Quo Vado?

Well, I’ve talked about the travel situation to and from the new homestead, but have remained mum on my activities while there. I call the house kMom lives in the new homestead because I’ve never really lived there. The house I grew up in was a two-story cape cod with a white body, brown trim and Georgia Clay colored door. The summer after I graduated from Case, mom had the new house built. It’s a cozy, if sterile, three-bedroom ranch with an awesomely arranged kitchen and a beautiful sunroom. Unfortunately, the house has never felt like home; nowhere has felt like home in a long time.

Putting aside my maudlin nature, my trip to Indiana did what I needed it to do. I came back refreshed. When I go home I find their expectations are low, I’m expected to be friendly, go to the movies, sleep allot and in general chill out without the guilt that festers in my head here. Mind you, after about four days I’m bored out my head, but I generally return home feeling rested and not guilty.

Christmas Eve went well. I’d told Aunt Prep which pattern I’d bought for kMom’s holiday ware, and she brought a cheese plate and knife with her. After having a minor heart attach I was grateful to know that kMom liked the pattern before she ever opened her gifts. She really did enjoy the new china pattern. What floored me was her plan to sell the one she’d had for so many years. It’s a great plan, I don’t like the pattern and Squid certainly doesn’t need it so no tears should be shed.

Some things about Christmas, however, never change; the number of gifts in front of Squid once again exceeded mine. You’d think after a quarter of a century I’d be over it, but know I had to fight the number of boxes envy all over again this year. The worst part of it was, I contributed three packages to the problem. I’ve managed to put most of the envy over the family’s treatment of Squid behind me, but I guess some days give that shadow more power than I’d like. I brushed the feeling off, reminded myself that he didn’t request it, and settled in to enjoy watching them open their gifts.

The remainder of my stay passed in a calm, informal matter with few bumps or spikes in emotion or energy. I sometimes wonder at just how much of my family’s calm is true and how much do we hide behind the silence. As I think this I wonder at how much my mother doesn’t know about me, and just how much that bothers me. There are things I don’t mess with now because there is little point, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t know anything about them or how to approach them when the time comes. Her assumptions about what I do know how to do when it comes to homemaking frustrate me to no end, I want to jump up and down and holler at her that I’m not completely without skills, I know how to set a table, I know what colors work together, and I have a clue about decorating and furniture arrangement so stop assuming that I’m deficient @#$*^&%. But, I don’t. Instead, I take a deep breath, gently correct and move on. I guess that’s what I get for being a partly ‘what you see is what you get’ kind of gal.

Dateline: On the MARTA heading to ATL ‘Burbs
Ok, odd dateline, I know but after spending much of the last three hours catching-up to the stuff in my aggregator, I need a break. The shear volume of stuff bloggers write is quite overwhelming if you spend four days away from a decent net connection. My to follow up on is as follows:

• Check Thanks for Not Being a Zombie for music recommendations.
• Follow Marvo’s Method business model link. Leave comment on sadness that he doesn’t have a Red Circle Boutique.
• Check into CleanSoftware.org
• Read Medical Students Profile Middle-Earth’s Gollum.
• Look on slashdot for Comair computer system failure talk.
• Find out what an RSA key is.
• Check into The King William’s College Quiz.
• Check into voice recognition software.
• Check into Mozilla Lightning.
• Look into helping Asian earthquake victims - Scobleizer has a few links.
• Look into the Graphing Calculator Story w/ the guys fired from Apple.

I think that’s the end of the blog catch-up stuff, but maybe not.

I also need to check into the return policy of where I purchased my bag. Much of my problems leaving last week involved the bag not carrying what I needed for it to carry for the trip to the new homestead. If I cannot return it I’ll be very miffed. I didn’t realize when I purchased it how important I would find being able to latch the bag closed would be to me. If I don’t run into problems returning the bag, I’m fairly certain about what I’m going to try next. This finding a bag thing has become something of an long protracted maze, with obstacles, wrong turns, and false finishes. I will persevere through it, and have a great happy dance when success is achieved.

I forgot just how long the ride to the other end of town could be. The leg supporting my iBook is falling asleep and the foot connected to it has become almost too warm. I know, anyone who knows me would question how one of my feet could ever get too warm; but it’s sitting on the train’s register. I am such a temperature wimp.

Alm’s picking me up from a station that’s new to me so I’d best start paying attention to where the train is going as I’m not sure about the order of stops on this line.

