The Wound Up Nerd Chronicle

Masterful

woundup — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 21:09:16 +0000

Just when I start to get bored with YouTube, and think that the world’s urge to create and publish cool stuff has waned, along comes something else that’s just marvelous. Funny, sweet, and very well done.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWWKBY7gx_0

Thanks to NM for IM’ing me the link.

How cool is this?!

woundup — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 01:09:41 +0000

I didn’t think it was possible to get simultanously any nerdier and cooler than the ascii-art Star Wars (http://www.asciimation.co.nz/), but it turns out I was wrong.

What I Did Over Christmas Vacation « Miss(ed) Manners

Wow!

So far so good

woundup — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 03:37:49 +0000

It’s been a fairly quiet year thus far, to which I have to say: whew. I’ve spent a lot of time, and even more mental energy on work stuff, but hopefully that will settle into more of a routine soon. Stuff around the house has kinda stalled, as I’m just about at the point where regular upkeep on the parts I’ve gotten cleaned up and organized takes all the time I’ve wanted to devote, so I haven’t been doing much about continuing to make it the way I want it – whatever that is. Or perhaps that has more to do with the fact that basically every next step is hard, either mentally (go through all those miscellaneous papers in my office) or physically (move some heavy furniture).

On the other hand, I have managed to have a few dates (!) with a couple different women, and it’s been nice to get out. And I got together last week with S&K for dinner at the Slanted Door (about which: Wow! – I feel like I should write a review for Yelp, because half the people on there clearly don’t get it), and we finally exchanged xmas presents. I gave KR a sampler pack of gluten-free baking mixes from Made by Mona, since she was so recently diagnosed with celiac (?) disease, and those folks seem to be well regarded. I hope they turn out well. For SD I got a pair of Carcassone-related t-shirts courtesy of meeplepeople.com, which has a lot of fun stuff. SD is always hard to buy for, since he has enough discretionary income that if he wants it he tends to have it, so one has to find the thing he’s never heard of but would want if he had. But from them, from them, oh! They got me a copy of the Bouchon cookbook by Thomas Keller, which is really the best thing. Keller is an absolute maniac, of course, but this food is at least theoretically approachable, compared to say the French Laundry Cookbook. What’s interesting is that his whole purpose is to *perfect* all the dishses, not just make them. So the technique is amazingly precise and, ok, let’s be frank, anal. But just reading it (cover to cover, and slowly – I just got into the main dishes) I am learning a lot. So I’m digging it. Especially since I got a copy for AF for her birthday a couple years ago, but from Amazon, so I had never even actually seen the inside.

Oh yeah, and I wrote a new tune at the piano last week, and completely reworked an old one, which went from frankly sentimental and rather trite to something quite bittersweet, and much more interesting. This was a pleasant surprise, as I’ve been otherwise unable to get any real practicing done this year. Although that perhaps has something to do with my new netflix subscription. Before the trial period was over, I had almost 200 items in my queue. I think they are going to be good for me.

Xmas Eve. Also, fucking ants!

woundup — Mon, 25 Dec 2006 21:31:22 +0000

So after my distress of the previous day, I was concerned that I’d be really morose on Xmas Eve, not having any particular plans. But AA came over in the afternoon so we could exchange gifts, and we went out for a nice Pho lunch, and that was ok for me, although she got very sad and weepy. But I felt ok, although I was wondering what to do with myself, not particularly wanting to sit around the house.

But at 7:30pm or so I realized I’d better make certain I had all the ingredients for the apple crisp I’m bringing to dinner – yeah, not the fanciest of desserts, but the wonderful almond cake I’d planned to make went out the window when my hostness emailed on Saturday with a note that one guest is deathly allergic to nuts. So: apples, cinnamon, nutmeg, butter, flour, all good. What am I missing? Salt! When AA moved out I kept the kosher salt and gave her the Morton’s table salt, because I use the kosher all the time, but only need the regular kind for boiling pasta or potatoes, which I haven’t had a need to do since then. And the only other thing you need it for is….baking. Sigh. OK, it’s 7:45 – no problem, Draeger’s is just down the street and they’re open till 8pm. Whoops, closed at 7 today. OK, over to Safeway, uh-oh, empty parking lot, lights dim. Gulp, well maybe Mollie Stone’s, which ditto. A-ha! And thank god for Walgreen’s, which solved my problem. Although I admit to being surprised at the number of people who were apparently finishing their Christmas shopping there.

