the fish epic

Just finished porting over the last of the stuff that was locked in facebook-neverland. <smacks lips>

Brief synopsis: after upgrading to Lucid, my slicehost server went kaput and couldn’t get up for some time. I tried all the pills I could, but finally declared it unrevivable and nuked it. I thought I could export my blog posts from facebook afterwards but noooo… The RSS feed was broken and there was no guarantee that it would ever come back for the handful of us who care enough to want it. So it was manual copy+paste for the 40 or so posts stuck in facebook neverland.

BUT NOW

WordPress is up running this blog, tracks is up on a subdomain, and squid3 is making life easier at work too!

The main problem I had with tracks today were goofs… First I used the wrong password in database.yml, then I told lighttpd to look for dispatch.fcgi in the wrong place. BUT NOW everything is working and I can start focusing on getting the WP theme to not suck.

W is a sweet boy of six years, which is about 13 or 14 years in human years. He’s quite a dear for trying to rub me off on trees, but otherwise he was fairly laid back and would have to be pushed quite a bit to get up to a good speed. P is the opposite. The chubby girl was raring to go at every chance, and barely needed a nudge to take me on a short canter. Freaked out our hosts. They kept saying I did good.

The part that surprised me was how much Papa knew about horses. Over dinner one night he rambled off all sorts of breeds from around the world, who raced in what races, what awaits a horse when he comes of age… I think I’ve found that bond I need with my father, at last. I wager he’s probably a better rider than I.

I’ve also started riding my bicycle again. It was spurred on by the need to get better at it for my 101 pledge, and again by the peeps who got me into motorcycles. M is en route to getting his motorcycle already and soon I’ll get my gear as well, so I can ride safely on his bike. I wanted to get licensed myself this summer but there isn’t enough time. So I just got a new pedal-bike. Good enough. <rubs hands together>

I started writing on 750words as much as I could to get my writing going again. It’s fun, almost obsessive-compulsive. (Gotta ollect all them badges!) I’ve been griping about not creating enough recently—I’m reading tons of blogs, too many perhaps, and am immersed in social media stuff, again too much perhaps—so the free-writing opportunity was a great place to kick that.

The content of that isn’t too different from my other writing, but I do tend to self-edit more here than there. It’s almost difficult for me to not self-edit as I write. I’m not used to the mechanism of simply writing… it seems the voices in my head quiet down when the spotlight is shone on them.

Anyway, I feel I’m off balance again. Too much consuming not enough creating. I need to rein in from the diaspora.

Not to be confused with the Diaspora, of which I am lucky to backer (albeit a minor one).

I am also a backer of Am I Broken?

I am also loving education blogs. I might become an educator some day, though right now I oughta focus on becoming a shrink.

Right now right now I oughta go to bed…

I applied for a promotion a bunch of weeks ago. I also donated to a bunch of charities last year: the UBC Farm and Kiva (alongside a bunch of gift-loans).

Last year I received a Christmas letter from M’s mum that briefly chronicled her and her immediate family’s adventures. It felt special — partly because I was mentioned, but partly also because it brought back a pang of nostalgia.

Card-writing was a ritual that involved the whole family. I recall resenting it somewhat; I hardly knew most of these aunts and uncles whose Christmases and New Years were going to be happy and merry at the expense of my hurting hand. Sometimes we got creative and stamped the cards with colourful stars or mistletoes. I used a glitter pen one year and I got glitter all over my hands for days. But I liked receiving cards so I didn’t complained much. (I think. I’d have to check with mum on that.)

In Hong Kong, our windows were covered with security metal bars disguised as decorations. We used to string cards all along it, and watch as our collection grow. Many came from names I didn’t recognise; some of them, mum would look at for a long time before hanging up. Our neighbours across the street would do the same thing. The side of the building was a wonderful display of fire hazard throughout December.

Slowly, the strings of paper cards dwindled. We stopped sending them at some point. I think it was the year we moved to Canada. We sent out e-mails and e-cards instead. Eventually we stopped sending those too.

M and I sent out Christmas letters this year. We printed most of them on card stock and wrote a few special ones by hand (like the one we sent to Gooma and M’s mum and grandmother). Included were some photos that were taken by talented Marlis Funk. I don’t know if the recipients shared the same feeling of specialness, but if even a handful of them did, I did good.

I’ve saved just over 10% of my income in 2009. Woop!

GIR (formerly Minsc) is a terrier mix of about a year old. He loves to run around the couch, dig, and chew on things. He came from Korea to teach me about minimalism and keeping tidy.

After the initial 72 hours of his arrival passed, it was clear that he wasn’t house-trained. The fun surprises we came home to stopped being fun pretty quickly. (Although it was a good excuse to burn yummy-smelling incense.) For the next two months, when we’re at work during the day, it’s the kitchen for the bugger.

