I'm usually resistant to my friends' Livejournal memes, but not this time (Blame Capricious!):

-I am currently single. -I am currently suffering from a broken heart.
-I am embarrassed to be seen with my mother or father.
-I am good at styling other people's hair.
-I am left handed.
-I am married.
-I am obsessed with my LJ.
-I am online 24/7, even as an away message.
-I am procrastinating by filling out this list.
-I am resentful that I have to grow up.
-I am very shy around the opposite/same sex.
-I am, or was, pigeon-toed.
-I bite my nails. Not any more!
-I can be paranoid at times.
-I carry a weapon with me everywhere I go.
-I collect picture frames.
-I consider myself to be a "nerd".
-I currently have a crush on someone.
-I currently regret something that I have done.
-I curse frequently.
-I do not believe people are inherently good or evil.
-I don't hate anyone.
-I enjoy country music.
-I enjoy jazz music.
-I enjoy smoothies.
-I enjoy talking on the phone.
-I have a car.
-I have a cell phone.
-I have a hard time paying attention at school.
-I have a hidden talent.
-I have a hobby.
-I have a lot to learn.
-I have a pet.
-I have a secret that I am ashamed to reveal.
-I have a tendency to fall for the "wrong" girl/guy.
-I have all my grandparents, none of them have died.
-I have at least one brother and/or sister.
-I have avoided work to play with my livejournal.
-I have been in a real relationship.
-I have been in a threesome.
-I have been rejected by someone.
-I have been the "psycho ex" in a past relationship.
-I have been to an anime convention.
-I have been to another country.
-I have been to Europe.
-I have been to Las Vegas.
-I have been told that I am very smart.
-I have been told that I have an unusual sense of humor.
-I have broken a bone. Fingers count, right?
-I have Caller I.D. on my phone.
-I have changed a diaper.
-I have changed a lot over the past year.
-I have cheated on a significant other.
-I have counted down the days until the summer.
-I have dated a close friend's ex.
-I have dated someone 10 years (or more) older or younger than me.
-I have done something illegal.
-I have friends who have never seen my natural hair color.
-I have gone scuba diving.
-I have had major surgery.
-I have had my hair cut within the last week.
-I have had sex with someone I was not in a relationship with.
-I have had the cops called on me.
-I have kissed someone I knew I shouldn't.
-I have kissed someone of the same sex.
-I have made a move on a friend's significant other in the past.
-I have mood swings. Wheeee!
-I have no idea what I want to do for the rest of my life.
-I have passed out drunk at least once in the past 6 months.
-I have rejected someone before.
-I have seen "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy All on the same day.
-I have seen the television show "The O.C."
-I have swam in the ocean.
-I have tried sushi.
-I have tried a drug that is illegal.
-I have watched "Sex and the City".
-I have watched porn movies.
-I have watched the television show "Spongebob Squarepants".
-I know how to shoot a gun.
-I like being the center of attention.
-I like eating Ramen noodles.
-I like my handwriting.
-I like Shakespeare. Oh yeah!
-I like the taste of blood.
-I like to cook.
-I like to sing.
-I like to vacuum.
-I love learning foreign languages.
-I love Michael Jackson.
-I love my friends.
-I love olives.
-I love rain.
-I love sleeping.
-I love to play computer games.
-I love to shop.
-I miss someone right now.
-I own 100 CDs or more.
-I own a home.
-I own and use a library card.
-I play a musical instrument.
-I practice a religion that is not considered "mainstream".
-I read books for pleasure.
-I shave my legs.
-I sleep a lot during the day.
-I strongly dislike math.
-I think Britney Spears is pretty.
-I think long strings of html code look cool.
-I think prostitution should be legalized.
-I think that Pizza Hut makes the best pizza.
-I think the world would be a better place if people just smiled more often.
-I was born in a country other than the USA.
-I watch more TV this year than last year.
-I watch MTV on a daily basis.
-I watch soap operas on a regular basis.
-I wear glasses or contact lenses.
-I will try anything once.
-I work at a job that I enjoy.
-I would classify myself as "ghetto".
-I would get plastic surgery if it were 100% safe, free of cost, and scar-free.
-I like orange kool aid.
-I can name all 7 of the dwarfs from 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs'. Sneezy, Dopey, Happy, Sleepy, Grumpy, and Doc. Oops, short one, but I know all the Fraggles...
-I like being at school.
-I always love wearing sweaters.
-I love water polo.
-I am currently wearing socks.
-I am being nostalgic right now.
-I hate summative season.
-I am tired.
-I love to paint.

I learned a little about myself on this one. For example, I like talking on the phone less than I used to, though I'm still trying to figure out why.

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Heya, so Netflix Friends features are so much more useful when you have more than two netflix friends. Are you on Netflix? Do I know you personally? If so, pelase add me as your netflix friend so we can share the collaboritive filtering fruits of our friendship!

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Talk about moblogging dedication. Heather always has her camera at the ready.

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It's Valentine's Day (in case the V-day Google logo didn't remind you) and Rachel's put up some really nifty Valentine-themed desktop pictures to keep you in the mood for months!

If candy hearts are too impersonal a medium to express your true sentiments but you still want to say 'I love you' with sugar, then start planning for next year by reading Andrew and Kelli's new blog, Lovescool: for the love of dessert.

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Rachel and I are hosting our housewarming party in a few hours, and it's the biggest party either of us has ever had. From an evite of about 140 people we'll probably have about 100 guests, including most of my family, a whole lot of coworkers, and friends I've had for ages. It's like every part of my life is converging into our new house for one night only.

I read an article a few weeks ago (damn I wish Google Desktop Search worked with Firefox so I could google it and give you a link, but I just don't have enough context to find it on my own) about the 'successful New York party' and the importance of a diverse range of age, occupation, political views, and socioeconomic background. Tonight is probably the biggest gathering of people I know and cherish that I've ever seen, and should certainly warm our house.

Rachel's really smart. She clued in really early on how much has to go in to a good-sized shindig, and has been doing crazy amounts of work in getting all the ducks in a row -- damn those wandering ducks! -- and I hope I've been her able-bodied helper goose. Just in the last few days it's started settling in how this is as big a production as the move itself was. Now, each time someone IMs me or drops by my desk asking "So, are you ready for tonight?" I feel a little dumber at how long it took me to grasp what everyone else knows. I mean there's putting together a movie night for 10 of your friends when the biggest problem is where to order the pizza from, and then there's the kindo f party where we're just one small step down from having to find a band. And if I'd thought about getting that 50s bluegrassy + Theramin band we saw last year at an SFMOMA event, we probably would have. After all, an eclectic gathering needs eclectic music.

Anyhow, that's all I've time for right now. Tomorrow we get to continue the fun with a large contingent of the family going to the Cal-stanford game though, especially since Craig can't make it this year, we Cal fans are going to be seriously outnumbered. True we have the home-field advantage, but we'll be sitting inthe Stanford section. (I've never heard anyone yell "Take off that blue shirt!" before...)

That's it for now. Much to do... So much!

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I love that my friends have weblogs. I love it because I keep in touch with friends who might otherwise slip out of mind for weeks at a time. I love it because reading about each others' lives helps us keep the common experience so important to keeping relationships alive across distance and time. I love it because there's nothing like sitting in a cabin on a cruise ship coming into port (and cellphone range), logging in to Bloglines on my Treo, and seeing a close friend's blog post with a title like this: There's really nothing like vomiting on your own toes in a BART station to make you feel like an alcoholic. Then, for completeness, the very next post was from Ammy's blog: And then there was the flu.

Blacksheep insists that she was 'with alcohol' and not 'with virus' but I'm going to ask her how she feels today. To top it all off, at the time of reading these posts I was 'with seasickness' but not to so large a degree that my own blog needed adding to the annals of upchuckiness.