Dateline: Fort Wayne International Business Center 12:11p
I know, my obsession with getting to airports early causes many people to question my sanity. I dread the anxiety of running late and do whatever I can to avoid it. So, today I arrive at FWI two hours early, check in and wait for my flight to depart. The wi-fi access made my quirk worth while today, especially given I hadn’t set up the land line connection. The collection of posts below have been added and date stamped in accordance with when they were written.

My hometown finds itself straddling two very different realities. As a suburb of cornfields, Fort Wayne seeks to serve the farmers in adjoining counties while simultaneously projecting a 21st century image. It’s quite possible it falls short in the first task, I don’t really know enough to judge, but it definitely falls short on the second. WiFi isn’t readily available, the six gate airport poses more problems than Hartsfield, and Pizza Hut remains a popular dining establishment. The Wi-Fi will arrive eventually, FWI will remain difficult, and Pizza Hut love will hang around my neck for a very long time. What’s with Pizza Hut? Well, here in Fort Wayne it represented nearly the only place to get pizza in town. Some of the busiest stores in the world are located in this slice of suburbia, the stores here all have sit-down areas, sometimes they even have two atriums with additional seating on the side. Squid and I talked about it, and not only did Pizza Hut spoil us for most other pizza establishments, but we haven’t seen the eat-in traffic found here at home.

I have other things about the trip to the new homestead to say, but I think I’ll take more time than I have available to frame them. For those of you traveling, be safe.

After avoiding Curtis’ review for over a week, and hoarding the DVD from Netflix for nearly a month, I finally found myself watching Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I now understand why the few reviews I read didn’t quite know how to describe this movie. I appreciated the utilization of time in this movie, the task of determining when a scene takes place helped pull me into the movie and provided a puzzle to get me to watch it again. While I know the movie offers a non-unique time treatment, I prefer the interpersonal nature of this film. Both Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet offer the viewer excellent acting against type performances. The internalization of Carrey’s more typical broad strokes produce a nuanced portrait of someone trying to find a little space within himself to be free. I feel like I can use this role in conjunction with the ‘loud’ characters Carrey typically plays to help people understand, to a degree, what it often feels like to be me. The excellent acting overcame moments of frustration regarding slow pacing and a B story I found obnoxious (the prude that I am).

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

• Matinee or Evening Movie: Evening
• Add to Collection: Yes
• Grade: A-

The idea that the person we love doesn’t change even if we attempt to cut them completely from our lives pokes at me with a double edged sword. Such potential promise and potential despair wrap themselves around that romantic notion.

For our time together while at the new homestead, Squid and I took in Spanglish. I perused enough reviews before seeing the movie to know that the professionals didn’t appreciate much about the movie. I enjoyed my time in the theatre, finding myself once again pulled into a world where shades of gray refrain from muddying the black and white world of technicolor. Built within a college admission essay frame, the movie paints caracitures rather than characters. My main frustration within the film involved controlling my reaction to Deborah Clasky, a portrait of a clueless mother searching for the world to fit an ideal and unable to accept that the reality of her life will never live up to that perfect image. From my seat my mind begged to yell at the woman to take her head out of the clouds, deal with reality, and do something to change her life so that she likes it. The actors filled their broadly drawn roles well, and for some reason I keep falling for Adam Sandler’s movie characters. He manages to find a way to make the purest of hearts believable, and this movie adds intelligence to the mix. There’s something about him that makes it too easy to understand why a chef would be happiest with three and a quarter stars. I enjoyed the film, and if you like sappy movies that move slowly I think you might too.

Spanglish

• Matinee or Evening Movie: Matinee
• Add to Collection: Yes
• Grade: B

There’s a line in The American President where Sydney Ellen Wade says something regarding how she’s enjoying the Capra-esque quality of her visit to the White House. In context the viewer appreciates what she says, even if they lack knowledge of Capra movies. Tonight, I decided to add Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington to my film education. Mr. Smith’s innocent joy at seeing the Washington sites for the first time rang of such purity of spirit I questioned his sincerity. This movie reminds the viewer that little things can have little influences and that sometimes the price we pay for idealism far exceeds our expectations. With James Stewart, an idealistic story, and a happy ending the movie fit what I needed for the day. I enjoyed the movie, and encourage you to see it if you haven’t yet.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

• Matinee or Evening Movie: Matinee
• Add to Collection: Yes
• Grade: B+

Oh, I forgot to mention that there’s now more than corn in Indiana. I’m visiting the new homestead until late Monday, so Happy Holidays to everyone and I’ll try to see you in the mean time. Drive safely, keep a cool head, and leave the deadly wepons at home!

