8 posts tagged “me”
The pointless forest has moved, like Birnam Wood up Dunsinane Hill, to Typepad. I've done this mainly because I'd like people to be able to comment without having to have a Vox account (though most likely everyone who is interested in doing so has already taken care of it). There's a little overlap between the last couple of posts here and the first couple there, but I have now also started posting brand new things over there.
Most people, unlike me, probably just use a feed reader anyhow, but I know that if you do not, the Vox interface does make it easier, under some circumstances, to notice when your friends have posted something new. Would it be useful, then, do you think, to make a little post here when I've posted something there? Or would that just be extra cruft to no good purpose?
It's a bit embarrassing how cheaply my good humor can be purchased by hot, sunny, summery weather, and being out in it. If you could see how sad I was on Monday (when it was cold and grey) and how happy I am today, you would laugh at me.
Yesterday I spent at least two hours drawing an otter. Today (and a number of other days that preceded it) I spent a good deal more time looking for sources of research funding, with much less to show for it. Productivity hooray.
On the other hand, the weather turned magically delicious while I was locked up indoors all day, and when I emerged at 8:15pm (I'd been substitute-teaching an evening class for a colleague) it was so shockingly lovely that it made me happy in spite of myself.
Another source of unexpected good feelings was this: Snark had to get up for a few hours smack in the middle of the night last night in order to do some computer thing for a client while the rest of the nation slept. Since he would have to set an alarm and get in and out of bed exactly when I am most likely to stare appalled at the ceiling for hours with insomnia in the event that I wake up on my own, neither of us was expecting to feel spectacularly well-rested or pleasant today. But since we were anticipating it, and I knew I'd have to stay at school extra late today anyhow, we granted ourselves an extra lazy morning, and it all wound up having a rather festive schedule-turned-upside-down effect. Not so bad after all.
In other high-achieving news, we watched two whole films in the past week. I cannot recommend I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, despite my fond feelings for Mike Hodges (or at least for Get Carter) and my well documented extremely favorable opinion of Clive Owen and his handsome, handsome handsomeness. Alas. If you are in the market for a charming trifle, however, I think you will find that Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day does not disappoint. I also finally finished my bathtub reading of The Little Drummer Girl, bringing me right up to date for 1983.
Distinctive moments of the day included bleeding freely from a chapped lip in the middle of giving a lecture and briefly mis-hearing the School of Seven Bells' "I Am Under No Disguise" as "I am a nerd of disguise". The latter gave rise to the following dialogue:
Me: I am a nerd of disguise!
Snark: I'm sure you are.
Me: I know a great deal about disguise, because I have studied it thoroughly.
Snark: That would do it, I suppose.
Me: It's all theoretical, though. I don't actually have any practical experience engaging in disguising.
Once again I have broken my rule against telling stories where the punchline is delivered by me.
Does Vox seriously not have preview functionality? That's nutty.
Oh right, I like to use Vox to talk about all my consumerist foolishness! I'd forgotten.
I'm feeling pleased at the moment with a shirt I just bought at Target. I was reading this post for the archives of A History of Architecture, where she pointed to several examples of chic people incorporating clothes from Target into their fashionable wardrobes. (Art History and History of Architecture certainly are at the apogee of academic stylishness, aren't they? Linguistics, I may tell you, certainly is not.) Since we were going to Target anyway to pick up such romantic items as sponges and kitty litter, I thought I would take a look at the clothes while I was there. That post was about a skirt that all these well-dressed types had identified as especially good, which I looked for particularly, but it was long gone, I think.
This shirt that I bought instead is very pleasing, however. It's from the Converse One Star line and doesn't appear to be available online. It has a surprising number of interesting and weird details. At first glance it is an ordinary cotton duck buttoned shirt. But then you see that it has inset panels of ribbed cotton jersey running up each side and down each sleeve. (This, incidentally, makes the fit extra nice.) The sleeves also have a button halfway down the upper arm that you can use, maybe, to pinion your rolled up cuffs into place, though I haven't figured out quite how. The One Star logo appears on a funny little piece of off-white, shinier fabric that's folded around the hem and sewn down so that it looks like a mysterious patch. White grosgrain ribbon runs up the button side edge of the shirt, underneath the buttons. The third button down is sewn on with black thread while the others are sewn on with white thread. There's a strip of ticking ribbon sewn inside the lower edge of the collar, so that it shows as the collar falls back (because you haven't buttoned up all the way to the very top Erkel button). In conclusion, it is packed full of odd little textural touches, and I think it also cost me $16. It is good on top of a black poplin dress with long gray socks and clumpy black shoes, not that you can really tell from this grainy and underlit photo:
This picture of S. and me is surprisingly decent, as posed photos go. It was taken while we were visiting S.'s parents over Thanksgiving, a weekend that produced many many photos of us both, most of which were frankly hideous, and which I would rather never have seen. Oh well! I'm happy to have this one, though. I like that we have both produced expressions that go only a single shade above neutral, as if to say, "This meets our federally mandated smile minimum. Take it or leave it."
...with headphones on. I think they look rather charming and like to imagine that this could be a shot of me taking a moment away from doing something cool and recording-engineer-ish. Also, the window mirror shot is pleasantly flattering, as it hides how tired I look this week. In sum, thumbs up.
My first webloggish project was called "Your Pocket Guide." This was in 2000, before any blogging software (that I knew of, at least) had categories or other organizational options other than date. This was inconvenient, because I liked automated archiving and all those other handy Blogger features, but I wanted to organize Your Pocket Guide into chapters. Eventually I forced my then-boyfriend, now-husband Snark to write a quick and dirty script for posting and archiving in this format. I'm not sure it was actually any less trouble than doing it all by hand, but it made it feel more like a real live weblog, just like all the cool kids were writing.
The idea was that each chapter would have a title adhering to the form [X and Y], and then each post would provide a little survey of some topic that one way or another was an example of X or Y. The first one was "Your Pocket Guide to Fits and Starts" and had pieces on pipe fitters, tailors, clove cigarettes ("nic fit"), boll weevils and their role in the start of the USDA, and the startle reaction. Other chapters were Your Pocket Guide to guns and butter, smoke and mirrors, sweetness and light, proceedings and papers, and hooks and eyes. All very clever! Also, all very tiny. When I go back and look at it now, I'm shocked by how itsy I made the text. I think that's actually even bigger than I had it at first -- or at least more generous linespacing. Your Pocket Guide to Losing Your Eyesight!
I kind of wish I'd kept up with it, but it was a lot of work, and I'm lazy. Fortunately, Snark writes much better and more cohesive little essays on arcana (with more readable text, too), and he's been much more faithful about keeping up with it.
Later I'd start a food blog, which I still post to occasionally, and a work blog, which I used while I was preparing for my PhD exams. I've never had an online journal as such, though, mostly because I can't really imagine that anyone would find it interesting. But, of course, that never stopped the rest of the Internet, so here I am. At the moment I'm planning to use this space to blather about my experiments with learning Inform, among other things. I think I'll also post some pictures of squirrels.