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Okay, okay, my bad. Rachel's birthday was Saturday, May first, May Day, Beltane, whatever you want to call it.

We had friends over and had a wonderful time in our backyard, our sanctuary, our hummingbird paradise. Rachel pulled off a wonderful party (I helped a little) and everyone had a great time. Rachel even went above and beyond and took some absolutely beautiful portraits of the guests as we spent hours talking, watching the hummingbirds scurry, the light fade, and the glow of food and fun continue on after bringing the party inside. Six hours never passed so quickly.

Happy birthday, Rachel! May this year be your best yet, and may you bask in the glow of all those who love you as I do. Okay, well not as I do but, you know, love you lots, too.

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In a remarkable feat of sticktoitiveness, today I post Ammy to Randompixel:

Hah. and the real Ammy didn't think I could do it. :-P

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I now have 90 sites in my daily (nee multi-hourly) RSS readthrough. At the moment they're all in a flat heirarchy except for a folder of sites pertaining to Gmail (Battelle, outer-court, etc.) and I've been meaning to sort them into folders by topic, 'friends', 'blogosphere', 'news' etc., but I just realized the important categorization I should make is 'sites where I'm expected to have read every post' and everything else.

For example, I have about 14 friends who, when they post on their blogs, have the same expectation that their friends will have read the post as if they had sent the post in email to the friends. While skimming through the roughly 400 posts a day, it would be nice if I had this 'must' list so I could stay in low gear in one folder, then return to 'skim' gear for the rest.

Then again, maybe I should set up Bloglines to email new items in the 'must' blogs to me, where I can filter them to a 'friendblogs' label and address them as if they really were emails sent to me.

This would also let me search past posts, restricted either by label, by specific friend, or both, so I can 'catch up' quickly when I missed something important...

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[Like the previous one, this is also Rachel's post. I'm hosting this for Rachel on my blog while she puts the finishing touches on her own. --KF]

A little calmer now, I have to think clearly about just how lucky I am. Kevin stayed home tonight from poker to comfort me. While he quite often seeks some time alone, I get that most of the day I feel a bit better if he is in the house. Just knowing that if i need him, he is there, helps so much. We watched a movie and pigged out just as those stressed and depressed should do. And I am thinking about my day a little more rashly now.

Yeah, I'm scared and unnerved about this unknown possibility right now. But we are very sure its not cancer; and its prolly nothing even that bad. Whatever it is, or isn't we will take care of it, and in the end I'm really lucky. Lucky it wasn't worse and lucky to have a wonderful, caring partner who helps me so very much.

[No, I didn't bribe her to say this. She's my sweetie.--KF]

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[This is Rachel's post. I'm hosting this for Rachel on my blog while she puts the finishing touches on her own. --KF]

So I don't talk to many people about most really personal things, I do talk a lot... there are just many things most people never hear from me. However I feel like I need to talk about this, for my own sake.

I had a normal gynecological exam about 3 weeks ago. Everything came back fine on all of my tests and I'm a healthy little girl. However during my breast exam the student who is also working with me found something. She showed it to the main doc and they discussed and talked with me and decided that it was interesting.

I should state that I have cystic breasts to begin with. I guess all that means is that in general there are really small beads or cysts that are normal for me and can be found all over within my breasts. They change size depending on fluids and the time of the month and when you touch them they are kind of rolly polly and all moveable and stuff. When they found this particular bump though it was much larger than the others. Deciding that since I was only one week away from my period which is a time when those things can be larger, they asked me to come in 10 days after my period to double check this particular bump.

So today I went back. I didn't have to do anything but get my breasts examined again. During the exams it was decided that the bump from the last time had not changed size. This bump does seem to be movable, which is good news since a cancerous lump is NOT movable, however it hadn't changed at all. The up news was that there seemed to be another bump which mirrored my first one. That bump hadn't been there the last time, but I am told that the fact that their is a mirror is a sign of normality.

Laying on a bed with a woman on each side of you both of them rubbing around on your breasts and discussing abnormalities is an uncomfortable and also kind of numbing experience. Both women are really nice, and I like seeing them very much, however that doesn't make the whole situation feel better. What was decided was that they just don't know what it is. They are nearly positive its not cancerous. Most other things (at least that they told me) found in breasts are benign. And the fact that I'm not yet 26 makes my risk of anything really low. However this little bump worries them enough that I have to go back in another month to have it looked at again. If at that point the bump is bigger or even the same size I will be having an ultra-sound on it. If it is smaller than all the other cysts in my body and we don't need to do anything.

As of yet I have not done any research since I only just came back from the doctors and wanted to get my thoughts down right now. They continually assured me there was nothing to worry about, however it seems odd to me that we are set on finding out what it is, if its nothing.

The other thing that hit me a little bit was that when deciding when to ultra-sound my doc said she felt okay waiting another month since I was so young. If there is nothing to worry about, even if I was older why would it matter if we wait a month? Maybe I am reading too much into this. I really don't think that they are lying to me or anything, I have to state again that I really like these doctors and feel comfortable talking to them. I'm just really not sure what to think and I feel like this is a touchy and scary area to have to think about.

I really and truly welcome any comments or discussion about mine or other similar situations from other women or men. I feel like maybe if I talk this out in a positive way with others, I will feel better.

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Wow, I really feel for Derek and Heather today. One of their Chihuahuas, Tigger, died in the park today. This sucks so much.

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So yesterday Google soft-launched Orkut, a new online community site along the lines of Friendster and Tribe.

Like Tribe, Orkut supports communities, but this is still a starting point. I expect it'll get better as it grows. The site's launched invite-only, so only members can invite new users. Rather than try to figure everyone I know, I'm happy to invite Fury readers who I know even the littlest bit (you know, old friends, the frequent commetners, stuff like that).

Drop me an email if you're interested and I haven't invited you yet!

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Saturday was the Firefly Farewell party. A little over a year after Fox cancelled the show, twelve of us got together and watched the three unaired episodes that were released with the DVD box-set of the first (and only) season.

Leave it to Fox to cancel a show that's popular enough to justify a DVD release, and to do it when there are still completed episodes in the can.

At any rate, the party was great. The episodes were teriffic. We're all hoping the rumors that Joss is writing a movie script for Firefly are true.

Before the party a handfull of us had a TiVo Upgrade Party, replete with a trip to Fry's and subsequent sortie to Radio Shack. Paul and Karen now have 139-hour TiVos where before they had only 14 hours. Quite a difference I imagine.

Me, I was planning on upping my 80-hour to 200 hours, but talking with Ammy and Rachel the night before, I realized that about 80% of the space on my current TiVo is being used to hold shows I want to save, some of them over a year old. If I upgraded to 200 hours, eventually I'd be in the same position, effectively having a 15-hour TiVo with an additional 185 hours of online saved content.

Rather than spend money to upgrade the TiVo as a stopgap, I decided to give a DVD-Recorder a try. With the ability to offload my shows to DVD, I could again have a true 80-hour TiVo, as well as a way to offload and distribute shows to those who missed them, like when the cast of The Simpsons was on Inside the Actor's Studio.

Much of yesterday was spent rewiring all the AV equipment in the living room (Cable box, TV, TiVo, DVD-R, VCR (Don't ask the obvious question, please. I'm a geek. That's why.), Stereo Receiver and 5.1 decoder, Playstation 2, Gamecube), and going to dinner with Rachel.

Rachel and I celebrated our 1-year anniversary yesterday. One year ago we met for the first time when she picked me up at the Pittsburgh airport, coming home from winter break. A year later and we're going stronger than ever, and celebrated this by having wonderful French cuisine at Cafe Brioche, capped by an absolutely amazing chocolate souffle and blackberry cobbler a la mode.

