lower than Lo again

Adventures at the library today: after a couple of months of asking around I found out where UIUC keeps old technical reports, like to the NSA and stuff. In a corner of the basement of the engineering library, I dug up one of two precious (to me, anyway) copies of "On the theory of randomly spaced antenna arrays." It's beat up. It looks almost archaeological. It was written on a typewriter! So I take its yellowed, scribbled-on self upstairs to the desk and they say, "Um, I'd better look up how to check this out to you. Where did you get this, anyway?" I felt kind of like Indiana Jones. I'll post a picture.

np: Rooks - "Down"

Rashofranciscomon

The other day, Matt and I talked about the vacation we're going to go on this summer, and he said some reasonable things that bothered me. But I had trouble explaining what they even were, let alone why they bothered me. Basically, he was planning this road trip from a standpoint that assumed he wouldn't be able to find an out-of-college job before early August, and I had been assuming he would. So we had a funny little tiff in which I scolded Matt for being pessimistic and he at first didn't know what I was talking about, because I'd just latched on to some subtleties of language and not any outright statements. My idea was that if he believes he won't succeed, then he probably won't, so he should treat any non-job plans as backup. He didn't want to count on something that wasn't a sure thing. We were talking about the same plans, just each giving a different one verbal priority. For some reason that really bothered me. But today he had an interview that sounds like it went well. I guess next week we'll find out who won that non-argument.

-- I want to see more Kurosawa movies.
-- My dad has seen Starman and been to the crater. We talked about how it was a dumb movie.
-- I cut myself while washing the dishes yesterday and subsequently freaked out a little bit because it involved a very sharp knife. I did bleed some. Being injured by a knife is, to me, inherently worse than being injured most other ways. I was fine.

jammin'

I stayed home from work yesterday, which led to me getting more work done in one day than ever before. You'd think I would get distracted more easily, but I worked pretty steadily all day, and then I cleaned the bathroom and did laundry. I was a high-energy chick. Today I'm back at work... and posting to my blog. Ha.

Matt and I haven't decided yet whether to go see the Mekons this weekend. On one hand, I like going to concerts. On the other hand, that would be the third weekend in a row we've spent in Chicago, and we already plan to go next weekend for another birthday thing. That's a lot of trips.

Theo's coming over to jam tonight. I hope he isn't too disappointed when he finds out I'm really not any good at guitar. I've been practicing, though, which is good for me even if the improvement isn't all that great yet. If I were a baby, this would be like playing with a kid who knows how to walk when I just learned how to roll over. Maybe we should get some drinks so I'm not so self-conscious.

island of un-misfit toys

I am posting this from my new laptop, which is one of the least unwanted toys I've ever had. Wowie! I had begun to worry that maybe I wouldn't like its touchpad or it wouldn't be big-screened enough or something, but the truth is, this is exactly what I had in mind.

It helps that this has allowed us to rearrange the living room, since my old desktop is out of the way. There's more space, Matt doesn't have to keep his borrowed keyboard on the floor, and the comfy yellow chair is back in the living room where it belongs.

Oh, and I dyed my hair black. My natural hair color used to be darker than it is now, and its new lightness was starting to get to me. Now it's darker than it's ever been (but still a brownish, natural-on-white-people-looking black), and I'm far more at home. I wonder if I'll want to keep this up for a while. Odd how my mental picture of myself somehow diverged that much from what I actually looked like.

eyes peeled

A couple of days ago it snowed again, after the snow had all been melted for a few weeks. Apparently a few weeks is long enough for me to become unused to the sight; that morning, the shock of seeing everything coated in heavy white was as strong as it is in October. It was cottonball-weight snow, on a morning in mid-March following a warm day. Surprising. I think that kind of shock is what makes people like seeing. We've all been looking at things for so long that when something surprises us it's shocking in such a way that we'd like to be shocked again. Surprising visuals are the best thing about getting up in the morning. (I think I see them disproportionately in the morning because I spend the rest of the day at work, where I have already seen everything.) I want to carry a digital camera around to record all the new things I see, and post them here.

In the past, I have seen these things that I can immediately think of, which were new and strange when I saw them:
a man walking backwards with his dog following him, walking forward
a guy who plays a banjo on his porch on summer afternoons
some Korean students learning collectively to ride a bike
the library stacks, when I got lost there

tried so hard to please her

I've been listening to those MP3s that Pitchfork posts periodically, and I don't like any of them. I don't know if that's because I'm just being difficult today, or if it's because none of them are good. Some days I just don't like anything - it's hard to tell.

edit: Matt tells me they're paid advertisements, not stuff the fork likes. That explains why they're mostly dumb.

I laughed, I cried, I beat king koopa

These Mario animations are surprisingly moving.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

may I make an observation

The building I work in was built in 1947, and my floor was added in 1965. Walking around here sometimes reminds me of what they had that we don't. Back then, there were adventures in science. Engineers built an antenna to track Sputnik from the roof of this building. Little kids cared about secret codes and radios. Besides being a "who's better at thinking" fight with Russia, the space race was also a time when it wasn't as dorky to be interested in those things for non-corporate reasons. The architecture of this building reflects that. The walls and doors are solid and plain, but certain details make this environment belong to the science that happens within it and to the attitudes (good and bad) of the time. Door handles and railings are made of copper in a nod to the metal that does it all. Women's bathrooms have obviously been converted from men's, because back when this place was built women didn't do this kind of thing. It's a fallout shelter. This summer we cleaned out a closet and found 50 pounds of "carbohydrate dietary supplement," stockpiled in the 50's by a now-deceased professor, in case the building's fallout-sheltering capability was ever used.

Things are just as dramatic these days, but no one believes anymore that science solves problems. Only money solves problems, and the new buildings on the quad are monuments to money, not to research.