karawynn

I heard about the (poorly-named) Open Source Boob Project because a friend posted to her LJ about it with a level of mouth-frothing that startled me. I came to it a day or two after the initial post, after the poster had already added certain salient details that were apparently missing from his original description. So I do not have a true measure of what my response would have been if I’d first seen only the original, as many people did.

As it was, on first reading I had a very mild response. I had a moment of identification with the author, as one high-school geek outcast to another. And I had a moment of discomfort and pity at the description of the girl who hesitantly asked whether her breasts were ‘good enough to touch’. Otherwise, I was pretty shrug about the whole thing. Knowing myself, I doubt I would have felt much more strongly before the revision began.

Here’s one explanation: I don’t tend to make judgments about people and circumstances unless I have a great deal of firsthand information plus some correlating secondhand data. I don’t say that from a horse of any particular height; it’s just what makes sense to me. If I know a person well, I will usually have a filter whereby I interpret things she says based on my understanding of her particular psychology. Anything related by a complete stranger gets a fairly Spock-like response: “Fascinating.” Judgment remains in indefinite superposition. I am certainly not the sort of person to respond with rage over an event for which I was not present and where I know none of the participants. Rage for me is a very personal response, on behalf of myself or someone else I know and care about.

Here’s another: Unless the speaker is someone I know from personal experience is an unreliable narrator, I tend to take everything he says at face value. Someone says ‘This happened, and it was good,’ and I assume that’s true until and unless evidence to the contrary presents itself. (And by ‘presents’ I mean ‘smacks me repeatedly upside the head’.) I am particularly trusting of people’s self-assessments; if someone tells me, ‘I am this way, and this,’ I typically accept it without question. She has to regularly and consistently behave otherwise before I will adjust my filter away from her stated self-assessment.

Both of these things are true. The former strikes me as a good place to be; the latter is dangerously naive, and has bitten me in the ass more times than I can count. I need to stop it.

For the better part of a week, now, I’ve been thoroughly — perhaps even obsessively — reading spinoffs from the original post ... comments and posts and comments to the posts and comments to the comments ad infinitum. A certain percentage of them are crap, but a surprising number are thoughtful and eloquent and resonant.

Periodically, I’ve also gone back and reread the original post. And what’s interesting to me (“Fascinating.”) is how my feelings about it have changed over these several days. I am still holding to the non-judgment regarding the original participants and circumstances. But I now read those same words and flinch, repeatedly, in places that didn’t affect me before. It’s like I had been wearing heavy woolen gloves, and now I’m touching it with my bare skin.

I’ve also been thinking a lot. Not so much about the OSBP per se, but about my own experiences: of being female in this time and place, of bodies and sex and more.

I believe I have learned some things this week, and been reminded of some others I’d forgotten. My mind is roiling with it all, even in sleep.

I would go into more detail, but I am about to spend ten whole days sans both internet and computer. Perhaps I’ll be able to gather my thoughts into something coherent when I return.

We had a pair of free movie passes that expired in two days, so headed out to see Forbidden Kingdom tonight.

OH MY GOD I WANT PREHENSILE KUNG FU RAPUNZEL HAIR.

That is all.

O gurus of LiveJournal, how do I make it so that single-entry pages maintain the overall journal template instead of the default look? Or is that a paid-account-only feature?

About this time last year, after replacing ten windows and a sliding door, we began eyeing Major Project Number Two, which was taking down the wall between the kitchen and the living room, thereby opening up enough space that we could seat more than three people for dinner at a time. (This house is a bit odd in its space allocation ... you’d think that anything with five bedrooms would have room for at least that many people to sit and eat, but no.)

So I found a structural engineer, had him out to the house; he looked it over and pronounced it not load-bearing, and shortly afterward Jak and I commenced wall destruction.

Got most of the drywall peeled off (unearthing a mess of old plumbing in the process — I am baffled as to its original use) before we discovered that the beam at the top did not extend the length of the wall, despite outward appearances. Engineer then wondered why the roof hadn’t fallen in already, and told us we need to install a massive beam across the width of the room.

