coolness of the week: jamie @ valparazo.blogspot.com

i discovered jamie's blog by accident last week and totally dug her style. the february 23rd post is the one that caught my attention. and here's another noteworthy one.

i can't put my finger on exactly why i liked it. i avoid the word authentic when i talk about writing, because when i hear someone say a piece sounds authentic, i have a hard time believing they really know what they mean. but in this case, it's the best word i can come up with. and there's a voice peeking through that's really fantastic--straightforward and unapologetic. and she makes such rich descriptions of everything: after you read that first short post i linked to, you know an incredible amount of information about the couple in wal-mart and about her. and actually, what you learn--or almost learn--about jamie is the most interesting part.

anyway, i hope she keeps writing. check it out.

reload reboot reload reboot reload reboot

tonight i spent hours and hours wiping and reloading the hardrive of my laptop. eventually i won, because here you are reading about it. i guess some important piece of software or registry or compy karma got sizzled, which made it impossible for the computer to "go." with my limited compy skyllz, the only way i could fix it was to start from scratch. meh.

the compy loved it. it got to make bar graphs and ask me questions and play around in DOS a little bit. compy was totally living it up.

i, on the other hand, was not living it up. this process, it turns out, is one of the most mind-crushingly boring experiences you can imagine. i tried to spice things up with some high-quality boob-tubular entertainment. no such luck. tonight, tv choices consisted of dancing with the stars, olympic figure skating, american idol shoot-yourself-in-the-head-boring eliminations, and a rerun of the only episode of this year's CSI i've actually seen. so there i sat in the middle of my living room floor, ignoring american idol and cradling the body of my laptop as it joyfully reabsorbed XP. i was tempted to run out to the street for a mouthful of gravel to suck on, just to round out the experience.

but i have to say, there were some little rewards. this oozing plaque of icons and settings and preferences had slowly built itself up on my compy, like some kind of nasty creeping skin disease. wiping everything clean gave me a chance to fix stuff i had meant to fix for months.

but it wasn't enough. when compy finally finished putting its brain back together, i logged in and quickly discovered that compy hadn't just replaced windows. oh no, it had totally wiped the hard drive. at first glance, no big deal. this is a laptop, and most of my important files were safely stored on señor compy grande, our bigger, cooler, non-breaking-down desktop. but i lost all my outlook stuff. this is the killer. i don't care about the old e-mails, but the calendar and contact list were pretty much priceless. putting it all back together is going to be about as much fun as giving myself a lice treatment.

nevertheless, it's late now and the hardest part is over. eventually american idol made us both so antsy we put in napoleon dynamite, which is like the 40oz malt liquor of entertainment--cheap, easy, and guaranteed to drain your brain. the movie is over--even the wedding scene at the end--compy is going to bed, and as soon as this post is published, i can go to sleep in sweet peace, too.

tomorrow, we reinstall office.

pier 1 update

update: wife reads the pier 1 post: "that chair looks like it's something out of someone's garage."

*pause*

then laughing, "no i don't mean that in a bad way!"

conclusion: maybe my rural maleness is safe after all.

pier 1

i admit it. i heart pier 1. it's one of my favorite stores, because the stuff there just looks so cool. i mean, who wouldn't want this awesome chair and matching ottoman in their den? see--i knew you would agree.

also, i did a mild metrosexual thing at work today--foofed the hair and wore a new microsuede sport coat over my pink untucked casual button-down and jeans. considering the general tedium that characterizes men's fashion where i work, it was a pretty pretentious move. i mean, if you were to pose all the men i work with in a line, you'd get this sort of wrinkled, stretched-over-bellies, earth-tone rainbow.

i should be honest: most days my clothes do nothing to diversify the local fashion scene. but today i was tired of working in a constant state of drab. so i loved the way i looked.

in conlusion, i know what ottomans and microsuede are. more to the point, i care. but i did not know those things when i left home to get married and make my way in the world.

what the hell else has five years of city living done to me?

a post just to post

i'm feeling uninspired, but i want to post something. so here's a picture of mike and stacie, some good friends we miss. they moved to tupper lake in september so mike could follow his dream of being a librarian. who knew it would lead him to the middle of the adirondack wilderness? it was their apartment where i wrote the first ever entry to this blog. since then, they've bought a cool house there, which means they're staying for a while. sigh.

they're one of the last of our couple-friends that hasn't had kids yet. it's surprisingly important for a couple in their late twenties without kids to have other kidless friends.

we used to go out to dinner with them once a month. we skied together, watched movies, chit-chatted. and they're the only friends we have who are happy to sit in a room and stare at us for hours with nothing in particular to say or do. sounds horrendous, right? with most other people it is. but we can do that with mike and stacie and feel completely comfortable. it's our special bond.

so they're good friends--who live four hours away from us--and we miss them.

sarah's dream

who knew that about luke wilson?

learn about fhqwhgads here and here.

what happened at work once

all names but mine have been changed to protect the jobs of the innocent. this is ridiculous, but see dooce and dooce and dooce.

