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Sunday, November 30, 2003

 
9:22 PM: [#] [0]

we filmed for 6 hours today. leopoldo unfortunately didn't make it down today, and andrew backed out at the last minute, but we did gain carl, so we ultimately had a quorum. :) the big time-eater this time was prepping the set(s) since we had so many more shots than we did for the last one (the 1-person, 40-second film i call "the disappointing coffee cup" in honour of edward gorey, but whose official title is "gretchin's thirst"). but hey, we got homemade chocolate chip cookies out of this film (sorry, the stunt cookies remain unscathed), and hot dogs afterwards. yum.

i think sven's been editing all night. go him! though he did all the direction & camera work, too. i hope he doesn't burn himself out on this one.

i think i'm sick now. meh. how did i manage to avoid the first round of november colds until now? bah.

in other news, i finally had a reason to comment on doug's blog, so he knows i'm here, too. yay!

Saturday, November 29, 2003

 
9:59 PM: [#] [0]

we're filming tomorrow at an unholy hour. did i not mention the filming before now? sven, leopoldo, carl, andrew & i have formed a group of "guerilla filmmakers": filming & editing tiny films in a single session of 2-4 hours.

for freecycle i've been trying to give away these boxes for a week now. i'm trying to arrange to pick up a small lunch cooler (the leonids gave me an incentive to pick up my own, and probably a thermos sometime soon, too). and hey, a portable shrink-wrap thing just became available. *knocks wood*

in other news, go to no fish, go fish. it's cute, funky, cheap and awfully darned tasty.

rob mead's latest mix tape has a song which won't leave my head: "pure," from the black mountain music project. i suspect it will end up on the holiday CarD. give in, give in, give in, give in, give in, give in, give in, give in....

Thursday, November 27, 2003

 
9:29 PM: [#] [0]

along with found magazine, there's another found-art site: the royal journal of found art. whee!

had thanksgiving dinner at kay's place: delicious. i stayed through two rounds of "lunch money" (won one of them) & a viewing of the fellowship of the ring, but had to go home to call my grandmother in phoenix instead of staying for the two towers.

Tuesday, November 25, 2003

 
1:09 PM: [#] [0]

rainbow, rainbow, rainbow! it looks like it starts at nw 23rd and ends at nw 18th.

 
12:54 PM: [#] [0]

hey, i found my perfect shirt!

Monday, November 24, 2003

 
8:36 PM: [#] [0]

yesterday sven, leopoldo & i went to snowshoe at mt. hood (we ended up at white river, where you move through forest to timberline while gasping at this view). i do so like snowshoeing: it's friendly, relaxing, inexpensive, and i stay so much drier than i do when i'm snowboarding. afterwards, we stopped by the timberline lodge, one of those depression-era government projects with two-story wooden beams made from one solid tree. a simply stunning fade to twilight required us to shuffle around the tables in the bar until we were in front of the largest plate glass window in the lodge. [update 11.25.03: yes, i know the timberline lodge is where they shot the exterior of the shining. i know!]

hey, my parents found my blog! *waves* they sent me an email to call them, so i did tonight. they're in flagstaff on the way to visit my grandmother, and i promised i would call her on thanksgiving (thursday! geesh!).

speaking of thanksgiving, sven's coming with us to kay & reza's, but kay says the only vegetarian thing will be the stuffing, which just seems odd, but if true, means that sven & bryan might be sadly watching the rest of us eat. :(

Sunday, November 23, 2003

 
8:25 AM: [#] [0]

well, that whole "it's snowing!" episode yesterday morning lasted all of 3 minutes. still, i hear it's better than usual in these parts, and i'm off to mount hood now.

rob & mel were fun to hang out with yesterday afternoon & evening, and now i have a delightful piece of dichroic glass to keep in my pocket (and can say "expansion coefficient" in a remotely meaningful way). we got a chance to see where rob works, too, and i have a whole list of books i now need to add to my wishlist.

Saturday, November 22, 2003

 
11:16 AM: [#] [0]

it's snowing! right-fucking-now! hooray!

