Being Amber Rhea

Vignettes

I’m taking a sick day from work today, because I knew I would be spending two and a half hours at the dentist (but my ordeal is finally over!) and would probably want to sleep afterward. I’ll be doing that as soon as I finish eating my soft lunch. I feel requisitely guilty about missing work, but Rusty reminded me that I have a ton of sick days, so I shouldn’t feel too bad. And he’s right; I hardly ever use sick days. (When I got the flu in 2006, I was a contractor, so those days off were all unpaid.) Back in 2005 when Ryan was my boss, he forced me to take some days off to use up some sick days.

My dentist has a satellite radio station that plays 70s music. Usually it’s good, with occasional really bad exceptions. The last two times I’ve been there, I’ve heard the Allman Brothers’ “Ramblin’ Man.” Every time it gets to the line, “I was born in the back seat of a Greyhound bus / Rollin’ down Highway 41,” I can’t help but think, “Wow, what a mess that must’ve been.”

If I feel better today after my ibuprofen-induced nap, I might go to Ace Hardware or Lowe’s and get some flowers to put in containers on the deck. So far the begonias out front are doing good. Fortunately for me, the birds seem to like the window basket outside my office window. On Saturday a female house finch was hanging out in the basket, and this morning I spotted a mockingbird pulling out a piece of the fiber of the basket for nesting material.

On the deck, I’ve seen a baby cardinal being fed by its father. And in the big pine tree in the front yard, I’ve seen two baby chickadees, which are even cuter than adult chickadees.

Also, yesterday there was a cat orgy in the back yard. It was two cats having sex and another one watching, so really more like voyeurism. At one point the voyeur cat looked up and, I don’t know if he could see Rusty and I watching from inside the kitchen, but his expression seemed to say, “What are you looking at, sickos?” Then he went back to watching the other cats have sex. Rusty suggested I get my Kodak Zi6 camera and record it. “What an auspicious start to my video making,” I said, as I went to get my camera. But the orgy was over by the time I made it back.

Finally: if you were at Sex 2.0, don’t forget to take the survey! We need your feedback. There are only 18 responses so far but 166 of y’all were there… come on!

The Yardbirds

I’ll hide most of this post behind a “more” link because there are a ton of photos and I realize that not everyone on the internet has a super-fast connection. Here are the birds we’ve seen so far in our yard at our house. Most of them have come to our feeder, except for the robin and mockingbird, which don’t eat seed anyway.
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Sundries

(Am I the only one who always reads “sundries” as “sun-dries,” like the plural for sun-dried tomatoes?)

Been busy w/ work and the new house. Hate saying something like that because it sounds so cliché, and also because I hate when people use “I’m busy” as a go-to excuse for everything. Hello, everyone is busy, it’s nothing special.

Anyway, here are some summaries of what’s been happening.

~*~

Monday I went to the Feminism2.0 conference in Washington, DC, with Ren. The subject matter and issues discussed were not new to me, but overall it was interesting and I’m glad I went. I liveblogged the following sessions:

• Feminism on the Move – Where we were and where are we now?
• Media and Culture: Feminists and the Media – Speaking Out
• Bloggers and Activists: An Intimate and Frank Conversation

I also posted a few photos on Flickr, many of which show the linkfluence node map thingy that was blowing everyone’s mind. I thought the top 30 list was pretty neat – and that’s all. Such things should be taken with the appropriate serving of salt. Or to put it another way, Technorati rankings are not character judgments.

Predictably, there are now conversations ensuing about who was “excluded,” and it’s driving me batty. I really try not to get all “snarky tech geek” on people, but this isn’t an issue of exclusion/inclusion. And honestly at this point it seems like there’s no pleasing some people. As I said at Renee’s, if WOC bloggers are not highly ranked by algorithms like that, it’s likely because of a lack of interlinking, which may happen because WOC bloggers feel that other feminist blogs are hostile environments and therefore don’t link to them. This is not condoning anything, it’s a straightforward explanation. Example: if you make your blog private, it’s not indexed by Google. That’s just the way the internet works.

Frankly, I’m sick of these conversations because they always seem to be Oppression Olympics and too often it seems like people who don’t understand the way SEO works are making outrageous, spurious claims. And more and more, I get a sense of people not wanting to be proactive, but rather just passively snarking about how everything is so unfair.

