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books
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2002-09-27
A Thousand Ships: is the title of
the new graphic novel I'm reading, which is the birthday present I chose for myself from my sister this year. (Thanks, Kathy!)
It's the first book in a looong serialization about the Trojan war. The series is called Age Of Bronze, and it is extremely cool. I eagerly await future volumes, and I'm not even finished with the first one yet.
I'm rather big on Greek history and Greek mythology lately, so this is right up my alley. I like it a lot so far - it's quite character driven and complex.
In other comics news, I happened upon something amazingly suited to me called Girl Genius at the Half Price Books location that is magically specially tuned to my particular thoughtstreams (more details on this some other time).
At the end of the bin, one of the individual episodes caught my eye with its title, and within a couple seconds of looking at it, I knew I had to have it. Later, I found the compilation book I linked to above at the comic store, and I just love it! I can't wait for more stuff to come out. I even want the schwag from the publisher's website, especially the license plate frame from Transylvania Polygnostic University that reads "Know Enough To Be Afraid".
Damn, I like their style! :) I'm going to have to get signed up at the comic book shop across the road to get all the new issues as they come out, something I've never done before.
The other book I'm actively reading now is called The Giver, and I found it in the young adult section of the bookstore when I was there on Tuesday with Elena and her grandmother.
Sometimes young adult books are way cooler than adult books :). Anyhow, it's quite fascinating, I like it. It's also a quick read, which is a plus. And if I like it enough, it goes into Elena's library for future reading.
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books
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2002-08-20
Scott McCloud's interesting take on Utopian Entrepreneur: Scott McCloud is a genius in the realm of comics, and he's done
an interesting piece about the book Utopian Entrepreneur.
It's a pretty good book, and I happen to have it. I suppose I should read it again.
Anyway, McCloud's bit is pretty good I think, but the last page felt like a lie to me.
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books
movies
my site
projects
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2002-07-21
Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea magnifica culpa: Okay, so I *didn't* get around to writing posts the other day. Please forgive me. Life got in the way (as it has a tendency to do) and I got quite busy.
Plus, Friday night & Saturday morning are my prime visiting times with Elena, so I was on Mommy duty much of the time. Yesterday, after we dropped Elena off, we went to the movies (Men in Black 2, highly recommended), shopping, and when we got home I was so tired I just conked out in bed after finally finishing off the latest Pratchett book I've been reading, Moving Pictures (also highly recommended).
This was around six pm, mind you.
So by around two or three, I was quite ready to get up. It's now 4:13am by my computer clock, and I'm going to see how many posts I can manage here before five, at which point I'll go read and take notes in the other room.
My schedule's really odd lately, and I know that's something I'm supposed to watch for because of my condition. I just want to reassure everyone that I'm feeling *fine* these days, taking my medication, et cetera. I was feeling quite horribly stressed before David got his new job last week, but things have improved drastically since he started work.
So, I've decided to write a book. A big book. I hope to have it in hand by Christmas. If it turns out there are only five copies which I have made at Kinko's and hand out just to close friends and family, and not even they really even bother to read the thing, that's okay. Because I need to write this book for *me*, to say what I need to say.
Though I figure at least one person besides me, somewhere, someday, will think that my book is worthwhile, and be glad that I wrote it. So I'm doing it for them, too.
But, I hear you in the peanut gallery crying, we've heard dramatic pronouncements from you before, Beth, yet you're the laziest person we know and we keep seeing all talk and no action from you. And I would say that you have a point.
But keep this in mind, dear peanut gallery: the last time I felt the need to write something big and important, a need so strong that it sort of took me over for a little while, I churned out 40,000 words in three days of frantic writing. That was a bit excessive and I didn't get enough sleep and so on when that happened, but what I'm trying to show is that I've got, or at least had in the past, a nice little pipeline into my noggin from whichever Muse controls these things. He / she / it / they know where to find me, in other words.
And so I have begun. I take lots of notes on 4 x 6 cards as I go through reading the book We've Got Blog. It's slow going, since I keep getting more and more ideas about the book I'm going to write, and I have to pause and write out notes about that before I can go back to writing notes about WGB and underline stuff and write in the margins.
And here's another thing about the book-to-come: I'm going to do it all myself. Why? Because I feel a compelling need to, that's why. More than just a want to, even. I have to show what I can do all on my own. If it's the kind of thing that merits a revision later, then I will accept some input from other people on the revision, but that will come later on.
For now, I need to get my ideas out as quickly and as well as I can, and frankly it would slow me down considerably to have to listen to someone else's opinions about what I'm writing, especially since I imagine most of the discussions would go something like this:
"Hey Beth, you should say something about ."
"I have a whole chapter about ."
"Hmmm, but you left out ."
"That's because I'm focusing on other things. Leave me alone, write your own darn book! Argh!"
And then subsequently I'd be going round in circles in my head, losing my original vision, as I wonder to myself "What if they're right and I really should go into huge detail about and all that?" and the dang book would *never get finished*.
Bah! Just deride me as another fool who thinks she's a mad, lone genius or something. Snicker away while I write, and then we'll chat after you've read my book, okay? I just don't have the time to deal with criticism about a work that isn't complete yet.
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books
my site
random thoughts
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2002-07-10
One of these days: I will return to writing more interesting weblog entries. Really.
