It's important to be warm

Time for a satisfying meme. Hee hee.

Your Ultimate Sci-Fi Profile: which sci-fi crew would you best fit in? (pics)
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You scored as Serenity (from Firefly). You like to live your own way and do not enjoy when anyone but a friend tries to tell you that you should do different. Now if only the Reavers would quit trying to skin you.

Moya (from Farscape)

38%

Filed by joy at 1:00 pm under life
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Last night Ian and I enjoyed dinner with Haven, Kerry, Carl & Betsy. Not only was dinner very yummy, but we all got into a rousing game of talking.

This morning I dreamt that Haven, an amalgam of Kerry, and I were all meeting with a business firm. Oddly, we were all about seven+ years younger than we really are, a little more volitile, a little less polished. We three were in the office of the interviewer, sometimes waiting while the interviewer steps out. There may have been more than one person interviewing, but only one at a time. At some point, we got into a Q&A session of us asking the interviewer about the company. Design and practice as it stands with an ethical situation came up. Haven pushed one edge, then I went to elaborate on it, circling the debate in tighter. I crossed a line and the interviewer did the verbal equivalent of a teacher snapping a book shut in front of the three of us. I wish that I could remember the exact wording, but alas, my brain held on to the light and shape of the room more than it clung to the details of speech (warm browns in decor, a single largish plate window letting in the grayish light of an overcast day, probably on a upper floor of a middle-tall structure, no view). The whole tone and energy changed from one of heated and enjoyable challenges, to a slightly bitter defeat on all sides. The question posed was unacceptable and would not be answered. We were to go, but not until each of us had been given various items, which the interviewer loaded into backpacks, during uncomfortable chit chat as we three half-heartedly tried to tell the interviewer we meant no harm, but wanted to discuss the ethics of business overall as well as the specifics of the company. Added to the surreal sense of it all was that the items we were to take were all rather kiddish, and were being loaded into two backpacks each, a medium size and a smaller one, each different and in bright sporty colors, all items the sort of higher end promotional items, with a brand, or brand-related name stitched on. The interviewer remained slightly pissed while loading items, going through the motions to get this part done, then send us on our way, the word of thanks given with nothing behind it as we were handed the haul of swag.

Filed by joy at 8:29 am under dreams
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Homeownership never has a dull moment. Sadly, there is no photographic evidence.

about 2:30 a.m.
Susie was sleeping downstairs; Ian sleeping upstairs; I’m finishing up a project in my office. From downstairs, I hear flustered withering complaints. Then again. Susie is either having a really bad nightmare, or something is amiss in the waking world. I head down and see from the landing on the stairs a flying object. I hear the *thwit-thwit-thwit* of wings, and a more awake and clear complaint from Susie. She, of course, cannot see the offending object as her contacts have been shelved for the night.

The lights are on, Susie and I are fully awake, and the small animal has disappeared. Saggar, of course, is nowhere to be found and likely sleeping her own self. Sus and I get towels to cover our heads (I prefer not to be shat on in the midst of crisis) and begin searching. Between the mild panic and the hilarity of it all, I spot the bat up on the highest shelf of books, hanging from a large Dickens volume. Susie decides this is the best time to put her eyes back in as we’ll need all the vision we can get. The bat is well out of reach, chubby and rather cute, as small mammals are wont to be. We try various methods of enticing the bat to the great outdoors, now available with the door and screen wide open. I point the flashlight at it (all the lights are on anyway). I blow a hairdryer at it. This disturbs it and it wiggles its little legs up, trying to find higher purchase than Dickens can offer. Having only bothered the bat without making it move, I get the coat-rack. Susie gets her pillow. We both still have towels on our heads. I poke the book to get the bat moving, which works after a few tries. Then the spinning around the room begins. First clockwise, then counter, Susie waving towel and pillow to prevent the bat from heading deeper into the house, me waving the coat-rack, trying very unsuccessfully to mess with the bat’s sonar enough to corner it towards the door. More hilarity ensues as I swing my towel at the bat, hitting the cord which pulls on the ceiling fan, breaking the cord. Door is open, fan is on, it’s cold, but we’re all sweating by now. Susie ends up whopping the little dude with the pillow, and he lands on her computer monitor tucked down by the couch. She throws the towel over him and tries unsuccessfully to scoop him up. Now the bat is audibly complaining. *eeech eeech eeech* Low flying of the bat, scurrying of the humans, low pitched complaints from bat, high pitched commentary from the humans, and after what seems like awhile, but surely isn’t, the bat is now under the towel again, center of the room. We realize the bat is now sandwiched between the throw rug and the towel, which we can roll up and carry outside to get the poor thing, still able to fly, but pissed and a bit stunned, out the door. We carry it out, lay the carpet on the sidewalk and toss up the towel. Off goes bat, hopefully to tell all his batty friends we are an inhospitable location.

