five thousand shades of blue

---

Tonight, Yungchen Llamo is playing the WOW Hall. She's a Tibetan vocalist who is utterly amazing. I saw her when she played with Vas at the same venue here in town. I wish I could go but it starts at 8:30 (approximately 1 hour before my bedtime) and I don't have money for a ticket. Aah well.

So today is my father's last day of work, all of this in the midst of my struggle to find a job. It feels too weird to think of having a parent who has retired. My dad doesn't seem old enough for that to be possible.

I hate that everyone I talk to is looking for employment. It's so depressing. I feel terribly sorry for the poor guy who just came in trying to sell cheap-ass car sets and $5 radios, because obviously it's the only work he can find and it must suck for him. Not sorry enough, however, to buy one.

I say, if you get just the Powerball number right, you should still be entitled to the jackpot. (Can you tell I matched one number on Saturday's lottery drawing?)

I know it's only Monday. I'm not sure how I'll make it through the week, waiting for word on whether I got the job. I really hope so, but I'll keep applying just in case...

Good luck to all of you participating in the 24 hour blogathon. You are all wonderful and have more stamina than I could ever hope to have. :)

Long morning. Lots of driving. Getting lost. Looking for parking, finding it, and realizing that the parking is even more brutal (and even more metered) in Salem than it is in Eugene. The Oregon State Capitol Building is very cool. Wasn't where I was going, but passed by it. Interviewinterviewinterview, think it went well, definitely better than the last one I had. Home at the moment, sending a large file on a dialup connection, which is rather like trying to send a golf ball through a garden hose. Bleah.

That reminds me. I got one of those tax relief refunds but you know what? The government just turned around put it towards a tax amount I still owe. Never mind I'm on a payment plan to take care of that. Uh, thanks -- I could have used the cash just about now. The people I know who need "relief" the most aren't getting a thin dime. Thanks for nothing.

Adding interactivity seems to so far have been a positive thing. Yeay.

The scene: yesterday afternoon, here in the café. One of our male customers, typing furiously away at a computer, stops typing suddenly to turn and ask, "What city is this again?"

The three of us look at him as if he must be joking, but his earnest expression tells us he's not. "Eugene," one of us says. "Oregon," another adds. He laughs and explains that he's from Indiana and has been on the road for about six weeks now, and has lost track of exactly where he is. I thought that sounded exciting but scary, and he said that yeah, it had its rough spots, but has been an awesome experience. I suddenly wished for the means and the opportunity to take off and see the world, or at least this country, and wondered briefly about the apparent discontent that indicated. But we've all had "run away and travel the world" adventure fantasies, haven't we?

On my way home, I passed the guy and his female companion, hitchhiking from a bus stop on W. 11th. I smiled.

Maybe it's just the designer in me disdaining too much white space, but I'm really getting aggravated by sites... okay, a spade's a spade, journals... that only give approximately 1 inch of screen space to the relevant, dynamic text. This looks just fine and dandy at the top of the page, but then you scroll down, and it's nothing except that narrow little newspaper-like column of text for screens and screens. No thought is put into that space beneath the initial page. It irks me.

How to make egg drop soup:

1. Get out a big soup pot; it must accommodate more than the broth. This is actually 4x the recipe out of my cookbook, the original of which allegedly serves 6. Hah. Maybe 6 elves. My mods make enough for 2-3 people (depending on appetite) to have dinner and then lunch the next day. Gotta love leftovers.
   
   
2. 12 cups of chicken broth (if you use boullion, only use 10 cubes to 12 cups water. Trust me on this, I'll tell you why later). The vegetarians out there can use vegetable broth.
   
   
3. ~2 lbs of pork (for some reason chicken with the chicken broth does NOT work, taste wise). Or, firm tofu cut into smallish pieces (again, for those who don't do meat).
   
   
4. Veg! Green onions, shiitake mushrooms, bamboo shoots, water chestnuts, cut up baby corn/even frozen corn, and so on. Use as much as you want, I guess. I happen to like it well stocked with vegetation.
   