You know, when I have like, leisure time. True leisure time, meaning that it's earned. Meaning that I have a job that can pay the rent and feed me and pay for my medical insurance.
These are things I cannot pay for right now. I can't afford squat. We're broke. Like, busted broke.
I went to a temp agency yesterday, and signed on with them. Not sure if they'll be able to get me anything, though. Sigh. This economy sure sucks.
Yesterday I went to the library, and got four books. One was "Interface Culture", which looked interesting in the library but seemed too hype-filled when I got home. The author seemed totally keen on showing off how well-read and smart he was, and he didn't seem to be making any real points. Bah. I flipped through it and I won't waste time reading it.
Another one was "Pragmatic Programming", which I thought would be good, but seemed to be common sense for managers of programmers, and it made me want to gag after flipping through it. Also goes to the "not gonna read it" pile.
The other two were on Greek mythology, and I made myself dizzy reading a *ton* and filling my head until it was so full that myths were spilling out my ears. I even *took notes* on 4 x 6 notecards. If that's not a sign that I'm crazy, I dunno what is. :)
Then I researched some mythy stuff on the web, until I felt really dizzy (and noticed how often people just plagiarize other sites). Also I learned that there are 23432433 versions of most of these myths, and that there is not "one true version" of most of them.
That is, there's only a fog of possibilities - these things changed so much over time, because different people had different points to make when they told the story, so they skewed it for their purposes, leaving parts out, embellishing other parts, and making stuff up because it suited them.
Kinda like modern times, only less trackable. :)
Anyway, that's what I learned yesterday. I feel I have a decent basic grounding in Greek myths, at least some of the most commonly known ones. Which is something I didn't have before. So I made progress.
[I notice myself using sentence fragments more these days. Part of me rebels, but the part of me that scans the text insists that the fragments make sense and are more readable than the otherwise achingly long and convoluted sentences that I tend to write. So that part is starting to win more. Good god, I'm starting to write more like David Foster Wallace. When I start using constructions like "line's end's end" instead of "end of the end of the line", please throw tomatoes at me until I come to my senses. End of digression.]
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mammalog
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2002-05-16
Great visit with Elena yesterday: This week, Spencer has training at work all day every day, so he can't do our usual pickup with Elena at 3:15pm. Instead, he's having us pick her up at 10am, with Luba watching her until that time. The result is a much longer visit than normal :).
Yesterday we had a lot of fun. Here are just some of the things we did:
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Tried out the new tattoo pens I got, which have food-grade ink in them. I made one tattoo on my ankle, and gave Elena about four tattoos on her legs (she kept insisting on more).
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Invented a new game called "box monster", using the empty macaroni and cheese box (a big Sam's Club one that had previously held eighteen packs of the instant mac & cheese). I chased after her with the box, flapping the flaps open and closed with my hands like a monstrous maw. I'd grab her hair and hands with it, until she defeated me, and I'd fall down and she'd grab the box and chase me with it.
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Made shrinky dink turtles using kits we got cheap from American Science & Surplus. They came out really well! I was impressed. It's been decades since I did shrinky dinks (if you are unfamiliar with them, they're plastic sheets that you decorate and then put in the oven, whereupon they shrink to a tiny size and become thick and stiff) but that signature smell as they cooked was oh-so-instantly-memorable.
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Took tons of digipix with my new digital camera. They're huge, so I have to select the good ones and crop and re-save before I upload them. Haven't gotten around to it yet, sorry. But I will!
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Played "shoot me with the Nerf gun", which involved me practicing my Nerf aim on her (at her request, nay, INSISTENCE, mind you). It was hilarious - she'd run around, I'd pelt her with the pump-action shooter til I ran out of ammo (foamy yellow balls), then she'd run and fetch the balls and bring them back to me. This went on until she ran right at me, and I shot her, and she was all "owie! owie!". To my horror, I saw that she had little red circles on her torso where the balls had hit her, and the game ended. She pleaded with me ten seconds later to resume the action, but I was so sorry and horrified that I had hurt her that I wouldn't give in. Then she got mad at me. Ah, well. Can't really win. (Yes, the marks went away later).
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Played in the hot tub, having a fun time until after about the fifth time I tossed Elena towards the center when she got tons of water up her nose. She cried and screamed and lamented pitifully while I quickly dried her off, put the toys away, and put the lid back on the spa and brought her inside. I gave her some mini m&m's to cheer her up, and she recovered ok. Then she conked out in her car seat as soon as we were on our way to take her back to her dad's house.
Also yesterday, I gave Spencer his Father's Day present early: a copy of Alton Brown's book, I'm Just Here for the Food. Alton Brown is the host (& creator & writer & director) of the show Good Eats on the Food Network. It's very spiffy - he covers really neat information about food chemistry and so on - how cooking actually *works*, not just recipes.
Anyway, I'm also a fan. So I bought a copy of the book for myself, too :). I haven't really started reading it yet, but glancing through it so far, it looks great.
I was so thrilled when I found out he had a book coming out - I knew it would be the perfect gift for Spencer. I am not a good gift-giver, typically (more often than not I am a total deadbeat, not even sending a card, but I hope to improve on this). But sometimes I do stumble upon just the right thing for a person I know, and I just *love* the feeling of being able to get someone something that I know they'll enjoy.
Alton Brown will be in Austin on June 11th on his book tour, and I told Spencer to mark it on his calendar so that we can switch around looking after Elena so that he can go (it's not one of our usual visiting days).
