30 December 2002: "...A Brand New Car!"
[insert "Price is Right" theme here]
[spoken in Rod Roddy announcer voice:]
That's right, folks! Diana Cook and Aaron Schnuth are now the proud owners
of a brand new 2003 Kia Spectra! Diana can now drive to work in style in this
pepper-red four-door sedan! Complete with AM/FM/CD Stereo, Air Conditioning,
and an Automatic Transmission, this gem is sure to make the happy couple into
the talk of the town... [end Rod Roddy voice]
No shit. We are joint-owners of a car loan for the next five years. Along
with it comes a damn spiffy new vehicle, though. :-) If our new car were to
be fabricated inside The Matrix construct, it would look like this:
Anyway, this saves us enormous car-related stress when going
on road trips (i.e. 'will the car make it back alive'), it saves me cab fare
(sort of... I think the car payment might be higher...), and it makes both
of us mobile. We're both insured on both cars, so whichever car is at the
end of the driveway is the lucky winner of the moment.
Come visit on New Year's, and you can see the new car... nudge,
nudge...
29 December 2002: Certifiable Tolkien Geek
I just spent two hours researching how to write my name in Elvish.
My latest idea for a tattoo is to get my name tattooed in Elvish on my shoulder/arm.
So, I went off looking for Elvish runes. Eventually, after searching through
the entire LOTR trilogy and all half-dozen supplemental texts Aaron and I
have, I went online. Duh.
First, I could only find images of the letters, and descriptions of their
respective phonetics (what sounds they make). So, I sliced up the images and
made my name:
This wasn't nearly as cool as I had hoped, being a bitmap image
and all. Turns out it was technically incorrect, as well. I researched for
a while more and found multiple
Tengwar (Elvish) fonts, as well as multiple rules for writing English
text using Tengwar
characters. I downloaded my favorite
font, along with the character mapping, and compared feverishly with my
chosen online Tengwar/English
guide to make this more correct version in Photoshop:
[D - i - an - uh]
The plan is to locate or fabricate some scrolly line-artsy things
to create a band on either side of the script, and have it tattooed around
my right shoulder.
If you're a geek, too, and would like something written in Tengwar
characters (read: English pronunciation using Elvish alphabet), I'm willing
to entertain requests... for now. Considering that only about four of you
regularly check my site, I think I'm safe from the galloping hordes of Tolkien
freaks.
26 December 2002: What Religion Are You? The Belief-O-Matic
Knows!
Oh, yeah—Merry Christmas. :-) As an initial side-note, I visited my
Memaw in the crazy two-day Cleveland Christmas Extravaganza (more on that
later). She was doing much better than on Thanskgiving, and insisted
that she will dance at my wedding. —Now, how do I break it to her that
there won't be dancing...?
So, Beliefnet.com informed me in my daily Hindu Wisdom e-mail that the Belief-O-Matic
knows what religion I truly am. Since I've recently been curious about this,
I answered the 20 questions and awaited the results:
- Unitarian
Universalism (100%)
- Liberal
Quakers (95%)
- Mainline
to Liberal Christian Protestants (95%)
- New
Age (93%)
- Neo-Pagan
(91%)
- Christian
Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (83%)
- Mahayana
Buddhism (76%)
- New
Thought (76%)
- Taoism
(71%)
- Bahá'í
Faith (70%)
Other notable placers include Nontheism
at 60%, The
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the religion I was raised
in and have denounced) at 47%, Hinduism
at 46%, Jehovah's
Witness at 35%, and Roman
Catholic at a whopping 16%.
First off, I know the percentages are bullshit, because I checked out Match
#1, and the Unitarian Universalists do not agree with all the answers
I gave. Secondly, the religion I've been studying on my own, Pantheism,
appears not to be represented at Beliefnet. On the positive side: though they
sound particularly harsh to me now, the Mormon
beliefs are laid out truthfully and correctly, which gives me hope that the
other religions are represented properly, as well.
I'm still not convinced that there's a religion out there that fits me to
a tee. At this point, I'm content with picking and choosing bits and pieces
from various religions that sound about right to me.
17 December 2002: Local flavor experience
Got off work early for once. It was still light out. I was geeked. After
chillin' for a while behind the computer, I walked to Ben Franklin to find
a Christmas present for Kris (actually, I just had to purchase the finishing
touches). So, while I was downtown, I decided to stop into Grounds for Thought
for some coffee goodness on the way home. Got my Milky Way (a mocha with a
healthy dose of caramel and a couple dollops of whipped cream), silently approved
of the R.E.M. playing in the background (must have been some album before
Green, because I didn't recognize it—sorry, Aaron), and planned
to slip out the back.
The first thing I noticed was that the Children's section had been moved.
It's usually there on the back wall of the cafe proper as you walk back into
the happily cramped shelves of used books. Hmm... more books on the side wall.
Neat. I turned to exit out the side door—to find it was no longer there.
WTF?
Yes, apparently Grounds purchased the store next door and tore out the wall,
because the happily cramped stacks are now spacious and comfy. I made a dork
of myself by wandering around, gaping at all the room. I believe I even marveled
aloud. I must bring Amy to see this.
For once, a good thing is made even better.
16 December 2002: Unrelated discoveries: one fun, one not-so-fun
We begin with the fun: wilwheaton.net.
