dianaschnuth

I’ve been cleaning my desk at home — which is no easy task, let me tell you — and I’ve run across a veritable shitload of old to-do lists and notes I wrote years ago. See, back in the dark ages, before Twitter and iGoogle (aka the personalized Google homepage), I would write my random thoughts on pieces of scrap paper I kept by my desk (ostensibly for note-taking during phone calls).

One thing I found funny was how driven I was to write down bizarre dreams that I remembered. I found pages upon pages of scrap paper covered front and back with detailed descriptions of my brain’s nightly wanderings, as if I thought they held importance. Now, a few years later, I glance at them, recognize them, maybe remember them vaguely, then toss the papers in the trash.

I’m not nearly as driven to record my dreams as I used to be. Last night or the night before, though, I woke up from dreaming all tense, heart pounding — those are the kind of dreams that I’m inclined to record, just because they obviously touched some innate fear of mine that I might want to look deeper into.

The dream I’m thinking of started out as me and Aaron having just moved from our house into an apartment on the second or third floor of a building. I remember this because I was photographing a local parade, and kept forgetting things at home, necessitating multiple runs up a very long flight of stairs. At one point, I realized I’d left my camera on the front step of our apartment, ran back to get it, and noticed (though not right away) that the front lens element was cracked. Which, in true dream-world fashion, quickly became pretty much obliterated. Aaron and I then both ran up the stairs to find that our apartment had been broken into, our big-screen TV and gaming consoles and furniture all gone… and I could hear the culprits still in the bedroom, gathering more loot. In the dream, it seemed reasonable to me that a.) they must have figured out all the stuff we had by looking through the photos on my camera, and b.) I should react by yelling frantically and alerting the thieves to our presence.

This could go so many ways: privacy concerns (I’m all over the internets, of my own volition), excessive love of “stuff”, or any number of more detailed analyses. There were, of course, more details in the dream, but the final scene was what stuck in my head when I woke.

The brain is a funny thing. Deciding whether it’s just blowing off steam or trying to make sense of its own inner thoughts can be either immensely helpful or immensely pointless.

Weekends in Toledo can be a little, shall we say… repetitive. Luckily, since our chosen distraction of late is thrifting and hitting garage sales, at least the results of our haul will change from weekend to weekend.

At our first stop, the Savers just off of Secor, I picked up a pinstriped miniskirt for $5.99. Not sure why I’ve been wanting to rock the miniskirts lately, especially since I feel so uncomfortable when I try to wear them in public (“OMG, my butt is right there!“), but I keep buying them, anyway. At the register, we had a conversation with the cashier about my Pixies shirt and how the cashier loved listening to Pandora. Unexpected, but cool.

While we were in the neighborhood, we hit the Allied Record Exchange, but didn’t really find anything. Since I still have stacks of $1 CDs at home from previous trips, I didn’t scour the budget CDs like I usually do, though. No video games or guides jumped out at Aaron, either, unfortunately. I managed to remember enough Japanese to read the spine of Shenmue for Aaron, which was fun. (Him: “There’s an import Dreamcast game down there! Wonder what it is…” Me (bending down and pausing): “Sh… eh… n… Shenmue!” Him: “Oh, yeah, that was here last time.”)

We also ran past the fairly-recently-updated Goodwill on Sylvania, but also had no luck. Usually we find something there — a book, or a vintage video game, or a camera — but not this time.

It wasn’t exactly thrift, but we checked out the new Health Foods by Claudia at Secor and Sylvania, too. Picked up some whole wheat, fat-free fig cookies and a couple boxes of No-Pudge Fudge Brownie Mix. I love that brownie mix (just add fat-free yogurt!), and Claudia’s has been the only place we can find it locally. Aaron especially misses the beer and wine section they had at their old store — we got a bottle of mead on sale there once, and it was surprisingly good.

Today’s weather was sticky and humid and overcast, so there weren’t very many garage sales going on. (We also got a slightly late start for garage saling.) So, the only one we managed to hit was a basement sale:

The only potential item of interest was a telescope for $15, but one leg of its tripod was broken (“A little super glue and it’s good as new!”) and it was missing the bolt to mount it to the tripod. If not for that, I might have picked it up, as it also had software to connect to your laptop and take digital photos.

