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October 5th, 2008
06:04 pm
Monday--We drove to El Cajon and check out the Space Brothers of Unarius (http://www.unarius.org/start.html), though that's their old name, and now they are the Unarius Academy of Science. We didn't take pictures inside, but the hubby took oodles of pictures of the front. They are right down the street from the El Cajon Chamber of Commerce. The inside was equally fantastic, but of course we couldn't take pictures there. But I would like to point out I have now seen the Cities of the Future, their layout and power grids and communication and travel methods. And it's all Tesla's fault.
I did try to read some of the literature, but found it extremely difficult going. The hubby points out that you don't read channeled material the way you read other material, and all Uriel did was channel (whether you believe she was actually in contact with other intelligences or not, her books all claim to be, so they all read similarly). My reading style simply doesn't work with her writing style. By the way, a disclaimer--the hubby took all these photos!! These are all a subset of his...
( Pictures behind the cut! )
From there, out on the 8 to the Desert Tower and Boulder Park (http://www.aroundandaboutsandiego.com/deserttower.html ), just like the old timers going from San Diego to Yuma, AZ (why was anyone going to Yuma? I'm not sure, but it was a main stop on the mail route from San Francisco down to Los Angeles and San Diego and then heading off to the east coast).
This doesn't quite show it all. Click to see the rest!
( And don't forget to visit the springs at Desert Tower... )
We wondered how many folks go back into the Desert Tower just to tell the owner there that he's a rat bastard. :)
From the Desert Tower, we continued along the Mexico-US border (ish) along the 8 to Ocotillo, then turned left and picked up the 2 into Anza-Borrego, where the first and only humans we'd seen since the Desert Tower showed up in the form of border guards. That at least allowed us to confirm we were going the right direction, because it is so desolate out there it can be hard to tell!! We went along up the 76 to overnight in Julian, 'causing the hubby some qualms as I zipped along the mountain roads.
Not the most direct route to Julian, but I'd not seen Anza-Borrego before. You REALLY need an off-road vehicle there. We checked in to Angel's Landing Country Inn, and had dinner at the Romano's Dodge House (Italian food) in Julian. No apple pie, unfortunately, but the steak wrapped around something else (I forget what) was delicious, as was the dessert.
( But of course, pictures from Julian... )
Tuesday--Breakfast at the cafe in Julian, along with everyone over the age of 60 in Julian. The food was excellent and the coffee was plentiful, but the conversation at the table next to us consisted of several elderly women discussing art history--so far so interesting, except one of them kept holding forth that the artistic developments of all cultures must pass through the same three phases, and one of the other kept insisting that one of those phases must be the Pleistocene... SIGH.
Back out through Anza Borrego on another route dead east to the Salton Sea, south around the Salton Sea with a quick stop in Niland to see Salvation Mountain (http://www.salvationmountain.us/).
( This is worth the drive...! )
Then back along the east coast of the Salton Sea to the north of it. Lunch in a Burger King in Coachella. We got no pictures of the Salton Sea, unfortunately. We stopped at Bombay Beach--boy howdy THERE is a depressing neighborhood. I forget that poverty like that exists in the US. But there was some sign at the obvious entrance to the beach.
At this point I had planned to head into Joshua Tree and go directly across it to Twenty-nine Palms, but we figured with the desert/mountain drives we'd had through Anza Borrego, we'd paid our desert dues. So we took the 10 (ohmigawd! A real highway!!) to the 62 (with a quick detour in Desert Hot Springs--the sign said "Point of Historical Interest" but we never did see the point) and then north to Yucca Valley, the town of Joshua Tree, and overnight in Twentynine Palms. A quick turn-off from Yucca Valley got us to the Desert Christ Park (http://www.desertchristpark.org/) before getting to our hotel that night.
The Desert Christ Park is another one that has to be seen to be believed. More pictures below the cut, of course!
( Sermon on the Mount that's actually on the Mount... )
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04:02 pm
So the itinerary for the vacation the past week was as follows:
Sunday--We drove to the Mount Palomar Observatory and see that. That road was incredibly twisty!!
There was some beautiful scenery, there, though.
( Cut for photos!! )
This doesn't really do it justice, but there was a fantastic view over the valley to the mountains in the distance. With the pines and the hills and the incredible sky, it did remind me of summers in Montana. There was also a picnic area off the parking lot. ( More Pictures )
We did a quick drive through the campgrounds that sit on the site of the old Adamski campgrounds (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Adamski ).
And more views coming down Mount Palomar--
There were signs of fires everywhere, clearly crossing the road at times.
Then we headed south to San Diego (no pictures there), lunch at O'Hungry's in Old Town; spent some time in Old Town (which I've never seen when it was open), and visited the Whaley House ("most haunted house in America!!" and marked on the tourist map with a little ghostie icon).