 
2:17 AM: [#] [0]

well, you can add that to my "top 10 list of things i didn't expect to do today": bury a squirrel we found on the street outside sven/alex's house. sven wrapped it in newspaper and we carried it in the dusk to the butte, burying it under a tree.

i was supposed to go to the 7-hour "ring-a-thon" tonight at bill's, since the extended cut of the two towers dvd came out on tuesday and michael was kind enough to volunteer bill's place for the occasion. but by the time i got home to pick him up i knew i wasn't going to be up for socialization. i just wanted to go back home and write, just wanted to be alone for a bit. i don't hate anyone; my brain was just full, thanks. part of it's because my weekend is now full, too: i spent some time tonight gathering the things rob lent me for burning man so i can return them tomorrow when i see him & mel. on sunday sven, his friend leopoldo & i are going to go snowshowing at mt. hood! i haven't been to mt. hood proper yet, but really the bonus here for me is the opportunity to play in more snow. i'm hoping leopoldo & sven don't just totally kick my ass while snowshoeing, though given my last trip to multnomah falls where i had to stop every 10 feet, it's entirely possible.

i'm way behind on email. guh. again, i don't hate anyone, my brain is just full. of something, i'm not sure what. cotton candy? flannel doused w/ kerosene? silt?

i'm still looking for stuff in the itunes music store that they don't have (most recently, the into the woods soundtrack). i had no idea i had such obscure tastes (but then, they actually have firesign theatre, for god's sake!). i think leeann will never send me a gift certificate again; i'm hoarding it like gold.

sven has a new blog (named "notepad") up now, which is a place for some informal thoughts about his youth liberation activism.

Thursday, November 20, 2003

 
11:07 AM: [#] [0]

i'd take this moment to write about how cool the leonids were, but it SNOWED in portland and i MISSED it! i'm so crushed. especially since i spent the day between wasco & condon in what i call "the world's smallest state park" watching it RAIN instead of SNOW. arrgh!

*deep breath* okay. i feel better now. because the leonids really were lovely. the clouds cleared before we hit the dalles and by the time we swung south, we were among fields and the stars were thick around us. unfortunately, it was also incredibly windy and there was no way we were going to be able to enjoy falling stars with our eyes tightly shut against the blowing dust and while bracing ourselves against the svan. so onward we drove into the night and into the hills, until we reached the best star-watching place ever: there was nothing there but a large flat space, toilets, and a picnic table -- which is all we really needed, after all. we got out all the blankets & pillows and set them up on the table, along with a thermos of french onion soup, and stayed out there until the wind caught up with us several hours later. though the spot was right off the road, we only saw four cars in all that time (two right at the end). then we piled the blankets into the back of the van and slept amazingly comfortably until late morning, and then watched the rain & read & napped (we shoulda brought scrabble!).

i had noticed slush being left by other cars stopping to use the toilets, but i had no idea portland (!) got snow until sven called alex at the burgerville in the dalles. argh! so in order to get some sort of snow fix, we stopped at a park-n-ride at the lewis and clark state recreation area to stomp around, make snow angels and a skeptical snowman named leo. so i had a good time, though it made me very cold & damp, so afterwards, a warm shower and a microwaved meal was very appreciated.

the leonids weren't overwhelmingly spectacular this year, and i suppose a great many people would have not found it worthwhile to drive all that way & back again for what amounted to a couple of handfuls of meteors. but they're always magic to me and being as i haven't seen a meteor shower in a long time, much less one with company, i don't regret a moment. *pauses* i just hope it snows again. :)

Tuesday, November 18, 2003

 
12:33 PM: [#] [0]

hey! portland's clear sky clock should prove very helpful for celestial phenomenon..!

 
11:52 AM: [#] [0]

i was wondering what the per-dollar breakdown was on the itunes music store, and thanks to time magazine's "coolest inventions 2003" story, i now know:
"Jobs has one more reason not to be concerned about the competition. "The dirty little secret of all this is there's no way to make money on these stores," he says. For every 99¢ Apple gets from your credit card, 65¢ goes straight to the music label. Another quarter or so gets eaten up by distribution costs. At most, Jobs is left with a dime per track, so even $500 million in annual sales would add up to a paltry $50 million profit."

