arletterocks

So, I haven't really written about it, because it's like, the uber-cliche', but since it's the start of the new year/quarter, this week I went back to the gym with new resolve.  I have already gone twice this week, and I haven't done that since...July.  So, so far so good.

Except for it's totally kicking my ass.  Which I guess should be expected.  I am doing my standard 30 minutes elliptical trainer, and then 10 laps in the pool.  On the ET I do alternating 3 minute intervals of forwards and backwards, just to use different muscles and keep me from getting too bored.  And man, the backwards just about kills me.  And the part that complains the most is my hip joints.  My knees and my cardio system are okay, but my hips are taxed.  Weird.

But after I leave, I am TIRED.  Not mentally tired, I'm not sleepy, but my body kind of feels like goo.  Which is sort of beneficial, because it makes sitting through an afternoon of lectures more manageable, and I don't get as antsy and twitchy.

• 14:54 Hell yeah I entered The Threadless 12-Club Giveaway! A chance to win a 12 Month Tee Subscription: bit.ly/68ZUyh #

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• 12:54 It's cold in my loft & my back is very sore from working at the shop for 10 hours yesterday. Things are getting off to a slow start today. #

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Thank you all so so so much for being so kind and loving and supportive about the two year update entry. You guys make me feel so cared about and so safe.

I didn’t blow off my D&C pre-op appointment! Then I spent hours at the hospital doing all the admittance paperwork and bloodwork. Ugh, it was kind of miserable. My procedure is Thursday morning. Total dread.

My gynecologist: “Do you have any quest…”

Me: “When can I have sex again!?”

Oh please, as if that wouldn’t be your first question too!

I could have gotten out of the D&C but didn’t. He asked what my periods were like now and I said they’d become fairly regular and normal the last several months. And we were about to cancel it when I said, “Okay, actually, there are still numerous days when the bleeding is so bad that I can’t leave the house.” I was really proud of myself for a) being honest, b) advocating for myself, and c) doing these things even when it resulted in something I really didn’t want to do.

On the plus side I found out I get to be completely knocked out during the procedure. On the not-so-plus side, I don’t have anyone available to drive me so I’m going to have to pay to take a taxi there and back. Suck.

My bathroom is still spotless. I realized that if I can get things clean, I have a good chance of keeping them clean. I’m now working on my bedroom. After that will be the kitchen.

The ex’s sister contacted me on MySpace. She wants to hang out and I think we will. I really miss her.

The Law Student is going to teach me how to smoke weed in the hopes that it’ll help alleviate some of my back pain. The only thing I’ve found that helps it is Vicodin and I have to take twice the prescribed amount which leaves me groggy and unable to get anything done. So, hopefully, smoking weed will help. That would be really amazing.


Four jobs I’ve had
1. Office Manager
2. Grant Writer
3. Administrative Assistant
4. Cashier at a stationary store

Four movies I can watch over and over
1. The Big Lebowski
2. The original Star Wars trilogy
3. Jaws
4. Wizard of Oz

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6/365
When I’m home alone I like to pretend to be all sexy goth girl. Shhhh, don’t tell.

So I was so sleepy before that I went to bed at like 8:30pm.  And then I fell asleep, and dreamed that I saw arletterocks at Zeitgeist, and then had a conversation with a guy who looked like Johnny Depp about the ipod I had accidentally stolen.  But then I woke up, and now I am not sleepy for the moment, so I am going to do a little electronic rambling for a bit.

So today on the bus, by cosmic fate of ipod shuffle, I heard four songs in a row:  an Elvis Costello song, an Elvis Presley song, a David Bowie song, and a Beatles song (featuring George Harrison- I think it was "While My Guitar Gently Weeps".)  You might be wondering, so what? What's the connection?  And the common factor in all of these is that I have read the autobiography of all of these guy's wives or girlfriends.  I have read something written by Bebe Buell, who was involved with Costello.  I have read "Elvis and Me" by Pricilla Presley.  I have read Angie Bowie's book, and Patti Boyd's book.  I have also read, over and over "I'm With the Band" and "Take Another Little Piece of my Heart" by Pamela Des Barres, world-famous groupie and star-fucker (Keith Moon, Jimmy Page, etc.)

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Ya know, I don't know what I did that was so exhausting, but I am freaking TIRED and it's not even 6pm.
I was planning to go to a 7:30 yoga class, but that's totally not happening.  I will be lucky if I can even stay awake until 7:30.  I guess it's both the shifting of the sleep schedule, and the increased activity level.  I went to the gym yesterday, and both yesterday and today I have been out and about and walking around much more than I had been prior to this week.  I hope I perk up a bit after I have dinner, because I still have to read a chapter of "The Media in America: A History" tonight and it looks like a total snooze.

