A Treasure Found at Home

people are dropping out of our camp. actually, all but two ‘drop outs’ are people who were big maybe’s anyhow and were coming from canada. i can’t say i’m too unhappy about less people to support who can’t help with building.

one of the more sure dropouts was someone who suggested a lot of things for us here in sf to build, but sorry, she couldn’t do any of it cause she was in canada and by the way didn’t plan on participating a whole heck of a lot once we were there. er? she ended up in a much bigger camp which had more cool things to look at and hang out at and seems a much better fit for her overall.

now sp guy is probably backing out, too. the problem at work isn’t getting solved as quickly as he would like, even though he spends almost all his time on it. i’m irked at that guy who didn’t do what he said he was doing and now i don’t get to go to dinner with my guy very often, or movies, or burning man, or even burning man shopping! i just get to go down to his place and use his garage and see him come out for snacks and be stressed and that’s pretty much that.  sure, sp guy can get overly pissy sounding sometimes; i’ve heard him on the phone and it’s not fun. but i think spending a year and a half on a project means you should have some usable code. and when it’s discovered for the second time in two months that what you’ve been doing is completely unsuable, and someone has to stay up till four in the morning the night before a conference fixing your work so you have a usable demo, then sneaking in to the office when no one is around and taking your things and resigning in email instead of face-to-face is the chicken’s way of dealing with it.

i’m so mad at this guy! because he was selfish my new relationship is harder than it has to be and my burning man plans are having to change last minute. let this be a lesson to you (and to me). if you don’t know what you’re doing at work… tell someone sooner rather than later, before things get all fucked up and you waste everyone’s time.

• donuts
• sp guy got granola/yogurt for me at the store last night
• had my car with me today
• *hamster_grrl is ok after her accident!!
• got my package from amazon
• free lunch
• freedom of information on internet
• good sense of direction

haven’t heard of DOPA? i’m not surprised. it’s a legislation that passed thursday by a vote of 410 -15.

heck, with those number it *must* be a good idea. right? right?… right?

wrong.

you won’t be able to reach social networking sites from libraries or schools anymore. and what’s a social networking site, as defined by DOPA?

(i) is offered by a commercial entity;
(ii) permits registered users to create an on-line profile that includes detailed personal information;
(iii) permits registered users to create an on-line journal and share such a journal with other users;
(iv) elicits highly-personalized information from users; and
(v) enables communication among users.

this means flickr, yahoo, any IM client, myspace, lots of blogs, slashdot, fark, … oh, wait, that’s where i spend all my time on the web. oh wait, that’s where lots of people spend time on the web.

congressman inslee had this to say about it (text from the library of congress):

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I hate to spoil this garden party, but this is not, in truth, suburban legislation, it is substandard legislation. And the reason for that is that it is, in effect, a good press release, but it is not effective legislation addressing a huge problem threatening our children.

The reason I say that is, after sitting through many hearings in the Commerce Committee about this enormous problem, I reached one conclusion. After listening to those thousands of children who are being abused on these horrendous occasions across this country, I concluded that this legislation would not save one single child one single time.

What we learned is that the problem is not in our schools. These kids are not hanging in the library with these sexual predators. They are hanging around in their dens, in their basements, in their living rooms, and in their upstairs bedrooms. That is where we have to get to the problem.

If you look at the problem here on this chart, only 10 percent of the abused kids are online and hardly any of them from schools. A tiny, tiny, infinitesimal portion. This will not solve the problem.

Now, there are things we can do, but, unfortunately, this legislation doesn’t do a single one of them. I used to prosecute cases, so I know a little bit about law enforcement. I raised three kids, so I know a little bit about the terror of worrying about your children. But what this legislation does not do is the three things we need to do.

Number one, we have to give resources to law enforcement to prosecute these horrendous monsters. We had detective after detective come to our hearings and say, give us some money; we can prosecute these people. This doesn’t give them a penny.

Number two, we need to protect the data. What the detectives told us is that this data, once it disappears, they can’t find the culprits. Now we could require the data to be maintained for a year or two, like we are trying to do. This bill doesn’t do that.

Third, what this bill could do is provide some real meaningful tools for our schools to educate our children on how to avoid these monsters on the Internet. This doesn’t do that.

The three effective things that we could do to really save our kids is not done in this legislation.

