As I was packing clothes last night, I was standing at my bed, laying stuff out. All of a sudden, I heard a huge bang that sounded like my upstairs neighbor hoisted then dropped his bed on the floor. The noise seemed concentrated above me. I looke up and saw the sliding doors shimmy, and I think I saw the ceiling flex out of the corner of my eye. But my three narrow and extremely unstable bookshelves in the hallway, which I plan to secure to the wall one of these days, stayed standing so I figured it wasn't an earthquake, just weirdness upstairs. I thought maybe I should check on my neighbor, but it was 1 am and he gives me a creepy "it puts on the lotion" vibe, so I re-thought that and set aside my packing and went to bed.
I just spoke to my boss who asked if I felt the 4.6 earthquake last night around 1 am. It woke her up. Her husband, my friend, said, "It's just the wind." She felt vindicated this morning when the radio announced that there had in fact been an earthquake nearby. Epicenter was near Chatsworth and Northridge, just over some mountains from me so 4.6 at a 15 mile distance can be felt. Now I know.
I'm not really worried about earthquakes. I've lived in areas that get extremely destructive tornados, Nor'easters, floods, etc... so I figure you pick a place to live and put up with whatever natural disaster favors your area. Of them all, I'm least partial to hurricanes for the record. Earthquakes are something that will either be a problem or won't, and they happen so fast you most likely won't have a chance to worry which side your lot will fall on. Most people live their whole lives in the "won't" category, even in earthquake country. My insurance company doesn't put me in a high earthquake risk category either, and it's their money to lose so I worry even less - my stuff is more likely to pull a Rhoda and be consumed by a fire. I'm fine with my electric stove since it means no gas plumbed through the complex.
But still, for a mere 4.5 which generally means "most people can barely tell there was an earthquake" there was a definite bang with movement. Certainly there have been plenty of earthquakes of this magnitude since I moved here. I have not, until last night, been even remotely aware of any of them except through a friend of mine who is obsessive enough to read a daily earthquake report and reminds me that we have them all the time. I consider lots of little quakes good because lots of little earthquakes releases stress gradually rather than storing it up for the big one. It was certainly interesting to get a little taste of one though.
Thursday, August 9, 2007
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Master of Understatement
Just heard Jon Stewart say something about being master of understatement when he used "pickle" to describe our current international policy instead of "exploding clusterfuck" as he then clarified. At least he has something to say. I wanted to post something light and fun after yesterday's mental vomit but I've got nothin much. I'm working on packing for Boston. I leave tomorrow and will probably finish packing at lunch tomorrow, but at least I have most everything set aside. So trip highlights will be my friends' wedding and seeing my friends and going to the Suz Brockmann opening night booksigning for FON.
Until then, I want to send this to someone who owns an "I'm not an evil minion, I'm upper management!" T-shirt:
But I had one of these.
Until then, I want to send this to someone who owns an "I'm not an evil minion, I'm upper management!" T-shirt:
But I had one of these.
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
I Got Rhythm (XL)
I also apparently got lots of titles that start with "I". I'll have to work on that. But for now, more about me. I've got chronic sleep troubles in that I tend not to get restful sleep unless I've had good acupuncture recently. The acupuncturists out here aren't quite hitting the spot, so to speak. After the success of my last treatment in Boston, I'm really hoping my acupuncturist doesn't miss the ferry and can see me again next week. I will also have to make a push to find a five elements practitioner out here. What do you want to bet he or she will be found either in San Fran near "my" new hairdresser, or in El Segundo? Which reminds me that if I can get in a wine tasting trip with my book club friends, I can also get my haircut refreshed.
The sleep thing, though, is critical. You don't sleep well and you start to feel like an old person - joints ache, hearing tests fine but doesn't function right, can't stay awake during the day, can't sleep at night, pain is intensified - and it's misery. Those people with fibromyalgia? I'm betting most of them don't get restful sleep. And 3 years of conventional treatment did nothing for me and mostly it doesn't work for fibromyalgics either. Fortunately for my quality of life, I found my acupuncturist, Lorli. (email me if you ever want her contact info.)
I never recall having any sort of internal clock. I was never affected by jet lag. Some people wake up and don't know where they are. I always know where I am, I don't always know when. Waking at 7:30 on a foggy summer day could easily be either AM or PM and I wouldn't (and didn't) know. I could stay awake all night, for nearly any reason. I would then sleep through my alarm until my roommate kicked my upper bunk and threatened bodily harm. In retrospect, I think my sleep troubles were masked when I was younger by the allergy medicine I took at night which made one "drowsy". I took it from the age of 12 to about the middle of college. A few years after graduation, though, and I was a mess. I honestly didn't know if I'd be able to hold down a job, applaud at a concert, use a childproof cap, or even think properly again.
I'd figured that I had a sleep problem, but my sleep test, with electrodes glued to my skull and everything, showed absolutely normal sleep patterns. Despite not having anything noticably wrong, I needed a 4 hour nap to recover from the sleep test after almost falling asleep at the wheel driving home afterward. I still couldn't wake up. One day, I got an early phone call from my friend T. We chatted for a while and I realized I was awake enough afterward to get out of bed. I also realized that I would answer the phone from a dead sleep even if I didn't hear the alarm clock. This was epiphany number one.