Dateline: Hartsfield Concourse D - Chili’s 8:45a
Well, so far so good this morning. After a snafu with the bag and running the usually 10 morning minutes late, I’ve stopped at the airport.

Having Hartsfield as a final destination represents one of the best things about living in Metro ATL, getting here, however, can challenge the most intrepid of travelers. Alm dropped me at the Midtown station earlier this morning and I traveled the train here. Sounds benign you say? Alm’s driving freaks me out, this morning she nearly ran a red, stopped for a green and didn’t drive fast enough to avoid being killed in ATL traffic.

The check-in and security process kept you moving this morning. Delta changed the check-in area at the bottom of the MARTA stairs to self-serve kiosks, lucky train placement and quick movement on my part resulted in no wait for a kiosk. Once I’d told them I’d arrived and took a pit stop I got into the security line. In a winding pattern of people, the line looked like this huge mass of people. Upon first glance it terrifies my impatient heart, but a second glance shows that everyone keeps moving. Now, I don’t know what the line will look like in in half an hour, but my entire trip through security took 20 minutes. Now, I sit awaiting my french toast and bacon, looking forward to hanging out here until around 10:30 when I (prayerfully) board the plane.

I intended to write yesterday evening, but dilated eyes and a grumpy disposition yielded a head hitting pillow time near 8:20p. My visit to the ophthalmologist revealed only that somewhere along the line someone over-corrected my vision, so now, in a twist of oddness, my prescription is becoming smaller. I scheduled the visit close enough to the end of the year that I was able to choose a new frame for my glasses. I’ve decided that my aesthetic tastes need to be somehow revised to fit my actual budget. My current glasses have an odd rounded diamond like shape and are Escada, which definitely didn’t fit the frame allowance; the new frames are Calvin Klein’s that also don’t fall within the allowance. I’m not sure how the Calvin’s will go over with my friends, instead of being a rounded shape they are rectangular; at least the woman helping me choose the frames helped out, especially given that I’m quite clueless about such things. From my prospective the testing indicated that my left eye was having a much more difficult time reading and that my right eye was doing most of the fine-tuning. I’m not sure why, but I thought that was odd and likely explains why I’ve been spending so much time without my glasses in the last couple of months. Oh, I almost forgot the hint of the day: when taking a ‘click when you see it’ test be sure to look at your clicker before hand. I managed to convince the tech yesterday that I had no peripheral vision because I treated the clicker like a Jeopardy clicker rather than a mouse clicker.

Please don’t plan to do anything with/for me on July 16th or 17th. There’s this book coming out you see, and I’ll likely be in line for it. One of these days I’m going to have to quit this addiction.

What do you get when you add spot on acting and great cinematography and a better than decent story? A great movie like Finding Neverland. A movie I didn’t regret paying evening prices to see and something to be added to the collection. Johnny Depp remains one of the few ‘big face’ actors I forget when I’m watching a movie, his ability to fill a role and speak with his eyes astounds me. The push/pull between fantasy and reality within the movie reflects a struggle I know I face. I worry that if I ever have children they won’t be children, I ponder how I would be different if I hadn’t been 30 at 13, and I struggle to live the simple joy that the children in the movie so treasure. Many of the movie beats found echoes within my own experiences, including the idea that we work so hard to be grown-ups because we hold the idea that it will hurt less that way.

Finding Neverland

• Evening Movie: Yes
• Add to Collection: Yes
• Grade: A-

I possess an affinity for movies that make me cry. The tears rolling down my face remind me that I’m not only human, but do actually retain some ability to empathize. The moments when tears appeared struck me most while watching this movie, rather than cry during the most obvious times the tears flowed the most when anger overcame the fear and rage sought to destroy the things that brought happiness. When James finds Peter destroying the stage and chooses to take a seat and watch, as if by not stopping the action he grants Peter the right to rage my heart broke. I wonder how the hurts would heal differently if I could externalize them.