Now, why is this such a pathetic wave at trying to do something? Why has Congress failed so miserably here? There is a reason for that. The reason is we want press releases, without having to do the hard work to do legislation. That is why we didn’t go through the Commerce Committee to have a markup on this bill so they could rush this thing to the floor and have their suburban agenda.

Well, speaking as a parent who represents 650,000 people, and probably 200,000 parents in suburbia, I think suburban parents, urban parents, rural parents, big-city parents and little-city parents deserve real legislation to stomp out the monstrosity that is going on on the Internet and not these little press releases. We can’t go home and just say that we are heroes without having really done something.

When I go home, I am going to tell my constituents that, yes, maybe there are some headlines, but there wasn’t real relief. And I look forward to the day when this Congress gets down to the nitty-gritty and really does something about this terrible problem.

also you can read what danah boyd (who researches social networks) had to say about back in may.

i’m stunned. this is just stupid.

• contact by snail mail
• dinner with cheryl the good
• sp guy feeling better
• not sick with what he has (knock on wood)
• sticky bun for breakfast
• warm towels

spider on door at work

Originally uploaded by Hjem.

looks like this spider is still hanging out on the door at work. as i walked up from the parking lot another woman was walking in with a guy right behind her. she beeped her card on the reader, and then sort of screamed. at first i thought she might have been surprised by the guy; maybe she didn’t see him. then i noticed her go in and he still held the door open and was looking at it for a lot longer than one would need to.

i was headed for a different door, so i didn’t see it. i just hope no one kills it for being too close to eye level.

• urgent care
• work close to sp guy
• wireless
• easy rules at work
• good enough driver to avoid bad s-vale drivers
• chai
• pb&j muffins
• kitten-face fussy-butt
• chub chub
• amazon.com

a number of questions about women and how we’re viewed and our place in society are coming up for me.

i was recently discussing with someone why i want certain sorts of women in my life and other sorts not so much. what is it, really, that irks me about women (and men) who do nothing but complain? i think they key is that i don’t want to be that sort of woman; i don’t want to focus so much on why my body is not right and why xyz is not right and why those things will keep me from ever finding a partner. i don’t want i set idea of what a woman is and should be and i don’t want a huge focus on how i’m falling short of the mark.

i really feel that the more i surround myself with women who see gender roles that way, the more i’m inclined to do it myself, and the more i do it and my friends do it, the more my future children will be inclined to grow up doubtful of their own selves.

this morning in squid’s blog i found she was having some similar doubts about her daughter’s friends.

then i read whinger’s blog and her entry on date rape. i think i need to take a walk around the building a few times.

all of this crap about women should be small waisted, small hipped, demure, fluffy haired, quiet, bright eyed, subserviant  angels in the house… it just leads to unhappy women and unhappy men.

so, my question to you… all of you… is who do you aspire to? who do you see as a role model? who would you love to have as a confidant and dinner companion at least once a week?

how come everyone else gets to *see* the baby raccoons and i just get mama in my house tearing open tea bags in my bedroom and leaving crumbs on my bed and scaring my cat into hiding in the broken dresser?

actually, mama’s really cute but i haven’t been able to convince the camera to take a picture in the semi-darkness, even with it set to flash (i think the flash was on).

still… i wanna see the babies!

sitting at the cafe table behind me is a brit who was smoking and is now sucking his teeth.

thank goodness i’m done with my homework and can flee!

you know sometimes i have days that make me wonder how i manage as an adult woman living on my own. some days i really feel like i still need some sort of keeper to follow me around and remind me to be more observant of my surroundings.

yesterday was one of those days.

normally i wake up before 8am so it never crossed my mind to set an alarm so i’d make it from oaktown (where i was participating in a 00 slumber party) to shambhala in the city on sunday morning. the crazy dog next door started barking about 7:15ish and there was no sleeping through it. i was on the verge of walking over and seeing what i could do to calm the poor terrier, but the fact that i was pantsless kept me in bed. finally, finally, he calmed down and i shut my eyes *just for a minute*.

it was 9:25 when i next glanced at the clock.

