Mushy stuff

Here's a cute picture David took of me writing "I love Sean" on the beach.

Savannah once again

As you may have surmised from the comments two posts ago, I took David to Savannah on Wednesday--almost exactly a year after my trip with Dawn and Sam. I have now been to that city three times, each time within the span of a day. Someday I'd like to go back and spend more time, with at least one night's stay in a bed and breakfast or luxury hotel, and just explore and enjoy the sights and shopping and other experiences in relaxation instead of a hurry.

As always, there are pictures.

I'm getting the impression that Savannah is a "girly town", because David really got bored on River Street. (Sam? Care to venture an opinion?)

Regardless, we both enjoyed visiting my favorite candy shop and sampling the praline candy. Mmm-mmm-mmm. I remembered how last year we bought a huge box of the stuff and had it all gone by the next day...but this time money was a little tight, so I didn't buy anything.

After spending far less time than I'd expected in historic downtown Savannah, and then walking the length of River Street, David was ready to head out to try and find a beach. We drove off in the wrong direction, then turned around and miraculously found our way to the beautiful Tybee Island. After a brief stop to admire a lighthouse, we picked our way down onto the beach.

I was wearing shorts, and I'd already taken my sneakers and socks off to walk in the sand barefoot, so it wasn't much of a stretch for me to run gleefully out into the water. My pants got thoroughly soaked. The water was warm and foamy and beautiful. You can't help but feel as if you're part of something when you're standing there, rushing tide pounding your legs and sucking the sand out from under your feet, bright sun shining overhead and sky clear and stretching out forever. I wanted to swim...but unfortunately I'd worn a rather nice shirt that I didn't want to ruin, so I had to content myself with wading.

Between jaunts, I convinced David to throw off his shoes, roll up his jeans, and do some splashing around of his own.

He too got soaked, and his jeans took quite a bit longer than my khaki shorts to dry.

I am so glad that we went to the ocean. If I ever plan my days-long excursion to Savannah, I will seriously consider staying on Tybee Island.

Now that's just dangerous

Nissan has created a car that makes it easy to back out of parking spaces--you just pivot the entire cabin 360 degrees and drive straight out.

Such moves are possible because Pivo's steering, wheels and other parts are controlled electronically by wireless, or electronic signals, not mechanical links between the cabin and the vehicle's chassis.

"This is a cute car for people who have problems parking," said Nissan Motor Co. chief designer Masato Inoue.

I'm sure it'll be very cute when there's a wireless "hiccup" and the car careens into a wall! Seriously, after having used a wireless keyboard and mouse and having dealt with signal drops on wireless internet while sitting in the same room as the router, I'm not sure I would trust wireless technology to control things as important as steering a moving car.

Then again, it's a tiny electric car that probably won't see use outside Japan, so I doubt it'll exceed 25 mph...

I am so tired.

Good night.

URRMPTH DELICIOUS MUSCLE TISSUE HURRMPH

Jeph Jacques says,

This entire strip is basically a verbatim transcription of the kind of dialogue I have going in my head at any given time. I am kind of a weird dude!

Mmm, the charred flesh of dead animals.

Penny Arcade vs. Harlan Ellison

O...M...G.

XD

Gabe got him good, didn't he?

Really old posts, brand new comments

A week or so ago I noticed that Blogger had separated the style of the date and time on the comments from the style of that of regular posts. This is something I had been hoping for for a long time, because "posted by Anonymous at 6:30 PM" didn't really tell me much. Now I know how new my comments are. I'm still not getting emails for all of them, so I could be missing quite a few, but at least when I do notice a comment I haven't seen before, I know how long it's been there.

Two posts have been getting quite a few comments recently, even though they are pretty old posts:

The first one, "Avril Lavigne sucks", was posted on October 25 three years ago--it's one of my very first posts. And for some reason, people have been commenting like mad this year. (Mainly anonymous people.)

The second one is the infamous constipated Naruto post, which isn't nearly as old; it's from January of this year. People have been commenting fairly regularly (and anonymously...hmm).

I really need to switch to WordPress so I can at least have more data on the people who are posting...

Catching up

A lot of news has been happening since my own personal tragedy, and I've not been posting about it for various reasons. Now's the time to get back on track.

To start, here's a bunch of stuff about Japan.

BoingBoing: Japan sees first-ever decrease in coins

Dealing with the coinage is one of the more interesting aspects of being in Japan.

BoingBoing: Japanese universities offering classes/programs in manga

I wonder how much of a learning curve there is for those classes. Are students expected to be Japanese people who have grown up reading the manga?

BoingBoing: Japan's coolest vending machines

Because the world can't get enough of the Japanese vending machine.

BoingBoing: Japanese lobster-vending machine

This is just bizarre. But okay.

Global Voices Online: Hitler comparisons

I haven't actually read this yet, but it would appear that a blogger is drawing a comparison between Hitler's Germany and Koizumi's Japan. He/she is worried about the possible "remilitarization" of the country after Koizumi's sweeping victory concerning the postal reforms. Given that Koizumi is leaving the prime minister position next year, and given that the postal reforms will help Japan immensely by chewing out some pork barrel projects, I'm not sure where this person is coming from, but again, I haven't read the article ;P

Yahoo! News: Oddly Enough: Japan cattle wranglers tie hopes to 'dream' beef (Reuters)

Beefy.

Yahoo! News: Oddly Enough: Smokers Welcome at 'Sin City' in Japan (AP)

I think this is highly appropriate.

Yahoo! News: Oddly Enough: Japanese woman calls cops over unreliable hitman (Reuters)

This news item made my day.

Yahoo! News: Oddly Enough: Japan Noodle Maker to Film TV Ad in Space (AP)

After the creation of ramen that could be eaten in space, this is a no-brainer.

Here are a couple of non-Japan Asian news stories:

CNN: Starbucks shop opens at Great Wall

Someday there will be a Starbucks on the top of Mount Everest. (If there's not one there already...)

Yahoo! News: Oddly Enough: N.Korea introduces first 'credit card' (Reuters)

I just love the first sentence:

North Korea announced on Friday the introduction of the Stalinist country's first credit card, but just how it would work was unclear.

Yahoo! News: Oddly Enough: Shanghai Publishes Guide to Spot Beggars (AP)

:>

Now, to finish this huge Japan/Asian roundup, I'd like to mention my favorite Japan blogs:

Sushicam is fun as always. Not only are Jeff's pictures superb, but he's always ready with a witty comment, such as the following:

Japanese TV is quite a bit different from American TV. First of all, its done almost entirely in Japanese... (tries to keep a straight face...fails..)

;>

I am way behind on Justin Klein's blog, and that's because he writes uberposts and fills them with awesome pictures. Definitely worth a read if you want an in-depth look at Kyoto and the other places he's visited.

I have really been enjoying Miklos Fejer's blog, Miyakonojo. His is more slice of life than anything else, which I love, and his writing is clean and clever. Something very exciting is happening for him right now, and I'm thrilled that I get to read about it.

And that's it for now. Sometime soon I hope to catch up on my Japan News, which I haven't been reading at all (sorry, Japundit!).

Time to shut up

Shutting up engine: engaged!

Short trip

Well, I'll be heading back to Augusta today. I don't feel like saying "back home", because I don't really have a home. Not even this place--even though I feel perfectly comfortable here, I don't live here. I don't have a life here.

I don't have a life anywhere anymore, it feels like.

But I'm not as depressed as I have been. Things will be better. I just need to be patient and frugal.

Today will be an interesting matter of timing. I need to visit Grandma on my way out of town, then pick David up at the Atlanta airport at 7:30. Hopefully I will time it all so David won't have to wait. I don't mind if I'm the one who has to wait. I can always find something to do ;>

Dad's making me breakfast, and I promised Connor I would come see him this morning, so I'd better get my shower and start packing up.