   
5. Don't add anything yet.
   
   
6. Beat 8 eggs well and set them aside.
   
   
7. Bring the broth up to temp. Take out 2 cups of the now-hot broth and dissolve 8 teaspoons of cornstarch in it. Then dump it back into the soup.
   
   
8. Now add: 4 tbsp soy sauce (this, my friends, is why you only need 10 cubes -- otherwise, it is too salty), 2-3 tbsp sesame oil. Then boil the soup. I mean, BOILING. And start adding stuff. The veg. The meat (or tofu) -- which is why you need smallish pieces, because they will cook thoroughly when they hit the broth.
   
   
9. Keep that soup moving as you slowly pour the egg in. The egg will cook the instant it hits the boiling broth.
   
   
10. Turn down heat; serve with cilantro sprinkled on top (ok, this is not part of the recipe, but I think it tastes swell) and a small bowl of chow mein noodles on the side.

What not to do with your egg drop soup:

1. Take the name too literally.
   
   
2. That is to say, do not set it down on an unstable table so that gravity will take over and send your bowl of boiling hot soup splashing all over your arm and foot, heating up the buckle on your Birks such that you blister, and otherwise burning you pretty painfully.

(I am much better today. The blisters look and feel weird and are still a mite tender, and I just have a few red marks on my hand and arm. Here's a handy tip: Preparation H makes an excellent burn cream. I kid you not.)

And you, dear readers, benefit from my injury and stupidity! Aren't I kind?

Will reblogger be my salvation?
...
Yes, indeed. Now play nice or I will take the new toy away. :)

Well, I tried to install comments. The server I'm on is too too sad.

I looked, disbelieving, at the flyer that Andra held. Caitlin. I knew those eyes. I had seen her. She had been in the café, her grubby, dimpled, smiling face peeking out from beneath the knit cap even on that very warm morning, her skirt almost impossibly long. She was travelling, she said; she was trying to get by and would I be kind enough to give her some coffee? Normally my cynical nature would not have been moved for a street urchin trying to bum a cup of coffee, but there was something charming -- yet almost lost -- about her that forced me to remind myself how giving her a cup of coffee would do wonderful things for my karma (and besides, I've had moments where I've spilled out more than I gave to her). We chatted for a little bit; I was treated again to those cavernous dimples and amazing smile, and I wished her well on her travels. She wished me well, too.

She was a missing person. Her mother looked to me, asked me how long ago it had been. A few weeks, I said. Mom looked kind of glum, but unsurprised. Mom then asked me what she'd been wearing, and I told her. She nodded. Yes, that sounds like Caitlin. I told her that she'd gotten some coffee, and Mom smiled. Yes, that's Caitlin; been drinking coffee since she was ten.

A lot of people in Eugene had apparently seen Caitlin. I wish I could remember where she said she'd been heading. I can't quite recall if it was south (towards southern Oregon) or north up to Seattle or Olympia. I felt horrible for not being able to tell her more.

Caitlin, I hope you know how much you are missed, and that you find your way back to those who love you.

I haven't felt the least bit talkative or creative in the past few days, weeks, whatever. I have a lot on my mind, most especially the pivotal importance of landing a decent job -- of which there is one sorta-maybe web job which would be tedious but well paying, and of course, my interview with the State of Oregon this upcoming Friday. I have been too worried about stupid, stupid money, which I hate. I don't kid when I say I want to win the lottery, and it's not for selfish, materialistic reasons. I don't want a speedboat, or a Lamborghini, or a wide-screen TV. I want to be able to live comfortably and do the creative things I love to do without worrying about losing my home.

Strangely, the smell of rosemary is wafting up from the computer caddy. I can't figure out why.

Step and turn and hop and twist and lunge...

No, not ballet. The art of making a mocha.

Well, I do believe that's that, then. :)

Did it work?

Well. As soon as the template server is reachable by Blogger again, I can actually change my template to reflect this swooby new journalspace (okay, so it's not that different, but I did make a couple of new buttons and some other stylistic changes).

Ya'll wot give me linky love, please update, okay?

Are we moved?

Courtesy of MMF: the 2001 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest Winners. Hahahahahahahaha!