 
10:01 AM: [#] [0]

michael tucked me into bed at 9 p.m. last night and i slept for almost 13 hours. (i can't remember the last time i went to bed before he did!) the plan for tonight is still to see the leonids, though i don't know how far i will need to drive to escape the rain & clouds, though somewhere between mt. hood & idaho might work. linda & michael recommend i check the passes for snow.

portland freecycle really came through for me this weekend: i am now the proud owner of a standing light table, the kind with its own utilitarian 60's industrial grey metal charm. it's in terrific working order. like i needed another piece of furniture for that room, but how could i pass up a free light table, something i've wanted for years and could never afford (these puppies go for between $500-$1000)? much thanks to michael who helped me pick it up, and to sven who let me use the svan & then even helped clean it up.

we watched wednesday's angel episode (thanks for taping it, philip!) and we all agreed that it was actually... good. we had almost forgotten what that was like. it had complexity, subtlety, action, plot progression, and all those other things i missed in the first six episodes this season.

Saturday, November 15, 2003

 
11:31 AM: [#] [0]

hee... michael had a very successfull call of cthulu game the other night. we're sharing itunes songs via rendezvous today, and it turns out to play purchased music from another machine, even via rendezvous, your machine has to be authourized. grrrrrr.

Friday, November 14, 2003

 
10:13 PM: [#] [0]

you know how they say you shouldn't buy groceries when you're hungry? it's true.

 
3:08 PM: [#] [0]

btw, the apple store is also looking for a store manager & an assistant store manager (you'd think they'd have thought of that before now!), a mac genius, a key holder (a lead sales position) and an inventory control specialist.

 
12:17 PM: [#] [0]

the apple store grand opening is tomorrow! almost everyone i know is going (hi, guys! someone bring me a t-shirt!) and i'm so jealous!

alas, i have a prior committment to attend sven's movie party (showing: soylent green and the cook, the thief, his wife and her lover). and ordinarily i might just leave early, but the people who did the art documentarian show are having an artists roundtable tomorrow. so i'll be going late, as it is. why is everything happening tomorrow?

i thought i might attend the best of the northwest arts & crafts show today, but now i think i won't. crashed a little hard last night and wanted to sleep in, go grocery shopping, and work on job apps today. did you know that elephant's deli has 14 essay questions? things like:
* "what's the difference between an 'aggressive' salesperson & a 'pushy' salesperson?"
* "although it takes a lot to upset most people, what would upset you?"
* "describe an instance when you had to overcome a difficult situation."

and there's enough room to write about two sentences each (easiest for the "if you only had one word to describe yourself, what would it be and why?" question: suggestions appreciated. otherwise, i'm leaning towards "curious.").

and since it appears i'm moving chronologically backwards, it seems like the time to mention that last night i attended lost in translation with philip & sven. the nytimes apparently said "[it] contains the self- stylized lonesomeness found in post-punk, like new order's 'bizarre love triangle,'" and if i had seen that, i might not have gone: not because i don't like new order (i do!), but because i can't imagine how anything could have possibly lived up to that. as it turns out, i'm not sure that's true (if i had to make a music reference, i might have compared it to cocteau's twins' "heaven or las vegas"), but it was very sweet, delicate & understated. it did an excellent job of making most of the characters sympathetic, and none of it really felt forced (i have to say, it felt like exactly the kind of thing that would happen to me). i think i'll want to see it again at some point to see if it hold up to re-viewing: for all its delights, it wasn't a complex movie w/ a lot of layers, which may be what keep it from my top-10 list. (the site, btw, is entirely in flash, which makes me sad, but it does have a big chunk of the soundtrack available for listening, though i didn't see the karaoke songs, philip. scarlett johannson is 18?! oh. geesh. i have to go lie down.)
[update 11.16.03: rob says he "found its real value, in terms of re-watching, in its subtlety rather than its complexity. there is a lot happening when there's nothing really happening in this film." he also says there's a hidden karoake track.]

