mmm hmm. yes, i am in japan, still. wild times, these. little people, big drinkers.
anyway, just wanted to say quickly, am alive. am wonderful. am lost, slightly.
also, i shamefully admit, i have checked my referral logs, and who the hell is searching for "teacher fucks student," then "teacher fucks student pictures," and finally "TEACHER FUCKS STUDENT"??? and clicking through to iscatter each time? wake the hell up! no teacher fucking here!
get out of the house, you people of the world!
okay, full recap soon. i adore you all!
bye for now.
I'm sitting in Newark Airport on a get2net terminal with what has to be the worst keyboard ever. BUT it is free. 100%, at least so far.
Anyway, I'm a little upset, the normal pre-flight jitters just now augmented by a last second call to Mom, only to discover that my Godmother does, as suspected, have systemic lymphoma. Damn.
This discovery, coupled with the stress of getting Mom to write down the flight info and having Mom chew me out for being more or less incommunicado all weekend, has driven me to worry. Ick.
All right, enough stressing out. In 24 hours I'll be in Japan with a whole new set of worries.
No, I'm not giving up on the weblog. I've just been a little distracted lately...
You may have heard the rumors. It's true, I'm off to Japan for a week. I just got the official word and I'm leaving Monday. I think this is going to be a fantastic trip. I'm being flown over for a week, but I'm only working for 2 days, so I'll get to explore a bit. I am really looking forward to it, but I do tend to stress out before traveling, and this is no exception. Last night I had a minor freak-out about everything that needs to be done before I can leave. And with Joe's wedding Sunday, I'm leaving for the city tonight! Still have to pay the bills, pick up travelers' cheques, call the landlord, pick up prescription med, finish packing, and not have an emotional breakdown or get sick. A tall order.
Still, how could I turn down a free trip to Japan? Yesterday I sat quietly worrying at my desk and as my gaze wandered past my monitor to a small paperweight I've had sitting there for years. It's an object that has followed me everywhere, always an afterthought as I move to a new desk. It first found me in fifth grade. The Paperweight first belonged to a friend of my mother's. She was The Librarian (and a fantastic Librarian at that) and her daughter and I were good friends. Our families traveled together during childhood, and Kendra and I would stay up late at night in sundry hotel rooms yelling fermez la bouche at the top of our lungs to the tune of the ascending four notes of the Addams Family theme song while we greasily discovered the virtues of the deconstituted/reconstituted fizzy potato wonder that was (and is) Munchos. I was not aware of The Paperweight during this era.
At some point, the Librarian met The Fifth Grade Teacher. The Fifth Grade Teacher was a sensitive soul, with too much makeup, not enough ironing, and a keen tendency to bring out the sense of wonder that the students, in the thick of their burgeoning adolescence, were so keen to quash. ...the students, of which I was, I suppose, The Student, for the purpose of this story. So, The Student (that's me) would listen to The Fifth Grade Teacher's sensitive tales of woe, would visit the home of The Fifth Grade Teacher, would help select records to play during journal writing period, and would help The Fifth Grade Teacher clean her desk. Which is where The Student first encountered The Paperweight.
The Paperweight is three-halves by one by three-halves inches large. It was probably constructed as follows: Pour opaque black resin into mold, to depth of one-quarter inch. Allow to cure. Place inch high gold replica of Shinto temple on top of black resin. Cover (and fill mold) with clear resin. Allow to cure. Remove rectangular block from mold. Carefully strike clear resin with mallet, creating web of partially fractured cracks distributed evenly on clear surface. Details of temple should be difficult to discern through cracked resin.
The Paperweight mesmerized The Student. While tears leaked from The Fifth Grade Teacher's eyes, because the other students would not listen during class, would not open their hearts in their journals, would not invert their fractions before replacing the division sign with the multiplication sign, The Student stared through the cracks at the shrine, wondering about The Paperweight, what it was, where it came from, what it meant.
At the end of fifth grade, The Fifth Grade Teacher took The Student aside, and presented The Student with The Paperweight. "This was a gift, a gift from The Librarian to The Fifth Grade Teacher... and now it is a gift again, from The Fifth Grade Teacher to The Student."
That was the first I knew that The Librarian was involved. I have worked some excruciatingly long days over the past year, and I've spent a good many hours staring at The Paperweight, searching for inspiration. When I look at The Paperweight, I think of the faith that my teacher had in me, and the wonderful times I had traveling the country with my mother's friend and her family, and how hard I have worked on this product. And I'm proud, and I'm nervous, but I'm getting a little rush from knowing that The Paperweight gets another incidental significance in my life this week.
