I’m using the bus primarily as a commuting tool and not a primary form of transportation. And it’s not winter yet, so I don’t know how cold it’s going to get while I’m standing out there. Plus, I don’t know how the “going out drinking and taking the bus home”? will work out. We’ve talked about that kind of thing but haven’t actually gone to it.
As you may or may not know, I’m totally into sustainable design, especially urban planning and community building. Pittsburgh is set up in one of the most ideal ways. There are many small neighborhoods within the city, and each neighborhood has a main shopping drag, with stores and movie theaters and restaurants. And it’s easy to walk or ride the bus into the neighborhood center. Each area has it’s own unique character, and mixed use housing is everywhere.
I like sidewalks, I like falling leaves and pine needles. I like walking to the bus after a terrible nasty storm and crunching the wet pine needles underfoot on the sidewalk. I like the smell of fall.
(I even like the terrible shadenfreude I get from hearing about the mysteries under the leaves that Michelle encounters with her shoes. Terrrible. But funny!)
This isn’t Pittsburgh’s fault, but I really like fall. In NYC this was one of my favorite seasons because everyone was so relieved that the hot hot summer was over that they rushed to put on sweaters and scarves and accessories. It was the most fashionable season. And also, I’m a scarf queen. I love wearing scarves. I love wearing scarves and skirts and tights and sweaters. Fall is nice.
Last weekend I took the plunge and rode my bike to school for the first time. I took the bus route, and there was a steepish uphill for 1/3 of the way and then a long gradual decline for the next 2/3 of the way. That was fine going there, I felt totally tough to come over the rise and then I really enjoyed the long coast to school. But going home that way was not so fun. I think I like an instant and conquerable challenge more than a long term endurance situation. Maybe I’m a sprinter? So I tried another way to school recommended by Mariss, who does his topographic footwork, and that was a good way to get to school (except for a couple of surprising uphills on the way there). And then it rained and rained, so I left my bike parked at school and took the bus. Friday I rode home, taking a third route, and that way RULED. It was like 85% downhill, which I really appreciate. I think that’s my to-home route. I just have to pick the best to-school route, and hopefully I’ll do that before winter settles in.
Today I got a bike helmet so I don’t brain myself on the trip. Knowing me I’ll suddenly fall off of my bike, and to add excitement to the equation, I won’t be the only one on the road. I really don’t look forward to wearing a helmet but I think I ought to be responsible about this. Especially if I want to be able to say anything about motorcycle helmet laws. Is it always the fear of hypocrisy that makes my decisions so much easier? Maybe. Sad.
This weekend was a good one: Michelle and I did laundry at Mariss and Kelly’s, which was really stellar and so above and beyond of them to offer. Especially after we showed up with 7ish loads and had to come back the next day to finish up. I managed to sleep past 11 on Saturday, organized my closets, started another scarf to replace the one that I lost forever on the subway, and even had a nice potluck with my scholarly cohorts that night. Michelle and I explored the South Side. (Verdict: apparently, no dancing. Or if they say there’s dancing, check with the other people near the dance floor, because I noticed lots of dance floors, lots of dancy music, and no dancing. It was uncomfortable.) Got some homework done with my cronies. All around good weekend. I mean, I could stand to actually clean up some stuff, you know, and get things done in my room, but whatever. I’ll take what I can!
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Big News!
Oh, right, besides the part where I really truly do want to keep updating my webpage, swear-to-god-really, and that’s all that will be said about that for now.
I’m leaving New York. I’m moving to Pittsburgh. I’m going back to school to get my environmental engineering masters.
There.
I gave notice a couple of weeks ago, and El Bosso took it very well.
I am leaving this job on the 31st, and it’s kind of bittersweet. Despite any annoyances I’ve had, the opportunity to work with this bunch of smart, interesting, diverse individuals was fantastic.
Everyone is saying very nice things about me. It’s all nice to hear. I’m still leaving, though.
