Crazy moon language

Like anybody’s, my day is mostly filled with routine and sometimes with outright drudgery, but every once in a while I remember why I slogged through grad school and took this crazy job. Here’s an excerpt from something I’m editing:

That’s part of a text in Glagolitic, an alphabet used in the Slavic-speaking world before the more familiar Cyrillic was used. (They were used contemporaneously, though—the exact chronology is a little fuzzy on which one was invented first. At any rate, we’re talking ninth century AD.) I’ve always thought it was the coolest looking script, all loops and impractical forms that look like they’d take a while to draw. But then again, monks spent their entire lives copying books out by hand, so maybe those curlicues kept them from getting bored.

I can’t read Glagolitic freely by any means—one of my professors in grad school actually could, which makes her pretty much a god in my view. And when I had to retype this particular Glagolitic passage using a Unicode-compliant font, it took a good while before I could get any speed going. Here’s a picture that shows the Cyrillic equivalent, just to give you an idea:
Working with Glagolitic is cool, and it definitely keeps me from getting bored when I get to do it.

Use your illusion

Just picked up this link to some fascinating illusions off the SDMB. Ah, so this is why it’s so damn difficult to choose colors for book jackets—you can thank the sheer orneriness of the human brain.

P.S. I am hopelessly addicted to the SDMB. I mean hopelessly. I feel so proud of myself today, I held out all the way until 1:30 p.m. before I surfed over there!

Tag, I'm it

All right, I got tagged by kaskasero last week and it’s high time I got around to responding.

Instructions: Each player starts with 7 random facts/habits about themselves. People who are tagged need to write on their own blog about their seven things, as well as these rules. At the end of your blog, you need to choose 7 people to get tagged and list their names. Don't forget to leave them a comment telling them that they have been tagged and to read your blog!

1. I am completely hopeless for the rest of the day if I don’t get breakfast (usually some healthy kind of cereal drowned in a huge bowl of milk).

2. I used to sleepwalk when I was a little kid. I’d walk downstairs and talk to my parents while asleep, or engage in my favorite sleepwalking activity of trying to flush my pajamas down the toilet.

3. In 1988 I won tickets to a Howard Jones concert in a radio contest by correctly identifying a lyric from Poison’s “Talk Dirty to Me.” In 1993 (or 1994?) I won tickets to a Cracker concert by identifying the difference between a reflecting and a refracting telescope.

4. Despite my rep as a worldly, cosmopolitan chick, I’ve never been overseas (not counting Canada, here).

(Editorial comment: This is a lot harder than it looks!)

5. My pie-in-the-sky dream job would be professional musician. My somewhat-more-feasible-but-still-unlikely dream job would be book designer or editor at a saner place than where I am now.

6. My first single was a 45 of Thomas Dolby’s “She Blinded Me with Science.”

7. Last but not least, in the spirit of kaskasero’s revelation, my Halo gameplaying handle is Fang. Although I haven’t played Halo in ages, too busy with Morrowind!

Now my true confession: I don’t know seven bloggers to tag! But I’ll call out Lifton, Danielle, and Frantix. Make me proud, guys. (TJ, if you’re reading this, you could always post your 7 to my comments if ya want.)

A always, B be, C closing

Tomorrow’s the closing on our old place, and thus an era will finally come to an end. I don’t have kids, so I can safely say that buying and selling a house (especially both at the same time) is by far the most stressful thing I have ever done. It’s the closest I’ve ever come to permanently curling into a fetal position, that’s for sure.

However great it will be to close the book on that place, the memories are poignant. The first stab at home ownership, the first annoying neighbors, the first flooded basement (thanks to the annoying neighbors, no less), the first smoke alarms going off for no reason in the dead of night, the second and third flooded basements. (Did I mention those neighbors yet? At fault for every instance of basement flooding. Everyone, make sure your washing machine hoses are either younger than five years old, or better yet, get a damn shutoff valve that works.) There were good things about it too, though. It was the Trekette’s first home, for example. And I’ll definitely miss the beautiful rosebushes in the yard; I love any plant that responds well to stern and remorseless pruning.

But anyway, it’s time to look forward. I love our new place, next month we’re going on vacation, Erin and Keith are coming back for the summer soon, and two Crowded House concerts are on the schedule for August. Lots of good stuff ahead!

