Cleaning House June 26, 2008

(started 6/25/08 )

I pulled out my old computer last night and after an hour of fiddling, Chris managed to turn it on. I’ve been meaning to pull some files off it it since I stopped using it (around December of 2004) but it always said a hard drive failure was imminent and wouldn’t turn on sometimes and it was all DANGER! DANGER, WILL ROBINSON! And it kind of scared me. Chris had to bring home a computer and monitor from work yesterday, so figured he could pull out my old computer and wipe it before we donate it somewhere.

There are a lot of memories in that old computer.

That was the computer I used to chat with WD’ers until the sun came up. The computer that I had handed down to me by the people that took me in when my only relative moved away and left me homeless (I refuse to call her family, as I now know the true definition of that word). The computer that I cemented friendships through and found relationships through. The computer that I cried at and told things to people thousands of miles away that I hadn’t told people in the same city. The computer that got me through a summer of depression and a summer of transition. The computer that tried to get me in a study abroad program that I thought would change my life and that bought that plane ticket that did. The computer that a relationship grew on and a friendship ended on. The computer that was replaced by the person who replaced everyone else.

There are a lot of memories in that old computer.

But not hard memories. Those left long ago. In the purge. Months after that friendship finally ended (which is something that, at the time, I never thought would actually happen), I purged. I erased. I trashed. I… no… I don’t think I did something as stereotypical as burned. The hard files: the letters, the birthday cards, the printed conversations… they were tossed out with the trash. The internets: the emails both from and about him… deleted. The files: the saved conversations and other memories… deleted. When I went to move everything from that computer to my new one, very little remained of him.

There were a lot of memories in that old computer.

Very little remained, but what little remained still gave me that jolt that memories always bring.

The Music. So many songs that I’d forgotten I had. Jeff Buckley has transcended beyond being connected to memories of him, but these songs that hadn’t been played in years haven’t had that luxury yet. Radiohead, “Fake Plastic Trees”… that will possibly always carry memories. Simon and Garfunkel… I think I remember him trying to sing “Bridge Over Troubled Water” at an obscene hour of the night.

The Pictures. Those exist in so many ways. The pictures are on the internet, occasionally stumbled upon. The pictures in my photo albums, tucked away in a closet, only brought out every so often. None of my pictures from that time are still on that computer, but in a file called “Photos from Chris’ iBook,” some remain. As I clicked some at random, of course, the ones with him popped up.

One IM transcript. From the mid-time between the first time the friendship ended and the last chance I gave it. Not with him, but with someone else, primarily about him.

There still are a lot of memories in that old computer.

There are happy memories. There’s all my Christmas music, which I never had room for on the next computer. There are some saved IM conversations with Chris from the early days. There are old profile pics from back in the days when I loved making profile pics for the WD. There are the files for one of the WD Christmas Gift Exchanges (so some people may be getting emails with very old gifts for old times’ sake), which were so much fun to run once upon a time. I remember how much a part of looking forward to Christmas that was for me. There are memories from a completely different time. From when I moved on, moved out, started new. Fun with people who only knew him as an anecdote. As the “Oh, let me tell you about this terrible, toxic friendship I had,” cautionary tale. It wasn’t always toxic, but when it was, it was toxic on both sides, I’m sure.

There was history in that old computer.

I haven’t really written about him in years. That was a past event and it had been written about (ad nauseaum) and ended. I wrote some great words about him, that’s one good thing that came from that friendship. I sometimes miss the need to write that the pain and anger brought on. I don’t miss the pain and anger, though. I haven’t written about him in so long it might have taken the readers who were around for it a minute to realize this was about it. In so long that there are some readers who are probably very very confused and have no clue who I mean. The story was written and done. And now it’s history. History that now wants to be reexamined to see what I’ve learned from it.

I’ve learned that there is such a thing as too much drama; and that I tend to create some of it, to my own detriment. I once thought I needed that drama to thrive, to propel me; I’ve learned I was wrong.