Off to find a contractor, who came out and gave us a bid for over six thousand dollars, making the project an order of magnitude more expensive than we’d expected.

Ouch.

Well, having very recently laid down nearly $10K for the windows, we did not have another six to put towards this. Plus it was summer, and finding contractors who even had time to answer their phones was tough, much less ones who’d come out and bid. So here we sat, with the half-destroyed wall ...

I had surgery in August, leaving me mobility-impaired for several months ... then Christmas and kids’ January birthdays ... what with one thing and another it was early March before I finally started researching contractors again.

Last week, more than eleven months after we began this saga, the wall was finally fully removed. (We managed to shave about a fourth off the initial $6K bid, though we lost the best deal while waiting for a third quote. Once the weather turns nice, the good contractors get snapped up in a hurry.)

And now we have space! Jak and I have been known to stand in the ex-wall spot and dance, we’re so happy to have it gone. The paint job needs to be completely redone, and the floor — I want to match the oak floor into the kitchen if we can afford it, or maybe bamboo if not — but these are aesthetic details, not functional ones. In May we’re going to get a dining table that seats six to eight, and assorted other furniture, and then we can actually begin to invite people into our home.

Here’s a tip for anyone redecorating: www.findyourfurniture.com has a pretty good free Flash-based room planner. More photos and a screenshot of my floorplan reside on Flickr.

( snowflowers )

Yes, those are tulips. Yes, that is snow. Yes, this is April. No, I have no explanation.

Jak just gave the thumbs-up on buying a new camera prior to our Mexico trip. This is likely to fix two of my biggest problems taking photos with our current camera (a model in the same line from 2003): the interminable millennia between shots, and the blurriness from having arms instead of tripods. I am excited!

The third problem I have with our current camera is that it has a bazillion options and I never RTFMed. This will also be true with the new camera, if not moreso. But I have several days in which I have nothing much scheduled but lying around on a beach and learning the camera. If I can manage not to spill margarita on it, we should be good ...

And then my Flickr account will actually get some use!

The single moment I remember most clearly from my first grade year is when my teacher handed me a library copy of Harriet the Spy and told me that I should read it because I reminded him of her. (The fact that my first-grade teacher was a man was astonishing for Texas in the seventies, where teaching prior to high school was very much a female-only profession.)

At seven I looked a lot like Harriet in the original illustrations: super-straight blond hair in a bob cut, heavy dark-rimmed glasses. And like Harriet, I was precocious, an only child, deeply introspective, and socially clueless. I desperately needed to learn the things Harriet does about how to get along with other people, but I don’t think they really sunk in until years later. But something about the book, and the gesture, meant enough to stick with me for thirty years and more.

I would search online for my first-grade teacher just to thank him for giving me Harriet, but sadly there’s not a snowball’s chance: his name was John Smith.

NPR tribute to Harriet the Spy

Look, an unlocked work post!

I just spent about an hour and a half at a work ‘patio party’ drinking surprisingly decent chardonnay and talking to a couple of my female coworkers with whom I don’t otherwise interact. And I had a shockingly good time. We had more experiences and attitudes in common than I would have imagined possible, considering our very different superficial self-presentations. I'm all cheerful now.

I need to spend more social time, I really do. Considering that talking to other people* is really one of my favorite things in the world, I don’t do it enough.

* or at least, the subset of other people who are interesting and not assholes.

Dear Frontier,

In exactly three weeks I expect to be on one of your planes en route to our long-awaited Mexican Beach Vacation. Do not, DO NOT, fuck this up for us.

Thanks.
Karawynn

˙˙˙ ʞɔıɹʇ s,ןooɟ ןıɹdɐ ʇɐǝɹƃ ɐ uǝǝq ǝʌɐɥ pןnoʍ sıɥʇ

Two things I’ve seen recently and am eager to discuss in depth with more than just Jak:

• Hard Candy
• Big Love season 2

Any takers?