And I hate that saying that makes me sound (to some, perhaps) like the assholes who deny that privilege exists; the people who, when someone points out an instance of white privilege, male privilege, hetero privilege, whatever, take it as a personal attack. I can’t STAND those people! I hate that there seems to be such a dichotomy set up, though, that you can’t have a legitimate critique with being painted as identical to those people. And I’m afraid it will make people not listen to me when I raise legitimate critiques (e.g., exclusion of sex workers’ voices; myriad instances of male privilege and institutionalized sexism, especially the “unintentional” kind). -Of course, the corollary to that is, if people can’t make a distinction between a legitimate critique and passive snarking, that’s their problem; but we all know that common sense is not so common.

~*~

SoCon09 is tomorrow. I’m glad Rusty and I are going this year; we went in 2007, but missed it last year in favor of going to PodCamp Nashville. That turned out to be a mistake, because PodCamp Nashville sucked. We still had fun in Nashville and the rest of the road trip, but seeing all the tweets and liveblogs from SoCon08 made us realize we’d chosen the wrong unconference for that weekend!

I’m leading a session tomorrow called “Online Etiquette: How to Balance Your Personal and Professional Image Online.” I didn’t pick the name. The session was already named and Sherry “assigned” it to me. I would not have used the word “etiquette” in this context, because to me that belongs in a completely separate discussion, and I’m bothered by the way the two are often conflated. But, I plan to bring that up in the session! Hopefully there will be some good discussion generated (and hopefully I won’t end up with a massive headache). If it’s anything like my BlogOrlando session, I’ll be pleased.

And, I have an order in at Office Depot for 80 more Buzzword Bingo cards. Josh initially prodded me; J motivated me and offered to chip in to help pay for them! Nik offered twenty bucks, too. So I’ll give the people what they want! There won’t be a formal game or anything, but it’ll be interesting to see how many Bingos people get throughout the day. ;)

~*~

Progress is being made (how ’bout that passive voice!) on the bedroom at the new house. The first coat of paint is complete and we’ll be putting the second coat on this weekend.

I feel like we’ve been very fortunate w/ this whole home-buying process. Everyone has been very nice to us. We’ve gotten gifts, for crying out loud!

From Stacia, our agent:

She also gave us two types of birdseed, a card, and a Lowe’s gift card.

The home inspection company made postcards with a picture of the house, the address, and “Just Moved” on them; and return address labels with a picture of the house.

Last weekend, we discovered champagne and chocolates in the fridge, from the seller:

And last night, when I went over to the house there was a package on the doorstep…

It was from the listing agent. It’s a stained-glass bird!

The bird is actually their logo, but it doesn’t look like a logo. (Rusty and I have discussed how this is very smart marketing.) They gave one to the seller at the closing, and I guess after finding out that we’re “bird people” they decided to give one to us, too. It was a really nice surprise.

On a geeky note, I should mention that I uploaded some of the closing pictures to Facebook, and immediately friend requested and tagged most of the people in this group shot.

~*~

New favorite recipe: Macaroni and Cheese with Cauliflower, from Real Simple Magazine. It’s really more of a casserole. Rusty was skeptical at first, but after he made it, all the skepticism was gone. It makes enough to feed a small army. After we ate a bunch of it the first night (photo is of my first serving only), we made six individually packaged portions and put them in the freezer. We ate the last of it yesterday. Maybe we’ll make some for our eventual housewarming party.

~*~

Not sure if I ever blogged about this, but Rusty posted a really fascinating interview with his great-aunt Jane, who was working at Grady Hospital the night of the Winecoff Hotel fire in 1946. She ended up taking in almost all of the bodies at the morgue. This is the kind of priceless history that is imperative to preserve.

After watching the video a few times, I had a dream that I was in the Winecoff Hotel fire, only it was happening now, and I knew in advance what would happen, and there was a social media conference going on at the Winecoff (Tessa and other Atlanta social media people were there), and I kept trying to convince the people on the upper levels to get out now because the fire was slowly coming up the building and I knew the people on the higher levels wouldn’t be able to escape, but they were all nonchalant and ignored me.

~*~

Am I becoming old and boring because I post about things like recipes and painting the bedroom of the house my long-term partner and I just bought? Hey, at least I’m not posting photos of my kids and blogging about the cute things they did today. Stop me if I ever get to that point! (Probably moot because I don’t plan to have kids – but of course, I reserve the right to change my mind.)