Right now my life is too full of important steps, significant decisions and important projects to miss any nooks and crannies of consciousness.

We made a couple of big mistakes last year because we simply lost the overview. Won't happen again if I keep my mind centered, focussed and aired out in nature on a regular basis.

Now if I could just find the disciplin to start my daily writing again...

By any chance, does anyone have an extra 2010 wall calendar? It can be any kind at all. Usually I get one from a charity or an insurance company but haven’t this year. I just want something with boxes big enough to note taking my pills, exercising, etc. It’d be hugely appreciated!

I decided to do the 365 Photos in 365 Days thing. Taking one picture a day for a year. I didn’t decide to do it until this morning so I cheated and took five pictures so I can consider myself caught up!

My favorite wall in my bedroom.


Stinky.


Yum.


Where I keep my sex toys. Sorry Lindsay!


In progress.

We decided to go out to lunch yesterday and had the good fortune to sit adjacent to two women engaged in an astrological reading. On the way in to the restaurant, I spotted two women in a booth, and one was reading an astrological chart, the other blurted out, "I am a life coach." This is one of those restaurants where you order, then sit down, and then they bring your food to you. The problem with such designs is that there is no overt rule declared as to the order of the actions. That is to say, some people will come in, sit down, distribute their stuff at a table, and then get up to order. Is it cheating? Is it the "SUV" attitude? Are they "Alphas" or "Winners" or what? I don't know. But most people do not do this. And there is no explicit rule. This brings up the issue of how strangers negotiate rules in a non-explicit rule space, but I don't want to go into that. The point is this. I desperately wanted to sit adjacent to these nut-jobs, and fortunately, we were able to get the spot, due to quick-thinking on alsoname's part.

It is rare to be able to sit in on such a "reading" and hear what actually goes on. I read accounts from time to time. There is a blogger who is a former phone "psychic" who went straight, and he talks about all the tricks that he used to keep people on the line. The overall sound of this conversation gave that feel. It was part pop psychology, part astrology, part Buddhism (or some version of Buddhism... I think we need a neologism to give a sense of the Americanized, individualized, feel-good Buddhism that is going around... perhaps "Boodizm"? Help me out... You know, the Buddhism where every monk is a rapping, basketball playing, Canon SureShot owning commercial billboard.). The scammer was not doing a very good job, but then again, the mark was particularly passive and didn't give her a lot to go on. The mark seemed to want to know for sure which of her many hook-ups was "the one". After all, she was 47 years old, massively in debt, unemployed, and desperate. Time to start thinking about her future! Where's Mr. RIGHT??? He should be tall, handsome, rich, loyal, young, have a perfect credit rating, independent, he should read my mind, etc... I DESERVE HAPPINESS, after all... I get the feeling though that ... we'll call her "Penny" was lying about a lot of things to her "adviser". And she was sort of trapped in her lies. She basically wanted to know which guy of the three or four she was "involved" with in some way was the one that was credit-worthy marriage material. I think.

Actually, it got quite boring pretty quickly. The Astrologer seemed to me to be in that group of astrologers who actually believed their own bullshit. I suppose every "psychic" and tarot card scam artist goes through a period where they genuinely believe this garbage. But she was dropping the (scattered and listless) clues that the mark was giving her to continue with BS shoptalk about Gemini and Saturn and such. She has to learn to let the mark do all the work and make it seem like she is doing it. "Psychics" work because of a few needs people have and a few mistakes people make. People go to psychics when times are comparatively bad in their lives. So, if things are horrible in your life you are out on the end of your own personal bell-curve. Regression to the mean means things will turn around for you almost always. So, the odds are in the "psychics" favor that they will "help" you. The same fact applies to churches. That's why they always ask for the most help from the poorest among their flock. Some preachers are explicit about this, "When times are tough you have got to GIVE! GIVE MORE! SACRIFICE!" Among people who are desperate, MOST will swing back to a more ordinary state of affairs after "giving" to a church or psychic scam artist. This constitutes "proof" in the addled minds of the blissfully irrational. Those who fall further into debt or desperation merely fall away from whatever scam artist is trying to "help" them and move on to the next church, psychic, astrologer, encounter group, or whatever.