Well, that's interesting

You are a Social Liberal (66% permissive) and an... Economic Liberal (36% permissive) You are best described as a: Democrat Link: The Politics Test on OkCupid Free Online Dating

Via Kirkie.

I never try to "beat the test" or figure out what the questions are leading to, because I think that messes up the results. So I just answered honestly, and this is what happened :>

Dad

A lot of times when I want to say something that's important to me, one of two things happens: either I decide that I'll do it justice later, that I just want to get it out for now; or I don't write it at all.

Right now I want to write about my father, and how he has taken up cooking in his later life, and how he always cooks me breakfast while I'm visiting, and how today he made me a steak for dinner, and when I was finished eating it he thought I might like a baked potato, and when I was almost done with that he remembered that he had some broccoli from the garden that he could steam...and when I was finally finishing this extended dinner, he mentioned that I could eat the stuffed mushrooms in the freezer later on if I wanted a snack.

My father hasn't always been like this. He hasn't really cooked much at all until recently; Mom usually handled all that, and she still does. They both cook whatever they feel like: Mom will typically make something big, like a huge vat of spaghetti, or a pot of beef stew, or a roast (all of which she has made while I've been here, and today she was thawing chicken to fry), and Dad will get a hankering for something and make it regardless of what Mom's cooking (like the steaks he made today).

Mom loves it when Dad decides to make breakfast, because he makes the best breakfast. Eggs over easy, toast, hash browns, and sausage or bacon. He'll make the eggs however you want them, and he makes really good cheesy scrambled eggs, but I've always preferred over easy because I like to sop up the yolks with my toast. Dad remembered and made them over easy for me the other day. He's going to make me breakfast tomorrow, too. I can't wait.

I think my father cooks for me because he wants to share something with me. For the same reason, he likes to talk with me about his inventions. Today he took me down to the workshop to show me the method he contrived to make screws for one of his tools. The screws he'd bought ready-made cost twelve dollars apiece...now he makes the screws himself, and they each cost roughly five cents. Dad talked me through each step in the process, and what problems he'd run into and how he'd solved them. Like me, like us all, he was looking for affirmation and appreciation, and I hope I gave him enough. (I worry that I wasn't very enthusiastic due to the fact that I was falling into a food coma.)

I love my dad. But yet again I haven't written well enough to do my subject justice.

Photos

Today I decided to grab all the photos I can from Mom's computer. She has copies of many of the photos (digital, at least) that I used to have. The majority of the family photos are here, and some of my other photos (from visits and such) are here too. It's not everything I lost, but it is quite a bit of stuff.

It's good that my mom is as nutty about pictures as I am :)

Flawed design

For security reasons, I run my Windows XP under a user account the majority of the time, and only use the administrator account for installing things or changing settings. These rules were imposed by my husband, for whom everything must be "just so". His methodical, meticulous nature is a good thing 99.9999% of the time (trust me), but this particular demand is irritating to no end.

Ultimately, it's not Sean's fault--it's the fault of the programmers of all the software I want to use. Thumbs, for example, can't make thumbnails under a user account. It just can't. Why? Why wouldn't you want to let a user create thumbnails of photos? Obviously, this was an oversight. The program was designed with the assumption of certain administrative rights.

The same goes for the majority of the games I've installed that have high score lists. The games will freak out and crash because they can't save the high score table. :>

So, damn you, software developers, for so insidiously foiling Sean's perfect plan for network security.

Cumberland Falls

On my way here, I stopped for gas for the last time and noticed that I was at the exit for Cumberland Falls. Why not? I thought. I followed the signs away from I-75, and drove for a long time on twisting mountain roads. Eventually I came to a beautiful stone overlook, so I stopped to get some pictures.

After that, I went on. By the time I finally got to the falls, I was twelve miles away from I-75. I drove past various entrances to restaurants and waterfront homes until finally I came to the park.

First I wandered around the area above the falls, looking at the rocky bed, the surrounding forest, and the beautiful bridge over the water.

Soon I reached a sign that said "DO NOT GO BEYOND THIS POINT", so I headed off to the right and passed through between the gift shop and the snack bar to the main park area.

And finally, there was the first falls viewing site:

I moved along from there and found several other great angles.

Someday I'll be as famous as James Archambault ;>

After a little more exploring, I was hot and tired and ready to drive the last 100 miles. I bought myself a souvenir, one of those neat paper storage boxes. My cousin Gabrielle gave me two hat boxes when I was in the hospital (which, of course, were destroyed in the fire); this box is made of the same kind of stuff, except it's a cube. It's beige with blue flowers. I also bought some homemade fudge. Then I headed home, fully satisfied with my little detour.

Total cuteness

Mom's trying to get Logan to sing the Bob the Builder song, which goes something like

Can we fix it?
Yes we can!

So she said, "Logan! Can we fix it?"

Logan turned around in the highchair, beamed at her, and said, "Sure!"

Monday

I didn't do much for most of Monday. After I got up I sat around and watched TV for awhile, eventually deciding to watch Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. I also ate a lot: cereal, more cereal, Pop Tarts, and a bagel with cream cheese. I was in a bad mood when Sean got home around 3:30, so once Chamber of Secrets was over I left the house to go to the Japanese grocery store.

Which ended up being closed.

So I tried to find a new way home, and ended up on Gordon Highway heading downtown. So I went to the Greeneway and took some pictures.

They put a new fence up around the trail closest to the golf course and the Hammond's Ferry entrance. Also, it is really starting to look like fall, despite the flowers.

It's a lot longer when you don't have a bike and have to walk. It was also pretty hot. I didn't make it very far before I turned around and left.

After that I went to Outspokin' to look for a new bike, but they were closed too. (Judging from the parking, everyone was out on a ride.)

Finally I headed back towards Martinez. I stopped at Payless to look for some nice boots, but they didn't have anything I liked. So I ended up returning home empty-handed, save for the pictures.

I guess I was pouting too much, because Cheryl gave me a lecture about depression, and wouldn't leave me alone about it. She did say that I needed to go see my mom, but I already knew that.

I was more than happy to get up early on Tuesday, pack, and run away to Kentucky.

A name for my new bike

Whenever I get my new bike, and if I manage to get another Fuji Cambridge, I'm thinking I'll name it Fujiyama, or Yama for short.

I don't get it

The BoBs are accepting nominations. I wanted to nominate Somewhere on the masthead (because I'm such a fangirl), but the nomination page is totally confusing.

Look at this.

I basically can't tell if the right column is supposed to be about me or the person I'm nominating. The Rules don't clear this up, either.

So, sorry, Magazine Man...no nomination due to horrible site design.

(By the way, what is this? Two different awards with practically the same name, and the exact same abbreviation?)

I arrived safely

Hours and hours ago, as it happens. I did take a slight detour--I stopped for gas at the exit for Cumberland Falls, and decided to go to the park and get photos. This took me about twelve miles away from I-75. After I hiked all over the falls area, took pictures, reminisced about going there in my early teens with a friend, and basically satisfied my need to reintroduce beauty into my life, I decided to finish the trip on backroads, which took forever. But at least it was different.

I have a splitting headache and I'm very tired. More details and the photos will come tomorrow.

Night!

Home

I only really have one home at this point, and that's my parents' house. In a few minutes, I'll be leaving for a visit. I'm coming back on Saturday, because David's coming into town on that day, but I really think I need this. I think it'll give me some perspective, and also room to relax. I love my in-laws, and they have been so great to us, but I'm not comfortable here, and I'm tired of feeling like a horrible ingrate. I think maybe if I go someplace where I am comfortable for awhile, I'll be able to return refreshed.

