2002-10-30

 

And another Halloween-ie thought: Stevie and I have gotten through the Nightmare Before Christmas level in Kingdom Hearts, and it was indeed great fun to play with Jack Skellington in the party.

posted by bethanye 5:32:00 PM   

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In this town, don't we love it now, everybody's waiting for the next surprise! Tomorrow is my first Xinet Halloween, and in the past they have really gotten into it. Should be entertaining to say the least.

Not trying to be no fun, but I haven't put together a costume. I'll just come as a wannabe!

posted by bethanye 5:30:00 PM   

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2002-10-29

 

The picture at left is new. I had some difficulties managing the camera, though it was a nice excuse to play around in iMovie for some time tonight. Some more pictures and little movies can be found here.

posted by bethanye 10:06:00 PM   

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Last night, I talked to Jake and MoMo for a bit. Jake had dressed up as a pumpkin for drama class at school, and was singing his little pumpkin song. And then he started in on "We will rock you" by Queen. WTF? He was going for it and belting out the chorus at top volume. Then, with a little prodding, he sang this:

"Well I'm not the world's most masculine man
But I know what I am and I'm glad that I'm a man
And so is Lola
La-la-la-la Lola la-la-la-la Lola"

I laughed so hard it hurt. MoMo was concerned that it wasn't appropriate for his age, until I reminded her about the story when she started singing "Touch-a Touch-a Touch Me, I wanna feel dirty!" in the middle of the grocery store produce section. She was four. Any chance to bring up painfully embarrassing anecdotes from your sibling's childhood should be taken full advantage of!

posted by bethanye 4:14:00 PM   

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2002-10-28

 

My dad called for the first time in months last night. I only spoke to him for a few minutes, though, because we were headed into the city to watch "The Sopranos" at a friend's house. He asked for pictures "of the area" where we live. "What, do you want a photo essay on homeless people? Or maybe the Marxist library down the street?" "Oh, yeah, Berkeley is kind of a liberal area. They had some problems in the 60's."

'Some problems'? The cops, the National Guard, gassing the crowds, the beatings, the students shot, the helicopter attack... that qualifies as 'some problems'? We live down Telegraph from People's Park, and those pictures from 1969 now seem familiar somehow, seeing some of the same buildings from our neighborhood. Enter the king of understatement... Berkeley's "kind of liberal" and the riots were "some problems". WTF is wrong with that man? And he was even alive then, the same age as some of the protesters in the park. Grrr...

Enough bitching. If you're interested, my hair is now strawberry blonde instead of yellow. Yellow was too hard to maintain.

Oh, some good news: Molly and JR are coming for Christmas! "Molly's coming over! Molly's coming over!" sung a la Blue's Clues keeps running through my head. They're coming Christmas Eve and leaving New Year's Day. An excellent turn of events.

posted by bethanye 4:37:00 PM   

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2002-10-23

 

Lucky me! Stevie found my keys. Marianna got her present yesterday afternoon. All-in-all, not such a bad denouement to an otherwise icky day.

posted by bethanye 5:56:00 PM   

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I think that today is the first "pretty bad" day I've had since I came here. And that's not so horrible of a record, plus it could be a lot worse. Basically, it's just a series of little annoyances. I lost my work keys. I probably left them in the bathroom yesterday, so now they may or may not show up. I can get new keys, so it's not a crisis. Just an annoyance. I sent flowers to Marianna. I gave them the wrong ZIP code, so now they may not get there at a reasonable time. Again, annoying, but not critical. The bathroom stall lock failed when I was on the potty earlier and someone opened the door on me. But it was a co-worker who I like and don't feel weird around, so the embarrassment isn't overwhelming. Just very annoying.