I’ve learned to not air my laundry publicly if I want a relationship or friendship to survive.

I’ve learned that it’s a liberating feeling to finally, one and for all, cut ties to someone who is bad for you.

I’ve learned that nothing comes of hating him or being angry with the things he or anyone has done or said.

I’ve learned who my friends are and what friendships should be based on.

I’d be lying if I said I never ever thought about him. I do occasionally. When we’re visiting Chris’ family, I wonder if I’ll randomly bump into him. I wonder if he visits her in Florida and if, in the small world we live in, I’ll run into them somewhere. I wonder if, one day, professionally, I may run into her and what I would do or say. I wonder about the two girls who loved to spread rumors and I wonder if they’ve grown as much as I have. I hope they have. I would imagine they have. I do wonder how he’s doing. I truly hope he’s doing well. When I saw that it was Christine’s birthday a couple months ago, I remembered it was his and, yes, sent him a message on Facebook (ironically, he popped up on the “People You May Know” thing around that time, too, which may have been what reminded me). I do wonder if he knows I’m married now. That I’m married and happy with who I am now. I would like him to know and I wonder if he does, but it doesn’t eat at me the way it once would have.

Epilogue - June 26, 2008

Chris went to wipe the computer last night and we remembered that the CD drive no longer worked. It didn’t want to be wiped; it was resisting. He took the hard drive out and with him to work today, with the idea of putting it into another computer in order to be able to wipe it. Even though the hard memories are long gone from its brain, and what’s left has been transferred to my new computer, I feel sad that it’s getting wiped. It feels very much like the final page of that book of my life. There are some characters and places that will carry on (and have carried on) to the next book, there are some that may make cameos, and there are some whose story is done.

No matter how many times I read this book in my mind, there still seems to be something missing, something incorrect, some plot hole. I can’t put the pieces together all the time, can’t always see the roadmap of how I got here from there. I know that, though I wasn’t at the time, I’m glad it all happened now. I know that, though it wasn’t at the time, the best things happened when they needed to happen. I know that, though I didn’t know it then, I needed to go through what happened in order to learn and grow and become a better person. I do, sometimes, miss who I was then. Small aspects of who I was then; not everything.

There was a time when I had a custom filter in Blurty for entries about him and the drama that ensued. I’m not even friends locking this one. I feel this is the last I will write about him. The words are exhausted. The book is done.

Final Product! June 26, 2008

Have I been doing good at the blogging regularly thing or what lately? Yay, me!

Anyway, Tuesday night, I went over to my mom’s house and finished the dress. I learned that zippers are a right pain in the ass, but I actually managed to get it in pretty well. I should probably take detail pictures to show everyone sometime, but I’ll probably just post those at Flickr rather than making another post about it, so you should totally stalk me there. I still may add stuff to this dress (I’m thinking a big flower or bird appliqué on the bottom of the skirt would be neat), but this is the final product and I was so confident in it, I decided to wear it to work yesterday.

I had one of the interns at work take a picture so that I could show off my work and she took a few. That’s my desk behind me, by the way.

I got a lot of compliments on the dress. A few people knew I’d been working on it and recognized it from the previous picture, but most people complimented the dress of their own accord, without any prompting. I got a lot of good reactions when I thanked them for the compliment and then revealed that I’d actually made the dress. Everyone seemed quite impressed which I’d like to think is an indication of the quality of the dress rather than their expectations of what I can do [wink].