but first (or last, depending on how you're reading the chronology), i finally had to go to planned parenthood to get another opinion on the UTI, which ought to have been cleared up by monday (it's been almost 2 weeks already!). they gave me a prescription (alas, cheaper visit, more expensive meds) which unfortunately wasn't specific about the strength and so i couldn't get it filled last night. i'll have to do that today when they can call the office. grrr. i am so done with this. makes me wish i were a boy. :P

Wednesday, November 12, 2003

 
1:10 PM: [#] [0]

and because michael stayed home yesterday, the laundry fairy came! yay!

 
12:30 PM: [#] [0]

there's a little huffiness happening on the portland freecycle list about whether or not certain "wanted" posts have dealers behind them. i say you can't police that sort of thing & that being suspicious of anyone who suddenly finds themselves awash in nostalgia over tinkertoys or whatever only serves to make everyone protective of their stuff, which is antithetical to freecycle.

the best quote from one of the other people (and not just because it mentions me, but because it's something i'm striving for): "i'll say it again: give freely, accept graciously, thank sincerely - and then, as gretchin said in a recent post, LET IT GO!" (though i didn't shout it like that, mind you.)

 
12:10 PM: [#] [0]

bah! i tried calling the california unemployment claims office, but their 1.800 number can't be called outside of california! argh! i remember this trick: it was something they had done for calstateteach. but i don't know how to get around it. maybe i'll contact packetwarp dan.

[update 11.14.03: rob says, "your phone number problem is due to the phenomenon of the "regional 800 number." most likely there's someone elsewhere in the country using the same number, which is applicable everywhere but CA. there's a way around it, but i don't know what it is. heh."]

Tuesday, November 11, 2003

 
12:48 PM: [#] [0]

i forgot! alex told us apple is opening a new store in tigard (i was really hoping it would be pioneer square). they're looking for a salesperson (or, rather, a "Flexible Work Mac Specialist").

 
12:00 AM: [#] [0]

this weekend:

* i discovered i wanted to be an art documentarian. but not just any art documentarian, oh, no. i want to be an art documentarian in process.

"process" was an art show at the portland center for the advancement of culture. an artist collaborated with a "documenter" responding with an equally artistic "documentation" of that artist's process:

* a painting with a timelapse animation (sven's favorite: over 12,000 photos were used!);
* a series of 7 paintings, a loose narrative of a car crash, with a music cd (this will apparently become a rock opera at the closing show);
* the penicillin corset w/ an accordian storybook;
* the muscles and tendons of man & the muscles and tendons of arm, with "samples" of the ingredients (sawdust, paint samples, diet pepsi, receipts) collected in jars w/ indexed, neatly-typed label tags. and while that was impressive, the documentation was vastly more extensive, including a montage of the studios, pix of the process, polaroid snapshots in baggies, and a map of portland which marked places & frequency of visitation. whee! (can you tell this was my favorite? it tugged at my ephemeral heart.)

btw, it was really cold in that space! if you go, bring a coat.

* i helped sven weed his back yard in preparation for his landlords to rototill it & replace it w/ bark dust. (yes, bark dust!) it was tough to be coherent enough on a saturday morning, but playing violent femmes helped. it always does.

* later that day we attempted to watch the eclipse. trying to escape what weather.com called "fair" weather but i called "cloudy," we drove to salem & then headed east: almost got to mill town but then turned back to sublimity (!). parked in a dark field which would have been perfect if the clouds had cooperated. alas, by the time the moon broke free, it was already halfway out of the penumbra, and we only got to see it for a few more minutes before the clouds swallowed it again, just enough to verify the shadow was, in fact, moving from half to a tad bit more than 3/4. in an attempt to console ourselves, we stopped for some "otter paws" ice cream cones.