This week is going to be all about rearranging furniture upstairs and redefining mental spaces. In medieval europe it was customary for neighbors to periodically walk their borders together, to establish in their head exactly where they agreed one property ended and the other began. Forget about GPS; back then not even good fences made good neighbors, because fencing off a 500-acre plot was an unheard-of amount of labor just to define a boundary, hence the walking of the lines.

Every once in a while it's good to walk the lines in several areas of life. It's annual review time at work, a walking of the lines, a defining of workplace scopes and boundaries. 1099s and W-4s are flying through the mail, to help us walk the lines with our government. I want to make a point of spending more 1-on-1 time with my close friends, walking those lines, touring their properties to see how their mental estates have flourished since the last time.

But right now it's work time, and I've got to get to it.

Happy Monday!

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Ammy, Rick, Ali, Mark and Ray are all over for Thanksgiving/Christmas dinner. Amidst stories of cars and road trips, I mentioned that I decided to transfer the GRR ARG license plate for the new car, and the naming began.

Fantasizing and lamenting about the Kayley-Anara sex scenes that start in Anara's boudoir and end up on Kayley's steamy engine room floor, and the proper order of episode presentation to those who have never seen the show, Mark named my car "Reaver," irrevocably and perfectly.

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So hey, it's already Sunday night (err, early Monday morning, that is), and that means it's time for Weekend Update!

This weekend started off early with a trip to see Alegria. A day after getting the (still unnamed) Prius, I was happy to trek up to downtown San Francisco for the show. The navigation system was fun to play with. It's actually a really elegant system. My masters project at CMU was designing next-generation car navigation and I was happy, yet sad, to see that many of our innovations were already in the works and available in this system. Nevertheless there are several serious usability flaws in the interface, but that's the meat of another post. I'm planning on writing a Prius sitelet, going in to detail on each of its systems from a user perspective.

Alegria was fantastic. It was Rachel's second time seeing Cirque du Soleil, and my second time seeing Alegria (I saw it 9 years ago when it first came to San Francisco). We sat in literally the first row (well, except for one person sitting in front of Rachel) and were close enough to touch the stage. The acts were amazing, all the more for being able to make and maintain eye contact with those characters who come close to the audience, and actually being under the flying trapeze. Cirque was, and always will be, magic to me.

Rachel's currently stage-managing SteinBeck's production of Santaland Diaries by David Sedaris. She got one of the producers to cover for her on Thursday so she could see the circus (we had tickets before she ever accepted the job and she told them it was a condition to accepting the gig). In compensation, I agreed to handle the box office for Friday's show. Ali and Mark came down to see the show and act as impromptu ushers. I sat back in the booth with Rachel as she ran the show, and had a great time watching a really funny play. I even unexpectedly got to see one of my old Berkeley drama teachers, John Fisher. After the performance was over and we had cleaned up and locked down the theater, the four of us went to the diner across the street and had a nice wind-down before I drove Ali and Mark back to their car at Orinda Bart and Rachel and I went to Emily's to visit with Kisa while Emily's out of town. We finally left Em's at about 2am (gotta take kitty time where you can!) and got to sleep well after 3am.

Saturday I made a serious faux pas. Rachel and I had been planning out the things we needed to accomplish in order to pull off Thanksgiving/Christmas dinner at our place on Monday night. Karen and I were comped to see the play Saturday night and Rachel and I realized that Saturday would be the only time we'd be able to go to Dickens Faire this year, albeit for only 3 or 4 hours. Working on our morning errands, I got a call from Karen to coordinate our plans for the day and it was suddenly clear to me that I'd seriously screwed up and doublebooked. In my head I thought Karen and I were seeing the play together, but I realized that when I didn't get to go to Dickens with her 1-1 last weekend, I hoped we could spend a whole day this weekend hanging out with her and that Saturday was that day. Serious oops. Damnit.

On the bright side, our doing chores late into the morning meant we were home when Mom and the girls from her chorus called to sing us a happy holidays. That was really special, and I wish I'd spent a little less time trying to prosletyse others into getting singing holiday greetings and spent a little more time placing orders for my friends. As it was the ladies were there singing later than they had in years, and I'm glad I didn't make them stay any later. Thanks, Mom!

Dickens Fair was a lot of fun. I got to see a lot of friends I almost never get to see otherwise, and I got to dance with a fair number of them. I had a weird realization, talking with Rachel, about how it would be so hard for me to work Dickens because it's during 'the busy season' and I suddenly realized that there really is a social season, almost as well defined as football season, and following almost the same calendar. I just know that if I were a girl I wouldn't wear white shoes after Labor Day because they'd get scuffed up with all the dancing that goes on almost every weekend after September.

Met Karen for the show (Rachel and I were running late because of the inexplicable 6:15pm Saturday gridlock before 7th street on 101). We walked around and talked for a while, then went in to see the show. The audience was more 'on' than they were for the Friday show, probably because it wasn't raining on Saturday and it was a packed house to boot. I liked the show even more the second time and Karen thought it was a riot. Ammy and Rick are seeing the show on Thursday and I have to decide today or tomorrow whether I can drive up there and see the show for a third time.

We drove Karen to her car at San Leandro bart after the show and again went down to spend some kitty-time with Kisa. Got back around midnight or so, did some cleaning and relaxing, and went to sleep, with a 7:15am alarm set.

Sunday Rachel and I started off with a visit to Watercourse Way for a 30-minute soak (in Two Stones if you're curious) followed by a pair of hour massages that left us both relaxed and my hair looking like a honky version of Don King.

Sunday morning shopping on University Avenue including a full tour through Restoration Hardware, the Apple Store, Gyros at a good greek place, and then off to IKEA, Pier 1, another Pier 1, and Target. The it was back home for cleaning and relaxing for a few minutes before Rachel had to take off to prep for Sunday's performance and I stayed here sorting papers and relaxing a bit.

Now it's nearly 2am, and I'm off to sleep so I can work hard tomorrow, take off a little earlier than usual (meetings permitting) and help Rachel with the Turkey and whatever else needs helping with.

On deck for this week are the special Monday dinner, Tuesday TiVo Poker Night, Wednesday Return of the King (actually, in the early afternoon, but then probably back to work for most of the evening). Thursday is when Ammy and Rick are seeing the play, and I know I have Friday plans as well. Saturday is Gaskell's Christmas Ball, and Sunday I'm heading to Carmel for family Christmas.

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Okay, the Clif's Notes version of my last five days (take two).

Thursday I was signed up to go to a philanthropic luncheon and in the evening join up with Ammy and Karen to see War Daddy, the play that Rachel was stage managing at the Zeum.

Midday Wednesday I knew that things would get too busy so I bowed out of the luncheon and had to postpone going to the play until this weekend. It turned out it was a good thing that I cancelled because I ended up staying at work all day and all night on thursday, not coming home at all, and grabbing a quick 90 minutes of sleep in a coworker's office. First time pulling an all-nighter at Google, and hopefully not a frequent occurance.

Incidentally, we're moving offices this weekend, and cardboard boxes and stickers were passed around earlier in the week. Anyhow, I worked pretty much solid until 5pm when I found out that 'be packed by the time you leave for the weekend' actually meant 'be packed by 6 when the movers start moving' (my fault, didn't read the faq closely enough). So, by 6:15 my GoogleLife is in boxes and stickered, and I'm out the door.