I just took the “Logical Thinking” quiz on OkCupid, and scored 100%, which I confess pleases me, given how much I value the ability to think logically.

However, I am dogged by the knowledge that it could just have easily been 93%, as I was only able to calculate 14 of the 15 questions. I finally gave up and made a slightly-educated guess for the other, and apparently I was correct. But the test did not offer answers or explanations at the end, dammit! Which means my brain is still gnawing away at the problem. Arrrgh.

Here’s the question that vexed me. If you Get It, please explain.

Each number shown below follows a certain rule. Figure out the rule and fill in the missing number.

August: 9 June: 6 October: 12 September: ?

Possible answers: 3, 12, 16, 18

 
How to Be a Cat
by Sammy, Age 3
( secret feline wisdom )

Horked from urlgirl and tommx , my version of the 200 Things meme. Bold/green I've done, orange I would like to do.

( The List )

More than anything, this makes me want to create my own (probably shorter) list to pass around!

One of Jak’s most endearing traits is the way that he approaches any major project. If he’s going to cook something (sadly, for Jak anything more than microwave heating is a rare and significant event) he has to make sure the entire kitchen is spotless before he so much as preheats an oven. I kid him about it, but I am in no way inclined to discourage spontaneous cleaning, even if means an extra hour of stomach growls.

Since we’d agreed that this weekend we would tackle the taxes, I was amused but unsurprised when he started on Saturday by cleaning and organizing his side of the office. A non-trivial effort, that, as we both had mountain ranges of unfiled paperwork piled around — and, courtesy of the Sammycat, spilling off of — our desks.

You ever see post-tornado photos where one building is splintered and a building right next to it is untouched? That was the state of our office by Saturday afternoon. I mock-complained: “Dude, you’re making me look bad.”

( Read more... )

The problem with this whole ‘writing’ thing is that it takes time. I keep trying to find some, and failing. Bah.

Sad but true: I am thirty-eight years old and I’ve never had a passport. I have left the country, but just barely, and only back in the old days, when the government would let you mosey a ways north or south without a bar code tattooed on your forehead.

For over a decade now I’ve regularly acknowledged to all and sundry that yes, I should get a passport, so I at least have the option to travel, if not the time and/or money. I have also managed to completely avoid making any actual progress in that direction. Last month I forced my own hand, by purchasing nonrefundable plane tickets to another country. Okay, it’s only Mexico, but it’s a part of Mexico that isn’t walking distance from the U.S. border, which is a big step for me.

The reason for my procrastination: fear of bureaucratic smackdown.

( Read more... )

I am starting to put up eyes-only posts.  If you're reading this and would like to be considered for access to one or more of my friends filters, throw a comment below.

Caveat: If I don't add you, it's not a judgment; I'm just a lot more cautious about what I say to whom these days, and prefer to err on the side of safety with people I don't know well.  If I come to know you better, I may change my mind.  :)

Okay, this is starting to be fun. :) LJ is waaaaay more usable than the last time I tried posting, back in what, 2003? And the insta-community aspect is nifty. Nice to see various old friends and acquaintances pop up in addition to the ones with whom I’ve maintained more regular contact. I do like the feeling that people are listening and responding ... I’ve never been interested in just talking to myself.

Aside from this tentative venture, I’m also sending some individual pings out to people from my past. Not quickly — I’m managing about one per week — but making a deliberate effort to reach out to people who’ve meant something to me (and who might not mind hearing from me again). I just got a reply from one of my high school friends, which is farther back than I usually go.

Which in turn got me to doing the math and realizing that my high school graduation was twenty years ago this coming May. Zomg. After careful deliberation I decided to pass on my ten-year reunion; I now have to consider whether there’s any point in the twenty.

But anyway. Hello all. It’s nice to be back. :)

tommx applauded my new userphoto; for the record, it’s a shot taken by my computer camera last November. I always look better in greyscale, for some reason. And after a mild Photoshop filter to blend the skin tones. <cough>

I just wish I could turn off the per-entry photos on my own LJ; it’s already getting a bit repetitive.