I should have tons of pictures when I get back. In the meantime, you can see my first few digital camera experiments. I'll check in on this blog if I can, from Japan.
I'm so happy to be in-the-fold. If you aren't already, please use this great wonderful tool.
We get it, dear. You are a freak. A numbskull. A halfwit. You are Billy's little girl. You would die for him. You have already died for him several times over. You fuck in the car. You fuck on the lawn. You fuck on the fucking roof. You think a vial of your own blood is a romantic gift. You think a tattoo of your gross old man of a husband is a romantic gift. You think letting a horse nuzzle your bosom while you throw your mangy head back in ecstasy is a romantic gift. You believe you have bestowed something precious upon this earth, and I'm not referring to the two C-sized somethings you have bestowed. You believe your characters embody your spirit, or is it your spirit that embodies the characters you have betrayed? I mean, portrayed. You collect knives. Quod me nutrit me destruit. We get it. It's wonderful to see you so free, and so unfettered. It's lovely to see you so lovely. Now, my fellow long-haired brunette, it is time to act like the grown-up I know you have chased to your most frightening depths. Let her out, little angel, and join the rest of us here on Earth!
Actually, now that I read the packaging, I see that the Intense Peach Smint flavor is a little dubious as a Vitamin. While they are surely quite summery tasting and I'll admit their intensity is almost overwhelming, it takes a serving size of TEN to get 25% of my RDA of Vitamin C. Hmm. I wonder how long the FDA will allow this to go on?
Also, it's not really so much of a rotary Pez thing, as a straight Pez copy with the mechanism mounted internally. (No decorative head.)
As an engineer with a particular (some might say obsessive) fascination with consumer product packaging, I can't help but notice that breathmint and candy packaging has really come a long way in the last 6 months or so. Take, for example, Certs Coolmint Drops, packaged in a "stylish slide-top" box. The oversized flap has a half-circular cutout to allow a single mint to escape without having to actually open the package all the way. Or Certs' other packaging wonder, their Powerful Mints. They come in a superthin package about the size of two credit cards. The mints are probably poured into one half of the case, shaken flat, and I think the other half of the case is laid on top and ultrasonically welded into place. So cool. But the packaging that most appeals to the geek in me is that of Smint, the king of mint packaging (not to mention the kind of mints -- they're really good!). Check the website, there's an animation of the super cool distribution mechanism, which I think is sort of an internal, rotary version of Pez (the classic -- that's old-school candy popping!). And now, lo and behold, you can get Smint in the US! I stopped at Target at lunchtime today and picked up a pack of mint and a pack of Intense Peach vitamin C drops. Woohoo!
When I hear you make fun of New Jersey, it is like I am hearing someone make fun of my little brother. He's sometimes annoying and crass, but damn it, he's my brother! Only I can make fun of him. When you do it you are being cruel, attacking someone smaller than you.
oh, that's so good. oh, baby, right there. yes. mmm...
last night i was awake at 4:17 AM, rubbing my feet together in topical agony, like the dog with the twitch that the family keeps saying they should really show the vet.
left foot: two mosquito bites.
right foot: four mosquito bites.
all bites in radial pattern around circumference of foot, including one on each most sensitive of foot locations, the tender instep... the g-spot of the foot... the taut clenched arch of a muscle that calls out to be rubbed... now needier than ever as it demands to be stroked again and again, now like a junkie whose satisfaction never makes it beyond skin-deep, the meat now forever tense, the skin now pale and scratched raw. needing a new drug i reached for my nubby post-row sandals this morning but the soles could only tease, a little too flat-footed to offer true relief.
oh, it was torture, until just now when i remembered the little packets of cortisone cream in the company medicine cabinet.
alas, it will be sock and shoe season soon, and i'll be longing for the flip flop days of summer.
If I were Kevin Smith, I would include the following scene in the upcoming Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back... now don't be upset if it's really in there. I have no prior knowledge of the script, or the characters, or the plot, or nuthin'. I'm just a writer in New Jersey... we may tend to think alike. Also, language alert. What can I say? Jay's a potty-mouth.
Jay: Which movie should we see, you big fat fucker? I mean, we could see the fucking sad prissy shit and maybe there'd be bitches in there that would, you know, wanna get all funky-cold-medina with us in the back row, what do you think you big bitch? You big mutha'? You wanna go smoke some shit up in the balcony with me? Your mother was just smokin me up there in the balcony, bitch, you want me to show you where? Or maybe we could see the action shit? The one with the kung fu bastards and the exotic bitches? Yeah, you like that shit, don't you, you big bastard? What's this Clerks shit? What's with that shit? What's it in, fucking black and white? Fucking old school View Askew bastards, fucking lazy poor-ass no money for film school bitches? You wanna see that?