But the reader was an amateur. She was not picking up on what "Penny" really wanted to know about. And Penny wanted to know the three classice things: When am I going to fall in love for reals? When am I going to get rich? How long will I be healthy? There were some classic coin-flip predictions... You will be involved in a relationship where there is an age difference, OR a difference in responsibilities. Try to think of a relationship where this is not true. (You will be involved with someone whos is the exact same age as you, and you will both feel that you are both equally responsible.) Otherwise, the conversation was boring. Although, according to her reader, Penny should be dating a MENSA member. Also, SOMETHING happened 7 years ago.

How about instead of arguing what we should call the last decade (and clearly, the answer is, "The Oh-Ohs!" It fulfils all the requirements: 1) It uniquely identifies the decade as the one with two zeroes in the middle, something that won't happen again until 3001. 2) It indicates that it was a decade of perilous doubt because it sounds like "Uh-oh!") perhaps we should abandon the notion that decades are a worthy method of defining time. We can't say we are in the "teens" now, because of the "ten, eleven, twelve" problem. I am saying we are in the "tweens". As in "Goodbye 'Oh-Ohs,' hello 'tweens!'" But really... everyone is watching Mad Men now, and you should all realize that for most people, the sixties were just an extension of the fifties. And even for most people on the bleeding edge of culture, "The Sixties" weren't "The Sixties" until 1967 or 1968. And what we call the sixties mostly didn't happen in the sixties.

I think that what people mean when they say "the sixties" is independent of the actual decade. Every person experiences their own personal "the sixties". Fortunately, their personal "the sixties" involves getting stoned twice a week and watching Mr. Show with Bob and David while eating pizza that has been delivered to their door (and not something like losing a leg in Vietnam, or getting a back-alley abortion). Or, if they are a more genuine hippy, they will ritually watch Monty Python. I don't even think most people ate pizza in the sixties. If they did, they certainly didn't have it delivered. And if you were an actual hippy college student in the sixties, you probably spent your time in an unheated dorm room reading Ralph Waldo Emerson by the light of a naked bulb. You almost certainly would not have had a television to watch or pot to smoke.

But that's what "the sixties" have come to mean to people. That period of time in their lives when they managed to have enough money and time to sit in a dorm room with their friends, smoking pot, eating pizza and watching TV (or whatever). It's the time of life when one is a liberal (though a non-voting one, because, "Where do I register? The FASCISTS want me to register at my parent's address. How FASCIST!")

My point is we should give up on the decades meme. We should just distill what we think of as decades down into how they affect people personally and then come up with a new label. How many coke-snorting, Wall Street, sociopathic lawyers do you know? How many were there in the 80's? Were they actually parading around in suspenders? Did they actually spend their free time in Ray-ban sunglasses and pastel Izod shirts with the collars turned up? How many "dot-com millionaires" do you know personally? Did they really work at companies with a Chuck-E-Cheese style room filled with plastic balls? Did they really "revolutionize the Internet?" How many Hobos do you think actually sold apple cores for a nickel during the 1930's? I would be AMAZED if a single apple core was sold for a single nickel during the ENTIRETY of the 1930's.

What "decades" come to represent are periods in people's lives where some "zeitgeist" meets some event. There were probably around 300,000 people at "Woodstock". But who knows, it may have been 100,000 for all we know. Yet if we polled people who were born between 1935 and 1952 on the matter, the polling data would indicate that 2 or 3 million people attended Woodstock. How can this be? I am just willing to bet that ten times as many people remember being at Woodstock as actually attended. And those are probably very real memories. Someone ought to do that poll.

What the Oh-Ohs will be remembered for is the attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon that happened on September 11, 2001. How it will be expressed is by millions of people "remembering" that after the attack they spent a week sitting in front of the television in a daze, crying, eating ice cream, and "trying to make sense of the madness." If you polled people in 2003 and asked them, "Did you know anyone personally who died in the attacks of September 11th," X people would answer yes. When you ask the same question in 2021, 20X people will answer "yes," and they will have genuine (false) memories of friends, family, etc, who died on that day.

I d'know, I guess that is just how history is "remembered" by people. They weave it into the narratives of their lives. Everyone has their own personal 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's and 00's. And they get all those decades between the ages of 12 and 30 to boot.

• 00:58 Great NYE but can't wait to get back to the shop. The Angel's gotta be ready for Toronto in 7 days. #
• 11:41 10 days until tickets to the annual company picnic go on sale. #
• 23:10 Tonight it feels like I did mile of plasma cutting but the Angel is getting her wings twitpic.com/wqr93 #

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Here's my favorite new songs playlist:



and here is a video I made of favorite events, people, things, junk and stuff:

I really enjoyed having this exercise while I was at Twigsville. It allowed me to keep track of all of the goodness stuffed into the days.