[
books
rants
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2002-04-09
Doctors aren't perfect: Obvious as this may be, sometimes people need to be reminded. The new book
'Complications': An Uncompromising Look at Medical Fallibility (link is to an NYTimes review thereof) covers this subject well, according to the review.
This looks like something I should read. I hope that it doesn't turn out to be just a collection of the author's pieces for the New Yorker, only longer. Feh. I don't think I'll buy it - I'll just read it in the bookstore...
And what's with the florid prose of the book reviewer? Yeesh. It's not so much the fancy words, it's that the same person used the word "milleniums". It's "millenia", dude. C'mon, get with the program. (I suppose the lesson is that writers are fallible too?)
Here's a quote that kind of gets to me:
Thus, in ''Fallibility,'' the reader confronts the sobering fact that physicians must learn, and that learning, even in the best organized, most expertly supervised environment, involves mistakes. Alas, some patients will be harmed. Worse yet, the poor, the uninsured, the most disadvantaged populations suffer the most, since it is for these that physicians in training bear the greatest amount of unsupervised responsibility. All this we may find revolting, but in the current system no viable alternative is in sight. ''We want perfection without practice,'' Gawande writes. ''Yet everyone is harmed if no one is trained for the future.''
I sense resignation that this is the way things are and such they shall ever be. This just doesn't strike me as acceptable.
If the current level of supervision for new physicians is inadequate, why do we not increase it?
Isn't this an obvious way to decrease the unnecessary suffering of patients?
For some reason, I can't see that anyone is thinking this way, besides me. It all comes down to money, I suppose. Essentially, some lives are worth more than others.
I've heard some horrible stories about really idiotic mistakes that are made with patients, and often the patients don't even know. Those that know many times don't bother to sue.
This is ridiculous. Is a standard of care so damn difficult to formulate? The stakes are pretty high - we're talking professionals who have people's lives in their hands on a daily basis.
And sometimes a "bad result" of death, it could be argued, is more merciful than a lifetime of debilitating pain and suffering.
I don't know what the answer is. But I'm wondering... could computers help?
Wouldn't it be spiffy if doctors were able to quickly look up the success rates for various treatments that they're considering? If they could quickly and unobtrusively consult with others in their field with more experience?
What if you had a set of weblogs, chatrooms, and such where questions could be (anonymously) posed, where other physicians could be listening and offering clueful feedback?
Oh, sorry, that would tend to dent the theory of doctor as God. Ok, yes, I'm getting a bit snarky here, but I don't think I'm out of line in suggesting that the profession suffers from an overdose of arrogance in too many cases.
You know what I want to do? I want to do *something* to help the average person get the kind of care that relatives of doctors get. (Guess how many mistakes are considered "acceptable" for one Inside the Circle in such a manner?)
I want to sit in waiting rooms of public hospitals and hand out flyers with the Patient's Bill of Rights on them, with the part about the right to refuse care by residents highlighted. If people knew they were being practiced on (as in "not fully skilled"), do you think they'd stand for it?
Hey look, this turned into a rant. The point is that the current system isn't working, but no one has a vested financial interest in making it work.
The people who are damaged unnecessarily by the system as it stands now deserve more than a shrug and a "Sucks to be you".
If saying that makes me a radical, then I guess I just hope that I have some company.
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body
books
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mammalog
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2002-03-01
The McDonald's habitrail workout:
is my new exercise plan. Well, part of it, anyway. :) We went and picked up Elena today, then went in search of a McDonald's with an indoor playground to go have lunch at, since the weather is all misty and gray.
We found one, where we hadn't been before. It was quite fabulous! The playground was smallish but well-laid-out, and made by Little Tikes (one of my favorite companies, as it so happens...). They also had a kiosk with Nintendo Game Cube games on four sides, at child-height. I tried to play the Pikmin game, but couldn't figure out how to make the little dude jump. (Later I saw a little girl guiding the dude up a ramp, so I suppose jumping wasn't required at that point after all).
I went up into the tube system twice with Elena, and it wore me out both times. Heck, I should go there with her some other time and just go through as many times as I can for half an hour or an hour, to get in shape.
When we arrived there, we were the only people in the playground room, but we were soon beset on all sides by crowds of homeschooling kids who had met there. It quickly became a zoo full of shrieking, running children. Egads!
Afterwards, we went by the bookstore where I got Fast Food Nation, something I've been meaning to read. I know that it has something in it about McDonald's playgrounds, and I had been wanting to read it ever since I heard the author talk about the book on NPR last year.
The lady at Barnes & Noble told me that the author had been down at Book People (the big independent bookstore downtown) just last week, and apparently it was really great. Crap! Just missed it. Ah, well.
Anyway, I want to read the book for more than just the stuff about playgrounds, of course. But I'm thinking of getting serious about my research for The Ultimate Playground Project... I may have to pay a trip to the local library sometime soon.
I also got a Barbie book for Elena that she picked out herself. It features a pink plastic carrying handle, and a matching pink plastic latch to keep the book closed. It's actually pretty cool - it features Barbie in various career situations: doctor, teacher, astronaut, artist, business executive, clothing designer, fire fighter, ballerina, veterinarian. The best part is making up my own words to go with the pictures :) "See Elena, there's Barbie at her desk reading a note from one of her underlings asking her for a raise. 'Fat chance!', says Barbie."
