Missy | February 24, 2005
For some reason, comments prior to Saturday are suddenly not showing up in the counts at the bottom of each post. They’re still there and you can view them, but I’m not sure what’s up. Anyone ever had this happen? What the heck?
Missy | February 24, 2005
Mihow and Toby Joe have got Self-Portrait Day up and running. Go and discover some new faces and links. (Incidentally, I was part of the initial batch; you can locate me in the archives.) Sign up and be seen!
Furthermore, Toby has stopped being shy about his photographic talents (and I feel obligated to add that it’s a hobby he only recently picked up….bastard) and is co-blogging at the photoblog site fiftymillimeter. He is a film camera snob.
Missy | February 23, 2005
Meanwhile, I’ve polished off season 2 of The Wire. Not sure when season 3 is being re-aired on HBO–I’m not going to link to the official site because it took me two times of going there and having major plot points revealed (one for season 2 before I even bought the DVD set and one for the as yet unseen season 3) to learn my lesson. Among my season 2 favorites:
……………..
I know Hunter S. Thompson has been written about extensively in the past week and I find it terrible that he took his own life, but I’m afraid I’ve no personal tie to his writing. So if you’ll permit me, I’d like to mention a different writer of whom I’m very fond. Yesterday morning on the way to work I finished reading this piece, written by E.B. White’s stepson in The New Yorker. I admit, I kind of had a lump in my throat. White, to me, epitomizes perfection in writing. I picked up a collection of some of his essays last year after Josh described reading “Here is New York” when he found a copy at his parents’ house. (You may recall that the essay gained a great deal of notice after September 11.) He marveled White’s economy. I do, too. I marvel his exactness of description without any sort of zeal poking through. It’s like the words just spill out–there’s no sense of hard-won phrases or self-congratulations for cleverness.
Anyway. There’s a part that’s worth sharing (in case you don’t click the link–I know many people often don’t click the links), where the author quotes a letter he received from White describing a kind gesture that becomes a bit of an annoyance, yet at once becoming endearing:
Missy | February 23, 2005
Today I witnessed an unfathomable event. There’s a busy intersection outside of my workplace. To turn right during rush hour when one has the light is a challenge because there is usually a mass of people crossing the street en route to the Metro and so, usually, not many cars get to turn or pass through the light in that lane during the green light. Also, it is important to note that there is a sign stating “No turn on red during the hours of 7am -7pm”. A normal-looking woman found herself stopped behind a STUDENT DRIVER at that light and she laid on her horn when the student driver (who had his/her right turn signal on) failed to turn right as the light was turning from green to yellow (pedestrians dashing across the street and whatnot). And then when the student driver obeyed the sign by not turning right on red, the woman laid on her horn some more, banged on her steering wheel and shook herself to & fro in a fit.
Not satisfied with this within-car outburst, she GOT OUT OF HER CAR and walked up to the driver window to say, “What, am I supposed to just go around you? What!” I could not hear the response, but I pray that the student or the adult in the car interpreted the sign’s meaning along with a general statement about sensible driving behavior in a simple condescending vocabulary that the woman could understand. I was too stunned to think about getting her license plate number. I’m glad I don’t drive.
Missy | February 19, 2005
Comments have been dislodged for the time being while I clean up the massive amounts of comment spam I’ve received in the last 24 hours. I also plan to (finally) upgrade my Movable Type version and install a throttle on commenting and likely close off commenting to old posts. I’d like to avoid users having to do extra work (like having a Type Key account to comment) or having to type in extra information (like the letters and numbers from those visually distorted images). This is the plan, at least, but not one I wanted to undertake this weekend, what with episodes of The Wire begging to be watched and Fear and Trembling opening in DC. If things look broken around here for a bit, you’ll know why.
UPDATE: Whew. That wasn’t as bad as I’d anticipated, but if we’re gauging this in terms of opportunity costs, then the answers are, respectively, 3 and 1. (The question is “How many episodes of The Wire could have been watched, or how many Sylvie Testud films–including transportation time to & from–could have been seen, the latter likely being a very important indicator to some people?”) In addition to the throttle plug-in linked above (which limits the number of allowable comments to the site per hour and day), I used this comments-closing feature. And I’m finally upgraded. Good night.
Missy | February 18, 2005
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Hahahaha. Hahahahahahahahaha. (Thanks Kriston.)