Dinner at El Agave, and I discovered tequila and mole are a match made in culinary heaven. Generally speaking, I am neither a tequila nor a mole fan; but I splurged for a decent reposado, and found that drinking a glass of water, a sip of tequila, then a bite of mole, did amazing things to the insides of my mouth. :) As I said to the hubby at the time, tequila really does dance through the various flavors. Gin tries to dance, but it ends up doing a rough polka, while tequila is totally fluid. Gin is tequila with two weeks' beard growth.
Mind you, I still prefer a good gin and tonic to tequila, but I appreciate that tequila has some serious complexity.
I made the mistake of getting a hotel in San Diego through Hotwire.com, and ended up at the St. James Ramada on 6th street, that I hated when I stayed there a few years ago and swore I'd never be back. Word to the wise--if you KNOW there is a hotel in the area that is not acceptable to you, then DO NOT USE HOTWIRE. Because, simply put, that WILL be the hotel you get. Poor ol' hubby could barely sleep at all--the hotel is a "historic, boutique" hotel, which when decoded means "cramped and lacking in current amenities", and they put us in with a full bed, not even a queen, and the shower was so small (no bath) that you had to step out of it if you wanted to wash your legs. Unbelievable. NEVER staying there again. Never using Hotwire. Bleah. Should've used Expedia.
Monday was the serious driving day. But let's post the Sunday report and see how it goes...
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02:01 pm
Ok, let's see if this works: Below should be a map of our trip. (Welcome to 1999, I'm now trying to link to images... ;)
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10:43 am
We're baaaack!! I'm trying to write it all down before I forget it, and include some choice pictures. No French cathedrals or medieval castles or neolithic tombs or Scottish moors (unlike SOME people's vacations ;), but a whole bunch of California desert. And accompanying oddities.
Woot. Lots of good food, lots of time seeing places I'd not seen before, lots of time in hot tubs.
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September 26th, 2008
03:38 pm
oh holy smokes. Today I scheduled myself for a 80 minute hot stone massage, preceded by some "Zen water treatment." I had just come off of four days of job applications, which is some serious introspection--reaching deep into your heart to answer who am I? What do I want? How do I string together the patchwork of my life into a coherent story? How do I say this? How do I sell it? It's tough work. I was pretty giddy as I headed off this morning, having just had a breakthrough earlier in the morning about why I love psychology so much. Which I do have to work into at least some of my teaching statements, though it never sounds as good on paper as it does in my head.
The Zen water treatment turns out to be a guided tour of rainfall showers you can stand and sping around in, mudbaths, steam rooms, more showers (all encompassing, with 8 nozzles pointing every which way), and an incredibly relaxing big enough to float in hot tub. That went a long way to making me less frenetic and goofily relieved, and more deeply pleased with life in general.
Then the hot stone massage was fantastic--I had only had one before many years ago, so I'd forgotten it. Besides, this one was applied by a middle-aged guy who was not afraid to put his forearms into it, and had hands that could span my entire back. Oh.my.gawd. I have never had a bad massage--every massage is a good massage--but this one was one for the books. The combination of oil, pressure, and little points of heat--the left brain goes happily off into la-la land, and the right brain starts weaving curlicues somewhere behind nirvana. And a full eighty minutes of this. I'm not really a believer in the healing power of touch, but massages like that are enough to change my mind. I didn't hug him when we were done, but I did hug the lady who ran the water treatment place when she brought me my shoes afterwards. Life is good.
THIS is what vacation is all about. ::happy sigh:: I smell like oranges or something, but I don't care.
I've already got my next massage booked for early November after my next grant goes in.
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September 24th, 2008
07:31 am
Oy. I went to a serious work-out class yesterday and everything from the back of my legs up to the back of my neck is complainin'. Another case of muscles I didn't know I had, suddenly reporting in. ;) Take some tylenol and go back to job apps.
For the record--and I knew this, I just forget the scope of it until I'm doing it again--applying for jobs is HARD. I thought I had a nice list of openings to apply for, whip out a statement of research interests and a cover letter, submit everything by email, no big deal. Get it done in two days.
Well phooey on that!! I've gotten people to agree to write me letters of recommendation--this is a good thing. I've gotten a draft statement of research and teaching interests--but the hubby who's been editing and commenting for me points out anyone who knows anything about teaching is going to laugh at the teaching part. Which is true--I haven't taught a class in I don't know how long and haven't thought seriously about it in ages. I have yet to finish an acceptable draft of a cover letter--I suck at sales pitches. And I just found out there's a whole new stash of job listings I have to sort through to see where I should apply, since about half the places I had *thought* were on my list I had to take off (they were looking for people doing social psych or animal models or something not remotely relevant). Never mind the soul searching, "Is this really what I want to do? How would I fit in at department X? And can we really live there? What do we do if the hubby isn't actually done with his degree by next year?" Etc.