i popped up, dressed, got some tea (to go), and said my goodbyes. i realized i’d probably miss all the sitting, but it might still be worth the effort just to get back in the habit. turned on the truck (which i borrowed from sp guy to haul around a mess of bridesmaids) and tried to flick the shifter from 1st to neutral on my way to reverse. and…

and…

pull, pull, pull. *wonder* pull. hrm. pull *pop!*

ok, i made it to neutral.

push push… this can’t be right. push, grind! OH!

i turned the truck off and slid the gears easily into reverse. maybe i wasn’t pushing on this stiff clutch enough. maybe it was a fluke.

i turned the truck back on and backed into the street. the traffic was still light at this time of day and the cars were about a block away. i jammed in the clutch and push, push, push, push… crap! here come the cars. *hit the emergency flashers* push, push…

truck off. shift to first. truck on. pull back into driveway. *give thanks for driveway!*

i went back into the house and tried to call sp guy, forgetting about his sunday morning tennis tradition. i can’t say those 00 members who were present were disappointed too greatly that i wasn’t going to be leaving any time soon.

then webber popped his head in the room and got the low down on the truck situation. he offered to take a look at it for me so i handed the keys over. i watched him from the porch as he fiddled and pulled and then… put the car in reverse, backed out, shifted into first and drove a few spots down the street and parallel parked.

!!

he said he’d noticed the clutch was really close to the floor and the mat was all rolled up under it. he pulled the mat back and pulled the clutch up with his toe. voila! — and sp guy *has* told me about that. i was just so focused on trying to push the clutch in further that i didn’t notice it wasn’t that far from the floor to start with. now i’ll know what other, more obvious to me, behaviour to look for.

by then it was sure i’d missed all the sitting, and i was almost sick to my stomach hungry, so i joined the grrs for breakfast at a local cafe.

when we returned home i reached for my keys so i could grab some things from the truck and have a quick shower before i had to meet my other friend. and realized i’d left my purse 4 or 5 blocks away at the cafe! i’d been using my wallet for a paperweight so i had that and just forgot i’d taken the whole rest of the purse, too. i handed flo my wallet so i wouldn’t lose it, and walked back.

when i got there our table had a new group of people sitting at it (not surprising) and i tried to suss out the purse location without disturbing them. they saw me looking, though, and asked, ‘purse?’ and told me they’d just turned it in inside. i waited for a while for one of the two women behind the counter to acknowledge me. one had her back to the register, fine, but the other was making a smoothie and could clearly see me. now, i understand she didn’t want to take orders while making the smoothie, but a little eye contact and a ‘just a sec’ would have been all i needed to ask after my purse. finally, though, i spied it on the end of the counter and went to grab it. as i picked it up she still wasn’t acknowledging me, but i did want her to know it’d been claimed rightfully so i sort of raised it up toward her.

she’d seen me from her side vision, which i’d guessed, and said, ‘oh is that your bag?’ and i said it was and she told me the guys had just turned it in a minute ago and i said i knew, they told me when i went back to the table.

and she said…

‘you shouldn’t leave your stuff just sitting out there alone.’

and i thought i must not have heard her right so i asked her to repeat herself.

‘you shouldn’t just leave things sitting out there alone.’

so i said, ‘uh… i didn’t do it on purpose.’

and she said, ‘oh! i thought…’

‘no, i don’t generally just leave things lying about at cafes.’

‘oh, ok.’

weird weird weird.

back to creampuff’s. showered. got directions and a phone number for my friend (since most of my numbers are *still* in my other phone) and drove off — without my wallet. which, you remember, was not with the purse. and, i discovered when i got to her street, with A phone number but not HER phone number.

luckily i figured out which unmarked apartment was hers and we had a great time hanging out. including her asking me, ‘how are you with power tools?’ — one of my favourite questions!

after chatting and hanging things and lunch and a margarita, i went back to creampuffs where mobileguy’s fiancee had brought her dog over. an adorable basset hound who would *not* let me pet him while he munched on his treat but was suuuper friendly once it was gone. but, i did step on poor dragon’s ear at one point. k told me not to worry, he did it to himself a lot, but i still felt horrible and chalked it up to my ‘unable to function right’ sort of day.

finally with all the things i should have with me, i left for sp guy’s house. we picked a dinner spot which is normally just fine but this night was too crowded for their one sushi chef so things took forever. and sp guy was uber work stressed and low blood sugary. we finally asked to just have it made to go and i waited for it while he walked home to get some more work done.