I read it to her once at the store, once in the car, and when she hassled me repeatedly to read it to her again in the car, I said no. She whined and whined about the fact that she couldn't read it herself and I told her I'd teach her to read. So we'll see if she's really interested.
I downloaded some cool fonts the other day, including some with dashed lines to serve as examples for practicing writing. I'll run off a few sheets of her name, the alphabet, and so on to see if it grabs her interest. If so, nifty, if not, no big deal, I'll wait and try again sometime later. She'll catch on at some point, when the spirit strikes her.
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body
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2002-01-22
Oy. I don't feel so good.
I'm feeling kinda sick. I have a painful cough thing going on and my sinuses are not too pleased with me either. I'll survive I'm sure.
Oh yeah, and my back is a bit sore still from going paddling on Saturday. Which I did (and forgot to mention here) and which was fun. :)
My computer is still discombobulated. I messed it up. I was trying to get it so that I could use David's Pinnacle software to edit digital video, but the damn thing wouldn't recognize my firewire card. Various badly-thought-out and irreversible changes later (I hate it when a company goes under/gets bought out and you can no longer get updated drivers for your hardware to replace the ones you just accidentally overwrote!), my computer sits naked on the table next to me with two cards yanked out of it that I have to put back in and attempt to get the software to be willing to talk to. My hopes for success are... not so high.
I finished Uncle Tungsten by Oliver Sacks, and it was great. All I can say is: cuttlefish! Bwahahahhahahaha! Okay, sorry, I'll have to quote from it later and tell you what's so funny. It'll be a spoiler, but it's worth it. Anyway, I want to do a full reasonable book report at some point, but I lack the energy at the moment.
Yesterday, we hung up the sky chair in a test configuration. We found a good branch, and it was able to hold each of us (held up by a chain). Yippee! We still need to get a good screw-onnable link to hook the chain together (we used a padlock for our test but this is not a good idea as a permanent configuration).
That's about it for now. We're going out to dinner tonight with some of David's friends, which should be a lot of fun.
Okay, I'm tired now. I think I'll lay down and read my next book, Stephen King's Dreamcatcher.
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books
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2001-12-20
I'm just hanging out:
so don't worry about me. It's a nice day today. I think I'm going to hang out and read the lovely book I got about Oliver Sacks, entitled Uncle Tungsten. Then I might go for a walk.
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books
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2001-12-11
Santa, please!
Well okay I'll probably either buy it myself or read it in the bookstore, but Oliver Sacks has a new book out called Uncle Tungsten, and I want it! By the way, he has
a spiffy website too. :) Now if only we could get him to write a weblog...
----later----
I've had a chance to check out the website now, and I really like
this excerpt from his new book.
Okay, I think it's decided: I have to go and read it today. Every time I think that I'm going to get control of my pile of Stuff To Be Read, something jumps to the front of the line! Sigh. :)
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books
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2001-11-05
I'm gonna write a book.
That is, a novel. At least I *think* I am. I have every intention of doing so, that is. But you never know what life is going to throw at you, so I don't want to make any promises that I can't keep.
The reason why is that there's this thingie called
National Novel Writing Month, and they're trying to get a bunch of people to write 50,000-word novels in thirty days in November.
Well, that is, they're succeeding. At least, it looks that way so far. A bunch of people have signed up, and they're writing at a breakneck pace. We'll have to see just how many make it to the finish line in time. And then of course we have to see how many of the finished products are any good... but that's not the point, so sayeth the organizers.
Of course, I'm not officially signed up or anything. I never was one much for officialdom, except for very special occasions that is. :) I like the idea of being a bit of a rogue outsider entry. Muahahhahaha!
Last November I uh, wrote a lot, and ummm... the result was 40,000 words in three days. Now, it was a very powerful flow of ideas that I just *had* to get out of my head. I felt as though I had drunk from the Firehose of Wisdom, and that much force can kinda knock you around.
What I'm trying to say is that what I wrote last year isn't that good. There's some good material there, but it's a little... crazy. There. I said it.
I hadn't realized at the time about my mental condition, or what can happen to me when I'm under *huge* amounts of stress (and I was, at that time). Now I know what's going on and I have tools (drugs*) to help me stay on track better, keep from getting too stressed out, etc.
The upshot is that I hope/expect that this time around, I'll come up with something that I can truly be proud of when I look back on it. :) I have some really neat ideas that I am just gunning to bring to fruition.
* okay, "pharmaceuticals". Dress it up with a fancy name and make it so only a doctor(**) can give it to you, and it undergoes the magical transformation from an agent of mayhem to a healing medicine. Oh yeah, don't forget to hyperinflate the price so that the people who really need it can't afford it except by participating in intricate extortion schemes (as the extortee, that is).
** or an advanced practice nurse, in my particular case.
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2001-06-26
Mania is an odd state:
and having been through it now several (many?) times, and only realizing what was happening quite recently, I ... understand things that formerly I couldn't quite comprehend.
To wit:
this entry in Caterina's log about a book that's an interview with author Philip K. Dick talking about how he wrote his books in fits of activity of 8-12 days, without eating or sleeping.
I kinda know what that feeling is like - when I wrote my silly little manifesto, 40,000 words in three days.
But I also more recently have had strange ideas similar to what the book he planned to write (but didn't because he died suddenly) was about. Of course, once I adjusted my medication, these thoughts went away. :) And lo, I was relieved. It gets oppressive when *everything* is so damned *symbolic*. Ugh. That's just not normal and comfortable for me.