A turkey runs through it

Here's an action shot of the fabled Kendall Square wild turkey, shot by the Swami with his Palm Pilot (hence a bit of blurriness, sorry). I’ve never seen the turkey in person, so I was a complete skeptic about his existence until presented with this photographic evidence. The turkey’s been around for a couple of years at least, judging from links off Google like this one and this one. Given the total lack of she-turkeys in the area, dude’s got a pretty dull existence. But he’s apparently still pretty feisty, gobbling at people if they get too close. A typical unfriendly New Englander. I still agree with Ben Franklin, though, how cool would it be to have the wild turkey as the national symbol?

Squonk

Last week I was both shocked and pleased to find a lot of Genesis-related stuff on VH1 Classic; they were part of this year’s Rock Honors concert or somesuch. Let me tell you, I never thought I’d get to see Peter dancing around in his Slipperman costume while flipping channels. There was a long show on their history, which fortunately spent more time and attention on the early stuff than the superstar/sellout phase from the late 1980s. The live footage was amazing, partly because I never expect to hear such obscure music on TV, partly because Peter was such a freak onstage at that time, and partly because I can’t believe live shows were ever like that: all the musicians sitting down, one lunatic jumping around wearing bat wings on his head, and eons of dead time between songs while the band set up the equipment for the next song. Totally alien to the modern pop era in every way. And then they showed an hour-long show of live footage from the Seconds Out concert, where a pre–pop slimeball Phil sang Lamb songs while sporting a beard of mountain-man proportion. I mean, you can’t beat that with a stick.

Unfortunately, my Genesis buzz was totally killed later in the week, when the Rock Honors concert was aired. It was all has-beens: Heart, ZZ Top, and the boys in Genesis, who reformed this year in order to fund the pensions. I watched about two minutes of “Turn It On Again” before I had to look away—man those guys look old, and Phil sang with absolutely no energy. They also knocked the key of the song down a few steps, I suppose in order to spare Phil’s voice, but it was a move that thoroughly sucked the life out of the song. Ugh. I guess I’d better pull out Three Sides Live if I want to experience the full, glorious spectacle that was Genesis.

Oh, and one more thing I must gripe about: at one point during the history show, they interviewed Phil talking about the fact that their early fans were almost always male. Bastard made some idiotic comment about men being better able to handle the complexity of the songs. I know, I know, Phil is a complete tosser, despicable in many ways, but I always held off with my own contempt because of what he was part of, what he accomplished when he was just a drummer in a band. That kind of statement indicates that I should probably give in to the scorn, what a sexist asshole. No more slack for you, pal.

Why I dislike LeBron

Besides the fact that he should have gotten his ass handed to him by Gilbert in the first round of the playoffs, there are these two lovely moments in the public eye:

• Lebron on not trusting a gay teammate who’s in the closet


• James Refuses to ‘Be a Witness’ against Darfur Genocide

What’s next? Well, I hope it’s getting his ass handed to him by Detroit. Not that getting beaten in the playoffs improved his public persona since last year’s defeat by, hey, Detroit. By the way, here’s a link to Amaechi responding to what James (and others) said. Classy dude.

New and improved

All right, it’s Monday, which means one of two things: either (1) time for a fresh start, or (2) why not blog because it’s a good way to kill time at work! I survived my move to the new place, although there is still some stuff at the old place (isn’t there always?). Now I would like everything to magically unpack itself. As for the old place, after more fraught negotiations we finally signed the Purchase and Sale agreement with the person craz—I mean, discriminating—enough to want to buy it. Meanwhile, the few times I’ve gone back over there to get more stuff, those heavy-footed moose upstairs have been engaged in vigorous bowling tournaments as always. In other words, good riddance to them.

Once things get a little tidier in the new pad, maybe I’ll post some pictures. So far, I’m warming up to its charms fairly quickly, which is good because I’m usually pretty squirrelly in new surroundings for a while: everything smells kind of weird, things creak in unfamiliar ways, and I’m not settled into any routines. I’m not a huge fan of other people’s dirt, either, so as it gets overlaid with my own I should be fine.

Many times during the last few months I’ve wondered why the hell I put myself through this. But now that the whole process is in the final stretch, maybe, just maybe I can start to feel optimistic about it. Hey, that’s pretty positive from Dr. Cynical over here. Did someone spike my drink?

This offer is unrepeatable

All right, after closing on our new house last Monday, I started getting seriously worried about whether anyone would want to buy the old place. I’m not too keen on carrying three mortgages at the same time, that’s for sure. And since the move date is May 12, I was also getting antsy because I’ve been holding off packing so that the place will show as nicely as possible.