Michelle is moving with me – we’re going to enjoy being away from New York City for a little bit. No matter how fantastic it is here, it’s still a hard place to live. There’s a lot of pressure, and you meet lots of people who ask you what you “do,� as if my job could even begin to encompass the craziness that is me. C’mon! And you end up working very hard just to make ends meet, and actually, I feel like living in NYC is like having a never-ending guilt trip. I know there are millions of things I should be doing. There are free concerts and movies and shows and the opera and museums and art galleries. There are volunteering opportunities and interesting people to meet. But when it comes down to it, I can’t do everything I want to go to go. I just can’t. I have to work for a living, firstly, and there’s not that much time left in the week after that. I can’t afford to go to cool bars and rock shows every night. And I don’t have that many nice clothes anyway. I find myself over committed and overextended. I want to go to tae kwon do and meet my coworkers for drinks after work and join a regular knitting group and make things (including finishing the xmas presents still left undone, horrors!) and go to museum exhibits and see movies and run in the mornings and meet up with my crafty friends for dancing and fun and visit the parks and trees and go to belly dancing. But I just can’t. It doesn’t work out for me.
All of that said, NYC is a wonderful beautiful exciting place to live. I would love to be a woman of leisure and be able to do everything I wanted to and to take full advantage of the city. That’s the best way to experience it, as a woman of leisure. The other good way is to be like a friend of mine, who says “I’m paying nasty rent to live here, hell if I’ll miss out on ANYTHING that’s free.� If I ever end up with a large endowment and an aversion to driving I would come back here and start doing good works with my free time. That, and try to join up with the kind of people who appreciate calling cards and thank you notes. You know.
Michelle and I went to Pittsburgh a couple of weeks ago for Mariss+Kelly’s wedding and we were able to find an apartment then, in a really nice neighborhood with trees and many rooms and possible parking in the back and super cheap rent and it’s in a house, not an apartment building and… it’s just fantastic. We’re going to ditch our couches here and pull up the carpets there and paint the walls and probably the floors. We’re going to have a beautiful fun and quirky home. It’s close enough to school that I could ride my new bike there, and it’s also close enough that it’s right on a bus line for the nasty winter days. And it’s v. close to M+K’s house, which is super!
My last day at work is 7/31. I’m going to have to start packing. And then Michelle and I will get a truck and load it up on August 4th, and then start to drive. Yikes. It might be a long couple of days (we are resigned to take a break at a hotel halfway there if it gets too late/tired), but at least when we get to Pittsburgh we’ve got some friends who can help unload. We’ll probably rent a wet-dry vac, and I imagine I’ll need to take a stiff brush to the floor, but it’ll be totally worth it in the end! We will be able to fix up the joint and make it our own, and also, we’ll be able to spend some time doing that before we return to NYC for a walkthrough with the landlord and then a trip to the beach in MD before getting back for orientation in Pittsburgh.
I’m very excited. Looking forward to starting this new part of my life!
Now, regarding that updating thing. I don’t really have a computer at home. I hope to soon, the beau has mentioned helping me fix up the disaster scene that I have now. But outside of that, I don’t have an internet connection at home either. So while I still have big (little) plans for this webpage, I might have to wait for a while to put them into action.
Happy summer y’all!
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Oh yeah, that’s me. I’m a big fattypants slacker. I am not big on the writing lately apparently. But if you ask me what I’ve been doing for, oh, the last MONTH, I don’t know that I could tell you!
I hit kind of a grouchy patch today. See, besides the rainy cold nasty spring weather we’ve been having, I have developed some Crafter’s Anxiety. Lately have been very so insecure that the crafty things I make (when I make things, which hasn’t been often lately) are not seen as creative work, or as something that is really difficult to do sometimes, but as just some crafts hobby that anyone could pick up at one of the Crafty SuperStores and crank out on their own. It’s the difference between bohemian intelligent artist and bourgeois crafty lady with lots of cats and possibly a chain smoking habit.
It’s not external pressures that I’m dealing with here. My family is very crafty. My dad, mom, gramma, other family members, a whole lotta people are crafters in my immediate circle of family and friends. I have a big group of supportive crafty friends and we get together and make stuff and talk about our differing approaches and work out any problems we might be having. I am not a lone crafter in an island of artists or non-creative types. I don’t actually accomplish much but when I do and give it away I’ve been really lucky that I don’t run into the damning-with-faint-praise thanks that I hear some crafters (and especially knitters) do. But somewhere inside of me is my nasty inner critic, the one who sneaks up on me and says: “Hey, you know, ANYONE can do what you’re doing. You’re not such hot stuff. C’mon, now.â€? That little guy keeps trying to convince me that I’m nothing special. That my holiday cards aren’t fantastic, they’re simple and too easy to make. That my knitting is of the simplistic and unappealing variety. That my clothing ideas are too difficult for me to actually sew. I am angry and sad that I feel so inhibited by my own inner critic that I don’t write more. That’s my number 2 excuse for having this webpage, you know, is to get me writing regularly (see how that worked last month? Yeah. At least I used the number 1 excuse [my very own email address] often).
