the Hoopla

» 03 | 2000: 02 03 04
Mar 2000

03.10.00 - last night i went to see John Gorka live in Piedmont. i always cry when i hear his songs whether its one about his father and the war or about his son or about italian girls. he's a beautiful man and he's from New Jersey.
   i went with a colleague and new friend and we talked the way there and back about what's missing from New Haven. we decided that NH just lacks the downright good. most things are more difficult here. i live in a small New England town that thinks it's a part of the New York sprall. every once in a while, you'll come across a garden. it took a lot of backfill to get it there, i'm sure.
   and we talked about sexuality and definitions and judgments and hopes. it is good to break out the wine with a new friend, share a brownie, and buy each other beers.
   when i returned i received a joyful phone call from my best friend. he'll be in Boston this weekend.

03.09.00 - the buds showed up, we ate and drank, and watched a movie called Dick that could have been so good, but moved so slowly that you had a chance in every scene to wonder why it got good reviews. i sat there and wondered if i'll ever believe another online review again. two (well, one) thumbs up my ass.
   then I got a chance to see 'If Walls Could Talk 2'. now this one was good. i had an aunt who lived with her companion for years and years. i knew them both as my two aunts, Aunt Peg and Aunt Marcine. Aunt Peg, my grandfather's sister, died and left everything in her will to Aunt Marcine. they had a beautiful relationship and made one hell of a gooseberry pie. i miss them both.

03.08.00 - with all the extra hours that i've put in this week, i'm taking the afternoon off. i'm going to open all of the windows in my house and let the sunshine in and face it with a grin. i'm going to blow out all of the winter dinge. what a beautiful day!

Chorus:
So let the sunshine in, Face it with a grin.
Smilers never lose, And frowners never win,
So let the sunshine in, Face it with a grin,
Open up your heart and let the sunshine in.

03.07.00 - great terrible tuesday. i'm already exhausted. each and every morning this week, i am getting up at the crack of dawn to check our database loads and fixes to our database loads. working day and inight. tomorrow i am taking a break. six of my buds are coming over for pizza, wine, and movies.

03.06.00 - great freaking monday. this is going to be a hell of a long week. i can feel it in me bones.
   i'm creating a movie to see list:
   - American Movie
   - Cartoons of Bob Godfrey
   - Happy, Texas
   - The Sixth Sense
   - Bottle Rocket
   - The Last Party
   - Taste of Cherry

03.04-05.00 - this was a weekend for discovery in my apartment. i discovered that i have enough room for my shit. I found a hanging bag hanger lost for about a year and a half. i discovered a box full of the postcards collected throughout college that had once decorated an entire dorm room wall. and i found my bike time pump. my house isn't that big, but i rarely move things around and open boxes. i've lived at this current address for a year and a half now and only during he past two weeks did i decide to finally open my book boxes.
   moves are painful, but i still choose to move often. just about every year or every year and a half. i'd rather pay more on the monthly rent than be locked into a long lease. i'm curious aobut how others live and what it's like for them. as soon as i move into a new place, i begin thinking about finding a new one. in many ways this, more than job hunts, is what has moved me around the country. i've lived all over the lovely state of Texas. I lived in Mississippi for two years exactly. i now live in Connecticut. i am not aware yet of the bug, but i still believe that it's there.
   do i need discipline in my wandering spirit? discipline has done wonders with my wandering heart. i've stuck with someone for three years and it feel good to have grown up a bit in that arena. nothing requited, but i feel secure.

03.03.00 - i used my pressure cooker for the first time today. i received it as a christmas present from my grandmother. i cooked brown rice and then added veggies...all in less than half an hour. including cutting up all the veggies... amazing. i don't really know why i am surprised.
  on the Discovery Channel they're discussing whether or not terrorism caused the West Nile outbreak last summer. what do you think the conclusion was? i'm not going to stay up to find out. 'new yorkers discovered that they were falling prey to the most dangerous animal alive: the mosquito.'
   i received a voters reminder in the mail today. it told me what party i'm registered with and where to go on Tuesday and the polling place hours. how nice. i never registered to vote when i returned to Texas from Mississippi. i don't know how Texas handles it. i do remember that motorvoter didn't work in Mississippi. i had to go to the courthouse in downtown Oxford and fill out the form.
   my mother instilled good civic manners in her children. i remember that once i turned 18, she'd call me on election day to remind me what my duty was as a citizen. she wouldn't let dad eat dinner until he came back with an 'i voted, did you?' sticker. we were very politically in tune during the 80s.

03.02.2000 - today i tested the almost final run of the y2k tests against our database. i got up at 6:15 and checked out the database load of 19 thousand new records. it went fine. was this another example of hoopla? i don't think so. after all, we're dealing with OCLC here.
   i heard that powerball has crossed the 100 million mark. perhaps i will play this weekend. taking it easy in the morning continues your dreams. i had a horrible one; actually i've been having horrible ones for about a week now. so far: i shot a man who ended up being my little brother and i was house sitting for a neighbor when i discovered, a week late, that they had hundreds of pets in their garage that i was supposed to, i guess, have been feeding, watering, and letting out to do their thing. i don't think that i was ever so devastated in a dream before.  i have to figure out why i'm stressing.
   well, the day is still churning out in massive detail. ends up that the OCLC load from this morning had 705 invalid records - OCLC's fault, not mine. i spent the entire afternoon checking and double checking the facts. it's all good now. speaking of good, someone found out that the powerball drawing has crossed the 150 million mark. hmmm.
   calendars are great companions. about five of fifteen in our systems group carry some form of electronic, portable calendar. je le refuse. i don't mind in the least going back to the office to confirm that i am available for my commitments. i'm not that busy and don't want the added pretension necessary, in my opinion, to act like i am. of course, all of my colleagues are busy as hell and portable, electronic devices with connective cables and convenient attachable keyboards are necessary for them to get through the days. i'm probably more suited to a farm.
   violence in the 90s: what decade might we compare this one to where the sane amongst us snap and the insane figure out the truths behind the mask? is there any history that can speak to us? 1860s? 1910s? bloody hell we're a mess of a society.

03.01.2000 - it's the first of March. Ides time. gorgeous morning here in New Haven. i walked in to work, stopping off for my volunteer stint at the Peabody Museum. i work in the Paleobotany Lab three mornings every week and have since last June. i thoroughly enjoy the work. besides introducing me to the world of curatorial work, my early morning experiences actually allow me to handle the specimens when i catalog them for their online database. currently i am involved with the Herman Becker collection composed of hypotype and figured specimens.
   everyone but me is at a class today. they are learning how to enhance our online catalog. since i'm holding down the fort, i thought that i'd continue to teach myself C. i've added a linux server to my collection of cheapo pcs at home. should be fun to work through the details.
   tonight on 20/20 there will be a segment on the main, only, who-knows suspect in the killing of Suzanne Jovin here at Yale in December 1998. James Van de Velde is the guy. Here's the latest from the Yale Daily News. i heard about the 20/20 show from Les, the cajun sandwich guy. 
   did we have any Y2KLeapDay problems today? no one is admitting to it, but here's my list of what happened badly today:
- all telecom systems for the library shelving facility were and are down since last night
- the LSYS table updates for our system crashed last night
- our database of vendors just didn't want to display the records after they were retrieved post-search
- there were various weird bugs in our database location displays
ok. so none were date-specific. it's probably because I'm the only one in the office today. i just need to be allowed to blame it on something, right? tomorrow is another day.

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