It will all work out okay. But for the moment, I just want to curl up into a little ball.

posted by bethanye 1:21:00 PM   

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2002-10-22

 

Something that fascinates me about my job: people here do work, and they do get things done, but hardly anyone stays for over 8 hours. That's 8 hours including lunch. I'm not fixating on everyone else's time at work - don't get me wrong. I think it's wonderful and amazing. But at the same time, talking to Mark Malone earlier reminded me of the kind of hours we used to put in. Actually, I'm sure he still puts in those kind of hours. I wonder how much of that mini-depression I experienced recently has to do with not having a clue how to fill my time. It's been something that Stevie never could figure out about me. I just don't know how to have fun - how to recreate, as it were. When I'm not working... well, I'm just not sure what to do with myself. Lately, I've done a lot of laying around feeling bad, some of which (I'm sure) is related to my immune system being completely unused to its new surroundings. Some of that laying around, though, has been simple depressiveness. How precisely does a person choose a "fun" activity? How do you know what you enjoy doing? HA! I know what you're thinking: "Try new things!"

It's hard to try new things when everything around me is already new. I'm soaking in it.

On an up-note, my fingernails are growing out well. They look just lovely, I must say, and they go clickety-click on the keyboard when I type.

Another up-note: Gregor is coming to training out here, and I am sincerely looking forward to seeing him.

Up-note number three: Stevie and I are playing Kingdom Hearts. There's a brain-squeezer of a game if I've ever seen one. It's your typical "Final Fantasy"-esqe SquareSoft game, but with Disney characters - Disney villains, Disney characters you can summon (Dumbo's one of them), and Donald Duck and Goofy are the two main other members of your party. So, there you are, in a huge battle against Cloud from Final Fantasy VII with Donald and Goofy as your assistants... it's just too weird. Like "Nightmare Before Christmas" with Square meeting Disney. In fact, "Nightmare" is one of the films represented in the game. I can't wait to get to play with Jack Skellington as part of the fight party!

posted by bethanye 5:41:00 PM   

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2002-10-15

 

Yesterday, I wasn't so sure I liked this hair. Today, I love it again. Go figure. In fact, I think I will go platinum and try that out for awhile. HA! Why not? I kind of have wild girl hair today, because it's kind of curly (WTF?) and all over the place.

I need to figure out how to post a picture here, dontcha think?

I really really want to buy a scooter. I love Stevie, don't get me wrong. I adore him. But sometimes, I just want to be able to take off on my own terms. While he'd be more than happy to give me the car, I'm not sure that's the answer here. I'm terrified of parallel parking, plus that California Street incident has soured me a bit on driving a five speed around. Around here, a scooter is plenty practical, I think, and I wouldn't have to get my motorcycle license.

Of course, nothing until li'l Stevie finds employment. We just don't have the disposable income until that comes to fruition.

posted by bethanye 11:00:00 AM   

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2002-10-14

 

Blonde. Well, blonde-ish, anyway. The peroxide didn't make my hair white, just kind of this goldenrod and butterscotch color. Plus, I can already see my roots growing in. It's not a bad thing, mind you. Sarah (a lovely co-worker) says that it'll give me "that sexy bad girl look". I'm figuring that's a good thing! Also, I whacked it off around chin-length last week as well, so it's a big change.

Last night, we went over to a Hitesh's house in the city (on Russian Hill, no less! What an amazing view) and nearly died going up California street. Stevie killed the bug, and that was nearly very much horribly a bad scene when we rolled backward and almost hit a mammoth SUV. Plus, it was odd being a tourist attraction - videotaped by loads of Japanese tourists as they rode by on the cable cars. <shudder> That could have been really bad, being caught on tape careening backwards down one of the steepest streets in the city! Like "The Streets of San Francisco - in color!", only in reverse.

posted by bethanye 10:47:00 AM   

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2002-10-11

 

This morning, the pledge drive started on KQED, one of the local public radio stations. Stephen pointed out that Matt Elmore sounds just like Doc Hattori from Iron Chef. It was creepy!

posted by bethanye 2:33:00 PM   

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2002-10-09

 

So, it's come to this. I have to accept it. I bear more than just a passing resemblance to HER. There's not much I can do about it without major plastic surgery, and that's just not worth it. I guess it could be worse. I could look like Steve Buscemi, who is a fabulously talented guy - but can you imagine trying to be a chick looked like him? I mean, that would be difficult. I don't think there's much call for Steve Buscemi drag kings.

