A Site of Beef by Ann-S-Thesia


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Saturday, April 07, 2001

Today is one of those days that I am unable to function on a computer. I helped Stan prime part of the northeast side of the house this morning until my painting hand hurt and I felt burned out. Then I sat in the iron loveseat in the garden and stared at the lawn, the house and any and all assorted flora and fauna, the heavy winds blinding me with my hair. It was warm outside, and the winds were not cold at all. Our assortment of miniature irises, crocuses, snowdrops and small hyacinth-type flowers have naturalized and spread since planted a couple years ago. The 70 degree weather caused them to grow as I watched. I contemplated a ladybug up close, brought the Pug out and marvelled as he ran around outside, fully recovered from his former basketcase self seven months ago. The UPS episode of yesterday may have initiated my inability to concentrate on anything, but the summer winds of today cemented it.

Sometimes I'm just so sick of computer this and internet that. Updating my pages is difficult. Checking my email is a chore. It is very hard to function in this cyber world when my heart is not in it, when I just do not think like and enjoy the same things that it seems everyone else does. I do not get off on EBay, three domains is plenty for me, I do not do ICQ, I do not keep up with the latest online conversations on all the trendy geek sites, I don't go to chat rooms, I don't keep abreast of the latest coding trends and electronic gadgets, my signfigant other is not involved in a complementary form of internet technology, I don't have a PDA or cellphone, I don't have the latest OS, and the computer I'm typing this on is three years old.

I just plain don't care.

Maybe I'd care if there I knew there were others out there who felt the same way. But I don't think there are. It's pointless writing this in a public blog because it's not like someone is going to read this and say, "Wow, I feel just like she does." No, people will read this and say, "Wow, she's a freak. She doesn't shop EBay?"

See? Pointless.
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 5:50 PM ||


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I can't remember the order the events took place in my dream last night, but I do remember being at my parents house, or maybe they were at my house and they were getting ready to go to church and I was trying to avoid the issue with them, hoping they would leave me alone. Then I do remember I was in the basement of my parent's house and they had an old couch in this one open area. Matt and Dale came over to see Stan and me there (Matt is Tim's ex-roommate and Dale is Matt's partner). Matt gives me this strange wiggly Jello-like butterfly (like the ones in the Jello ads), but it's not edible, and it's just plain weird. Matt is trying to tell a funny story, but he can't finish it and never gets to the punchline. I'm noticing that Matt seems like he's made out of Jello himself, and wonder if he is sick or something. He has a strange marking on his upper lip...like a yellow road sign. Weird. Then somehow I find out that Dale is the son of Stan's biological mom's husband, making him the biological half-brother of Stan's biological half-sister, however that would only make him and Stan related in a family tree sort of way, not by actual blood (make sense?). I'm sort of freaking out about the coincidence. Then I remember Stan and I are driving around the part of town where IRL Matt and Dale live, and we find this weird house that actually exists (IRL it is this old [built circa 1900] two story house that looks like something that should be in the center of town or where we live on the isthmus but looks out of place on the south end of town with cheapy little single story houses built around 1930-1950). We drive past it and notice in the dream that it has no windows. Then the house starts mutating and it becomes this very massive structure that looks like some sort of institution. We drive around it and see windows on the other side, but they're positioned so that no one on the inside can look out of them, but we can see into the building. I notice that there are women in there wearing uniforms and then I realize it's a woman's prison or something. Then Stan and I are inside the women's prison, walking around and looking at it.
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 9:24 AM ||



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Friday, April 06, 2001

Aaagh! UPS is royally pissing me off today. Normally I love UPS. Their delivery man, when I see him, is friendly. They leave packages for me by my back door when I do not answer, which is 95% of the time. Today when I got the mail, I saw a notice attached to the back door. It was from UPS telling me they attempted a delivery. I never heard the doorbell, which is not unusual since I work on the 2nd floor in a back room with NPR on the radio and hum of computer equipment blocking out any doorbell let alone feeble knocking. Unless the delivery person is persistent which would cause the dogs to go ballistic, I usually have no idea someone is at the door. And often by the time I get downstairs, they have left anyway. Why they didn't leave the packages is beyond me. All it was was less than $100 of art supplies (paint), and the last time I ordered from the same company back in December, UPS promptly left the paint by our back door. The last time I received a UPS shipment was just last week (Slimline CD rainbow-colored jewel cases from NEATO...very cool!), they left it in the door. Is this a new policy that just took place? What was so darn frustrating is that I couldn't contact them to tell them to just leave the package in the back door. There was nothing to sign on the slip of paper giving them my permission to leave the next attempted delivery whether I answer the door or not. When I called the 800 number that was on the slip of paper, all it told me was the same mumbo jumbo that was printed on the InfoNotice. I got caught in a pre-recorded message tape loop, and when I finally got ahold of a human, he could barely speak English and at that time I was losing it. I had to explain the whole thing to him, he had to fill out something on the computer, and then he told me that "they" will call me back about my incident! I was practically in tears..."Can't they just leave it at my back door? Why can't they do this, they always did this before, every single time. I can't guarantee I'll be home from 10:30-2:00 on Monday, and even if I am at home, I can't guarantee I'll hear the door. What am I supposed to do, sit downstairs during mid-day just to listen for UPS?" He said the obvious, "Sometimes packages require a signature...." Well, durhey...don't you think I thought of that? If that was the case, then why wasn't the "Signature required on delivery" box checked on the form they left? And furthermore, NovaColor (the art supply company) has never required a signature on their packages before.