I was supposed to go to Liz's birthday/housewarming party on Friday night, but running on only 90 minutes sleep in the previous 40 hours, I knew I wasn't fit to drive the 140 miles to Sacramento, especially when I knew I'd have to drive back that evening to be ready to go to the Big Game (Cal vs. Stanford) on Saturday morning. So I went home and tried to sleep for about an hour before waking up to answer the phone.

After that I didn't get back to bed until after midnight, my circadian rhythms in direct opposition to my serotonin levels, making everything feel a little distant. Friday Night Waltz was at the same time, and 100 miles closer, but I didn't even think of going. Home was my final destination for the night.

Saturday morning Karen and I made an easy journey to Stanford, thanks to Rachel dropping us off on the way to work. Good thing to, since this is the first Stanford Big Game in decades without CalTrain access, since they've shut the train down on weekends for the last year and a half and didn't change the schedule for the event. (This is stupid because the way most public transit agencies increase ridership is when they introduce new potential riders to the system when they do one-off events like games and concerts. If you only run on weekdays, then only those people who use your train for commuting find out about your train. Chicken, I'd like you to meet egg.) Anyhow, Palo Alto was a resultant mess that we got to glide through relatively unscathed.

The game was a lot of fun. Both teams played badly at first, but it was nice to come from behind and pound the other team. This was also the first time I'd actually gone to a Big Game as a bona-fide alumnus. Karen wrote up a bit more on the game and the aftermath.

Karen dropped me off at the Zeum at 7:27pm for a 7:30pm curtain and I'm so glad I made it on time, though I'm so sorry that my own planning ended up making Karen sick so that she couldn't go. The show didn't actually start for another 10 minutes or so, so I even got to catch my breath.

Watching theatre alone is such a different experience for me than watching in a group. Somehow experiencing art with others, I feel that I have to immediately encapsulate my feelings and opinions into communicable nuggets, like I'm writing an essay, or at least that I have to have formed an opinion by the time the curtain falls. Seeing a play on my own I feel freer to experience it, rather than judge it.

While experiencing the play I realized a few things about my own approach to creative endeavors. I don't like anything I make to go out into the world until it's perfect. I realized on Saturday that this isn't because I'm so much a perfectionist, as it is that the kinds of art I produce are ones that stay up for a while, where imperfections are more glaring, and where the work is such an intentional act that improvisation is almost impossible. The musician can change a riff on the fly, or a painter can be very free with their brush, knowing both that the randomness and carefree effect can boost the work, and that the act itself is quick. Inspiration does play a large role in web design, but improvisation is harder to pull off, since every effect on the page is time-consuming enough to be deliberate by nature, and the best that one can hope for is for carefree inspiration that they can hold on to while transforming it into code.

Even then, if you make tools that people will use thousands of times, utility has to take a front seat to free-expression, and while aesthetics are vital, possibly even more important than in the more ephemeral disciplines of the performing arts, they're there to indicate the piece's function, or to create an emotional space to frame the work in.

It's probably a good thing I don't go to plays alone very often.

But even so, all that said, this is one of the reasons I so enjoyed riding Amtrak to and from Yahoo, more than a year ago. Setting myself to start writing in Oakland and to have a finished piece by Santa Clara, I started to see writing as an impromptu performance art, instead of a crafted and re-crafted tailored work to be scrutinized. I don't expect anyone to read what I write twice, or to write about what I write.

Back to my weekend, I enjoyed the play. I was impressed by many of the youth actors, though I felt that the playwriting lacked significant differentiation in most of the characters' dialogue. I love the Zeum's theater. It's just intimate enough to saddle the line between a performance to the audience and a performance with the audience. And of course it was technically great. After all, it had a great stage manager. :-)

Today was a day of relative sloth. There were many small things that needed to be done around the house, and Rachel, angel that she is, got the day started for us with omelettes in bed! Add on my organizing and archiving files off my powerbook before installing OS X 10.3, catching up on a little TV, a little email, and a little websurfing, and suddenly it's after midnight and I'm wondering where the day went.

In the morning I'm heading over to the new office to unpack my boxes and set up the computer, find out whether the new office has a bathroom closer than my old cube's 79 paces. We're right next to the kitchen area, which means far too many snacks in far too close proximity. Virtually nothing will get accomplished Monday, what with everyone unpacking, learning the lay of things, and with so many of us making ready for early Thanksgivings.

Rachel and I are flying out tomorrow night for Los Angeles where we'll stay a night before flying to Kauai with the greater family for Thanksgiving in Hawaii. It'll be nice to get away.

For the past few weeks I've been feeling a little growing ennui, especially when I'm alone. I don't know if I'm experiencing it more now, or if I'm just noticing it more now, but as I sit at home when Rachel's off shopping, visiting Nym, or off running a show, I sometimes compare the mental me to the person I'd expect I'd be and I seem muted. I'm not looking for sympathy, but I feel that acknowledging this alteration is probably an important step in changing it, and so I put it here to pin this acknowledgement down.

So yeah, Tomorrow night is LA, then Kauai, then back to LA and back here on an unspecified flight.

Overall, life is very, very good. Trouble is, I can usually identify problems and fix them when things aren't going their best. Right now though, I feel like fixing the problem involves letting go of something I don't yet want to let go of, because I feel like if I loose my grip I'll forget what it was like to hold on to it.

I'm sorry if this doesn't make any sense to newer readers, or even those who have been here for a while. Maybe it makes a lot of sense. I don't really know. I'm just looking forward to Thanksgiving and Christmas. I have so much to be thankful for, and though I may have less now, I value it so much more.

Anyhow, next week Rachel starts work on her next gig, a production of the Santaland Diaries, I have my company party, we might get to go to Dickens Fair, and then the next week I'll be getting my new car, and then it's only a few more weeks to Christmas.

And, as I've thought every Sunday night since I came back to the Bay Area three months ago, I know I'm lucky when I remember that tomorrow's Monday and I need to go to work, and it fills me with excitement.

I hope y'all had a good weekend.

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Wow, I've actually been afraid to post here for a few days, what with all the tension and expectations! But this is just so cool, I had to break radio silence.

A week or so ago I commented on how I'm thinking about buying a utilikilt (argh, or was that on Blacksheep's blog?). Anyhow, Utilikilt is having a contest for user-created commercials, touting the advantages that a utilikilt offers.

My friend Rick and others went off a few weeks ago and made a commercial that got posted to the contest site yesterday. Check out "It Works". I think it rocks, and I really hope it wins.

Go Rick!

Comments?

Before there were any dotcom stories I used to ride the bus to junior high school every day. Attending a magnet school, I and most of my classmates were bussed in from outside the school's area.

One of my best friends in junior high, and pretty much my only local friend, was Josh. Josh lived a few blocks away from me and together we explored the depths of geekdom. He taught me how to use two 10-sided dice (err, 2D10) to simulate a hundred-sided die and I'd challenge him to read tiny passages from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and time me to see if I could find the passage within 60 seconds. We both camped out in the computer lab (ahem, back of the math classroom (with a teacher I didn't discover until three years later was a post-op transsexual (not that there's anything wrong with that))) every lunch, playing Sands of Egypt and Hunt the Wumpus on donated CoCos, a Kaypro II, and an Osborne.

We weren't alone. We were part of a cadre of geeks. Erik, Vincent, and a few others. One thing that set Josh and I apart was our innate competitiveness. We'd always try to one-up the other. I'd let him play with my Colecovision, and a month later he's show me his Intellivision. We both took the SAT in 9th grade.

Nevertheless, there were differences between us. I had a self-deprecating bent, and Josh didn't ever let up. I would admit to vulnerabilities or insecurities as a part of who I am, the step backwards that can lead to steps forward in relationships. I still do this even now, though only with a few friends who I know are either ultra-supportive (Karen, Rachel) or who will be critical (Ammy, Ali), and I expose that side of me to one friend or another, depending on whether I need a confidence boost or a reality check.

