five thousand shades of blue

---

From a letter in the local weekly paper:

...Stop hesitating, quit procrastinating, take a chance. Say the words you long to say as if this were the last chance you had. Treat yourself with care the way you give to others. Don't just say it, do it. If you are afraid -- do it anyway.

Which, I admit, is very appealing to me, after my grandfather's death. Then I get to the last line:

When there is no tomorrow, what will be your epithet?

I'm pretty certain the author meant epitaph -- but the alternative is intriguing. What do you think your epithet would be?

I'll miss you, Mollie.

The internet is a weird and wonderful place. A friend of mine I met online and have met in person at least twice (and that I have known for, hm, probably close to 8 or 9 years now) is currently going to university in Edinburgh (but hails from Canada). She recently spoke at length on our mutual mailing list about appearing on British TV on something called "University Challenge".

Cut to Wednesday. I'm reading my usual spate of blogs and such and I read Swish Cottage. My eyes fix upon an entry about staying in and watching tv and the ...interesting programming on British TV, and see he's written this: 8:00pm BBC2 University Challenge [no-one shaggable, and we hated the smug Canadian girl]

After pressing for details (since my friend has rather red hair), it turns out it's her he's talking about. His comment after that: "... I'm sure she's not smug really, it's just nerves. And I'm just jealous that she knows MORE THAN ME!" *grin*

Like I said, the net's a weird place.

sometimes a circle feels like a direction....

Back in the Bronze Age days of the web (circa 1995-6) the trend towards designing a home page and having a zillion and one internal links (i.e. < a href="#AboutMe" >) was the thing to do. After some truly spectacular examples of eternally long pages, it then became bad form to make a single page with a bunch of information that would take forever to load (remember, 28.8 modems were the hot new thing) and instead, make a website with all of that unique linkage and seperate sections on seperate pages. It was also less busy and less confusing to the eye, rather than looking at one great big wad of information.

Today? With the advent of PHP includes and CSS absolute/relative positioning, we've come full circle back to doing home pages, where there's a body of information and a bunch of sidebars and overlays; mini-bios and quotes and links and... well, yes, I'm guilty of this myself to some extent. Not that I think it's a cardinal sin or anything; it's just an observation on my part, the fickle nature of trends (online trends specifically). This time around the single page of information is a lot like romanticized flare pants of the late 90s and today -- subtler, softer, and not half bad -- and a hell of a lot faster to load.

Sydney, 800 miles S. of Nova Scotia (SatireWire.com) — After what witnesses described as an all night blinder during which it kept droning on about how it was always being bloody ignored by the whole bloody world and would bloody well stand to do something about it, Australia this morning woke up to find itself in the middle of the North Atlantic.

Yesterday was not quite as long as my 22-hours-awake Friday but it came damned close. Had to stay at the café for an extra hour and a half, and then when I did try to leave, the truck battery was dead and I had to wait for a friend to come and jumpstart it. To say I was grumpy would be an understatement, since I had so much to do at home. But then... then I went home, took a shower, and wrote up invoices for the two projects I've been working on, only to find I had spent much more billable time on them than previously thought. That perked me right up, enough to get me through my 7pm meeting. I went home and practically fell into bed sleeping, and I still feel very very sleepy today, but at least I'm not grumpy.

And not as sad. Thank you to so many of my friends who sent kind words (and e-cards) of condolence to me regarding my grandfather. He had a full and happy life -- my grief is mostly for the rest of the family, especially my grandmother. How hard it must have been (and must still be) for her, to watch the man, the partner she'd had for over 50... 60?... years crumble into a shadow of his former self and then die. How awful that total loss of control must be. And how right that bastard was when he said that it was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, because even with the hurt it's worth it in the end.

He's gone.

He came down with another bout of pneumonia, and he was too weak to weather it. He looked peacefully at my grandmother, closed his eyes, and his head slumped forward.

I hope wherever he is now, he has his memories back, because then he will remember how much I love him.

Come on, you know you want to do it! It's what all the cool kids are doing! Don't be a loser!

(Link to downloadable scorer courtesy of #1 cool kid up there.)

Needed for tomorrow: an ink drawn, hand lettered (with calligraphy), painted, signed*, sealed charter scroll award for an award that my barony established years ago but everyone kind of forgot about or something, so the master copy was lost and only one person that we know of who is still active actually has this award. Notice I mention that the master was lost. And wax seals for about 6 awards.