But of course, everyone's calibrated differently, and we all have our own preferential internal mental landscapes.
The trick, I'm finding, is to realize who I am through all these changing mind-states. How can I correct for the fact that I may sometimes tend a little too much towards the manic side? How do I develop the judgment to adjust my meds *before* I start doing things like staying up too late, spending too much money, biting off more than I can chew on projects, etc? It's going to be a struggle, I know it.
At least now, I suppose, I know what's going on. I'm learning the skill of fine-tuning things. Last night I should have taken a *little* more of one of my meds - my thoughts are a bit disheveled today, but within the range of what I can deal with without spending the whole day wondering about alternate universes, heaven & hell, cosmic planes, and whether we're trapped here, we chose to be here, or what.
These can be interesting questions I suppose, but not when they circle endlessly around your head for hours and hours, days on end.
Today my goals are to take a walk, and to get some things done on the job front - update my resume, and get ready to go to the UT temp service tomorrow for typing tests & stuff. I feel pretty good, positive attitude and so forth, and even, dare I say, just a teeny bit creative. What a lovely thing to have return, I must say. :)
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beauty
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2001-06-25
Underwater gorgeousness:
is what Daniel tells me
this book is all about. It's got a hella long title, though: "Water Light Time : Beneath the Surface, Sea of Light, Cool Waters, Rhythm & Dance, Dark Blue, Water Gardens, Desert Ocean, South Light, Island Kingdom".
On a whim, I just did a search for the word "obidos", which appears in just about every Amazon book-specific url (like the one above). Imagine my surprise when Google showed
a mere 78 hits. Hmm. Odd. I wonder what it means? Anyone who has a theory, put it in the box o doom there at the left, and let me know.
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books
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2001-05-04
For those who are particularly curious about bipolar disorder:
The nurse I saw yesterday gave me an excellent guide about it, which just so happens to be available
on the internet (in pdf format). So if you're a family member or friend or just an interested anonymous reader, you might want to check it out - it's got some useful information for those who are close to a bipolar person such as myself.
I bought a book she recommended as well - it's titled "An Unquiet Mind, a Memoir of Moods and Madness" (*). I look forward to the insights I expect the book to offer...
* I tried to get an Amazon link to the book, but I'm getting a 404 on www.amazon.com at the moment. Hahahahahhahahah! That's pretty rare. I wonder how much money they're losing per minute due to whatever the problem is.
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beauty
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2001-05-04
Hey, how come I don't have a category for music?
Geez, that's quite an oversight... Anyway, last night I had the first guitar lesson of my life, and it was *extremely* cool. I got there late (bs traffic), but all was cool once I arrived. I was even feeling a bit bad by the time I arrived, my most-of-the-day good mood having finally dissipated, but once we got started and started talking, I felt much better. :)
My teacher is
Scott (aka VanDweller), a brilliant fellow with whom I've been exchanging email for many months now. He lives on his own land near (in?) Wimberley, in a big blue van. Scott also makes guitars, and works in the music shop, among other things.
He's (quite) a bit further down the Path than I am, and gracious enough to assist me along in my journey. He's been a great source of wisdom for me, and now I get to learn music from him, too!
I got a copy of his book when I saw him, and one of his cd's too (which I'm listening to now, and it's *great*!). We talked for a long time after the lesson (well okay, before/during/after), and then went out to a big truck stop on I-35 to have really huge delicious omelettes. It was a wonderful evening, and I got home exhausted and fell right into bed.
I've got a lot of cool new stuff to learn before my next lesson. It's nice to know that I have something so enjoyable to do now, an additional coping strategy when I'm feeling frazzled or down or panicky...
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books
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2001-05-04
Baboons can give us insight into ourselves:
at least when it comes to looking at social stresses and things like that. The Atlantic has
a big interview with Robert Sapolsky, a researcher who's written a new book about baboons. It looks quite fascinating, and he seems to be quite a brilliant fellow.
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beauty
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2001-04-22
This autistic artist has incredible vision:
I happened across this illustration of the work of an autistic artist in the New Yorker:
It just struck me immediately with its beauty, so here I share it with you. The artist's name is Jessy Park, and her mother
has written a book about her, which looks quite intriguing...
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books
mental
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2001-04-19
Swimming holes:
I've heard repeatedly of a book that's supposed to be good, called
Splash Across Texas! The Definitive Guide to Swimming in Central Texas, which I might get. I like the idea of being able to go to a swimming hole.
I thought of this recently when I went with Chris to his office last week or so, and in the elevator was this amazing poster depicting some swimming hole around here. It was like a big carved-out limestone cave, with cliffs overhanging and water streaming down. It was gorgeous.
I figure that while I live here, I might as well explore the territory a bit. I don't know what my problem is...
No, that's wrong, I *do* know what my problem is: I tend not to go places by myself. I can be such a total wuss. Well, it's not being a wuss per se, but just not having the gumption to go by myself.
I've been working on this, as part of my self-improvement thing. I did well heading to Houston last weekend by myself. That was adventurous and fun, and I survived.
I'm not sure what I'm afraid of, or what causes my inability to do stuff by myself. Something chemical, I'm sure.
Well, starting tomorrow, my friend Daniel will be here, so I'll have someone to drag along with me to places. It's always more fun to take someone with you.