Latest happenings and thoughts

I know I’ve alluded to it before, but lately I’m seriously wondering if I’ve reached my tipping point w/ social media. It’s true that I’ve been really busy in the past week, but come on, everybody’s busy, that’s not much of an explanation. Like I mentioned in a podcast a while back (would link but our site is down at the moment), I wonder if it’s finally gotten to the point where there’s just too much to keep up with. I haven’t been spending as much time on Twitter, and certainly not attempting to read everybody’s tweets. I haven’t checked Bloglines in days and have given up trying to read all my feeds – and I don’t even subscribe to an insane number of feeds, and certainly not the kind of blogs that post 20+ times a day! Then I end up reblogging shit on Tumblr and half the time I don’t know why, other than it’s a convenient way to help me wake up in the morning or unwind at night without using too many brain cells. I’ve been meaning to write Jenny and Niki an email for weeks now – and of course trying to find time to blog. It all seems so ridiculous, but more and more everything for me seems to be moving to quick little updates of 140 characters or less, no time to sit and write anything of substantial length.
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Friday night bytes… har, har

Lots of stuff in my head. I’ve been itching to write a long-ass blog post since last night, but I haven’t had the time nor do I think I’d be able to find the right words to really convey what I mean. I have a post in draft mode w/ all my notes to self saved for reference, in case I ever do write that post. (I also have a post in draft mode that’s been there since September, but let’s not get into that.) I’m halfway tempted to just put it up as-is, even though it would make absolutely no sense. It’s all sentence fragments and typos and weird abbreviations that make sense to no one but me.

But the truth is I’ve been bothered all day by the EAV shooting that I wrote about yesterday. I spilled it all out to Rusty at lunch and hopefully I made more sense than if I’d been writing. I even used an analogy to 9/11, and even though there should probably be a Godwin’s Law for that, in this case it fits.

I just feel sick about the whole thing and the way people are reacting – all these reactions that are making me use the word STRAWMAN, which I loathe. It makes me want to withdraw from humanity. If this is really how people think then how can I feel safe around them?

Might come back to this later and finish the fabled post. We’ll see. For now, there’s a twisted knot of sickness in my gut that won’t go away. I’m going to try to ignore it by changing the subject for now.

~*~

I continue to be paranoid (not really the right word, because it is a justified concern) about losing my nearly 7 years of blog posts to the bowels of the internet. I want this record of my life, such as it is, to be around for a long time. Recently I read about a woman who periodically makes hard copies of her blog posts for a specific period of time through lulu.com. That’s a damn good idea. For a while I was printing out all my posts and saving them in a big binder, but it got to be too much work and unmanageable. (“Admitted that my blog had become unmanageable…”) Plus – and this would still be an issue w/ the lulu.com solution – it doesn’t preserve the comment threads. But I suppose preserving the posts w/ no comments is better than preserving nothing at all. I might look into this. Someone really needs to form a start-up with venture capital from angel investors (more Bingo words!) that specializes in multi-format, redundant blog backups – NOT just copying stuff to whatever the latest form of magnetic storage is and being done w/ it.

~*~

Back to serious stuff for a minute – another thing I want to write about, in conjunction w/ the rest of my thoughts on the EAV shooting, is the false concept of the innocent victim and how it’s a red herring anyway. But I’m definitely too sleepy to get into that right now. Consider this a personal, mental bookmark.

~*~

Speaking of bookmarks, did anyone else notice that del.icio.us now redirects to delicious.com? Maybe it’s been that way for a while and I just wasn’t observant. Did that happen after Yahoo bought them? (Yahoo did buy them, right? Sometimes I can’t keep track of who’s zooming buying whom.)

~*~

Tuesday is the inauguration and originally I was planning to work from home. Rusty is working from home that day because he has an appointment in the morning, so he’ll work 12-8 from home. I figured I’d work from home so I could have the inauguration coverage on in the background and just work on the couch w/ my laptop. But today they sent out an email saying they’ll have live coverage on the “big screen” (read: conference room projection screens) and free lunch! I’m sure it’ll be crowded but the free lunch always gets me. I’ll be going into the office.

God speed to those of you who are going to DC – including Crystal and Dominque, who are staying in Philadelphia because that’s the closest room they could find. I say, better y’all than me. Being in a crowd of that many people does NOT sound fun to me, even though I understand on a theoretical level wanting to be a part of history. I’ll just enjoy the history from the conference room at work w/ a plate of free food, thanks.