[* = I don't have the authority to do the signing, but it's part of the finished product, so I thought I'd mention it.]

What I have as of today: a pencil drawing for a new master, and 3 wax seals.

It's gonna be a long night.

[update, 1/27: Friday was a 22-hours-awake-in-a-row day, but I got it done.]

Big Brother is Watching.

Leaving for the bus stop just before six a.m. in early January at this latitude has many many bad things about it (chief among them being -- it's six a.m.). The perks: nearly-perfect unbroken silence and a crystal clear view of the stars.

We watched Galaxy Quest again over the weekend for the umpteenth time, and it struck me why this movie resonates not only with Trek fans but with anyone who's ever been fond of a fictitious universe. That scene where Brandon exclaims "I knew it!". I think almost everyone has wished once in their life for a moment like that, for a made-up world to be revealed to them as real.

Yesterday was my grandfather's 88th birthday. Or so we thought. My Grandma dug up his birth certificate and as it turns out his birthday is actually today, the 23rd. It's weird, because we've always thought of the 22nd as his birthday. He is also in the late stages of Alzheimer's, and I don't think I will get to see him again before he dies. It is a twisted sort of comfort being so far away, because I don't know if I could handle seeing him now. I want to hang on to those memories I have of him being my Grandpa, not a shell of a man I don't recognize and who doesn't recognize me. I know the last time I saw him (in 1998) he knew me and he knew that I loved him. That has to be enough for me. I don't have much of a choice.

I'm not sure what else to say. I feel like the poetry has been sucked from my soul. I have fleeting, whispering thoughts of perfect vignettes of a busy life but they disappear before I can verbalize them. And then I think, They're not important anyway.

Come tromping down the stairs, pass the front door and then did what must have looked like the classic double-take: step back, throw back sheer curtains, and gape at the snow lingering on the grassy parts of the lawn. Naturally I had to brush off two vehicles (since the car was at the top of the driveway, I had to move the truck) and it was heavy, wet, perfect-for-snowball snow. I scooped up a snowball and stuck it in the freezer for An to see, since she's from Texas. I won't throw it at her though, since it's way too hard now.

Still busy. Busy. Busy.

I have weird hobbies. How many people do you know that spent their Friday night watching bad TV and designing a pattern for Mongolian braid cases?

I was overly domestic this morning, between dishes, laundry (folding last week's, bad me, and starting a new round) and baking banana bread with whole wheat flour and pecans that came from Texas that are the biggest pecans I've ever seen in my life.

Now I've got Matthew Sweet serenading me and I must be off... a freelancer's work knows no weekends :)

So the X-Files will close after this season. Is there anyone out there that's really terribly surprised by this? "It's the ninth inning. We want to go out on top,'' he [Chris Carter] said. "We wanted to go out as a strong show." Mr. Carter, "on top" was like 3 years ago -- were you not paying attention?

So much to do. No time to think.

Ask (or at least bitch about it) and ye shall receive. Mille grazie to Zowie -- I think this more than makes up for "cut and paste"! :)

Yesterday proved to me that I am one lucky gal, and that there are still angels here on earth. If they could only grant me more useable hours in one day.

Aside from the German tech company, I've acquired a side project for a Jewish Temple in the Bay Area. I would like to state for the record that Microsoft Word's handling of HTML rendering is about the worst bunch of garbage I've ever seen in my life. Really. And I've seen a lot. I swear I can reduce the file size of a web page by half by cutting out the unnecessary Word crap, which tries to be clever by inserting all kinds of style sheet garbage. It wouldn't be so bad if it actually appeared to be doing something, but I took nearly all of it out and it doesn't look any different. It's terrible to wade through when you work with raw code like I do.

(Jerry, I promise I'll get your thing done too! So much work all of a sudden!)

Weekend was too short. Isn't it always? I got a lot done though, including a mock up for a new café website (yes, this is what I do to relax. I'm weird.).

I've been up for about 19 hours now. I think it's time for bed. At least my poor old PowerMac 9500 is happier than it's been in a long time, due to a spring-cleaning of sorts -- trolling the hard drive for archivable files, I recovered about 400 MB on the main disk, which is a piddly 2 gig. Speed Disked, Disk Doctored, the monitor is practically smiling at me.