* i saw the matrix revolutions (twice, though i didn't write about it the first time. thanks sven & mark!). everyone else seemed to have liked it well enough even if they weren't thrilled with it, but i really had a hard time with it. to be fair, war movies do absolutely nothing for me, and that's basically what it turned into at the end. it didn't help that the dialogue through the whole movie was truly, truly awful. i have a whole host of unanswered questions & lost threads i'd pursue if i cared about it at all, but it left me pretty numb. i so adored the first one, the second one irritated me quite a bit but still had some fantastic scenes, but the third one mainly bored me. one of my more interesting observations: i'm pretty sure the reason why the neo/agent smith mano e mano fight scene happens in a blinding rainstorm is to obvuscate how cgi it is.

tonight the discussion group met to discuss feminism, but only the group organizer & i showed up this time. this might be in part due to the fact that she didn't send out an email reminder, but it was still a little sad. the good news is doing research for it led me to this wonderfully inclusive article defining feminism ("yes, you are") which i think i will adopt for myself. i think i still prefer "egalitarian" to "feminist," though, as just being a feminist seems too narrow when there are so many other humans who are also treated unfairly.

so we'll try the discussion thing again next month (topic: news media) and see what happens. it turns out she works for kboo which looks like it has fairly eclectic programming, and they're looking for news reporters...

today michael has the day off for veteran's day. i've never worked for a place which gets veteran's day off. hmph. he's been asked to choose what to do for thanksgiving, and seeing as i don't really have any plans (there's no way i can afford to travel), it'll be interesting to see where we end up.

i still have this freaking UTI. argh. i'm out of antibiotics & so there's not much i can do other than go see another doctor. i wish i knew what the last visit cost, but i haven't received the bill yet.

Monday, November 10, 2003

 
3:44 PM: [#] [0]

pomegranates are messy! but tasty. :)

Thursday, November 06, 2003

 
4:12 AM: [#] [0]

hooray! i am now armed w/ antibiotics & pain relievers, thanks to kaiser's interstate medical office south 24-hour urgent care after hours program. the guy who checked me in said it's the best of both worlds: e.r. staff & resources, but without e.r. prices. unfortunately, i don't know that for sure, because they wouldn't let me pay then; instead, i'll be billed. i'd prefer to pay and be done with it, myself. but at 3 a.m., it's pretty darned convenient.

[update: linda recommends looking into the oregon health plan. unfortunately, i happen to know one can't use ohp benefits at planned parenthood. :(]

Wednesday, November 05, 2003

 
1:28 PM: [#] [0]

so i woke up motivated to do laundry: i sorted, piled, counted quarters, dressed in laundry-only clothing, and then discovered i didn't have enough detergent. argh. so now do i get dressed in presentable clothing & brush my hair & go to zupan's to pick up more & -then- do laundry, or do i just forget it for today? but at some point i'm going to have get dressed anyway, right? gah. it takes so little to derail me. and i know, half the world's 6 billion people would love to have this as their delimna of the day.

matrix=tomorrow afternoon w/ sven & his friend michael (too many michaels!). mark & i will go sunday (maybe w/ my michael & some others, if they don't go friday when sven & i are going to an art thing), so i hope it's good, though packetwarp dan says the "bbc trashed it." sven & i will be on eclipse watch on saturday, but i think everyone else is gaming.

oh, and last night i suddenly remembered now that i'm watching angel again, i can return to reading television without pity. i thought i could return to reading tabula rasa, but they haven't updated for a few episodes this season & i'm beginning to suspect they've given up.

that's it. you may now return to your regularly scheduled day.

Tuesday, November 04, 2003

 
4:30 PM: [#] [0]

eep! today's voting day! who's voting?
[0 votes from michael, 1 vote from philip, 1 vote from sven, 1 consented vote for sven's alex]

 
1:51 PM: [#] [0]

linda also confirms light snow this afternoon. it still doesn't look like anything here.... *peers anxiously through condensation gaps*

 
11:47 AM: [#] [0]

michael says it snowed this morning on his way to work! eeeeeee!!!! and brian's got his final senior tech fellow interview today. that has to be a good sign, right? :D otoh, if it's still snowing, it's not like i could tell because our windows are perpetually fogged. :(

Monday, November 03, 2003

 
8:27 PM: [#] [0]

oh, and my blogshare stock is worth $1000. i didn't even know i was listed. but linda & chas are doing way better than i am.