So here we are three days into the process and I'm freaking out about getting it done by Friday. My letters of rec people said to send them the contacts and deadlines, and I said I would by the end of the week. I want to narrow it down to about six places that I actually would be willing to work if they offered me the job, and where I can apply without blushing because I'm so far off of what the job ad says they want. Thank heavens everything can be done by email these days and I don't have to worry about finding the right paper stock for CVs, or standing in line at the post office.
I just hope I'm not blowing my good letters of rec on jobs I can't remotely get because I am so far off the standard academic track. Ten years ago I said soft money was the way for me, but now there IS no soft money, or at least danged little of it. But I'm not really groomed for the usual positions. I don't really know what these particular schools and departments are looking for, from just a paragraph in the job listings, and most of them don't list contact people you can ask (though some do, and in that case, I have). And they are at schools where I don't know anybody to ask (sigh).
On the flip side, at least two senior guys I talked to about this pointed out they found that the best jobs are gotten through someone you know talking to someone they know, and creating a job package just to hire you. It's soft money (i.e. you're on your own to get research grants to pay your salary, the school owes you nothing), but it has its advantages. And they both seemed to think I could pull that off, which I find flattering (and I'll start thinking about it as a back up if the hard money positions don't come through--timelines on those sorts of things are more flexible, and the paygrade is usually better).
My hat is off to those on my friends list who did this year after year while looking for an academic position, I must say. I knew it was tough, but it's a whole new experience when you're in the middle of it from when you're watching it from a distance. ;) Blargh.
Current Mood: anxious
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September 21st, 2008
08:20 pm
Not a bad start to the vacation. Friday we went into Los Angeles to see this lecture at Silver Lake/Echo Park: http://machineproject.com/2008/09/10/aliensextalk/
That worked out well--I took off at 2 pm from work, the hubby and I left around 4ish, had time to explore the area a bit, discover http://www.goodmicrobrew.com/ which actually was a Good Brew. Decent food, and I discovered I like the Hobgoblin brand of English Dark Ale. Yum!! I had it with an "Aspen Sandwich" which was really just Thanksgiving in a sandwich--turkey, gouda, apples, mustard, on cranberry bread. Delish.
The coffee shop next to Machine Project was closed, which stumped us for a bit because it was 7 pm and we'd expected to sit and read for a bit over coffee before lecture on alien sex :). We eventually found a Starbucks nearby, inside--not a grocery store, not its own store, not a bookstore--but inside a laundromat!! Is that way cool or what? You could do your laundry and read a book over a decent espresso if you lived in that region.
Beats the stuffing out of the laundry rooms I've been using for the past 20 years.
The lecture was an amusing combination of stand-up comedy and 20th century esoterica. The hubby found it less amusing than I did since he knew it all already and could keep a checklist of everything the guy forgot to mention--we didn't KNOW the hubby could have been getting gigs lecturing on some of his favorite hobbies. Just goes to show. ;) But it's a niche market and it's probably filled, in LA. I knew much of it from having lived with the hubby for the past 15 years, but I always forget the details and to be honest, I didn't know a lot of it, like I knew something about Jack Parsons but not the Crowley-Parsons-Hubbard connection (or really the history of 1003 South Orange Ave, Pasadena, and all the wacky things that went on there in the 1940s!! Yeesh!!). Or that Jacques Vallee had ever had his picture taken with Anton La Vey. But when the speaker pointed out that Marshall Applewhite of the Bo and Peep cult from the 70s was the guy who led the Heaven's Gate movement in their mass suicide, the audience gasped--which surprised me, I thought *everyone* knew that. So it was kind of uneven that way.
The hubby pointed out part of his annoyance was the humor was so fundamentalist--the speaker clearly had the standard "I don't agree with any of this and this is all nonsense" point of view, and the humor was very much "Aren't these people who don't think like me rather wacky". The refusal to step outside his own mindset, while making him entertaining, was a bit galling. Me, I appreciate that when someone brings up the Flying Spaghetti Monster they are communicating their general disdain for theism of any sort, but enh. You choose to be annoyed by that or not. I can suspend disbelief for the purposes of a humorous presentation.
Saturday I went for a 5K run (yay me!!) and did some laundry (bleah). Then we joined our friends Pash and Mysh and their daughter to go into Fullerton and try to find spudnuts (e.g., http://www.yelp.com/biz/spudnut-donuts-no-4-los-angeles ) --we were told there was a spudnuts store in Orange, but while there was a donut store at the right address, it a) was closed by the time we got there and b) had no references to spudnuts on its signs anywhere. We have no reason to believe it is not a mundane donut store.
