Saturday, January 20, 2001

I was brushing my teeth and recalled my dream last night. I was buying more toothpaste...Tom's of Maine...Peppermint and Spearmint. That's all I remember. We tried Tom's this past fall when I got so tired of the same old flavors of Corporate Toothpaste. Also noticed when I switched brands that I stopped getting swollen tastebuds. Some lethal crap they put in Corporate Toothpaste I'm sensitive to. We haven't tried those two flavors yet...right now we have four tubes kicking around the bathroom (I love this toothpaste!)...the more bizzarro flavors like Wintermint, Fennel, Cinnamint and Gingermint. Will try the more conventional mint flavors later.

One of my favorite scary lines from a TV show involved tooth brushing. Can you guess what it is?
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 6:35 PM ||

Took a ride Friday and drove by an old used crap store out in the country run by "Crazy Larry" (our name for him). I remember about 9 years ago we went to his place to see if he had any decent used crap, like inexpensive classy antiques, as we were trying to furnish our recently-acquired home. Nothing but crap...Stan ended up buying a blue glass transformer as he collects those. Shortly afterward there was a write-up in the paper about Crazy Larry and how he was going out of the business and was going to go down to Arizona to make it big by selling Wisconsin cheese out of a trailer. Like people in Arizona can't get cheese.
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 12:32 PM ||

I'm halfway asleep listening to "Car Talk (With Click and Clack)" this morning, and a young man named "Taz" calls up with an automotive question. Naturally, Tom or Ray ask him about his name, and it is revealed that Taz is only a nickname short for "Tazwell Wellington V" (The Fifth). Tom and Ray start joking about the pomposity of the name and Taz says it helps or helped (I'm sleeping, remember) him get into College, and the topic of Harvard is brought up. I don't know if Taz actually went to Harvard or another ivy league school, but so it is implied by the conversation. Soon the topic turns back to Taz's automotive question, and Taz starts out by framing the situation with "Me and my wife bought a (insert car name here)...." Me and my wife bought. Me and my wife. By today's standards of so-called excellence, yes, definitely Harvard material. Happy Inauguration Day.
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 11:39 AM ||

Friday, January 19, 2001

No, I meant exactly what I said...SSI. Some of us "Starving Artists" know exactly what we're talking about, in fact, we're probably more on top of it than others. You know how a little starvation gives one a keener sense, like a hungry wolf as opposed to a satiated lap dog.
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 8:26 PM ||

House photos, as promised:

What I am about to tell you is one of those unbelievable, cosmic, Twin Peaksish bizarre psychic things, much more cosmic than dreaming about someone and then having them call you after not having talked to them for several weeks. Much more supernatural.

Remember that odd little supernatural first-floor dormered house I mentioned around the 3rd or 5th of January? We checked it early this week and they moved it sideways to the road. We drove by last night...it was still there. While doing errands around noon today we drove past it, and it was gone. All that was left was the mystery of where it disappeared to. Stan and I said it would have been bizarre if it had ended up at one of the areas we were searching for it in the first place, namely around Sycamore or Buckeye. I also thought we'd never find it again, I mean, it could be *anywhere.* So we start to head down Buckeye, past Highway 51, and right there, after the fast food mart...right after the strange little street where Pam lives and where we had looked at a house to buy 11 years ago, and where we thought the house may have been the first time....was....ta da...you guessed it. The House. After I got over the fact that we found it so quickly...immediately, really, I ask Stan, as he was the one driving, "how did you know where to look?" It was the crows. He asked the crows where the house went. A crow flew that direction, so he followed it.

After I get some time to extract them from my digital camera's memory, I will add pictures of this.

Thanks, crows.
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 2:08 PM ||

Becky, I am so sorry to read that you were the recipient of that Nasty Gram. Some people just don't get it on so many levels. First, if you don't like a site or what that site says if it conflicts with your ideology...leave. If they are not targeting you personally, don't write them, ignore them. Just leave. Second, don't criticize someone for protecting their intellectual property if you have never been the victim of imitation, impersonation or copyright violation. Of course, Nasty Gram Sender will probably never know what it's like to have her site appropriated...with all the colorful and creative sites out there, why appropriate one that isn't? Nasty Gram Sender needs to do a little grey thinking and get out of the black and white, all or nothing stage of reasoning.

BTW...this post is a little late in coming....ran into a little Blogger Blockage that wouldn't allow me to post: "Error 103:java.sql.SQLException: java.sql.SQLException: The log file for database 'pyra' is full. Back up the transaction log for the database to free up some log space."
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 1:52 PM ||

Thursday, January 18, 2001

Ya wanna know what's weird? It's a speak of the devil thing. Go weeks...months, even, without hearing from someone, mention them in a blog, and then, wham. I get an email from one of the people mentioned in the "group of people" in my post below with something that I needed to add to "the project." So I contact another one of them (the one I used to have the crush on) via email asking what to do with it (because he's the fearless leader, more or less), and later he calls me while I'm dead exhausted taking a nap...Stan talks to him instead (Stan knows all about the crush...everything's cool, honey bunny). Just think...7 years ago I would've jumped out of bed to hear his voice, exhaustive fatigue or no. Now, sleep is much more important.