after dinner (finally) i was exhausted, took out my contacts, and laid down on the couch with the learning channel… i couldn’t even tell you what was on i was out so fast. and in the morning i couldn’t find my contact case! on the third scan of the house i found it… in pieces… on the floor.

walter was in a LOT of trouble with sp guy this morning (we also found some other things he shouldn’t have been chewing up). i figured i shouldn’t have left it where i knew he could get it and assumed some of the responsibility. walter’s eyes were fixed on sp guy for a good half hour, but he sat by me for comfort. i was trying to ignore him, but i think i was still better than angry daddy. sp guy took a great shot of us while i checked in with work. it’s on my flickr account.

and now… home and in my glasses and ready to start paying better attention!

tomorrow is the 3 month mark with sp guy. i called him this morning from work to see if we could do lunch together (and i could get a sweater for the fridge i’m now working in). he said he had some stuff to do and hemed and hawed, eventually deciding it would be good for me to come along because it was my gift he was picking up (!) and he thought it would be good if i would pick out just exactly what i wanted.

so it was off to the day spa for lunch! he suggested the whole day package and i took him up on the offer after reading a menu of their treatments — which he’d already doctored with the aid of a sharpie to be sure i didn’t know the prices. while he purchased the gift certificate, i had a brief tour of the facilities. the place is very nice, to be sure, and they have all sorts of little ammenities which make things seem uber indulgent. (forgot your hair ties? they have some.)

we celebrated today ’cause tomorrow i’m haging out with the women of 00 in a furious attempt to get us all complementary bridesmaid dresses in one day.

the coordination of five women’s taste in dresses and six women’s taste in movies (for the slumber party before and after), plus schedules… all i can say is, ‘brick fight!‘ we all have strong ideas about what we like and what works for us. some of us are more direct than others in expressing our preferences and some of us are more absolute than others in what we want. some of us have no clue what we want and still won’t really know after trying on several things. we have a list of possible movies about 20 deep at this point. i think at least two of us are bringing a selection. good thing i packed my knitting!

oh, yeah, i’m actually knitting again! rock on with my bad needles. socks and arm warmers are the order of the day. it’s funny to me how i can be knitting something i like for me and still people will come up to me and start telling me how to change it into something different. they’re great ideas for the next bit of stash, but this ufo is going to stay on target.

another site where you can make little animated pictures of yourself, or of who you want to be.

this is me at willits, except this year i was too inward focused to take any pictures.

i didn’t get a stellar shot of mr. mullins from my camera phone, so i snagged a coworker’s shot off flickr. the free lunchtime concert has been over less than one hour and the photos are already up — i don’t even know the person who shot this. we’re so geeky.

i nearly forgot, but another woman on my team came by and asked if i wanted to walk over with her. yes! who passes up free live music?

of course he played mostly well known songs. but, in a medly with ‘house of the rising sun’ he sang some bluesy thing i’d never heard before wich was really great. i hope it’s on his album.

probably this is not news, but he was saying the title of his newest album, ‘9th ward pickin’ parlor’ is named after a friend’s little recording studio which was destroyed when the levees broke. click here to hear the story (from shawn’s website).

all in all it was a pretty nice way to spend lunch here in the south bay, even if i did come away with a little bit of a sunburn.

my coffee sleave came with a packet of eexcedrin this morning. the advert says ‘e e go!’

er, are we marketing to homeward bound ravers now?

i’m happy to accept it, though, since i get headaches so frequently since i keep changing glasses/contact prescriptions. one day i’ll be able to see clearly without squinting and without headaches. i hear tell of some high tech cataract surgery which *replaces* the lense! *swoon*

please oh great eye surgions, do many of these so that they become common place and my defective lenses can be replaced, too! could you imagine?

this past weekend was our cult campout in beautiful mendicino county. i agreed to drive up with a friend of flo’s who i’d never met before, lumiere.

i was completely on top of things… except that i left lumiere’s phone number and address at work. thankfully, i realized it while i was on the train and could access the interwebs with my magic mobile phone card. what i didn’t realize, though, was that i’d forgotten to print the MAP!