I often wonder what makes a song pop unexpectedly into one's head. I don't mean the times when a circumstance causes an association to a song (like reading a story with a character named "Lemon" makes you think of U2's song of the same name). I mean the other day, out of nowhere, "Land" by Duran Duran just popped into my head. I really can't think why it would. I haven't listened to the album it's on in a long time. It's not one that was ever released as a single and therefore unlikely I caught it on the radio. Maybe all the stress lately has finally caused me to snap. :)

Hm. I'm having a decision-making crisis. I was just going through my personal site's pages and realized the index page is utterly superfluous. I'm wondering now if I should bite the bullet and move this journally blog thing to the index and be done with it. However, in doing that I'll reduce the number of links on the side to... three. That seems lame. Thoughts on this? Send me an email, since I'm not set up with a comments system.

I could have gone my whole life without knowing about this.

Now for the really hard part. After the phone call from the job I'm going to interview with (a woman who, oddly enough, has the same name as my work-study boss way back in the mists of time when I was a freshman in college -- and is surely NOT the same person), I felt like I could tackle anything. I was ready to go paint a masterpiece, or run a marathon, or take over the world. Now... now my brain is quite a bit less sure and all the crystal-clear revelations and inspiration I had when I hung up have turned all fuzzy and full of self-doubt. The lizard in my head is taunting me with jabs: how can I even think I have a chance in convincing them I can do this job? (Which I know rationally that I can, by the way.)

I almost wish the interview could have happened instantaneously, because that "queen of the world" sensation would still be alive and fresh and I would have wowed them beyond belief. Ah well. I've got to trust what I know, believe in myself, and hope.

IN.
TER.
VIEW.

Direct all of your most positive energy to Salem, OR, on July 27th at 9:15 am.

That's all. Thank you.

We move from July to June to April, weather-wise. My head can't take it. *sneeze*

Impressions of the Oregon Country Fair
(Since it was my first)

Trees, dust, cloudy sky. Sunday. Spectrum of people: young, old, black, white, thin, fat, short, tall. Glitter. Fairy wings and diaphanous draped arms. Dried rosebud circlets atop creatively adorned heads: braids, headwraps, dreads, or no hair at all. Satin and silk. Cotton and hemp. Painted bare skin, arms, legs, bellies, even breasts -- men and even women. One booth (midwife association) even will paint one's pregnant belly as if you could see through to the baby -- at the correct stage of development. Air filled with the scent of patchouli and smudging sage. Drumming. Voices in song. Wheeled carts selling wares. Permanent booths with two stories and tree branches woven into the lumber. Giant tubes pressed to your ears that vibrate with a digeridoo-like sound, hearing what the trees hear. Pizza -- organic chocolate ice cream topped with fresh raspberries -- Afghani cuisine -- hot coffee. Puppet parades and artistic licenses. Sound sculpture and physical music. Crowded shuttlebus, tired feet.

So, I didn't get the job I interviewed for at the beginning of the month -- not that this comes as a huge surprise; I expected that they might choose someone with more print experience. Counteracting that bit of a bummer was a notification from the state that my application was accepted as Qualified. My test answers had, apparently, been acceptable. This is hugely positive news and I hope this means I will soon find an interview request......

Veddy interesting. It appears that the similarity of the Loki/Balder and Judas/Jesus thing was likely the cross-pollination of Christianity into Norway. From Encyclopedia Mythica: "[Edda] Two collections of Old Norse writings which form together the most authoritative source for Norse mythology. The oldest is the Elder, or Poetic, Edda. It is a collection of 34 Icelandic poems, interspersed with prose dating from the 9th to 12th century. Most of these poems deal with Norse mythology." It is very interesting to note that 9th-12th century is reportedly when Christianity makes it to Norway.

Thanks, Martha. It's so cool that we can talk religion and NOT argue.

I should have known that a Torani bottle to the kneecap was going to hurt. Ow.

It feels a bit weird to be here on a Saturday, but we decided to be open to accommodate the line for the shuttle to the Oregon Country Fair (which I am going to for the first time, tomorrow).