God, I hope no one from their crowd reads this blog. I would just die of embarrassment. They're all pretty much computer phobes, though. That's good. I deleted eyeblog from my signature in my emails...it's now an option, but it doesn't automatically add it in the random signatures. They don't need to know I run a blog, they don't need to know about the crush, and they don't need to know about "bad houseguest." Ironic that I don't care that the rest of the world does...
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 8:08 PM ||

So here's my dream that I had during the cell phone brain cancer show:

I was in a room/house that was partly my grandmother's house and partly my parent's house. There was a small toddler running around, and we were trying to block it from going up/down stairs, much the way we block off Hieronymus from stairways since he had his accident. I was with some guy...I don't know who he was, but it was like a work situation. I was going through a bunch of mail or papers and there was a press packet there with pictures of (how shall I put this delicately? It's not as if they read this blog, but just want to make sure...) ...a group of people I'm doing work with. I start leafing through the pictures...they're all black and white 8x10s, but of a strange quality, like they were photocopied or something. I come across one of someone who I had a crush on. I show it to the guy who is there. Then I come across a photo of "our bad houseguest." Then, it's as if "our bad houseguest" manifests himself, so he's not just in the pictures but there in the room. The only thing is, he doesn't look a thing like himself, but it's him nonetheless (you know how dreams are). It freaks me out.

BTW, I took this emode test this morning, "What's your Superpower?" My superpower is Animal Communication. I just wish I could communicate to the skinny newt that eating is a good idea.
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 10:04 AM ||

Weird freaky thing on the Tom Clark show this morning regarding cell phones causing brain/eye cancer. It just freaked me out and I've never even used a cell phone. I was halfway dreaming through the whole thing, so it was pretty surreal, but my semiconscious state put me in this mindset of wanting to save everyone from this miserable fate, so on behalf of my dreamstate, please everyone STOP USING CELLPHONES! Unless you're one of those jerks who use them when you're behind the wheel in heavy traffic and cause accidents...then keep on using them....use several at once.
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 9:46 AM ||

Wednesday, January 17, 2001

Heh heh. I think we should all put up donaton pleas on our blogs. Maybe someone should start a contest like "Most pathetic-sounding plea" and "lowest goal amount plea" and "best cheap crap offered in return for donation." Get out the violins...
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 5:05 PM ||

I...uh...redesigned Ann-S-Thesia again. I swear, this will be the last redesign for a while. Just had to figure out what I was doing with SSI a little better.
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 4:47 PM ||

Can't remember too much of my dream...I know it was more extensive than my memory of the images will allow. All I can recall is that I was in one of those interstate rest stops, a fairly nice one like the one on US highway 151 (OK, so that's not an interstate...whatever) in southwestern Wisconsin right after you come in from Iowa (As far as rest stops and rest stop settings go...that's a beaut). There were some people living there. I remember seeing spider webs in the eves. Can't remember much else.
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 9:59 AM ||

This poem that Cecily found in her email is waaaay funny. I'd like to see Mark Russell do this one on his periodic PBS specials.
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 9:47 AM ||

Tuesday, January 16, 2001

I got this addressed to the email on my ann-s-thesia site:

"I am interested in poly lifestyle, how can I get connected with folks?"

*sigh*. Well, here's a tip: Why not try contacting sites that are related to the "poly" lifestyle, not sites THAT HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THAT TOPIC THAT ARE RUN BY MONOGAMOUS MARRIED WOMEN? Of course you'd have no way of knowing from that site that I'm monogamous and married, because that's not germain to the topic of a graphic design site, is it? But naturally you assume I know something about polygamy/polyandry? Go figure.

That's a start. Here's another tip: Got two hands? Use them if one hand's not good enough.

Geez.

I never put limits on who and who cannot use my designs because I figure that Nazi KKK types just won't be attracted to my style of art anyway, so a sort of self-censorship is already built into it. I suspect that the misguided soul I mention above came by my site via the way of a polyandry site that is using my work that I find in my referrers every once in a while. I don't understand why people automatically contact me about a site I have absolutely nothing to do with. Why don't they contact *the site they find my site through*? Can't they see that once they are at my site that *they aren't in Kansas anymore* so to speak? This happens all the time and is not limited to swingers. For example:

1. An X-Files fan site using some of my web graphics like backgrounds and buttons had some sort of Mulder Purple Heart Award thing (that I did not create and have absolutely nothing to do with). Site is visited by WWII vet who is offended by the award. Instead of contacting the site's owner, contacts me and threatens legal action by some VFW lawyer or somesuch for defaming the Purple Heart. I had no idea what he was yelling about in his email, because I didn't even know about the damn X-Files site until after I was finally able to drag out of this hot-tempered geezer...er... excuse me... honorable and gentlemanly veteran... where he found the graphics. It was not a pleasant day in Annville. Fortunately, he realized his error and apologized.

