siriosa 2000

testing schmapplet.
"paste this code to your blog," it says.

couldn't see it on livejournal. lessee if it shows up here.



excellent. you'll wanna click on the cluny museum. the picture of that purty chapel ceiling is mine.

carrie fisher at berkeley rep:
short version: go see her.

longer version: the fabulous anne casey has season ticket to berkeley rep. when i heard about carrie fisher's show, i asked her if maybe we could go together. she made it happen. third row seats, just out of range of the glitter confetti.

carrie fisher's funny. and smart. and she's got some hellacious history and biology that would surely have killed her if she hadn't figured out a way to laugh at them. (the last thing john belushi said to her was "you and i are alike." a week or so later, he died.)

she insists on audience participation. she sings (darn well). she's been bringing items to decorate the set as the run progresses.

she's at the berkeley rep until march 30. go thou: see her. laugh. cheer. and if you're in the first couple of rows, expect to go home with glitter in your hair.

this is me, roaring.
paging through previous posts, i see that i have not whined much about the depredations of the cat wars. bhe's cat objected to the introduction of other felines into the house. she expressed herself on the carpet, in the heating vents, on pieces of paper left on the floor. virginia looked up to her, and took this to be How Things Are Done. virginia expressed herself in some of those places, and also (alas) in bhe's laundry, and on top of bhe's dresser. (virginia's the aerobatic cat: spot's joints are not flexible enough for high altitude exploits.)

so last november, i took up the carpet in the dining room. it was weirdly exhilarating, at my age. the hard part, of course, was getting up the staples and strips of tacks around the edges. took me 4 hours for the carpet, 8 or so for the detritus.

then it was going to be thanksgiving, and then i was visiting my family, and then it was going to be the end of the year, so i didn't get around to pulling the carpet in the living room until a month ago. took 2 hours. the staples and tacks took about 4 hours. because i learn from experience.

years ago, in one of the earthquakes, the chimney separated from the house. when it became apparent it was only a matter of time before it brained one of the neighbors, i had it taken down. when i asked somebody about refinishing the floors, they said well, first you have to do something about the fireplace. are you going to leave it in? you see the hearth? it interrupts the floor. so, right, fine.

the reason the floors need to be refinished (aside from feline depredations) is that the previous owners did not believe in dropcloths. i think they were house flippers, and as carpet was going in anyway, they simply did not care. i like to think the universe has seen to them. i don't like to think about how.

we finally had somebody come and take the fireplace away. he started a week ago. it took him one day to dismantle the thing and pile it neatly in the yard. the next door neighbors, bless them, have a great honking truck, and kindly filled it up with (i am not exaggerating: i saw the receipt from the dump) a ton of deceased fireplace. subfloor has been installed, and drywall. the crown molding is all nice. the baseboard is a little difficult to approximate, but he's an artist, and whatever he's happy with will be fine with me.

all this is leading up to the floors being refinished, right? that means everything in two rooms has to go be someplace else.

turns out i'm good at three-dimensional tetris.

gertrude (formerly known as the room that dare not speak its name) has some furniture in it, but against the walls. a few days ago i started fitting items into gertrude. it now contains (not counting the original furniture) 3 tables, a computer desk, a 15-drawer flat file, 4 bookcases, 2 stools, a sewing machine, 3 little rollie carts, and two upholstered chairs. (i had to take the door off its hinges to get them in.)

all that's left in the living room and dining room: the sofa, the tivo altar, a work table that folds, a narrow table that sits behind the sofa, and a 4-drawer file cabinet. all of that can just go in the kitchen for the duration of the floor refinishing. provided the sofa will fit through the kitchen door. if not, we'll just have to sell it.

anyway, get this: you can still walk through gertrude. and access the networked printer.

cue the helen reddy song.

a little juvenilia,
from memory.