So, I've packed the little old blue suitcase someone gave us, and when I'm done with this post I'll pack the laptop bag, and I'll throw some snacks and drinks into my lunchbox and be off.

I'm not strong

I don't know why I always thought I was, but I'm not. I don't know how to even begin to get to a point where I can deal with life.

Woo! I'm to the "I hate everything" stage

Things can only get better from this point, right?

Lost

I am realizing that I really haven't built much of a life for myself.

What do I have that I can call a life? I haven't owned any experience. The things I cared the most about and put the most effort into were all home-oriented. And now my home is gone. I have nothing else. I didn't create anything elsewhere.

All I seem to want to do is have my own home, and to work to make it mine, and to fill it with children and care for them. I have no interest in anything else except returning to Japan. I don't care about finding a new job. In fact, the idea of finding a new job just makes me feel like a loser. Can't get a job, and when I do finally get one, can't keep it. I don't really want to go through it all again. Especially since I can't think of one thing--one thing--that I would even want to do.

I'm just stranded, adrift, with nothing but Sean to cling to. And he's got his own support structure, which, while it includes me, is not limited to me. He can sit in the bedroom for hours and play his game. Meanwhile, I wander from room to room looking for something to occupy my mind, and finding nothing.

Reflection

As you might expect, I'm going through a period of questioning. Is there something wrong with me? Do I truly have any skills? Is there any job at all that I 1) would be good at and 2) would enjoy? Do I care too much about enjoying my work? Why do I have so much trouble focusing on boring tasks? Do I need to be on medication? Is there any way I can learn better time management skills?

I'm really just shooting in the dark here, because I don't know why they fired me, but I think it might have been that they were unable to see what I was accomplishing. Part of that is my fault for not showing them, but part of it is their fault for not asking. I was never given deadlines or any indication of expectations, and I (apparently foolishly) assumed this meant I was free to decide for myself what needed to be done and then present my work to them when I was ready for it to be seen. I would have had something ready next week, I believe.

Did they just decide that I must not be the right choice because I hadn't managed to pull a website out of my ass in three weeks? That's very possible. I'm sure there's someone out there who could do it. Maybe they just wanted to get rid of me and find that person.

It's frustrating that I wasn't able to finish the project. It's hard to just walk away from something that's incomplete. I keep thinking of things to do that might help or make it better, and then remembering that I'm not working on it anymore. Creative projects are like that...inspiration seems to come at inopportune times, when you're thinking about something else, rather than during normal working hours. I was hoping that if I plugged away at it for long enough something would come out, and I'm pretty sure something good was coming, but now I'll never know.

At this point I am really turned off by the idea of web design as a career...mainly because I don't want something like this to happen again. I feel that I'm slow at it because it's not something I truly enjoy. I like making designs, but doing them all the time is so draining. I feel that I'd like design to be something I do occasionally--and web coding something I do very occasionally--rather than having those things be the primary focus of my job.

To be honest, right now I feel that I would rather have an easy job that doesn't require much brain power. That makes me feel lame, but it's true.

My job at 2go-Box spoiled me and made me egotistical. Maybe the purpose of this job was to knock me down about a trillion pegs, so I'd be on the same level as normal people.

I don't really know what I want to do now.

Trying to look on the bright side

Does anybody know of any office jobs in North Augusta? This could be my chance to, if not move there, at least have some reason to be close to all my friends who live there.

I wonder how much longer I can remain an optimist.

There have been a lot of tests lately.

Well, I've been fired

I'm not even really sure why, but the job was too good to be true anyway.

So long, cute house

The listing for that house I liked has disappeared from the intarweb. Guess it's off the market...

Some sort of meaning

Sean said not too long ago that we were lucky that we weren't living in Japan when the fire happened, because we wouldn't have had a support structure to help us get back on our feet. I thought that was a ridiculous statement. If we'd been in Japan, the fire wouldn't have happened to us at all--we didn't cause it.

It occurred to me today that if we had been in Japan, the fire probably would have still happened, but to someone else. Would the people living in 09I have been home? Would they have awakened? Would one of them have thought to pull the fire alarm?

When we ran out front, there was a guy standing in the yard just staring at the building. I have no idea who he was or what he was doing there, but he hadn't pulled the fire alarm. And no one else woke up until the alarm went off and the firemen started beating on doors.

The only casualty in the fire was a gerbil. If we'd been in Japan, would people have died?

This is about the only reason I can think of to be glad that we were there.

Yes, I'm up

I'm on my laptop before work for the first time. Usually I watch TV in the mornings, but today Reid is asleep on the chair in the living room, so I'm back in what used to be Sean's old bedroom and is now the workout room, my laptop sitting on the head of the treadmill. Well, it's kind of like a desk.

Have you ever seen Return of the Jedi?

You know the part where the Ewoks start worshipping Threepio as a god?

The mini-fridge in here rumbles in exactly the same pitch progression and timing.

I was thinking just now about how I don't really feel like going to work, and that reminded me of Shel Silverstein's "Sick". This in turn reminded me of The Light in the Attic, the collection of Silverstein's poems that I gave to Sean while we were dating. I took the time to write in the front of the book why I was giving it to him and which poems meant something to me about my childhood.

That, too, is gone.

I get the feeling that I'm going to just keep thinking of things and listing them here. Maybe that'll be the "scrapbook" that one commenter mentioned awhile back.

Hai rules

Me (2:20:20 PM): I need a new mp3 player
Me (2:20:24 PM): what would you recommend?
Hai (2:20:31 PM): www.anythingbutipod.com
Me (2:20:35 PM): ROFL
Hai (2:20:45 PM): i love that site =D
Hai (2:20:49 PM): well
Hai (2:20:52 PM): i love that URL =]

Randomly, Japanlust strikes

About.com sent me a recipe today about Ohagi, sweet rice balls, and I suddenly very much wanted to eat one. Not only that, I wanted to be back in Japan.

The dream of living there hasn't died--I pass a company on my way to work that is in the same industry as the company I wanted to work for, and every day I ponder trying to get my foot in the door there so I could make myself more attractive to the Japanese company--but as always I would be happy just to go back and visit.

I wanted to mention this dream I had the other night

The day before yesterday, I spent much of my free time catching up on Somewhere on the Masthead. Magazine Man's posts are nice and long and I usually want to give them my full attention (because they rule), and due to how busy/disconnected I've been lately I ended up reading about 12 posts at once.

Because I was lodged firmly in Magazine Man World, he ended up in my dream that night. I dreamed that he found out about our apartment fire, and, to make me feel better, altered his subscriptions to some architectural magazines so that they would come to me instead of him. The thing was, the magazines still had his full name and address printed on them. (For some reason, in my dream he lived in Boston, when all evidence I've seen points to him living somewhere near NYC.)

This was monumental to me. Magazine Man is a mystery, as faithful readers know. He's an editor for a huge national magazine, but he won't tell us (straight out) who he is. At first this was for dooce reasons, but as time has gone on he's dropped more and more clues, enough that two people have figured out who he is. At this point I don't think he cares if people know, but he's maintaining the mystery for fun.

At any rate, to me, in the dream, his revealing his identity to me was the supreme act of kindness. Sure, the architecture magazines were cool, but it was the fact that he didn't worry about his secret identity when he decided to help me that really made it special. It was like he was letting me in on his secret.

Of course, I guess there's something like pity in an action like that, but you know what? I want to be pitied. This is just like when I was recovering from cancer and I went around telling everyone about it. It's apparently how I deal with trauma.

Don't worry, I'll get over it.