 
7:22 PM: [#] [0]

azo & cystex are my two best friends today (thanks for the recommendation, linda! and the trip to walgreens, michael!). guh. i'm not ordinarily a drug person, but they're like little miracles when you're in this much pain. i don't know if i've got what sven's got, but i've been riding the edge of something for a while and this just pushed me right over into UTI land. it's what i imagine hell to be like. (not to mention the joys of unsweetened cranberry juice. sometimes the science of gastronomy really intrigues me, and this is one of those times: how in the world did we manage to convince ourselves that cranberries were edible?)

speaking of hell, it turned out the haunted halloween maze that planet steve was working on fell through (ach! what a waste!). but steve is as ever optomistic:

The NEW holiday will be known as Bloody Valentine's Day, and will fall on the closest weekend to the 14th of February. Instead of the portable maze I plan to haunt my entire garage and studio, giving me over a hundred yards of maze to haunt! We will gleefully twist that saccharine Hallmark monstrosity into a celebration of not Undying but UNDEAD Love.....Zombies will covet the hearts instead of the brains of the living......There will be a dramatic reading (or re-enactment!) of The Telltale Heart......The climax of the evening will be the Bonfire Of The Inanities, a burning of Hallmark cards and figurines, Care Bears, Love Is artifacts and whatever other horrors we can assemble. I can't wait.

hee.

still nothing on the total lunar eclipse (!) and matrix revolutions. i may be the only one to see the eclipse, and while there has been feedback on wanting to see the matrix, no clear plan has emerged. *bites lip, tries to be patient*

other random news: i got a chance to talk to rob on the weekend, though, and we're making plans to see each other on a weekend this month. yay! the stars last night were so clear it was startling: orion, which is coming up earlier and earlier now, sparkled like ice. and speaking of ice, michael is again predicting weather which involves ice, quite possibly in the shape of mixed snow/ice/rain tomottow.

Sunday, November 02, 2003

 
11:13 AM: [#] [0]

november is still a surprise to me. michael says it might even snow. but things aren't slowing down:

a total lunar eclipse (!) will occur november 8 (!) @ 5:06 p.m. pst (for 24 minutes of totality). it looks like this will be about moonset, which is a shame, because the partial eclipse will begin at 3:32 p.m. pst. depending on the weather that day, i may make serious plans to get the heck out of dodge and get to a place without clouds, which will require travelling earlier in the day.

and the matrix revolutions begins wednesday! (why wednesday, we wonder?) is anyone going?

Saturday, November 01, 2003

 
10:45 PM: [#] [0]

did everyone have a good halloween? i did, even while trying to find a super 8 hotel which didn't exist in centralia and nobody i talked to would admit it. but it served me right, i guess: while trying to help sven celebrate his birthday a little early, i was (very) late in meeting dan.

all the halloween plans happened after i had given up on everyone. i suppose this will teach me patience next year: there was something at john's and later at alex's, and today a showing of alien in the theatre i missed. (michael didn't end up going to any of this, either). last night sven had a halloween movie & pre-birthday party that was apparently fan-tabulous.

so thursday was my only true halloween event (except pumpkins, of course!): we went to see liminal's faust(faust), and the vague "what is it?" mystery wasn't solved upon seeing their gorgeous letterpressed posters proclaiming it to be "a liturgy, a science experiment, a haunted house, a musical." nor was it solved upon actually seeing the show, which was entirely narrativeless and required the audience to drift from seat to seat and wall to wall in order to keep from missing anything. they did several things right: the sound & lighting were top notch, and i quite liked the set(s) and the use of space & perspective. but something about it just felt emotionless: maybe it was the dancing, maybe it was the way i couldn't really tell if the actors were supposed to be in character and if so what they were, maybe it was the clumsy way they tried to integrate the chorus. however, i give bonus points for ambition, and this was certainly that. i was very glad i went, but i'm not sure i could recommend it to anyone else i know.