But then I see people doing things, and even if I don’t like what they’ve done, I have to admire them for doing it, for risking it all and putting themselves out there. I even admire authors who are terrible writers because somewhere in them they have an incredible amount of inner quiet and strength, that they believe in themselves enough to put what they love out there and risk the scathing eyes of other people. I don’t know how people ignore their inner critics. Is mine worse than others? Do I just listen harder? What about all of those people who are such terrible singers, yet tried out for American Idol? Don’t they know? Oh, that’s another rhetorical question entirely. (These self doubts apply also to topics such as “but I’m an engineer, so what do I know about art?� and “oh, sure, I like and know a lot about xyz, but I can’t really be an arbiter of good taste. That’s just my opinion.�)
I was out with some crafty friends and the topic of Arts vs. Crafts came up. Someone (an artist no less!) said “oh, but art is always pretty much just masturbation.� So that makes crafts mutual masturbation, because usually you don’t make something just for yourself, but for someone else. I need to remember that analogy – it makes everything seem so much simpler, and much less complicated. It makes my inner critic seem silly and just one of those grouchy people who yells petulantly at inanimate objects.
It’s starting to seem very nice outside. Is it spring yet? Honest?
I am so busy, but I don’t know what I’ve been doing at all. So here’s some lists:
Things that bothered me today at work:
Things that I want to buy and am totally not going to because I’ve been a huge spendthrift lately:
Things I wish I could stay in one place long enough to do:
Things I love doing that I have been doing lately and want to do more of:
In an effort to accomplish SOMETHING, here it is: I am making a mailing list for this page. If you want to be included, send me an email! And as always, compliments are always appreciated…
Posted in all posts, crafts, jobby job job, knitastic
Well, They got me again, and managed to destroy my famed “patience of a saint.�
I had to renew my driver’s license, I realized on Saturday as I was (ahem) driving down to Atlantic City that it had expired on my birthday, and that I had never renewed it. Yikes! So today, like a responsible citizen (but I guess not a citizen so responsible I stopped driving my car this weekend) I went down to the License Express DMV location near Penn Station. The License Express is Express. It’s great, and I was excited to get a chance to go there! But after my 10 minutes of standing in line, paying people, and having my picture taken were over, well, I found out that they could not give me my new license because my old one? Was RESTRICTED.
Yikes. Here’s the back-story: NYS absolutely positively requires you to turn in your plates after canceling your insurance. It’s a good idea, I guess, it keeps cars off the road that shouldn’t be on there. The penalty is either a fine, or suspension of your license. Except I have a sneaking suspicion that people who don’t want turn in their plates because they want to use them for their own nefarious purposes don’t really care if their licenses are suspended. I think the scofflaws who go around slapping expired plates on stolen cars and driving them at risk to life, limb, and societies general happiness don’t really worry that they’re about to get picked up for driving with a suspended license.
OK, so in early 2001 my brother trades some speakers for a car for me. I insure it and when we pick it up, we realize it’s really truly broken. Like, it needs a new engine. So I cancel the insurance and my brother forgets to turn in the plates. Long story short, even though the car doesn’t run, and is off the road, and even though my sister uses the broken car as a trade-in when she buys her new car, NYS doesn’t care and my license is suspended for 117 days. Luckily I use public transportation almost exclusively. I did write two letters to George Pataki, which honestly, crack me up. They are so funny. So they’re linked for your enjoyment and also because they provide a very concise and well written (if I say so myself) timeline of events. (I derive a bizarre joy from writing letters to people like this. I mean, “Frankly, I am dismayed.� !!! So funny. Maybe someday I’ll share with y’all the fantastic letter I wrote to my landlord…)
So, anyway, after all of that, after having slipped through the cracks and been ignored by the governor and sadly, discredited by the DMV, I find that once again, I have slipped through the cracks. My restriction had not ever been removed from my license so I had to walk the looong walk over to the other DMV office, stand in the line outside that wrapped around the block and wait for them to open, wait in another line, get a ticket, see someone in “enforcement� (where can I get a title like that? “I’m Karina Jean, and I’m in Enforcement.� Cool.), and in less than 5 minutes they had cleared everything up and renewed my license for me. It was so easy, it’s a shame they couldn’t have done it right the first time.