Anyway, after that little close call, I decided I could use a drink, so I stopped in at the local. A manhattan and a couple pints later, and it was almost time for their regular Sunday night karaoke. So I decided to stick around for a little while longer. End result: the place was packed, I stayed until close, did a passable job with “Surrender” and “Mack the Knife”, had a fine time chatting with lots of folks, came home and crashed. Xmas Eve karaoke – who knew so many people would be out for it? A nice time, and a good crowd; I think I’ll be back there for karaoke again, although probably not too often on Sunday, because kinda hung-over this morning. Oof.

On an unrelated note, the house had been full of ants since we moved in. This being northern California, not much to be done about it other than try to figure out where they come in (the heating ducts somehow), and put ant traps out. Which have been there, and I just put out new ones a couple weeks ago but they don’t seem to have done much – I guess I’ll have to try a different brand. But checking email just before I started writing this one crawls on my hand. How and why it’s on my desk is one issue (there’s nothing to eat here other than envelope glue), but the real problem now is that I can’t shake the feeling that something is crawling on me; on my foot, now my leg, now my scalp. Ugh! But no, I very deliberately checke couple spots I was sure had something on them – nothing. Which leaves me with no recourse other than to repeat: fucking ants!

Anyway, Merry Xmas!

Finally….

woundup — Sun, 24 Dec 2006 05:48:42 +0000

For those who might be reading and not have the backround, let me briefly provide some context, which is that at the end of October, my wife and I decided to separate after 16 years of marriage. Or more accurately, she decided we should separate, and I went along, not having much choice when you get down to it. Now, I wasn’t remotely keen on the idea at the time, and spent most of the next day alternately grieving and trying to figure out what I could do to change her mind. But after talking with a few friends both old and new, most especially the profoundly insightful and helpful MD, and her brother PR, I started to see how this was a good thing, and how what’s always been the most important thing between us (that is to say, my wife – AA – and I) has been our friendship. And since we are in so many ways very different people, both living together and the compromises that marriage require had been putting a heavy strain on that friendship for quite some time. And I started to feel a lot better, and very accepting, and a few days later I wrote up a list, titled “What I won’t miss”, and at that point I decided I’d be ok.

And we got her moved out at the beginning of December, and I have been ok. I’ve been rearranging the house to be more comfortable for me, although there’s still a lot to do, and really I probably want to replace of most of the furniture at some point – Danish Modern is ok, but it was really a compromise (see above) between her ideal decor (horribly modern and uncomfortable) and mine (Arts & Crafts). And although there have been a few brief periods of uncertainty about what to do or how to do it – I haven’t ever really had a home all to myself; always family, roommates, or girlfriend/wife. But it’s been cool, and I’ve asked a couple women out (they said yes, but ya know its the holidays, so scheduling….). Last weekend I was out with some friends, and was talking with one who hadn’t heard, and I told her, “Yeah, I went through my five stages in like 24 hours”. And this has all been fine, except that basically everyone, including myself, all our friends, and AA too, have been completely surprised that I was coping so well. But hey, that obviously means that at some level I’d been wanting this to happen. And yeah, looking back it’s clear we probably were done as a married couple maybe five or six years ago, but (a) I’m very change averse, and don’t push for it until I’m really desperate; and (b) between us there’s been one crisis or another of some sort all along until this year. So it makes sense that we waited, but also that we’re splitting. And honestly we’ve been getting along really well (although we haven’t talked money in detail yet, so that could change!) these last couple months – she comes over a couple times a week for something or other, and we have a regular weekly date to watch “Battlestar Galactica” and “Studio 60″ – she wanted me to keep the TV and TiVo, since she doesn’t want to pay for cable.

