jessamyn

There are 269 posts tagged jessamyn (this is page 20 of 39).

muppet! and tree swallows.

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I went away last weekend and headed down to Amherst where I hung out with Jim and my friend Matthew, went walking around outside a lot, ate a lot of delicious food and saw the Asylum Street Spankers for the first time on what was, sadly, their farewell tour. It was a good time.

The last few weeks have been a lot of adjusting to the shorter days and hoping that my poozly sinuses can hold up long enough for my ENT appointment which is in December. So, I’ve been scarfing down a lot of zinc, drinking a lot of tea, trying to get some sunlight and dwelling on my least favorite dwelling-topics: sinus infections (avoiding) and sleep (getting enough of). Mostly successful.

A story you might like is how this video of my colleague Josh and I swearing up a blue streak wound up making $200 for my local food bank. It’s sort of complicated and involves a lot of inside baseball, but I’ve had a frustrating day trying to explain Mac computers to local folks, so I’ll try this.

– There was a thread on Ask MetaFilter where some one asked for good jovial insults to call your friends. It was, predictably, hilarious.
– So, we mentioned it in the monthly podcast. Yes there is a podcast, about a website. And yeah it’s really us talking about the website. I can’t explain it, it is somehow good.
– In the comments for the podcast — yes we put the podcast about the website on the website itself and then people comment on the website, about the podcast — someone mentions that he’ll give $20 to my favorite charity if I read the list of insults into a video camera. He did this knowing full well I would totally do this.
– Josh (cortex on MetaFilter) offers to help and he is much handier with video stuff than I am.
– I do the reading and send the link to my friend who donates $20 to the Randolph Area Food Shelf (my charity of choice) via PayPal. He mentions it on Twitter and a few other people offer to make donations if I send them the link. I do
– The next day, Josh finishes the remix and it is terrific. He makes a separate thread about the new video and people enjoy it and because PayPal is so ridiculously simple, chip in some cash for the food bank.
– I put up the original video of me just reading words off, with no remixing. At some point I decide to explain to the Food Shelf what exactly is going on and I receive a nice note back from them. I have no idea if they saw the video or not.
– I teach a somewhat frustrating Mac class and decide I would rather explain this to internet strangers [and facebook friends] than make myself a drink.

This has nothing to do with tree swallow houses, which I decided to use as an illustration on the off chance that an auto-playing video of me swearing like a sailor might be surprising or off-putting to anyone. I realize this is not likely.

hunkerdown highscore

pumpamokin

So according to my calendar, I’ve been away or home with houseguests every weekend since early September. Last night I got home after doing my last talk of the season and I slept for 13 hours. This morning I got up and contemplated an empty calendar. I can tell things are mellowing out here somewhat when I catch up on my RSS feeds and my sweeping. But things aren’t so relaxed that I’ve figured out where to put all the Scientific American magazines or sorted out my CD collection. This bowl of pumpkin innards was in my sink for way too long.

My new-to-me car seems all modern compared to my last one but it does actually have a tape deck, so it’s been somewhere between 1984 and 1994 in the car most of the time. It’s been fun and weird to drive around listening to mixtapes that people made for me in high school. Most of it is music I still like. Some of it is music I’ve been missing. Jim and I had a “Woah!” moment when one of the mixtape songs came on and I said “This is that song I’ve never been able to identify, even though I’ve Googled and Googled” and he said “What? This is Tribe.” And it turns out that the word that I thought was Hoedown was Down Home and suddenly it was all there.

Related big grins in my highest ever Scrabble score [against a well-matched opponent]. Jim and I have played somewhere around sixty+ games since we started keeping track. Until Wednesday we were about twenty points apart in total scores. Somehow the stars aligned and I got four seven letter words and pow pow pow. Luckily, we play using the Internet Scrabble Club which lets you replay games for kibitzing and nerd purposes. So, I made this little movie about the game, well OF the game really.

finished, start again

yay

So hey, Autumn! I’ve broken free of the rapturous stupor that is fall around here. There has been some rain. The leaves are more a mushy brown memory than a glowing poppy field of possibility. And I’ve been getting stuff done, somewhat subdued by the seasonal allergies that characterize this time of year for me.