OK, so until now I’ve always maintained that the DMV was full of mostly courteous, professional, and competent people. I don’t know that this is the rule. Every actual real life person I speak to is a courteous and competent professional, but somehow I have been tripped up twice. I’m choosing to believe here that there are malfunctioning robots behind the scenes at the DMV, like Rosie from the Jetson’s only really really slow and stupid, and that’s the reason I keep having these weird problems. Like, you know, when R2D2 tries to hack into the Death Star computer and gets zapped. That’s what’s going on in the State of New York Department of Motor Vehicles. The only that frustrates me once I come to this realization is the fact that I have to make out my checks to “The Commissioner of the Department of Motor Vehicles� personally. That’s just not right.
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While I’ve been goofing off with the glamour of environmental engineering, it’s SPRING! And, also, I have turned 26 years old. Amazing.
A birthday story:
When we moved here from Tennessee I was the new kid, and I was (and am) very very shy. It’s a big surprise to everyone now, because I fake it pretty good, but I was so nervous about being the new kid, and having people over for my birthday. I can’t remember exactly what I wanted to happen, but I wanted to have a great party, and have an outdoor part, with the good smelling lilac bush and the cottonwood trees and green green grass. I wanted it to be a magical outdoors experience. So, I was waiting for people to come over for the party and I noticed something. It was snowing. Snowing! April 15, and it snows. Welcome to the northeast! That’s the way it is around here, I guess. Stinkers.
So I wasn’t surprised when it started snowing a couple of weeks ago. Welcome to the northeast! Where Mother Nature likes to tease us a little with good warm beautiful sunny weather, and then drop some snowfall on us. (A good thing about the snow was that parking rules were suspended and I didn’t have to move my car!)
An Easter story:
So usually I don’t do much for Easter. I have in the past had people over for Easter egg fun, boiling dozens and dozens of eggs and setting up an egg-dying table, raiding the neighbors garbage for paper to put down under the vinegary paas kits. At cooper we had a big “Spring� dinner one Easter, wherein we had 14(?) people at the dinner table and we ate and ate and laughed and ate. It was fun, and also hard to find seating for everyone. This year, I went back to Brigantine to spend the evening with Dad and Maggie. It was fun, they’re staying at a timeshare on a very different part of Brigantine than I saw. It’s grassier, more houses, and on the ocean side. I can’t understand how Brigantine stays so small town while the only car access is directly through Atlantic City. It doesn’t make any sense. Although, a fellow from the condo who saw us in church on Easter assured us that Brigantine was a very Catholic community, and actually, so Catholic that if all of the Catholics came to church they’d have to build 3 or 4 more.
Paul Harvey officiated over Easter Mass. No, really. The priest had a deep sonorous voice that boomed out, and his elocution? Full stops in the middle of sentences just like Paul Harvey. I honestly was waiting for him to end the homily with “and now you know…. The rest. Of the story.� He didn’t, though. Maybe because the Easter story isn’t too esoteric, and most people attending church on Easter Sunday already know the rest. Of the story.
Then in the spirit of Easter we went to Atlantic City and walked on the boardwalk. It was lots of fun, and early early morning is the best time of all to hit the Atlantic City scene. As in, not too many people. And I am still shocked by people smoking indoors!
After AC I drove up to my Beau’s Parent’s house for dinner, which was very nice. And I made a cake which seemed to go over very well. I think the cake is super-fantastico, a flourless chocolate cake with a chocolate cream topping and mini-chocolate Easter eggs floating on the chocolatly “nest.� It is a wonderful Nigella Lawson creation. That woman is so fine. And what a good cook! The cake is from the NYTimes, and I don’t know how long the link will last but I do think you should all read the “At my table� column every week because the way the woman writes about food is an inspiration. She alone is well worth the free registration required for viewing the NY Times.