Epiphany number two was that I had to ask for help. I wasn't ready to go to my parents, but I asked T for help and this great friend called me EVERY DAY for a month and talked to and at me until I woke up enough to make the conscious choice to get out of bed. After a month of her calling me Long Distance for 45 minutes from a later time zone, I realized I had to call in the big guns if I wanted to keep waking up in time for work. A forcibly rearranged some blocking neurons in my head and I called my dad. My dad proceeded to call me every weekday for a YEAR. Long distance, from later time zone, to talk me out of bed in the morning. I'm sure some mornings he would have preferred the method of dripping cold water on my face - there's a reason I don't live that close. I asked for less risky help from home and another friend, a morning person, offered to rideshare with me even though it was very restricting for her. But I would not have made it without this help.
I had my third sleep related epiphany one day when I realized what it felt like to really wake up. I have always had extreme trouble waking up. I always figured that the morning people or kids or dogs pestered their night person spouse, parent, kids, or owners out of bed. Living on my own, while preferable in many ways, puts me at a disadvantage in this one. But my dad had my back, once I broke down the barrier and asked for help.
In the interim, I took ibuprofen for the joint pain and worked with a few docs on the abdominal pain until we found something, anything, to do about it. (Ask me about electrical nerve stimulation.) A week after I had surgery to fix a minor hernia that caused all manner of pain, I woke up a minute before my alarm went off, feeling refreshed. My first thought was, "this must be how people woke up before alarm clocks were invented. Can that trait be evolved out?" My second thought was, "This is strange. I don't need to hit the snooze. I'm just AWAKE." I had never in my memory ever felt awake like that after a night's sleep. Never Ever.
Great! I thought, I'm fixed! Ta-Da!
Not so fast, Kemosabe, said my body. After a month of waking up on my own, the scar tissue re-grew over my abused nerves and my sleep problems came back. Because of the alarm clock miracle, I finally deduced, with no help whatsoever from a half dozen trained sleep and mental health professionals, that my problem was getting restful sleep. Quantity was no trouble. Quality was elusive.
At this point though, I finally knew what better sleep felt like. I got a new doctor and I was able to get pharmaceuticals to help me sleep and others to help me wake up. The trick was, I had to wake up to take the drugs. Thankfully my dad kept calling me. My mom told me he got a kick out of it and I stopped feeling guilty. (I did finally have to force him to quit calling after three solid years of weekday morning rise and shine.)
I started doing a LOT better. But I needed a LOT of drugs. And more every month. I knew I couldn't move far away - I had a notion of working in Europe for a year that was totally off the table. Even a long vacation seemed risky. Drugs were buying me time, but were not a sustainable solution. I didn't much like my, or any standard doctor at this point. I'd recently read a study that found consistency of care - seeing the same therapist or same group regularly - could be more important to recovery than quality or personalization of care. So I decided that I would find a different "doctor" and when I found someone I liked, was going to stick it out for as long as I could manage.
Cambridge has an alternative health practitioner around every corner, and I tried out a lot of them to no avail. (If I tell you I don't much care for milk or peanuts, don't try to convince me to make a peanut milkshake a daily diet staple. Sheesh! I do love peanut sauce though.) My boyfriend at the time recommended I try an acupuncturist he'd met by taking her Adult Ed class on herbs. He thought we'd hit it off. I had had some luck with acupuncture previously for a different issue and was open to giving it a try. He sent me to Lorli and she said, "honey, you need my help. I can help you. Come twice a week, I won't even charge for the second visit".
And I liked Lorli. The process was not immediate, but I did start to feel better. I would go into the treatment room planning only for a nap and leave with so much energy I'd go swim a half mile at the Y. On days when I just went home and napped, no such swim happened afterward; the treatments were working. After a couple months, I dropped back to once a week visits. After a few more months I dropped to biweekly visits. After nine months, I started weaning myself from the pharmaceuticals. After 15 months or so I was up to three week intervals and no drugs. In the intervening five years or so, I got treated every 3 to 5 weeks and took no prescription drugs. And I only took OTC drugs to combat drinking too much caffeine.
In this time, I started to develop a daily rhythm. When I woke up, when I got sleepy. I can now just drop off at night where previously it could take hours to go from "sleepy" to "asleep". I now get severely jet lagged. (Lun.esta helps with short term upsets like that. Am.bien made me sleepwalk at least once.) These days, I can feel the rhythm of my day. Mornings start slow and ramp up. I get hungry at lunchtime. I have a low, slow period after lunch that morphs into about 15 minutes of being horny and them I'm totally reved up and filled with excitement and plans for work and home and glass and... I get lots of work done late afternoons.