After dinner, we made one final stop past the Savers on Reynolds and Heatherdowns. We did end up buying a pullover sweater and a summer dress for me, a t-shirt for Aaron (advertising the Testicle Festival in a small town in central Ohio), and an Agfa Isoflash Rapid camera that apparently takes film cartridges that are no longer manufactured.

What we didn’t end up buying were these VHS tapes of Ikkyu-san, an anime by the Toei Animation Studios from the ’70s. These particular tapes were of the Chinese variety, but the anime was apparently quite popular across Asia.

What we also didn’t end up buying were these super-stylish jackets:

Ironically enough, at the register, the cashier complimented me on my Pixies shirt, and we established that she knows the cashier at the other Savers who also liked my Pixies shirt. We also established that she knows a distant cousin of Aaron’s who happens to have the same given name as his brother, which consistently causes confusion around town (“Are you so-and-so’s brother? I went to school with him! Oh, your brother graduated in the ’90s? Maybe not…”).

So, all in all, a fun thrift day, if not a particularly bountiful one.

So, who reads this thing on a regular basis, anyway?

Most of my hits come from Google, not regular readers. So, I guess I’m just curious about who’s interested in my life. I mean, I know my husband reads this blog, but I end up just telling him most of this stuff, anyway. And I know my Mom reads it, but I end up telling her a lot of this stuff on the phone (or over Facebook), too.

Speaking of Facebook… I no longer automatically port all my blog posts over there. Facebook “friendship” is a very passive and voyeuristic animal, and I don’t necessarily want to put all my blog entries into the mix of passively-consumed personal information. If people really want to know, they can type in my URL or subscribe in Google Reader (which is at least a little less passive than Facebook).

I’ve also realized that my posting frequency has dropped dramatically since I’ve started using Twitter. Seems I’ve been condensing my thoughts down to 140 characters as they occur to me, rather than expounding on them in depth later in the evening. If I knew who was listening, I might be more inclined to spout more massive amounts of prose on a more regular basis.

So, who’s out there?

*crickets chirping*

What I wouldn’t give for a hammock right now.

I’m sitting on my front step, music just barely audible through my open front door. It’s been a busy, stressful day, and I just can’t summon the energy (physical or mental) to do just about anything. Not a walk, not a game, not a book or magazine.

I know I’ll regret my laziness later, when I feel like I’ve “wasted” the evening. For now, though, all I’m good for is taking in the breeze and the long shadows.

I used to read strangers’ blogs.

By “strangers,” I don’t mean internet celebrities that I’ve never met in person; or stars of stage, screen and television; or acquaintances that I know from a podcast or a convention. I mean complete strangers: normal (or not-so-normal) people whose publicized slices of life randomly caught my eye.

Blogs were still new then — often updated manually, and created by people who knew how to design websites. I would click through blogroll links and stumble across a blog that had a striking design, and if the content spoke to me, it went in my bookmarks.

Some of the more fascinating blogs were the intentionally vague ones. I used to wonder why they were so elusive, never giving any details about names or places or actual events. They’d only speak of emotions, interactions, sometimes touching on major life events like a graduation or a breakup. It seemed to me that these people were adding just enough detail that someone who knew them might know what they were talking about, while a complete stranger such as myself would have absolutely no clue.

This was a time when I was blogging in much greater detail than was probably called for. Since I knew no one knew about my blog except a handful of college friends, I was spilling my guts about my shitty job, my co-workers, my wedding plans, my grandmother’s losing battle with cancer. My blog wasn’t a collection of witty essays or a vague smearing of post-adolescent angst. It was an online version of the written journal I’d kept since I was seven, with most of the juicy details that entails.

(If I had been taking the time to write witty essays, rather than scribbling down notes at work and then writing rambling entries after dinner, perhaps I would have become one of these internet celebrity types. —Actually, no. I doubt that I would have, now that I think of it.)

I’ve maintained my openness over the years, while prudently holding back on some details — my brother-in-law, for instance, doesn’t like his photo to be posted on the internet, and I have a friend or two who are uncomfortable with being Google-able. I’ve also tried to hold back on the posts about work and about specific people, since those could so easily come back to bite me in the ass.

Sometimes, I long for the days of locked LiveJournal posts, or just not giving a fuck whether a long-lost friend or co-worker read what I had to say. The internet is a volatile yet potentially permanent place, though, and I’d rather be vague and mysterious (about some things) than get myself in trouble.