The Engineer has a crush on the Gardener. He looks at her a lot, but not so intently as to seem weird. He keeps offering to help her lift her bicycle onto the train every morning in a fit of chivalry despite her having done so every day for months and months without his help. It's really very cute. I can tell she thinks it's all a bit odd.
I'm exceedingly jazzed by the arrival of my brand new, totally legitimate copy of Adobe Photoshop 5. A friend bought it for me using his employee discount so it set me back fifty bucks instead of five hundred. I'm doing a little Lucy Dance of Glee right now. I haven't installed it yet as I have a project to finish on PS4: the not-so-legit copy. Maybe this time I'll read the manual before flailing around trying to intuit how an application works. It's pure luxury to have a manual. Shareware rarely comes with much documentation even after I've paid the fees. On the other hand, reading the manuals of my perfectly legit copies of NetObject Fusion and GoLive CyberStudio weren't helpful at all. I still can't use an HTML editor. I still upload, tweak, upload, fix, upload, nudge...
My email is chock full of activity lately. Between the Iron Chef mailing list, the Metajournals staff mailing list, and The Mailing List Which Must Not Be Named I am greeted with something like 50 messages a day when I get home. Ugh. I hate mailing lists. The first I can cope with because there's normally some interesting information every week if not every day. The second I agreed to join as a method for getting an idea for an article; I don't really have to participate since I'm freelance, although occasionally I weigh in. The third has a limited lifetime and is necessary for shared information among a widely scattered group. While these three lists are not full of horrible fighting or ultra useless information I still feel disappointed when I see how much of my In Box is filled with stuff to delete. Email is only exciting when it's from real people writing to me and not group responses to postings. Lists smack of Usenet and APAs and other amateur critiquing societies, and those things irritate the heck out of me. I'm not a letter hack; I'm just not the sort of person who likes commenting on every tiny aspect of what someone wrote. I vastly prefer to admire someone's jewel-like offering and then present my own as a gift of equal value. Much like fanzines and online diaries do, you see. Let's all do some art, man. Save the comments for later.
I've had trouble sleeping the last few days because of a recent spate of burglaries in this area. The thing which creeps me out so much is the way the burglar operates. He takes off his shoes and sneaks around while the people are at home. He never hits unoccupied houses like a normal burglar. Not only that, he's not very good at it! He's left several pairs of shoes behind during interrupted robberies. No one's been hurt or anything but the very thought of someone being in our house while we are home is upsetting me badly. I startle awake every time the sprinklers go off or the cats make an unusual noise. I'm super paranoid about locking up, now, too, whereas I had been looking forward to sleeping with our windows open this summer. This completes my transition from easy-going Tennessee resident to suspicious Californian. A genuine shame, I think.
I've updated my Desert Island Diaries section. It's a small selection of diaries I read outside of Archipelago. Archipelago has been closed to new submissions all year. This doesn't stop some people from writing for a review, but does effectively winnow out the completely inappropriate requests ("I have been keeping a diary for two whole weeks now, and I have lots of blinking text and animated fairies and blue text on red backgrounds, and I don't believe in navigation between entries so you'll have to keep hitting the back button, and I have a fairly tentative grasp of grammar, so can you please add me to your web ring?"). I'm a bit surprised about that, actually, but grateful all the same. As a matter of fact, I'm thinking of expanding up to 30 diaries again. The list has been stable for quite a while now. I like taking on diaries in non-traditional formats, like Karawynn's or Spilthy Girl's presentations. I would love a less North America-centric list. I'll have to go hunting for new diaries. If you have a favorite, feel free to nominate them.
Last, but not least, anyone who knows Janet Burrola should send her some health beams (old WELL tradition). She is undergoing gallbladder surgery and would really rather not. If the power of positive thinking can help, you're a winner, Janet.