I guess I forgot to tell you, I have new things to say about myself. (Thanks, Martha.)

Blogback temporarily down while the fabulous Marcus tinkers with the code. That's why the comment link appears as an 'x'.

Dear Ms. Bitch,

I just wanted to thank you for fixing me with the coldest, iciest stare possible after I accidentally knocked your precious hairdrier off of the shelf in the change room at the health club. Goodness knows you certainly didn't have enough space to work with, what with taking up nearly one-half of the available counter space with your various hairdrying and curling appliances, and I was utterly in the wrong to try to put my coat on in such a manner as to impinge upon the space you are clearly entitled to. I'm so glad to see that the generosity of spirit enlivened by the terrorist attacks of September 11th and sustained throughout the holiday season have not fallen to the wayside yet. Because you know, a hairdrier is worth so much more than being kind to another human being.

Warmest regards,
Sandra

Crawling on hands and knees to Friday, blessed blessed weekend. My project for a German tech company is coming along swimmingly now that I have a test server to work on, meaning the PHP renders properly and I can see how their designers meant the thing to look. Being that they are native Germans, there is still a bit of a language barrier, and there are still some sections that seem woefully underfilled and overengineered (I'm pretty sure four navigation layers are unnecessary for a simple Contact Us page), but it's been great work.

Was sitting watching a particularly gruesome Medical Detectives last night and had Andra gently pound the spot where my neck and shoulders meet like an inverted T, when something went poppoppop suddenly like muted firecrackers. I'm sure it was a good thing but it's as sore as all get out today.

Courtesy of Zannah: when gazebos attack!

When I found those assorted boxes of magnetic poetry, I found an odd one that had reversible words (yellow with black words on one side, black with white words on the other). Mostly the words are antonyms of the word they're paired with, though not always. I brought that box into the café because it was the only one like it and it didn't match with the black-on-white tiles at home.

For some reason I felt compelled to line up the words into rows this morning, a line of yellow then a line of black. I ended up with an extremely surreal poem of sorts...

why the golden red plunge
there like season never dreamed
the less said hide wild rain climb
over across landscape a whisper above ocean will
the woman love mother wind nectar yet
equip live star tapestry a
sorry million dry tiny tune of the fly

During the H&D haze, I think I neglected to mention that my Great-Aunt Cele had passed away. The thing I remember most vividly about her is the trip I took to Orlando when I was a kid. My cousin Jen and I stayed with her (and then-husband) for three weeks -- the concept of having three weeks' worth of vacation now seems like an extravagance. There was Sea World, Circus World, Disney World (and being somewhat disgruntled at not being allowed to ride the big roller coaster, but we were only seven and eight respectively). Cherry tomato exploding onto new white sweater on the airplane. Meeting cousins-once-removed and playing Monopoly with them and jumping on their trampoline. Swooping a great big spoonful of applesauce up, stuffing it into my mouth, and completely scalding every inside surface -- a painful lesson to an eight year old that sometimes applesauce is served hot. Aunt Cele's little dog Candy and eye (or was it ear?) drops every night and big fat curlers to put waves in my long but too-straight sun-blonde hair for a party. It seems so very long ago. She had kept with me into my adult life, into my forays into California and now in Oregon, and we'd corresponded occasionally by mail before her health turned for the worse.

What brings this back to mind for me is getting news that my grandfather's in the hospital. I can't remember exactly what had happened but he does have pneumonia. I suppose it is a good sign that, being off his medication for Alzheimer's for the morning, he was alert enough and physically able to act up against the nurses (silver lining, silver lining). It seems my luck with family mortality is finally coming to a long end after almost a thirty year winning streak.

I caught the tail end of a story this morning on ABC News: an Afghan artist who'd used brilliant trickery and deception to keep the Taliban from destroying his paintings. It is the Taliban's hardline fanatical opinion that the human form cannot and should not be depicted in any form in any work of art. The government took it upon themselves to blow up ancient holy Buddhas and shatter sculptures, clay pots and bowls from antiquity; there was little he could do to keep them from slashing his portraits. But he got clever: on his oil paintings, he painted over the human figures in watercolor. On the watercolor paintings, he simply painted directly on the glass. He figured when the Taliban was no longer in power, he could just restore his original works with a wipe of a sponge... and it was this way that he saved about eighty works of his art. The camera crews surrounded him and focused closely on what appeared to be a landscape painting, as he took a damp sponge and like magic revealed a figure sitting on the bank what had moments before been another patch of river. The Taliban had never caught on.