So he’s come to hate the kitchen, which is no surprise and really sort of cute. His reactions, whether to something pleasurable or disgusting, are hilariously exaggerated, especially if you consider the awful futility of his predicament: no matter how hard he wriggles, he’s going to be in the kitchen. I mean, we’re bigger, so we get to boss him around. That is the way of the world.

We could never get used to the whining — it’s such a sad, pitiful sound — or the noise of his feeble little claws clashing on tile, wood and recycled plastic as he scrambles to jump over or dig under the baby gate we erect between him and us. Even his favourite toys do not amuse him. We don’t know for certain what he does during his time in the kitchen, but gauging from his bleary eyes and untouched water dish, he seems to simply sleep it out. Once upon a time he would search through the recycling bin for toys, but he’s since stopped doing that.

Lately, though, we decided that he could stay in the living room instead. It seems to relieve a great deal of anxiety, judging solely by the greatly reduced amount of whining emitted when we put up the gate. That is usually a good thing.

I was quite careful about not leaving wires accessible, since they are a well-known puppy-attractor — something about the soft gooshy black plastic brings these natural chewers no small amount of joy. And since we knew he was big into shredding paper, we hid away our notebooks and post-its on higher shelves or on the other side of the gate. But I was not prepared for the destruction of at least two tape dispensers (we don’t know from where he got the second one), a few plants, a jewel case and its inserts, a CD (not the one contained in the previously destroyed jewel case), a wireless mouse, an old telephone charger I left on the side table for all of ten minutes, the plums and coasters I left on the dining table, or the walls themselves.

It was after GIR put a few holes in my mouse that I realised how attached I was to certain belongings. The sleek, slim gadget has set me back a good $40 not a year ago. At the time, all I could think about was that I was, in a way, $40 in the hole. Which wasn’t entirely correct: the mouse still works fine; I just had to remove two chunks of plastic which were bent out of shape, and sand down the bottom so that it would once again slide around a surface smoothly as a mouse is wont to do. The clicking doesn’t work a hundred-percent of the time and the cover falls off quite frequently, but it’s still a perfectly usable pointing device.

As I reflected on my own anger, I realised its futility and irrationality. Quite frankly, it was my own fault for leaving him with super awesome fun chewables; how could I blame him for being what he is — a dog in heart and soul and mind and body? How could I even fathom changing his very canine nature and scold him for the one thing that brings him pleasure when he so misses his beloved humans? And what’s $40 to me, anyway? I’ve already dumped fifty times as much into the dog’s well-being to-date, and much more on myself over the years. And it’s not like I can’t replace it if it was really broken… some might even say that’s cheap for a mouse!

So I meticulously smeared bitter apple on the wall corners and table legs and basically any part of the piano I thought GIR could reach. (I’m not sure what I would do if he chewed on one of my musical instruments, so I’m doing everything I can to prevent it.) Everyday after breakfast, I make sure to place the plants on the dining table and tuck in the chairs so that he can’t jump onto the chairs to get at the plants. I put away in boxes all my arts and crafts things, which, being in rolls of paper or tubes of plastic, are sure to make awesome doggy chew toys.

All of which actually keeps my living room fairly neat.

If I concentrate on not looking at the horrifying stains in the carpet, I can almost enjoy my stay there. I have ideas for ditching my ottoman, getting a smaller couch and two minimal or modern chairs, which should help the spacing issues greatly, but for now, it’s really not bad.

I watched my own blood gush from my arm into a little plastic baggie a couple of days ago…. Just in time for the Hallowe’en season.

Last week our communications manager sent out an e-mail with some alarming news. Blood supply in Vancouver and across B.C. are at a critical low. So, for one, try not to get into serious accidents; for two, please give blood.

My heart beating thunderously, I checked over the e-mail again for location and contact information.

My heart was beating thunderously largely because I was very much alive and capable of giving blood. That notion made my heart beat even faster since I’m irrationally afraid of needles. Thus, while I’ve entertained the idea of giving blood for a long time and went as far as making it one of my 101 goals, and it really doesn’t take much to do it, I just… haven’t gotten around to it.

But I couldn’t put it off any longer: I was cornered by my ambition and phobia. So I called myself a nancy, muttered “get over it” and dialed the number, making an appointment for the next day the clinic was open. (I was too chicken to do it on the same day, though that was probably a good thing in retrospect.)

When I arrived, the receptionist knew right away I was a first timer. “You look lost,” she said, with the affection of a nanny who has known me all my life. I filled out forms and had my finger pricked by a lady with purple bangs. A drop of my blood was pipetted into a glass of blue liquid — copper sulphate — to see if my blood sucked or not. It rocked. The lady helpfully reassured me that the pricking was the worst part.