But before I can execute on all those plans, especially the non-work ones, I crash. I've losing a lot of quality time with myself. I go from being full of vim and vigor to only wanting to sleep, NOW, and maybe get a snack. This crash was debilitatingly worse before my last trip to Boston. One, admittedly intense, acupuncture session with Lorli later, and I've had about 3 solid weeks of being perky me again. It's starting to fade though. I really hope to see Lorli in Boston. If I don't, I might have to make a special trip. It's that important. I don't want to go back on the drugs if I don't have to. I will, but I won't like it. And I don't think I'll have to if I can find a good practitioner out here.
I do need sleep - I've been reading the FON countdown in the evenings which leads to getting distracted and staying up too late puttering online. I probably should have gone to bed an hour ago. I'd only intended, really, to write these last two paragraphs after the opener. But I use this blog to unclutter my mind and all this stuff just fell out of the door to the mental storage closet when I cracked it open. So there you have it. My ongoing journey to find restful sleep and be able to wake up on my own. I do still hit the snooze most days, but I manage. I'm trying to figure out how to manage a bit better. I'll get there.
I'll end with a Public Service Announcement:
It took the efforts of a lot of friends and family to pull me together, but that only happened after I gave up the idea of being the "conquering hero" (conquering the job world? conquering what? I don't know.) and asked for help. If someone reading this out there is in a downward spiral of any sort (illness, abuse, addiction, bad moods) and is to proud or embarrassed to ask someone for help because you don't want friends, family, neighbors, or even perfect strangers to think you're a failure or an idiot or a waste of a good student loan... think again and ask for their help. Without help you may well wind up a failure. But with help you have more options.
Your friends and family want to help you. But they might not know you need help, or if they do, they know it won't be any use unless you're willing to accept it. Not everyone will want to help you, but enough people will, sometimes even the perfect strangers. It turns out people are much nicer to the folks who need them than they are to the "heroes" that made it to the top but ignored them on the way. People want to be part of your success story. If you need help, ask. If you don't get help, ask again. It gets easier. And you get a better shot at being a conquering hero, only this time it's you and your army, succeeding together.
The sleep thing, though, is critical. You don't sleep well and you start to feel like an old person - joints ache, hearing tests fine but doesn't function right, can't stay awake during the day, can't sleep at night, pain is intensified - and it's misery. Those people with fibromyalgia? I'm betting most of them don't get restful sleep. And 3 years of conventional treatment did nothing for me and mostly it doesn't work for fibromyalgics either. Fortunately for my quality of life, I found my acupuncturist, Lorli. (email me if you ever want her contact info.)
I never recall having any sort of internal clock. I was never affected by jet lag. Some people wake up and don't know where they are. I always know where I am, I don't always know when. Waking at 7:30 on a foggy summer day could easily be either AM or PM and I wouldn't (and didn't) know. I could stay awake all night, for nearly any reason. I would then sleep through my alarm until my roommate kicked my upper bunk and threatened bodily harm. In retrospect, I think my sleep troubles were masked when I was younger by the allergy medicine I took at night which made one "drowsy". I took it from the age of 12 to about the middle of college. A few years after graduation, though, and I was a mess. I honestly didn't know if I'd be able to hold down a job, applaud at a concert, use a childproof cap, or even think properly again.
I'd figured that I had a sleep problem, but my sleep test, with electrodes glued to my skull and everything, showed absolutely normal sleep patterns. Despite not having anything noticably wrong, I needed a 4 hour nap to recover from the sleep test after almost falling asleep at the wheel driving home afterward. I still couldn't wake up. One day, I got an early phone call from my friend T. We chatted for a while and I realized I was awake enough afterward to get out of bed. I also realized that I would answer the phone from a dead sleep even if I didn't hear the alarm clock. This was epiphany number one.
Epiphany number two was that I had to ask for help. I wasn't ready to go to my parents, but I asked T for help and this great friend called me EVERY DAY for a month and talked to and at me until I woke up enough to make the conscious choice to get out of bed. After a month of her calling me Long Distance for 45 minutes from a later time zone, I realized I had to call in the big guns if I wanted to keep waking up in time for work. A forcibly rearranged some blocking neurons in my head and I called my dad. My dad proceeded to call me every weekday for a YEAR. Long distance, from later time zone, to talk me out of bed in the morning. I'm sure some mornings he would have preferred the method of dripping cold water on my face - there's a reason I don't live that close. I asked for less risky help from home and another friend, a morning person, offered to rideshare with me even though it was very restricting for her. But I would not have made it without this help.
I had my third sleep related epiphany one day when I realized what it felt like to really wake up. I have always had extreme trouble waking up. I always figured that the morning people or kids or dogs pestered their night person spouse, parent, kids, or owners out of bed. Living on my own, while preferable in many ways, puts me at a disadvantage in this one. But my dad had my back, once I broke down the barrier and asked for help.
In the interim, I took ibuprofen for the joint pain and worked with a few docs on the abdominal pain until we found something, anything, to do about it. (Ask me about electrical nerve stimulation.) A week after I had surgery to fix a minor hernia that caused all manner of pain, I woke up a minute before my alarm went off, feeling refreshed. My first thought was, "this must be how people woke up before alarm clocks were invented. Can that trait be evolved out?" My second thought was, "This is strange. I don't need to hit the snooze. I'm just AWAKE." I had never in my memory ever felt awake like that after a night's sleep. Never Ever.