once was a poet, long since dead
who used to write things off the top of his [sic] head.
and they were beautiful: their beauty sings.
until a professor named dr. zings
made a revelation: he said he'd found
when the poet said "bird" he really meant "ground."
and someone else decided there were other symbols, too:
the use of the word "me" had the implication "you."
then a preacher, with a nod, said that "man" refers to "god."
and this goes on and on: will it never stop?
the poet, in his grave, is spinning like a top.

was probably 16 when i wrote this. filthy doggerel, but extra points for attitude.

and why did it float up to consciousness just now? i am copyediting a doctoral dissertation. there are semiotics. there are hermeneutics. gods help us all, there are intertextual interpretations.

maybe it's something i ate.

my little brother called on saturday.
he wanted to know how my cats were doing. i was helping out my 92-yr-old friend, so i couldn't talk, but i promised i'd post some new pictures for him.

how they're doing: really, quite well. they pounce on each other and chase each other and have wrestling matches. with three, you get tag-team action. in the 15 months since i brought virginia and vita home, i think i've laughed more than in the ten years previous. (yes, they were an especially grim ten years, but still.)

weetzie's now bigger than any of the adults, at 8 or 9 months old. he's still kitten-shaped, and has a kitten's wonky lack of coordination. he's been throwing up some, sometimes spectacularly, and we've been trying to adjust his diet. he and spot like chicken liver very much, so i make sure they get some every other day or so. (virginia and elizabeth don't care for it, for some reason.) we just tried wet food, but he wasn't charmed. fortunately, b.h.e. bought several flavors.

one set of ejecta contained some tinsel from a garland. i'm grateful it didn't stay down, and sad that i'll have to put the lavender and purple garlands away. they've been up for years.

white elephant sale: oakland's mardi gras.
it's just so darn cheerful, the white elephant sale. the oakland museum's auxiliary has a warehouse in east oakland. they collect donations all year, and have a two-day blow-out sale in late february or early march (this year it's march 1 & 2), with free admission. the second day of the sale, several of the departments will sell you a grocery bag for a dollar, and that includes whatever you can fit into it.

a month before that, they have a preview sale, where they charge you money to get in. fair enough: you get first shot at ... stuff.

what kind of stuff? shoes, clothes, toys, sporting goods, linens, jewelry, art, books, music, bric-a-brac, office supplies, sewing supplies, housewares, hardware, furniture, electronics. hats. one of my favorite things is that many of the volunteers wear goofy hats, so you can find them in the crowd.

at the sale proper, the girlscouts always set up a tent outside, because they know you want the cookies, and you're feeling self-indulgent because you just bought, for example, five swimsuits for $11.

which is what i did today. no girlscouts, not a lot of rain, just several hundred dollars worth of spandex, plus a pair of lined wool pants and a pair of sweatpants, for under $20.

i say it a lot: i love where i live.

my friend bill called this morning.
he waited patiently until 10:30, so as not to wake me up. (little did he know that the little cat feet kept me awake until around 4:30.) he said "can you please help me out for $300? i'd be so grateful. i'm at my wits' end." willfully misunderstanding, i said "well, sure, bill. i can let you have $300." that stopped him cold.

he explained that he's trying to get ready for his accountant, and he has these stacks of receipts, and he's typed a list, and added everything repeatedly, and can't get the same result twice. could i please bring the magic computer over and help him out?

so that's what i did this afternoon: essentially, the task i've delayed and struggled and wept over on my own account.

i begin to suspect that having strong feelings about anything means the universe will send it your way, so you can just deal already. and get over it.

that's been my experience, anyway. it's why i have a yellow kitchen.

mind like a hummingbird.
i've been having "focus" issues lately. there are dozens of projects in various stages of noncompletion. just as an example: my holiday card list. thank fsm i've never specified which holiday.

so i sit down on the floor to go through my miscellaneous inbox. there are many items in it. vet bills, bank statements, holiday cards from people with better focus than i've got. i file the bank statements as i come to them, make a stack of medical items, and then i have to make a new folder for weetzie. i get out a fresh folder, but i have no pencil. so i get up.