lumiere’s electricity was off… as was that of a few blocks of sf… so he couldn’t print it either. luckily i found a spot right around where his place was and waited. a few minutes later a guy who looked about the right age stepped out of a building and started looking around. i looked at him a bit and he caught my eye. i raised my eyebrows, he raised his, i leaned over and rolled down the passenger window. he came over and leaned in. we smiled.

i said, ‘i’m erin.’

and he said, ‘i’m andrew.’

oh! *blush*

i thought this guy looked a little to asian to be lumiere, but… i don’t know, it’s sf. there could be an asian guy with a french name. it could happen.

i explaind that i was waiting for someone i’d never met and he looked to be looking for someone, too. he said he was just looking for *anyone* since he was so frustrated about the electricity being out.

finally lumiere showed up and we started to wonder about the map. my computer was in my trunk and seemed bulky, plus there wouldn’t be a signal where we were going (i suppose i could have saved the map to my desktop, but didn’t think of it.) sp guy to the rescue! he texted the last bit of the directions to me (i knew the exit). we were doing great until we were nearly there and lumiere read out the next direction, ‘2.2 miles, T intersection… straight?’

we looked at each other, he read it again, and we laughed for about 2.2 miles!

when we got to the intersection in question we realized we were on the ‘top’ of the T and another road ran into ours.

as we made the last turn we found someone else sitting in her car reading a map. i rolled down the window and asked if she was headed for the cult campout, she said she was, and i said, ‘this way. follow me!’

we lost her part way up… i *swear* i wasn’t going very fast! she did pull up behind us at the gate, but we’d been there a few minutes already by the time she made it.

the weekend eneded up really nice. i could have done with a little more one-on-one time with an old, established friend. laying on the ground, holding hands, looking at stars and talking about ’stuff’ (whatever, as long as it was NOT who liked who and what to do to get the cuties to like us). unfortunately, i didn’t have a friend like that available and so spent time alone laying on the ground looking at stars and enjoying the lack of idle gossip.

(to be sure, there is a time and place for idle gossip, but my ears were full last weekend.)

i had a few really good conversations, and danced some, and generally had a wonderfully fulfilling weekend.

>5 things

• text messages
• family
• peanut
• peanut’s m&d
• mobile
• flo’s food
• mesh topped tent — good pre-sleep star viewing
• wheelbarrow when i needed one
• dancin’
• hot water shower

a couple weeks back in therapy i ranted on about how much it really sucks ass sometimes to be a female! especially when i get surprised looks by coworkers when i throw around words like ‘unix’ and ‘emacs’, get emails all the time (in my tech work) addressed to eri – C instead of eri – N, — or how i’m not allowed to be a pall bearer without a fight.
argh. articles like this one, which i originally thought just to email to hamster_grrl, really get my ire up. brests and a lower center of gravity might mean we do things like basketball and archery differently, but they sure don’t get in the way of doing them *well* and the sure as sugar don’t get in the way of our friggin *neurons*!

grumble, grumble, i haven’t had lunch yet so i’m a little pissy, and too tired to make coherent arguments.

read for yourself how second class we still are in academia/schools. my favourite at first glance is the f-to-m who remarks, “I can even complete a whole sentence without being interrupted by a man.”

i spent a lot of time deleting comments spam from my blog yesterday. this morning i logged in to my email to find 185 new spam comments!

i guess the registering thing didn’t help. must find another way to reduce comment spam!

plants on playa

Originally uploaded by Hjem.

i got my playa photos up. i didn’t really take many, since i was very tired and distracted most of the time i was there. there are some nice ones here, though, i think.

the wedding on sunday evening was beautiful and i loved how they really brought the concept of community as well as the community itself into the wedding.

monday spguy and i were getting into the truck to go drive around when a guy on a bike showed up at camp with the news that two people were stuck in the edge of the lake! we had a tow strap, come along, boards, shovel and a strong truck. we just stopped at one other camp for a stack of other boards and we were off to the far northwest end of that section of the playa.

as the motorcycle guy was about to drive off he asked spguy, ‘how fast are you comfortable driving?’

i think we were going 70/75. fun!

we pulled up onto the edge of the edge where we found two other green toyota trucks (both different models and years than ours) and one red rental convertable.

the red one and the older toyota were stuck. the toyota very clearly dug in when trying to free the little red rental.