In the meantime, if it's getting too depressing for you all over here, check out Somewhere on the Masthead. It's always good for either a laugh or happy tears (or both).

Ugh

Feel kinda crappy today. I've been eating way too much, and all the wrong foods...and I've been drinking a lot of sodas with caffeine in them. Need to stop that.

I'm supposed to get a new bike at the end of the month, and that will help.

Yesterday I found a nice house: 3 bedroom, 2 1/2 bath, 2 story, with a fenced-in backyard and a patio. It's all brick and has carpet, vinyl, and wood flooring. This is all from the ad; I really can't say anything about the interior or the yard because all I could see was the front. But it's really pretty; it's got a wraparound front porch, and the brick is kind of a warm brown/orange color that's rather comforting. It's on a cul-de-sac, which means less traffic, and it's in a subdivision near where Sean's parents live, which means it's decently convenient to both our jobs.

I showed the Internet listing to Sean and he said, "I don't have a problem with that."

Now I just have to hope that it doesn't sell before next week, which would be the time we could get a NACA-certified real estate agent to show it to us. (I would ask one of the many agents I've been referred to, but I don't want them to feel used if we go the NACA route. They would make no money and I would feel like a heel.)

I don't know if it's the right house, but there's something very nice about it. I at least want the chance to see the whole thing.

Suddenly I'm falling apart

I guess that "delayed mourning" thing is really kicking in...I left the internship early today so I could be alone in the house for a change, and because I couldn't concentrate and wasn't getting anything done. Then I pretty much cried the whole way home.

I stopped at Springhouse. They wouldn't let me into the apartment, of course. I don't know what I was thinking. That I'd sneak in? I was told to talk to the apartment manager, so I did. She said they wouldn't know if they could recover anything until the demolition guys evaluated the situation, and they don't know when that'll be because they haven't even made an appointment with the demolition guys yet. She said they'd call. I don't know if I trust them to do that, given their history.

I feel like I should try to resign myself to losing all my writing. It's the writing that really got me, beyond even the pictures. I just want my hard drive. But if they can't even, like, rake the debris out of the structure and let me sort through it...maybe I should just give up now and stop hoping.

I'm tired of these situations. I'm tired of life telling me to give up on my hopes.

I have a horrible headache right now. Earlier I felt like I was going to throw up. Now I just want to turn off my brain and hide from life.

"Delayed mourning"

That's what I called it when Cheryl asked me what was wrong. It's about the stupidest phrase ever, because it makes no sense.

"Mourning? Over what?"

"My apartment burned down," I said. By this time I was struggling not to cry.

Cheryl launched into a speech about how nobody could do anything about that, and she wished she could but she couldn't. All I could think was Duh, so you shouldn't have pressed me about it. Why couldn't you have just left me alone? But I just nodded and did my best not to start wailing in the middle of the stupid driveway. "Why today? What's wrong?" she said.

"Yesterday they said that people couldn't go in and get their stuff because it was too dangerous, and I'd been hoping my hard drive would be in there, and everything I've ever written was on it." I was being brief because I was about to burst into tears, especially there towards the end.

"Nobody's found anything?"

"I haven't heard anything."

"Cry, honey, just cry," Cheryl said. I did not want to cry. She started saying the usual crap about letting it out. Well, that's great and all, but I want to cry on my own terms. That's why I was out in the middle of the driveway in the first place. I was trying to move stuff around, to exert control over my environment. I was trying to get rid of the clothes that people had donated that didn't fit or weren't quite our style. I had been going to put them in my car, and Cheryl had followed me outside because she'd meant one box for the Abilene Church. And then she'd just sunk her teeth into me until I was struggling to keep from collapsing.

I'm not the type to bawl in front of other people. I've done it, but I don't choose to. I did not want to cry in front of Cheryl. There's nothing wrong with her, and I love her, but I did not want to cry in front of her. But she kept telling me to.

"I'll do it later," I said. She finally backed down and we put the box of clothes in the garage. Then a neighbor appeared and I was able to escape.

I cried a little in the bathroom and in the guest bedroom, but it wasn't enough. I just can't cry here. It's not my space.

Maybe sometime tomorrow I will drive off somewhere private and cry in my car.

RIP Syuusuke 8/28/05

So long, pal.

My new bike will have a different name.

...did anybody save that book?

Because seriously, I would like to have that back.

:/

Losing my writing

There were short stories on my hard drive that I hadn't put on the web anywhere. None of them was finished, and none of them was particularly good. The first novel I ever tried to write was there, an epic fantasy in two parts (yes, I was writing a fantasy series...hahaha), and so was the other novel, the one about the bald guy and the conspiracy.

It occurs to me that losing them might be a good thing, because now I'm unfettered by the actual writing I did those years ago. I only have the ideas. Maybe I can turn them into something worthwhile now that I don't have my prior, fumbling attempts to restrain me.

The book I tried to write last November was also there, and I removed it from this site...and unlike those older things, this one actually had relatively decent writing.

Thank goodness for the Wayback Machine. At least I still have the last (and weakest) chapter...

Another update (I forgot to mention something)

Last night we went to a get-together at Springhouse for all the residents affected by the fire. The firemen came too. Unfortunately, Sean and I didn't see many people, as the office at Springhouse didn't inform us of the time of the party until the middle of the day. They called my phone and left voicemail that it was at 6. I don't get phone service out at work, so I didn't get the message until 6:10.

:>

Sean, on the other hand, was still at work when I called to tell him about the call. He hurried home and we went over there, arriving about an hour "late". This after being asked repeatedly to please come because they wanted to do something special. It would have been nice to give the guest of honor (our hero Sean Meadows, who pulled a fire alarm) more warning about the time of the party.

In any event, he got a goofy-looking certificate that said something like "Good Job Award" and we ate some WifeSaver. Mmm, chicken.

We did learn something important, though: apparently it's so dangerous in the burned-out building that even people whose homes were barely touched aren't allowed to salvage their perfectly unscathed items. They won't let anyone go in there. So the chances of our recovering our hard drives just went from "minimal" to "no chance in hell".

Bleh.

Update

So many people have been so generous to us. Thanks to the kindness of Sean's parents in allowing us to stay with them, we are able to save the majority of our salaries, as well as all the money we've been given by our wonderful friends and families. This means that we should have enough money in a few months to get a place to live and replace most of the things we lost. It's not perfect, but it's far better than it could have been.

We currently have laptops and an Internet connection, and some of our friends have ordered replacement goodies from the Amazon list. We're planning to get me a new bicycle at the end of the month. Several people have offered us furniture, and many of them are able to hold on to the pieces until we get a place to live. At this point, due to kind donations and gift cards, we no longer have need of clothes.

If there's anyone out there who still wants to help in some way (though I really can't imagine that--we've already been given so much), money is probably the best option at this point, because it takes up the least amount of space. However, I still feel funny asking people for money, so the other thing you can do is just wait until we get a house and then buy something from the Amazon list.

We want to thank everyone who has given us gifts. You've helped us more than we could ever express. We have just been overwhelmed by the amazing outpouring of love and generosity. Thank you all so much.

Sabembermoff!

I love Penny Arcade.

Read a little sci-fi every day

Via BoingBoing, a really cool piece of flash fiction. (Damn, I lost that book in the fire, too!) Apparently these guys will be putting out a new short story every day for a year. Crazy.

Lunch at the beach

If I leave work to the right, pass the way home, and drive for awhile, I end up reaching a bridge over part of the sprawling J. Strom Thurmond/Clarks Hill Lake. There's a boat ramp just past the bridge to the right. I've stopped for lunch there before.