Great! I thought, I'm fixed! Ta-Da!
Not so fast, Kemosabe, said my body. After a month of waking up on my own, the scar tissue re-grew over my abused nerves and my sleep problems came back. Because of the alarm clock miracle, I finally deduced, with no help whatsoever from a half dozen trained sleep and mental health professionals, that my problem was getting restful sleep. Quantity was no trouble. Quality was elusive.
At this point though, I finally knew what better sleep felt like. I got a new doctor and I was able to get pharmaceuticals to help me sleep and others to help me wake up. The trick was, I had to wake up to take the drugs. Thankfully my dad kept calling me. My mom told me he got a kick out of it and I stopped feeling guilty. (I did finally have to force him to quit calling after three solid years of weekday morning rise and shine.)
I started doing a LOT better. But I needed a LOT of drugs. And more every month. I knew I couldn't move far away - I had a notion of working in Europe for a year that was totally off the table. Even a long vacation seemed risky. Drugs were buying me time, but were not a sustainable solution. I didn't much like my, or any standard doctor at this point. I'd recently read a study that found consistency of care - seeing the same therapist or same group regularly - could be more important to recovery than quality or personalization of care. So I decided that I would find a different "doctor" and when I found someone I liked, was going to stick it out for as long as I could manage.
Cambridge has an alternative health practitioner around every corner, and I tried out a lot of them to no avail. (If I tell you I don't much care for milk or peanuts, don't try to convince me to make a peanut milkshake a daily diet staple. Sheesh! I do love peanut sauce though.) My boyfriend at the time recommended I try an acupuncturist he'd met by taking her Adult Ed class on herbs. He thought we'd hit it off. I had had some luck with acupuncture previously for a different issue and was open to giving it a try. He sent me to Lorli and she said, "honey, you need my help. I can help you. Come twice a week, I won't even charge for the second visit".
And I liked Lorli. The process was not immediate, but I did start to feel better. I would go into the treatment room planning only for a nap and leave with so much energy I'd go swim a half mile at the Y. On days when I just went home and napped, no such swim happened afterward; the treatments were working. After a couple months, I dropped back to once a week visits. After a few more months I dropped to biweekly visits. After nine months, I started weaning myself from the pharmaceuticals. After 15 months or so I was up to three week intervals and no drugs. In the intervening five years or so, I got treated every 3 to 5 weeks and took no prescription drugs. And I only took OTC drugs to combat drinking too much caffeine.
In this time, I started to develop a daily rhythm. When I woke up, when I got sleepy. I can now just drop off at night where previously it could take hours to go from "sleepy" to "asleep". I now get severely jet lagged. (Lun.esta helps with short term upsets like that. Am.bien made me sleepwalk at least once.) These days, I can feel the rhythm of my day. Mornings start slow and ramp up. I get hungry at lunchtime. I have a low, slow period after lunch that morphs into about 15 minutes of being horny and them I'm totally reved up and filled with excitement and plans for work and home and glass and... I get lots of work done late afternoons.
But before I can execute on all those plans, especially the non-work ones, I crash. I've losing a lot of quality time with myself. I go from being full of vim and vigor to only wanting to sleep, NOW, and maybe get a snack. This crash was debilitatingly worse before my last trip to Boston. One, admittedly intense, acupuncture session with Lorli later, and I've had about 3 solid weeks of being perky me again. It's starting to fade though. I really hope to see Lorli in Boston. If I don't, I might have to make a special trip. It's that important. I don't want to go back on the drugs if I don't have to. I will, but I won't like it. And I don't think I'll have to if I can find a good practitioner out here.
I do need sleep - I've been reading the FON countdown in the evenings which leads to getting distracted and staying up too late puttering online. I probably should have gone to bed an hour ago. I'd only intended, really, to write these last two paragraphs after the opener. But I use this blog to unclutter my mind and all this stuff just fell out of the door to the mental storage closet when I cracked it open. So there you have it. My ongoing journey to find restful sleep and be able to wake up on my own. I do still hit the snooze most days, but I manage. I'm trying to figure out how to manage a bit better. I'll get there.
I'll end with a Public Service Announcement:
It took the efforts of a lot of friends and family to pull me together, but that only happened after I gave up the idea of being the "conquering hero" (conquering the job world? conquering what? I don't know.) and asked for help. If someone reading this out there is in a downward spiral of any sort (illness, abuse, addiction, bad moods) and is to proud or embarrassed to ask someone for help because you don't want friends, family, neighbors, or even perfect strangers to think you're a failure or an idiot or a waste of a good student loan... think again and ask for their help. Without help you may well wind up a failure. But with help you have more options.
Your friends and family want to help you. But they might not know you need help, or if they do, they know it won't be any use unless you're willing to accept it. Not everyone will want to help you, but enough people will, sometimes even the perfect strangers. It turns out people are much nicer to the folks who need them than they are to the "heroes" that made it to the top but ignored them on the way. People want to be part of your success story. If you need help, ask. If you don't get help, ask again. It gets easier. And you get a better shot at being a conquering hero, only this time it's you and your army, succeeding together.
