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May. 28th, 2004
Map of the Air
May. 28th, 2004 02:29 amA tree has released zillions of downy seeds to drift through our yard, creating a perfect three-dimensional map of the air currents outside. Eddies and gusts and breezes are all visible; it's underwatery, in a way. The seeds collect in drifts beneath the stairs and snag in the welcome mats.
*slam* I have finally finished The Confusion, and quite enjoyed it. "Half-Cocked" Jack Shaftoe is splendidly larger-than-life, the plots and misdirections and detours came together intriguingly at the end, and we actually learned some minor details about our intriguing alchemist friend (whose presence is a spoiler for other books). Also, I was blindsided by something that I probably should have picked up on, which was fun. I anxiously await The System of the World, due in four or five months. It is nice, though, to be reading something that weighs less than five pounds (specifically, The Compleat Enchanter).
Yesterday I faced—and vanquished—the dreaded OCR ogre. (OCR = Optical Character Recognition.) K has a hard copy of a manuscript chapter which she needs to turn into an editable file, and so she enlisted my help in figuring out the scanner and associated paraphernalia. The first scanner lurked in a luridly (but not unpleasantly) muralled room in her department. The G3 it was connected to was dusted with curly hairs, the scanner and the monitor both made alarming noises when they were turned on, and every attempt to do any actual scanning of actual paper generated system errors. Eventually the computer stopped admitting there was a scanner there at all, so we gave up and moved to the Fishbowl (the large public area in the same building, where I'd once seen college girls flashing their boobs). A gleaming G5 with a dual-monitor setup awaited me there, and after some unsuccessful attempts to get Photoshop to behave I found the dedicated OCR software, and all was well. It is imperfect—"Whenever" becomes "IIIIhenever," "atrium" becomes "tort-wangling love torpedo," etc.—but quite easy to use.
Earlier, on my way to meet K, I bumped into the mother of our Scottish class cellist, and she related the shocking tale of said cellist's disappearance from class: she (17) and our other guitarist (27) had moved from nearly-dating to actually dating, and shortly thereafter to not dating at all—and, now that you mention it, not wanting to see each other ever again. Cellist-gal had never cried so much, her mom said. She also said nice things about my influence on her daughter and my big-brotherly qualities, which made me feel good, while reminding me that big-brotherliness is no way to get Hot Lolita Action. (Not that I'd accept it, but would it kill her to at least have a crush on me once in a while?)
Cellist-gal did come to dance tonight, and although she's not talking about The Incident I did get to be Supportive and There For Her and Distracting, which made both of us happy, I think. She was wearing an extremely low-cut tank top and a push-up bra, too, which made at least one of us happy. (Yes, yes. I know. Seventeen. I behaved myself. It's not my fault that I play guitar standing up and she plays cello sitting down.) She and I played some strathspeys together, which sounded quite nice, and when the class moved to quicktime dancing we had one of those pleasant conversations when it's a spring evening and the half-moon is bright in a dusky sky and one person is standing with the car door open but not getting in for quite a long while because you're having too much fun talking. I do hope she winds up at Swarthmore, so I won't lose track of her. I have her AIM ID now, anyway.
Little Katie was there, and she proudly worked through all six faces of the (now well-creased) hexaflexagon for me; she'd solved them all, and could rattle off the sequences to find each one. I was sincerely impressed, and told her so. Her slightly older brother also came; I suspect him of having a crush on Cellist-gal, since he puppy-dogged her footsteps even more than I did, and then, after she left, asked me why I'd teased her so much. I explained that I hadn't seen her in a while, and had stored them up, like a chipmunk.
I also sat outside with Britta for a while, her working on Greek and I noodling on the guitar. She's getting more comfortable with casual contact—having her back scratched and rubbed and so on—which pleases me.
Dinner tonight was yet another tasty homemade pizza: pepperoni with Lebanon bologna and fresh basil from our window-box. (Just the basil came from the window-box; we don't grow our own Lebanon bologna.) I was feeling a bit sad and wistful while kneading the dough, listening to Nick Cave's Live Seeds in a futile effort to drive the blues out, but dance class has cheered me up considerably.
I had some more distant friendly contact, as well: lengthy AIM talks with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
showergrrl on Wednesday night and franzeska, who is in Japan, on Tuesday. This AIM thing is dangerous but fun, like a motorcycle with loose handlebars.