Unrelated: Anyone with intentions of watching The Wire series is urged to avoid eating dinner like I did during episode 3 of season 2. Seemingly innocuous puppy + rat victim = yuck. You’ll thank me.
Missy | February 12, 2005
New York may have The Gates, but we’ve got nature sculptor Andy Goldsworthy and Roof, currently an in-progress installation. I was more interested in watching Goldsworthy and his crew work than in the piece itself–ever since I saw Rivers and Tides I realized that some art is just as impressive in its creation as in the finished product.
UPDATE: Via Lenny, here is a nice piece on the wallers from the Washington Post. I should stop referring to these guys as merely “Goldsworthy’s crew”.
Click on for some photos.
Missy | February 12, 2005
Today I was cleaning out a couple of boxes that have been sitting at the top of my foyer closet since I moved here, some of which contain stuff that, I’m ashamed to admit, I must have been moving around since high school but never unpacking under the assumption that “whatever is in the box must be important”. Why else would I still have two champagne glasses that were party favors from my junior and senior proms? And isn’t it funny that high school prom favors were champagne glasses? (Truth be told, I believe my mother packed them up for me after cleaning out the remnants of my room prior to selling the house several years back.) The one from junior prom reads, “When I’m With You”, a reference I had to look up. I knew it was a one-hit wonder power ballad, but what I didn’t remember was that it was by the band Sheriff. Naturally, I can now sing at least the chorus and, unfortunately, will be singing said chorus for the rest of the day. Senior prom was easier to decipher: “Paradise City”. The glasses are now sitting in my kitchen, and I’m not sure what to do with them. Besides wash them and drink champagne out of them, of course.
High school memories.
I also found the bulk of the work from my thesis, which mostly translates to hundreds of pages of printouts of GAUSS program outputs. Why didn’t I get rid of this stuff earlier? And more importantly, why am I deciding to save the programs themselves now? I haven’t coded in GAUSS since then and I’m going to go out on a limb and say that I probably never will again. I also found one set of the student evaluations from one of the semesters that I taught Intro to Macroeconomics in grad school. My ratings were high, which is a relief. I’d hate to unearth this stuff only to find out I was a terrible instructor.
I’ve got a polaroid photo of myself from grad school, presumably taken by my then-boyfriend (a photography student who used scratched up, ripped up polaroids as his primary medium), that illustrates my early 20’s uniform: too-large, baggy second-hand jeans and Vans. I still have my Vans. I don’t have a scanner at home, but I’ll put it up if I get a chance to scan it at work.
UPDATE: Said photo has been scanned and uploaded.
Missy | February 10, 2005
I have not been carrying my camera around with me. Shame on me. But Toby & his lovely wife Mihow (Toby is lovely, too, but in a manly way) take the hobby more seriously than me and this photo he took of me, when I was visiting during the snowstorm weekend, is evidence that not all photographs of myself are bad. And don’t miss Mihow’s dailies here. There’s usually more at Mihow.com.
(P.S. The interview went fine, even if I felt it wasn’t a personal best–I had to get up kind of early today, so my tongue felt heavy & my brain ill-equipped, but I am my worst critic. Long day. Nice people. That’s all I can freely say for now.)
Missy | February 4, 2005
My tax return is filed. Do you hate me? In celebration, I ordered season 2 of The Wire from Amazon. (Actually, these two events are completely unrelated. I came home today red-eyed and slobbery–which is to say exhausted, not drunk–from a very busy but highly productive work week and decided to check out my own Wishlist. I technically completed my tax return last night immediately following the receipt of the last of my necessary materials in the mail. I’m sure there’s a word for people like me.)
Missy | February 2, 2005
Next Thursday I will be taking a day trip up to New York City because….I have an interview! I have informed the relevant people including (in no particular order of importance) my boss, my mom, and my dance teacher, which is why I feel comfortable posting about it now, although I’m afraid I am unwilling to comment further. The reason I’m even bringing it up is because, disappointingly, I have to offload a ticket to Swan Lake at the Kennedy Center that night. The performance is being taped for PBS and will feature ABT principal dancers Angel Corella (that’s AHN-hell co-RAY-uh) and Gillian Murphy (pronounced like it reads…although now that I think about it, I’ve heard ‘Gillian’ with both a soft and hard G. Kevin?) I already hit up Craigslist, but I figure it couldn’t hurt to leave a post here as well. Contact me if you are interested and we can work out some kind of deal. The seat is terrific: dead-center front of the first tier (B-210).