Silent Bob: You know, I would, but every time I watch one of those Kevin Smith movies, all I can think is, I could have made that myself. I should be writing more.
It's no secret. Old people are scary. And now there's proof. Check out The Smoking Gun's felon photographs -- all old, all scary, all convicted and sentenced -- but who knows how many more of these scary old people are out there???
A little too close to home! The first human case of West Nile Virus in the Northeastern US this year has been confirmed. Here's the story of the elderly Staten Island woman who contracted the disease, and here's an outline of when larvicide spraying will take place in Staten Island. Don your masks, kids, if you want to have kids. And if you're feeling a little pneumoniac, call your doctor quick.
Do you know what you're breathing? The Village Voice had this interesting, though perhaps somewhat sensational story a couple of weeks ago on mosquiticide turned deadly neurotoxin!!! The problem was caused by improper storage, and the chemicals were used anyway.
Panicked? Curious? Just want more info? This article has a pretty extensive list of questions and answers about the flavivirus. And here is a FAQ from the NYC DOH. NPR also ran a story about precautions being taken in New York and New Jersey, including the strategic monitoring of seroconversion rates in sentinel chickens. Yes, that's right... sentinel chickens. You can find a link to the Real Audio story here.
a pleasant weekend.
I had a wonderful weekend with my parents. They came to visit and to watch me get my butt kicked at yesterday's regatta. My folks were so cute, all huddled under their giant umbrella, sitting on those campy folding chairs, trying to read their paperbacks between races. Mom's right leg was soaked from poking out from under the umbrella. They were real troopers. My mom yelled from the shore as we rowed past: "Go Matilda from Carnegie Lake!" The girls in my boat made fun of my parade wave as we rowed back to shore after the race.
new dream car... sort of.
First, let me say, I wouldn't buy an electric vehicle. But if I were going to buy one, this would be it:
Link via Saint Caffeine, and by association Tabitha, who linked me last week (and who you can also find right over there on the left).
Posted on the Cooper Union website is a plan to "modernize" academic facilities and add a total of about 300,000 sq. feet of commercial-use space, and about 30,000 sq. feet of street-level retail space, all in the name of creating revenue. As usual, there is no user-friendly description of the plan on the CU site, and some of the detail files start mid-sentence so I'm sure they aren't publishing the entire document, so I've taken a look and I offer the highlights here.
This program would entail the demolition of the current Nerken Engineering Building and the Abram S Hewitt Building.
Also on the agenda: Demapping and related disposition of Taras Shevchenko Place (also known as Piss Alley, or a great place to park if you keep Febreze in the car).
Phase 1 will be the demolition of the Hewitt Building, and the construction of a new 9-story academic facility in its place. Phase 2 is relocation of academic programs to the new building, demolition of the Engineering Building, and the development of commercial space on the former site of the Engineering Building, with some academic space (4 of 15 floors to be used for academic purposes, 1 one those academic floors to be partially subterranean).
Construction is planned from 2003 to 2006.
It's that time. Again. It's the time when I realize I'm up later than I ought to be, that I'm sadder than I have any right to be, that I'm busier than I admit I could be, and that I'm older, fatter, more frizzy, pockmarked, rude, and frazzled than I ever thought possible.
Physical exertion (is it the heat? or is it just that I insist we row in the heat? does eating vegetarian really mean that the heat affects you less?) leads to mental exhaustion (but really, who gives a damn?)... leads to frenetic blog entries (welcome.), reasserts my self-evaluation: Exhibitionist, capital E, with nothing, really, all that great to exhibit (see notes on blog, above.). When I wanted to be normal, I was a freak, and now that being normal sucks, I'm just a quiet geek with a penchant for math jokes and reality TV trivia...
Which reminds me of a great one: What do you get when you cross a duck with a mountain climber? (Answer below.)
And why oh why did I get home at 10:15 and excitedly sit down on the couch for the last 15 minutes of Real World? Hint: it wasn't for the air conditioning, and it wasn't because my couch is super-comfortable.
And that's about all I have to say. It's hot. Damn hot. ("Hottest thing is my shorts... I can cook things in it!")