Ah well. We found a regular donut store and coffee shop, then went off to check out the cactus garden in a local park, and played bocce ball for a while before heading home. We always lose to Pash and Mysh when we play bocce ball, 'cause it's their set and they play a lot. I throw a ball twice every year, when we play bocce ball with them, and that's about it. ;) The daughter is getting to the point where she gives her dad a run for his money, though.
She's also gotten a "Memory" game (which I always thought of as "Concentration") -- where you have a bunch of pictures laid out face down, you turn them over two at a time, and have to remember what was where so you can make pairs. I figured I'd give it a shot playing with her, since she clearly was looking to play a game and show off her skill--I was more for humor value than anything else, since I have no spatial memory to start with, I was pooped after the day out, and I was drinking a beer while we were playing. :) So she cleaned the floor with me, and her mom, and her dad, though she clearly gets her skill from her dad. But she's playing in the first flush of full myelination, while we're all working with much-used and abused frontal cortices. (grin)
Today I nearly finished another book, went to the gym, played some version of Memory I could find online just to prove to myself I was actually capable of getting better at it, and made Keema from scratch for dinner, along with basmati rice and a boil-in-the-bag paneer makhani. Yum!! I laid out menus for the rest of the week and did the shopping, and we're going to eat well if all goes according to plan. Tomorrow I turn the extra keema into some Indian version of cornish pasties/empanadas, Tuesday we're having spaghetti, Wednesday it's chicken in an onion/tomato sauce (Murgh Masala), Thursday it's tuna fish sandwiches, and Friday it's kofteh meatballs.
Unless the hubby gets inspired and digs into his new Moroccan cookbook. (For which I am hoping!!) We eat well on vacation, when there's actually time to cook!! A week of Indian food, yummers (barring the break for spaghetti and tuna fish sandwiches).
Unfortunately, the hubby's knee is giving him fits suddenly, and given his history of knee problems we need to check in with the doc tomorrow and see what's up with that. Hopefully it won't get in the way of us driving around next week. Tomorrow the plan is exercise; clean the bathroom; take the hubby to the doc; apply for jobs; and try to make these fried empanada things...
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September 18th, 2008
10:21 am
Oy. Ok, the grant my boss told me about a week and a half ago is pretty much done--we've got a junior person doing the citations today--luckily it's a short one, just a project and a core for a larger grant that someone else is organizing, about 15 pp total from us. It is not the quality I would have liked, and if it gets funded I'll be astounded, but it's nothing to blush about. I now know more about the workings of depression and various treatments and studies than I did a week ago. The boss wrote his initial thoughts on the project, I rearranged them into an outline, he filled it in, I cleaned it up, he did some final revisions while I wrote the parts for the imaging core last night--it was a surprisingly efficient process, all things considered. Especially considering there were multiple other grants going in at the same time and other crises to be handled--the boss was out yesterday for a dinner business meeting, back in the office by 7:30 pm, having stopped at his home to touch base with his kids, and discovered his garage was under water from a broken water heater. (!!) We wrapped up everything around 10 pm and then he was off to bail out the garage... And he's off to Japan this morning, his wife's in DC, both on business trips, apparently his kids are camping in a tent in the backyard. ::chuckle:: (I am SO glad I don't have kids to worry about at a time like this.)
Of course, we also got word a day or two ago that a grant we were part of from this spring, that I didn't think had a snowball's chance in hell, got funded. Someone call the snowplow, hell's clearly frozen over! ;) And we got confirmation that our next two year's funding for the project I run has been approved, so I'm a happy camper on that front. (With the caveat that I'm hoping to be out of here in a year so it doesn't really help me directly much past that. But hey.)
And someone else I was talking to, who'd just gotten off an NIH council meeting, said my name came up during the meeting as an ontology expert. On the one hand, I am thrilled (good lord, people at NIH know my name!!); on the other hand, I am amused. I'm a what?? Dude, I'm just a frustrated logician with illusions of grandeur.
On yet a third hand, I'm exhausted from the sprint over the past week, and pissed that I haven't been able to work on my own grant that has to be substantially revised and resubmitted in a month and a half. And there are three papers waiting for my input that I've had to put off. Argh. :P
But we're off on vacation starting Saturday, so that's a break. I've slated a few days for job applications, a few days for cleaning the house, a morning for an extended visit to the spa (massage!! steam room!! Woot!!), and then the hubby and I are off for a "weird southern California" tour for a few days. That'll be fun.
