Being Amber Rhea

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.

More Saturday night stuff (complete withOUT proofreading)

Woo! Time for another packed-full-of-too-much-stuff, non-SEO-friendly, old-school-blogging post!

Speaking of SEO, Rusty and I were talking yesterday about how everyone wants high search engine rankings, and they’ll invest in all the whiz-bang SEO stuff but they won’t do the one thing that really matters: making sure anyone else knows their site exists so they’ll get some incoming links. Is that ironic? Or just unfortunate?

And that reminds of me of the scene in Reality Bites where Winona Ryder’s character (a journalism major who was valedictorian of her class) is asked, at a job interview, to define irony, and she stumbles over her words and can’t come up with a definition. Then she goes home and tells Ethan Hawke’s character what happened and complains that no one can define irony anyway, and he immediately defines it as when the actual meaning is the opposite of the literal meaning. When I first saw the movie, I remember thinking that that definition sounded awfully fancy, but when you think about it, it doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense. Now, searching webster.com, I see they include the same definition:

Main Entry: iro·ny
Pronunciation: \ˈī-rə-nē also ˈī(-ə)r-nē\

Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural iro·nies
Etymology: Latin ironia, from Greek eirōnia, from eirōn dissembler
Date: 1502

1: a pretense of ignorance and of willingness to learn from another assumed in order to make the other’s false conceptions conspicuous by adroit questioning —called also Socratic irony
2 a: the use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning b: a usually humorous or sardonic literary style or form characterized by irony c: an ironic expression or utterance
3 a (1): incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result (2): an event or result marked by such incongruity b: incongruity between a situation developed in a drama and the accompanying words or actions that is understood by the audience but not by the characters in the play —called also dramatic irony tragic irony

To me it seems like 3a is the definition that makes the most sense.

~*~

But enough of that. The big news is, re: the house… we are officially under contract!! We have binding agreement as of Thursday. This morning, we had our home inspection, termite inspection, mold test (will get results by Tuesday), and appraisal. The appraiser was so stereotypical. He struck me as someone out of a 1960s movie. But he was apparently impressed enough with the house to actually speak to us and say as much. Ha! As for the home inspection, it went well. The inspector found a few issues (naturally), but most of them are small things that the workers should have done in the first place during the renovation.

Now that I’m not quite as nervous about jinxing the sale, I’ll post a few more photos:

There’s also an old wooden swingset in the backyard that’s super cool.

I’m so excited! Thank you to everyone who has @’ed or DM’ed on Twitter about the house. I really need to write emails to people. I don’t want to become one of those people who constantly whines on being soooo behind on email, blogs, etc. But I think I’ve reached a tipping point where it’s all getting to be too much to manage. More on that later, though. The point: Thanks for all the well-wishes about the house! I’m going to be a home-owner, holy crap!

~*~

I don’t know how to write about this without upsetting someone, because regardless of my intent I know emotions are (100% understandably) a bit raw right now. Yet I still feel the need to speak, and I admit I’m doing it after Karsh did the hard work of speaking first. Ever since I heard about the vigil at The Standard and the formation of the Facebook group against rising crime in Atlanta, something about it didn’t sit well with me. Karsh articulated it well:

Yes, citizens in Atlanta need to feel safe. But I get the overwhelming perception from people I’ve talked to and read about that because this happened in East Atlanta, things must really be out of hand. I’d disagree with that. What if this happened in Bankhead or East Point or Buckhead? Would the public outrage be this great or this social-media oriented? Why start organizing now? Because it happened at a familiar haunt? I can almost smell a Twitter hashtag forming. (I’m partially kidding about that.)

I don’t disbelieve Maigh’s sentiment, and yet the fact is, we haven’t seen this type/level of outrage over other murders. To me it kind of smells like when I call a guy on sexist behavior and he insists, “I’d treat a man the same way!” Well, we don’t know that for a fact, now do we? And it’s moot anyway, because you haven’t treated a man this way. (Yet another clumsy analogy [I'm all about those lately] but I can’t think of a better one right now.)

Note this is not about accusing individuals of being “racists,” as in, a noun. People always latch onto that kind of thing and it derails discussions, because once again racism is cast as something that individuals perpetrate against other individuals, and you are either “a racist” or you aren’t; rather than racism being acknowledged as the systemic, ingrained, oft-unnoticed (by white people) issue it really is. Oh and if someone didn’t mean something in a racist way then it’s not racist. Except, that’s the entire point.

