Tuesday, February 27, 2007

8:40 AM - Why did the marsupial cross the road?

starting with a few bad jokes

I've had some miniature tidbits rattling around in my head, so I'm going to sit down and turn them into a blog entry. If you don't think they are funny, then just remember this is my blog and I am allowed to indulge my own sense of humor. Moving along.

There's a car that I often pass on my route home from work, and it's got a bumper sticker that I really like: Honk if you're a goose. I tried to figure out where they sell them, but it looks like it might be custom made.

I know I'm late to the party on this one, but... what exactly does JT's "I'm bringing sexy back!" song mean? He talks about sexy as if it was an overdue library book. Thank you, Justin, for bringing sexy back, but I'd still like to know why you took it in the first place.

Clearly I am not cool.

All of my things are packed and shipped, so now I just have to finish cleaning and finding homes for the leftover bits. Everything is empty... I took photos of my boxes just to remember what it's like to have my life consolidated into a little box. It's snowing today, and everything is covered with a few inches of wet, perfect for clumping into snowballs, cloying snow.

Tomorrow I finish work in the mid-afternoon, drive south to MA to FedEx myself some clothes to wear in California, and then am off on my adventure. It's always amazing how many objects there are in an "empty" space, and my challenge tonight will be getting rid of those things and cleaning up.

It still doesn't feel real.

Friday, February 23, 2007

6:48 AM - Need more Vitamin C

a realization

I've had a couple of experiences in the past few days that reminded me of something very important: I am a creative person. I haven't been in circus classes since the performance in October, mostly for financial reasons, and without circus or other creative outlets, I've been living a mundane existence of database development, packing boxes, and handling the thousand little stresses of moving across the country on no money. For me, it's like the world stops on February 28th, and I can't see anything beyond that.

I am hoping to get enthusiastic about circus and other forms of creativity, to find a place of balance in my life. Brattleboro is.... such an uninspiring and miserable town, that I haven't wanted to do anything except curl up in a hole and hide. And I've been doing that for four months, and I didn't even remember that I am a creative person until other people reminded me. I really cant' wait to leave Vermont.

Five days.

As a side note-- in the course of writing this entry, I realized that I will be visiting several creative people for a couple of days in NYC, and maybe they can help re-ignite my spark a bit. I don't want to keep waking up in a dull and colorless world.

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

1:22 PM - despite the crankies, a cute anecdote in the middle

a few things

First, to get it off my chest, I hate the new Blogger. They forced me to upgrade from Old Blogger (which worked just fine, thank you very much) to New Blogger (which everything I read at the time of the transition said it was buggy, especially with custom templates, which is what I rely on). New Blogger: you get one chance to make this work correctly, and if it doesn't work, I'm going to thrash you senseless and then move to a new blogging module. End of vitriol.

What inspired me to log in to ZOMG don't force me to use New Blogger was this post by Pierut, where she talks about revitalizing old wood furniture. I really would like to have nice furniture, and so I was thinking maybe when I move back to San Francisco (in 1 week) I could learn how to do this. I've obviously played too many video games, because my inner brain said, "Yeah, I could pick up a tradeskill."

Everything else has been moving and packing and laying down preparations. I am going to test publishing and if it doesn't work, a week from now I'm going to Mountain View with the biggest bottle of maple syrup the world has ever seen. "Greetings from Vermont. This is for forcing me to change my blog."

I'm sure I'll let you know how it goes.

Thursday, February 08, 2007

1:44 PM - make a run for it

Bay to Breakers

I've decided that I really want to do Bay to Breakers this year. 7 or 8 miles? No problem. Are you with me?

I'm going to be local again! Yay! I was telling someone here how to get to the Cottage Hair Studio where Joanna cut my hair today, and I accidentally said "downtown Berkeley" instead of "downtown Brattleboro". I am halfway home already. (Especially since my DVDs, my yoga mat, even the scarf I wanted to wear yesterday... they are all packed already.)

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

1:59 PM - get in mah belly

faster than a speeding blog

Predictably, I consider the Super Bowl to be the best time of year to do some chores or go to the zoo. And predictably, I still managed to be riled up by an instance of homophobia in the media. And before I could (predictably) write about it in my blog to explain what exactly is homophobic about the commercial, asking all of you to write your congresspeople and stop eating chocolate, the story has a new twist.

Apparently the campaign had a website with three other versions of the commercial; and all three were considerably more homophobia-inducing than the one that aired. Whereas I would have been making a nuanced and subtle argument about the homophobia involved in the first commercial (and yes, it's homophobic), there's no question that the violent version of the commercial set an example of violence against queer people. Predictably, queer advocacy groups complained. And disappointingly (although probably also predicatbly), the company has refused to apologize even though it has discontinued the ad campaign in response to the complaints.

One of the excuses the company offered was that they were offering an ad that was supposed to be funny to their core consumers. Does that mean that the core consumers for Snickers are overweight, violent homophobes?

This country has a long way to go.

Sunday, February 04, 2007

1:08 PM - by jove

woohoo!

It's been a great week. I had three separate companies call me for interviews, and things are going really well on that front. A subcontractor called me about some Flash graphics for a site. I bought a plane ticket home to California. I've got two thirds of my stuff packed in boxes. And finally, I just called the people who are moving my car to schedule an appointment, and the price they gave me was almost 10% less than their original quote. Yay!!

I'm coming home I'm coming home I'm coming home.