sit down at my computer.

two hours later, i remember the original project. find a pencil. meanwhile, the cats are scattering my neat little piles of what-goes-where with gleeful abandon.

now's a good time to synch my palm.

and so it goes. some days, i never get to the end of any projects at all. i've built a framework such that (most days) i write a page in the morning and the evening, do two sets of sun salutes, eat oatmeal, take vitamins (and of course feed the cats). so most days aren't a complete waste, even here in the dark of winter, when sensible creatures hibernate.

what is old?
on a psychic level, i've always assumed i was born old. one theory is that when my grandmother died, she rose up out of her body and looked down at my mother, who was 17 and pregnant, and thought to herself "i can't just leave her," and dove into the nearest available body. mine. i shared with her for decades (i'm sure i gave her a very interesting ride) until a few years ago it occurred to me that she needed to be evicted.

one trope i've found amusing is: just as "crazy cat lady" is anybody with two more cats than i've got, "old" is anybody 15 years older than i am.

suzette haden elgin,* whose ozark series of YA SF novels i liked a lot, and whose linguist-themed feminist novels (beginning with native tongue) i admired extravagantly, has been discussing "eldering" on her livejournal.

she quoted george burns on the topic: "if you wake up in the morning when you're old and nothing hurts, you know you've died."

tfac and bhe and i went to the monterey aquarium last summer, to admire the otters. they seem to be having such a fine time in their bodies, and it occurred to me that i'd have more fun in mine if i were more limber. i started doing a sun salute in the morning. then one in the morning and one in the evening. i'm up to eight a day now.

and i wake up in the morning and nothing hurts. so i must not be old. good to have a rubric.

*i can also heartily recommend elgin's series beginning with the gentle art of verbal self defense. very useful.

instant gratification takes too long.
okay. i admit it. it wasn't the wisest purchasing decision i've ever made. but it was up on woot, and we had so much fun with the scooba, and i just lost my head.

the roomba scheduler with intellibin for pets arrived today. it sweeps floors. we have four cats. they all shed all the time, brushed or not, winter or summer. the rug in my room is virtually unrecognizable.

(once, after carpet sweeping and vacuuming it, i spent an hour on the floor with a hairbrush, picking up fur. the rug looked a hundred times better, but, really, how often am i going to do that?)

so i plugged it in to charge, and settled back with the quickstart guide. then i went to the userguide. and there i found that the first time you use it, you should charge it for 16 hours. nooooo! i already waited five whole days for it to get here.

le sigh.

the cats are having a fine old time with the box it came in, and the plastic air pillows that cushioned it. oh look! lilbit's about to dump the whole shebang on the floor!

hours of harmless entertainment. wait until the thing starts going. some time tomorrow.

daddy emails: it's not working.
daddy's 91. i write back and say "what program are you in? and what's it doing wrong?" he says "news." uh, okay. maybe your browser. i suggest quitting the program, restarting it. maybe rebooting the computer. a few hours later, he writes back: still no joy.

eventually i call. the problem was maybe in mail. no scrollbar. well, see, if it's a short message, you don't get a scrollbar. no, that's not it. ah, i see: when you click on a link in mail, the browser doesn't have a scrollbar so you can see the rest of the article. okay then.

as it happens, i was just there recently, and i tried to upgrade his safari. he's at a weird level of operating system unreachable by safari upgrades. i tried. didn't work. so i installed firefox.

with mom's help, we reset his preferences so links open in firefox. scrollbars return. life is good.

nothing to complain about.
nothing whatsoever. i've hit one of those periods where i can do what needs done (laundry, dishes, pay bills, tax paperwork), and i can do my sun salutes in the morning and evening. have my oatmeal and vitamins, and pay close attention to my teeth. and cook up liver for b.h.e.'s cat, who has learned to convey "feed me that yum stuff now, you moron" with body language and an especially pointed "meow." i can do what needs done, but i can't seem to launch a project.

maybe it's the prospect of pulling the living room carpet up. (when i did the dining room, i had no idea how physically demanding it was going to be. i just did it. this time i know. not always a bonus.)

or maybe it's some kind of sick again. first half of last year i was listless like this. part of it was ptsd from the tee debacle. and part of it was my gall bladder trying to kill me. i don't know. i don't think i'm sick, but i have a stupidly high pain threshold, so there's really no telling.