Monday, August 6, 2007
One Cranky Otter
I work in a production facility. We process parts in the form of wafers. Every so often something goes wrong and I or another engineer has to look into it and look at the wafers and make a disposition. Some problems are "routine" and have prescribed solutions. The engineering techs can disposition these just fine. With the non-routine problems, particularly with visual defects, it helps to have one set of eyes to evaluate problems because what one person might write up as a "stain" someone else will call an "overetch" and someone else might call "corrosion". They might all be right, they might all be wrong. But if one person does the evaluation, they can at least tell if this "stain" is the same as that "corrosion" and start to build a consistent picture of the problem.
We had a lot pass through with a visual defect of the type I've been trying to get the process techs to hold for me, and me specifically, to look at. I'm not sure why people are so reluctant to hold things for me, but it was from night shift and I can think they didn't want the lot sitting for 10 hours waiting on me. So they wrote up the disposition (mask out that section of wafer as scrap) and sent the wafers on. But the description of the problem was new and unusual. I have no idea what they mean. Since I'm on a team looking into defects at this step, I need to know what they mean. So I tracked the wafers down after and got them put on hold. But they didn't get on hold until well into friday night. This was so the lot could get to a point where I could only hold my few wafers and send the unaffected wafers on without being held all weekend.
The wafers were tracked down and held by the shift supervisor. They held through the shift change at night shift. The held through the new day shift that comes in sunday. Then, inexplicably, this morning they were let off hold. This is the same shift that works sunday. I could understand if they let them go yesterday. But I checked this morning and they were on hold. I had to deal with a down tool, then I went and called up to find out where the wafers were and were told they were sent on. GAH!!!! When sent on, they go to a step where I can no longer inspect them. What part of hold for ME to evaluate means "let the shift technician evaluate them and send them on"? And it was a supervisor who released the hold! WTF!?! Did anyone call me to ask if it was ok? No. Did anyone call to say they were being let go? No. Why do I even put my name on a hold if it can just be blown off?
It's not a case, this time, of letting bad parts get to customers, but of me adding to my inventory of issues at a certain step. But what happens if they let something go that shouldn't go out? What if I miss a developing or evolving problem because my wafers are just let go to get moves? I need some special code that says "no one but this exact person or their specified representative is allowed to move these wafers beyond this point". Maybe I should just write "Hold for me and only me" next time, instead of merely specifying "hold for me."
As you can tell, I needed to rant. This is driving me crazy. It's happened way too many times now, too. And I need to not be a raving lunatic that is going to choke the daylights out of my colleagues when I go over to try and evaluate these wafers at a stage where I probably won't be able to see through the mounting film to my defect. Gah!
We had a lot pass through with a visual defect of the type I've been trying to get the process techs to hold for me, and me specifically, to look at. I'm not sure why people are so reluctant to hold things for me, but it was from night shift and I can think they didn't want the lot sitting for 10 hours waiting on me. So they wrote up the disposition (mask out that section of wafer as scrap) and sent the wafers on. But the description of the problem was new and unusual. I have no idea what they mean. Since I'm on a team looking into defects at this step, I need to know what they mean. So I tracked the wafers down after and got them put on hold. But they didn't get on hold until well into friday night. This was so the lot could get to a point where I could only hold my few wafers and send the unaffected wafers on without being held all weekend.
The wafers were tracked down and held by the shift supervisor. They held through the shift change at night shift. The held through the new day shift that comes in sunday. Then, inexplicably, this morning they were let off hold. This is the same shift that works sunday. I could understand if they let them go yesterday. But I checked this morning and they were on hold. I had to deal with a down tool, then I went and called up to find out where the wafers were and were told they were sent on. GAH!!!! When sent on, they go to a step where I can no longer inspect them. What part of hold for ME to evaluate means "let the shift technician evaluate them and send them on"? And it was a supervisor who released the hold! WTF!?! Did anyone call me to ask if it was ok? No. Did anyone call to say they were being let go? No. Why do I even put my name on a hold if it can just be blown off?
It's not a case, this time, of letting bad parts get to customers, but of me adding to my inventory of issues at a certain step. But what happens if they let something go that shouldn't go out? What if I miss a developing or evolving problem because my wafers are just let go to get moves? I need some special code that says "no one but this exact person or their specified representative is allowed to move these wafers beyond this point". Maybe I should just write "Hold for me and only me" next time, instead of merely specifying "hold for me."
As you can tell, I needed to rant. This is driving me crazy. It's happened way too many times now, too. And I need to not be a raving lunatic that is going to choke the daylights out of my colleagues when I go over to try and evaluate these wafers at a stage where I probably won't be able to see through the mounting film to my defect. Gah!
Sunday, August 5, 2007
I Left the North, I Travelled South
Three times this weekend, four this week, I have driven from Ventura county, over East and down South to El Segundo, just south of LAX. This can take anywhere from 35 to 95 minutes, generally 45 in lighter traffic. I got stuck in the 95 minute version only once so I shouldn't complain even though I think I got a headache from it. I had checked out 2 books on tape for the NorCal trip though, and this gave me the opportunity to blow through most of the rest of "The Bean Trees".