Human spirit and creativity once again thumbs its nose at oppression.

Dreaming last night of being in an impossible large, oppressively dark hotel, trying to find the room I needed in the rusty amber hallways. Somehow it was a school as well as a hotel. Other details slip away from my conscious grasp, but somehow I do remember that Wil Wheaton was my very best friend in the world. Moral of the story: never drink peach lambic ale before going to bed.

Administrivia: I'm pleased to see that this page is not too dark for even this overly-dark monitor. Since I primarily work on a Mac, everything I do is always too dark for PCs (because Windows machines have a higher default gamma setting). Oh, and if you have ColorSync running, make sure it's enabled in your browser, especially if the main graphic looks lavender, because it's supposed to be blue (this caused me all sorts of headache and frustration yesterday, as I'd save the graphic, then open the browser and the colours would be all wrong). Also, if you don't have the font Trebuchet installed, that's what this site looks for. It comes, I think, with some evil MS product or other. Second or third choice is Verdana or Arial, I think, which are not serif fonts but I'm really not crazy about Times and I can't be sure that everyone has G_____ (the name of which is completely escaping me at the moment, too little sleep!).

Cosmetic change, more or less, but one that feels a little more like 'me'. I liked the photo of the bug on the water, but I'm not a photographer by heart. I like paint, texture, stippling and dry brush, and on the computer, PShop filters.

Hope this does not render things unreadable for some of you. Let me know if it does.

Strange little sociological experiment that has been unfolding before my eyes at the café: we have two computers sitting side by side. When I offer the customer a choice of computers, they always take the one on the right. Sometimes even if I tell them the one on the left is a newer computer. Always. Isn't that bizarre?

It dawned on me the other night that my 'little' sister (the one with 2.5 kids) turns 29 today. Wasn't I just 29??

Vividly I remember being a teenager, eyes bright, with countless possibilities before me, filled with boundless energy and optimism. I will visit every continent by the age of 30! I will redefine the modern art movement with my homage to realism by portraying scenes of daily life! I will be an inspiration to millions with my brilliant debut novel!

It somehow seems inconceivable now that anything that outrageous would have ever been possible. Don't get me wrong -- this tiny insight into realism hasn't reduced me to a quivering mass in the corner of my bedroom. It's just reality, a little sad, but, well, realistic. Fact: I will probably never make it to Africa, Asia, Australia or Antarctica (South America is looking grim, and that's the closest one). Fact: I am nowhere near redefining an art movement. Fact: my blog entries are barely amusing or brilliant enough to keep friends reading, let alone sustaining an entire novel.

Hi, my name is Sandra, and I'll be your wet blanket today. [grin]

I think today is not my day either.

It is good to suddenly decide to get in a car with three friends, head down to a local eatery, take over a table that has four stuffed chairs, and order a brownie covered with ice cream and caramel sauce so big that it defeats us all, and sit back and sigh with a tummy full of chocolate goodness.

Despite lousy circumstances lately, it is comforting to know there are good people in the world, ready to offer what they can, even if it's nothing but a smile.

January 1st is always the day to buy calendars, because most bookstores put them on sale for 50% off. If you wait too long, though, the good ones will be gone. For the café counter, we passed over the Dilbert desktop page-a-day for The Onion: Dispatches from the Tenth Circle. Appropriately enough, today's is a StatShot, "Remaining Unregistered Internet Domain Names" (though probably as a result of that StatShot, at least one of them now is -- really, how could anyone resist "gayrepublicanmetalheadwiccans.org"?). To train myself to use a weekly planner again, I got the Worst-Case Scenario 2002 Survival Calendar.

And for home, the Magnetic Poetry calendar. This one actually spurred a cleaning frenzy, turning the fridge door back into a tabula rasa for new poems. The ones that were there had been for a long time, and were taking up the entirety of the available space. We wrote our favourite ones down on paper and then decided an infusion of new words would be good. I had found about 7 boxes of different sets at Goodwill for Andra one year for Christmas and we'd only put up two of them. So now we're all set to be poetic, even if it is on the fridge door. It was a good way to start the new year.

Happy New Year!

I hereby deem 2002 the Year to Incubate Change. Use your power for good!

is this just not enough…?

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