Campfyre Stories

I have mentioned, I’m sure, that lately I’ve felt like certain aspects of my past are catching up with me.  I’m still not entirely sure what that means, exactly, but it keeps happenning.  I can’t think of another time when so many things from years ago came up all at once.

I’ve been seeing people from my old workplace, my first IT job.  I see them all over the place, not always, or even often, in the area where we worked.  Sometimes it’s a happy catching up, other times it’s a little sad to see how things have gone for them.  I haven’t always been able to place them…  out of context is hard sometimes, but they usually remember me first.
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Last week I forgot to put on sunscreen while I stained a deck in direct sunlight.  My pasty-white skin turned BRIGHT red, but I’ve been really good about taking care of it for the past 5 days.  I put this aloe gel on it 3-4 times a day and made sure I wasn’t going to peel.

Last night I was thinking that I should buy some decaf coffee because sometimes I want coffee, but I don’t want the caffeine.

Today I went out on a painting job with Mom.  We had a lot of scraping and patching to complete, so I was working on an area of the ceiling.  As the dust fell from the ceiling onto my arms I noticed that there was something weird going on.  At first I thought it might be a rash, then I thought it might be hives, then I realized that my arm was covered in teeny tiny blisters.

I can only assume it’s an allergic reaction.  You can thank me later for not posting a picture.  It doesn’t hurt, but it itches like mad.  I can’t touch it because they keep popping.  It looks gross and it feels gross and probably it means that no matter what I did before, now it’s gonna peel.  My mother, who was also working in the same area, with the same dust falling on her had no skin reaction.  Blah.  And I have an interview tomorrow…  I’m not sure if I should bandage it or just wear long sleeves.

But, then, my day got better.  I got home and there were free coffee samples in the mail – enough for 14 cups.  Sure, it’s instant coffee, which is not my preference,  but there’s decaf and it’s coffee.  At least the day wasn’t an entire wash.

I am  a free woman

Papers came today.  Next up, getting my name back.

Here’s the funny part…

All that whole time i had spelled Adulteress wrong and NO ONE noticed…  I only noticed a couple of weeks ago when the spellchecker caught it in an email – heh.

It is truly amazing that so many of them live to adulthood.

Or any of them at all, really.

That is all.

I already wrote the entry about the things that are on my mind tonight, so I hope that my regular readers will head over to the Firing Range and read my review on Following Sean.  In addition to being a movie review, it’s also partly a commentary on my life growing up and the misconceptions that a lot of people have about children who were raised by active hippies.

I think you’ll find it interesting.

I think that blogging without comments is an excersise in extreme egotism.  I don’t mean the occassional comment-free entry, those often have their reasons, but an entire blog, rife with opinions, more specifically, biased opinions, Frankly, I think it’s cowardly and unforgivably narcissistic.  This, I think, is almost as bad as comment moderation that picks and chooses which opinions are worth publishing or those who edit comments to suit their own needs/wants.

Sometimes I see blogs or message boards or other community-based websites where groups form up to promote and encourage each other – often without any apparent good reason. No matter how wrong one person may be or how stupid they are acting, all of their imaginary friends come together to say "You’re so wonderful.  You can do no wrong."  Even this is less offensive to me than those who eschew comments on their to-be-revered words.

I believe that these comment-free zones are refusing to acknowledge that differing opinions even exist.  That their opinion is the only opinion there is – let alone that is valid.

While I was surfing last night I came across a post that set off the IT girl inside of me, so I said something.  Sometimes when I comment I come off rather harsh and a little bitchy, despite my intentions.  When I went back today, Ananke had replied to me, explaining her point of view, further explaining the situation and being a completely rational person.  Many other situations would have had the blog owner ripping me apart, or waiting for their readership to do it.  It was so refreshing to experience a rational person who could accept a comment that was at odds with her own entry.  I try to do the same thing in my own blogging.

Ed and I, for example, often go head to head on issues.  He’s still my friend online as well as IRL, but if he disagrees with me, I think it’s a sign of real friendship that he feels comfortable enough to say it.  Usually we keep conversations restricted to their original forums, as in, we rarely discuss online agruments in person, but even when we do, we’re reasonable people who don’t resort to screaming or petty name-calling.

Is that the concern?  That you can’t be rational about criticism?  In that case, I strongly suggest that you grow a thicker skin or step away from the internet.  Personally, I’d rather know what people are thinking in relation to what I’ve said than knowing that they’re saying those things behind my back.

Beyond that, we blog because we have an opinion.  We add ourselves to traffic-generatings sites because we want others to read our opinions.  To make a decision to subject the rest of the blogosphere to your opinon and not allowing a counter, or even the possibility of counter, you’re making yourself seem like you think you’re better than the rest.

Make people register – fine.  Surround yourself with cronies who will defend you to the death, right or wrong – fine.  But stop thinking that your opinion is the only one that matters because, frankly, it matters less if you’re too insecure to allow other people to correct your mistakes or have a differing opinion where you keep your own words.

At some point in time everyone has experienced the power of words.  Whether it was the singsong taunting of the schoolyard bully, a news report or a passing internet encounter, everyone has seen that others are affected by the words we choose, either to represent ourselves or to describe other people.