I wish I had a bottle of ibuprofen.

From this page on a fear of Friday the 13thes:

...Thirteen takes us out of wholeness and into the unknown. Twelve is the last year of childhood. Thirteen begins the often difficult teenage years, our first steps toward adulthood. Going back to the Bible, Judas, the thirteenth guest at the Last Supper, ends up betraying Jesus.
...
The number thirteen's association with evil predates Christianity. In ancient Norse mythology, twelve demigods were happily having a banquet in Valhalla when a thirteenth demigod, Loki, appeared. Loki, evil god of deceit, killed Balder, the god of light and beauty.

I knew that in Norse legend Loki killed Baldur -- hell, they did a warped version of the whole story in Xena. I had, however, never heard the part Norse legend that Loki was the "thirteenth demigod" at the "feast". Appearing in such close proximity, it seems to me that the Christian telling of the thirteenth guest being the betrayer sprung directly out of the Norse tale. I mean no disrespect to Christians out there -- but the Bible is not a blow-by-blow telling of what happened at the time. It's not surprising that other effective and popular legends at the time were Christianized and later incorporated into that holy book. Just like Brigid / St. Bridget, and the Persian god Mithra, who was popular among the Roman soldiers:

Mithra, by the way, was born on December 25, of a virgin. His birth was witnessed by shepherds and magicians [magi]. Mithra raised the dead and healed the sick and cast out demons. He returned to heaven at the spring equinox and before doing so had a last supper with his 12 disciples (representing the 12 signs of the zodiac), eating mizd, a piece of bread marked with a cross (an almost universal symbol of the sun). Any of that sound familiar?

I'm wordy today, eh?

Administrivia: The line between "know" and "don't know" in the Journal section at the bottom of this page had become pretty smudged, since I have regularly emailed several of the people I claim to not know, so those distinctions have been removed.

"And that... is called kickin' your ass." -- Dylan, Charlie's Angels

It's very scary for me to think that babies born on the day that Live Aid happened are celebrating their Sweet Sixteen. That anniversary would be today: July 13th, 1985. It reminds me that I've now lived more life since Live Aid than I had before it, which consequently makes me feel a little old, since I was a teeny-bopper at the time going absolutely apeshit at the concept of all of my favourite Brit rockers playing the same glorious show. How badly I wanted to be at Wembley Stadium (impossible) or JFK Stadium (improbable)!

I wave my Evil fingernails at you.

First I forgot to bring any form of payment with me on the way to the gas station -- then I drove a panicked four miles home and back hoping upon hope that I wouldn't end up completely running out, all systems freezing in place and there's me, unable to brake or steer, crashing off the side of the road and into a ditch in a firey ball of flames... but I made it all right back to the pump, only to discover that a very enterprising group of yellowjackets had used the space inside the little gas flap to make a nest. Never have I been so grateful for Oregon's "no self serve" law, and the two Chevron attendants managed to get it out and step on it (exclaiming, "They were just about to hatch!").

Perhaps today will be the day when I get some good news. I have not yet heard back from the company I interviewed with last week (this is not unexpected). I am also awaiting word from another position I applied for, one I think I'm well suited for (though I can't decide if the error on the "test question" was intentionally "trick" or if it was just lack of knowledge about web programming). I addressed the error nonetheless, and damn the consequences, eh? Pulling all six numbers on Megabucks would have been welcome good news, but alas, I am out of luck.

I was pondering late last week, as I backed ten mostly-full Zip disks onto hard drive, the currency of storage. I remember being awed at the thought of fitting nearly 100 floppies onto a single Zip disk. When I finished with the backing up, I looked at the size of the folder, and noticed that all of that information didn't even fill up one CD-R. It kind of amazed me, actually. That's almost like a thousand floppies.

Every day I pass the corner store on the way downtown, and every day I do a double take at a hand-printed sign that reads "BLDG IN REAR" because my brain reads BLDG as BLOG and thinks lightning-fast, "There's a blog back there??" Sometimes I feel like I have the memory of a goldfish... that little plastic castle is a surprise every time.