I am just so mad right now. Oh, and here's the kicker...I asked him when they would call me back. "Oh, within the hour." Well, it's going on "within the hour," and I need to go online right now, so I guess they'll get a busy signal, eh? Aaarrrrrgh.

Later....

So I've been on the phone with the CSR in Madison, going over the same crap over and over. ("Why can't they just leave it in the back like they've done hundreds of times before?") She says it's because we have an alley in the back and it isn't safe. WTF? We've ALWAYS had an alley in the back. After I hung up the phone after her telling me he'll be here between 3 and 4 today (I haven't even had time to shower yet, and now I guess I just plain won't freaking shower because I won't have time to dry my hair before he gets here) I just burst into tears. They are just a bunch of freaking idiots. I told her we have a bulkhead, and he could leave it in the bulkhead. She's probably one of these 24-year-old-always-lived-in-suburbia-types who doesn't even know what a bulkhead is. (Kinda like people who throw out clawfoots...another "lived-in-suburbia-all-my-life-don't-know-what-one-of-those-is" words) I can't get anywhere with them, I can't understand this new thing (they won't even admit it's a new policy!) where they won't leave it at my house, they can't understand why I won't take several hours out of my day to just wait for the package to come....blah blah blah. Why can't they just put a phone number on their notice where you can make arrangements for redelivery or for pickup without all this rigamarole (going through pre-recorded messages and non-responsive CSRs).

I am just so angry!
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 2:29 PM ||


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Ann: This month has a Friday the Thirteenth.
Stan: Does it really?
Ann: Yes. Next Friday. You have it off. We should have a Friday the Thirteenth party.
Stan: Would we get stinking drunk?
Ann: Yes.
Stan: I don't want to get stinking drunk.
Ann (who has an impeccable memory): Just kidding. Remember we had a Friday the Thirteenth party seventeen years ago? That was in April too.
Stan (sarcastically): Is Friday the Thirteenth when we remember our goth roots?
Ann (thinking what it would be like to have kids and steep them in tradition...like say, um, The Addams Family):
"Mom, why do we paint our eyes dark and wear black clothes today?"
"Because today is Friday the Thirteenth. Your father and I remember and celebrate our goth roots."
"Do other kids celebrate their goth roots?"
"Be quiet and drink your absinthe."

Dream was stupid last night. I was walking down a street late at night in a downtown area of a city somewhere and there were a bunch of bakeries and oriental shops in a row with delicious--but-weird-looking food in the windows. Then I went to a store that sold bicycles and a woman waited on me. I was in the company of some friends. I went to the back loading dock where I could take a bike out back and give it a test ride. It was strange...the pedals weren't under my feet where they should be, they were closer to the rear wheel which made riding quite difficult. I think there was more to the dream, such as snippets of reocurring dreams of travelling out west, highways and interstates but I can't remember any specifics.
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 8:31 AM ||