Today I decided to go there because I didn't feel like driving all the way down to the longer bridge, the one that has two roads leading down to the water. I just wanted to eat and relax--but I didn't want to go to the Historical Park, because I just went there yesterday.

I was expecting to just park in the shade and stand around staring down the boat ramp at the lake. But when I pulled in this time I noticed that there was a little road leading away from the ramp. Being a curious little bugger, I drove up to it. There was a sign there reading: "Park open April 1 to November 1".

Public property! I drove down the skinny winding road...and discovered a beach.

It was so gorgeous that after I ate lunch at one of the many picnic tables scattered around the woods, I had to take my shoes and socks off and splash in the water.

It was just so nice. I had a lovely lunch.

Now I'm trying to figure out the logistics of going for a swim over my lunch break. I'll need a swimsuit, a towel, and probably a shower cap to keep my hair dry...

*whips Blogger*

Publish these posts, or feel my wrath!

h4x0rz3d

Somebody replaced the front page of the old Aubrey family picture site I put up aeons ago. I guess there's a Post-Nuke vulnerability that got exploited. Anyway, you can still get to the content via the Google cache. I'm going to save the content tonight, remove Post-Nuke, and set up a Blogger blog there, I think.

We don't even really need that site anymore, as Mom and I are both quite happy with smugmug. It'll really just be a matter of shifting the images elsewhere.

That's a lot of spam

I'm just saying.

23 pages and counting!

(Yes, I am bored. Not bored in the traditional sense of having nothing to do, but bored in the "I'm too braindead to think right now" sense.)

Damn it

I was scrolling along down my blog and noticed the archive for June 2001. That's the one post from my Japan trip journal that I managed to get typed up. I never typed up any of the rest of it (though the notes on my galleries for the trip heavily drew from the journal).

That made me realize that not only have I lost the Japan journal, but I've lost all my old diaries. The huge three ring spiral-bound one full of high school thoughts. The little books I used to buy as a kid and write in. The journal I took to GSP. I typed out some of this stuff, but nowhere near all of it.

I never got around to typing out those Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Darkwing Duck stories either (they were written on my old Apple II e, and those disks are long gone). They were all in three ring binders on my bookshelf. Now they're gone, too.

The diaries were inside one of the end tables. I could pretend that they were somehow safe because they were in there, but that would be ridiculous. They probably spontaneously combusted due to the heat, if the end table itself didn't go up in flames, which it probably did.

Googled

I, like all self-obsessed persons, enjoy searching for myself on Google. (Right now I'm pleased to report that this journal is the number two result for searches for "Heather Meadows". Go me and my bad self.) I searched for "Heather Aubrey" again, just for fun, and once again came across the "Utopia Bibliography" wherein the following horrendous sentence is quoted:

Heather Aubrey's George Orwell and the English Language

Orwell's "predictions of what problems the dangerous capabilities of language might cause are coming true today."

Yes, I did write that. And yes, I am so sorry. Please forgive me.

(You could pretend that the sentence was intended as an example of language going bad, but I don't think it's bad in the way Orwell was predicting, and anyway I wasn't that smart when I was a senior in high school.)

[Update 9/13 3:30 pm:] OMGWTFBBQ, here is the essay in its entirety. I have got to archive this puppy.

Any artists in the audience?

I have decided that I would like a caricature of Junichiro Koizumi to use whenever I make reference to "Jun-Jun-kun". It could be anime-chibi style, or American caricature style--just something distorted, with a big head, that looks like Koizumi.

Anyone?

The etymology of OMGWTFBBQ

UrbanDictionary.com has several definitions of the term. It may or may not have originated on GameFAQs, Something Awful, and/or Starcraft, and it may or may not have something to do with the Korean word for "fuck you".

Personally, I always just figured it was a way to mock Internet acronyms, but whatever. Also, I think saying BBQ stands for "be back quick" is BS. It's barbecue. I mean, come on.

I'm not sure when I first heard it (thanks a lot, apartment fire, for destroying my records), but I know it was Kevin who first said it to me.

Zzzz...

Yes, I'm a wuss. I'm not used to getting up at 7 am every day. I've done just that for seven days in a row now. That plus the hourlong commute and the sudden burden of having to do creative work all day (I had no idea how tiring that would be) have resulted in a very sleepy Heather.

I'm very lucky to be here. I just need to stay focused and charged up as best as I can.

I think I'd get claustrophobic

Two divers are going to live underwater for 10 days, entering a special dry chamber every five hours to take care of business but otherwise living life like fish. I love how Reuters ends the article:

Asked what she would miss most, Mensa exclaimed: "The telephone. No, I'll miss everything a bit".

After some thought, she said: "The ground and the air".

Will they be able to tell if her brain function is affected?

Ben Stein's response to the "blame Bush for everything" camp

Via Snopes, I found the article "Get Off His Back", written by Ben Stein on September 2 and updated on the 4th. It was nice to see rational thinking getting some play on the Internet for a change.

4.) There is no overwhelming evidence that global warming exists as a man-made phenomenon. There is no clear-cut evidence that global warming even exists. There is no clear evidence that if it does exist it makes hurricanes more powerful or makes them aim at cities with large numbers of poor people. If global warming is a real phenomenon, which it may well be, it started long before George Bush was inaugurated, and would not have been affected at all by the Kyoto treaty, considering that Kyoto does not cover the world's worst polluters -- China, India, and Brazil. In a word, George Bush had zero to do with causing this hurricane. To speculate otherwise is belief in sorcery.

5.) George Bush had nothing to do with the hurricane contingency plans for New Orleans. Those are drawn up by New Orleans and Louisiana. In any event, the plans were perfectly good: mandatory evacuation. It is in no way at all George Bush's fault that about 20 percent of New Orleans neglected to follow the plan. It is not his fault that many persons in New Orleans were too confused to realize how dangerous the hurricane would be. They were certainly warned. It's not George Bush's fault that there were sick people and old people and people without cars in New Orleans. His job description does not include making sure every adult in America has a car, is in good health, has good sense, and is mobile.

[...]

8.) George Bush is rushing every bit of help he can to New Orleans and Mississippi and Alabama as soon as he can. He is not a magician. It takes time to organize huge convoys of food and now they are starting to arrive. That they get in at all considering the lawlessness of the city is a miracle of bravery and organization.

9.) There is not the slightest evidence at all that the war in Iraq has diminished the response of the government to the emergency. To say otherwise is pure slander.

10.) If the energy the news media puts into blaming Bush for an Act of God worsened by stupendous incompetence by the New Orleans city authorities and the malevolence of the criminals of the city were directed to helping the morale of the nation, we would all be a lot better off.

Photos!

I just discovered that 52 (of the approximately 75 hojillion) honeymoon pictures are still in my Photoworks account (along with the wedding pictures I'd had prints made of, and some pictures from Logan's birth). It's not all the honeymoon pictures, and I have no idea if I can get the full-size images back from Photoworks, but at least they're there, and I can download them at 800x600, and order prints!

For your viewing pleasure, here's one of my favorite shots, of an old man and a deer walking through Nara Park:

New pics

From Downtown/Riverwalk and Clarks Hill Lake. (Hey, they can't decide what to call it around here, so I can't, either.)

OMGWTFBBQ

This car is awesome.

Satellite images of Katrina damage

I have to admit, what with dealing with losing all my possessions and trying to adjust to living with the in-laws and getting used to my new job, I haven't been extraordinarily attentive to the situation in the Gulf. It's been in my periphery--I was aware on an academic level that things were terrible, but I had never truly comprehended.

This totally blew my mind.

Just look at that. Zoom in on it. The houses are like little islands in a sea. Look at the bridge surfacing out of the lake that is New Orleans, then slipping back under the water.