The Bean Trees is one of my top five favorite books and this listen gave me a chance to remember why I love it even though the Lou Ann character makes me a little nuts. The way B. Kingsolver strings words together is poetic. The characterisation that finds something fabulous in the least loveable character, and the interaction with the world as a gift is something to be treasured. The scene where Taylor realizes who has been buying Edna Poppy her red hairpins gets me every time. And the ferocious thicket of bean viness that surprises people by coming up in the squash patch. It can get a little preachy, but it always makes sense in context. And it's a beautiful story of making your own life out of what you have.
But it was not just driving back and forth to no purpose other than listening to a story... On monday, I got to enjoy the sun and had lunch with my cousin J who was on her way back to Taiwan. Yesterday, I drove down in a pickup truck with no pickup to get my new sofa. I also picked up a new friend and potential date who had driven up from San Diego to help. (He's new in town and lacking for weekend activities too. We met in Sacramento.) After driving back up and unloading the couch, eating a quick lunch, and returning the truck, we headed back to his car. In the miserable stop and go 20mph afternoon traffic. Whether or not he ever speaks to me again will probably be dependent on whether or not he made it back to San Diego in time for a concert he was looking forward to.
I have a friend who kindly let me borrow the truck which turned out to be just right for hauling the sofa. I'm pretty excited about the whole sofa/ couch/ davenport/ sectional experience. It's incredibly hard to find a ready made sofa small enough for my space. I could easily build a custom one for $3K, but couldn't pay for it. I was just about to buy a not quite the right color orange sofa from IKEA that had not quite the right legs for a couple hundred dollars more than my budget, just to be done with it, when I found this little custom shop near the glass studio run by a couple of women. It took a little longer than planned due to my just right orange fabric being discontinued, but in the end it turned out to be just what I wanted. I'd been going back and forth between wanting orange or green. The final fabric I chose isn't just one color but is woven with varying bits of different colored and textured yarns although on the whole it looks light green. Here 'tis, with orange pillows.
There is still a fair amount of furniture rearranging to do but it's in the house. Condo. Living room. My first adult piece of furniture that I didn't get at a garage sale, build myself, or receive as a gift. Well, this and the bench for the patio. All that driving wore me out and I had to take a quick couch nap. Just to check it out. Yep. Comfy too. Not too squishy, not too firm.
Today I woke up earlyish yet again and tried to make an alligator. I had the luxury of working with an assistant today who could bring me bits that I could make into legs and scales and eyes. It's clearly a prototype glass alligator and looks like an baby sea lizard - lips are fishy and the eyes are big and buggy. And it was good fun. I need to coach my assistant more on bringing bits pronto but it was good. I also made another pushup vase. If it looks good, I might have a home for it. I will have to go back to El Segundo to pick them up after they get done annealing. Maybe I should look for a boyfriend in El Segundo because that's there I seem to get everything else.
Back to the people though, I was planning to meet with my cousin M - sister to cousin J and the youngest cousin from our side of the family. I'm just about 10 years older than she is, and am the oldest cousin. We'd planned to meet in Santa Monica in the afternoon, but the schedule got pushed out. This is something I rarely have a problem with. Today it wound up being a treat for me because I was able to see my elusive and overworked friend at UCLA. I drove her and her gimpy foot over to the In-n-Out for monster fries and a strawberry shake. She may not clearly remember the outing tomorrow due to the pain meds for the foot but we had a good time. I left before she fell asleep in the fries and managed to arrive at the Santa Monica pier just in time to find good street parking mere minutes before my cousin and her friends came strolling up.
My cousins and I grew up in different states so we are something of fond strangers who played together for a couple for weeks in the summer most every year. I think we've all gotten more interesting with age. She is out here visiting with college pals and I crashed their dinner plans. We took a slooowww stroll down to the pier, poked the squishy sea cucumbers at the little aquarium, got our feet wet and sandy, pushed our way through a mass of humanity, then headed back uphill and six blocks over for some Thai food. We got in a couple of pictures and remembered to touch in at least one of them. It occurs to me now that we waved goodbye instead of hugging. Heck, even sofa moving boy got a hug. I'm hopeless sometimes :)
At any rate, I had a wonderful and packed weekend despite starting out with no firm plans. I saw the very good, but visually jumpy, Bourne movie! I got together with all sorts of people - new to me and not! I blew glass with an assistant! I got my new sofa! And I drove to El Segundo. Lather, rinse, repeat.
The Bean Trees is one of my top five favorite books and this listen gave me a chance to remember why I love it even though the Lou Ann character makes me a little nuts. The way B. Kingsolver strings words together is poetic. The characterisation that finds something fabulous in the least loveable character, and the interaction with the world as a gift is something to be treasured. The scene where Taylor realizes who has been buying Edna Poppy her red hairpins gets me every time. And the ferocious thicket of bean viness that surprises people by coming up in the squash patch. It can get a little preachy, but it always makes sense in context. And it's a beautiful story of making your own life out of what you have.