Unfortunately, I need to be at work at noon tomorrow to lead a seminar in projectionist skillz. I enjoy teaching, but that's awfully early for me; I'm going to be one tired projectionist tomorrow.
*slam* I have finally finished The Confusion, and quite enjoyed it. "Half-Cocked" Jack Shaftoe is splendidly larger-than-life, the plots and misdirections and detours came together intriguingly at the end, and we actually learned some minor details about our intriguing alchemist friend (whose presence is a spoiler for other books). Also, I was blindsided by something that I probably should have picked up on, which was fun. I anxiously await The System of the World, due in four or five months. It is nice, though, to be reading something that weighs less than five pounds (specifically, The Compleat Enchanter).
Yesterday I faced—and vanquished—the dreaded OCR ogre. (OCR = Optical Character Recognition.) K has a hard copy of a manuscript chapter which she needs to turn into an editable file, and so she enlisted my help in figuring out the scanner and associated paraphernalia. The first scanner lurked in a luridly (but not unpleasantly) muralled room in her department. The G3 it was connected to was dusted with curly hairs, the scanner and the monitor both made alarming noises when they were turned on, and every attempt to do any actual scanning of actual paper generated system errors. Eventually the computer stopped admitting there was a scanner there at all, so we gave up and moved to the Fishbowl (the large public area in the same building, where I'd once seen college girls flashing their boobs). A gleaming G5 with a dual-monitor setup awaited me there, and after some unsuccessful attempts to get Photoshop to behave I found the dedicated OCR software, and all was well. It is imperfect—"Whenever" becomes "IIIIhenever," "atrium" becomes "tort-wangling love torpedo," etc.—but quite easy to use.
Earlier, on my way to meet K, I bumped into the mother of our Scottish class cellist, and she related the shocking tale of said cellist's disappearance from class: she (17) and our other guitarist (27) had moved from nearly-dating to actually dating, and shortly thereafter to not dating at all—and, now that you mention it, not wanting to see each other ever again. Cellist-gal had never cried so much, her mom said. She also said nice things about my influence on her daughter and my big-brotherly qualities, which made me feel good, while reminding me that big-brotherliness is no way to get Hot Lolita Action. (Not that I'd accept it, but would it kill her to at least have a crush on me once in a while?)
Cellist-gal did come to dance tonight, and although she's not talking about The Incident I did get to be Supportive and There For Her and Distracting, which made both of us happy, I think. She was wearing an extremely low-cut tank top and a push-up bra, too, which made at least one of us happy. (Yes, yes. I know. Seventeen. I behaved myself. It's not my fault that I play guitar standing up and she plays cello sitting down.) She and I played some strathspeys together, which sounded quite nice, and when the class moved to quicktime dancing we had one of those pleasant conversations when it's a spring evening and the half-moon is bright in a dusky sky and one person is standing with the car door open but not getting in for quite a long while because you're having too much fun talking. I do hope she winds up at Swarthmore, so I won't lose track of her. I have her AIM ID now, anyway.
Little Katie was there, and she proudly worked through all six faces of the (now well-creased) hexaflexagon for me; she'd solved them all, and could rattle off the sequences to find each one. I was sincerely impressed, and told her so. Her slightly older brother also came; I suspect him of having a crush on Cellist-gal, since he puppy-dogged her footsteps even more than I did, and then, after she left, asked me why I'd teased her so much. I explained that I hadn't seen her in a while, and had stored them up, like a chipmunk.
I also sat outside with Britta for a while, her working on Greek and I noodling on the guitar. She's getting more comfortable with casual contact—having her back scratched and rubbed and so on—which pleases me.
Dinner tonight was yet another tasty homemade pizza: pepperoni with Lebanon bologna and fresh basil from our window-box. (Just the basil came from the window-box; we don't grow our own Lebanon bologna.) I was feeling a bit sad and wistful while kneading the dough, listening to Nick Cave's Live Seeds in a futile effort to drive the blues out, but dance class has cheered me up considerably.
I had some more distant friendly contact, as well: lengthy AIM talks with
showergrrl on Wednesday night and franzeska, who is in Japan, on Tuesday. This AIM thing is dangerous but fun, like a motorcycle with loose handlebars.Unfortunately, I need to be at work at noon tomorrow to lead a seminar in projectionist skillz. I enjoy teaching, but that's awfully early for me; I'm going to be one tired projectionist tomorrow.