I’ve yet to name my iBook. It has to be a guys name to remind me who designed the darned thing when something goes wrong, that, and I don’t really actually like too many girls names. I’m going to be in trouble if I ever have girl children, well, any children at all really. I’m going to see a movie tonight as a reward for surviving the last two weeks. If I’m not completely brain dead by the time I get home I’ll let you know what I thought about it. Given that I had to remind myself to take my coat with me to lunch I won’t be holding my breath that I actually get around to writing something about it. I find myself frustrated at the holidays because there isn’t more blue. Not the yucky baby blue, or the sock confusing navy blue, but rich royal blue needs to become a more popular holiday color. Until last week I wondered where the connection between Christmas and blue was made in my head. In speaking with our AA I mentioned that our Advent banners at church were blue for almost all of December when I grew older* and the connection clicked into place. I want more blue. *Note: I only admit to growing older, not to growing up. Sorry mom!

I feel like the small steps Philip suggested I try to make to survive until I leave for the wilds of Indiana some how encompases large chunks of time. After Friday, it became ‘making it through the weekend’. All in all it was a solid weekend, with way more face time than I typically appreciate, but in many ways disaster could have struck in many and various ways.

Saturday started with the usual alarm clock struggle which only achieved the typical conclusion, I began the day running 10 minutes late. Luckily the maintence bay began the day in much the same manner so my reluctance to stop dreaming caused no bad karma ripple effects. A new girl waxed my arches, and while they didn’t turn out perfectly symetrical, it lacked much of the accustomed pain, and since I don’t have to look at my face, and most of my arch is covered by my glasses, I don’t really care and will be returning to have her do it again in five or six weeks. Randy kindly removed a large quantity of my hair, though he did get a laugh out of my looking at him with my index finger level with the lower part of my eye and saying, ‘hair to here is good.’ I then moved the finger to my mouth and said ‘hair to here is bad.’ I even talked him to removing much of the stuff on the back of my head, I know, I can’t see there either, but it drives me insane. I drove back across town and had my nails done, amazingly enough it’s 26+ hours later and there is still bright red laquer on my fingers, a little chipped at the index fingers, but not too badly.

The crazy woman that I am I then headed into Phipps to find the Tumi store following Stag’s suggestion. While I didn’t find what I was looking for there, I was reminded of one of the first rules of the picky shopper, when you really need help ask the gay man or the little old lady. Dolly was a true gem, more than willing to listen to what I was looking for, drag me to the Mori store next door and show me a couple of options. I settled on a Mulholland Lombard Street mesenger bag, with this fun orange lining. It made it’s first public appearance this morning, and did very well. managed to contain all of the stuff I usually carry and my laptop without having anything loose it’s place. The price was more than I wanted to spend, but being that I know I’m AR and picky, I went ahead and purchased it.

After returning home, having an extended conversation with Alm about how difficult it is to define my asthetic, and resting for an hour, I prepared for a night of torture in high heels. I’d recovered the 10 minutes I’d lost earlier in the morning only to loose them and 20 more looking THE shoes I wanted to wear for the holiday gathering. I know, I had three other pair in the closet that would have worked, but they weren’t the ones I wanted to wear. I’d gone to the troble of having my toe nails painted blue so that they could brighten my evening and I couldn’t find my dressy sandles. After a please God prayer and making one more trip around the place, I found them - in the travel bag they’d never been released from after our trip to Charlotte, imagine that. The party itself was painful, the music was too loud, the food was bad and some wrinkles in my future plans were revealed. Even desert sucked, and it’s annoying me a day later. Though the dancing people did provide much amusement.

Today shined. Service this morning was good, though I do wonder why we have young children who cannot sing get up and pretend they can as part of a chior. Between service and the wedding I did some Toys for Tots shopping, soothing some of my shopping guilt. This afternoons wedding was beautiful, the bride radiated that strange ‘bride glow’, the groom about jumped out of his skin, and I re-connected with the brides family with a pair of bannanas. I know, kind of odd, but I know just enough Spanish to say ‘one moment please’ and I wanted to find a way to let them know that they were people I cared about on some level. When they visited us, the bride and I were sharing a flat with a third girl, and even with my large knowledge of the Spanish language and their equally large knowledge of American we somehow formed a connection. Like all good connections, this one involved food, basically her father’s love of bannanas and my mooching tendacies. So, to indicate special thought, I brought the father of the bride some bananas. The bananas left the party safely secured in his jacket pocket, and the connection remains.

Sorry this post is more a recitation than anything thought provoking. All of you headed off-line for the holidays, have a great time and work to keep yourselves safe. I’m going to take my fried brain and sleep. ‘Night!