But it was not just driving back and forth to no purpose other than listening to a story... On monday, I got to enjoy the sun and had lunch with my cousin J who was on her way back to Taiwan. Yesterday, I drove down in a pickup truck with no pickup to get my new sofa. I also picked up a new friend and potential date who had driven up from San Diego to help. (He's new in town and lacking for weekend activities too. We met in Sacramento.) After driving back up and unloading the couch, eating a quick lunch, and returning the truck, we headed back to his car. In the miserable stop and go 20mph afternoon traffic. Whether or not he ever speaks to me again will probably be dependent on whether or not he made it back to San Diego in time for a concert he was looking forward to.
I have a friend who kindly let me borrow the truck which turned out to be just right for hauling the sofa. I'm pretty excited about the whole sofa/ couch/ davenport/ sectional experience. It's incredibly hard to find a ready made sofa small enough for my space. I could easily build a custom one for $3K, but couldn't pay for it. I was just about to buy a not quite the right color orange sofa from IKEA that had not quite the right legs for a couple hundred dollars more than my budget, just to be done with it, when I found this little custom shop near the glass studio run by a couple of women. It took a little longer than planned due to my just right orange fabric being discontinued, but in the end it turned out to be just what I wanted. I'd been going back and forth between wanting orange or green. The final fabric I chose isn't just one color but is woven with varying bits of different colored and textured yarns although on the whole it looks light green. Here 'tis, with orange pillows.
There is still a fair amount of furniture rearranging to do but it's in the house. Condo. Living room. My first adult piece of furniture that I didn't get at a garage sale, build myself, or receive as a gift. Well, this and the bench for the patio. All that driving wore me out and I had to take a quick couch nap. Just to check it out. Yep. Comfy too. Not too squishy, not too firm.
Today I woke up earlyish yet again and tried to make an alligator. I had the luxury of working with an assistant today who could bring me bits that I could make into legs and scales and eyes. It's clearly a prototype glass alligator and looks like an baby sea lizard - lips are fishy and the eyes are big and buggy. And it was good fun. I need to coach my assistant more on bringing bits pronto but it was good. I also made another pushup vase. If it looks good, I might have a home for it. I will have to go back to El Segundo to pick them up after they get done annealing. Maybe I should look for a boyfriend in El Segundo because that's there I seem to get everything else.
Back to the people though, I was planning to meet with my cousin M - sister to cousin J and the youngest cousin from our side of the family. I'm just about 10 years older than she is, and am the oldest cousin. We'd planned to meet in Santa Monica in the afternoon, but the schedule got pushed out. This is something I rarely have a problem with. Today it wound up being a treat for me because I was able to see my elusive and overworked friend at UCLA. I drove her and her gimpy foot over to the In-n-Out for monster fries and a strawberry shake. She may not clearly remember the outing tomorrow due to the pain meds for the foot but we had a good time. I left before she fell asleep in the fries and managed to arrive at the Santa Monica pier just in time to find good street parking mere minutes before my cousin and her friends came strolling up.
My cousins and I grew up in different states so we are something of fond strangers who played together for a couple for weeks in the summer most every year. I think we've all gotten more interesting with age. She is out here visiting with college pals and I crashed their dinner plans. We took a slooowww stroll down to the pier, poked the squishy sea cucumbers at the little aquarium, got our feet wet and sandy, pushed our way through a mass of humanity, then headed back uphill and six blocks over for some Thai food. We got in a couple of pictures and remembered to touch in at least one of them. It occurs to me now that we waved goodbye instead of hugging. Heck, even sofa moving boy got a hug. I'm hopeless sometimes :)
At any rate, I had a wonderful and packed weekend despite starting out with no firm plans. I saw the very good, but visually jumpy, Bourne movie! I got together with all sorts of people - new to me and not! I blew glass with an assistant! I got my new sofa! And I drove to El Segundo. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Friday, August 3, 2007
Bourne Free
I was going to post a big thing about bio-rhythms but got too lazy and didn't. I've got a lot of stuff going on this weekend. Tomorrow I get my couch, rearrange all my furniture, prep for glassblowing on sunday, blow glass on sunday, hang out with cousin M, and maybe get a little sleep. I'll probably re-read the Suz Brockmann Countdown. But all this only AFTER I see the Bourne Ultimatum.
It's FINALLY here! Bourne Identity is one of my favorite movies ever. And not because I think Matt D.amon is cute - he actually doesn't really do it for me - but because when I watch the movie, I see "Jason Bourne" not Matt. It reads as real. And that movie is a work of genius. The early buzz about this movie seems solid - of nine reviews all were 4 to 5 of 5 stars. The Boston G.lobe review was really fun to read and does my favorite thing - says WHY they like the movie without giving away major plot points and spoilers.
I also got a link to some YouTube silliness that spoofs it.