There are systemic issues here that have to be addressed, and if they’re not addressed, nothing will change. Yes, the cutting of the budget and reduction in police force is part of the problem. But far too many people are either ignorant of, or willfully ignoring, the deeper issue.

I’m sure someone will come over here and comment that I’m being disrespectful of John Henderson’s memory and that it’s not the appropriate time and that I’m just being an asshole. If they do, I understand. As I said, emotions are raw right now, and maybe it’s not the right time – but then, I wonder when the right time will be. I know what it feels like to deal with the loss of someone close to you, and the desire for “rational discourse” on a blog FFS is pretty much priority zero. So I understand and I’m sure I would feel the same way if it were my friend who had been murdered. But I just wanted to say my piece.

~*~

I admit I am a bit annoyed with this discussion of sex-positivity at Ren’s. Obviously I respect Ren’s right to like or dislike any terms, and to identify however she chooses! I get frustrated, though, when sex-positivity is constantly portrayed as meaning “I like sex.” Too many people have taken too many steps to explain why this is not the case for the myth to continue to be put forward. I know it’s a hard one to fight against because the marketing world has co-opted the term and applied it to things like fashion magazines, expensive shoes, and men’s body spray. As I said in the comments at Ren’s:

The sex-positive feminism wikipedia page and sex-positive wikipedia page actually have a much more detailed history of the term than the about.com article. I’m always a bit wary about linking to those pages though, because sometimes they get edited by anti-sex-positive people with an ulterior motive.

Anyway, personally, I’m not interested in debating the meaning of the term. It’s been spelled out pretty clearly in many places. For me, it’s part and parcel of feminism because it centers women’s sexual health and the way women’s sexuality has been pathologized under patriarchy. I provided links in order to help clarify some of the history behind the term; most people are not familiar w/ the history and unfortunately the way we most often hear it now is in the co-opted marketing sense, where it’s been twisted around so that it stands in for “anything vaguely related to sex, at all.” Often it’s applied to things that are completely the *opposite* of true sex-positivity.

Again, for me, I find that the term fits, and I will continue to self-identify as a sex-positive feminist. Everyone else is free to do what they want, of course!

See also my page of sex-positive feminism reference material, especially Queer Dewd’s post from two years ago on the matter. I (or anyone else) will never be able to say it better than she did.

~*~

This has been saved in my Bloglines for weeks, and I’m not sure what I can say about it, because you just need to check it out: $pread’s excellent cultural analysis of anti-trafficking posters. Seriously, read it. And tell me those images aren’t fucked up.

Wednesday

Lots of things on my mind… I suppose I’ll just start writing and keep on until I’m too tired to type. And no proofreading!

~*~

In the “HOLY SHIT I’M AN ADULT” department, Rusty and I put an offer in on a house yesterday. It’s the first one pictured in this post. I haven’t blogged or Twittered about it much because I don’t want to jinx anything, and because I’m freaking out a little bit. Don’t get me wrong, I know this is the right decision and all that jazz; but it’s a BIG decision, and a major commitment. Signing a lease is one thing but getting a mortgage, that’s an entirely different level of “you better know what you’re getting into.” It looks like everything is going to work out w/ this house, but still, I appreciate any and all crossed fingers. The next few weeks will be a flurry of activity leading up to closing, and I intend to enjoy all of it! Then, after closing, there will be a flurry of activity leading up to moving in. Followed by a flurry of activity leading up to having the place looking decent enough for a housewarming party!

Priorities before closing: home inspection and termite inspection (duh); figuring out where the furnace is.

Priorities after closing: Security system; Orkin super-dousing because I don’t play around with roaches; personal pole studio; many bird feeders in the backyard.

A REQUEST: Please do not offer any unsolicited real estate “advice” in the comments!

~*~

I love Rachel Maddow. She and Suze Orman are two of my heroes. Initially I found Suze Orman annoying, but that was before I’d ever listened to anything she said – I just thought she was annoying because she seemed to shout so much. Then I realized the shouting is part of what makes her awesome. But, back to Rachel Maddow. How freakin’ cool is she?? However, I don’t like how in this New York Magazine article she says “I’m not very pretty.” Why the self-deprecation? No, she doesn’t conform to the general media-dictated ‘beauty standard’ for women, but so what? There’s no need to cast that as her not being pretty. It really bothers me. She is pretty, but it bugs me that there’s any discussion of it at all, honestly; when would you see a male pundit’s looks being such an issue?