---

From: Rose
Sent: Tuesday, January 24, 2006 1:18 PM
To: Susie; Nancy; Jack; Dave
Subject:

Jack = troublemaker

---

From: Dave
Sent: Tuesday, January 24, 2006 1:19 PM
To: Rose; Susie; Nancy; Jack
Subject: RE:

what just happened over there?

---

From: Rose
Sent: Tuesday, January 24, 2006 1:21 PM
To: Dave; Susie; Nancy; Jack
Subject: RE:

Jack getting out of control again, you know how he is.

---

From: Jack
Sent: Tuesday, January 24, 2006 1:21 PM
To: Rose; Dave; Susie; Nancy
Subject: RE:

Rose was screwing around again - I had to set her straight.

---

From: Rose
Sent: Tuesday, January 24, 2006 1:22 PM
To: Jack; Dave; Susie; Nancy
Cc: Mick
Subject: RE:

SHUT UP! I was trying to mind my own business and all I get from both sides is DO IT ROSE, COME ON ROSE, DO IT! Then I don't even do it, a certain other person does it, and THEN Jack says he was just minding his own business trying to work. Uuggghh.

---

From: Dave
Sent: Tuesday, January 24, 2006 1:23 PM
To: Rose; Jack; Susie; Nancy
Cc: Mickhew
Subject: RE:

this is fun. please give me another completely out of context hint that's partially true.

---

From: Jack
Sent: Tuesday, January 24, 2006 1:32 PM
To: Dave; Rose; Susie; Nancy
Cc: Mick
Subject: RE:

OK - here's the really true story:

I was sitting here, diligently doing my work, minding my own business, when all of the sudden Rose jumped over the partition between us! She jumped right over - no running start or anything! She landed on top of my monitor, balancing not unlike Cameron Diaz on that old guy's sword in Kill Bill. At the top of her mighty lungs, she proclaimed, "[sleeping coworker] is asleep yet again!!!! I'm going to involve you in mischief of many types!!!!" Mick & I pleaded with her to rethink her drastic plans, but the Goddess of Tomfoolery would have none of it and our cries fell upon deaf ears. She smote us w/her massive SAP password & left us for dead, then proceeded to force a camera in poor Mick's hands, obviously to frame him, and compressed the shutter taking incriminating pictures of our associate (shudder). I tried to assist my compadre, but could lift only two fingers in his defense, so weak was I from the wrath of the Goddess. She swore her revenge - indicating that one greater than her would hear of our supposed indiscretions. With that there was a wailing and gnashing of teeth. Rose swept away, triumphant in her nefarious slackitude.

---

i heart the winter olympics

mundane saturday

This morning we got up somewhere between 8:30 and 9:00, having stayed up last night to watch most of the opening ceremonies of the winter olympics. We've been slowly straightening up the house: vacuuming piles of pet fur, putting away piles of clothes, scrubbing piles of dishes, washing piles of laundry.

We also put up really wonderful new curtain rods and curtains in our bedroom. I have to talk about this, actually. We are slow decorators. Check that--we're binge decorators. We've lived in our house for 2 and a half years now, but we've been taking our time with redecorating. This is partly to conserve money, but mostly because we have never really been sure how we wanted to redecorate. Stuff seems to get done all of a sudden. Some piece will fall into place (a new chair, a great color) and we'll finally figure out how to build a room around it.

So, back to the story, Kara had a bedroom binge recently that was brought on by finding the perfect comforter cover. She's been looking for the perfect comforter cover for 3 or 4 years now, and she finally found it on the website of a store (yeah, it's that one) whose closest branch is several hours away. Her sister, however, lives 15 minutes from one, and she agreed to pick everything up and ship it to us.

While we waited for the package, Kara found matching sheets, curtains, and curtain rods. We put up the curtain rods--the last piece of the puzzle--today. Now that everything is in place, I have to say our room is a much nicer place. The problem is, all the new stuff points out the glaring need for a new paint job in the room and a new dresser. But before any of that can be done, there's a long line of other stuff to finish: (1) replace two odd-sized exterior doors; (2) replace the washing machine; (3) buy and install a dishwasher; (4) reroute the bathroom exhaust fan so it leads out of the house, rather than into the attic; (5) finish patining the stairs and the upsatirs hallway. And then there's the kitchen ... oh man the kitchen.