A story about my nephew:
My brother used to date a woman who once had a dog named Sweetness. This dog was a wiry little boxer/pitt bull kind of dog, all coiled muscle and beautiful eyes. She was a sweet sweet pup. My nephew loved standing out in the yard and yelling “Sweetness! Sweetness!� It’s better if you imagine my nephew with a high-pitched baby voice and a habit of dragging out the vowels in the word so it sounded more like “Sweeeeeaaaaatnaaaaas!�
The Crafty void in my life:
Heck, but I haven’t been making anything lately. People ask me what I’ve been up to and I have nothing to say. Um, working? I go out of town a lot lately? I don’t know what I’ve been doing. This is what I NEED to be doing:
* Making use of the fun great wonderful beautiful embroidery patterns I have.
* Finishing dad’s Christmas mittens! And Maggie’s Christmas scarf! I am A Bad Gift Giver.
* Cooking at home more, and not eating out as much.
* Making socks! I have so much sock yarn and even the right size needles. I have good instructions for using the self patterned yarn. But do I have socks? No.
* Sewing aprons from my cool “how to get a husband� fabric. It’s neat and ironic. I love it.
* Knitting the Sitcom Chic cardigan from Knitty. Because I need it! Really! Plus, all of my other cardigans are falling apart. Especially in the elbows.
The Book I’m reading:
“Woman: An Intimate Geographyâ€? by Natalie Angier. It is so fantastic and interesting, like taking a tour of my woman parts. I have learned so many cool things that I had no idea about. The author is a science writer for the NYTimes and does a fantastic job tearing down our preconceived feelings about our bodies, based on old scientific theories since disproved, and rebuilding the concept of “woman” as an evolutionary gem. This book goes on my list of books that all women should read.
Um, maybe it won’t be so long until next time? Maybe?
Here is a big catchup entry:
The end of March weekend was the northeast glitterati retreat! Pictures are here. It was superfantastico fun, we rented a house very near Atlantic City and will stayed for the weekend, crafting, enjoying our gas fireplace and deck and bay-side view. And, Tony Danza was appearing at the showboat on Saturday night, and I think it’s safe to say that it was the closest I’ll ever come to him. We didn’t go, of course, because it was $35 and Atlantic City was scary. Not so much scary, but weird and creepy. Like the extra-oxygenated air really spaced me out, but didn’t distract me enough from noticing the casinos weren’t as fun and glamorous as I think they should be. I mean, if you’re building a whole culture (“America’s Playground!�) on gambling and showgirls and Miss America and big boxing matches, well, I think it should be a little glitzier. It’s cheap to make things look very outlandish and luxurious, and they could have gone that much further with the window-dressing. In my opinion.
It’s really hard to plan a get-together, actually. Everyone sort of vaguely wants to come, so you try to impress on them the importance of really truly coming. And then some people back out, other people confirm. So you make reservations, start to collect money, and actually put a deposit down. And then more people, confirmed people, back out. It’s terrible. Stressful. You can’t make anyone happy. The cost goes up. Luckily, however, the people who can go are usually sweet and cool and ok with that kind of thing. At least, that’s what happened for us!
I went to Pittsburgh last weekend to scope out the town and the school. It was very very good. I enjoyed it a lot. I learned muchly. I foresee big life-changes for me… And it’s scary, too. I am excited to move but at the same time when I’m really tired and let down my guard I get very nervous about actually moving. About moving so far from my friends, and so much further from my family. About going into debt. But I’m young, right? So even if this isn’t the right decision, and I honestly am sure it is (unless I’m on an airplane and I just finished a good novel and I’m feeling really tired and vulnerable), I’m young and this is the best time to make wrong decisions. It’ll all be just fine.
I still don’t understand the reasons people move, outside of the standard moving for a job, or for a school. I feel like I am moving for not exactly the right reasons, but I can’t figure out what the right reasons would be. Is it to be near other people you love? Is it because you need a change? You like the weather somewhere else better? You can’t afford where you’re living now?