Liar.

After the next lady quizzed me on my age and weight (with utmost kindness, and amidst stories of her working with high school kids in a blood drive) I was sat down in a leather chair. They asked me to furl and unfurl my fingers, to keep the blood moving, I guess. I didn’t look, but after the lady stuck the needle in my arm another lady handed her a clean tissue. I think I squirted a bit there. Fortunately I wore black.

I texted M continually to keep my spirits up. I explained my fright of needles to a nurse and she laid a tissue over my arm so I wouldn’t see it, but it didn’t help — the mere thought of having a needle stuck in my arm made me want to cry. Every squeeze of my hand reminded me of the stiff bit of metal stuck to the inside of my elbow. I pictured in my head what the needle would look like and blinked too late to get rid of the image. The nurses gently touched me on my arm and told me I was doing great, just keep pumping that arm, thank you very much.

Losing blood rapidly probably contributed to further deterioration of my mood, which evolved to the next stage of discomfort — nausea. I tried to ignore it at first. I thought about all the people who needed that blood, how much nausea they felt, called myself a nancy and kept going.

When she checked on me next, I was glad I told her I was feeling nauseous, because within the next five seconds my vision dimmed. “We have a ten!” she yelled, moving toward my needle-bound arm. Two or three other nurses came over. One of them spoke to me as I stared at her and watched her face recede into a dull, colourless flat world. I was losing resolution, I thought amusedly. Need to twiddle with that cable in the back. “Keep your eyes open, look at me,” she said, and it sounded like she was yelling but she didn’t look like she was yelling. I could hardly hear her through the din of some annoying ringing noise just behind my head, yet everything sounded very quiet. “Keep your eyes open,” she said again, and I opened my eyes wide as I could, staring into empty nothing. It wasn’t really black. I suppose that’s what the colour “null” looks like.

I felt towels on my neck and forehead, the wetness pushing back the nausea with every droplet of cold water on my brow. My chair was being tipped back so my heart was lower than my limbs. “You can stop squeezing now,” one of them said. I laughed (or wanted to at least) and stopped moving. The needle was out a while ago. I was probably making a mess on the armrest. “Take a deep breath,” another said, “then blow out slowly through your mouth.” As I did so, I could slowly make out the blur of her face again. I smiled at her when she said there was colour in my face again. She smiled back, a knowing smile that alluded to the hundreds or thousands other fainting nancies she’s met in my chair.

I am a little disappointed that I didn’t see my baggie at the end of the day; they’d snuck it away when I couldn’t see. I do know that the sloshing machine didn’t beep to signal that it was full, though. The lady said that I was very close to the finishing mark, so I’m guessing that I started blacking out at 450mL. Not a small amount of blood — that’s nearly a full pint of blood (taken from a half-pint).

In the mean time, I will repeat the call for donation — if you can give, please do. Unless you have extremely low blood pressure or are miniscule like me, you’ll walk away with nothing but a bruise on your arm (and probably an elevated ego for having helped save the lives of some three people). And if you can’t donate today for whatever reason, donate as soon as you can. You can also donate plasma or platelets if you want to cling close to you haemoglobins. It’s really a heck of a lot simpler than making a monetary donation.

Since getting my first e-mail address in, oh, seventh grade, my e-mail-checking habit has seen a slow but steady escalation.

From once-daily (during my designated dial-up time after school) to casual-camper (having the email window open at all times in the high speed era), recently I have graduated further to completely-neurotic (having my browser/phone notify me whenever a new piece of mail arrives). Part of that, I rationalised, was my job as a web developer and a student politician before that. The other part was just a reflexive, unthinking drive to install gadgets that “increase” my “productivity.”

Since my workflow was wide open to interruptions, I found that I produced some of the best work late at night — when no one else was around to offer friendly interruptions. This was in third and fourth years in university when I pulled all-nighters to finish term papers. In fifth year, I had to pull all-nighters just to finish regularly assigned readings and homework.

The gospel I’m about to sing comes as no surprise (especially given the awful, double-quotation foreshadowing). Yeah. I’ve “quit” e-mail for the last month or so and I’m quite glad I didn’t wait any longer.

But what do I mean by “quitting e-mail”?

This is what it means:

I’ve also turned off the notifiers on my phone. Unless I’m desperate for some response, I check my e-mail only a few times throughout the day (personal e-mail: twice; work e-mail: four or six times). In essence, I initiate the action of checking e-mails, not the other way around.

Relatedly, I unsubscribe to a ton of mailing lists which were fast becoming a burden. Anything I haven’t read in detail or even opened the last three times I received it got an automatic boot, and some stuff which I felt were interesting but still a waste of my time were vetted out as well. My inbox now feels very minimalist.