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September 13th, 2008
07:58 am
I must say, I'm enjoying watching Ballykissangel on netflix, one episode whenever I have time. It's not as vicious as Father Ted, nor as clever, sweet, or downright raunchy as Vicar of Dibley (no one does raunchy like Dawn French does, particularly in the later season of that show;), but it appeals to me. What is it that the BBC has with shows about clergy? No one would make shows like that for the US audience (would they?).
The hubby doesn't care for it--too bland, too much NOT what the other shows are. It's in Ireland but it doesn't have the dark humor that Father Ted and Black Books had. (Is that a differrence between something made by the BBC set in Ireland and something made by the BBC Ireland?) The people are not particularly interesting, though I find they got more interesting as the show went on; they grow on you.
I pointed out in Father Ted it's two priests against their bishop, as one of the main tensions of the show; in Vicar of Dibley the original tension is the priest against the local town leader; and in Ballykissangel it's the curate against his next higher up in the chain. I thought it was going to be the curate against the local pub owner, but they ended up being friends. Somehow the hierarchy of the Catholic church always plays a role when it's a Catholic priest--when the clergy is C of E I guess everyone knows the hierarchy isn't strong enough to carry the plot. ;)
And I'm finally getting to see some episodes of Red Dwarf. Can't argue with that!! Yay for instant downloads. ;)
Current Mood: bouncy
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September 11th, 2008
10:04 am
On a more neutral note, I blew out a tire on Tuesday night coming home from work. Ya gotta love Roadside Assistance--I just called my insurance company, sat in my car with the blinkers on, and half an hour later a real pro showed up, and fwip fwip fwip he'd changed my tire. Wasn't fazed at all by the 8 lanes of traffic zipping by at 80 miles an hour just a few feet away.
A cop showed up with the tow truck, which was really nice--he had a searchlight on his car, and he pulled up behind me, and the tow truck behind him. So the car was illuminated, the guy could work, and there were *plenty* of flashing lights so the folks zipping by wouldn't get too close.
Now, of course, I have to go get a new tire. Joy. ;) But I can't drive on a donut forever. Luckily for the past few days I've only had to go 1.5 miles back and forth to the local office, not the 15 miles of freeway to the medical center.
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I'd been sleeping really well for the past I don't know how long. I took a temazepam on Monday night just to be on the safe side, but it was the first I'd taken in weeks.
Which I was congratulating myself for, until I didn't sleep AT ALL last night. Well, it feels like I didn't sleep at all. I know I was tossing and turning for hours, though I was sleeping when my alarm went off at some ungodly hour this morning. However, I drafted up a Statement of Research Interests in my head while I was tossing and turning at 1 am, which I think I kind of remember, so it wasn't a complete loss. I need that to be able to apply for jobs.
I'm starting with what I formulated after going to ISMRM this past spring--I'm interested in the interaction between mind and brain. I love neuroimaging because it lets me explore that interaction, but I'm not wedded to a particular question, like figuring out working memory, or nailing down how the frontal cortex and executive function works, or the precise relationship between the BOLD signal in V5 and the probability you perceived a coherent movement in a randomly moving stimulus. Those are fascinating questions and I love working with people who work on them--I'm a collaborative beast at heart. Give me a brain and I will image it. I can't imagine giving up fMRI as a research technique (though I'm less interested in PET). But where my passion now is what we can know from neuroimaging, and how the different analysis techniques reveal or identify different connections. It's where Stats meets Philosophy--what questions can we answer? I'd be happy to never design an experiment again, just work with previously existing datasets (of which there are beginning to be quite a few) exploring what various analyses will tell you, and what that means about the incredibly complex relationship between the brain and cognitive/emotional states.
And of course, from there it's a short step to data mining and knowledge representation/ontology building, in one direction, and working with whopping multi-modal datasets in the other direction.
So the night wasn't a complete waste. :) When I was in grad school I really wanted to sit and think about how the physiological stimulus of retinal cone signals becomes sensation which becomes conscious visual perception. Less stats and more philosophy than I'm interested in now, but it's all par for the course. How the hell does the physical become conscious? And given that we know that the simple approaches won't capture the whole story, what tools can we use to actually answer that question?
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September 8th, 2008
02:42 pm
hee hee hee. Someone said today I was "spectacular"--a place that wants me to come work there! Woot!! That kind of thing always makes my day. Ya gotta blush and giggle and feel good about stuff like that. ::happy dance:: My first response is always "What? Who? You must have the wrong person!" Nothing makes the brain misfire quite like being hit upside the head with an unexpected compliment.
(Not sure I want to go live there, but hey. It's fantastic to be complimented like that. I'll stop doing my happy dance as soon as the endorphins wear off.)