I guess I think that people don’t move when they’re happy already. They move because they need to improve something, like their job, or their relationships with other people. They want to fix something that’s wrong. But that makes moving seem so terrible. You’re doing it because you HAVE to. Because you can’t stand the way things are now. I don’t like to think of it like that – I want to go into a move feeling very positive and excited about things, enthusiastic about what the future may bring me.
And, if you’ve made it this far, here’s an extra special bonus tip! Go to the Photos page. It’s updated! I won’t get any more google hits for “photos peeing behind,� which makes me a little sad, but, pictures for you!
here lies the ghost of the entry titled “my latest venutre,” forever gone from the interwebs. I wonder what it was?
[[based on a link in this post I think it has something to do with this scarf.]]
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I’ve been kind of freaked out all day today thinking about war. I haven’t gotten much work done, and I’m too busy reading up on current events. I’m going to have to bill sick time today, I think.
I remember the gulf war, when I was ending middle school. Or was it high school? I remember trying to get people to meet me by the flag pole for a last minute protest during homeroom, but no one would. Those ubiquitous yellow ribbons. “Support the soldiers, not the war.�
These are things I thought after last night’s speech by GWB:
* We’re going to war.
* We’re going to war, supported by a potentially fictitious “coalition.â€?
* We can’t even afford to educate or feed our children. I know of teachers that have to panhandle for classroom supplies for their students. We’re going to finance the entirety of another gulf war by ourselves?
* There’s a sneaky large tax cut being pushed through the senate right now, and we’re going to finance the entirety of another gulf war by ourselves?
* We are the aggressors in this war. We are attacking another country with little reason. We are attacking another country because:
* Bush is ushering in a super-aggressive future where it’s called “suicideâ€? (his word!) to wait and see if your neighbors won’t attack you, and one should just go ahead and attack them, just in case.
* I have a sneaking suspicion that Bush is trying to coax Armageddon in, to force the end of the world to come in his lifetime.
* The Bush administration has been systematically redefining who is allowed to disagree with the government and still be considered ‘American’, and has been systematically demonizing dissenters, since September 11th. And now people are disagreeing and protesting, there’s no response. Our elected representatives seem to be lost, running in circles and avoiding the immediate and real issues. Many of our rights have been tossed – and all in the name of security. As Michelle said last night, if we really have to discard so many essential American freedoms, ones the country was built on, in order to preserve security, than it means the system isn’t working.
Remember during the last gulf war? When we had to really convince Israel not to return the attack, because of the frightening potential for a Jewish-Muslim war developing? How the heck are we going to prevent that from happening now? Especially now that the Israeli government is taking a ‘hard-line’ stance on Palestine, and is driving bulldozers over unarmed, peaceful protesters. You know, while they knock houses over in the Gaza Strip. An American woman died, and the war talk has kept us from asking, where did these bulldozers and tanks come from? Whose money was spent on this? Was it mine, from my 2001 taxes? 2002? And American woman died and it hardly made the news. What chance did the some-dozen other Palestinians (as young as 4 years old) have to make the news?
This is our “coalition�:
Afghanistan, Albania, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Colombia, Czech Republic, Denmark, El Salvador, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Georgia, Hungary, Italy, Japan (post conflict), Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Netherlands, Nicaragua, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Turkey, United Kingdom, Uzbekistan.
(I guess it’s a shame that Spain’s once invincible armada is no more. (Thanks a lot, Queen Elizabeth!) Though if we’re fighting in a desert it wouldn’t do much good anyway.)
Here’s another thing I’ve been thinking about. The singer from the Dixie Chicks criticized GWB and was immediately demonized: people drove over their CDs, and the fact that she wouldn’t support our president was denounced. She stuck to her guns for a couple of days, and didn’t apologize until her record company made her. Why wasn’t she allowed by American society to speak her beliefs?
I am a patriot. I believe strongly in the American way of life. I love my country, despite her faults. But I don’t understand at what point I’m supposed to just suck it up, to realize the severity of the situation and to not speak my mind. When is that appropriate? And when do you think our founding fathers would have thought it be appropriate? Our elected representatives are hiding behind the “support the soldiers� tenet – they don’t have to say anything hard, or bad, or dissenting about this war, because they are busy supporting the soldiers. I know a lot of veterans. I know lots of people who went to war, and wish we hadn’t, and also wish we wouldn’t now. I also know many people who joined the military for the wrong reason, not because they want to fight, but because they felt they had to. Will they understand if we speak out against war that we aren’t speaking out against them? Won’t they understand that we speak out against war because we want them home, safe, and with their families?