At any rate, I had a point here. I'm going to get a haircut tomorrow, and it's been damned convenient to just browse through pics of Molly Ringwald to see what looked good and what looked really horrible on her. She even went through her "pudgy" phase, so I have an approximate idea of how different styles may look on me. It's like a virtual makeover, and all I had to do was browse through Google to go hairstyle shopping. Easy!

posted by bethanye 4:51:00 PM   

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Workin' 9 to 5, what a way to make a living! I got email from Kimmy yesterday with her new contact info at the new job - a much better gig from the big p-V, it looks like, and for some reason it set me off to Dolly Parton. Go figure. Kimmy is among the coolest people I know, so I'm thrilled she's gotten away from the vipers' nest.

It's kind of crappy and foggy here today, but at least it isn't hot. And lil' Stevie loves the fog. It's his favorite weather.

Some days are coffee days; some days are tea days. Today is a coffee day, so I'll be good and buzzed in a while. I slept well, though, and felt all peaceful when I woke up. Maybe I'm going to jinx it, but maybe it's possible that I'm finally starting to come out of the mourning period that started over a year ago. No, I don't really mean the whole September 11 thing, though I'm sure that plays into it some. I mean the depression that started when I began to realize that lots of things had changed (mostly at work, at the time), and that almost none of them were very good. I went from a period where I worked hard but was extremely happy to a period where I worked hard and was not so happy... then onto the period where I didn't work particularly hard and was miserable to boot. No fun there. I've been in something of a dream-state since I decided (for real) to leave the big p-V. It was in many ways an idyllic time for me. Ironically, it was also a sick and co-dependent time for me, as my work/life relationship was all skewed. Still, I was happy. It was an overachiever's paradise for awhile there. Then they had to go and screw it up. Well, times change, I guess, and I'm less... what am I less of now? Less angry? Less bitter? Certainly, those are true, but that's not the crux of it.

Less nostalgic, I guess. What has suddenly caused me to see this differently, I can't say, but there it is.

I have a friend at work - Karen. Actually, to be fair, I have a lot of "work friends" here, as Xinet is (as Joon once told me) "socially very close." But Karen has the potential to be a friend-friend on an ongoing basis, not just a work-friend. I've had the rare and wonderful treat of making a few "friend-friends" at work in the past - Kimmy, Marianna, Christian, maybe a few others - and it is a lovely thing to find someone you like and feel comfortable with in the place where you spend so much time and energy. At any rate, Karen was thinking about moving due to family considerations, and I think because of this we both kept some serious distance. After all, why risk becoming even moderately attached to someone if they're just going to be far away soon, right? I already miss so many people so much I don't have room to start missing another one, if that makes any sense. At any rate, after considering all of their options, Karen and her dear husband James will not be moving away any time soon.

The reason I'm thinking about that is that I'm trying to figure out why I'm suddenly feeling better over the past several days. It's a remarkable change, too, not just a subtle one. I'm sleeping soundly; I'm hungry again where my appetite had dropped off; I can look at myself in the mirror and feel tenderness instead of loathing. WTF is up with that? Is it just time passing, giving me a distance from the things that saddened me?

Another potential candidate for assisting this change-of-moroseness: the political climate. If I haven't already recounted the story of Molly and I at Outback in Dallas the week after September 11, I'll do so at some point. (Oooh, and hey, Molly! I was nearly driven nuts listening to that Cincinnati speech night before last. Shrub and Homer Simpson: "It's pronounced: new-kew-ler. Nu-CU-ler." Or "hunnert"? WTF was up with that?) There was a big rally in SF against the war on Sunday. I can say things like, "Gee, I'm not so sure that going to bomb the hell out of Iraq is really going to solve anything" - and not get the crap beat out of me or have to worry about torches and pitchforks at the door. Go figure. So, maybe that's part of it, too.