Back then I didn't know myself very well, and I certainly didn't understand other people as well as I do now. Back then I based my sense of self-worth on the respect of those around me. What thirteen-year-old doesn't? At any rate, in the ninth grade Josh and my relationship changed. Maybe it was that I wasn't confident enough in my geekiness, or just that I didn't feel right sequestered away in the 'computer lab' or that I started dating that year, but the rest of the group tightened up, and as they endured the perpetual social ridicule of the non-geeks, they turned that antipathy towards me, the sub-geek.

This shift turned out to have significant consequences in my life. The next year when we all went to high school I left the magnet program to go to a high school with a very strong all-around AP program, but not a hyperfocus on one area, as is typical of the high school magnet programs. Josh and that group went to a math and science magnet. Though he still lived closer to me than any of my friends in high school, we had virtually no communication. We'd see each other rarely at competitive events like Academic Decathlon, where we each represented our schools, but we really didn't do anything more than measure each other up.

Ironically, when it came time to go to college, I intended to leave the computer arena and focus on liberal arts but, through twists of fate to be chronicled in a later post, I ended up going to Berkeley, sealing my fate firmly in the forthcoming dotcom bubble. Josh went to Reed, studying math.

Years passed, school gave way to work and back to school and back to work and back to school. One day about three or four years ago, as I do at least a few times each year, I googled friends from my former lives to see what they're up to. I was surprised to note that Josh had finished his degree and come to Berkeley to get his PhD in math. At that time I was in the 'school' sweep of the pendulum and shared a campus with him, but I never looked him up. It might have been because, with only one current friend I'd made before meeting Josh, I'd completely moved on in my life, or it might have been because I knew that we'd instantly fall into that 'sass that hoopy frood' cooler-than-thou modality, and not only would it be sad to instantly devolve ten years, but I'd probably lose, not having even finished my bachelor's degree. Another year later I noticed he got engaged at Lake Tahoe and later got married.

Josh, like Denise, Carina, John, Steve, Jeff, Dahlia, Dana, Rhett, Ethan, Nellie, and so many other faded friends, only entered my mind in the abstract, thinking about how lives are like branches, winding, sheltering, separating and diverging from common origins.

So I was taken by surprise when I got a call from my mom a few days ago, asking if I knew that Josh was working at Google.

Way.

I went to the intranet and looked him up, and there he was. It turns out he finished his PhD in May and started at Google a few weeks before I did. Different building.

The first impulse involved dropping by his cube to say hi, flashing back to the scene in Hitchhikers when Ford and Arthur are sucked on to the Heart of Gold and Ford walks in to the bridge, intent on outcooling Zaphod. To follow that storyline though, his cubemate would probably end up being Maggie or someone similarly astronomically improbable, and the whole phenomenon is better left unobserved.

My second thought was that he mush have known that I was working here. In my six weeks here I've sent out a few company-wide emails, and was introduced at an all-hands meeting. Then again, he might have said hi and I might have just not recognized him. How's that for playing it cool?

I decide to loop in my cubemate and tell her the story. She asks if I can show her a picture of him. "I've met him! He was asking about you!" She goes on to tell me that he told her he talked to me but doesn't think I recognized him, and that now he'd have to plan some elaborate situation to surprise me with his presence...

I should probably just drop by next time I'm in his building. I'll just be sure not to ask him how he did on his GREs.

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It's been the subhead of a site I visit frequently for the past month, yet the dying just doesn't seem to stop.

Volt, a coworker of Ammy's died over the weekend after slipping in the shower and cutting his arm on the glass. He called 9-1-1, but died before the paramedics got there. He was 34.

There's hearing about people you never heard of dying ("Two shot in a school in Minnesota" or "Baby killed yesterday by stray bullet in Bayfair" (links omitted because, really, why do you need to read that?)), then there's celebrities dying (as they seem to every other day nowadays), then there's people your friends know, and then people you know. Why has it been happening on every level, most notably to young and hitherto healthy people?

It's really, really starting to get to me.

Oh, to balance the freak-vibe to friends and family reading this, one of the reasons I'm leaning toward the Prius is that the package I want comes with front, side, and side-curtain airbags. All the better to save me with.

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Okay, a whole lot of small things:

• Ammy's put a bid on a house last night. They have until 8pm today to accept or decline. It's a big underbid, so who knows, but she's really excited.
• I picked up a couple of original TiVos for $50 apiece (employee discount on outdated inventory), and I'm looking to use them for some cool projects, but I'm not sure what yet. One I want to work on is a TiVo for radio. Further details will follow.
• Rachel and her mom arrived in town on Wednesday after a 3500 mile road trip from Rochester. Rachel's staying with me until she finds work and an apartment, probably around the end of the year-ish. Ellie's going back home on Tuesday, and she and Rachel will be doing sightseeing before then.
• I'm new car shopping. I've had the new car bug since June, when I realized that Mutant is over six years old. Several years ago I promised myself that I wouldn't get a new car until I had a place to put it, since her life on the streets has caused Mutant to age faster than I'd like. Now my townhouse has a real bona-fide garage with a garage door opener and everything, so I guess it's time! I've been researching cars for the past three months, originally focusing on an Accord or Passat, then gravitating towards something more utilitarian like a Honda CR-V, but then refocused on a Subaru Forrester and, after looking at them, changed to the Subaru Outback. I've been keeping tabs on the new Prius though, and the more I see, the better it sounds. I'll have to adjust to the equivalent of a 104hp engine, but other than that the Prius looks really good. Most of my hybrid concerns have been addressed in this model, and I'll be very keen to take a look at them when they arrive in showrooms on October 17th. 60mph City, 51mpg Highway is nothing to sneeze at, and the optional Bluetooth integration with my new cellphone (I got the Ericsson T616 by the way, but more on that later) is also pretty sweet.
• Karen's car got broken into a few days ago. They took her stereo and (nonsensically) the controls for her air conditioning. Basically the whole center panel.
• I need a name for my place. I was thinking about 'Rendezvous' because I have a fully equipped guest bedroom and wanted to play up the 'I know it's a long drive from the East Bay, but come on down 'cause there's crash space' angle, infused with a little bit of the Three's Company theme song. Now I'm over it, but I'm still looking for a good name that's not based on a trendy fantasy or sci-fi book or movie.
• I really, really love my job.
• Kisa's still at Emily's place. I thought it made sense that, since Emily's living by herself while Chris is down in Los Angeles until who-knows-when, we shouldn't switch Kisa to my place until I was living alone. It didn't seem fair to take Kisa when I already have a roommate keeping me company.
• Rachel's cat Nym is being fostered by Ammy and Rick, who live about a mile away from me. If you're wondering about the seeming contradiction, it's that Kisa was carefully chosen as one of the few breeds of cat I'm not allergic to. Nym, unfortunately, is not, so while Rachel's staying with me, Nym would drive me (literally, though not figuratively) to tears after a day or so. Nym's having some adjustment issues at Ammy's, mostly because she doesn't yet know what a great cat-lover Ammy is, and how happy Amy is to have Nym around after Tigger passed away less than a year ago.
• I'm reading Cory Doctorow's "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom." It's a very interesting story, and not what i expected. Cory's probably known just as much or more for editing the fabulous site BoingBoing!
• Listening to Aphex Twin alone at work in the morning creates a really interesting mood.
• Last week I added Google AdSense ads to Fury. They make me about $1.50 a day, or nearly enough to pay for Fury's hosting! If you're thinking, 'Where are the ads? I don't see them!' it's because I love you, the regular reader.
• Gah. I really should link up a lot of things in this post, but if I'm too lazy to have seperated this post into the five it warrants, then I'm too lazy to go look up hyperlinks all over the web.