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Thursday, April 05, 2001

Sometimes the weird clustering of events and coincidences in my life are just a little too strange. I go through these periods where I get no orders...periods of feast or famine. For the past several weeks it's been a famine as far as selling graphic CDs or fonts after having a feasty period the month before of taking in an order about once a day. Then yesterday I sold one set of CDs, and then today I get another order for the very same set, both from the same continent, different countries. This is after going months without selling that set. But that's not as strange as another event that happened concurrently to the CD sales. I was contacted Tuesday night by a web client that I've done webgraphic work for. She was wondering if I could do a brochure for her, either 1 page front and back or 3-fold. Wednesday morning I thought I'd look through my portfolio of print work I've done before to see if I could find examples of 3-fold brochures...just so I know where to lay out the addresses and everything so it could be mailed. I could not find my portfolio. It was nowhere. I searched and searched and tore up the house. I was in a state of panic. Not that I really wanted to, but what if I had to get a job doing print work again if somehow the WWW blew up and I could no longer make it as a web graphic artist? I'd have nothing to show anyone, to prove I indeed have experience doing print work. Had I thrown out my portfolio by mistake? Did Stan throw it out? Was I losing my mind? Was I actually ever a freelance desktop publisher, or was that a figment of my imagination? Would I need to get ahold of Sue, a woman I freelanced for in town several years ago who I did most of the examples in my portfolio for? What do I say, "Hi Sue, I know it's been a long time, but do you have any extra samples of the pamphlets and flyers I helped create while I was freelancing for you? See, I um, lost my porftolio." I couldn't do that. I'd rather work as a maid than admit to anyone I lost my portfolio. What self-respecting graphic artist loses their portfolio? Then as I was going through my CDs I made, seeing which ones I have to cut more copies of, I found it. My portfolio. It was there amongst my computer stuff, behind the zip disks, with other binders of important papers. It wasn't in a weird spot. It was where it should be...just a little hidden behind jewel cases and my temporary mental fog. I sighed a big sigh of relief. Ironically, I couldn't find any examples of 3-fold brochures in it. Maybe I never did any three-folds for Sue. Maybe all of that was back in my old Kinko's days. It didn't matter, because to advance the irony further, my web client decided against the three-fold and opted for the single page front and back instead. But, the story is not over. Guess who called today, after two or three years of not having talked or worked for her, wondering if I had some time to do some freelance work for her? Sue!
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 11:47 AM ||


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Dream was nothing but a jumble of CSS, Blogger Templates, colorful yellow and orange paint and paintings, and old furniture and creepy old rooms of a crumbling old house. Not unlike my own life. Too bad I can't make sense of my dream (not unlike my own life.)
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 9:31 AM ||



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Wednesday, April 04, 2001

Hard to remember certain aspects of my dream last night, but here goes: I was hanging around the Memorial Union with Stan and I believe my parents were there too, along with some other people. I was buying some Thai food from a vending stand or restaurant area that was sort of open to the main concourse of the Union inside the building...one of those Satay things with the peanut sauce...forgot exactly what it was. My mom said she'd pay for it, but when I got up to the counter, I couldn't find her, so I was scrounging around for change in my wallet. Although the stand was run by Asian people, the woman at the counter was a large white woman and she couldn't see too well, or at least count change, and ended up giving me two five hundred dollar bills in making change for a twenty or something. Then I remember walking around in this strange garden area outside with water running around and underneath the flagstones that we had to step on to avoid getting wet. Also remember part of the dream took place in my parents house. I was listening to the Velvet Goldmine soundtrack and was in the presence of a friend who didn't appreciate music, so she couldn't relate to my singing along to it.
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 7:54 AM ||



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Tuesday, April 03, 2001

Intense "talking in my sleep" dream last night: Stan and I were getting a new house to live in, but it was like we never owned our current house, it was like we were still renting in Fort Collins and getting a new rental. The new house was rather quaint like a cottage, with a white picket fence that came to the edge of the sidewalk and a small yard in both front and back. It meant less mowing for me which I liked, and the front yard was just bursting with hollyhocks and roses. Even though we had to go to a laundromat when we lived in Fort Collins, in this dream for some reason we owned a washing machine, and I wanted to make sure that when we moved into the new house we took our washing machine with us, so I wrote a note to myself. (Didn't even think about the dryer we also own now). Then I started having doubts as to whether this new house even had a basement or a place to put a washing machine. We went there a second time to take another look around, and I was reassured that there was a large basement (even larger than our current basement in the house we own) that also came with a washer and dryer. Then it was like we were living there already with some other guys, and Stan was in a band or something. The other guys were younger, in their 20s, and they were putting a bunch of laundry in the tub upstairs. I had to shower because Stan and I had planned to go out that night, but couldn't with all the clothes in the bathtub. So I go into the basement to wash up in a large sink down there. As I'm running the water, I notice that water runs down the pipes against the wall, and mingles with the stone or cement mix siding on the walls and forms a disgusting brownish-red milky water that runs in a gutter on the floor...sort of like a lot of the iron-saturated water I saw up north in northern Wisconsin and the Michigan UP. Then some guys come downstairs while I'm washing up (I'm not undressed...it's just a sponge bath and I'm mostly washing dirt off of my knees) and they're either Stan's band members or their electricians or plumbers. Don't know which (you know how musicians dress these days). I ask Stan for a towel so I can dry off and he gives me a towel with tar or asphalt or black ink on it, and I throw it back at him and yell at him it's a piece of shit. (I don't think I say this outloud). He looks at me like I insulted him. Then I yell outloud in my sleep, "I just want to strangle you guys!" That woke me up.

