Written on Monday, June 27, 2005 by Jessica
Look. Grokker is free now. Grokker doesn't exactly rock my world, which is why I wasn't willing to pay for it back when it first came out, but it's still interesting.
Barely related thought: When I first read about hypertext, I just plain didn't get it and thought it was kinda dumb, so you could say it didn't rock my world, either. Then again, I was ten years old, so maybe I should go easy on myself. Still, I would like to have been a brilliant kid who could recognize the genius of the web's driving mechanism: the hyperlink. Seriously, I can remember sitting there reading about a little software program that came with my mom's Mac that allowed you to link from one document to another. I couldn't figure out why you'd ever want to do that.
Written on Wednesday, June 22, 2005 by Jessica
The Offspring have released a Greatest Hits disc. How did I get so old?
Written on Wednesday, June 22, 2005 by Jessica
I have sunk to such depths as to be drinking a Diet Coke this very moment and it's disgusting. I really hate diet drinks. After one sip, I'm pouring it out. Plus, it has caffeine in it. I don't drink caffeine.
Written on Wednesday, June 22, 2005 by Jessica
The diet is back on today. Sigh. I'm really starting to crave a cigarette or ten (see Cigarette post), with whole bunch of tobacco on top. It's been a year since I started dieting seriously for the first time ever and ended up losing thirty-some pounds in five months. But then the holidays (Thanksgiving, birthday, Christmas) arrived and everything fell apart. I purposely stopped dieting with the intention of starting again after Christmas. Who knew it would be so hard. (It was fairly easy to get the diet started the first time. No so during subsequent attempts.)
Written on Tuesday, June 21, 2005 by Jessica
This post makes me think of Dolly Parton's song, "Two Doors Down."
Except I keep changing the words in my head:
Two doors down
Trailer trash is drinking and having a party.
Two doors down
There's not a way that I'm around.
Written on Thursday, June 09, 2005 by Jessica
Here's a personal-finance article with some enjoyable moments. My favorite part:
OK, so you can't boil down procreation to dollars and cents. There is also the humiliation... [T]here's the time [my son] pointed to the lady in front of us in the checkout line and asked (for all to hear), "Why is she so fat?" Which is just as bad as the times he talks about his private parts in mixed company. (So far, we have been spared this ignominy with our 2-year-old daughter, who, because she still has trouble pronouncing V's and G's, refers to her private parts as her "china." ...)
Hahahaha. Cracked me up. Also reminds me, with no little consternation, of when I was about five or six and asked my mother why a woman in our church had such a big butt. The woman laughed and then played organ at my wedding years later, so I guess she didn't hold a grudge.
Written on Friday, June 03, 2005 by Jessica
"Black Betty" by Ram Jam (not Lynyrd Skynyrd, as some illegally downloaded files might suggest). I didn't even know the song existed until Spiderbait did a cover.
Written on Wednesday, June 01, 2005 by Jessica
I'm reading Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life by Amy Krouse Rosenthal. Amazon recommended it to me because I like David Sedaris. (Barely related: Just once I'd like to see or meet a gay guy who prefers to go by Dave instead of David. He must be out there somewhere. And there must be at least one gay Chris out there. They can't all be Christophers, can they?)
Rosenthal's "Purple Flower" entry says:
There is a single purple flower a couple of feet from where I am sitting. I am feeling poorly dressed and missing my long hair. I am at Cafe De Lucca in Bucktown, and there is a purple flower--that's how I would define this moment. And you, your moment? Where are you at this moment? E-mail me and tell me. If you are the hundredth person to do so, I will bake you a pie and FedEx it to you. You will have to trust me on this.
Try though I might, I cannot define my moment. I'm sitting on our waterbed with my legs crossed underneath me. (In kindergarten, we called it Indian style--
Okay, class. It's story time, so let's all go sit on the story mat Indian style--but that's probably not politically correct anymore.) The sheets are cranberry, but why would I want to define this moment by the cranberry sheets? Sure, Rosenthal picked a purple flower, but that doesn't mean I have to copy her by picking a colored something around me. The fan in the window is blowing cool outdoor air on my face, which is nice.
None of this, by the way, is actually happening right now. It all happened last night as I was reading the "Purple Flower" entry. But to be true to the spirit of the Purple Flower Moment, I thought I ought to write it all in present tense as did Rosenthal. After mulling for a bit, I realized that I couldn't find anything to define that moment in time because the moment was essentially meaningless to me. That's when I moved to get off the bed. Suddenly, I was able to identify what defined the moment--not that moment in time, but a more important moment--that moment in my life. And what, praytell, defined that moment in my life? Brace yourself... Sore ass cheeks. Yes, it's true.
The gluteus maximus is the largest muscle in the body, and it's a muscle we hardly ever notice. In fact, I have always tended to think of its purpose as being for padding, which is ridiculous notion, because muscles are always for movement--fat is for padding. But there I was, climbing off the bed, well aware that my ass muscles were horribly sore. Dammit, since when did it become necessary for me to do warm-up and cool-down stretches before and after gardening, for god's sake? Since age thirty, that's when!
Yes, it seems too pitiful to be true, but I weeded the small shade garden in front of my house the day before, and now my glutes (gluts?) and the backs of my thighs are so sore I can hardly sit down or stand up. It's bad karma, I think, because I wouldn't be so sore if I'd just stayed on my hands and knees as I worked. But no, I was a little lazy, frequently bending at the waist, which is not good for the back, nor, apparently, for the ass-cheek muscles. And as I was bending at the waist to pull those weeds, I was quite conscious of the fact that I shouldn't be subjecting my unsuspecting neighbors and passersby to such a sight. They might be happy to look on if I lost sixty pounds or so, but until then, it was unkind of me. But still I bent at the waist, contorting all the thigh and ass-cheek muscles I never realized I ever use.