I've been meaning to go to this place called the Ceramic Mug, where you can paint a ceramic thingie and then have it fired. It'd be weird to go alone to a place like that.
Anyway, I'm just rambling now, in case you hadn't noticed. I'm feeling sort of... empty and low this evening, I'm not sure why. It really is sad sometimes, what viciously chemical creatures our minds are. I'm shy on some neurotransmitter or other, and it causes me to wander around the house feeling blue and not knowing why. :/. I'm doing okay, I just tidied up a bunch, loaded the dishwasher, etc.
I guess it aggravates me more when I'm down, all the crap I have accumulated in my life, and the incredible level of disarray it's in. It's not actually that bad, I just find it hard to make myself deal with it. I've been doing a bit here, a bit there, and working away at it, but I think I won't feel truly free to do more fun creative things until I've put my house in order, so to speak.
It's odd, I started sorting my papers a couple weeks ago, and I was saving all these scraps of paper and things, because I considered them important somehow. Now I look at them and realize that they're just trash, and I feel like the person who wanted to save them wasn't really me.
It's an odd thing, not being yourself. Or rather, being yourself and not being yourself simultaneously. Who are we, anyway? It's a complicated question with bizarre answers. We are who we think we are, that's who. The trouble is that with a rational mind, it's hard to just wish yourself into being who you want to be. That is, unless you have a bit of psychotic delusion... :/.
But this begs the question - what is sanity, anyway? And what is insanity? I'm only considering my previous state as a bit off because I feel differently now, and the state I'm in now feels... more familiar to me. More *me*. I can't help it, I've settled back into the old rut of my selfhood.
I look back at the past month or so and ... I'm just not sure what to make of it. Was it a breath of fresh air, a taste of freedom? Or was it just a flight of fancy, a delusion, actual Psychosis with a capital P? It was wonderful in many ways, but... it wasn't really me. Or was it? This is a question whose answer is yet undecided. Only when I decide what I want the answer to be will I set myself on that path.
I'm getting really complicated here, I know. I just... wish sometimes I could wish myself into feeling better, into being that strong Beth who always knows what she wants and has the confidence that she'll get it. And I wonder if the sense that I have to be who I "really" am instead is just bullshit. This territory is so far from the measurable, it must be mapped by blind wandering and bumping into things, really.
I don't know. All I know is that in my current mindset, everything feels impossible. Anything I want to do feels sort of worthless. I know it's not true, but ... it saps me nonetheless. So I'm trying to distract myself, by writing, by working my feelings out of my head and into the electronic void. Maybe I'm just wishing I could leave my troubles in the bit bucket.
When it comes down to it, I'm rather scared. Scared of failure, for sure, but scared of being too terrified to try. How's that for a tangled little loop of emotion?
I think too much. I've always thought too much. It's been my greatest weapon against all the painful, awful, and difficult things that life has thrown my way. And now I realize that this weapon has become dust in my hands...
Okay, maybe that's overboard, but certainly I wasn't bright enough to figure out just how far beyond sanity I had gone. And here's a dirty little secret: when you're insane,
no one tells you. They just nod and smile and you are left to assume that they're in on it, that they believe you. It's hard to realize how far you've gone when you get no feedback.
I know, I know - I can't figure out what people should have said to me, I have no idea what would have been the most helpful response. It's even likely that any suppositions I might have about what clues might have helped me, would have actually hurt tremendously and made life more difficult, possibly even causing rifts between me and people who care about me.
But that question is still there - how do you know when you're crazy? And how do you deal with someone you care about who is crazy? I'm sorry, I don't have the answers. I've done the research (one side of it, anyway), but I have no conclusions.
All I know is that I miss my daughter, it's Thursday night and I'm all alone, and I can finally cry again (I couldn't really, for weeks - as soon as I'd start, it would fade, as though blown away by a divine wind). Maybe I need to cry a bit, to just let it out - the frustration, the feeling stupid, the embarrassment, the loss, the confusion.
Because here's another dirty little secret that I think most of us already know: sometimes it's comforting to cry. When I was a little child and felt a sadness so deep that it swallowed me inside, the only thing I could do was cry, and in some strange and twisted way, it comforted me. Somehow, it let me bear it.
Boy, I've really wandered far afield in this one. I just had a lot to get off my chest. I still do, but there's a finite length for a log entry before one chases all of one's readers away. Who am I kidding? It doesn't matter to me how many people read my log. I'm still amazed that anyone does - right now in my current mindset I find it so hard to believe that anyone would be interested in my ramblings (both sane and insane).
Tonight is one of those nights where the world feels huge and complicated and imposing, and I feel so excruciatingly finite in my capacity to deal with it.
I think I'll go do a jigsaw puzzle.
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books
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2001-02-12
This is incredibly cool:
Ancient illegible texts may be readable with new technology. Wow. I can't wait! I wonder if any of the newly revealed stuff will turn assumptions about some of the Classical authors on their head.
As many as 850 Greek and Latin philosophical and literary works were excavated from a 2,000-year-old Roman villa in the ancient city of Herculaneum near Naples by Italian antiquarians in the 18th century. Among the works, which academics hope to read using the new equipment, are the lost works of Aristotle (his 30 dialogues, referred to by other authors, but lost in antiquity), scientific works by Archimedes, mathematical treatises by Euclid, philosophical work by Epicurus, masterpieces by the Greek poets Simonides and Alcaeus, erotic poems by Philodemus, lesbian erotic poetry by Sappho, the lost sections of Virgil's Juvenilia, comedies by Terence, tragedies by Seneca and works by the Roman poets Ennius, Accius, Catullus, Gallus, Macer and Varus.