The house in this dream reminds me so much of something I've seen somewhere before but I cannot pinpoint it.
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 9:17 AM ||



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Monday, April 02, 2001

Aaack. Just found a totally repulsive site linking to Plato's, saying that he finds Boston Terriers totally repulsive, says it must be their bug eyes. Bug Eyes? Bostons? Try Pug Eyes. Said site (which gets no link, thank you very much) goes on about juvenile erection stories. Need I say more? Uncouth people find Boston Terriers repulsive. Classy people find Boston Terriers wonderful.
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 9:24 AM ||


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Stan has always told me I'm one of those people that you have to get up really early to pull one over on. He sort of did April Fool's morning. In the past, the incredibly famous Plato the Boston Terrier has had a propensity for going after...um...droppings, if you know what I mean. Hey, he's a dog, you know? When we take him out for his daily duty we have to watch that his nose doesn't go to the ground and start rooting for disgusting things, not just droppings but old chicken bones (we don't even eat chicken...yuck), odd, undefinable substances that raccoons drag into our yard, etc. Sunday morning I was still in bed and groggy from the daylight savings time changeover. Stan had gotten up to go to work and take the dogs out. When he came up to the bedroom to say goodbye to me, he told me that Plato had found some nice rabbit droppings for breakfast. I simply groaned, too sleepy to outwardly express the fear I felt in my mind, the fear of tapeworms and other diseases that wild rabbits carry. Well, it wasn't an ingenious April Fool's joke, but I did buy it for a minute.

I took Hieronymus for a walk around the block on Sunday. This was the first walk either of us had been on since the autumn due to this incredibly cold winter. I couldn't believe how that dog ran! This is the same dog who after falling down the stairs on Labor Day could barely make it halfway down the alley without labored breathing and uncomfortableness back in October. He savored smelling all the dead leaves on his path. I just couldn't believe his exuberance. We have a new dog!

I had a sort of disturbing dream Sunday morning. Stan, Tim and I were at an art opening at the Anderson Art Center in Kenosha, but it didn't look much like the place. Inside it was more like a drafty Tudor mansion, with stone walls. We went upstairs to the west wing where they have the kid's art exhibits and for some reason we were hanging out there, talking to some "friends" that we all used to have that used to be in a long term relationship together but recently broke up and since their break up haven't spoken to Stan or me (or Tim much). In the dream we weren't speaking to them together, when one of them left the room, the other came in. They were spewing great hatred for eachother. Simultaneously, IRL the radio was playing this "Sound Money" program in the background which always depresses me because it's not geared toward people like me and it always makes me feel like I'll be eating out of trash cans when I'm 70. So it translated in my dream to being lectured to by accountants. I was telling them, "but I can't invest in dividends...I have no money!" and they just kept ignoring me. Actually, one of the "friends" of ours actually was/is an accountant IRL. I also remember seeing some women there sitting on a couch, eating opening food, nattering away about money market funds and investments, and there were like four generations of them and they all looked the same, like a cross between the Mrs. Beasley doll from Family Affair and Paul Williams, the toadly little pop singer from the early 70s. It was disturbing. I remember thinking, "I just have to get out of here." We started to get ready to leave, and Tim gives me a bunch of bead/marble type plastic baubles that he found on the floor in some kid's play area. I really didn't want to keep them, so I was going to try to find a place to put them. I was standing on the top landing of these half stairs (which actually do exist at the AAC, but they looked different in the dream) and there was this strange animal at the bottom of the landing. At first I thought it was a seal, but then I wondered how on earth a seal would get into that building (but they did have a deer get into one of the closets...true story, honest!) Then I looked at it again and I realized it was a very strange overweight dog. Its coat was too reddish to be a seal. But because of its obesity and some sort of deformity to its hind legs, it flopped around like a seal. It was trying to get up the stairs, and I was afraid of it biting me or knocking me down with its sheer force and volume.
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 8:38 AM ||



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Sunday, April 01, 2001

I hope you had a happy April Fool's Day and the TeenaWeena didn't scare too many of you off. It wasn't as hard as I thought to go an entire day without blogging.

Although I knew it was an April Fool's thing, Jeff's hilarious Lord Jakob page was really starting to frighten me. You know, someone really ought to tell Nielsen about LEADING. We have CSS now, Jakob, we can control line height.

Oh, and in case you're interested, TeenaWeena is now here in case you missed it and/or would like to torture yourself.
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 10:49 PM ||



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