It's horrific.

(And yes, it is much worse than what I've been through, as several people have mentioned.)

I have a friend who was living in Biloxi, MS last I heard. I don't know what the situation is in that city, or even if she is still there. Margaret, I have no idea if you ever read this thing, but if you're out there I'd appreciate a note--I've lost your email address.

Three reasons to be cheerful

John Kovalic thinks he's starting a meme. I found it via Wil Wheaton.

Anyway, listing things that make me cheerful would be a nice thing to do right about now, so here I go.

1) Thinking about how the people we love have reacted to our apartment fire. This is the biggest one because it's at the forefront of my mind. Everyone has been so generous and wonderful. It's overwhelming and humbling and it just makes me feel so loved.

2) Water. Lakes, streams, creeks, ponds, waterfalls, the ocean...I love water. I've said it before a zillion times, and I'll say it again: water rejuvenates me.

3) Looking at Sean. I love to just watch him. He has the cutest smile ever. I won't get into the other things I love to watch too specifically, because I'm sure you're all groaning already, and I don't want you to have to vomit too. Let's just leave it at this: my husband is the most attractive man in the world.

There. Hmm, I am feeling pretty cheerful :)

NERD!

Pure Nerd 78 % Nerd, 47% Geek, 26% Dork

For The Record: A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia. A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one. A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions. You scored better than half in Nerd, earning you the title of: Pure Nerd. The times, they are a-changing. It used to be that being exceptionally smart led to being unpopular, which would ultimately lead to picking up all of the traits and tendences associated with the "dork." No-longer. Being smart isn't as socially crippling as it once was, and even more so as you get older: eventually being a Pure Nerd will likely be replaced with the following label: Purely Successful. Congratulations! THE NERD? GEEK? OR DORK? TEST

My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 86% on nerdiness You scored higher than 66% on geekosity You scored higher than 37% on dork points

Link: The Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test written by donathos on Ok Cupid

Home ownership for cheap

Sean and I attended a preliminary workshop for buying a home through the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America, or NACA, today. The program offers people the chance to own their own home with no down payment, no application fee, no closing costs, and an interest rate 1% below current market rates. I'd mentioned to a few people that we were going to look into this, only to hear plenty of warnings that there had to be some sort of catch, something they weren't telling us. It did seem strange. How did they manage to swing that kind of deal? Would you be paying ridiculous amounts of money for your house for the rest of your life?

Actually, no. What they've done is rather clever. NACA, a nonprofit organization, is an advocacy group that has been trying to reveal how banks take advantage of people, and offer an alternative. They have managed to do the latter through a combination of lobbying the government and negotiating with individual financial institutions. If you look at their timeline, you'll see how they've gone to "war" with several well-known banks.

The nuts and bolts of the system they've negotiated is the root of the whole thing, and what convinced us that this isn't some sort of elaborate scam.

The main thing NACA does is get the bank to take care of the majority of your up-front fees, including the down payment and most of the closing costs. The bank also agrees to a base interest rate of 1% below the market rate for NACA members.

The savvy thing to do, and what NACA highly encourages, is to put money towards buying "points"--paying down your interest rate from the get-go. This is much easier to do if you don't have to make a down payment or pay lots of fees. Paying down your interest rate saves you an inordinate amount of money in the long term. Most people end up grossly "upside-down" on their houses by the time they reach the end of their mortgage; the representative said that most 30 year mortgage holders end up paying three times the purchase price due to interest. Knock down that interest rate at the beginning and you can curtail that kind of rampant spending. Or, in NACA verbiage,

The Interest Rate Buy-Down is a tremendous opportunity to increase the Maximum Purchase Price without increasing your Maximum Mortgage Payment. If you do not want to purchase a more expensive home, you can also use the buy-down to reduce your monthly mortgage payment. For each one percent (1%) of the mortgage amount--or "point"--you pay up front, the interest rate is reduced by one-quarter of a percent (.25%) for the life of the mortgage.

This unique option in the NACA program will increase the Maximum Purchase Price much more than using the same amount as a downpayment. You can use any source of funds to pay for the buy-down, including seller contributions, city grants and government programs, employers, unions, other programs, or your own savings.

NACA has apparently helped people get their interest rates down to as low as .5%. That's one half of a percent! Can you imagine that? :> We probably won't be that lucky. Sean estimates that we can get ours down to 2.5%, but we won't really know until we've gone through the application process.

Of course, you don't have to take the option of paying down your interest rate, but that's what Sean and I plan to do. You'd have to be an idiot not to, if you have some money to throw at it. (You can pay down your interest rate without going through NACA, but your average real estate agent isn't going to know how to negotiate this, and your average mortgage broker isn't going to want to do this.)

Now, you might be wondering how exactly this works for the bank. After all, they are trying to make a profit, and if you chop down the interest rate and force them to shoulder the up-front costs, they don't seem to make as much money. The benefit for the bank, though, is that people who go through NACA's program are far less likely to default on their loans, because they will have been educated by NACA in how to live on a budget. Another plus is that NACA members are typically in it for the long term; they truly want to own the home they are buying. The bank can therefore count on years and years of steady income, even if it is less than they could get in a higher risk situation. (A final reason that this is appealing to a bank is that it shows they are socially responsible, but as Mr. Christopher said, "How am I supposed to enter that into the ledger?")

The buyer covers the "pre-paids"/escrows, and the bank covers the rest as part of its deal with NACA--in other words, the other fees are negotiated into the mortgage. NACA works with you every step of the way, first getting you to work out a realistic budget, getting you approved for your loan, helping you find a house, and helping you pay the interest rate down if you choose to. A young couple came into the workshop today and gave testimonials that indicated the process was extremely easy, completely unlike most home purchasing horror stories.

One other important benefit of NACA is its "NSF", or Neighborhood Stabilization Fund. When you buy a house and borrow over 80% of its value, you are typically required by the lender to purchase Private Mortgage Insurance. This insurance does nothing for you--it just ensures that the lender will be paid if something happens and you can't make a payment. You, however, typically end up putting out a "For Sale" sign if that happens. With NACA, when something happens and you can't make a payment, you can meet with the NSF committee and plead your case, and if you're approved, NACA will dip into the NSF and make your payments for you until you're back on your feet. The NSF costs NACA members $50 a month for the first 5 to 10 years of their mortgage; PMI insurance can cost upwards of $200 a month. Both ensure that the lender gets paid, but the NSF also ensures that the homeowner gets to keep the house. You can apply for NSF benefits for as long as you own the home.

Here's a breakdown, taken from the Home Buyer's Workbook:

NACA Program Features

• No down payment
• No closing costs
• No fees
• No yield spread premium
• No pre-payment penalty
• No balloon payment
• No required credit life or other unnecessary and overpriced insurance
• one-on-one financial and credit counseling

NACA Program Fine Print

• No member of the household can have an ownership interest in any other property.
• You must occupy the home for as long as you have the mortgage through NACA.
• You must contribute to the NSF.
• You must participate in at least five "Actions and Activities" per year in support of NACA's mission.

For the Augusta region, which includes the priority areas of Richmond, Columbia, and Aiken counties and the city of Savannah, the maximum purchase price for a single family home is currently $172,632. Any NACA "Qualified Members" can purchase homes in the priority areas, and those with "low and moderate income" can purchase in additional areas.

So far, this thing seems to be a very good deal. We'll be meeting with the coordinator on September 22 to discuss the matter further. Hopefully this will mean we can save a lot of money and get a really nice house. We'd have to pay off our house before using it as a rental property (unless we wanted to rent out a room while we were still living in it), but that's not a big deal to us right now.