You’ll notice that you don’t see the bow. Until I replace the ribbon, I decided to work around the annoying bow issue by simply tying the bow in the back, creating a nice, interesting back detail. I didn’t get to get pictures of the back, as I had to get to work… the other pictures show me trying to work. The dress was really comfortable, all day long (except for when I retied the bow and tied it too tight) and seemed to wear very well. I sometimes have a problem with armholes bothering me, but these were placed perfectly to avoid that irritation entirely. There are still some changes that I’d like to make to it, and the costume person at work is going to show me how to cut the fabric on the bias to avoid some of the pooching in the front (because, seriously, if I turn certain ways, it looks like I’m trying to hide a pregnancy and I’m really not). I got compliments on the zipper and the gathers and the back detail and the general cut of it. I have a feeling that dress making is going to become very addicting for me, because there’s such an amazing sense of self-fulfillment to wear something that you made yourself and have others like it. I’ve kind of started becoming aware of colors and how things work with my coloring and what shapes look good on me (I still need to get a picture of the perfect dress that inspired this all). I wear a lot of pinks and purples, but I try to make them very rich, bright shades. I’ve also recently embraced deep teals and have started incorporating yellow shades in. This is quite a change from when I thought I could only wear greens and purples. The compliment I get most, no matter what I’m wearing, is “That’s a great color on you,” and I think working somewhere I’m free to wear whatever I feel, rather than the few “business casual” clothes I own is really bringing this out in me. You can see it in my appearance and in my demeanor and personality, I think. I don’t think my personality every came out at Nameless Insurance Company because individuality and creative thinking were beaten down there in favor of the “do thing the way we say because we say and don’t question” attitude of management there. Here, I like what I do. I don’t feel under pressure to not talk or get out an unattainable amount of work in a day. I feel confident and comfortable in what I do and I enjoy it and the people I’m around all day.

Well, this entry was supposed to be a superficial entry about a dress and it kind of turned into rambling about clothing and feelings. Sorry about that. I shouldn’t write under the influence of contentment.

Did someone say Birthday Cake? June 24, 2008

A TARDIS cake.

I need this cake. I do have a birthday coming up, after all. (From Craftster via BoingBoing)

Holy Hell! June 22, 2008

So Chris and I were talking to his mum today and she asked “Do you have your tickets for Hamlet yet?” Which was a reasonable question since we don’t have our flights booked. And I said “Oh, yeah, I booked them the first day they were on public sale.” And then she said “Are you sure you want to go?” Apparently, people have been selling tickets for upwards of 500 Pounds! Is this true? That is ridiculous. Crazy.

Even crazier? The fact that that would almost pay for one of our plane tickets and that I haven’t even entertained the thought of selling mine for a minute.

Although… I did ask Chris if he still wanted to go. Should I remind him it’s three hours long? [wink]

Also: June 22, 2008

I bought a round, ceramic dish yesterday for baking round loaves of bread in. As my birthday approaches, I’m embracing my Cancer-Homemaker instincts.

Dress in Progress June 22, 2008

As previously mentioned, I’m making a dress! Now, you may ask why, exactly someone who has never used a sewing machine in their life would suddenly have the desire to make a dress. There are a few reasons.

1. I’m Assistant Director for the living chessboard at next year’s Hoggetowne Medieval Faire. One of the requirements is that I participate in the troupe (not fighting, necessarily, just being a character to interact with patrons). And I need a dress for this. So I will be sewing a dress for this. I figured I should try my hand at something easy before I take on period costumes. My original plan was to try this apron (link goes to Annika’s review). That plan changed due to reason number two.

2. I got a FANTASTIC dress a few weeks ago. I have no pictures of it yet, but it’s a goldenrod color and the cut of it is THE PERFECT CUT for my body shape. I found it at TJ Maxx and, as is often the case with TJ Maxx finds, I cannot find this dress anywhere  else to save my life. I’ve googled and ebay’d it by style number, I’ve tried to find similiar by the same maker (Max Studio, for reference)… no luck. After this experience and a shopping trip where I went to get some skirts and came back with One Skirt (which I later returned) and Eight Shirts, I started thinking that things might be easier if I just started making my own clothes. I have one particular skirt (that I wore to Danielle and mUrt’s wedding), that I think looks especially great on me, so I’m still looking for a skirt pattern like that. I think I’ve found one on BurdaStyle, though, that’s pretty close.