"nothing to complain about" is also one of the things i used to say to myself when i was clinically depressed, back in the 80s. it didn't help. what helped was going back to college, starting my new life. having a project that interested and engaged me.

i got plenty projects. want to make a movie out of the pictures of women i took in paris in 2005. want to gather up cara's costume jewelry and send it to her posthumous niece. it'd be fun to make a movie out of the milkshake sequence with cynthia. getting started is hard, and it's the only thing that really fixes stuff.

and then i chanced on a link (at making light, "which books would you require everybody to read?") to john scalzi's blog post being poor. and upwards of 600 comments, many of them expanding on the topic.

some of them i've lived. some i can imagine all too vividly. judge a civilization based on how it treats its most vulnerable members: this one's going to hell.

the home improvement projects: not so very pressing.

cleaned out the hall closet.
i'm starting the year-end cleaning a little early (because last year i was up until 4am, and that's just silly).

i finally found it in my heart to let go of some more of cara's hats. and there's a big old pile of coats and jackets piled in the dining room. i may get in the car tomorrow and drive down to hayward, to dump them in a "one warm coat" bin. there is now enough room in the hall closet for visitors to hang their coats.

also cleaned off the hall table.

it's called "starting in a corner." one of my all-purpose algorithms. pick a spot, and move out from there, being careful not to move stuff back into it. next task is dusting and vacuuming the living room.

after that, aggregate all the boxes of "i don't need to have this in the house any more." list the contents. offer them on freecycle.

space. the final frontier.

next year: pull up the carpet in the living room. it's good to have goals, isn't it?

charity is like potato chips.
once you get started, it's difficult to stop.

no sooner had i sent off (what turned out to be the first round of) donations to worthy causes, than i started hearing about others, impossible to exclude.

pretty bird woman house is a women's shelter on the standing rock reservation in south dakota. they lost the place they were renting, and needed a place of their own to qualify for grants. real estate is relatively inexpensive in south dakota: they found a place to buy for about $70,000. and then they raised half that in a few weeks (go, world wide web, go!). yesterday they passed $50k.

it's cold in south dakota. send 'em some money, why doncha?

then there was bad, bad news. terry pratchett, creator of the discworld novels, has been diagnosed with early onset alzheimer's. he's a year older than i am.

turnberry knick-knock, one of his (millions of) fans did some research, and suggests the fisher center for alzheimer's research foundation, which puts 94% of the money it raises right into actual research. i wrote out a check for them today, too.

the thing to do, you see, is to put out into the world what you hope to find there.

we were just discussing worthy causes, right?
yes, yes we were.

so i've known this guy for about a hundred years, give or take. back when there was a bmug, he moderated the writers conference. when guardian online was amusing, he lit the place up. he's been in the process of writing a book about the great love of his life, the joshua tree, for almost that entire time.

it's finally time to finish. there are expensive books to acquire, and expensive trips to take, and presents to buy for the tribal elders he needs to interview.

when cara and i had time to kill, we used to play "what i would do if i won the lottery." cara was very high-minded. literacy programs, clean water, anti-violence programs, battered women's shelters. i figured she had that end covered. i was going to endow a foundation which would give a thousand dollars to anybody who'd ever made me laugh.

i have won the lottery only in a small, limited sense, but i'm going to send chris clarke a little something to help him on his way. if you've got a little extra, you could help out too.

did i mention he's a damn fine writer? he is.