Without even looking at my place right now, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not a very good minimalist.

This weekend we purchased a sofabed, both in preparation for hosting some guests and to use up a difficult space in our flat. The floor plan shows that this was originally intended as a closet, complete with accordion doors and built-in shelves. The previous tenant correctly surmised that having such a large closet is useless, ripped everything out, and turned it into a home office. We have kept the same arrangement largely because that’s how it was when we got the place. Then we realised that it gets no natural light in the day, which makes it quite awful to be cooped up in there for more than several hours. With laptops it’s become much easier to work in other, better-lit areas of the flat. So the area devolved back into a closet where we stashed junk and paperwork that we promised we would do tomorrow.

Now it’s a guest room, with a bed and the future promises of shelves and place for our guests to hang up some clothes.

However, we still have the challenge of throwing out or selling several pieces of furniture, some of which I purchased as recently as last year. That “awesome” green chair will probably go at the next round of purging. I gave away books I’d never read again, realising that I bought them just for the sake of collecting the series. My mother’s drafting desk will be photographed, documented, and then put in the alley with a note explaining its history and a hope that it goes to someone who will love it as much as we did.

The desk is probably the most difficult item because I’ve grown attached to it. But with the understanding that I’m not attached to the object but rather the feeling of having it, it’s much easier to let go — the sentiment can be replicated using a simple photograph. The actual object, unused and unloved, can and should go to a better place. If nothing else, the desk deserves it.

In this exercise, I’ve found that minimalism is a mindset and a feeling that translates into deliberate acts. Once the mind has changed, the rest follows easily because the actions are all within my abilities. Throwing things out was never my forte, but I can do it in the face of, well, a desk sitting in the hallway and several boxes filled with unused junk. And I can keep doing it even if I had enough space to accumulate junk.

The resources I’ve found most useful are the Zen Habits blog, mnmlist, The Very Small Closet, and an article on self-reliance at the Art of Manliness.

M and I hosted a ten-course dinner party at our flat last mid-winter. Then-named “The Tank,” the condo is a little more than 600 sq.ft. Part of the challenge was to seat eleven people to comfortably dine; the other part had to do with cooking for said eleven people. The kitchen is sized Standard Yuppie: big enough to barely store wine glasses, and they pretty much just expect you to store your dress shirts, not noms, in the fridge.

We drank over ten bottles of wine and ate delicious leg of lamb and garlic-butter Brussels sprouts. Then we opened up the party and drank more mulled wine and spirits and warmed up by the fire amid a fierce snowstorm that started near the end of desserts (Typsy laird). We were lucky that most of the decorations that K put up managed to stay up… It got rowdy.

A few weeks ago we did it again to celebrate mid-autumn. We invited another mix of good friends and ate and drank and were merry. We had two chickens (and made yummy, yummy stock from the carcasses afterward, some of which still lays tantalisingly frozen, biding its time for a Chicken Noodle Soup Day), spanakopita, and a great début for a new recipe for bite-sized caramel apples. After supper, we cut open fresh fruits we’d picked out from the market in the morning. We didn’t get quite as rowdy but we certainly had many good conversations.

I really need to either get more efficient, or find some means of warming the food while it is being served… By the time I sat down for most courses, the food had become lukewarm. The time between courses is also haphazard at best. We served food basically whenever the food was ready. Sometimes that meant a good fifteen minute wait before the tables were cleared. Hopefully we’ll figure all this out before the winter dinner comes around again, and hopefully the solution isn’t just “get a bigger kitchen and get more pans”!

Related to this is my ambition to make and bind a book. I’d worked through the process in my art class, but I don’t feel particularly attached to the content and so am not too proud of the book. I made that book, essentially, to get a passing grade. But surely a recipe book of all my favourite recipes, perhaps with pretty photographs and heart-warming anecdotes would garner a bigger spot in my heart! So it begins. I’ve started compiling my most favourite recipes. I’m sure the stories would come naturally when I write them — good things always happen where good food goes.

I had decided some time ago, probably in high school, that bed-making is for nancies. What’s the point if I’m going to muss it all up in 12 hours again anyway? What’s the point of hanging up my clothes if they’re going to come off the hanger in two days? What’s the point of cleaning up? What’s the point? etc.

Point: it’s hella easier to find things when the room is neat. I discovered that I can see all my clothes at a glance and know what I can wear fairly quickly (I got it down to under 30 seconds now, and after the recent purge, I’ve begun to plan my outfits ahead of time).

Point deux: I feel a lot calmer when there isn’t crap all over the place. I never knew how much it bothered me until I cleaned up more, and now that I understand what that serene feeling is, I’m much better at replicating it.

I never thought I’d enjoy making beds, but this habit-goal has been the easiest by far.