**you can't. A mountain climber's a scaler. Hey! I've got a million of them. If you liked that one, let me know. Maybe we can talk sometime. You know, Eigenvalues, ... um, lightsabers... Paul Auster... I'll tell you about all the megapixels in my camera, you correct my grammar and take me to foreign countries to see the elephants jump over a fence.
It's that time. It's the time when I begin to admit that my stomach is upset. The acrid smoke of the clueless pyroculinary neighborhood watch has passed. He's moved from lighter fluid to pork tenderloin, sizzling up here in puffs of oily delight.
The relief of the evening breeze brings waves of nausea drafting behind and I can't sit here by the window much longer. I crank up the volume. The Chord is Mightier than the Sword, indeed.
How can one man grill every night?
It's that time. It's the time when my downstairs neighbor gets out the grilling tools, rolls the Weber directly under my windows, pours entirely too much lighter fluid on the coals, and attempts murder by asphixiation.
But tonight I refuse to lie down and pass out like usual. I've cranked up the stereo, and I have turned the speakers to the window, and I have thrown open the sash. There will be battle in the suburbs tonight.
... the one where you find out you're on the web where you didn't think you were? I just had a flash of:
Geeks on parade.
I just wish people would notice more often. Just received a letter that starts like this:
Attn: Kate
Dear Sir:
etc. Um, hello? It was from someone named Bill.
pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
Yes, I know my archives are intermittently not working. I'm working on it, sort of. Mostly what I mean is that I'm reloading the page over and over again, wondering what the problem could possibly be. Thanks for noticing.
As of today, I've officially been here for four years.
And so I thought to tell the story of how I ended up here. It's a story many of you may have heard, or even have been a part of, but it's an interesting story, nonetheless, I think. Shows you my haphazard nature, my adaptability (?), and my neuroses.
It was 1997. I had just graduated. I was coming off the end of a very messy breakup. We had split up the CDs (I lost Frampton Comes Alive and Blues Traveler, but I got the rack...), he'd moved out (and on), and I was a mess. I was hardly eating. I would sleep in 2 hour fits and then get up and go running. I had an overwhelming sense of physical elongation -- my limbs felt stretched and my extremities distant. Whenever I sneezed I felt certain I would vomit. I was living out the end of a lease in an apartment I had grown to despise, not working, with no job prospects to speak of... I wasn't writing; I was hardly thinking. I spent my days wandering the city. I occasionally bummed cigarettes off of strange men.
At the end of June my lease expired and I moved upstate to my parents' house. I put all of my belongings in storage so I wouldn't get too comfortable. I had a vague plan to move to Troy or Albany and share an apartment with Joe when he returned to RPI in the fall. I was going to work at the Dinosaurs Alive! exhibit at the state museum. It was a six month exhibition that I figured was perfect for me, because I knew it would end and I would have to make a decision about where to go next.
I stayed with my parents for all of 4 weeks, during which time I was probably home about 8 days. I was back in the city almost every weekend. The time I was home was spent updating my CV, trying to make myself sound like less Engineer, more inspired-math-whiz-mad-scientist. Surely there was someone looking for what I had...and who knows, maybe if I had stuck around to finish that search, I would be in a very different place today.
Instead, I got a call from the placement office at college saying there was a company looking for a Mechanical Engineer. They had seen my CV and my transcript, and were still interested... imagine that. The company called later that day and I was intrigued. This was a company doing good things, saving lives... with economic growth and a fascinating little product. New Jersey, though... I cycled through the reasons to reject the idea -- bad location, a job I'd convinced myself I didn't want, bad location, bad location. But I visited anyway, and sure enough I took the job.
My first night here, I cried.
What evolution is this, I wondered, that I have meandered into this little niche of being, so far from where I imagined myself, while still just the same little girl as always? I mourned for the fact that I had nothing I loved enough to regret giving up.
But circumstances frequently appear dire at first glance. What I thought was a mistake turned out to be character-building. I was okay alone. I found out how to amuse myself. I played lots of one-player chess for a while. Eventually I started rowing and realized I had missed being fit. I started writing again (and here we are). I found friends at work, and then gave them up when I realized they were all idiots. I spent a lot of weekends not going into the city. I bought a car I can only drive here and now. I calmed down.
And really, I think I've turned out okay, so far. I still cry sometimes, because I still don't have the passion I think I should have, or because I'm afraid of a crazy lunatic climbing through my window, or because I don't know what to do next... but I don't regret moving here, and I'm excited to figure out what comes next and go do it.
So raise a glass to four years for me, and if you have any suggestions, I'd be more than willing to entertain 'em. Thanks!
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