Tuesday, October 19, 2004
The saga continues…and ends (hopefully). Naturally the husband was cautioning me to exercise restraint, and telling me to have patience (Bah!) and that I should wait to see if that undisclosed location would get any new machines in before the month’s end. While I see the wisdom in his logic I just don’t want to, nay, I cannot wait! So back to ebay I went, searching high and low. After sifting through the flotsam and jetsam of spare parts I finally found it. The one. My trigger finger was just itching to click that Buy It Now button. But I waited for the good word from Lane, and I got it:
i would buy it. good price. it’s a decent machine. much better deal than the other one. i’d still upgrade the ram, though.
what are you waiting for! scratch that itchy trigger finger!
So, thanks to my enabler, I should have my hands on a laptop soon. Unless my crapass luck somehow sours the deal. Think happy thoughts. Think happy thoughts.
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Tuesday, October 19, 2004
I have long been known for my crapass luck, so I shouldn’t be surprised when my plans fall apart at the seams. All yesterday afternoon I had my eye on an ebay auction, for a nice-looking 500 MHz G3 Powerbook. When I came upon it bidding was around $152, but skyrocketed up to $395 by the end of the day, which was out of my price range. No problem, I thought, as I had a most secret method style backup plan. But the rug’s been pulled out from under me. The 300 MHz G3, and my second choice 292 MHz G3, that I’d intended to purchase tomorrow morning (in an undisclosed but legit location) have both been sold! Grrr! Aaargh! And honestly, I do not have the time or patience for ebay (specifically for laptop acquisition, I did score some sweet new winter boots for the little man yesterday). So far the only items I’ve procured for my upcoming NaNoWriMo activities are a new Chococat notebook, and pen and pencil case (with pen and pencil). But that alone won’t get me to my 50,000 words.
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Distractions abound this Monday morning:
- Found Future Librarian, a resource for those, like myself, who would like to become librarians in the future;
- Moms Named Sharon, which I am one of, sort of. My birth name was spelled “Sharon” but I legally changed it in the 90s because a) it seems like an old lady name (yeah, yeah) and b) I’ve always been creeped out that I was named after Sharon Tate…after she was murdered by the Manson Gang. Ick.
- I need Ted Leo’s latest, Shake the Sheets. Been repeatedly listening to the free track, Me and Mia, and debating what to do about next month. He’ll be playing in Duluth on the 16th, and Chicago on the 18th. I’d love to road trip it to either destination, but the outlook is not so good. He doesn’t have anything scheduled for the 17th, so here’s to hoping he’ll stop in Minneapolis.
- Once again, realizing that I should have taken Spanish classes instead of eight useless years of French. A couple years ago I managed to get myself on some Spanish language email list. I haven’t unsubscribed because the URLs sent in the messages have been interesting, mainly having to do with music and art events. Sometimes I let Google’s translation service slaughter the messages, but that’s painfully bad. The latest email led to this: La Gran Maula.
- Not at all surprised, but absolutely disgusted that freaking Richard Gere and J Lo have had the gall to remake an absolutely perfect Japanese film. Jerks.
- The husband hung out with one of the Daves the other night and brought home a copy of The Grim Grotto, the eleventh of A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket (aka Daniel Handler). Can’t believe I didn’t pick it up sooner, as I’d been chomping at the bit waiting for it to come out. I’m less enthused by the idea of the upcoming film adaptation, but will, no doubt, be seeing it in the theater anyhow.
- I am far more excited by the LoTR extended version, coming out December 14th. An extra 50 minutes of character development. And twenty hours of bonus material. The trailer gives me goosebumps.
- And finally, a Mac guru and friend has supplied me with some solid advice, and good links, regarding the purchase of a decent used G3 powerbook on the cheap. Thank you Lane!
Now I’ve got exactly two hours before the little man returns home from school (which, today, featured a special field trip to a pumpkin patch). Time to shut out the distractions and get down to business, which is easier said than done. Naturally.