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September 5th, 2008
07:56 am
So we finished watching all of Twin Peaks the other night. No hay mas. Foo. I want more.
But in the special features section there was a series of interviews with Kyle McLachlan and a bunch of the other actors (not all of them, something of a random sample--Audrey and Shelley, for example, but not Norma or Annie; Bobbie and Mike but not Leo; Cooper but not Harry, etc.), made probably at the 10th anniversary of Twin Peaks. They were musing over the experiences auditioning, making the show, and why the show's popularity has endured.
And David Duchovny said in his interview EXACTLY what I said in my blog, almost word for word, about Lynch's capacity to put funny and scary together simultaneously. How the X-Files could do either funny, or scary, by episode; but only Lynch could do them in the same scene.
Word for word, I tell you. I nearly fell off the couch in surprise. :) That was truly weird. Didn't know I could channel Duchovny.
And now, back to Trailer Park Boys...
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September 3rd, 2008
11:28 am
In case you're in Southern California... Got this in my various emails...
Why Marriage Is Important for Everyone September 12, 2008 at 6:30 pm At : St Wilfrid of York Episcopal Church 18631 Chapel Lane Huntington Beach, CA 92646
This will be an evening of people sharing their stories of love, life and commitment in a world that tried to tell them that their love was wrong. Please come and share your thoughts and experiences. We will explore the benefits of legal marriage and the burdens of not being able to define your relationship as marriage...
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September 2nd, 2008
07:20 am
I saw Pan's Labyrinth over the weekend on Netflix. I didn't care for it. I thought it needlessly violent and grim and gory. It's unpleasant people in unpleasant situations doing unpleasant things, and there's too much blood. It's technically very well done, parts of it are beautiful, it's clever--but, bleah. Uplifting, it is not.
Back when my family was in Madrid in the mid-80s we went to an amusement park, and among other things we went on a little ride through a scary house. Where you sit in a little cart that rolls along a track and things pop out you. I was expecting to squeak at skeletons and ghosts and witches popping out of the darkened corners. What I got, was gore. Headless corpses, mutilations, blood and guts, etc. It wasn't "scary", it was gory. Downright nasty and not fun at all.
We were all unpleasantly surprised and trying to figure out afterwards why they billed THAT as a scary house. Mom said at the time it was a cultural effect from the time of Franco. I didn't know why she said that, but this movie definitely reminded me of her saying that--both the unexpected violence and depicted pain, and the connection to Franco. A quick look for "Franco's effect on Spanish art" indicates Franco's Spain must have been a fairly horrific place to be.
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August 28th, 2008
03:49 pm
We were watching a re-run of "This American Life" downloaded from Netflix, over the weekend. It had to do with a Mormon artist in Utah painting a series on the life of Jesus, and what he was doing in order to get the photos he needed to work from. Turns out finding 12 guys with beards in Utah is a really good trick, since the Mormon church frowns on beards (who knew???). So he ended up pulling in the rebels, the homeless, the marginalized, etc. to be his disciples in the tableau.
The irony was not lost.
Plus, his Jesus was an atheist grad student dating a lapsed Mormon who had serious issues with the religious fervor of her parents (who were also part of the TV show, and had hanging in their house a copy of the picture of their daughter's boyfriend as Jesus in the Last Supper. Hoo boy--not just a few issues there).
Interesting stuff, actually. But the lapsed Mormon girl said at one point that "Oprah says you always fall in love with your Nemesis", referring I imagine to the idea that the one you love is the one who brings to the fore many of your wounds and issues. Harville (aka Horrible) Hendrix says similar stuff in the relationship books he was so successful with. ;)
This caused much amusement between me and my Nemesis, aka the hubby, or vice versa between him and his Nemesis, aka me. The hubby pointed out later than anyone who goes into a romantic relationship thinking that all relationships must involve your Nemesis is doomed to self-destruct--how long can a romance with your Nemesis last? How can you be willing to compromise or wink at their shortcomings or accept them as a loving, decent person?
But be that as it may, we were amused. I was thinking that even if it were true at the beginning of a relationship, how could that be true after a decade or more of marriage/commitment? People change--what was my nemesis when I was 18 is not my nemesis now, for example.
And a good case in point, that had me chuckling: I've been using Pandora for a few years now, as a way to get streaming radio with commercials at work. (Check it out: Pandora.com. Very cool stuff. Choose your own musical tastes and they choose music for you, and generally they're pretty good.) My tastes are incredibly banal--I like 80's pop music, whatever's on the radio, Beatles but not the Rolling Stones, etc. So I have a couple of stations set up; and one of them is based on Daniel Lanois and Moby, which are music that I have never bought but the hubby introduced me too. I like 'em, and I tend to like the music that comes up on Pandora as being somehow related.