So, I think this is why we're bingers. Each job we finish leads to something else that still has to be done. And we enjoy living life so much more than we enjoy home improvement. So when a lull happens or inspriation drops from the heavens, we take a quick break to tidy something up. But until then, we're just good at living with things the way they are.

tonight on lost

we were wrong about everything except hurley. he was both sweaty and nervous. but next week the counter hits zero. what will it mean?

why (some more), plus american idol and george hamilton. that about covers it.

i got to thinking today that there's another reason i blog instead of writing in a journal. i read james michener's memoir last year, in which he insists that a writer must have an audience. a piece of writing is never complete, he says, until it has been published. he defines "published writing" as a piece that is made available in some accessible format to an audience which then reads it. writing has a purpose which isn't fulfilled until it's published.

that would call into question my point about the art changing the artist. maybe it's just that shitty first drafts don't change writers as much as polished writing that's prepared for publication.

but this is getting boring. tonight is the last night of american idol auditions, which really shouldn't be missed. this one takes place in boston which has all kinds of potential for lots of talent and lots of untalent.

also, although george hamilton is an unnatural color, he is famous. this is not a new observation. however, i'm not sure how i want to end this post, and that's what came to mind.

why

In the fall I took a copywriting class to support my freelance work. After two years of winging it, I decided it was time to get some actual training to make the whole self-employed writer thing feel more legit. Since then, I've decided that the self-employed writer thing would feel more legit if I was indeed self-employed. What I make freelancing mostly goes to replace appliances and house parts that break.

Anyway, the guy teaching my class told us that we all needed to create a blog--"it's just essential for any professional writer to have a presence on the web," he said. He suggested blogger.com, so that's what I used. I never had an audience or topic in mind. I started blogging because I had to. But I kept going because I liked it.

The semi-discipline of writing semi-publically has been good for me. I said a couple of posts ago that I've been minding parts of myself that I haven't paid much attention to in a while. Writing is part of that. I'm not particularly excited about what I'm writing. But I'm excited that I've been writing intentionally. It's satisfying to give myself these painless exercises and feel good about accomplishing them.

Honestly, though, I'm ambivalent about why I'm doing this as a blog and not as a private journal. Posts like my depression entry last week make me feel like a tool because I don't enjoy reading stuff like that from other people. It's hard to pull off a piece of writing like that and keep it engaging and unpresumptuous-sounding.

Despite that danger, though, the benefit of posting on a blog is that it forces me to pay attention to my style and structure and syntax so that it's not just sloppy, stream of consciousness, "shitty first-draft" kind of stuff. The stuff here isn't super polished, but all of it has been read and reread and edited to some degree.

So I guess what this boils down to is that it's good practice. I'm slowly refining my style, listening for my voice to develop, wondering how it will evolve. And I don't have any expectations for this other than personal satisfaction and maybe some lasting creative discipline.

I know of only three people who read the blog from time to time: my mother (dammit), my wife, and my new friend Angela from Irvine, CA who was the first stranger who put a thoughtful comment on the blog. For a long time my Blogger profile had only 24 views. Last night I noticed it had suddenly jumped to 129. That hardly counts as a presence on the web, but it's not total anonymity.

I have no idea who my readers are or if they're coming back or how often they do. I guess there are ways to figure that stuff out, but I don't think I want to put that much effort into this site. And that's not really the point, either. I'm just thrilled, in my deepest most selfish parts, that people are reading me. That is so much damned fun.

next week on lost

From: Dave
Sent: Thursday, February 02, 2006 12:40 PM
To: Losties; Non-Losty

do you think they're going to go look for that radio antenna near the black rock?

---

From: Losty #2
Sent: Thursday, February 02, 2006 12:48 PM
To: Dave; Losties; Non-losty

Probably not.

---

From: Dave
Sent: Thursday, February 02, 2006 12:50 PM
To: Losty #2; Losties; Non-Losty

you're right. jack is gonna flip out. locke is going to be all mysterious. charlie is going to whine and get angry. claire is going to cry. hurley is going to get nervous. sayid is going to stay calm, but look concerned. kate is going to tag along behind someone. sawyer is going to pout in a corner. sun is going to get kidnapped. no one is going to figure anything out. rousseau is going to eat a banana.

---

From: Losty #2

Sent: Thursday, February 02, 2006 12:52 PM
To: Dave; Losties; Non-Losty

Oh my god, thank you so much for making me laugh so hard, Dave.

("non-losty") unfortunately won't get it :(

You forgot the newbies:

Eko is going to baptize everyone. Ana will shoot someone and then pout about it and live in the jungle. Libby will put the moves on Hurley and he will just sweat. Rose's husband will be non-existant.

see for yourself