Fortunately, after a small price drop, we got another offer this past Friday, and unlike the first one it’s solid and reasonable. So everybody’s signed off on it, and we’re now under agreement! Fingers are crossed that the home inspection goes well. And now there’s no excuse, I need to start tearing this place apart and stuffing it into boxes. So, enough screwing around on Blogger, heh.

Those are some shoes

I’ve been reading a lot of other people’s writing recently, and that’s led me to misplace my own voice a bit. Some of it’s jealousy, some of it’s fatigue from the house-selling saga (I don’t feel like writing much about that, so for now let me sum up in two words: “lead paint”), some of it’s my intrinsic laziness. But I notice I don’t have much in the scriptorium category lately. Hopefully the house crap hasn’t completely dried up the creative juices.

Anyway, here’s a little story about a shoe. A very expensive shoe. I was minding my own business at the local bike shop, killing time while there was an open house at the domicile. And I’d been thinking about buying clipless pedals for my road bike sometime this spring, since you’re cool on a bicycle only if you have clipless. I mean, being physically connected to your bike conveys a special blend of hardcoreness (“I want to maximize my pedaling efficiency so I can bike just that much further before collapsing on my face in exhaustion”), dedication (“I’m serious enough to have special shoes just for cycling”), and masochism (“I plan on falling over and scraping up my knee with nasty road rash at least once because of a panic stop where I can’t detach my foot from the pedal in time”), and I was just about ready to sip that hot and zesty blend.

So I’m looking at the pedals. There are a few different brands with slightly different means of snapping onto the cleats on the shoes, but not too different. I figure I’ll go with what the Swami has, what the heck. Plus that was the cheapest option, and I don’t feel hardcore enough to spend a hundred bucks on friggin’ pedals. Having made that choice, I move on to the shoes. Here the salesperson takes a laudable position: she starts with the cheapest shoes. So I try ’em on. And of course, they’re terribly uncomfortable, too tight, bleah. Next price point up: nah, still kind of tight and chafing in a couple of places. Next pair: same dif. (Although I’m glad, because that particular pair was metallic silver, and I really wasn’t interested in looking like either Neil Armstrong or a breakdancer from 1985.) Hmmm, we are really climbing the ladder in terms of benjamins. Another pair goes by, and I’m starting to worry less about the money and more about my actual feet. Are they freakishly wide? Not in any universe I knew of—until I entered the European tiny-footed female cycling universe. It’s funny how trying on clothes that don’t fit can lead you to question your body rather than the clothes. (I think I just summed up a lot of neuroses with just that one sentence.) And then, just like that, we were at the top of the stack. Aaaaaah, that one felt awesome! It was like Cinderella with the prince, except with lots of Velcro and snappy clippy things to screw onto the bottom. And of course that shoe turned out to be so nice, as I turned it over and looked at the price tag: $230. Well, well, well.

And that’s how I bought the most expensive pair of shoes I’ve ever bought by far, for wearing maybe two or three hours a week at the most. And which will probably lead me to at least one scraped knee and a fair amount of beginner’s anxiety. But damn they are comfortable, and they make me want to ride. Sounds like a good deal to me.

Virginia Tech

As someone with some family ties to VTech, just wanted to say, well, something. I’m completely speechless but thought this unbelievable awfulness should not go unmentioned. The worst thing that should ever happen to someone in a classroom is being called on.

Open house

The last couple of weeks have been a rollercoaster ride, to say the least. I haven’t even found the time to upload pictures of our short trip to San Francisco, or inform you loyal blog readers about it! (Summary: lots of fun, great food, great to see Erin and Keith.) But all the news these days is on the home front. Yesterday was the first open house to sell the condo, and I’m still not sure whether to be optimistic or not. I took Friday off work and spent a Herculean effort getting the place staged—that’s real-estate-speak for hiding all personal items and making things as empty as possible while still projecting a homey and lived-in appearance for your gracious dwelling. And apparently, despite the insanely wet nor’easter that blew through the whole thing, there were a lot of people looking around and looking interested. We even managed to cajole the moose cloggers upstairs to go out somewhere and not stomp around and drop things.

After a somewhat tense evening of anticipation, an offer did come in today, although it’s a little lower than we were hoping for. So now the chess game really begins: counteroffers, sizing up the offer, deciding how to act and when. This is where our agent will make her dough, because I definitely don’t have the fortitude to play that game. If I’m not careful, “The Gambler” will start playing in my head and that could seriously drive me over the edge. So the game’s by no means over.

Speaking of games, I must add a postscript that the NBA regular season is over on Wednesday and I’m about to repeat as super duper champion of Andy’s league! I am the greatest! Go me! Just had to woof a little, there.