I don’t want a war, y’all.
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I flew to Tennessee for a whirlwind visit with my grand mother this weekend. It was fantastic. I got a wicked cheap flight, and the traveling went so smoothly (probably because I was traveling at non-traditional times, Saturday AM and Monday AM). It was really good to see Gramma. She’s one of the neatest people I know. She’s super crafty, and tough, and stubborn (in a good way). She can make anything, and if she can’t make it, she’ll figure it out. I told her about being interviewed for a book about crafting, and why I craft (I don’t get much of a feeling of accomplishment at work) and she said she likes to do things to figure them out. There’s the story about her weaving, where someone told her it would be impossible to weave a checkerboard pattern on the loom she was using, but she figured it out and that year gave us all little traveling checkerboards. And, she’s got so much wonderful great stuff. If I ever am concerned about how much stuff I have, well, as she said, it’s genetically inherited that I collect junk in case I need it later. I love going to her house, she’s got patterns from the 70’s (I scored a cool knit ascot pattern and a neat flyer on macramé bags!), boxes of fabrics (she’s been collecting them to make lap rugs for Meals-on-wheels recipients), and so much yarn and neat old stuff.
How I feel about my own belongings, well, that might be a longer and more stand-alone entry.
I’m concerned about the possible torture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. I saw a newspaper today with the headline “Tormented, but not Tortured.� But after reading this article from the Washington Post [I’ll revise with a link, I can’t find it now. I’ve asked my source…], with this paragraph down towards the bottom:
“U.S. authorities have an additional inducement to make Mr. Mohammed talk, even if he shares the suicidal commitment of the Sept. 11 hijackers: The Americans have access to two of his elementary-school-age children, the top law-enforcement official says. The children were captured in a September raid that netted one of Mr. Mohammed’s top comrades, Ramzi Binalshibhâ€?
…I’m not really sure what’s going to happen.
Why would we ever consider using children as leverage? Unless we’re hoping that the promise of being raised as an American is so terrible that he cracks, I can’t see how this “leverage� would mean anything except for torture. And I guess the NYPost article was right, if he’ll be tormented but not tortured, and his torment is knowing his children will be tortured.
OK, so he’s a bad man. So he might know things that will help stop terrorism. He probably knows the other people responsible for September 11th. But you know who tortures children in front of their parents? Saddam Hussein. And by suggesting we use these children as “leverage� implies we’re going to do the same thing that Saddam Hussein has done, you know, one of those things that gives Bush the moral imperative to invade Iraq. If we do this to Mohammed’s children, will our great buddy Tony Blair in Great Britain feel the moral imperative to invade us?
These are some of the things that I love about America (that people seem to walk over at will lately):
* Equal rights/Freedom for all (as long as they look just like me).
* Land of Opportunity (for me and my ancestors but no one new, because new = dangerous and costly).
* Due process of law (except for those people who oppose the government).
* Freedom of Speech (but not if it requires you to assemble in the streets of Manhattan below 59th Street).
I am feeling particularly cynical about the current state of affairs in America today. I love America. I consider myself a patriot (pre-patriot act, of course). I think we’ve got a great way of life here, and we have a fantastic society that can do a lot of good if it wants to. But slowly, slowly, we’re slipping into that gray area of too much power in the hands of a few. And it’s terrifying to me how quickly our most basic rights, the ones that America was founded on, are being yanked from us. It baffles me that the republican party, the one that insists the government has too large a hand in everyday American’s lives, is the source of these revisionist policies. And I don’t know how to stop it except to tell everyone I know, and to call my senators every single day.
Check this out:
If only I can get the student work that I have submitted on time. I’m kind of nervous I won’t be able to, because it’s a lot of scanning and plotting, and besides the using company materials thing, there’s also the nasty working hard at my regular job thing. Oh, the tragedy. Plus, it’s very difficult to get in touch with most of the students because they’ve all graduated. Terrible.
