April 2003 Archives

A few weeks ago, I had this entry half-written in my head about walking. I went a couple of weeks without driving my car to work (to my very convenient parking garage which is attached to my office building -- unheard-of at my university of employment), opting instead to take the bus or, on nicer days, walk. Most days, I'd ride the bus in the morning and walk home in the afternoon, so I wouldn't be all sweaty and I'd get to work on time. Turns out, I really enjoy the walk.

Yeah, I was shocked, too.

Well, then I bought a new car. New cars are addictive. I think they lace the upholstery with new car smell and crack or something -- it's -so- good, and when that new car smell dissipates, the dealers want you to trade in your car and get a newer one.

So I've got my new car, with the new car crack going on, and it gets 450+ miles to a tank of gas. I don't have to worry about it breaking down like the old one, and I can rationalize my gas usage by saying that I'm helping to clean the air with my super-ultra-low-emissions-vehicle. I know that sounds redundant, but it's the official designation -- I didn't make it up.

The point is, I can rationalize. I can always rationalize. So I've been driving my car to work most days, and I haven't gotten around to writing this entry yet, until now.

C and I walked to Eeyore's Birthday Party on Saturday. I wore my new sandals, which are really comfortable, but not quite comfortable enough for six miles of walking. I got blisters right at the ball of my foot where the straps rubbed funny. By Sunday, they felt better again, and today, I had the urge to walk to school. C didn't need a ride to school, so I decided to hoof it.

It's a nice walk, and cool mornings make it even nicer. I live in a great neighborhood, but there are even greater ones between home and work. Once I get to the other side of the medical centers and cross the major street, there's this beautiful, idyllic neighborhood with quaint little houses and beautiful yards. The only things missing are driveways. I like driveways and car ports, but I'd be willing to consider giving them up to live in a house on this street with huge, overhanging trees.

There's a Taco Shack on the way to work, too. I have a weakness for potato-egg-cheese breakfast tacos. I grabbed a taco on the way to work this morning -- ate it there and read the paper for a few minutes before continuing on my way. I wound up being 40 minutes late, but the walk was good.

This afternoon, I made the return trip. It was much hotter at 5pm, just foreshadowing of the summer to come. I saw a message stenciled on the sidewalk at a street corner:

"we are our experience,
our experience is what it is of;
we are that."

I have no idea what it meant, but it sounded profound, so I took a picture. On days when no one listens to anyone, I have to content myself with the little things.

I'm ambivalent on the issue of gun control. I've got no inherent problem with hunters, and some people need weapons for their own protection. But can I just tell you how uncomfortable this article makes me?

And I quote:

Florida Gov. Jeb Bush thanked the National Rifle Association Saturday for helping elect his brother president in 2000.

..."Were it not for your active involvement, it's safe to say my brother would not be president of the United States," the younger Bush said.

The governor said he and his brother both support the NRA's contention that the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which contains "the right to bear arms," is an individual right with few restrictions.

"The sound of our guns is the sound of freedom," said Bush, to thunderous applause from the gun group.

Last I checked, the sound of guns is (often) the sound of warfare and violence.

I promise I'm not getting a kick-back for this. Let me tell you. If you ever feel sluggish in the morning, or even in the evening, for that matter, my friend Feith sells this soap called Wakey Wakey. It's this blend of mint and rosemary botanicals, and it is SO yummy. The soap comes in sort of a half-cylinder, flat on the bottom and rounded on the top. So what you do is, you start right underneath your chin, and using the rounded part of the bar, you wash your neck with this cooling minty soap. Then you move on to your shoulders and your collar bones. The rounded side has a little less of the botanical stuff, so it's not as exfoliating as the flat side is, so it's great for more sensitive skin. By the time you get to your armpits, your day will be looking up. It is heavenly.

My blogswap entry was written for Josh at Collective Observations.

The following was written by David Nunez as part of the first-ever Austin Blogger blogswap project. :)

Daily Thermal Rating ()

I want to tell you about ice cream.

I realize it's been a while, but sometimes -life- takes precedent. I promise to do better as I free up some time.

So about the ice cream.

I was -going- to write my personal manifesto (because, you know, every girl needs a manifesto. And, of course, what good is a manifesto unless people hear it). However, -right- as I was pressing the button to submit my entry, the server blew up and retched out these little black puffs of smoke.