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It’s been a lovely weekend. Saturday morning I arrived at MCTC about fifteen minutes before the workshop I intended to attend, and scored a free parking spot just across the street from the venue. City Pages did not mislead. There really were rows and “rows of area publishers and booksellers in full schmooze mode” crowded on to the floor. If one of them caught me eyeing their wares I was immediately caught in their tractor beams, desperate to extricate myself so as to continue on to my destination. But how can I hold anything against fellow bibliophiles? The workshop itself was wonderful. Chris Baty’s energy comes through well in his book, but is even more fun firsthand. I both enjoyed and needed his pep talk. But I couldn’t stay long afterwards. Managed to be third in line to have my book signed, then headed home after only a quick walk through the aisles. One item of note…I discovered that Norwegian graphic novelist Jason will be in town in April. Loved his book, Hey Wait… but am a little leary of this idea…of a “world premiere mask and dance production” based on his characters. Hmmm. The masks I saw looked cool enough, but I don’t know about this dance business. Only time will tell. Speaking of time, I got home less than two hours after I’d set out. When I returned the little man happened to be looking out the window, his little face lighting up upon spotting me. Walking in the door I smelled the husband’s notorious snickerdoodles. Made myself eat lunch before devouring one…or two. The remainder of the weekend was spent lazing and playing, making pancakes and seitan stew (separately), looking for a cheap or free old laptop, to borrow or buy, for use during November (any leads appreciated), and doing a minimal amount of housework. Just now I was so tired that I wondered, for an ever so brief moment, if my computer was runningslowly because I’d just turned on the dishwasher. See, housework is bad for the brain. Well, for my brain at least.
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Things that are making me happy today:
- The smell of the crisp, clean Fall air.
- The sound of old mix tapes after they’ve emerged from long hibernations.
- The sight of Sam Brown’s drawings on paper.
- The little man’s hugs, as he begins to comprehend the difference between baby touch and bear touch.
- The taste of pancakes for dinner.
And some bonus sensory stimuli (things that also make me happy):
- The Aeolian Ride, which is the Inflatable Suit Bike Ride, of course.
- Friends of friends of friends. Turns out my old pal Noel is a friend of the husband of the force behind Gengki Gang Hats (considered making a little flow chart graphic to help make sense of that statement). I’ve been a long-time fan of Lindze’s work, but haven’t been able to choose just one style of hat. Though if I were forced to, it might just be the Choco Cat Hat.
- This gorgeous gallery, documenting the super-sizing of Star Wars action figures from 1979 to 1997.
- The little man’s increasingly appropriate use of pronouns. The boy has been talking about himself in the third person for some time now, and has never had a handle on pronouns in general. So he took me by surprise this morning. Upon seeing that the husband was wearing my headphones the little man quite correctly said to him “you are wearing her headphones.” It may seem like a small thing, but this is a HUGE deal for us.
There’s just one more sense I left out, and that’s a sense of guilt, for not quite hitting…all right, for completely missing more than one deadline I set for myself this week. But I do like what Douglas Adams said on the matter:
“I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”
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The FedEx delivery person must think we’re a bunch of freaks. When he rang the doorbell our little family converged on the poor man, over-eager, eyes wide and glistening in anticipation. After depositing the goods he backed away slowly…as we tore into our packages like a pack of wild animals in for the kill. Now the lot of us are crowded into the computer room, playing with our new toys. The husband with his replacement monitor. The little man with the big monitor box. And me, with my shiny new keyboard. It’s just so…very…clean. The letters on the keys are completely legible (which should help the little man, in a big way). And when I type the lefthand Ctrl key actually works, and, get this, the M and I keys remain attached to the keyboard instead of popping off when I press down on them. How novel. There are two minor differences I will have to adjust to, though. The grouping of Home/Page Up/End keys, et al, are now in columns of 2×3 rather than 3×2, and the arrow keys are laid out differently. But these are things I can live with. And get used to, just in time for NaNoWriMo.
Addendum: It’s only fun until someone gets hurt. The little man seems to have poked himself in or around the eye with one of the box flap corners. Luckily his eye seems all right, with just a bit of a scratch near it. And the husband helped turn that frown upside down with a demonstration of his new monitor’s capabilities…with a showing of Little Nemo.
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Thursday, October 14, 2004
I never have been much of a morning person. Today the phone rang while I was still sleeping. My first instinct was to panic, thinking that someone had died. And that really was what my voicemail was about. My poor Dad had called. To remind me that my brother would have been 34 today. Like I could ever forget.
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Wednesday, October 13, 2004
There’s always too much going on these days. One not-to-be-missed event is the Twin Cities Book Festival happening Saturday in Minneapolis. The special sessons sound intriguing, especially the novel writing workshop with Chris Baty, founder of NaNoWriMo and author of No Plot? No Problem!: A High-Velocity, Low-Stress Way to Write a Novel in 30 Days. But the City Pages‘ Michael Tortorello admonishes: “Yeah, you’re going to have to give up some blogging time.” I’m not sure I can do that. It’s become publish or perish. Plus I’ve promised (myself) to write a piece for Mizna’s upcoming Mid-East in the Midwest open mike event, nervewracking though that might be.
