A sad thing

Well, I typed out a whole long message about the cold wind that's blowing through town and how it reminded me of this day when I was a freshman in college and I sat outside in the cold waiting for my ex-boyfriend to arrive (he was visiting from college in Boston) and what a nice day we had, etc. And then it got swallowed up into the cyber-vaccuum.

As I often say under my breath at work, f%#$ing computers! OH WELL.

I will re-recap, for those interested, that my house (contract pending) was inspected Saturday afternoon, and the inspector actually pronounced it "a gem." For a 50-year-old house, it's nearly pristine. There's some electrical work to be done, but nothing out of the ordinary for a house of this age. Had a good time hanging out with the sellers. Got to learn about all the plants in the garden (important because I plan to keep up their work and continue adding to it), and they even hinted they were glad I was buying the house b/c they knew I would take care of it.

A big point of agreement is that most additions to houses are abominations. One of the many bright points with this house is it's all original structure. None of what my friend Shawn calls the sunken den. (I'll bet James Lileks has something on these, but I'm too lazy to look right now.) In the neighborhood I've been looking, the sunken den is ubiquitous, as people enclosed their carports to create the charming, brick-on-the-inside den/lounge/wet bar. Common features of this type of room are brittle wood paneling, side-to-side sliding trailer-type windows, and climate control from hell--either a rattling window unit or an exposed-coil heater that makes your hair crackle--or both, since you are basically sitting in the garage, which was never meant to be warm/cool when it's cold/hot outside.

Oh, the houses I could tell you about. I come from staunch Modernist stock, so I'm a fan of 1950s design. I've looked at approximately, what--20 houses in the past few months? I have seen every color combination for bathroom fixtures from the 50s that one could imagine. My recent favorite was maroon and cream, with maroon toothbrush holders. I also saw a fabulous sink in that was aqua and kind of skewed in its angles. I got lucky--my bathroom is redone, and the half-bath is green and white. At some point I'll post a photo of the beautiful, unusual tile work in the floor.

Time is ticking down to my Utah trip, and I am wasting it. I leave Thursday, and people in the office are coming out of the woodwork with bizarre "priority" requests. Obviously, our priorities are not aligned at the moment. So, I leave you with the question, "to ski...or not to ski?"

College, revisited

I work at the college I attended/graduated from about ten years ago. It is, in the lingo of the biz, and Institution of Higher Education--IHE, an unfriendly, un-pronounce-able acronym. Then again, it's a lovely coupling of pronouns, "I-he."

Perhaps b/c of my fairly recent return to the campus of my youth, I've been listening to the Cure a lot lately. It's been years--in fact, they were more of a high school fascination. By the second year in college, it was all Pavement and REM's Automatic for the People. And the Beastie Boys. And Nirvana.

ANYWAY. Just got "Seventeen Seconds" and "Faith" on CD. I have the entire Cure discography (well, not true anymore--none of these greatest hits and extras crapola they've been releasing the last few years) on cassette tape, which means I can listen to it in the car (I must have bought the last car in 1999 to have a tape deck instead of CD player). Seventeen Seconds is still...what? Not "moving" in the way it was when I was 14, but engrossing. Wonderful to listen to. Faith will likely be the same.

Well, how did I get here?

This may be a short-lived endeavor. I had planned just to respond to my friend Tammitopia, and now here I am with my very own blog. Must admit, I've considered having one before, but prefer my sparse journal entries to be the non-edited, rambling type. Hence the title of this blog.

The other thing is that since I work in the wonderful world of web sites at least 40 hours/week, my idea of fun is not to sit around doing stuff on the computer--not really a "technology for technology's sake" kind of girl. Don't get me wrong, I love my job, but when the workday's over I'd rather go home and tie knots in some string (aka knitting) or go take a walk. Maybe it's a reaction to that horrible addiction I had a few years back to the X-Files message board. Back then, I worked at a job that was also technology-based but not challenging, so I had time to be sucked in. Ah, I do miss Agent Mulder.

That's all for now.