Twigsville was amazing. I am renewed and refreshed. I am also happy to see that people had a good time at Squaycation since there is a chance that I will be there next year.

All of my photos can be found here.

( Days 12-17 Twigsville Goodness )

So at my mom's I can't get on the internet. And the day I was home I wound up working and had to pack. And Im writing this on a plane and I don't know if Twigsville will have internets so who know how these will stack up.

So here’s a whole lot of happy all at once


( Day 6-Day 11 )

So, today was the first day of winter quarter 2010 at good ole CSUEB.

I had much the same reaction to it that I remember having at the beginning of Fall quarter: goddamn there's a lot of boring waiting on the first day of school.  Actually, that's true of many days of school, but it's most painful in the first day because I'm not used to it.

Walk to the bus stop and wait for the bus.  Get on the bus, and sit there for 30 minutes or so, while it makes it's lumbering way up to the campus (I left my house at 11:15, and was five minutes late for my 12pm class.)  Walk into class 5 minutes late, and then wait for the teacher to start the class. Wait while he calls roll.  Wait while he reads the syllabus to us.  Then I have an almost-three hour break between my first class and my second class.  I didn't bring my laptop, or anything read.  And I swear the library there does not have a single fun, interesting or post-1990 book.

Then go to my second class.  Wait for it to start.  Wait while the next teacher prattles on about himself, then reads us his syllabus.  Go wait for the bus.  Get on the bus and wait for it to lumber down the hill.  Get off and walk home.

I realize I am being a big complainer.  It's just that I have been out of the school routine for so long that I am totally used to being in charge of my own time, for the most part.  I am not used to having to be on someone else's schedule.

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I am finding it pretty hard to get excited about any of my classes.  I don't know if it's the lack of inspiring, engaging teachers, or if I am just having school burn-out.

clynne and I just got home from our third annual New Year's Eve trip up to Cambria with several dozen of our closest friends. We had a wonderful time. One highlight was the first night, when about 30 of us went on the nighttime tour of Hearst Castle, which is longer than the daytime tours and features docents dressed up in clothes from the castle's heyday. Being the hams that we are, many of us dressed up ourselves, which the staff got a real kick out of. The castle was decorated for Christmas and was very beautiful.

While on the trip, I also held a ceremonial presentation for the trophy and medal I had made commemorating Connie-Lynne's fortieth birthday, which is today. She'd been asking for a trophy for the whole year, so I decided to do things in grand style. Several dozen people were in attendance and Connie-Lynne marched down the center aisle to the sounds of the "Throne Room" piece from the end of Star Wars. She carried her trophy around all night (New Year's Eve) and wore her medal all weekend.

2009 was a tough year for me in many ways. 2010 is off to a good start and I'm hoping things keep moving in a good direction.

Height: 5’6”

Starting Weight: 550 pounds

Current Weight: 336 pounds

( Weight loss talk, eating disorder talk, and half naked pictures. You have been warned!! NOT safe for work. )

I think it's all sorted and we decided to go the adventurous route into the future. Very exciting! The last two days were very glowy, romantic and at peace with the wild ride that we chose 2010 to be.

NYE was spent at a fun little house party surrounded by my klowns. The friends who stayed with us were chill and fun to be around. We went to the movies and saw Avatar and I am quite surprised that such a anti-imperialist pagan hippie love fest can make it to number one at the US box offices without raising too many eyebrows. A good omen for the new decade me thinks.

I was just pondering what this last decade will be looked back as. We don't really know what to call it. The 2000s? Maybe the whole concept of comparing decades will end? I came up with a pretty positive picture: Most of the 2000s were dominated by Bush and the "War on Terror" BS and a general reverting to the dark ages after the fairly enlightened 90s. Then it all turned around and we got an Obama and an economic crisis that shook capitalism at it's very foundation. Environmentalism went from a tree-hugger pipe-dream to an international marketing strategy and music with real instruments had a come-back.

Now where is this all going? I can't wait to find out.

• 18:10 Back from Twigsville had so much fun! Off to burn trees in a little bit. #
• 20:48 Xmas tree burn. Because I didn't get enough dumb fun this weekend. twitpic.com/wlqj9 #
• 22:41 Way to go 2010! I just found out Hunky Daddy has a Facebook page www.facebook.com/group.php?v=wall&gid=117737662270 (I<3 Salton Sea) #

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