3. It’s FLIPPING HOT where I work. I am in a hundred year old building with 70+ children running through it every day. The A/C is not adequate. I know that when I started this job, I was all excited that I didn’t have to wear skirts and could wear jeans everyday. Screw that! I want to wear skirts and dresses all summer long because they are SO much cooler. Especially when leaving the building to walk to the post office or to lunch. Roll on skirts and dresses.

So, it became a mission to find a dress pattern that was similiar to the perfect dress mentioned in reason 2. I stopped in JoAnn’s one day and took a look at the book, finding the Vogue Very Easy (yay! Very Easy!) pattern mentioned in the previous post. I knew I’d be going with the side tie version, as it looks ever so much classier and less cleavage baring (I knew that the gathers would show off the girls nicely without showing skin). I got the larger pattern size, as my measurements split me between the two. Hips, I ignored; Bust was in the larger size; Waist in the smaller. I figured that I needed to err on the larger size and scale down from there. I found some three dollar, pink, broadcloth cotton and matching zipper and thread and called my mom to ask when she could teach me to sew. She told me to wash the fabric (who knew!) and come over Monday.

The first day, we got the pattern and fabric cut out. We made our first alteration, which was to add two inches to the skirt legnth, as I have a really long torso and the dress would have come abover my knee, rather than to the knee like I wanted. The second day, my mom taught me how to operate the machine and we got the top bits sewn.

Next time (a week later or so), she taught me how to do the gathering. Which I messed up. And had to rip out and re do. This was a painful day. We also got the waist on and the ribbon sewn together. The pieces are in roughly the same place as the last picture, so you can compare to see how it’s progressing.

The next day went very very quickly, as we got the skirt on and the interfacing in the waist band. It’s funnt how, with this dress, the more intensive and time consuming work happens on the smallest bit of it. And then, suddenly, after one more session of work, there’s suddenly a thing that looks like a dress!

It’s really gratifying at that stage, too, because I got that feeling of… look! I made this! It’s a dress and it looks like a dress and I made it! I loose stitched the bottom side of the dress and tried it on for size.

The zipper is not in yet, so it’s just pinned at the sides. It’s a bit odd at the back, because it’s too big at the waist. We will correct that one of three ways: 1. Elastic, 2. Just pulling the top out a bit to compensate, 3. reducing the back size by an inch or two in future versions. The front skirt gathers give me a bit of a pooch unless I stand up 100% straight. The skirt is still a tad short for my taste, so we’ll add three inches to the next pattern. The ribbon, made from the same fabric, is too stiff. I’m going to use a different fabric for the ribbons when I use broadcloth in the future.

When the final version is done, I’ll post some more pictures. I’m really happy with it so far, especially as I considered this a test dress that I didn’t think I’d ever actually wear. Now… I think I will. I’m kinda proud of it. One of the nights I was over, my mom gave me a couple 50% off coupons for JoAnn’s. I knew what I was getting with them.

Both are organic cotton fabrics. The green is a thick, broadcloth cotton (similiar to the original dress) and the blue is a lightweight jersey (more like the PERFECT DRESS). Jersey tends to cling badly to me, but with the cut of the dress, I think it will be okay. After (or possibly before) these two, I want to get a nice satin and possibly make a fancy version of the dress for Chris’ sister’s wedding in August. I just don’t know if I need backing for it or what. I’m going to talk to my mom about it today. After that, I’m going to play with patterns and have patterned top and skirt, with solid waist and ribbon, perhaps. I want to have 5 or 6 versions of this dress, so suggestions are welcome. Also, if anyone has some suggestions of other patterns, those are also very very welcome.

California: Part 4 June 16, 2008

Hey, look! It’s finally done! Only two months after the trip!

In which there’s a last minute dash to the dock, we get upgraded, I take the creepiest picture in history (and too many pictures in general), Chris finds a restaurant from seven years ago, we do the trolley thing, we don’t do Ghiardelli, we see Twin Peaks, don’t see the Winchester Mystery House, have a great dinner and head home.