The researchers are from Brigham Young University. Of course, I wonder if the newly-readable works will be oddly supportive of the claims of the Mormon church, heh heh. I am just kidding, of course. :)
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books
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2001-01-25
I got the book I wanted:
plus a couple others. I called Borders near here to ask if they had a copy, and
they had one which they happily put on hold for me. Take that, Amazon! (they have a 3-5 week backorder on the book).
I also browsed through the new non-fiction and found the book
My War, by Andy Rooney. I got it because it looked great, and I've always enjoyed his writing. If all you knew of the man was what you saw on his segments on 60 Minutes, you might dismiss him as a mere cranky, whiny curmudgeon. But there is so much more to the man. Seriously. Read his books - there's a lot more, it goes much deeper, and it's very, very good. Well, I think so anyway. It's been awhile since I read some of his books, and it looks like he's written several more in the meantime, so I have to catch up on them. What a delightful thing to look forward to. :) Lucky me!
Anyway, this book is about World War II, in which Rooney was an Army correspondent (among other things).
I also got an O'Reilly travel book,
A Woman's World, which is supposed to be good.
I looked for a page about it at the O'Reilly site, but strangely they don't have any of their Traveler's Tales books there. They do have a bunch of medical books though, which look to be geared towards patients & families, dealing with various situations. They look pretty good. Cool! O'Reilly rocks, I've just got to say it. Ever since I bought my Programming Perl book years ago (aka the Camel Book), I've loved their stuff.
I also got a little Richard Scarry book for Elena, and a big cheap world map, which I hope to hang on the wall and scrawl upon indicating the places I've been (so far, all the scrawling will be in North America, but I hope to change that someday).
Speaking of travel, I'm finally going to get a passport. I've never had one. I don't have any specific travel plans, but I figure if I don't have the passport, I won't make any! :) And of course I'm getting one for Elena, too. Under "Occupation" on her application, I'm not sure whether to put "Baby", "Student", or "Parental Frustration and Delight Engineer".
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books
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2001-01-24
I must get this:
I heard about this book
on NPR last week, when they had an interview with the author. The book is called
Beyond the Stone Arches: An American Missionary Doctor in China, 1892-1932 by Edward Bliss, Jr.
It sounds absolutely amazing from what the author was saying about it. I was particularly interested in what he said about his mother - she was a farm girl from Nebraska who just decided to take off to China. By herself. She met his father when she was already over there.
That's incredibly cool. That takes a lot of courage, too. I really want to read more about this family. I'll see if I can find the book locally...
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beauty
books
good
movies
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2001-01-08
Hayao Miyazaki is amazing!
He's the guy who has done My Neighbor Totoro, Grave of the Fireflies, and a bunch of other things, including Princess Mononoke and Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind.
I am very impressed with his work, and I can't wait to see more of it. I'm going to buy the Nausicaa graphic novels, and since Princess Mononoke came out on DVD but isn't out on VHS, it's the perfect excuse for me to break down and buy a DVD player! :)
I'm just reading all sorts of stuff about him, including interviews with him. Here's a small taste:
I love this exquisite feeling - knowing that I have a bunch of really wonderful things to see and read, and that the author clearly has a worldview similar to mine (at least in certain ways). I'm giddy with anticipation!
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beauty
books
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2000-12-04
Finally read Jimmy Corrigan:
Yesterday, I read the first third of Jimmy Corrigan during the day, and finished it after Elena went to sleep. I was up until two.
It's one of the best books I've ever read in my life.
And I'm damn picky, so that's saying something. It was so incredibly moving, and subtle, and complex, and interwoven, and exquisite, and I could go on and on and on. Please, read it!
And buy it from a local comic book shop, not a chain store, and DEFINITELY not from Amazon, okay? If comics are going to survive as an art form, people need to support their local outlets. If there are comics out there that are anywhere near even 10% as good as this book, I'm totally hooked.
I mean, I've liked comics for a while, I just don't have that many of them, and I don't know how to find the best stuff (I'm very very picky). And some of it is clearly brilliant, like Art Spiegelman's Maus, and now Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan. Damn, what a beautiful book, both to look at (the cover & everything) and to read. Wow.
I am so profoundly affected by this book, I can't even begin to describe it. Words can't do it justice. (because it's comics, you see - it's more than words, more than pictures. Read
Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics for more details on the history, how & why & wonder of comics as an art form unlike any other.)
I already loaned it out to Fred, a cool coworker of mine. I can't wait until he's done, because I want to re-read it. I'm sure that I missed a lot the first time through...
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books
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2000-11-03
Controversy at the Tattered Cover:
also known as the best bookstore in the entire universe (in my esteemed opinion),
(DEAD LINK) the Tattered Cover Bookstore in Denver is being forced to turn over records to the cops so they can track down someone involved with a meth lab.
Pretty sticky situation. On the one hand, I'm all for civil liberties, but on the other hand, this kind of sounds like just another clue being tracked down. They found an invoice to something bought at the TC in the meth lab. I just don't think this is all that different from any other clue at another crime scene.
