laurenisms

I am having a fight with this blog right now because I cannot figure out what to do to make comments work. I am sure that it’s something very small, and I think it has to do with passing parameters, but I can’t find exactly what it is. It’s making me very frustrated and cranky and not wanting to think about this site at all.

Last night I dreamed about Richmond Fontaine. They were renting a house in Astoria, just for a couple of weeks, and I walked past with someone who commented on a guitar that had been in the window. I asked what was special about that guitar, and whoever it was (I don’t remember; maybe Travis? but why was Travis a guitar nerd?) said “Well, Richmond Fontaine has one and they’ve said they are looking for another.” And I said “Then that means that either Richmond Fontaine is in that house, or someone who might want to sell their guitar to Richmond Fontaine is, so we should go see, in either case.” So we went in, and there was Willy and the rest of the band, and we said hi. They said to me “We saw you walk by with your sister earlier and do a double take when you saw us because you weren’t sure if it was us.” I had forgotten, apparently.
Then later were space aliens that were attacking people, and I had to shoot things and people and then G. was on the aliens’ side and he was going to shoot me so I had to shoot him, but he didn’t die right away, but the wolves were coming so I had to stand there and wait for him to die so that the wolves wouldn’t eat him while he was still alive. I didn’t like that dream.

(song: “Somewhere Near,” Richmond Fontaine)

I am irritable today because it is too hot and it is making my head hurt. Also I can’t make the CSS play nice on a project I’m working on. And the e-Reserves are down so I can’t get to the readings I need to do for Monday. Also I’m hungry but I have to be good until the wedding because the dress has to fit. And I’m too broke for skinny food (other than plain salad), especially since I think I have to get a new undergarment to squish the top half properly. For the dress.
Maybe an Ace bandage would do it.

Wah wah wah.

But plants were 99¢ so I got to dig in the dirt yesterday and put marigolds and verbena in the boxes on the porch.

I was going to rave about my new software crush but I don’t know if any of y’all are Mac users. I am totally going to marry this program, though. I would have its little easily-integrated drag-and-drop export-to-iPod wiki babies.

Oh, and categories work now. Kind of. Still working on it. No comments yet. Homework keeps happening. stupid homework.

(song: “If I Could Give All My Love (Richard Manuel Is Dead),” Counting Crows )

O, the writers’ block! truly it will be the death of me!

Yea verily!

There’s a paper due at midnight — well, at 11:59pm. I emailed the last one in at 11:54 and was proud of myself for being early. I don’t know if this one will make it by the witching hour, though. If I knew what I wanted to say, I would be fine; I type quickly enough to plow through more than this paper’s maximum 1000 words in the next six hours. But I’m not sure what it’s going to be about, so instead of writing I’m playing Tetris and downloading The Dark Tower series audio books. I get to start book 3 on the bus to work tomorrow morning!

The bus yesterday morning was quiet and empty. I was the third person on; usually there are at least fifteen by the time it gets to my stop. It confused me. I wondered if I had misread the clock and was an hour off, or if I had forgotten it was a holiday. It’s like being the first to finish a test, which I often was — that always makes me worry that I missed a page or misunderstood directions and answered one paragraph on the essay questions instead of five.
But then at the next stop, the same guy that always gets on was there. He looks friendly and is always reading an interesting book. I was happy to see him because it meant that if I was totally confused, at least one other person was confused with me.
Also I realized that if the bus was empty, I wouldn’t have to sit next to anyone, so I listened to my Frankenstein, or, the Modern Prometheus and was happy.

Anyway:
Of the different methods of evaluating indexing, which come closest to assessing the quality of indexing, and which best suggest how to improve indexing? Please email me if you know.

Edited to add:

• Fix the RSS feed

should have been on the to-do list. Thanks for pointing it out, Heath.

Edited again to add:
Also, thanks, all, for the kind words on the new site. I do want criticism as well (constructive only, please; I can produce plenty of destructive criticism all by myself), though, so don’t hesitate to email if there are things that you consider extremely unpleasant.
Tho’ I suppose I shouldn’t assume that there are more readers than the four who already emailed! (*waves* Hi friends!)

(song: “I’ll Be Around,” Bobby)

I am working on making it display the metadata I want.