And then, as I was pondering whether I should learn Electrical Engineering to fix the stir-fried CPU, my phone rang. I jumped -with- a start (did I just say "...with a start?" Who talks like that?) and yelped. (Yes, I know "yelping" is also passe')

In response to my Tourrette's-like outburst, my kittens turned into these little buzzsaws and flurried their way across the room into the safety of their wollen, kitten pockets I found at this -bizarre- Kats-R-Us place when I was working as a Hippopotumus wrangler in Belgium. (I'd like to go back one of these days and do more work with the baby hippos. It's life affirming to see them hatch out of their purple eggs and scurry into the sea. Or maybe I could learn to be an ice sculptor. I'm not too old to live out a girlhood fantasy, am I?)

Anyway, I was hoping the phone call was Claudia. She always has the right advice and always seems to be available -for- my gripe-a-thons.

Instead I was welcomed with a mixed blessing. It was David, the quiet, slightly creepy, self-effacing guy I met at the Journalers Happy Hour and the blogger meetup.

He was asking me all these questions about whether or not he should get his eyebrows pierced. Naturally, I told him to do whatever he wanted, but if it were ME... well, you know. It started to dawn on me that this was awfully weird for a stranger to be asking me to decide for him about piercings. I started to plan my escape as Hux sauntered back over and spun around into his you-scratch-my-belly-now pose to show his support.

And then the conversation took a decidedly important and energizing turn.

I would be a happy girl indeed if I could snap my fingers and take care of all the world's problems. I'll do the next best thing: take care of the most important problems, one at a time. David invited me to a rally this afternoon to ban mellorine.

I was -so- glad to finally find someone who dispises Mellorine as I do.

Mellorine. Hate. Hate. Hate.

Because, really. Do we need that -stuff- swirled into our ice cream? "I'll take chocolate syrup, walnuts, and a THICK, CRUSTY INFUSION of mellorine, please."

Did you know that people that eat more than one gallon of mellorine-laden ice cream per day have a 3% higher chance of having heart disease?

David asked for me to pull together some troops for the demonstration. I called CY, JI, FA, WX, UY, HV, EU, LBs, XX, DV, 4H, and ?#, but unfortunately they all seemed to suddenly remember other plans. No matter.

At first it was just me and David on the Congress bridge singing our "Mellorine is not the way" ditties we made up on the spot.

And then this truck full of cool, hippie looking people pulled up with signs. At first we were all excited about this unexpected cavalry, but then one of them shouted, "Do you have any idea what's happening on the other side of the world? You need to get your priorities straight! People are dying!"

As if people aren't dying from ice cream delivered mellorine overdose, for Pete's sake! I've come to expect that sort of behavior from people that don't understand.

It's ok. That's why I'm here; it's my job to spread the word and fight the good fight.

I suppose there are actually some people that can be perfectly satisfied eating their "ice cream" with all that mellorine dripping on their chins. I'm hoping the Ice Cream Corporations will stop their charade and own up to their responsibility. I'm hoping really hard.

Ahem. Bluebell. You know... bah...

And so forth.

I've posted the earliest letter I've found so far in the bundle -- on the occasion of Aunt Bill's marriage.

Everything is intrinsically entwined, y'know? I don't really want to go into the minute details of it all, but case in point:

- A local weblogger posted a gettogether celebrating the anniversary of bookcrossing.com, scarcely a day after I'd heard about it from someone else I know. I've been meaning to get involved with this project -- dropping books in random places hoping someone will pick them up is right up my alley, and very much in keeping with other social experiments I've conducted in the past.

- Claudia and I went to Quack's to see what this bookcrossing thing was about. I'd labeled a book of mine for release, so I traded it out for another book, one chosen almost entirely based on the appearance of its cover. (Aphorisms be damned -- I can often tell a lot about a book by its cover.)

- The book I picked out is called, Angle of Repose, a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about reconstructing a family's history through letters sent by its matriarch.

- My dad and stepmom were in town this weekend, and I spent most of the weekend hanging out with them. They'd gone to see my grandfather in Johnson City before they came to Austin, and he'd given them a couple of cigar boxes full of old letters and postcards, sent by friends and family of my Aunt Bill. Aunt Bill was the sister of my paternal great-grandmother -- she died in 1993, when I was about sixteen.

- Some of these letters are fascinating. There are a lot of Christmas cards from over the years, but there are also some fairly personal letters in there. I'd like to transcribe and/or scan them and post them here. I haven't completely figured out the logistics of this yet. Realistically, there isn't enough information here to patch together a real history, but there are some letters that would be interesting to other people, too.

It's not that there isn't anything to write about; it's just that I find I've developed a life when I wasn't paying attention, and I can't figure out where all the time goes...

I was out of town for the weekend and frustrated that my weblog was down -- server problems, I assume. CY just pointed out that my manifesto is gone (as well as the entry that prompted it). Hrmph. I can't write it again...

machine!