From my understanding of the situation, this is NOT going after someone *because of* the books they bought. If it were a receipt or invoice for a box of chocolates or whatever else, it makes sense to me that it's legitimate for them to seek out whatever info they can find to determine who the purchaser was. I don't know, I don't claim to have all the facts on this one.
But then again, they state that they want to know which one of six known people was operating the meth lab. Um, how about asking them? Looking for fingerprints? I don't see how it implicates a person in the illegal manufacture of drugs if they happened to have left an invoice for a book there. I mean, it may or may not correlate. Whatever.
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books
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2000-10-18
Digging deeper into A Pattern Language:
It's an amazing book! I am slowly going through it, pattern by pattern. I can't wait to someday build my Dream House. Yesterday, while Spencer worked out at lunch time, I stayed in the car and just read. I got into the section at the back about actual construction methods. I'm so eager to try this stuff out! I'm guessing it would be best to experiment by building a dog house or small child's playhouse. That way I can test it out and make sure it's structurally secure.
And then, someday, I can build a bigger school!
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books
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2000-09-21
Zen and the Brain:
is a book that I'm interested in, and
it's gotten some good reviews at Amazon. And while I'm on the topic of books, I got A Pattern Language yesterday, and Judge Judy's book, Beauty Fades, Dumb Is Forever. Judge Judy's a hoot! And I've been meaning to read A Pattern Language for a long time. I'm still making my way slowly through Cryptonomicon. And I looked for Snow Crash again yesterday, and again they didn't have it! What's the deal? Argh!
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books
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2000-09-14
Compare:
Shakespeare, Hamlet:
What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!
Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon:
The room contains a few dozen living human bodies, each one a big sack of guts and fluids so highly compressed that it will squirt for a few yards when pierced. Each one is built around an armature of 206 bones connected to each other by notoriously fault-prone joints that are given to obnoxious creaking, grinding, and popping noises when they are in other than pristine condition. This structure is draped with throbbing steak, inflated with clenching air sacks, and pierced by a Gordian sewer filled with burbling acid and compressed gas and asquirt with vile enzymes and solvents produced by the many dark, gamy nuggets of genetically programmed meat strung along its length. Slugs of dissolving food are forced down this sloppy labyrinth by serialized convulsions, decaying into gas, liquid, and solid matter which must all be regularly vented to the outside world lest the owner go toxic and drop dead. Spherical, gel-packed cameras swivel in mucus-greased ball joints. Infinite phalanxes of cilia beat back invading particles, encapsulate them in goo for later disposal. In each body a centrally located muscle flails away at an eternal, circulating torrent of pressurized gravy.
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books
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2000-09-12
Argh!
I just looked for some paint with water books for Elena (and me) at Amazon, and I'm amazed at how many of them are religious. Sigh. It's everywhere. I'm just SICK OF IT sometimes.
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books
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2000-09-11
A ranty interview with Harlan Ellison:
over at the Onion.
This is great! I never knew much about him, but now I am intrigued and want to check out some of his books.
He used to write for the Twilight Zone tv show (in the 80's, so I take it that it's the "New" Twilight Zone. They had some excellent episodes in that series - I wonder if he's the writer of some of my favorite ones? I'll have to look into it more...
(The ones I remember and like are: The Shadow Man, the one about the guy who has a bomb shelter in his basement, and the one about the guy who is frozen because of his stomach cancer and woken up in the future and healed and I don't wanna give the rest away. I'd really like to see any or all of these again. Guess I had better check the Sci Fi Channel listings.)
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books
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2000-09-11
I've started reading Cryptonomicon:
by Neal Stephenson. It's pretty good so far, I'll probably write more about it when I've finished it.
I was actually looking for a copy of Snow Crash to re-read at the bookstore, but they didn't have it (!), so I grabbed Cryptonomicon instead. (I think I lost my copy of Snow Crash in my divorce. It may have been Jarod's in the first place, come to think of it).
I'm amazed at how... dense this book is already. If I didn't know already about Turing and cryptography and certain forms of math, I think I'd be lost. So I'm glad I happen to have absorbed at least a few clues in these areas, that make this book more meaningful for me than for a person who may not have this background.
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books
family
random thoughts
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2000-08-17
The Mismeasure of Man and Woman:
A couple weeks ago or so, Elena was messing with our (fancy, digital) scale and somehow changed the units from pounds to kilograms. Spencer and I were baffled - what the heck does it mean if I'm 82kg? We also couldn't figure out how to change it back, and we couldn't find the instruction booklet.
Spencer messed around with it some more after we had been this way for a week, and after taking out the batteries and poking around, he managed to change the units to stones. Oh, great. Now I'm 13 stones, I'm just as lost as before.
So, several days later, I take a stab at it and by random flailing figure out how to adjust the units (press both buttons, wait until ALL unit symbols flash, then press up arrow to choose the one you want - not exactly obvious), and we're happily back to pounds again. Well, not all that happily, since we've both gained weight since this whole fiasco started.
So we blame Elena for that. Not exactly fair, but what can we do when we don't know how much we weigh?
[
books
cognition
people
school
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2000-07-21
On rewards & motivation:
This guy seems to be well-endowed in the clue department. He talks about how competition and reward systems simply don't work, and actually make things (morale & performance) worse. This holds true for the classroom, parenting, and management. Very fascinating, I think I may get one of his books.
