Not A Dollarshort

Did I mention that people suck?

On Saturday, we had plans to meet up with a few people at an establishment in a "non-gentrified" section of town. While "non-gentrified" certainly has all sorts of questionable sociological implications, to us, it simply meant "It's Tempo time."

We're at a weird stage of new car ownership. We love driving our new Civic around and we're nowhere near as paranoid about scratches and dents as when we first purchased the car. However, we're still a bit hesitant to park in unfamiliar neighborhoods.

As we were getting into the Tempo, we questioned the logic of not driving the "safe car" to the city late at night. What's the point of having airbags if you're not going to drive the car with the airbags?

And why must we always be so paranoid of car theft or vandalism? Why shouldn't we give people the benefit of the doubt.

Besides, we had made plans to park in a familiar area and then walk to the destination. That way, we wouldn't have to worry about finding a parking spot. A couple weeks ago, while trying to park in North Beach on a Friday night, we were reminded just how much San Francisco is not a driver's town.

On Saturday night, neither one of us wanted to be reminded again.

Although all arguments seemed to favor us driving the Civic to The City, we remained stubbornly set on driving the Tempo.

Fast forward to six hours later.

Gotta Dance!

Many many thanks go to Helen, of Malibu Helen, for being incredibly generous and purchasing Singin' in the Rain off my Amazon wishlist.

I'm quite excited about watching the film tonight since Ben has never seen it before.

When we first started dating, Ben professed that he wasn't too crazy about musicals. "They're just boring," he'd complain. Of course, that attitude wasn't going to last too long for I need my M-G-M fix.

Of course, now, I can count on Ben to make comments like "I'm not watching that version of A Star is Born (Streisand/Kristofferson). The 1954 version (wink wink) is so much better."

Who says heterosexual men can't appreciate a good musical?

And he's so right about the versions. I mean really, The Man that Got Away vs. Evergreen.

That's not even a fair fight.

Now you listen to The Man that Got Away (Carnegie Hall version) and tell me it gets any better than this.

I dare you.

On a similar note, I am so buying this.

How about a trade?

I've mentioned before that I collect state quarters. It's a geeky but relatively easy sort of hobby -- that is until you start to use your credit card exclusively.

One month later.

The tragedy through a child's eyes.

The people falling. Not one but two, holding hands. We spent a lot of time talking about that, why they jumped, why they held hands, and we finally decided that they both must have been very scared, and that they must have held hands to try to ease each others' fear.

Thanks, Rebecca, for sharing that card.

Reading the message from Rebecca's sister makes me realize that, I, as an adult am no more equipped than a child to handle seeing such horrible images as those two people falling hand-in-hand.

Of all that I saw that day, the images of people falling were the most devastating and unhinging.

The pain lies in seeing a person and knowing what their fate will be.

And no matter how hard I try, I can not prevent myself from picturing wht people saw, what they did and how they died.

Helping.org.

The Original Project Manager.

I had a fairly relaxing day today.

Home alone, and feeling quite adventurous, I decided to finish the book I started a couple days ago.

So, I made myself a grilled-cheese sandwich and read from The Professor and the Madman (Thanks Sunil).

It was a light read, but nonetheless engaging. I think it's a good jumping-off point for anyone interested in learning the history of The Oxford English Dictionary. After all, a story about a scholarly murderer will certainly pique most interests.

I love a good non-fiction page turner.

For a project (the making of the OED) that was supposed to take ten years to complete but actually took seventy, you could only imagine the amount of stress that the editor James Murray was under.

I'm quite surprised that, with all those little slips of catch-phrased marked paper, he didn't go mad.

But maybe I'm just projecting my own feelings of exhaustion on Murray.

If I had a little bit of that Victorian restraint, I'd be a much happier woman.

Similar Victorian note: It is no coincidence that the Victorian illustration on the About page looks like me. Oh, the wonders of Photoshop.

Recycled Story.

Since I'm getting a lot of new visitors via Movable Type, I thought I might link to an older post I particularly liked. This is one of my favorite childhood stories and for those at Fray Day San Francisco, this is the written version of my little anecdote.

The bookcase story

And yes, I'm a bit swamped right now. Hence, the recycled post. Enjoy.

Hawaiian pizza and the meaning of life.

After the events of September 11th, I didn't think I could ever blog one of my childhood stories again. They were all too silly. I kept on thinking: Big deal, kids picked on me. So what?

There was one story, however, that I kept thinking about.

It's not heart-wrenching or tragic. It's just a little tale about me finding myself at the tender age of eight.

This is the story.

Have you ever had a moment like this?

That number just gave me a dirty look!

In response to my post about anthropomorphizing food, I received one comment that caused me to recall another weird behavior of mine.

Nadia wrote:

I do the same thing with numbers. It was the only way I could learn to add in my head. Each of the numbers had a personality, and reaching 10 was their equivalent of having a perfect, happy, harmonious relationship. So when the different personalities complimented each other, as with 4 and 6, they reached blissful 10.

My twist on the whole anthropomorphizing of numbers leaves me slightly disturbed.

Nadia describes a "perfect, happy, harmonious relationship" between numbers — her numbers work together and live in a sunny, happy world.

My take is a bit different. For one thing, my numbers exchange derisive taunts.

You know where this is going.

I'm not sure why — perhaps because I was taunted in school — many of my number "friends" have quite unpleasant personalities.

Here's a breakdown of their personalities (a list that has been forming since I was six years-old). Oh, and they have gender, as well:

1 - male, The goody two shoes

2 - female, The tomboy

3 - female, The jolly girl

4 - male, The jock

5 - male, The stoic

6 - female, The matriarch

7 - male, The snob

8 - female, The temptress

9 - female, The egotist

Number nine was the worst. I think the egotist label came about since whenever you multiply nine by any number, its sum from adding the digits always equals nine. Oh, and nine and eight clashed royally.

While the actual attributes I gave to my numbers may cause some to worry, the act of anthro- pomorphizing numbers is more widespread than I imagined.

Once, in college, I met a friend for lunch between classes. I asked him if he ever gave numbers personalities. He told me yes, and I didn't quite believe him.

No sooner had I challenged his claim when he opened his binder to reveal to me a number list he had compiled earlier in the week.

Yeah, we're both dorks, but that list was sure reassuring.

While writing this entry, I asked Ben to quickly give me his first impressions of the numbers. And amazingly, although he hadn't seen my list, his 1, 3, 4, 7 and 9 had almost the exact same personalities.

Do your numbers have personalities?

Can I breathe now?

With the conversion to Movable Type as my weblogging software, I just had to do a full redesign.

Although I do like my new design, I do question whether it was wise to do the entire layout in CSS. "What about that 1% who uses Netscape 3.x?" I ask myself. "Now they'll have to look at an ugly site."

Of course because I'm always trying to please everyone, I'll be setting up some sort of design-friendly solution for those without the latest browsers.

So, now I guess I should give some sort of tour for those visiting the new dollarshort.org. I basically moved everything off of my old index into different sections.

Archives contain the entries grouped by week. Additionally, you can now browse entries based on their categories. The search function will return shortly.

Projects contain the entries that are just a little more interesting than the regular postings. This is the place for my cartoons, video and audio files.

Elsewhere is my list of bookmarks.

About contains information about me and the site as well as the diversions list that was previously on the index page.

Contact is pretty self-evident.

Previously posted comments will be restored sometime later this week. In the meantime, let me know what you think.