Soon I will import from MT. (Thanks Bill!)

this morning i am cranky. i suppose i need to have more coffee and some food. but there were no leftovers to bring for lunch and last time i ate on campus when i was grumpy, i ended up with one of those korean ramen-in-a-bowl, just-add-water things. soup is my default when i am cross, especially salty soup, but for this one i checked the sodium content because i am working on not kiling myself with oversaltedness. it only had 63% of my daily sodium, so i bought it. on the way back to my office i noticed that it actually said that one serving had 63%, and the bowl contained two servings. oops. the bowl also contained several interesting ingredients: “onion laver,” “wel shonion,” “seatangle” (sea tangle or seat angle? i guess we’ll never know).
i ate the whole thing anyway, despite the MSG and the wel shonion and the onion laver and the hot pink pinwheel shaped fish cakes, which are cute but not something that i feel should actually be digested. and it was good.

school is getting to the point where i start chewing on my nails, and my face starts breaking out, and i start going crazy. whee! but at least the househunting stress is over so i can focus fully on the academic stress: on monday we signed the lease for a super cute two-bedroom in wallingford with a fireplace and a basement and a garden all ready for me! i get to start moving in on june 1.

and in the meantime i have to figure out PHP and MySQL and how to make them talk to each other, and write a 10+ page paper, and learn JavaScript so i can fix my flowershop.

(song: “montgomery park,” richmond fontaine)

when i was a kid i wanted to grow up to be an artist. i made my parents get me watercolors and palettes and pastels and nice paper; i dressed up as an artist for future career day during spirit week in 8th grade. i don’t even know what that means — i think i wore a beret and some jeans with holes in them. who knows.
shortly after that, though, i realized i’m not meant to be an artist: i frustrate too quickly, i’m not patient, i don’t trust myself, i can’t properly translate what i see or feel. i was heartbroken for a while and then i got over it, but the inability to create is still one of the major things i wish i could change about myself.
knitting was good for me to discover because it is impermanent yet it allows me to play with color and texture and shape as well as my limits. but lately what i want to do is write. not write great fiction or anything, just produce something i don’t hate.
everything i have read recommends writing daily, so i am going to try it. i am going to try to take notes when i think of interesting things — though i think for starters it’ll be seeing interesting things rather than thinking them up myself — and i am going to try to write about them in a way that i like.
what this means in practice is probably that i will post less frequently, though, because i will not want anyone to see it at first. so if i disappear that’s why. but maybe sometimes i’ll like things i write!
pfft.

***

seattleites, there is a very exciting show this weekend: my boyfriend bobby bare jr., with richmond fontaine from portland and chuckanut drive, 2/5 from here and 3/5 from bellingham. all of these bands rock seriously a lot and i’m really looking forward to the show. get tickets early as bbj shows usually sell out!

***

oh, the other good thing about writing is that it’s free. this is nice because i’m super broke. can only go to the show because of being on the guest list; tomorrow i get to go to the grocery store and am only allowed to buy dried beans, bulk rice, eggs, and whichever are the cheapest tortillas. at least i’ll be a semi-nutritioned (??) broke person.

(song: “the king of carrot flowers, part one,” neutral milk hotel)

it’s not that i hate the fat - it’s the feministness that hates (SO FUCKING MUCH) the thought that i would be a better person if i weren’t.

(song: “meaulnes,” the palace brothers)

maybe the reason i’ve been in a bad mood lately is that i haven’t been listening to enough old 97s.

(song: “indefinitely,” old 97s)

this spring break, i have learned that i am not good at being bored. waking up with nothing to accomplish in a day makes me cranky. i need a goal of some sort, either something that must be done by the end of the day or someplace to be at a certain time. finishing books apparently doesn’t count, which is unfortunate, as i’m within 60 pages of the end of at least two books. so now i’m trying to find goals for every day this week. some options:
go for a bike ride in the morning
go to the gym (x3)
finish one half of one curtain (x2)
beat the INCREDIBLY ANNOYING spot i’m at in prince of persia
fix the stupid css for the website
put my controlled vocabulary in a database, just to prove i can.
and maybe i’ll bake something. i’ve been thinking about making fifteen batches of muffins and then freezing them for breakfasts for the rest of eternity.

got home today from a brief and boring (and therefore cranky) trip to portland. since it was largely a business (catsitting for my mom) trip, i didn’t see anyone except katie on the way down. i did get to have a little picnic in clatskanie, which was very nice; it was strange to be so close to astoria. the other high point of the trip was the $5 crossword puzzle book at powell’s. it’s all sunday puzzles so i will be busy for a while.

addendum to the list of daily goals:
finish one crossword puzzle.

(song: “guess things happen that way,” johnny cash)

i get to build a controlled vocabulary about fashion design. it’s very exciting. no, really. it is.
snow day was good but monday was stupid again.

(song: “outro (with bees),” neko case. sorry for using the same song twice. it is just the right song to use right now.)