So, that's it in a nutshell! Any questions?

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So, due to the exigencies of having only one moving buddy for Sunday and the overall exhaustion of helping Karen and Crystal move house on Saturday, the great Berkeley Storage Space to Mountain View Townhouse move will commence one week later, on September 14th.

Banns shall be posted on the morrow, and already I'm sure I'll have the help to pull it off (err, on, then off).

Yesterday, with help from The Ken and The Ken's $1 Van I got a ton of IKEA bookcases from the Abandoned Fortress of Duotude to the townhouse's back patio, where they laid in wait overnight as the landlord moved out on Saturday. Literally, averaging 150lbs apiece, the seven of them together amassed, well, okay, half a ton. (But half a ton is better than none!)

Sunday, Liz, along with the 'Twins's Twenty Dollar Dolly' enabled me to move the pieces into my new living room, where they await the stuff from storage to give their lives purpose. Oh, and as it turns out I will be going to the spanking IKEA, needing an 8 foot glass door to replace the one that broke mid-vanride. (Amazingly, it was the hinge, and not the huge pane of glass, that broke.)

Then there's the van that was filled yesterday in Pittsburgh, which is, on Tuesday, starting its own cross-country journey, ending at my doorstep in 10-14 days time. Then there's the Big Honking TV which I'm selling to Ali and Mark rather than try to wrest from the gravity well in their living room. Then there's the 10 boxes of memory and utility from Dad's house that I will, at some point, have to fetch from California Meridional.

Oh yeah, and a table and chairs from Emily, and a pair of lamps from Ammy and Rick.

It's like an IKEA family reunion, with a few black sheep from Norka Futon and Pier One.

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Well, it's the end of week one, and where else would I be on a Sunday afternoon but at work?

No, it's completely by choice. I wanted to get a head start (sooo many meetings last week) and it's always nice to get a little work done when the office is quiet.

In other news, as my Mom has already mentioned in the comments of the previous posts, I got the two bedroom, 2.5 bath townhouse I really wanted. My landlord-to-be bought the place when it was built, and has lived there for the last 18 years, only now his sister and her husband are relocating to Guadalahara for three or four years, for work purposes, and he's moving in to their house, where he just has to pay utilities.

So moving out of his place and renting it out means he gets to live in a million dollar house in Los Altos and gets to collect rent on his own place in the meantime. Quite the sweet deal.

Sweet for me too, since it means I'm living in a townhouse worth nearly a half-million (gak!). It has beautiful new hardwood floors and the place has been kept-up perfectly. I get to move in a week from today!

Last night my cousins Steve and Susan, Jill, and Randy and Debbie were all in town at the same time, like some planetary alignment. (Well, Jill lives in Palo Alto, so that's no huge coincidence.) I came over for dinner and to hang out with the next generation. I was the only one there without kids!

Spending time with them, I felt closer to them than in a long time. I'm absolutely going to make a point of spending more time with Jill and the kids, in addition to driving down to LA more often.

Stuff stuff stuff stuff. So come Sunday I'l have the keys to an empty living space, and I'll need to fill it. My stuff from Pittsburgh should be in a truck and on it's way before the end of the week, but in the meantime I have a two-bedroom apartment's worth of stuff in storage in Berkeley, and here and there in a few friends' houses. I'm going to take a look at getting a U-Haul to trundle the furniture and boxes down from Berkeley to Mountain View, or I could hire movers. I've got to go to the space and do a little accounting of what I have, what I want, and what, if anything, I'll need to leave in storage a bit longer.

Then there's the stuff in Los Angeles. The ten days of going through Dad's house with Mom and Susie has yeilded about 10 boxes of 'near-term' items I want to incorporate into my own life, as well as a few more 'long-term' items for when I end up getting a house of my own.

Luckily, the townhouse has a garage that's longer than a car, so I may have some room to put things. Or there's always storage.

This morning was more hangoutage with the cousins, and this evening is friend hangoutage and spaghetti dinner. I meant to get a new cellphone today, realizing that both my phone's form factor (bar of soap) and service provider (T-Mobile) are ill-equipped to serve as my mobile communication solution. I'm interested in trying out the Treo 600, but it doesn't come out until October at the earliest. Now that I'm working full-time again, portable IM and email aren't as important as they were on campus. AT&T has one of the best coverage blankets in the Bay Area, and I'm thinking of the Nokia 3650 or the Ericsson T616. They both have bluetooth, and both have cameras (yeah, a gimick, I know. That is, until I set up the phonecam-to-weblog gateway and can blog pictures on the fly).

I just want a phone that fits in my jeans pocket, and though none of them approach the sveltitude of my old Nokia 8290, that phone only works on Cingular and T-Mobile, both of which share the same spotty network in the Bay Area (unlike in Pittsburgh, where T-Mobile covers you like a bolt of wool!). I'll take a look at the phones in person and give one a 30-day trial. It couldn't be worse than the Sidekick, which dropped my call no les than 5 times in 90 minutes while talking to Rachel today.

Well, that's it for now. Tomorrow is the one-two punch of Plough and Death Guild, which Karen says is okay because everyone expects you to come in bleary-eyed on the Tuesday after Labor Day.

I hope everyone has a nice, calming, fruitful month in September! Don't forget your 'Rabbit, rabbit!' tonight, if you're a latenighter, or in the morning otherwise. You'll thank yourself for it!

Oh yeah, and tomorrow I'll write in and tell you about my unexpected dental visit on Friday, and my plan to save a cherished tooth through sheer will.

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So in a half day I start my first day at Google. So much backblog stuff to write about: the road trip, my sister's birthday party at the Inn of the Seventh Ray, coming back home, apartment hunting (sooo excited now that I have a rental application in at a 2 bedroom townhouse in Mountain View that I'm highly enamored of), house painting at Karen and Crystal's brand new house (they got the keys Friday!) (Crystal just said, apropos of nothing, "We're not just talking about house. We're doing house!") They're incredibly excited, and so am I.

We painted two rooms today, and painted clouds in one of them. It's a fun place.

Okay, now off to dancing, then sleep, then Google, then to see a cottage in case the townhouse doesn't go through, then Plough (more dancing), then sleep, and repeat!

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Okay, I should post more but, for the first time in a year, the time attached to this post is the actual local time right now (about 1:52am) instead of offset by 3 hours because I was on the East coast.

Ammy and I rolled in to Mountain View today just before sundown (funnily enough, most people had it in their heads that we weren't coming in 'till tomorrow) and I promptly took off for San Leandro for a celebratory dinner with Karen and Crystal in honor of their getting the keys for their new house! After getting the tour (the first tour, I'm so honored) all my driving caught up to me and I drove(!) back south to Ammy and Rick's, where I've spent the last two hours looking at apartment listings, balancing monthly rent for comfort, and unsure where the equilibrium will be found, but I have a slew of places to drive by tomorrow (err, today), pretty much all in Mountain View (can we say 'walk to the Googleplex'?) and they tend to center to a few specific neighborhoods, so I'm sure I'll end up driving or walking around those neighborhoods to find places for rent that didn't make it to the Merc's classifieds or Craigslist.

Sunday may involve dancing but definitely involves helping the Danger Twins paint their new Chateau (Mmm... 'Chateau'...).

And of course Monday is the first day of the rest of my life. Go Google!

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One petrified forest, painted desert, meteor crater, sedona dinner, grand canyon sunset, and a hoover dam later, we're in Vegas! We met Rick at the hotel lobby, after we were delayed five minutes by a completely unjustified police pullover (and yes, we got off scott free because my registration is in fact valid).