But I think the exhibit stuff that I have to offer is a valuable addition. It’s a good foil to a lot of the recycled materials stuff that will be there, and it’s an unusual course for NYC. Sadly. Everyone should know about sustainable design. Everyone should know how to make a building be cheaper in the long run and also use less electricity and water. Everyone should try to incorporate mixed use development into their urban planning, so there isn’t weird ghost towns after 5PM when everyone goes home from their jobs, or weird ghost towns between 8 and 6 when everyone is at their jobs. Everyone should learn about the true cost of oil, about how we’ve been subsidizing the low cost for years and years by military spending. Or about the true cost of clean, fresh water. Or what it really means to cancel recycling, and to have trucks move more garbage out of the city – what it means in terms of deteriorated air quality, and in wear and tear on roads.
Everyone who can, come to the exhibit. I’ll go with you. I’ll tell you all about this stuff, in more detail than you’ve ever dared to dream there was…
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Um, someone got to my web page by searching for “photos peeing behind.†Welcome to the interweb! Thank you Google!
(Um, for the record ((mom)) I do NOT have pictures of peeing behinds. The phrase “peeing behind†is on my photo page. Wild.)
Last night I went to a book lecture by Dava Sobel, author of Galileo’s Daughter. That book is one of the most finely written works of non-fiction I’ve ever read. It was fantastic. Maybe I liked it so much because it was about Galileo, and I love science, or maybe it was because it was about a wonderful father-daughter relationship, and I’m sort of a daddy’s girl sometimes. But it was so well written. Sobel translated over 100 letters written from Galileo’s daughter from her convent, and uses it to tell the story of Galileo, the church, and his science. Wonderful.
While I was at the book lecture, I started thinking about letters. I love letters. I’m a real packrat – I have a couple of small boxes at home full of cards and letters. But at the same time, letter writing is a dying form of communication, really. In Italy in the 1600’s, people would write each other letters much as we might call someone to let them know how our day went. Messangers would take letters from person to person, sometimes waiting to collect a response. That stuff charms me. I collect stationary, and try to write letters. I love sitting down with a nice pen and a nice card and some fun stamps and sending notes out to my friends. And then, when I clean my room and come across stacks of old correspondence, I find myself thinking: what the heck am I going to do with this stuff?
In a time when we come across so many old letters and photos in thrift shops, should we worry about keeping a written record of our daily lives? And, should I save letters for posterity when I don’t really think I’ll ever be a famous person of interest, like Galileo was, and people probably won’t want to read my letters?
And what about this computer stuff? With the emails and the on-line journaling, we’re probably reaching a point very quickly where we may not have a handwritten record at all. It’s still fun to write by pen and ink, but it’s harder to take the time and sit down and do so. It’s also slower. It’s so easy for me to keep a window open on my desktop, type for a couple of minutes crazily, and then leave it.
But besides the historic paper trail, what are we losing from writing electronically? I wonder if we aren’t losing the ability to think clearly and concisely. There’s a lot of pressure when you’re writing something by hand to get it right the first time. I think that the habit of thinking through your arguments is a good one to know. It’s very easy when writing electronically to just zip through the middle, write the intro, and then figure out the best conclusion. I mean, I do that all the time. But here I try to do an off the cuff ramble. Sure, I set it aside for hours some times, but it generally comes out just the way I post it. And it probably shows, hey?
The snow here is melting, slowly but surely. My car was covered right over the top but it’s nearly down to the middle of the doors by now. It’s been in the 40s every day. Alternate side of the street parking rules have been suspended all week, and I’ve been reluctant to shovel my car out. Apparently the city has been reluctant to finish up the job as well – because there’re mountains of snow all over town, and primarily in my neighborhood, that haven’t been trucked off and melted yet. It is a huge job, so I understand it’s taking a while. But you know what Jersey City did? They went out on Wednesday night and took off all of the snow. They towed cars, moved snow, and towed the cars back. That’s seriously hard core! They put all the snow in an old reservoir for storage. It’s rock. It’s supposed to rain all day tomorrow, which means the snow should melt and melt and I’ll be able to move my car with a minimum of shoveling. That’s my plans for Sunday. Saturday, well, I think I may go to another belly dancing class! Whee! I love it.
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