Thanx Ev. I think. This doesn’t mean we have to throw more money at you, does it? Cause, all of my funds are tied up in other places right now. But, anyway, thank you. We all appreciate the efforts.
by krisis
Personal
My wrist hurts so bad that i’m physically sick, and of course i decided that i ought to type about it; ironically, my mother just had surgery for her rapid onset Carpal Tunnel Syndrome ten days ago. I definitely have CTS, without a doubt in anyone’s mind, but so far it’s been a particularly ineffectual case of it. But, this morning i actually enjoyed my job for three whole hours, so now i’ve got to pay for it somehow, right?
My task for this morning was to make individual mounts for photos of everyone in our department (22 people) so that we can have a new staff board outside of the office. This involved heading across the street to the ECM Creative Group, whose office is totally surreal compared to mine. They have seven people crammed into one medium office space, and each one of them have an iMac or a G4 plus one hi-tech tool (scanner, digital camera, digital film scanner, digital scripting board…), and all of them are delightfully tech-headed in amusing and awing ways (as opposed to those other tech people i met last week). They all go out together in the morning for coffee (small black with shots of vanilla), they listen to 88.5xpn (“Hey, turn that up, that’s George Harrison!”), and they talk about fun things like digitally inserting a prettier color of sky into pictures of our lab building or about who gets to take home their extra registered copy of photoshop.
Their leader is Carole, who seems almost quiet and mousey when you first meet her, but who is really whacky and carries twizzlers on Fridays to get her through the day and rows crew in her spare time. Ally, one of the other office people, is a nationally ranked female rower. They also have a myriad of toys, both technological and for children. They do the university web page, our yearly viewbook (now on cdrom), and a myriad of other visible campus design work. Carole thought i was only an “arty kind of guy” and was surprised when i told her i might be interested in working for her part time and that my goal for the summer is learning PHP/mysql. She asked to look at my cross-curricular project once it’s done. I blushed a little and studiously ate my twizzler.
So, yes, today they gave me a job with a goal and a timeframe and nice company and i loved it. Use Quark to make the picture mounts, slice them into reality with a huge metal rule and an exacto blade, then mount the mounts onto heavy cardboard, and finally deftly place the picture into the mount using a mere two pieces of double-sided tape that do not let go of what they’re holding onto even if you only want to move it half a millimeter. The only problem was that to use the exacto blade, or to edge pieces of double-sided tape into the right place, my right hand kept being twisted every which possible way until finally it felt like the insides of my wrist ached and my fingers didn’t quite want to be cooperative. One of the other women in the office with CTS had a beautiful wrist-splint on to get used to her new keyboard, and i was biting my lip to keep myself from asking her if i could borrow it. We just talked a bit about her condition instead. At first it’s a lot like trying to move your arm when it’s totally numb from sleeping on it, and you know you can move it but it will feel strange and you’d really rather not. (And, i just wrote that without thinking about it, but that’s exactly how my mother described her CTS to me three months ago when it first started really getting to her. And, i’m in two high risk categories because i’ve typed regularly since age 7, and i play guitar every day. Fuck.)
So, ouch. But, a good morning, and i like being here, and i’m trying to contrive a way to get my ass back across the street to play with more Quark and art supplies. Yum.
Some business: A) Huge congrats to Marissa, the newest cool chick to win a Survivor-Based WebGame. Despite accusations that she won by baring the most flesh the most often, i can honestly say that i found Marissa entertaining from my first sighting of her, and i think she was very deserving of the win. Now onto more PuppetMaster, where i’m currently splitting color-commentator duties with the illustrious Bertie, queen of all things sBlog. Being the peanut gallery for PM is fun, because i always have something to blog as long as the contestants are acting up; it has nothing to do with my own motivation. B) I am very gracious for the link from Prosiac, a wonderfully cleanly designed website that found me over at PM. Next, redesign related-links were blogged by sBlog2’s Josi and Matt Pollard (who’s probably linked me more times than any other page i read). Also, please go give Dane’s new log a day or two of your attention. Dane was pinch-blogging for Mollie of Book of Days while she was on vacation, and is also a frequent commenter at Rabi’s and a newly accepted student at Drexel. Finally, to finish up in the gratitude category, Tom from Nothing is the third sponsor of the 25/24 project (the other two being the ladies that the latter two links led to).
amazing websites make me very happy : erasing.org
I sorta learned to speak by listening to Ani DiFranco; you can hear me hem and haw and um and ahh my way through my sentences complete with lil’ folksinger giggles and breathlessly ended phrases. This isn’t an all-the-time thing, but you can certainly hear the influence whenever i forget who i am and start talking about my music. But, Ani’s not the only person who’s had an unintentional effect on my speech patterns: i pepper my campus tours with twangy southern “y’alls” and attach “ya knows” to the tails of my statements in an unmistakenly Fargo fashion. In the cases of the latter two affectations, i’m not entire sure how i picked them up, but generally anyone i listen to often has an effect on how others hear me – and the surest way to tell is to ask me to talk about music and proffer me a bemused smile as my sarcastically directed patterns take a left-hand turn and suddenly i’m saying “Well, ahh, this song… this song was, um, not the easiest song. Not the easiest song to write… but it wrote itself, i suppose.”
Oh, did i mention i picked up some loopiness from Tori?