~*~

I love love love this post at Shakesville, about Congress finally switching to gender neutral language. What is absolutely not surprising, of course, is the reaction to this news from a hell of a lot of people – whining that it’s “not important” and the feminists have their hair on fire again, blah blah. This is a perfect example of how privilege works. Inevitably, in every “conversation” like this, some dude will pipe up and say how there’s not some conspiracy against women and why don’t we feminists just shut up already, it’s just language, get over it. Well, first of all, I’m not fooled by anyone trying to lecture me on the way language works – I’ll bust out the learnin’ that earned me my linguistics degree any day of the week. But the main point is: no, OF COURSE there’s not a conspiracy – THAT’S THE POINT. No one is sitting in a smoke-filled room, rubbing their hands together maniacally as they devise ways to oppress women through grammatical rules. No one “means anything by it.” Everytime someone poses this as an “argument” it just makes me roll my eyes, because it’s like hello, you have just PROVEN THE POINT. The question of intent does not figure into this. The fact that it’s normalized, the default, we just accept it, nobody “means anything” by any of it – that is the problem! I can’t tell you how sick I am of people trying to argue intent against someone pointing out privilege in action. It makes me want to beat my head against a wall because they don’t seem to realize that LACK OF INTENT is the point!! If I hear one more person talk about how someone didn’t mean something maliciously, I’m just going to… well, I don’t know what. Beat my head against a brick wall?

Brief note about Old English: the commenter at the Shakesville thread who mentioned wyf and wer as the Old English words for woman and man, and man as the Old English word for human, is correct. The Old English word wyfman, which became woman, literally meant “female person.”

Also, I love the commenter who mentions how you’ll see exactly how big of a deal male-as-unmarked-case language is when you switch the genders and start using “she” as a general-purpose pronoun instead of “he.” It will blow some people’s minds, and some will get REALLY fucking hostile about it. The Regender tool is also a really interesting way of demonstrating how gender stereotypes are encoded in our language.

See also X: A Fabulous Child’s Story. Thanks to Catherine for showing me her original 1970s copy of the book; the illustrations are wonderful!

~*~

As I mentioned yesterday, Caroline has been doing a bang-up job with the UK prostitution law news. I have briefly glanced at the F-Word thread and even left a few comments at the Feministe thread, but for the most part unfortunately I haven’t had time to participate or do much blogging of my own on the issue. But from what I saw at the F-Word thread, it’s all the same bullshit “arguments” that give me a pounding headache. Kudos to Caroline, Ren, Natalia, and others for fighting the good fight; I’ll be back at it once I have some time, I promise. Even though these conversations with the antis feel SO repetitive, I believe it is extremely important to keep having them, because people’s lives are at stake, and if we don’t speak, then the people in power will continue to actively and passively commit violence against sex workers. Being uncomfortable or annoyed is not a justification for permanently disengaging from these issues. Absolutely, everyone must take breaks, because it is vitally important that we take care of ourselves. But that’s why it’s crucial to have many, many people involved in the sex workers’ rights movement, so that there’s always someone there to speak, and so that everyone can properly care for themselves.

Fundamentally, I just don’t get it, with these “arguments.” At the F-Word, for example – how much clearer could Caroline be? It’s not about whether you think sex work is right or wrong. It’s not about how it’s constructed in our society or why it exists or where it comes from. It’s not about wondering whether sex work would still be around after The Revolution. It’s not about discussions of “normalizing” prostitution, questions of whether sex workers can choose their work, debates about what exactly is being sold. IT IS ABOUT SAFETY AND HUMAN RIGHTS. This should not be a source of debate. Feminists should be united on this, completely. It should be a foregone conclusion. That the conversation always drifts back to ideology, what prostitution “means” and that kind of thing, really disgusts me and astounds me. And this constant conflating of sex work and trafficking? STOP, ALREADY!!! This is what Sex in the Public Square held a week-long forum to address, but I guess most of the antis didn’t bother to read that, now did they. The way trafficking is ALWAYS brought into these discussions, such an obvious red herring but one that always leads to derailment, just floors me.

Sigh… Ren, I’m going to need another Typical file.

~*~

To say this essay by Latoya of Racialicious is powerful would be an insulting understatement. It’s entitled “The Not Rape Epidemic” and is the original version of the essay which appears in the Yes Means Yes! anthology. She has a trigger warning on it, so be aware of that if you’ll be clicking through.