In this internet age, words have more power than ever.  People who blog, for example, give their words out to uncountable potential readers.  This can be a good thing in some cases or a truly horrible experience for others.  I have seen the difference in the end results of malicious gossip from the grapevine in a high school to slanderous comments in the blogosphere.  It is incredible how vastly things have changed just in the past 10 years.

The problem that I perceive, though, is that most people have no concept of how much power their words hold.  In the age of immediate information at our fingertips, how we portray ourselves (not to mention others) is more important that ever, but it’s a lesson that many people learn the hard way.
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Twice I have dropped my phone in the past couple of weeks.  When I say dropped, though, I’m not quite conveying the accuracy of this statement.  Both times, the phone, the expensive phone, FLEW out of my backpack and landed HARD on the ground – shooting the back cover and battery far, FAR away.  The first time I dropped it in the street, the second time I dropped it on a concrete floor.

The phone still works fine, but I cracked the casing, broke/lost the headphone jack and lost 3 screws.  This is not a huge problem, but the phone was starting to come apart at the seams.

So when Princess called me to ask if it was ok if we went to the Mall – just to go to Best Buy (an anchor store), I made her promise that we wouldn’t go into the Mall itself.  Now, what you have to understand is that the Mall makes me claustrophobic.  I get tense and a little frightened.  It is ALWAYS a harrowing experience for me.

So we went to Best Buy and I figured that they would be able to help me with my screw problem.  While Princess picked up her geek item, I went to harass the cell phone people.  They couldn’t help me there, but one of the sales team suggested I try a jeweler, since they almost always have eenie weenie watch screws lying around.  From Best Buy, I could see a jewelry store, so I ventured out.

They were no help at all and suggested I try the Sprint Store (who probably have old dead copies of my phone lying around), which is in the heart of the Mall.  Of course, at this point, it has become a mission.  At my behest, we entered the Land of the Mall.

As soon as we got downstairs, we were accosted by a woman who wanted us for a focus group, but we were on a time line and, frankly, not wanting to be IN THE MALL.  Even finding the Sprint Store (after consulting the map) was a challenge.  Princess was convinced that we were going the wrong way, I was appalled that I was actually in the Mall – and that it was MY IDEA.

We get to the Sprint Store and there are, of course, no available salespeople to help.  One woman had TWO sales folk working for her.  I really hate the Mall.  Finally we get a woman who thinks she can help, but tells me that they don’t have any screws.  I ask about old, dead Treos, but they don’t have any of those either.  She tells me that she can replace my phone for $55, which is ABSURD, because all I really needed was a couple of screws!  (However, this is good to know for when I have an extra $55 (HA!) and get annoyed with the cracked casing.

At this point, I am really unhappy.  Not only am I *in* the Mall, I can’t even get the screws to fix my poor phone, we’re going to have dinner in the Mall, since we’re already here, I’m IN THE MALL and, did I mention, I can’t even get the eenie weenie screws?  AUGH!

We pretty much gave up until we walked past a watch kiosk (I love that word, "kiosk").  Thinking about where this whole "adventure" started, I figured why not?  All I really need are a couple of eenie weenie screws and they’re not busy. 

They fixed my phone.  The watch kiosk…  in the Mall.  ROCK ON!

And then we got accosted again to participate in a focus group (by a different woman).  WTF?  We are BUSY and deliberately giving off the "I’m in the Mall, I’m in a hurry, leave me the FUCK alone vibe".  They don’t care, but we are young, single women – we KNOW how to brush people off as expediently as possible

On to dinner and a movie, but if you want to know about the movie, you’re going to have to read about that over at the Firing Range.

When I was little I had a book called Owl at Home.  It must have been my brother’s book, since I would have been around 7 when it first came out, but it was one of my favorites for a long time – well after I could read past that level and one of my favorite stories was Tearwater Tea. 

If you click the book link above, you’ll be taken to a page that talks a good bit about Tearwater Tea better than anything I could say now, at 4am, but that’s something else entirely.  I often find myself thinking about Owl, oftentimes after crying, but also when the moon follows me home

It never occurs to me to catch my tears in a kettle.  It never occurs to me to catch them in anything, at least not until after I’m done.

Owl said the tea was very salty.  I believe him, but I’d also kind of like to try it for myself.

And I don’t know if it’s necessarily about turning into a pessimist, but I’m losing my optimism.  Every day it gets harder and harder to keep upbeat – not in a plastic, fake way, but in a keeping true to my nature way.

I’ve come to a point where I have to actively work to not see cosmic conspiracies peering around corners.  I have to battle the paranoia that would be really, really easy to fall into.

Thank gods for my support network, though it sometimes feels smaller than I think it really is.  Thank gods for my voice of reason who can give me new perspectives and new ways to come at problems.

Tomorrow, after 17 years of active collecting, I am heading out to the local used record store to sell my collection…  this hurts, but of all the things I’m worried I’m going to need to sell, it probably hurts the least.  Of course, finding out what little it may be worth in reality may hurt even worse than parting with material possessions.

Is that the lesson here?  I’ve always believed that everything happens for a reason and I haven’t been able to find the reason in my current happenings.  Maybe it has to do with letting go of material goods.

It doesn’t make it any easier.  I really want a cigarette.  No, that’s a lie.  I want a LOT of cigarettes.