So I basically have a station of the hubby's musical choice on my Pandora lineup. Now the other day I was at home and wanted to check out Pandora again, but when I went there on the home computer the hubby had left himself logged in. And the musical choices he'd left playing?
80's pop music. So I got to listen to Flock of Seagulls and Men at Work on the hubby's station, which is music he ALWAYS turns off when we're in the car.
hee hee hee hee. Nemesis, meet Companion.
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/purplelemon/sassips/giggly.gif) amused
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August 25th, 2008
10:26 am
Hey, tomorrow is ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) tapas' Birthday!! The day after that is my hubby's allogenes birthday, and the day after that is my mom's birthday!! What a week!! Happy birthday to all concerned, and many happy returns of the day!!
Of course, my mom and the rest of the family celebrated her birthday this past Sunday all together on the other coast. I called, but too late for the actual celebration--I got to chat with my brother for almost an hour, and then called my folks at their home and had a LONG chat with my mom about all and sundry. She and my dad have been reading up on all sorts of brain stuff, and she keeps bouncing her neuroanatomical understanding off me to see if she got it right. I'm going to have to bone up on this supposed area of expertise I've got. ::grin:: I must say I never thought I'd spend 20 minutes talking with my mom on her 70th birthday about dopamine, the basal ganglia, and addictive/reward circuitry.
Let's hear it for keeping the ol' neural circuitry humming. :)
I got absolutely no work done this past weekend and feel GREAT. I re-read two of my favorite novels, watched two episodes of Ballykissangel on Netflix, did some shopping, went out to eat, and helped the hubby set up his birthday present from me.
I got him a coffee roaster!! Last year I got him an espresso machine, and this year it's a coffee roaster (and a fire extinguisher, and a scale for weighing coffee, and an extension cord that's rated 15 Amps so we can run the roaster outside). We have to run it out on the porch, which was also motivation this weekend to clean the porch off, figure out a table to put the roaster on sturdily, and how to hang some sheets so we can actually be out on the porch without being blinded by the sun at all hours. Things are never simple around our house! ::chuckle::
But we've been reading up on coffee roasting details for the past few weeks, did the dry run of the roaster Saturday night, and Sunday afternoon he roasted our first half pound of coffee. Woot! Turns out you can't roast it and grind it right away--opinions differ, but most folks seem to agree you should let it sit for a bit, where "a bit" can be anywhere from 2 hours to 2 days. We let it sit for about 6 hours and then gave it a try after dinner.
The hubby tried "cupping" it instead of making regular cup of coffee, and that was an experience! The coffee actually bubbled up and developed a head on it, for all the world like a pint of Guiness. It was about as black as Guinness too. I've never seen coffee actually foam like that, but apparently that is what truly fresh coffee does. It developed three layers--the head, with big bubbles on it; a middle grainy layer; and the pitch black bottom layer. After about 5 minutes the bubbles were gone and the middle layer had settled to the bottom, the whole thing was pitch black, and the top looked like a solid chocolate cake.
I made a real cup of coffee with it this morning and found it quite enjoyable. Very smooth, not at all bitter, not thin or watery. Very tasty!! It's a lighter roast than is recommended for this bean, but I thought it was just fine. Just goes to show I have no sophistication. :) But wow, seriously fresh coffee. I love it. I'm hoping the hubby has fun tinkering with all the possibilities, between beans and timing and heating profiles and ...
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/purplelemon/sassips/happy.gif) happy
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August 23rd, 2008
10:07 am
Weird dream last night. The hubby and I were trying to get to the beach in Laguna; I was driving, and we were trying to take the route the bus takes the beach. (As far as I know, there is no bus route to the beach here, but hey...)
We were getting farther and farther into the wild, when I could see the beach and I said to the hubby, "There's not much beach there"--it was all waves and just a thin strip of sand before the cliffs (kind of like off of UC Santa Barbara, at points). Suddenly we went over a steep sandy cliff, and were dune-buggying it down to the base. I pointed out the bus probably did NOT come that way, and then we were down safely.
At which point we were in something out of Creature from the Black Lagoon,or any tropical beach--there were small pools, and white loose sand, and deep green tropical forest, and not a sign of an actual ocean anywhere. But there were clearly people there, playing in the water and sand. We didn't think that was the beach, though, and we found where the sand went through a break in the palm trees, and picking our way so as not to get palm-tree slivers in our feet, we *finally* found the beach.
I was pondering that on the way to the gym this morning--when a dream stays with me, I always want to know what it "means". The hubby's advice in thinking about dreams is always to ask what the predominant feeling was, and start from that rather than what any given object might "symbolize" out of some silly book.