I hate feeling like I'm being mean or cruel, like I've gained a smudge on my soul to match the smudges under my eyes. But even more than that, I hate feeling like I'm under a pressure not of my own making. It's not a choice I like to make, but sometimes I have to. You know?

In the spirit of last night's Velvet Goldmine fest, I give you: Your Glam Rock Name.

Fond regards,
Electric Desire

[from much earlier today, couldn't post due to Blogger's DNS issues]

Ohhh. The sky is turning dark gray. We might get those promised thunderstorms after all. I hope so. I can't take 90+ degree weather, especially with high humidity.

This is cool. (Thanks, Zannah.)

Hm. What am I getting myself into this weekend??

Watched Velvet Goldmine last night. Oh so pleasantly surprised, though it was awfully weird to see Ewan MacGregor looking very much like Kurt Cobain. Casting Jonathan Rhys-Meyers (who I realized was Steerpike in Gormenghast!) as the lead was a stroke of genius. It was so difficult to discern the actual 70s music from the music created for the movie. We had a grand time pulling parallels between "Brian Slade / Maxwell Demon" and "David Bowie / Ziggy Stardust". Definitely recommended.

Weekend was long and strange, during which I felt disconnected from just about everyone I encountered and everything I did. I was fine enough while I was preoccupied with shopping at Goodwill or watching Shakespeare in Love and Elizabeth (the Joseph Fiennes / Geoffrey Rush double feature), but all too often I just felt... blank.

Best of luck to Melsie today, whose possible hourly salary made my eyes glaze over...

It's Friday night, and instead of watching a movie or going out for a drink, here I sit... copying files from Zip disks to my now-functioning secondary hard drive (with a cooling fan and a little correct SCSI termination jumper setting love, it's a happy little WORKING disk). I feel like the highest of the highly ordained Geek Girls. I will likely then take all of these files and back 'em to CD, so that I will, hopefully, not lose a ton of stuff like I did when the Jaz disk (that had been entrusted to hold all of the work I had saved up) died a miserable death. Gone were all of my original graphic files, my client backups, even my rather extensive icon collection. I had little choice: the Jaz disks were the only additional large-volume storage I had, and my machine's original hard drive (pre-cheap CD-RW drives and WAY pre-iBook) is only 2 gig (knock on wood, still in use, still going strong). I have since removed the Jaz drive altogether, not wishing further atrocities to befall me (I managed to rescue the files off of the remaining Jaz disk just in the nick of time, it seems). I wish there were some way to recover all of that stuff, but I think the disk itself suffered from catastrophic hardware failure.

It's kind of weird to watch the copy progress, seeing file names flit by almost as fast as memory recall. It amazes me to think that at one time I was perfectly content with the blinding speed and power of a Quadra running Photoshop 2.5, can vividly remember the ooohs and ahhhs when 14.4 modems were the newest and best things on the block. I think this is just a taste of what it's like to grow old.

Some links for you this morning:

• A first-person account of An Tir / West War, the event I attended last weekend. I have never played Tablero, but substitute a Moroccan dinner (preceded by Mongolian hot pot), and that I went shopping and not marshalling, and you've got my Saturday.
  
  
• Well, I was going to post a page of hilarious road sign pictures, but it seems the host up and deleted the page. Humpfh!
  
  
• TV Alert: Sunday. Witchblade. Every episode. Firing up the VCR, yes indeed!

Okay. Mercury, listen to me. You are now direct. Please restore my ability to use a computer without it crashing, freezing, or otherwise failing miserably. I was plagued by problems on Tuesday because my iBook kept freezing when I tried to show off my portfolio on it (it's digital, they're mostly web pages I've done, so I saw little point in printing it out). How do I think I did? I remain.... "cautiously optimistic".

My Fourth of July was... HOT. It got to be almost 90 degrees outside, and none of us wanted to stand over a fire pit and cook, so we opted for pre-cooked cold ham, pickled beans and beets, pickles, garlic-stuffed olives, cucumbers sprinkled with lemon juice and paprika, and for dessert, root beer floats. We took some of the little legal firecrackers and went out onto the back patio to explode them. There's nothing quite like setting off about six of those spinning ground flowers at once, like so many swarms of angry, glowing bees, bumping around as if they were in a pinball game.