And you certainly should click through, because I think this essay is a must-read, especially for men. The essay resonated with me on a very deep level, to a degree that I feel I can’t articulate. Women experience this shit all the time and most of us don’t say anything – because we know from experience that if we do, it won’t help and will likely hurt. One time a male friend remarked that he couldn’t really see a mutual female friend the same way after learning she’d been raped; I was so bothered by his statement that I said nothing. What I was thinking was, if you truly knew how many of your female friends and acquaintances had experienced sexual assault, you wouldn’t be speaking to most of them if you have such a problem with “seeing them the same way.” Men don’t realize how prevalent this is. They might hear the 1 in 4 stat but often I don’t think it really registers on a “yes, this has happened to someone I know” level.

I want to write more about Latoya’s essay but I can’t find the words. What I want to say about it is beyond words.

~*~

Tomorrow night I’m leading the Social Media Club Atlanta meeting. The topic is “Online Identity and Buzzword Bingo.” You can RSVP on Facebook or Upcoming – or just show up! (Though RSVPing is always nice.) Here are some links I’ll be using for reference material, if you want to read up ahead of time. There won’t be a quiz but there will be a Bingo game, with an appropriately self-referential prize.

• Sarah Dopp: Why I Write About My Life On the Internet
• Nelson “Nelz” Carpentier: The Real Nelz
• Penelope Trunk: Good blogging is simple: Write good posts (and be thankful)
• AV Flox: Hiring the Information Generation
• Caroline McCarthy: What I don’t get about all this hullaballoo over personal branding

And finally this gem from Laura’s LiveJournal, which is short enough that I can just post the whole thing. When I put the link in my browser it wanted me to log in, so I don’t know if the post was friends-locked or what, so I’m not linking; but I doubt she’ll mind me sharing this chunk of wisdom…

Just an observation from Twitter

Robert Scoble is a self-promotion machine. It gets tiresome.

I’m sorry, but I am about to un-follow ever media marketing PR link-spamming mongol because I am sick of their shit. The only topic more boring is…oh, I can’t think of any topic more boring.

That is all.

Heh.

I’m excited about the meeting, but also a little nervous! Please come out and help make it an interesting discussion. (It’s all in good fun, so I hope no one gets pissy about the words on the Bingo card.) Here’s the description again:

SMC ATL: Online Identity and Buzzword Bingo

When: Thursday, January 8, 7:00pm – 8:30pm
Where: Manuel’s Tavern – North Avenue Room

Thanks to Amber Rhea for leading the conversation and bingo game! Bring your bingo dauber and POV on these identity topics!

• Is your online identity different from your IRL identity?
• What does it mean to “manage your online identity”?
• Are there any off-limits topics on blogs? Who decides?
• Rethinking the personal/professional dichotomy and tearing down the walls of compartmentalization: yea or nay?

Note: this is what a dauber is.

~*~

And that’s a wrap. I’m getting sleepy, so it’s time for bed. Rusty and I are getting up a little earlier than usual tomorrow so we can go over to our potential new house and see what the traffic on Moreland is like at the usual time when we head to work. If we have to adjust our schedule to account for it, I don’t mind; I actually like getting to the office early. We just want to be aware!

This post is going to have a million tags.

Life notes as of Jan. 1

Since it’s New Year’s Day, I’ll start this post by saying I have a new resolution. I got the idea from US News & World Report, of all places. They had a cover story called “50 Ways to Improve Your Life in 2009,” which I read in the bathroom at my mom’s house. One of the suggestions was this:

Distill your day’s experiences into a single sentence each day. Call it a “clothes hanger” journal: It provides a framework on which to hang the larger raiments of memory. A few well-chosen words can transport you back to where you were days or years ago. And—if you’re persistent—it can show you the shape of your life over time.

Luann Robins, a 79-year-old grandmother of five who lives in Rhinelander, Wis., has kept such records for most of her life, storing her five-year diaries in a cedar chest at the foot of her bed. “Sometimes they bring back great memories that I might have forgotten,” says Robins. Her journals are filled with comments on the weather, odd events, and her children’s and grandchildren’s news.

This is something different from blogging. I’m going to try to write a few sentences every day – just mundane stuff about what I did that day. This is not to say that mundane stuff won’t appear on the blog, too! But my point is, this is just more of a straight-up record. Like today, I wrote, “Took my car to Nalley Nissan for a routine service appt. Last night watched our friends’ wedding webcast online.” The particular book I’m writing in, I started in September 2003 but sometimes went years between entries. I used to be a prolific journal-keeper, and then I started a blog and moved some of that stuff online. I tried to keep up both, but it was never really the same. I think this is a good balance.

~*~

As much as I’m making my best effort not to be one of those people who, when looking for a house, is totally consumed by it and that’s all they talk about and everyone gets sick of hearing about it, as if they think they’re the only person who ever bought a house – well, I’m going to blog a little about our house hunt!