He's
30, he's married, and he has blue hair. It's freaky on some level, yet comforting
on another. As much as it might disturb Wil to hear it, he's kind of like
a long-distance high-school or college buddy. That's how he comes across on
his page. Totally honest, frank, and certainly more than a touch dorky. (Hell,
who isn't?) His web-design skills are pretty middle-of-the-road, his writing
style is familiar and fresh, and he has interests that "normal"
people have. And he likes The Pixies. Plus, after watching his character Wesley
grow up on Star
Trek: The Next Generation (now who's the dork?), it's neat to see
what he's like in real life, and to know that he's just as cool as you'd hope
an actor (and aspiring writer) your age would be.
I know, I know... I'm not 30 yet. In the grand scheme of things, though,
those four years don't really matter much.
Now, to the not-so-fun discovery. Actually, it's downright depressing.
On Thanksgiving, I went to visit my grandmother at her new nursing home.
Beforehand, my step-Gary felt the need to call me and warn me of her mental
condition. Seems she would be OK for a while, then start talking about feeding
pet mice and stepping on cockroaches and all sorts of random things that may
or may not have root in reality. So, I felt I was armed with the knowledge
that my Memaw was going off her rocker, and things would be cool.
As one might expect, the visit was unusual at best. At least when I used
to visit her before, she was recognizable. This wispy-haired, bent wraith
of a woman bore very little resemblance to the Memaw that I knew and loved.
True to form, she wasn't wearing her hearing aid or her teeth, and she did
indeed go off on random tangents. I smiled and nodded along, answering loudly
when appropriate. Just to prove how erratic her behavior had been, when she
stood up to show me how much weight she had lost, I discovered that the staff
had her bed monitored; when she stood, a beeping alarm sounded. At first I
thought her oxygen had been disconnected, but no. It was so she wouldn't try
to wander off and break a window to escape again.
Seriously.
I dealt well with the visit at the time. I even saw the humor in it. Memaw
was going off the deep end. Funny stuff. I joked with Aaron about it on the
way to Parma to visit my folks.
Later, though, the truth of the matter set in. I really don't have a Memaw
anymore.
Yes, I know she's still alive, and I should be thankful for that. But my
Memaw, the one that fabricated my imaginary friend when I was two, the one
who made up lullabies that stood the test of time, the one who could cook
almost anything I asked for, the one with the slightly warped sense of humor
(one aspect of her I didn't fully realize until I was a little older), that
Memaw... she's gone.
Maybe it's easier to lose her this way, slowly, so I can come to terms with
it. Maybe it's better than just getting a phone call out of the blue, telling
me I'll have to cash in my Bereavement Days at work.
But she's still my Memaw. And God, I miss her already.
3 December 2002: Bizarre Dreams and High-School Crushes
I once had a crush on this guy. (Don't ask why. Certainly not for his stunning
good looks.) Actually, I was hopelessly hung up on him for about four years,
and probably not as secretly as I thought at the time. He was a bass in choir,
lead trumpet in band, and enrolled in all the same advanced classes I was
in. His name is Matt, and this is his Senior picture, scanned right from the
1994 Buckeye High School yearbook.
I dreamed about him last night.
Allow me to digress for a moment. I believe (and some people think I'm way
off-base) that in dreams, some people or places can and do represent aspects
of the dreamer's life. Some mistakes and triumphs, relived in different ways,
can draw parallels between today and yesteryear. For instance, when I was
about to graduate college (and had been for some time), and my grades were
beyond slipping and my attitude was beyond sucking, I kept dreaming about
aging out of drumcorps. I relived the final performance in a dozen different
ways: forgetting the drill and having to step off the field, missing uniform
parts, losing my mellophone, not knowing the music, all the typical terrors.
Except in these dreams, I came away with the distinct knowledge that I had
lost something I had worked hard toward for so long. I drew a waking parallel
between the dream-disasters and my current sitation of almost not graduating.
I'm not sure it actually helped my real-life situation any, but at least I
knew what my brain was throwing out at me.
Last night, I dreamed about Matt. I forget the details, since it was a day
ago and all, but I remember the gist. There was a choir/band get-together,
or reunion, or something in the Music Room at my high school. Of course, everyone
looked just as I remember them from eight years ago. The main thing I recall
is that Matt and I shared the easy spontaneity of old friends (something we
never experienced in real life—I was always too flustered by him). In
the dream, we even traded innuendos: something about me liking sausage...?
At any rate, it was clear that he knew that I had "liked" him. Maybe
we'd even fooled around. In the dreamworld, it's hard to be sure.
Without recapping all of my remembered dreams for the past several months,
suffice it to say that I've dreamed about Matt before. No, it's not some bizarro
redhead fetish come to the surface. But putting these dreams together, and
adding in my real-life thoughts, I think that Matt has come to represent a
part of my psyche. I think Matt represents my former love of music. Not that
I don't love music anymore, but I'm no longer directly involved in it, and
I think it filled a void that I didn't realize at the time. But Matt helped
me get into high school band when I didn't play an instrument by vouching
for my musicianship in choir, and he was one of my personal peer-heroes in
high school. I think he represents my longing to return to performing, combined
with my nostalgia for an era past. Not necessarily high school itself, but
those years when I was immersed in music—choir, band, and drumcorps.
Some people will think this dream quasi-analysis is bullshit. You're welcome
to your opinion. This analysis is like Tarot for me, like meditation. Even
if it's bullshit in itself, it brings forth the things I need to think about.
The things that matter to me, the things that need addressing. Music was once
how I defined myself. Having that large of a chunk of my being unaccounted
for is... disconcerting at best.
So... I wonder what Matt is doing these days?