~*~

Today our Realtor scheduled our closing, so barring any catastrophes next week (and you better believe I’ll be emailing EVERYONE on Tuesday to “follow up”), as of January 29 in the late morning/early afternoon, Rusty and I will be homeowners! It’s so hard to believe. Not sure how I’m supposed to be reacting, but it’s really weird. Every so often it’ll hit me and I’ll realize that this is our house and we can do whatever we want – this happens w/ a start, like one of those “OMG where’s my purse??” moments, only to then remind yourself you left it in [x] place on purpose. We can paint the walls whatever color we want and no one can tell us otherwise or charge us a fee to paint them back! We can drill holes in the ceiling and floor to mount a permanent pole and there’s no security deposit to lose! The list goes on.

And indeed, one of the first things we plan on doing, before we move all our furniture over, is painting. So we have to think of colors! Rusty might paint the kitchen Tennessee orange, which despite my obligatory protestations, I’m actually okay with. We know for a fact we’re going to have a yellow room. Other than that, we haven’t decided.

The order of events will go like this:

1. Install security system
2. Have the pest control people come out for the works
3. Put sealant/protectant (whatever you call it) on deck so rainwater doesn’t damage it
4. Paint various rooms
5. Put up lots of birdfeeders, nestboxes, and birdbaths in the backyard. Also plant shrubs that produce berries that birds like to eat.

Initial heads-up: we’ll be selling our washer and dryer because the house comes with a new set. I’ll also be selling my pole/stage. We can give you our microwave for free because the house comes w/ one and I doubt this microwave is worth much in terms of money, but it functions just fine. If you want any of these things, let me know. We also have some unraveling wicker chairs, and you can have those too if you want them. I was figuring they’d go to the Goodwill donation center.

~*~

It’s cold outside and we have the little space heater set up next to the bird cage. I have it on the almost-lowest setting. The first night we ran it, I had a nightmare that it cooked Puff and Stuff to death in their sleep. It was awful and I hate that I even mentioned it because now I’m thinking about it again. I’m really concerned about it not being too hot for them, while at the same time keeping them warm.

For those who are curious, here are pictures of Puff and Stuff. Sometimes I can’t get over how adorable they are.

I apologize for the state of the perch Stuff is standing on in that picture. Rusty and I are very responsible birdkeepers and we clean their cage and perches regularly.

~*~

Rusty is sitting next to me on the couch playing a game of NCAA Football on his X-Box, and I just looked up and this status bar thing said “Commencing graduation ceremony,” and then 2 seconds later it moved on to the next thing. Ha.

~*~

It’s a three-day weekend so maybe I’ll finally get off my duff and write some damn emails. I feel like a bad friend. :P I should get over that, because we’re all constantly connected thanks to Twitter and Facebook, but still. God.

Okay, turning off the ramble spigot for now and hitting the sack. Commence adding a million tags which take up 3 or 4 lines.

Birds!

For Caroline and Kim (and, of course, me!)… it’s time for some bird pictures.

Weekend wrap-up

This weekend, Rusty got his truck washed for the first time in years:

Shiny!

Also, we went down to the bird fair in Forest Park and got two new zebra finches. They are named Puff and Stuff. The girl is Puff, because she’s bigger.

I’ll post more (and closer-up) photos soon. I didn’t want to disturb them too much while they’re still getting adjusted to their new home, so I haven’t been hovering around their cage with the camera just yet.

Monday mockingbird

Not much to say at the moment and very busy, but here’s a photo to brighten your Monday…

I snapped this one in downtown Augusta yesterday. I love how fat and happy this mockingbird looks! (Click through to the Flickr page; it’s best viewed large.)

R.I.P. Max

This morning I found Max, my adorable, beautiful little Florida Fancy zebra finch, lying dead beside the water dish. :( His mate, Erma, seemed distressed, understandably.

More often than not, it’s a shock when zebra finches die, because they hide their illness so well. If Max was sick, I had absolutely no idea. He seemed fine last night. I hate that he might’ve been suffering and I didn’t know it.

Zebra finches are tiny birds with big personalities. Max definitely had his. He was very mellow and laid-back. He liked to eat, swing, peck at his cuttlebone, and sing to Erma.

There will be a makeshift funeral for him when I get home from work tonight. And I hope Erma isn’t too upset. *sigh*

Don’t let these birds become homeless

FYI… 5 finches still need a home… here is the (updated) ad on Craigslist. I had a few leads that looked promising but they all flaked out, dammit.