Tonight is Zumanity, but first there's swimming. It's over 100 degrees and drizzley. I'm gonna immerse myself in water.

Maybe tomorrow I'll try to blog from something other than my sidekick. Taa for now!

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While I've been busy driving and snapping pictures, Ammy's been doing some proper blogging. For those who want details about the hinted-at moving horror story, or details in to what we've been doing since, read Ammy's travelogue of the trip so far.

If you leave comments here, we'll both get them. Happier trails ahead!

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Hey from Albuquerque, where so far we have made three rights and a U-turn, but no left turns. We'll have to make a point of that.

We're at Napoli Coffee, just a few blocks off Interstate 40, where they have free wireless, and really comfy chairs! Oh god, comfy chairs...

Driving's been going great. Yesterday we had our first really long leg of driving, leaving Little Rock in the morning, driving through Oklahoma and into the Texas panhandle before stopping at Amarillo, Texas. It didn't even seem like that long of a day, despite Oklahoma City's sweltering heat and humidity.

Being the pit stop that this is, I don't have time to craft a real journal entry of the trip so far, but I'm attaching a bunch of photos I've taken along the way.

I hope all is well with everyone else. Our plan for now is to make it to the Petrified Forest and stop there, see it in the morning, visit the Meteor Crater 40 miles east of Flagstaff, Arizona, then it's a little up in the air, so long as we make it to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon the following morning (Monday), where we'll spend the day and the night, then head from there to Las Vegas Tuesday morning, pick up Rick at the airport, check in to the MGM Grand, see Zumanity Tuesday evening, and "O" on Wednesday evening. Thursday morning Rick flies home and Ammy and I drive to Los Angeles to spend an evening with my family, then drive up to the SF Bay on Friday morning and afternoon!

Whew! Well, by miles we're well over halfway, and the latter part of the trip should be a little more pampering (though Hot Springs, Arkansas was a nice diversion).

For those who need to reach us, our cells should be a little more friendly now that Oklahoma and Texas are past, though I'm sure the Southwest has its fill of dead zones in the desert.

Oh yeah, Road Trip Photos.

Click for More!

Whew! That's a lot of work for one cafe stop. I think Ammy's giving me some content to post, so you may have some reading to go with the pictures.

Talk to you all soon! Oh, by the way, when you leave comments, I get them in my Sidekick inbox, and we read them from the road. Keep 'em coming!

Comments?

So suddenly the five weeks I had to complete grad school has vaporized to one, two weeks spent in Los Angeles with family, one week back now, and leaving one week early to spend more much-needed time with family.

My life is suddenly thrown into fast-forward, a mixed blessing of keeping busy and of having to work fast enough to stay on my own life's train.

Within the next week I have a bunch of work do do on my masters project, and my independent study project, and I need to pack up my apartment to be ready for movers to come and take it all in their van.

Late next week Rachel and I head to Vancouver, with a 7 hour layover in San Francisco, where we can spend a little time with friends, then a week with family, then flying home from Anchorage by way of a redeye to Atlanta (can you believe there's a plane that goes from Anchorage to Atlanta?) where we'll meet Ammy and hop on another plane to complete the return to Pittsburgh. Then it's two days in Pittsburgh before Ammy and I drive off on a 12 day road trip back to San Francisco, with stops in Los Angeles, Vegas and the Grand Canyon for certain (not in that order), and a bunch of other destinations to be finalized, but likely including Mammoth Caves, Mesa Verde, and the Painted Desert.

Two days later is my first day at Google. Meanwhile I'll be staying with Ammy and Rick for a few weeks (or less) while I find an apartment and tell the movers where to appear with my stuff.

All-told I'll be living in six different environments over the next six weeks. Maybe my internal bolstering preparing for once again changing my total environment has helped a bit in dealing with the unexpected change in my life. I knew I'd be off-kilter, and so perhaps I'm a little more prepared emotionally, though just enough to keep standing, not enough to absorb the blow.

So much to do, and so little time. I need to compartmentalize. I need to make sure that when I leave next Thursday that school is checked off. I need to make sure that when I leave on the road trip, Pittsburgh is checked of. (I mean materially, not personally. Those I love here in the 'burgh will be with me for a long, long time, and do not have little boxes next to their avatars in my mind).

The last 10% is always the hardest.

Here we go!

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Sorry for the dearth of posts. Dad's memorial service was today, and we've all just been incredibly busy. I have so much to tell, to share, but I've been running on only a couple hours sleep a night for a while...

The Los Angeles Times printed an extended obituary in today's paper. We went to the newsstands this evening and they were sold out. If anyone has a copy of this, my family would greatly cherish getting a hold of it. If you have one, please do contact me. We're really appreciate it.

The URL for the online copy, sans picture, is here. (sorrry, LA Times free registration required)

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Thank you Liz. Today I've been thinking about the time so long ago when we sat overlooking Lake Tahoe, and you shared your loss with me.

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My uncle, a long-time writer and storyteller, has lately been writing phenomenal accounts of his life and emailing them to the family. Inspired by his courage to speak in his 'true voice' without concern of tempering accounts for his audience, I want to share a few items from my private journal.

My good friend and former lover, Caroline, passed away in a car accident four years ago, about six months before I started keeping a weblog. After coming back from the memorial service, I wrote a eulogy in my physical journal. Re-reading it tonight for the first time in years, its so relevant to my life now that I want to put it down here, both because it's a part of me, and because maybe it will strike a chord with someone else.

Sunday, March 28, 1999

Caroline K. O'Brien was killed in a car accident on Wednesday.

In the short time that I knew her, caroline taught me so much about the human condition, and how wonderful life could be. Only now, with her passing, am I beginning to realize the true scope of her gift.

Caroline was fearless. she would never hesitate to make the dangerous choice, and she had the self-reliance to drive forward where most would balk at fear of failure or fear of reprisal. What makes her truly beautiful is that this rare drive was joined by an equally rare love of those around her. She realized the true nature of happiness and strove to bring it out in others.

She was very smart, but she never held it against you. In love, Caroline followed the middle path: Never fear love; embrace it. Don't let it blind you, but let it fill you and those around you with joy.

I learned so much about love and life from Caroline. I've spent far more time over the last two years absorbing that knowledge into my own life than the time I was gifted with her presence.

Ben and I spent several hours talking on the road yesterday to and from the service. Talking with him helped me remember many of the lessons I forgot over time.

We all have a responsibility to embrace life. It's vital to steer clear of the empty side every day, however comfortable it may be. the life best lived is one filled with chances, experiences, glowing successes and poignant defeats. It's the self-reliance that allows a person to take a thousand chances a day, to be warmed by the successes and learn from the failures.

Nice is different than good, and both are essential. Live for yourself by living for others.

Consuetude should never be confused with contentment, and when routine and habit drive our actions we all die a little.

Life is a series of relations and intersections, and we grow wiser, stronger, and hopefully happier with every one.

Beware the feedback loop. Love and happiness can't survive in a sealed environment. If love is to lead your life, then it must always be fed with new experiences, risks, successes and failures brought to the table by both parties. Most importantly, never lose hold of the qualities that inspired love once love is achieved, because love is not a gateway or a finish line. It's a constant achievement to be won each day.

Do great things and small. Never be afraid of the extra mile. You'll find looking back that the outcome is always worth more than the opportunity cost, whether it's driving two hours to see a friend for dinner or leaving a job to follow a dream.

Thank you Caroline for all your teachings. I pray that I can live up to them in my own life every day, and inspire others as you inspire me.

I love you,
Kevin

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[Lou asked about the rides, since he's going to cedar Point this weekend. Rachel wrote up this synopsis, in temporary lieu of our forthcoming trip report, for his enjoyment and everyone else's. -Kev]

So the dragster wasn't up for our trip. We were both disappointed and relieved. Every time we looked at the coaster it brought new chills. They have done a great job with the theme though.