The predominant feeling was one, not of fear per se, but trepidation, uncertainty--where we going the right way? Was this where we wanted to be? Is this the beach? Real anxiety when we plunged down that steep slope, confusion in the "back bay" area, and some concern about avoiding slivers. Followed by a sense of relief, and appreciation, when we finally got to the beach and it was beautiful.
Gee huh, pretty obvious what the dream is about when you put it that way. We're "taking the plunge" of looking for new places to live and work, we don't really know what it will look like when we get there, and we're not at all sure where we're going or how to get there.
But I guess my subconscious is generally optimistic--take the plunge, don't settle for the first thing you see, and you'll know it when you get there, if you just keep looking for it.
et voila. Here's hoping my subconscious is right. ;)
Current Mood: creative
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August 21st, 2008
05:49 am
I got my car back yesterday from the shop, and it's bee-yoo-tiful. Its passenger mirror is back, it doesn't whistle through the hole in the door any more, and there ain't a scratch to be seen on that side of the car. Yay!!
The driver's side is where all the dents are, but those were all done over the years by hit and runs in various parking lots, so there's not a lot I can do about those. My car's currently a bit like Two Face--fine on one side and all dinged on the other. ;) But they washed and waxed it so it's beeyootiful anyway.
But after driving the rented Hyundai, I turned on my car and edged out of the parking lot at the car shop--only to realize exactly how much pick up it had, compared to the Hyundai!! I nearly gave myself whip lash. Hee hee hee. Now I know what they mean by "fun to drive"--it was actually fun toodling down the street in a car that is responsive and energetic, after driving one around for 3 days that was the definition of "sluggish".
I think the car place worked on the transmission without telling me. ::chuckle::
Current Mood: happy
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August 20th, 2008
05:03 am
Heh--so opinions on childhood friends varies. Some people have kept some, most haven't. Some who moved frequently were ok with that, some weren't. Some people needed the stability, some didn't.
In a word--YMMV. :)
I have to admit, I had a weird situation growing up because I was moving every few years, but importantly, so was everyone else. I was not in a situation where I moved into new places where everyone else had been there forever and I was THE New Kid in a sea of people who'd known each other all their lives. Every summer, 1/3 to 1/2 of the kids were "new kids", and 1/3 to 1/2 of my friends would be gone. Cliques had to dissolve and re-form every year. That makes everything different, and frequent uprooting is much easier. I've noticed when people bitch about how they had to move every few years, often it's because they were ALWAYS the "new kid", the outsider, the alien in a situation where everyone else was settled.
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In another online community I'm in, someone did a poll of what Meyers-Briggs personalities were participating in the community. Once again, INFP's and INTJ's and IN's in general predominate. That's been true in every online community I've seen that does a MB poll (which many of them do eventually). ESTJ's apparently don't hang out in online communities, or at least the ones that I hang out in.
Which is odd, since I'm an ESTJ.
Freak. ::chuckle::
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I've had my car in for repairs for the past two days--when the hubby and I were in San Diego in July, my car was parked in the hotel parking lot and someone backed a van into it, taking off the passenger side mirror. Luckily it was NOT a hit and run; the fellow went off to get his insurance info while hotel security tracked me down (sigh). But it's all worked out and currently my car is in getting its mirror put back on and the scratches on the side door touched up.
The rental car I got while it's in the shop, though, has XM radio. 240 stations, apparently, of which a dozen are devoted to hockey, a couple of French Canadian stations, a couple of Spanish stations, another dozen are Christian pop, two dozen talk radio--there's American Right and American Left right next to each other on the dial (I was amused). A bunch of jazz stations of all sorts, and some ambient stuff as well.
So I'm not really sold on the concept of satellite radio, I must say. 240 stations and basically I found two 80's stations, a "mix" station, and a classical station that I programmed into my radio buttons. Which is pretty much the same as what I get from just picking through the free local radio stations--Jack and Jill, usually one other and a classical station. Not worth paying extra for.
Current Mood: chipper
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August 17th, 2008
02:34 pm
The hubby and I were talking about one of my friends' blog entries about trying to raise kids to be flexible, able to be happy in a variety of environments. I was commenting on how I thought moving around every few years was a good way to do it, and the hubby pointed out that means you lose out on having life long friends.
He pointed out most people have some friends they've known since childhood. Childhood friends, in fact.
I had to scratch my head at that one. I don't have any childhood friends. I have a lot from college, and some who occasionally resurface every few years, that I've known from high school. But from before that, nada. All gone, lost track of, don't even remember their last names.
I didn't think that was so weird. Does everybody else have friends they've had since childhood?
Current Mood: awake
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