2. Some dog site using some of my web graphics has a list of some... AKC list... championship... thing... I don't know what it was, but out of the blue some woman contacts me to change her dog's ranking... list... thing... I don't even know what it was about because it was so cryptic and had no idea what she was talking about. Somehow I managed to figure out it had to do with dogs, and since I am a webmaster for a client's personal homepage about dogs, I naturally assumed it had something to do with *that* site. So I contact my client and she's clueless like I am. Then I contact the person who sent the email and found out she should've contacted the first dog site's webmaster with her update information. Why she contacted me is just beyond me.

Really makes me reconsider my terms for linking back to me for free graphics. Should just institute a pay-for-everything policy...just buy a license to use them and forget it.
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 10:03 AM ||

Weird twist on college anxiety dreams: I was up in Canada, don't know where, exactly, but somewhere due-north of Madison...Somewhere, Ontario. I was going to be going to college up there, and my parents lived in Madison. Weird. I was going to be rooming with another college woman in a house where both of us were lodgers. The people who owned the house had a little boy, and he had a bedroom that sort of opened up to a large loft area over a living room with big windows where the room forms a triangle (don't know the architectural term). I was walking around the house trying to find my own bedroom, and there were all these passageways and stairways, but they were all blocked off from my access. It's as if the house had this inner access that was accessible only by the owners, not us college people. I was thinking that I would need to go home (to my "parents" in Madison) on weekends so that I could do laundry and stuff, but my schedule on Friday was late so I wouldn't be able to leave early...like as if...it's at least a two-day drive up to or down from Canada anyway! I really wish these stupid dreams where I'm back in college would stop. It's getting old already. (And so am I.)
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 8:30 AM ||

I added BlogVoices. All along this little Woody Allen voice inside of me keeps yelling, "What, are you CRAZY?" I think it's good to have a little Woody Allen inside. It justifies paranoia.
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 12:34 AM ||

Monday, January 15, 2001

**snort** Look what Jann sent me! A taller Tim!

You know, it's frightening how much the Stan one really does look like him. Same square jawline, wide-ish nose, lip shape, centrally-parted long hair with receding hairline...spooky.

Do you think I'll *ever* learn to not type my bloggage of the moment directly into Blogger's posting area without *first* typing it in Stickies (A Mac-system accessory thang for you Windows folks out there) and then copy/pasting to guard against any loss of time, memory (mine, not the computer's) and data when Blogger's java-powered or whatever-powered gadgetry decides it doesn't want to post, leaving my bloggage irretrievable from the message posting area, causing me to force-quit MSIE, losing any witty commentary that I may or may not be able to recall when redoing it? Wow. That was a sentence.
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 11:46 PM ||

Heh. The old screenshot method and if you can't join them beat them and all that jazz:

Me, Stan and Tim. Stan actually looks the most like himself. Tim isn't tall enough. My hair's too blonde.
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 1:06 PM ||

Well poo. I can't do this stor trooper thing that I've been finding in other people's blogs. It's not that the clothes and hairstyles aren't quite right, nor is it for the fact I think the jaw structure is too broad, the chin is too non-existant and the lips are too wide to make it look anything like me. No, I just can't plain get it to save my work. Browser freezes up each time after I complete my trooper. I tried it in all my browsers (can't even find the plug-in for it for N6). Nada. Must be a Mac Thang. Who knows. Perhaps I will have to resort to screen shots. Yeah, I'll try that. And if that doesn't work, I'll list a bunch of people Stan and I look like, and I'll let you, dear visitor, create us instead. (Don't go by the Halloween costumes...we really don't look like those)
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 12:26 PM ||

Sunday, January 14, 2001

Not a good thing to be met with on a Sunday morning. Log on to ftp to upload my changing weekly icons and background, and my server tells me that it can't upload because I've exceeded the quota. WTF? I checked my stats online the other day and it told me I have 33 megs used, and I'm allotted 50. I check the online control panel. I have used 72 megs! This can't be right because the only thing I've added onto lately has been my blog...no major art added or anything. I figure out it's this damn wusage 7.0 that I installed the other month. I tried to delete it the other day and couldn't...said my permissions were wrong. I tried changing my permissions at that time, but I don't know if I did...I don't get permissions, frankly. So I try to delete the wusage 7.0 again and finally it lets me. I just hope it won't return again, like some bad case of...the woooosages or whatever. In the mean time I can't tie up my phone because we have to call Tim to get together with him for "Gay Brunch" (Actually, Stan and I are the only hets that go to it...good food at the Shamrock bar downtown presided over by drag queen Felisha). Well, after staying up all night working on my SSI and CSS and now this problem trying to delete over 22 megs from my site, I won't exactly feel very "gay" (in the traditional, old fashioned sense of the word) for brunch.
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 10:44 AM ||

Good news: Slaved my butt off to get this blog changed over to SSI and CSS tonight. Bad news: What the heck is that huge gaposis before the picture below? Any code types out there know what causes this?

I'm beat. Can't take any more of this tonight.
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 1:02 AM ||

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