The biggest thing that’s been on a ten year To Do list was the 251 Club. I can now say that I’ve set foot in every town in Vermont. I started this officially sometime back in 2004, when I had to roll my own website just to keep track of this stuff online. Now there’s an official website and hey I’m helping them maintain their mailing list in exchange for a membership. The last town on the list was Somerset, population five, mostly home to a giant reservoir, a campground and some hiking trails. I couldn’t tell from the gazetteer, but it’s also in the shadow of Mount Snow, a place Jim used to go when he was a kid, so the closer we got, the more he was saying “This all looks familiar” It’s interesting driving around a deserted ski area in off-season.

So, with little fanfare, I finished up. Jim and I split a beer by the reservoir. I’ll write the 251 Club and probably get a note in the next (print) newsletter. And because I’m not much for resting on my laurels, now I want to go back and “do it right” and take a photograph in each one.

In other accomplishments, I sent in the second draft of my book and it’s on its way to the production department. It should be ready to ship on March 30th, my sister Kate’s birthday. And I went to the doctor to figure out why my nose has been half-stuffed up since April. And I’ve started my drop-in time up again, teaching people to use a computer mouse and related basic computer stuff. I don’t know if I mentioned that the panel I proposed for SXSW, Offline America, Why We Have A Digital Divide, was accepted in the first round, so I’ll be in Texas again in March.

Meanwhile October is ramping up. The public speaking stuff I do has been dropping off some. I’ve gotten more picky, there’s less work, and it’s possible people are less interested in me and/or the things I talk about. I have very little perspective on this sort of thing. I had someone turn me down, after inviting me, because I said I wouldn’t, really couldn’t, work before 11 am. So starting in November there are big gaps of free time. I know I often say this and then fill it all up before it arrives. We’ll see. I am hoping to be able to get used to being okay with big open spaces on the calendar, good times for woodshedding some new ideas, reading books, dreaming new dreams.

some projects

cupcake

Cupcakes are better than moss because even if you sort of screwed them up, the evidence is eaten and does not sit around moldering and dying in your window and eventually smelling bad. So this is just to say that the really terrific looking mossarium keeled over in a spectacular way (should have known that the dried orange peels would mold, what was I thinking?) but the other one remains hale and hearty. Also Jim and I made nearly four dozen cupcakes this weekend and I have a few left, but they were delicious. And even if they weren’t, they are basically gone and you’ll have to take my word for it.

So yeah, the birthday weekend was a success. I get nervy around birthdays because I always seem to remember them, so I hope that they are nice so that I will have pleasant memories. My mind is inscrutable even to me. Anyhow, the weekend was great. Jim came up on Friday and we made cupcakes. The secret was getting some decent cake mixes and then loading them with cardamom and nutmeg and mace to make them taste exotic. I couldn’t have made 50 exotic cupcakes. And then I realized I didn’t know how to frost them [I don’t like supermarket icing, it is gross] so I took a crash course in royal icing and covered up my mistakes with colored sugar. There was a neighborhood porch party on Saturday to celebrate a few local birthdays and it was a good way to see everyone and get birthday high fives in a fun relaxed atmosphere.

Sunday we trekked to the Northeast Kingdom and went to Lewis, Maidstone and Granby, three of the five towns I have left in my 251 project. I was talking to someone about the project this weekend [Kate maybe?] and they were surprised that The 251 Club is a real club. It’s real! I even get a newsletter. The newsletter also came with crucial information to help us figure out how to get to Lewis Vermont, population zero. On the way home we stopped at the Miss Lyndonville Diner for a birthday dinner that couldn’t be beat, complete with strangers from the next booth singing happy birthday to me. Home to movies and a low key day with mini-golf before Jim headed home. Yay for three day weekends.