It's probably a bunch of things all wrapped up together, of course. But I like playing forensics on my mood, so there!

posted by bethanye 9:36:00 AM   

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2002-10-08

 

This is also one of the (perhaps unintentionally) funniest pages I've read in awhile. I particularly like: You are overly fond of heavy foods such as meat, potatoes, breads and pastries and could suffer with stomach and intestinal disorders, constipation or boils.

posted by bethanye 10:56:00 AM   

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It's a strange thing, really. I woke up this morning, and I felt quite good. I bought some new tennis shoes last night, and some exercise tubing so that I can do some ankle-strengthening exercises. Then, I walked home from the shoe store, and read for the rest of the evening. Nothing else interesting or special about yesterday. I guess I just slept well. Go figure. I'm still a little bit sleepy, but I think that's because it's exceptionally warm here today again. Tomorrow, things are supposed to cool off.

Giggle of the day - go here for the tales of the stuffed Cthulu.

posted by bethanye 7:49:00 AM   

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2002-10-07

 

I have been very low-energy lately. Very. I've just been draggin'. I don't have a good explanation as to why. I feel down - depressed, actually - but then when I have massive intake of stimulants... No, I'm not doing crank!! I'm just drinking too much coffee, and it's improving my mood immediately. I wonder if I'm depressed, which is making me lethargic, or if I'm lethargic, which is making me depressed. HAH! Diagram that sentence, why dontcha?

This weekend is a fine example of this. It was gorgeous all weekend, and what did I do? I stayed home. Inside. On Sunday, we walked up to do a little window shopping, but that's about it. I'm sleeping too much and moving too little, and perhaps that's one of the root causes of my mood. I don't think it's my diet, because I'm eating well, and I'm actively trying to stay hydrated. It was warm this weekend, too. Well over 80, but not up to 90. Now, that doesn't sound so warm until you consider that there's no air conditioning. None. Nada. Consequently, there's no escape save cool showers and lying under the fan.

I miss ceiling fans. We had them in most rooms in our house, and now we have none. Note to self: ceiling fans = good.

posted by bethanye 8:42:00 AM   

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2002-10-04

 

Many people look back on their high school or college years and say, "That was the best time of my life." Not me. For me, the best time of my life was when we first bought the house, after the major drama of wondering if Jake's father was going to show up at the door had passed. I missed Molly like crazy, of course, because she had just moved away to Albuquerque. At the same time, though, it was wonderful to have the home I wanted. We had enough money to pay for the house and still get by. Every night was a family dinner, something MoMo and I hadn't had growing up, and every Sunday we had a big sit-down dinner, then Simpsons and X-Files. We had a routine. I spent every day with people I loved - though they drove me absolutely crazy at times, too.

I really miss Jacob and MoMo. I miss Molly, too, but somehow today I'm fixated on those two particularly. I just want to hold my nephew, and I can't. And I won't be able to for a very very long time yet.

posted by bethanye 3:13:00 PM   

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2002-10-01

 

Don't you want to ride in my survival car? Listening to Fountains of Wayne today, in a very post-Soprano orgy mood. We finished season three this weekend. That means we've watched 39 hours of The Sopranos in the past month. That's a lot of TV. I don't think we're going to turn on the tube much for the next month, except to keep up with the current season and maybe Enterprise. The rest of it has reached saturation levels. I had a cold this weekend, and was laggy and headachy yesterday. I stayed home and laid on the couch all day. I even watched Jerry Springer - go figure. It was the typical horrible crapfest, but like going to a convention it left me feeling attractive and well-adjusted. Add another goal to the "by 30" list - I'm trying to stop biting my nails. I know, I've done this before, and it hasn't ever lasted very long. Maybe this one won't, either, but really I have two concurrent deadlines for this stuff. The first is the birthday countdown. The other is MoMo's graduation in May, because I'm going home for that one. I admit it, I want to look fabulous when I next set foot in DFW. Maybe it will happen, maybe it won't, but at least I have a reasonable and attainable goal, right?

posted by bethanye 8:05:00 AM   

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