Tagged in a good way

Whoa, this is a new thing for me, I’ve been tagged by my man Lifton. (Edit: To my embarrassment, I see I missed one last month. Sorry, man.) And I say, why pass up a chance to blab about myself? To pass it on, I hereby tag Raoul, Frantix, Sashe, and Danielle. Maybe this will inspire those slackers to get back to posting.

And now on to the Q and A.

FOODOLOGY

Q. What is your salad dressing of choice?
A. Bleu cheese

Q. What is your favorite fast food restaurant?
A. National? Chipotle. Local? Boca Grande. One might sense a theme.

Q. What is your favorite sit-down restaurant?
A. Of all time, the Galaxy Cafe in Columbus, Ohio. Sadly defunct.

Q. On average, what size tip do you leave at a restaurant?
A. 20% on small checks, 16% minimum on large checks.

Q. What food could you eat every day for two weeks and not get sick off of?
A. I actually eat the same Kashi cereal every morning, but breakfast is a special circumstance. Chocolate for when I'm wide awake.

Q. What is your favorite type of gum?
A. My parents’ deep hatred of gum has taken hold in me as an adult, alas.

TECHNOLOGY

Q. What is your wallpaper on your computer?
A. Right now, a Japanese postcard. Alternates with a still from X2 and Neil Armstrong on the moon.

Q. How many televisions are in your house?
A. One. Don’t despair, Raoul, someday there might be two!

BIOLOGY

Q. What’s your best feature?
A. Aw, I don’t know. It sure ain’t humility.

Q. Have you ever had anything removed from your body?
A. Wisdom teeth, the occasional vial of the red stuff.

Q. Which of your five senses do you think is keenest?
A. Taste, not to be confused with the abstract version thereof.

Q. When was the last time you had a cavity?
A. God, what a tragedy. My first and only one was in 2004. I am mildly convinced that the dentist scammed me. A thing about myself I was so proud of, crushed like a stale cornflake.

Q. What is the heaviest item you lifted last?
A. My suitcase, coming back from San Francisco on Tuesday. Metaphorically, the burden of being one of the two competent people at work.

Q. Have you ever been knocked unconscious?
A. I almost fainted once. And they knocked me out to remove the aforementioned wisdom teeth, thank the gods.

BULLSHITOLOGY

Q. If it were possible, would you want to know the day you were going to die?
A. No way, no way.

Q. Is love for real?
A. Yes, no doubt about it.

Q. If you could change your first name, what would you change it to?
A. I love my name, although there are times when I’ve been tempted to switch full-time to Fang.

Q. What color do you think looks best on you?
A. Good question. There are some shades of blue that make my eyes look even bluer.

Q. Have you ever swallowed a non-food item by mistake?
A. Oh man, when I was a kid I once collected a single dime for Unicef at Halloween, and I was holding the box above my head, shaking it, when it dropped down my throat. Sorry, Unicef.

Q. Have you ever saved someone’s life?
A. No.

Q. Has someone ever saved yours?
A. No.

DAREOLOGY

Q. Would you walk naked for a half mile down a public street for $100,000?
A. No.

Q. Would you kiss a member of the same sex for $100?
A. If her name were Uma Thurman, or Kate Winslet. Actually, I kid, I’m easier than that.

Q. Would you allow one of your little fingers to be cut off for $200,000?
A. No way.

Q. Would you never blog again for $50,000?
A. Tempting, very tempting. How would you enforce it!

Q. Would you pose nude in a magazine for $250,000?
A. No.

Q. Would you drink an entire bottle of hot sauce for $1,000?
A. No, man that stuff is too much for me. (See taste question, above)

Q. Would you, without fear of punishment, take a human life for $1,000,000?
A. There are a couple of people who tempt me, but I doubt I could actually do it.

Q. Would you give up watching television for a year for $25,000?
A. I can’t live without my Stewart and Colbert, unfortunately.

Q. Give up MySpace forever for $30,000?
A. Hey, I’ve never gotten into it! Start writing that check.

DUMBOLOGY

Q: What is in your left pocket?
A. Empty! My left pockets are, as a rule, terribly underutilized.

Q: Is Napoleon Dynamite actually a good movie?
A. I haven’t seen it, but my spidey sense says it sucks.

Q: Do you have hardwood or carpet in your house?
A. Hardwood with some rugs.

Q: Do you sit or stand in the shower?
A. Stand. What a goofy question.

Q: Could you live with roommates?
A. I have in the past, although I imagine I’m not an easy roommate. My misanthropy doesn’t help.