Now I’m facing the grim reality of a month of edits to my book (available on Amazon, now you can go look at the cover) and “school” starting in a few weeks. I’ll be going back to teaching night classes and doing the same old drop-in time from now through holidaytime. The leaves are changing here and have been filling up the driveway for the past few days. I’ve started sleeping in my fuzzy hat. Summer you were fun while you lasted.

on staying put

telecommuting

It was sort of an exciting offer “Hey if you want to get one of those Jet Blue All You Can Jet passes and go around the country going to meetups, I’ll spring for the ticket.” And I almost said yes before I even thought about it, because traveling is fun and meeting up with people is fun and it’s lovely out and there have been a few people on my “to visit” list for an embarassingly long time.

And then I slept on it, the awesome sleep I have when it’s just the right temperature outside and I am sleeping with my favorite pillow and my room is all nice and dark the way I like it. And woke up thinking that being gone for a good chunk of a month meant less of that. And I asked a few people, all of whom gave me answers that I’d characterize as cautiously supportive, and I slept on it again. And I decided to stay put. Which is a little strange since I usually opt for squeezing more stuff into my days not less. But I think I was maybe not giving enough weight to the things already on my plate including

  • Working on the second draft of my book, due in October
  • School starting, and with it, my drop-in time
  • A few little projects I’ve been thinking about
  • How much I love Vermont and my apartment in it
  • Reconnecting with friends who I’ve seen less of than I’d like
  • My exercise plan, casually abandoned while I was writing, now back on the priority list
  • A freezerful of blueberries that won’t be getting any fresher
  • Keeping my houseplants alive
  • Another essay I’m writing for a book friends are publishing
  • My full-time MetaFilter job
  • Family & boyfriend time which I’ve been enjoying a lot of this summer
  • Reading hardcover books which I never do when I’m travelling

That’s just the top of the head list, I’m sure there are more things. I’ll go back and look at this list when I’m stuck in the September doldrums and wishing I were elsewhere. If that happens. Which I bet it won’t.

small but useful victories

So hey I’m back from New York. I managed to take an entire trip away from home to two other states without getting in my car. That is, I walked to and from the public transportation that took me to and from various places. I had never done this before, mainly because it’s completely impractical, but also because I’d never had a good reason. The whole deal worked like this [enumerated for nerdliness, as well as a how-was-my-weekend report]

– Walked into town and took the Amtrak train to New York City. There are two trains I can take into NYC and this one is the closer-to-my-house one but also the longer-travel one [eight vs. five hours]. It was not bad. Side bonus: the other two people at the train stop with me were also at the conference I was at and will, I am certain, be my new friends. I had to buy my ticket from the conductor; if you live in Vermont, there is no way to buy a ticket in advance if you do not want it mailed to you. ($58)
– Took the subway from the train station out to dinner with my friends, then to ice cream, then back to where I was staying with my other friends. Subwayed around NYC. Took a bus once. The bus is a pain, requiring exact change and an awful lot of it. [no bills] ($20)
– Got the BoltBus from NYC to Boston. Cheap. Simple. Wifi. Outlets. ($20)
– Got a few rides: from the bus station, to Jim’s place, to my sister’s place, to the subway. (free, as in favors)
– Took the subway to the bus station in Boston. ($1.70)
– Took the bus from Boston to Hanover. ($25)
– Screwed around for a few hours. Was interviewed by some guy at the New Yorker. Got rained on. Took the cute three-times-a-day “short bus” from Hanover to Randolph. Walked home. ($3.50)

All in all not bad. The short bus only leaves three times a day at not that convenient (to me) times, but it worked and was siple. I’d never tried it before because the one that is outgoing leaves at some ungodly hour of the morning, but taking it back home didn’t involve getting up too terribly early. Yay for long bumbada bumbada trips. The entire time I was traveling, I was reading Paul Theroux’s book Dark Star which is about traveling from Cairo to Cape Town in Africa which made every dirty subway car seem like the Taj Mahal by comparison.