Principia Smeadia

I saw this news story today about how somebody has patented a cordless jump-rope. It reminded me of invisible jump-rope, which I haven't done in a while. I should do that more often.

Last night I dreamt of Zankou Chicken. Mmmm... Zankou Chicken.

I voted last night. I really love being a permanent absentee voter as it fits my temperament perfectly. In fact, I first voted absentee as a senior in high school and I've never even been to a polling place.

After reading through the ballot measures, I was curious what the various political parties had to say. So I went to the California websites for the Democrats, Republicans, and Libertarians (my registered party) and read through their positions/arguments. Unsurprisingly, the Democrats and Republicans disagreed on every proposition. The Libertarians agreed with the Republicans on six measures, agreed with the Democrats on one measure, and abstained from one measure. In this particular election, I sided more often with the Democrats, which I kind of consider my backup party.

The very first bank check I ever wrote was to El Corral Bookstore for $211.53 on September 11, 1990. This doen't surprise me in any way, but it does amuse me a little. I flipped through an old check book register today, and I don't know which was worse back then, my handwriting or my accounting practices.

I didn't really intend to do this meme, but when I put my name in I really liked the selection of my interests that it chose.

( Interests )

So I heard news of my friend Molly, the one in New Orleans. She is OK, but she is indeed stuck in New Orleans. She is in the hotel where she works, next to the Superdome, watching the unfolding chaos from the relative safety of a hotel room. She has food and drinking water, though the sewer system is down and I'm unsure about electricity. Her group is scheduled to be evacuated sometime after they finish the Superdome, and she has no idea where she will end up.

I haven't actually spoken to her myself; this news comes from her mom. She gave us the phone number to reach Molly there, but I haven't been able to get through.

So I'm finishing up my third week back at work after three months of unemployment, and I feel like crap. That's OK, I knew that it was going to be a rough transition and I already feel myself starting to level off. I still have the general feeling that I'm about to pull a George Jetson on the treadmill of modern life, but I can't really pinpoint anything specific, so I'll just chalk it up to angst.

Somewhere between all the heavy lifting during the office move and the ergonomic challenges of new office furniture, I managed to pinch my right-hand ulnar nerve where it exits the neck, resulting in lots of numbness and tingling in my ring/pinky fingers along with neck/shoulder stiffness.

It is much better than a week ago, but it hasn't been helping my already fractured sleeping habits. I've never been good at sticking to a schedule, so when I felt myself slipping I instinctively (and foolishly) turned to caffeine and sugar. It helped in the short term but of course caused a rebound effect that left me pretty wiped. Now I'm back to my standard two cups of tea of day and feeling relatively normal.

Unemployment was bliss, my only real concern a relative lack of funds. Each day consisted of sleeping late, having a leisurely breakfast, and then working on whatever personal goals suited my whim du jour. Largely these consisted of exercise, music, organization and cleaning, and hot baths.

One of my largest undertakings was to completely do a software revamp of my aging computer. I'll spare the gore, but it roughly consisted of backing up, reformatting, reinstalling the OS, reinstalling and configuring all my applications, going through every single backed up file and deciding what to restore and how to organize it, then doing a full backup of the fresh system. I did this first to the WinXP side (which was starting to show clear signs of Microsoft rot), then to the Linux side (which was too ancient to be useful as a toy). I also took the time to reorganize my online life: updating accounts, deleting unused accounts, changing email addresses, and implementing a new password scheme. This took a lot of time and effort, and it amuses me to think that all I really did was twiddle a bunch of bits.

Sadly, I didn't play my banjo nearly as much as I had hoped during my unemployment, but I did get in a lot of singing practice. I've been taking singing lessons since last July and it has been quite a learning experience. While I've always been involved in music, I really didn't sing much past the age of six, when I realized people were listening.

I have two goals in taking singing lessons. The first is to become a better singer, that is, to learn to play the instrument that is myself. This has been very interesting for a visual learner like me because the vocal apparatus is internal and largely hidden from sight, in contrast to most other instruments where you can at least see some of what you are doing. My other goal is to become a better musician by honing my internalizations of musical concepts through exercising them in a new medium. I feel these are both coming along nicely.

The last two months have been particularly fruitful, as I've been working on my first song in Italian, a piece from Giulio Caccini's Le nuove musiche (1601). Singing in a language you don't know allows you to focus on the sound and not get caught up in the words so much, though I have read both literal and figurative translations of the song. Italian is a great language for singing, in part due to its legato and vowel-centric nature, and singing it has made me a better singer. Plus learning how to pronounce Italian could come in handy in restaurants!

One of the things on my list that I clearly did not accomplish during my unemployment was to write here. In particular, I wanted to write about the trip that elsparquito and I took to New Orleans during Mardi Gras while it was still mint-julepy fresh in my mind, but my slack got the best of me. I do still intend to write it, and I'm hoping that Sparky's digital photo archive of the trip will help me restore the necessary mental vividness.

Just a quick announcement for those of you who know Nils Brummond. He and Tina are getting married this afternoon in a small, family-only ceremony and then are off to New Orleans to catch a cruise ship.

I just haven't been able to get myself to post anything recently, but this one was too good to pass up.

Post 15 facts about yourself, but five of them have to be made up. Everyone then guesses which are the untrue ones. Then, post this on your journal and see if I can guess which ones you're bluffing about!

1. I have never seen any of The Godfather movies.

2. I am related to country singer Hank Williams.

3. As a child, I won a bicycle in a church contest to see who could bring the most guests.

4. I was acquitted of sexual harassment while at Cal Poly.

5. I was robbed on the subway in Seoul, South Korea.

6. I have never eaten a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

7. I can juggle.

8. I worked on a committee in Washington DC to help provide Emergency 911 service to the deaf community.

9. At a previous job, I organized and ran a racquetball ladder.

10. I have ridden in the Goodyear blimp.

11. I was a founding member of my Junior High School's Toastmasters club.

12. I worked for the operators of the opposition newspaper on the Caribbean island of Antigua.

13. I was president of my High School French club.

14. I have been curling at a curling club in Montreal, Québec.

15. I am "allergic" to the class of drugs that includes the anti-psychotic thorazine.

You scored as Chaotic Good. A Chaotic Good person is someone who has little intrinsic respect for laws or authority, seeing them as insufficient to sustain what's right. These people work according to their own moral compass which, while good, is not necessarily always aligned with that of society. Despite their chaotic tendancies, these people are good at heart. </td> Chaotic Good 75% True Neutral 70% Chaotic Neutral 65% Lawful Good 65% Neutral Good 55% Neutral Evil 40% Lawful Evil 30% Chaotic Evil 20% Lawful Neutral 10% What is your Alignment? created with QuizFarm.com

Seems fairly accurate, at least to my mental image of myself. It is interesting to look at everyone's full slate of scores and note the trends.