In other news…the husband’s monitor died (after ten years of faithful service) just as he was looking at monitor prices. How ironical. Thankfully it came back long enough for me to watch House of Flying Daggers, which I enjoyed (mmmm, Takeshi) but opinion on IMDB’s message board varies wildly. Still, I’d like to see it on the big screen, when it’s released stateside on December 3rd. And not just a big monitor screen, though the husband’s replacement should be arriving soon.
Next week my lovely lady friends are planning our first girls’ night out in ages, but I doubt I will be able to attend. Sucks even more because they’re thinking about stopping by Psycho Suzi’s Motor Lounge, a place I’d been meaning to check out all summer, in support of the MN Rollergirls. That’s right, Minnesota now has an all-female roller derby league, and, if all goes well, Zophia will work up the gumption to try out.
And lastly, time for a product endorsement. Our co-op started carrying Dagoba vegan-friendly, fair trade certified, organic chocolate products (that’s a mouthful). When I saw the name my first thought was of Yoda’s temperate and humid swamp world, but there’s an extra “h” on the end. After tasting Dagoba’s dark chocolate all thoughts of Yoda were pushed aside, while I contemplated my next fix. And now I’ve got the little man hooked on their hot chocolate too. Oh, the shame of it all.
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I need to pause and take a breath. This is shaping up to be a gut-wrenching week of deadlines and mixed emotions. Listening to too much Low (+ Dirty Three), as I am doing right this very moment, is probably not the best idea. But I have managed to look beyond my self-involved bubble long enough to unearth a few choice oddities. Let’s start with the impostors / usurpers / evil twins:
- The other Sharyn Morrow out there seems to be some sort of Baptist Evangelist musician. I doubt we have much in common, aside from our shared name.
- I’ve been aware of one other Mass Distraction, but have just found another .org, only with a hyphen. I have to admit, they have an interesting concept:
Mass Distraction is a series of three jackets (the Coin Jacket, the Hood Jacket and the Game Jacket) intended to provoke thought and discussion about the idea of presence: physical presence no longer guarantees a person.s availability and attentiveness. Nowadays the user of a mobile communication device often splits his attention between the people in his surroundings and the person to whom he’s linked remotely. Often, in order to remain connected the people both near and far, the mobile phone user multitasks between the two communication channels. Whether disguised or not, this practice degrades the quality of the interaction with the people in his immediate presence.
Moving along to the WTF? category we have a few gems:
- Tonight I’m going to be your Watermelon Love. So sweet? So bizarre.
- Safer than Prozac (best when played with accompanying sound).
- This season I will mostly be wearing…a BAG on my head.
- And the perfect Halloween costume for that hottie in your life. Eww.
Lastly, via Jessamyn, an excellent resource devoted to Rethinking Columbus and Columbus Day. Now it’s time, once again, to bid you all a good night. Hey, let’s be careful out there.
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For such a low-key, leisurely weekend I sure have a lot of photos. Friday we had our first family outing in ages (as the husband keeps to a bizarre work/sleep schedule). The three of us ventured over to the Children’s Museum. This month only they have a nifty little hay maze set up outside. The little man was initially hesitant to enter, but once he’d figured it out he was reluctant to leave.
Saturday was fairly quiet. The little man and I visited the neighborhood playground early in the day, then drove to another in the evening…to enjoy a bonfire happening at the community center. It was lovely, but by 7:30pm many parents looked a bit tired (myself included) while the kids were just getting their second winds, whooping it up, energized by the novelty of playing in the near-dark. My alter ego, Captain Safety, became increasingly worried as I watched more and more children having collisions and near collisions…culminating in the little man being kicked in the head…as he not uncharacteristically ran under the monkey bars while another child happened to be traversing them. Naturally this barely slowed him down, but it got me moving. Homeward bound.
This afternoon Zophia graciously agreed to meet with me, for some one-on-one hands-on instruction. Despite her best efforts I do not have the knack for this knitting thing…yet. But I’m hoping I’ll get there. I can see where it would be a relaxing activity, after you’ve got the hang of it. Sadly I am easily distracted, and today she was trying to teach me the basics at a playground…packed with children…many of whom were yelling “MOM”, something which is guaranteed to snap my head around, even if the call is not coming from the little man. I’m thinking our next session will have to be indoors, preferably in a quiet venue. Perhaps not unlike a room-sized sensory deprivation tank, as I am one massively and completely distracted mother.
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