As a nonprofit organization, NACA doesn't have much money to spend on advertising, which is why you may not have heard of it. NACA depends on its members to spread the word, via postcards, flyers, word of mouth, anything. I figure this nice mention on my website should count towards one of the five advocacy activities we're required to do per year as members of the program. ;>

The society of bribes

Whether it's with a well-timed handful of Cheetos before a devastating [D&D] battle or a well-timed kick into the rough so your boss can win the golf game, it's important to know how to handle yourself in a greed-based economy.

From "My son becomes a man, gets +2 STR, +1 DEX".

Meticulous? Obsessive?

In that post about the Papermate pen I misused commas. I did it on purpose, because I wanted to write it exactly how I was feeling it, and at the time I was feeling like a person who misused commas.

Now the misusages are seriously annoying me.

My head is not in the game

You know "the zone"? I'm not there. :>

I've been having trouble concentrating all day. I'd much rather be at home (and by "home" now I mean Cheryl and Reid's house--the place where what little stuff I own currently resides). I'd like to be doing fun stuff, like watching TV. Or maybe messing around online, since the laptops arrived Wednesday and the Internet should be working tonight. I'd like to get started working on house hunting--that house I mentioned before is okay in many ways, but ultimately the location is far from my friends and the front of the house is just butt-ugly, and I'm not going to get over those things, even if I can deal with only having two bedrooms. And I'd like to start working on listing all the anime I lost--while there were a few files on hard drives that might possibly maybe be recovered (though who knows--we haven't heard a thing about hard drives yet), the majority of my anime was burned to DVD, so that's gone. (And I had finally almost finished d/ling Tenshi na Konamaiki, too...)

I guess I'm distracted because there are things I'd rather be doing, which is annoying. I want to put my life in order, and that's taking precedence in my head over silly things like work that puts food on the table (and possessions in our...possession). I want to be able to shut that off and focus on the things I need to do now.

You know, I lost my favorite pen

Papermate used to make these blue pens, they were perfect. The body was kind of rubbery and slender, and the ink just rolled right out of the ball point. Comfortable and easy to use. I loved those pens and I always bought them.

Well, they don't make those pens anymore, and out of all the ones I'd bought, I only had one left. It was my prized pen, I used it all the time.

It was sitting in my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles tin with the rest of my pens and pencils.

Late

Had to replace the battery in my car this morning, so I'm just now rolling into work.

Woo.

At least the problem wasn't something more serious...

Monica Lewinsky I am not

It's my first day back at the internship since the fire; I skipped last week. Things have been going okay. I've been offered condolences by everyone...and a king size wrought iron canopy bed by the vice president. She's moving and doesn't have the space for it anymore. If we end up getting that cute little two bedroom with the horrible thrusting garage, the bed would definitely fit in the master bedroom...

At any rate, I've had actual work to do today, which has been fun and challenging and interesting and all that. For the first half hour or so, I read a book called The Complete 35mm Sourcebook, which was quite interesting. I got through about half of the history of the format. Then I ran an errand to the Augusta Chronicle and helped prepare some items for an advertisers meeting.

After that, the real work began. I attended a meeting wherein the account manager told the art director and myself what was needed for three upcoming ads. I was asked to write slogans/headlines and create mockups for two of the ads.

I nailed down my headlines pretty quickly, and I've done two mockups for one ad, so I'm pretty satisfied with my work so far today. (Of course, I still need to mock up the other ad, for which a rough draft is actually due today. I'm actually waiting on some information in that regard...) I suppose I should admit that a lot of my work has been "cheating"; that is, I've lifted quite a bit from the company's existing ads. However, that's what they want...so there you go.

It's really cool that the company is using me more now. I'm definitely getting some good experience.

Someday...

...I'll catch up on my reading.

More exploring

Here are some pics I took around J. Strom Thurmond Lake at the Georgia/South Carolina border. I found a boat ramp and had lunch there.

There were all kinds of caterpillars there...

It was a really beautiful place to eat lunch, even if I did get swarmed by ants.

Hi!

Not even vignettes

I don't have time to write full stories about everything that's been happening to me, but there have been a few moments that have left impressions, and I wanted to document them.

So here are a few random scenes.

---

Suddenly he swung the massive truck into a parking lot. "Wait here," he said. "I've gotta see my friend for a minute."

He got out and headed to a storefront. I sat in the truck and waited. A few minutes later, he returned with a brown paper bag, which he deposited in the floor of the backseat.

---

"There was a girl from North Carolina and a woman from Ve-neh-zoo-ay-luh, and they saw my churn and asked, 'Is that an ice cream maker?' I couldn't believe it. You know what a butter churn is, don't you dear? And the molds you put the butter in when it's done? That woman from Ve-neh-zoo-ay-luh, she was 45 years old."

---

"This young lady has never seen a real hardware store before."

---

After work yesterday I went to the mall to get a manicure. Ever since working at GRW, the nail on my left pointer finger has been flawed. A line runs up the length of it, causing it to split and break at the tip. I was hoping the manicurist would be able to do something about it, or at least that the procedure would strengthen the nail.

The place I went to, Nail Something in the mall, was run by a group of Vietnamese women who chattered away in their own language as they attended to their customers. A teenage girl took particular interest in my hands, which needed a lot of work. The middle-aged woman taking care of me filed my nails down, then scraped back the cuticles, and then hacked the skin off all the way around. It smarted, and one nail started to bleed.

She applied lotion all up my arms, giving my forearms and hands and fingers a rough but pleasant massage. Then, after I washed my hands, she buffed the nails and painted them clear. I was impatient and didn't let my hands dry long enough before digging in my purse, so she had to touch up the polish on my thumbnails.

The manicure cost $12, and I gave her a $3 tip.

---

Superman II was on, and I was watching it more out of a sense of curiosity than out of any actual desire to see it.

"I'd rather watch something else, if you don't mind," Sean said. I shrugged and started flipping. "Here," he said, and took the remote. A few clicks later and there was Lenny Briscoe, making some comment about how parking rates in New York City will kill you, which was funny because there was a dead body in the parking lot.

"Are you addicted to this show?"

"Yes."

So we watched three episodes.

---

Water is so rejuvenating to me. I know I've said this before. But every time I drive over the lake to get to work, I feel so refreshed. Today I was filled with emotion to the point that it brought tears to my eyes. And they were happy tears, for a change.

What it is, yo

Sean says our laptops shipped, so hopefully we'll get them soon. I'm going a little stir-crazy without internet access at home.

Yesterday we looked at a house, and (somehow) I didn't take any pictures of it. It is actually quite a nice house. The downsides: it's one of those horrible "let's jut the garage out front so it's all you see from the road" styles, it only has two bedrooms, and it's pretty far out in Columbia County, meaning it's not convenient to lots of the places I like to go, including shopping and friends' houses. The upsides: it's very convenient to our jobs, the backyard is beautiful, it's on a pond with a walking trail around it, the deck is spacious and multi-level, there's a lovely sunroom, the kitchen has all-new appliances, the house itself is only 2 years old, there are actual stairs to the attic instead of a pull-down ladder, the great room is of a very nice size, the master bedroom is huge, and the master bath is spacious and has a jacuzzi tub.

The two bedrooms thing really is a problem, though, because we'd like to have a place for guests to sleep. There has been talk of using the sunroom for one of the purposes (either a guest bedroom or the office), but we're still not sure what we think of that.

Off to the in-laws'.

Coping

I had the best dream last night.

We went back into the apartment to see if we could salvage anything, and it turned out that all our stuff was fine. The fire had just eaten the apartment around it, leaving rafters overhead that looked like a beautiful arbor. Vines had grown up all around everything (kudzu probably, but it was pretty), and somehow a river had sprung up and was running through the apartment. I was busy taking pictures of everything when my alarm went off.