We ran around the backyard with sparklers, too. Minor rant: I have to say that today's sparklers are so much lamer -- and so much more dangerous -- than the metal ones from when I was a kid. We knew enough not to touch the hot metal part, the sparks that came off of them didn't actually burn you, and it didn't drop red-hot charred paper bits onto the grass as it burned down. Whose bright idea was it to change them, anyway? New sparklers suck rocks.

I was racing home to make that interview, when suddenly I noticed traffic had just stopped dead ahead of me, for no good reason that I could see. I cursed under my breath, feeling my impatience and annoyance mount with each nanosecond that passed.

And then I saw why everyone had stopped, and all anger dissolved away.

A momma duck, trailed by three baby ducks, were crossing one of the busiest sections of Highway 99, at the top of the hill. I watched in silent awe as they hopped up onto the curb-height concrete median, heading for the opposing lane. My heart was in my throat as I saw traffic approaching, and frantically I hit my headlight switch on and off, on and off, hoping that the little duck family would make it across. The drivers in the oncoming lanes luckily saw them in time, and traffic came to a standstill in that direction as well.

I proceeded home feeling a profound peace and awe. I'm not really sure why. Perhaps because it felt like those ducks needed to be there at that moment to show me something that I can't put into words. Sometimes I think we need moments like that during our busy days to bring us back to a grounded reality.

"someday monkey play piano song... play piano song"

giggle

That Beatles song is on -- "Michelle" -- you know, the one with the French... and that's honestly what it sounds like.

As I read Martha's blog about peace and solitude in the Canadian countryside, I suddenly realized an added benefit of going to all of these SCA events: getting to commune with nature. There are lots of things to do at these events, but the summertime is what we call "Tourney Season" and the event that just happened was a War (I am not a fighter, so that aspect just doesn't appeal to me, and there is not, of yet, combative calligraphy tournaments). When I wasn't visiting with people, attending court, and traipsing through Merchants Row dressed to the nines in finery and jewelry and being mistaken for royalty (which is lots of fun), I spent the time this weekend sitting in our tree-enclosed camp, listening to the baby birds making sounds strangely like a camera rewinding as they called for their mother, watching spiders spin their web, ground squirrels running back and forth with new-found treasure, and watching the wind blow through the branches. The sun fell quickly behind the mountains; darkness comes so fast in the valley where we are, and especially so that much closer to the mountains. The moon was just about full and lit up the landscape with its gentle silver glow. Out in the country the stars are so beautiful and crystal clear, and looking out across a field spotted with the glow of campfires, and the moonlight touching on the peaks of the pavilions and tents, one tends to wonder if this was anything close to what our ancestors saw.

Inevitably, though, these things are over far too fast, and breaking down camp is always a little depressing. I didn't get to see nearly as many people as I had hoped, but I did get to meet and make new friends with people I hadn't expected to, so it all worked out. I sometimes feel sad when I think of the people I have known and the people I would like to know, and how we dance through our lives like fireflies in the breeze, occasionally meeting up with those we feel an affinity for, and and even more rarely we're lucky enough to keep those people close to us as we continue our journey. Sometimes I wish I could gather up all of those people I've known and loved and somehow keep them close to me.

On a slightly less philisophical note, Andra got a Kingdom grant level award this weekend, a service award known as a Goutte de Sang (literally, "drop of blood"). For those reading who are going, "HUH?", this is a Rather Big Tadoo. The award is called that as a play on the service peerage known in the SCA as a Pelican (of which the Goutte is more or less one step below). It is so called for the pelican who pierces her breast to feed her babies (hence, drop of blood). It's been a long time coming -- I think it may just have been my recommendation (which listed what she's done point-by-point) that finally made the Crown sit up and take notice! Andra tells me that the Queen lauded her with heaps of praise as she was given her award (I was not close enough to hear). WOO! I'm really very proud of her. Now she gets to be called Her Ladyship, and the boat jokes have already begun. ;)

is this just not enough…?

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