Q: How many pairs of flip-flops do you own?
A. None, plastic shoes are evil!

Q: Last time you had a run-in with the cops?
A. Never, as a matter of fact.

Q: What do you want to be when you grow up?
A. In Neil Finn’s backup band.

LASTOLOGY

Q: Friend you talked to?
A. Erin, though I already miss her.

Q: Last person you called?
A. Swami, of course.

RANDOMOLOGY

Q: First place you went this morning?
A. Bathroom. Outside the house, it was to work via the bus. Ah, suck.

Q: What can you not wait to do?
A. Get my damn condo sold and move into my new one! Not in that order.

Q: What’s the last movie you saw?
A. Theater: The Queen. At home: The Sting.

Q: Are you a friendly person?
A. Not in the least, until I warm up to you. If I do. Watch out!

Mark it up, sell it off

Well, mark it down, I mean. The current condo goes on sale this weekend, and I’m vacillating between anxiety and complete freakout. Will anybody want to buy this place? Will I manage to get all of the sensitive personal items locked down and/or stowed in the car in time? Will my thoroughly noisy neighbors keep a lid on it for the two hours of the open house? Will some crazy kleptomaniac steal my toothbrush? I’ve been advised to “de-clutter,” and I do appreciate that things shouldn’t be stacked to the ceiling or spilling out of closets, but anyone who knows me can imagine that the place is pretty low on clutter as it is. Blah. I’m just feeling lazy. The real challenge will actually be trying to continue living here for another month, and somehow get packed up, while it’s staged to woo those elusive buyers. Maybe I should bury that statue of Saint What’s-His-Face in the yard. It would help if I remembered which saint was the relevant one.

Arrrgh

Small frustrations all, but they add up.

• Nasty head cold for the last four days


• Arenas and Butler out for the season


• Elvis Costello tickets weirdly out of reach because eeeevil Ticketma$ter wants me to pay with a Visa


• Ridiculous $8 “convenience charge” per ticket should I ever be able to actually buy the damn tickets


• Cut my vacation short to try to make a deadline that I ended up not making, and that it turned out I didn’t even need to try to make in the first place!

Arrrrrrrgh!

Rasheed at the buzzer

What a shot!

Encounter at tvsquad.com

Thanks to Danielle for pointing me to Wil Wheaton’s reviews of ST:TNG. They’re awesome! Can you believe it’s been almost twenty years? Yikes. And TNG is still the best Trek series, however craptacular that first season was.

Purchase and sale

Yes, I’m still alive. We signed the Purchase and Sale agreement on Thursday and wrote a big check. There are now no more ways for us to back out (unless the mortgage application is denied, which better not happen). The seller has to fix the things he agreed to fix, and assuming that he does, we are going to have a new place! So on the buying end, things are now quiet until closing (scheduled for late April). On the selling end, things get started now. I’ve done some cleaning today, and we’ve started formulating a plan on Making the Basement Look Decent. That may or may not be possible. If we’d really worked on it this weekend, we could have gotten this place on the market by next weekend, but thanks to us being usual lazy selves, it’ll probably be the weekend of April 14. Might be a flower or two blooming outside by then, that should help! And if I could only get the knob screwed back on to one of the kitchen cupboards—it’s defying all laws of physics and refuses to stay on. I’m gluing the sucker on if I have to, dammit.

God give me strength

I don’t think I can write coherent sentences as this point; time for a list. Here’s what’s been going on since the last update.

—Nerve-racking home inspection
—Most things fine, a couple not fine
—Tense couple of days waiting for the seller to decide whether to fix stuff
—Transferring large amounts of money around
—Meeting with lawyer
—Hashing out the details of the mortgage application
—Scheduling the pest inspection
—Seller agrees to repair major problems
—Meeting with other unit’s owners
—Signing approximately 17,000 places on mortgage application
—Hashing out the details of the Purchase and Sale agreement
—Not sleeping particularly well at night
—Neighbors’ racket continuing to provide only motivation for this crazy plan
—Considering alcoholism

That about covers it!

Why blog?

It’s an efficient way to keep the peeps informed, and a forum for their hollers back.
It’s a good way to work shit out; writing encourages fuzzy ideas to form coherent shapes.
It’s a record of your life, for when time passes and you forget the rawness of the immediate moment.
It’s another way to kill time on slow afternoons at work.
It’s a window into your tiny, tiny slice of the world, and a precious link to exotic other slices you might not have known about otherwise.
It’s navel-gazing with cool cascading style sheets!