People keep saying that I'm dealing with it really well, that I have a good attitude, that I'm in good spirits, etc. I think I'm pretty cheerful when I'm not thinking about it, but some days I'm very strongly reminded that I don't have a home, I don't have my own space, I don't have my own things, and I'm not in control of anything, and that feeling overwhelms me.

Exploring

As I've mentioned, my new job is in Lincolnton, which is "40 minutes from Augusta" if the job ad is to be believed (but it's really 40 minutes from Martinez). I can get to work faster from Cheryl and Reid's house than I could from our apartment, which is nice, sort of. Either way, leaving at 8 am gets me here on time, usually with a little time to spare to get settled in.

Since I'm so far from "home", I can't just go back to the house for lunch. I've been packing a sandwich and some yogurt, but today I decided that was boring, so I didn't pack anything and instead went to Hardee's. (They got my order totally wrong--I ordered the 1/2 pound sourdough burger, and I came out with a small patty on a regular bun with no condiments except a huge amount of ketchup. They also gave me the large size drink and fries. They did get the type of drink and fries correct, so I didn't really mind. I'm not extraordinarily picky, in general.)

After picking up my food at the drive-thru, I decided to drive "the other way" down Washington Street here in Lincolnton. Is that confusing, or what? You take Washington Road out of Augusta and it ends up stopping at Washington Street in Lincolnton. If you turn right at that point (the Hardee's is on the corner there), you head towards my workplace. I'd never tried going left, so today I did that.

Apparently that's the way you go if you want to go to Washington, Georgia (the street names make sense!). There was a BBQ place and a hair salon out that way, but not much else. I finally found a place to stop at a church across the street from a graveyard. The graveyard had a nice gazebo, so after I'd eaten most of my food I crossed the street and took some pictures (which I would have uploaded if I'd thought to bring the USB cable with me).

Oh, that's right, I didn't mention--the camera Mom bought for me arrived yesterday. It's like new. I think it must have been washed up with industrial cleaner, but even so it's in impeccable condition. It also came with a telephoto lens(!) and one of those cover thingies you can use to block light (someday I'll know all these terms). Pretty sweet all in all. The lens cap is a little different from the one I had--it doesn't have a hole for looping a string into, so the previous owner attached it to the camera with a string ending in a sticky circle thing. That will take getting used to, especially since the plastic part with the string on it keeps pulling off of the sticky part. I may just look to replace the lens cap with one that has that convenient hole.

In any case, I took some pictures, and it worked great. It's almost exactly like having my old camera back. It was a wonderful feeling to be able to take pictures again. First priority: getting some 128 meg memory cards!

After I satisfied my photography craving, I finished eating and headed back. My phone doesn't get service out in Lincolnton (d'oh), and for some reason this phone doesn't keep track of what time it is for me when it's out of its service area (double d'oh) so I never know how much time I have left when I head back to the office. It turned out that I had 25 minutes to spare (wh00t), so that's why I'm writing a long post this time.

There isn't much to Lincolnton. So far I've found a state park (that you have to pay to enter, so I didn't), a local park with a playground, swimming pool, and various sports pitches, and a historical area with old houses. Now that I finally have a camera again I'll be able to take pictures of all the neat stuff here! I'm hoping that I haven't found everything yet. I'm also looking forward to trying out the various mom and pop restaurants in town :)

Speaking of exploring, I'm told that "the dam" is very impressive. I'm not exactly sure where it is, but I'm eager to check it out! (It looks like I can just take Fury's Ferry Road out of Martinez to get there.) Some general info:

Thurmond Dam is a concrete-gravity structure flanked on both sides by embankments of compacted earth some 5,680 feet (over 1 mile), crossing the Savannah River. The concrete section is 2,282 feet long and rises 200' above the riverbed at its highest point. Highway 221 crosses over the top of the dam connecting Georgia and South Carolina. The spillway contains 23 large gates, each 40 feet wide by 35 feet high, for the quick release of water from the lake.

Pretty neat.

Just found a font called Sudbury!

And here it is.

(Here's why that's funny. Also, here and here.

(...yes, I enjoy that joke too much.)

I keep thinking of things I've lost

I really, really hope that my hard drive is salvageable. I'm looking for fabulous fonts right now, and it occurred to me that I used to have so many fonts...what a pain to have to go out and find them all again :/

(Whine, whine, whine...)

FABULOUS!

"It's fine. But it has to be fabulous."

I'd read about the problems creative directors had with trying to get a concrete idea of what their clients wanted, but now I know their pain.

*goes off to make something fabulous*

I just realized, I totally missed BlogDay.

Stupid fire.

I wanna go home

Or, you know, to Cheryl and Reid's house.

The Japundit guys = also some of the nicest people in the world

I'm just overwhelmed. The guys at Japundit just Paypaled us some money.

It's amazing how wonderfully generous people can be. I'm just floored by the willingness of near-total strangers to help us out.

My poor biographers

According to the radio, the fire was caused by the guy below us flicking a cigarette out his patio door. It landed on a chair, which caught fire. Some people are looking into litigation options for us even though we don't actually want to sue. There's plenty of righteous indignation out there on our behalf, I guess.

In any case, now that the investigation is over, the process of salvaging what's left in the apartments can begin.

We won't know for a couple of weeks if our hard drives survived. This is because it's too dangerous to go into our apartment. Some construction people are setting up a support structure so that other people can get into their apartments and try to save their possessions, but we won't be allowed to do that. It's too unstable. So we have to wait until everyone else has gotten their stuff, and then the firemen will scrounge for whatever they can find in our apartment and the one below ours. After that, the building will be demolished.

I am really hoping that my hard drive(s) can be saved. I hold little hope for the external drive that had most of my Kyou Kara Maou on it...but you never know. The server, which was nearest to this window, had all our mp3s on it...while it would be nice to get those back, that's not very likely either.

Meanwhile, my main hard drive had everything else: chat logs, email, photos, writing, websites. This is a huge loss not just to me, but to the people who will write about me in the future! So, as you can imagine, I'm hoping that my hard drive wasn't completely incinerated, and that a professional recovery company can scrape at least some of the data off the platter.

(This brings to mind a quote from the Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever: "There's only one way to hurt a man who's lost everything. Give him back something broken.")

Updated sidebar

I spent some time throwing together a partial list of stuff we lost--it's mostly DVDs right now. Then I set up an area in the sidebar for it, under Links. So there you go.

Some semblance of normalcy

You don't know how much it meant to me to be able to watch an episode of Saved by the Bell: The College Years this morning.

(It was the one where Zack is conflicted about whether to date Kelly or Leslie, with side plots about Screech and a dorky bicycle and Slater switching from easy classes to real classes.)

The guys at smugmug = some of the nicest people in the world

I got an email this morning from Ben MacAskill at smugmug:

Several of us here at smugmug noticed your journal about the tragedy with your apartment! We all send our condolences on your loss, but we are very glad that a lot of your photos were online and not lost at least. I wish there was something tangible we could do to help you out, but we figured the very least we could do was change your account to a free lifetime professional account. I know you have fairly recently renewed, so it won't help with any immediate monetary concerns. But I suppose in the long run every bit counts, and you at least know we are thinking about you!

I hope you manage to get back on your feet again soon. It sounds like you have a great friend and family support network, so hopefully the transition won't be too painful. Good luck!

Can you believe that? Not only did they notice what had happened and send their condolences, but they're giving me a free lifetime pro account...I'm totally overwhelmed by this. It's just amazing.

Thank you, Ben, and everyone at smugmug!