Anyway (sheesh, is that enough context for you?), today I got a tree for Christmas, or I suppose I should say Xmas since I don’t consider myself a Christian. But I’ve always liked the exchange of gifts, and the festivity that the decorations suggest and inspire. And MD thought we should each get one, and she’s been right about basically everything in this so far. So I got one, no problem, and I brought it home, and I opened up the boxes of decorations and where the hell is the tree stand grumble grumble back out to buy one at Target and now where’s the fracking tree skirt WTF grumble grumble next year I’ll know what all I have and I’ll know where all this shit is and I won’t put the stuff up where I need to drop boxes full of glass down from the top of a ladder etc etc. And it’ll be a fantastic looking tree when she comes over tomorrow to exchange gifts, so there!

And then I started to unwrap all the ornaments, and started finding all the ones we had bought together….in addition to whatever random stuff we picked up to fill out the tree, we bought one special one every year, starting when we were just living together, to comemorate the year, like the Mickey Mouse ornament we got on our honeymoon (Disneyworld), or the melting clock from the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg FL, to which we’d escaped when we couldn’t stand it any longer with my mother in West Palm Beach, or the plastic sushi to acknowledge the year we basically lived at the neighborhood sushi joint. And it crushed me.

And I had to sit down and just cry for a while, acknowledging the incredible suckiness of not getting to spend the rest of my life with this person who I love very much, and who I’ve thought of as my very best friend, although I don’t think I’ve ever been hers. Thank heavens the cat decided just then to come and sit on my lap – something she does does maybe twice a year – and purr up a storm while I petted her. That certainly helped me feel better. But still, I’m very sad again just writing this.

So what’s my point? I guess it’s this. On the one hand, it’s kinda shitty to announce you want to split up right before the holidays, and I’m sorta mad about that, even though its been ok for both of us until now. Two, although I’m going over to my friends JK and MB’s house for Christmas, I hadn’t made any plans for tomorrow night (Xmas eve), and maybe I should try to do so. And three, I guess I’m a little relieved really that the grief is actually there, beyond the initial bout which was really mixed with confusion and anxiety. Sometimes I wonder what’s going on inside my head, or more specially what isn’t. I know I’m not the only one because MD tells me her husband is the same way, but sometimes when I get really upset or irritated I feel like all emotions are just shut off and I’m just cold inside. (Do you watch “Dexter” on Showtime? I imagine that’s what he’s supposedly feeling all the time.) And I’ve wondered after every time that happens just how real the emotions I have at other times could possibly be, if they can just go away. OK, and obivously, the most common time for it to happen is during an argument that heats up beyond a certain point, and then I’ve been mean!

So does that diminish the value, or the quality, or the legitimacy, of the love I feel for the woman at other times? I didn’t think so, because goddammit, sometimes when I look at her, or just think about her, I feel like I’m melting with love, and would do anything for her, if it would make her happy. Which, apparently, includes making it easy for her to leave me. Oh well. Nevertheless, I started wondering again about how much love was left if I could give up that easily, and not really be sad for more than a couple days. But I guess I don’t have to wonder, since I can safely say that this fucking blows.

Jesus, I should probably go back and edit the hell out of this thing. But screw it.

iscribe.com apparently rocks!

woundup — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 00:46:54 +0000

I hadn’t really planned on starting this blog with a web link, but if this thing lives up to the demo (and the review excerpts seem to say that it will), this might be the single coolest “Web 2.0″ app I’ve ever seen. Watch the video!

Welcome to Scrybe

One more blog

woundup — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 21:44:32 +0000

As I have tried to get in touch with various folks around the country over the past couple months, it’s become clear that life would be easier (at least for me) if I start blogging again, at least a little. I’ve been putting it off for months, really, but as I was ordering a Murakami book as a present for a friend, I came up with the title, and that was it.

And if you’re wondering why you didn’t get that Murakami book on your wishlist, well, maybe it wasn’t for you, or maybe it was backordered and it won’t show up for weeks.