In any case -- I'm hoping to do some rating of the coaster on my site (their rating system is bad, they have the Millennium Force ranked a 5 for thrill, as well as the Wild Cat (a small coaster great for kids). However I don't think it will be done before Lou goes -- so here are a couple things we learned while at Cedar Point.

1. Stay in a Cedar Point Resort. You get to enter about an hour early, they open two rides and we already had the Raptor and Millennium Force done and were in line for something else before 10 when the park opened.
2. Get in line for your Freeway pass early. Freeway passes let you skip to the front of the line on two rides. But don't wait, we were confused about how they explained it; apparently they only give away about 50 passes for each hour of the day. They start handing them out at about 11 o'clock and once they are gone, they are gone.
3. Go on the Millennium Force early, everything else seems like cake after that (except the dragster) and you don't realize you are scared till the ride starts.
4. When you go on the Iron Dragon, close your eyes -- the ride gets so much better when you do that. Especially at the end of the ride.
5. If you are Kevin and I, don't assume just cause no one else got too wet on that ride, that you won't. YOU WILL!!! At least if you are Kevin and I! (However it was okay cause we were the coolest people in line for the Mantis. We heard about an hour and a half of complaining about the heat while we just worked on drying off!)
6. Go on a Monday (especially one where they are calling for thunderstorms), the park isn't empty, but it's much better.
7. When riding the Millennium Force wear your sunglasses! The wind goes so fast it's very hard to keep your eyes open on this ride, but its cool. The sunglasses get a little vibration while you are riding, but we didn't see anyone loose them and I enjoyed the ride much more with them.
8. I think that the Up side ride on the Power Tower is better than the Down side, but we didn't ride the down side cause we felt the up had best of both worlds. Shoots you up into the air and then drops as opposed to just raising you up and then dropping you.

We went on the Millennium Force twice. It was easily our favorite ride. Though as we got in the car there tended to be a lot of cursing at each other and telling Kevin we hate him for getting us on the ride (even Kevin was cursing himself). My second favorite was the Wicked Twister and then prolly the Raptor and the Mantis. In any case I highly recommend the park. We had a great time, and I'm sure there will be more up about it later, but this will help anyone going this weekend. Have fun!!!!!

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And so the great rush of June and July birthdays begins, matched only by the October/November rush.

Happy Birthday Emily! I hope the day finds you well, and that the coming year is filled with wonder (the good kind)!

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Congrats to my HCI classmate Micah, who today accepted a UI position at eBay, and is wasting no time in flying to Florida on Thursday to get to know his users at eBay Live: Orlando!

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Uncaptioned as of yet, I wanted to post my gallery of pics from today's graduation. So much fun!

Click to see the rest

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I think I mentioned something like this last year, but I find it funny that out of Google's sites related to fury.com lists 15 weblogs, 13 are friends of mine I've met in real life.

It's slightly comforting though that these are almost all people I met through my weblog. Google hasn't found my 'real world first' friends... Yey, anyhow.

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I figure everyone deserves their own birthday wishes, so I decided to spread them out today.

Happy Birthday Dawn! I'm sorry I won't be at your party, but I'm working on having a life-sized cardboard cutout brought in my stead!

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One of my friends has a weblog, but saves his more personal stories for his email list that he sends out maybe once a month. Today he wrote about himself ten years ago, how he would have called himself a songwriter, and about a song he wrote then after his breakup with the first woman who he thought he would have spent the rest of his life with.

Of particular poignancy are the lines in the song: "I bet you'll find that in ten years time...I won't even cross through your mind." To him the passage of the decade was a liberation, one item he could checkoff a list that he didn't even knew he kept with him.

It's been just over 10 years since I met the first woman I thought I could spend the rest of my life with. I didn't write a song about her when we broke up, but then 'breaking up' is a misnomer in this case, as it implies breaking off. I've been lucky that several of my closest friendships have come out of my closest relationships.

The recognition of an elapsed decade is freeing to me as well, but probably in a different way than to my songwriting friend. It's shown me that the valuable relationships last, no matter the form they settle into. My post-relationship friendships aren't about a refusal to admit interpersonal failure. They represent sincere, close ties that sustain themselves, even when we're apart for years at a time.

I'm still good friends with five of my six past girlfriends. Okay, seven past girlfriends, but there's an asterisk (I suppose there's always an asterisk) next to one of them. I'm not sure if this is more a testament to how much I value friendships or how differently from most people I view relationships, but it gives me warm fuzzies.

I wonder where I'll be 10 years from now. Who will shape my life then, and who will have shaped it along the way? I suppose I'm tacking a small item onto my own invisible list. I'm sure that come 2013 something or someone will bring this post to my attention. Things always tend to come back, in the good way.

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I have way too much latency in posts. Things happen to me, and I ruminate, think of ways to relate them to the greater experience of life, decide what to blog, but then something else happens and the post is relegated to a pocket of neurons in my brain, never to escape.

Karen, on the other hand, is a good, responsible blogger. I'm glad I've spent the last week with her for a lot of reasons, but the relevant one right now is that she has been giving a good day-by-day account of our Los Angeles adventures, from Magic Mountain to the Oscars to Citywalk to movies, and all the rest. So without further ado, I invite you all to her blog to check out what we've been up to. ("Check out to what we've been up"? I figure I should watch my dangling participles when linking to the site of a writer.)

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Irony abounds today as Dave Linabury, owner and operator of Davezilla and Fucked Weblog, discovered that his ISP had not only not performed a backup of his server in six weeks, but proceeded to take that server down and reformat the hard drive.

Dave has asked that his blogging friends make mention of this, as he finds a new ISP and begins to recreate his sites to be faster, stronger, and better backed up than before. Davezilla is down for the next few weeks, but will return. When it does I'll doubtless make mention of it here.

The funny part is that Fucked Weblog is the perfect site to make pronouncements like this, if only it wasn't one of the victims of formatting.

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Kerry and I saw Tori Amos in concert last night, and the performance was fantastic.

After acclimating myself to the fact that I was about eight years older than the average audience member, and that smoking appeared to be legal inside the auditorium, we sat down and enjoyed a truly impressive show.

Held on the campus of Duquesne ('Doo-caine') University, there were probably fewer than 3000 people in a half basketball arena where they clearly stuffed in Tori's stage and lighting grand enough for a crowd five times that size.

The show was all about the music. Bassist and drummer in the rear corners, and Tori nestled between a full grand piano and a stack of synth keyboards on the other side, I don't see how people on the ground seats off to the side could see her through the instrument racks, but second row balcony worked very nicely.

The lighting for this show was spectacular. Tori's all about communicating emotion through song, and light effects were used to augment the emotion. Rich colors, patterns that silhouetted each head in the audience giving them golden halos, and multi-spectrum spotlights turned the hundred-foot high cube of smokey air into a visual sensorium that James Turrell would have been proud of.

Each song went the same way. Notes would start, small cheers would rise, the song would wander to the main theme when it became clear to the rest of the crowd which song it was, and the cheering would rise threefold, then die down as people just watched, rapt.

The ground floor folks were standing in front of their seats the whole show, just watching. Entranced.

Tori's a flirt, but didn't talk much. She's inches away from becoming a Diva if she wanted to and she knows it, but she holds it in check. Still, this didn't stop her from performing a beautiful solo of Madonna's "Live to Tell" that showed that even new, voice-trained Madonna can't hold a candle to Tori's raw talent.

In short, I really enjoyed this concert. I wasn't star-struck, but it was a great emotional experience.