But now the fan is on, and our hearts are racing. The fan is set with a hot wire, so it can only be turned off with the pull chain, which is now in my pocket. The remainder of the chain has been lost inside the motor unit and I realize I can no longer think this one through. I go up and wake Ian, who amazingly, has slept through all that probably included stomping and shrill yipping. I explain there was a bat and now the fan is on. He goes up the ladder and finds that I am in fact correct, and wakes up enough to realize we have to hit the fuse down in the basement. I don’t do the fuses; that’s an Ian job. I handle the wildlife. It’s a fair arrangement. We manage to get the fuse off and decide that is plenty for the night. There will be natural light soon enough to help us figure out how to deal with the chaos.

Good thing I had a nap earlier.

(We never did get shat on. Bonus.)

Filed by joy at 4:37 am under life
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It’s not a certain cycle, but it happens often enough that I can call it that. This time the trigger has been my lack of doing many things due to being tired and often rather nauseated. On top of a slightly volatile state, I did my good-board-member bit for PghAIGA and set up for the 100 show. I don’t enjoy being involved in this particular event; it always makes me feel like a crappy designer.

Firstly, I’m not cool. I don’t really try to be either. I also don’t have particularly cool clients, with fancy budgets for high end paper, printing, photography, etc. That’s partly an excuse, and partly part of the problem. Mostly it’s the amount of time I’ll spend on any particular job. If they’re not paying me enough for me to spend 300 hours on it, guess what? I don’t love doing the work enough to spend the time unpaid. That makes me a) not an artist b) not a great designer. For the most part, I’m really ok with that. Often I just get in my own way and resent that I’m not a prodigy. I wish I was more passionate about creating good design. I wish I’d've found a passion for anything specific, just as I’ve wished since I was a little kid. I’ve always wanted to do a bit of everything, which makes me a perfect dilettante (definition one of course), and a not the Renaissance woman I would prefer to be.

My passion can best be defined as a manner in which I want to live. I care deeply about art, design and politics. I care deeply about culture. I want to support and participate in all of it. I want to enrich it, in my own small way. Moreover, I would rather change the life of one person for the better than have something I made up on a wall with a plaque. I do know what is important, but I work in a field that values the shiny, the impressions, the damn plaques and shows. It’s a constant struggle to remain on that train professionally and to know that I’m really looking down other tracks, longingly.

I went to a restorative yoga class yesterday. I needed the clarity, as well as the physical opening. I need to be in my body, to get out of the trap of my mind, to get out of my own way. Knowing helps, but knowing doesn’t make it happen as smoothly as I’d like (still not a prodigy). The teacher, seeing that our collective foreheads were crunched in consideration, strongly instructed us to “Stop thinking about what you have to do after class today!” Between the calmness I could find during the class and the poem he read to us during Savasana, I came out in a far better place than I arrived.

Lesson: Setting up awards shows is not good for me. But it would be even better for me to learn not to beat up on myself over what is really irrelevant to the life I truly want to live (as opposed to the life I’m supposed to want).

Filed by joy at 1:41 pm under life
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Woke up glum today. Couldn’t get myself in gear. I was all bugged out last night, between the combination of horrible politics and the personal state of things. Fear not for me truly; nothing is wrong that several grand couldn’t fix up nicely. And perhaps a self-tidying house. And the ever-popular “Make” button.

I might have to drop off paying any attention to the news. Really, who thinks Rove is going to tell any truth, federal grand jury or no? Seriously, why would he? I may be even a touch more paranoid than usual, but I simply can’t fathom a reason. We watched Kingdom of Heaven the other night, and Hero even more recently. Two very different films, but the point is that the minions all chant to the leader “God Wills It” (well, not and exact translation in regards to Hero, to be fair). Jimmy Carter was on NPR this morning discussing his personal schism with his Baptist congregation. During his presidency, this very conservative, born-again Christian was told by his own church to give up Humanism. Carter seems saddened and frustrated by the fundamentalism of his own church for (literally) turning away from the message of the deeds of Christ in favor of a Church whose leaders are the only ones in charge of interpreting the bible, with the ideas of the leaders spoken as if in direct consult with God. Haven’t we heard this somewhere before?

Enough, enough. I’m so blue! yet the sun is shining. I’m overwhelmed over nearly nothing and will find a way up and out.

Cat and Girl made me laugh out loud. A lot. I think I’ll go look at it again. It’s a less recent one, but doesn’t feel old to me.

Filed by joy at 11:55 am under life, politics
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