The Boston reviewer pointed out a common issue between us. He and I are both still pissed that they killed off Franke in the 2nd flick. I'd probably have liked that one more than I do if they hadn't offed Marie. Actually, I might not as it didn't have a lot of character growth, mostly just plot happenings. As an avid reader I've come to realize that what draws me into a story is character and relationship growth. I stopped reading the R. Jor.dan "Whe.el of Ti.me" series when the main characters started reacting to their close friends as if they were stereotypical enemies rather than someone they'd known their whole lives. Sort of an "oh, now that you're a [insert job title], you cannot now be trusted despite our 20 year history" attitude. Pfft! Game over.
In Bourne Supremacy, we the viewers learn about some machinations behind the scenes, and we see Bourne kicking ass, but we don't really learn anything new about him. He gets back more of his memory, but it doesn't continue to change him, really. We sort of expect him to make good on his findings. And without he and Franke growing together? Just not as interesting to me. I'm not a huge fan of revenge plots. Revenge has its place, don't get me wrong! I can hold a grudge with the best of them. But revenge is about living in the past. It is something you take care of in act one or two so you can move on with your life already.
And car chases? I only like them if they make sense to the plot. I loved the car chase in BI. They were in the car already, using it as their primary transport, then he realized they were in danger of being cornered and it offered the quickest way out. In BS (heh!) the car chase read to me as "well, people loved them some car chase in the first movie, so we'll put one in here too, but we'll make it more frenetic and jumpy so they won't realize it's kinda pointless". So we'll see if I like this next installment. Regardless of plot, I plan to enjoy myself. I do love to see MD become Jason Bourne, it's truly a thing of beauty.
It's FINALLY here! Bourne Identity is one of my favorite movies ever. And not because I think Matt D.amon is cute - he actually doesn't really do it for me - but because when I watch the movie, I see "Jason Bourne" not Matt. It reads as real. And that movie is a work of genius. The early buzz about this movie seems solid - of nine reviews all were 4 to 5 of 5 stars. The Boston G.lobe review was really fun to read and does my favorite thing - says WHY they like the movie without giving away major plot points and spoilers.
I also got a link to some YouTube silliness that spoofs it.
The Boston reviewer pointed out a common issue between us. He and I are both still pissed that they killed off Franke in the 2nd flick. I'd probably have liked that one more than I do if they hadn't offed Marie. Actually, I might not as it didn't have a lot of character growth, mostly just plot happenings. As an avid reader I've come to realize that what draws me into a story is character and relationship growth. I stopped reading the R. Jor.dan "Whe.el of Ti.me" series when the main characters started reacting to their close friends as if they were stereotypical enemies rather than someone they'd known their whole lives. Sort of an "oh, now that you're a [insert job title], you cannot now be trusted despite our 20 year history" attitude. Pfft! Game over.
In Bourne Supremacy, we the viewers learn about some machinations behind the scenes, and we see Bourne kicking ass, but we don't really learn anything new about him. He gets back more of his memory, but it doesn't continue to change him, really. We sort of expect him to make good on his findings. And without he and Franke growing together? Just not as interesting to me. I'm not a huge fan of revenge plots. Revenge has its place, don't get me wrong! I can hold a grudge with the best of them. But revenge is about living in the past. It is something you take care of in act one or two so you can move on with your life already.
And car chases? I only like them if they make sense to the plot. I loved the car chase in BI. They were in the car already, using it as their primary transport, then he realized they were in danger of being cornered and it offered the quickest way out. In BS (heh!) the car chase read to me as "well, people loved them some car chase in the first movie, so we'll put one in here too, but we'll make it more frenetic and jumpy so they won't realize it's kinda pointless". So we'll see if I like this next installment. Regardless of plot, I plan to enjoy myself. I do love to see MD become Jason Bourne, it's truly a thing of beauty.
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
Good thing I like driving
I'd initially resisted the idea of heading to northern CA for the weekend because I've just been exhausted. Not "nap on the couch after work" tired, but just fatigued from not enough sleep. I went with the "I'll sleep when I'm dead" theory once again. And this time it was a great idea. Many blessings came my way recently, here are three.
- The trip to NorCal is detailed here in two parts. This was 947 miles round trip. It was nice because I'm starting to be more comfortable with my new friends out here.
Part 1 : Part 2
Perhaps because I only knew one person going into it, I met even more friendly people at the party saturday, including one guy who lives a couple hours south of here and wants to meet up and watch Firefly. I'm not sure how date-like that will turn out, but hey, he's another Joss Whedon fan that's close enough to see on weekends. I'll take it for now. It was nice to be flirted with, I must say. - Please note that the Force of Nature countdown for Suz Brockmann's next release has begun! Fun!
- I did even MORE driving on monday, 140 miles for the day. My cousin J called from LAX with a 9 hour layover on her way back to Taiwan for another year of teaching. I was able to take a loooonnnnng lunch and go see her for the first time since we ran a Thanksgiving 6K Turkey Trot together in 2004. She has the pics on her camera because I wiped out my poor battery. We went to an excellent place in El Segundo and did a drive by of the beach. Then I worked late, which is why I didn't post yesterday. I get to drive back down to El Segundo twice this weekend, once in a slow truck to get my couch, once to blow glass and see my cousin M.
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