Other California Adventures: Part One | Part Two | Part Three

The Drive to San Francisco was pretty leisurely, but we knew we hadn’t allowed ourselves much wiggle time, so when we hit backed up traffic just outside of The City, we started to worry a bit. After the first couple of exits, the traffic cleared a little, but by the time we checked into our hotel, we knew we were still in a rush. A rush that was not entirely helped when the person who checked us in wanted to give us all the upgrade options. We did end up going with one, though, as we were only there one night and the room had been pre-paid (I booked pretty much everything on Hotwire), so we didn’t mind the small splurge. We dashed up to the room (which, in the end was totally worth the upgrade of a higher floor and refurbished room… this was the nicest room we had the whole time) dropped our stuff, grabbed the Alcatraz tickets and warm clothes and ran downstairs to get a taxi to the docks. We ended up getting to the right pier pretty much exactly on schedule. We’d booked one of the night trips to Alcatraz and, I’m telling you… I would never book anything else. There was plenty of light before and during the tour and having the sunset light cast over everything towards the end was absolutely stunning. The majority of the pictures I took are from SF, and of those, most are Alcatraz. For those facebook people (sorry, Amy… I will attempt to get more pictures on Flickr soon), there are a couple albums worth here and here. Some highlights (and some of Chris’ pictures, since I’ve barely posted any pictures of me from this trip) below.

12 of 12 - June 2008 June 14, 2008

A little late, but here’s my day. As always, the idea is credited to Chad Darnell. Check out his blog and other 12 of 12′ers at Untitled Chad Darnell Project.

12 of 12 June 2008

8:53am - Home - Bathroom
Putting makeup on. I was running very late Thursday morning.

9:32am - Work - Desk
My to-do list for the day. It only got longer. And I did very little on it. Thursday was a no motivation day, really.

12:45pm - Work - Second Floor
Leaving for lunch. We always have flowers in front of the mainstage. This is the pretty, orange and blue themed arrangement we have for this show.

1:36pm - Work - Desk
I couldn’t resist the lure of Chipotle. I hate my lunch as I helped Kara order her new computer. She’s joining the Mac world, yay!

6:37pm - Work - Back office
So I’d slacked on taking pictures at the Usher Party that I stayed late for. Kara and Matt helped me bump up my numbers a little. Thanks!

7:26pm - Work - Bathroom
Getting ready to leave. This is a detail of the radiator in the women’s bathroom.

7:43pm - Main Street
I was going to take a picture of the fountain behind the theatre, but it was starting to rain as I left, so I made a mad dash for my car.

7:56pm - Home
We have a new fishtank! The other one was just too big and too much hassle to clean, so I’ve got a smaller, neater one.

8:44pm - Home
A few weeks ago I was finally able to find ballet flats that looked good on me. Love them!

8:47pm - Home
A nice cup of low carb pistachio ice cream. It’s actually much yummier than it sounds.

10:05pm - Home
I needed another photo and saw my earrings on the counter and thought it would make for a pretty one. The purple ones are from the local Medieval Faire this year and the pearl ones are from The Philippines.

I’m making a dress! June 10, 2008

Among other things going on recently, I’m making a dress! I don’t have a good picture of it in progress, but it’s this pattern (B). I got a pink, cheap cotton to test it on, and if it looks good (I think it will), I’ll splurge on some nice linen and bamboo cotton. If I remember tomorrow, I’ll get a picture when I’m over at my mom’s (she’s teaching me). We’ve cut out everything and got the very top part sewn together. Next time we work on it, we’re doing the waist and ribbon (for the “sleeves”) and maybe moving onto the skirt.

More updates coming soon. Nothing big or important, just those lots of updates that come from not updating for a while.

Oh, Doctor Jones… May 26, 2008

I was really, really excited to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull this weekend. I mean, I was seven the last time an Indy movie came out, so just the sheer idea of getting to see Indy on opening weekend with the excitement of the crowds… what could be better?

Bally Inspired One Word Review
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: WHY?

The rest of this post, behind the More tag, contains information about the film, including two worst kept secrets of the summer movie season. Read at your own risk.