a few hours later and all were free, and the wench on the previously stuck toyota was ‘fixed’. at least, there was a way to work it even if it wasn’t exactly what was originally intended.

i rode on the top of our truck all the way back to camp. so nice!!

then it was a bit of a regroup and we were off to the hot springs where i had a great conversation with the new groom amid a swarm of young tadpoles. i even managed to catch one, reacalling my days in little rock when i spent afternoons in the creek behind our house catching tadpoles just to feel them wiggle in my hands.

spguy and i packed up that night and headed out to reno where we reserved the LAST room in the casino. it was a smoking room, but when we showed up they said they had a non-smoking room if we could just wait an extra hour and a half.

sure!

so we had an ok dinner and then went to a mini-mart to pick up a hairbrush for me. what a slice of reno life in there! it was chaotic and there were only four other people in the store, including the two who worked there!

i think the room was great, but i conked out pretty quickly after my shower and then left at 5ish to get to the airport.

i wrote this a few days ago in an email to some friends. i can’t really think of much more to say at this point so i’m using it as my post.

i’m in colorado after grandma’s funeral. when we got in last night it was the fourth state in as many days for me.

sp guy and i drove from ca to nv on sunday, from the playa to reno monday, i flew from nv to ohio (with a stop in co) tuesday and flew back from oh to co wednesday with a two hour drive to the condo after that. *whew*

grandma looked really nice in her casket. beautiful, even though her mouth didn’t look quite right and they’d picked a wrong colour of lipstick for her.

i was a pall bearer this time. i’d asked to do it for grandpa, but was turned down due to my uncle saying no one had ever heard of a woman pall bearer. i thought this was crazy talk and checked with the morticians who assured me there were female pall bearers. this time we looked like we were one short so i told mom i’d like to do it, that uncle b had said no last time, but that the people at the funeral home thought it was fine. (mom also wasn’t sure about the female pall bearer thing.) so mom asked the priest who said of course and pointed out that nuns do it all the time for other nuns. so it was settled.

still when we lined up outside the church mom came up to cousin t.a. and asked if *he’d* ever seen a female pall bearer and he said no but was sure that if anyone could do it i could! right on cousin t! (who is really my first cousin once removed, i think.)

i also unfolded the pall (the cloth which covers the casket during the funeral mass) with my other two cousins who were there (both girls) and mom and i took the gifts up (the wine and bread) during the mass. i really felt connected to grandma and like the women of her family were playing a big role in her funeral, as it should be. and i also felt it was appropriate for me to end up doing so much as i am the oldest granddaughter and the oldest daughter of the oldest daughter.

i wish i had a picture of l so you could see how funny it was when he realized i was going to end up at the front of the casket as a pall bearer and tried to convince me to trade places because ‘it’s going to be heavy!’ l is probably in his mid to late 70’s, about as thin as me, and a few inches shorter. i held my ground.

my uncle b wrote another great eulogy which we also hope to get up online.

here is her obituary: http://www.legacy.com/ohio/Obituaries.asp?Page=Notice&PersonID=18304327
and grandpa’s if you want to read that, too. his eulogy is in his guestbook, but rosie’s isn’t up there yet: http://www.legacy.com/ohio/Obituaries.asp?Page=Notice&PersonID=17325822

and just for good measure, here’s aj’s: http://www.legacy.com/ohio/Obituaries.asp?Page=Notice&PersonID=15980868
and now i’m going to go to the local breakfast place and get something to eat and sit and try to absorb some of this. mom and dad drove back to denver to get my aunt “eat rat”, brother flies in tomorrow, and we’re all going to sit around and have some family decompression time.

oh, yeah, brother missed the funeral! his flight took off from la on time, circled a bit, then went *back to the airport*! something about the door not sealing correctly. he wouldn’t have made it in till 2 in the morning, missing the family calling hours, so he wouldn’t have gotten to see her again. plus, he’d be there just over 12 hours, and on almost no sleep. he did manage to get a refund on the ticket by explaining that because of this he’d never see his grandmother’s face again.

it all seems so weird and there’s a bit of a feeling of “now what”. eat rat was a school teacher but took the last part of the year off and decided to retire. she literally has no idea what to do with her time now that both chief and rosie are gone. she said she filled out a form the other day and under hobbies she wrote, “taking care of mom and dad.”