Monday and Tuesday morning, we went out with our Realtor and looked at houses. In total we’ve seen 15 houses – not including three we didn’t bother going in for various reasons. We’ve been, in our Realtor’s words, “copious note takers” and in typical nerd fashion made a Google document with all the notes and info for the houses we like. We originally had six houses on that list, but after much thought it’s been reduced to three. Here they are:

If these pictures look familiar, it’s because the houses were on the market when we were doing our “driving around and looking” routine in November, and I posted pictures then.

The first one is by far our favorite. When we walked in, we both had that “gut feeling” my mom talked about. But, there’s a problem: the next door neighbors have two big dogs which barked their fool heads off the entire time they were there. Yes, even when we were inside the house, and yes, you could hear them inside; and the master bedroom is on that side of the house. Long story short, we had basically scratched it off our list with much gnashing of teeth. The listing agent emailed our agent and said she and the seller had never heard the dogs bark like that; “yeah right,” we thought, taking it with the appropriate serving of salt. But since then, we’ve driven by the house three times at various times of day and haven’t heard the dogs. I got out and walked around the yard one of those times. Apparently, according to a second email from the listing agent, the neighbors are a nice gay couple who were “mortified” to hear that their dogs were making so much noise. So we’re wary, but haven’t abandoned all hope. We’re going to see the house again tomorrow and knock on the neighbors’ door; hopefully they’ll be home and be reasonable people we can talk to. Cross your fingers for us!

The other two houses are good, too; I could see myself living in all three of them. But the top one is definitely our fave, minus the possible dog situation. :P

Why do people have dogs if they aren’t going to take care of them properly and make sure they have proper obedience training? Who the hell thinks it’s okay for a dog to bark all the time? Like the guy who lives next door to my grandmother, he has a big dog that he leaves in the backyard all the time and it’s always barking – scares my grandmother half to death every time she walks outside. And yes, she’s called the police, and no, there’s nothing they can do. One police officer who came out just made it worse by antagonizing the dog and getting it even more riled up. Recently some teenagers broke into the house on the other side, and the owner was like, “Your dog was barking the whole time and you didn’t think to come see if anything was the matter??” The guy’s answer? “My dog barks all the time” – said with a shrug.

The phrase “defeating the purpose” comes to mind.

But back to house-hunting in general, this reminds me of at Sara’s (awesome, impressive, delicious) Christmas party, when Garrett and I were chatting and I said, “When did this happen? When did we become grown-ups? We’re sitting here talking about mortgages and babies!”

~*~

It will show up in my del.icio.us auto-post tomorrow morning (which, btw, I’m glad to know at least someone reads!) but I just wanted to reiterate how much I love this post by Kim. With the Rick Warren stuff, I’m trying really damn hard not to say “I told you so” to some of the more obnoxiously zealous Obama supporters. Now, if anyone wants to construe this as support for McCain or overt Obama-hate, all I can say is stop being an idiot. I made no secret that I was an Obama supporter in the election, BUT I was really bothered by the groupthink/lock-step mentality I saw among some of his supporters, where you couldn’t question him at all or else you were CAST OFF THE ISLAND. Construing someone as so perfect and flawless unnerved me from the beginning, because it’s just not realistic, and should be especially red-flag-worthy for a candidate who’s trying to run on a platform of being accessible, transparent, and bringing change to the political process.

~*~

Niki sent me this e-card right before I was planning to send it to a bunch of people. By now it’s been all over Twitter so I’m sure it’s old news, but I still find it amusing in the way only someone who takes anti-depressant meds can.

~*~

I have some partially written posts saved in draft mode about things like Peggy Denby of the Midtown Neighbors Association comparing prostitutes to cockroaches; the royally fucked-up situation with Dymond Milburn; and the gang-rape of a San Francisco woman who was attacked for being a lesbian. I will try to finish them when I have the energy. These are important issues and I am, as usual, struggling to find the balance between taking care of myself/not drowning in the mire of upsetting news, and giving these things the attention they need, especially to people who are blissfully ignorant. In the meantime – if you’re a British citizen, please be sure to sign this petition calling to defer any bill on prostitution until after the next general election; and if you’re not a Brit, spread the word!

Parade of homes, version 1

Next week Rusty and I will be venturing out with our Realtor for the first time to go look at houses – as in, actually go inside. I’m very excited and also nervous. We sent her a list of seven houses we narrowed it down to that we want to look at. (What a grammatical nightmare that sentence was; Mrs. Cody would be shaking her head in disgust.) Here are exterior photos of the houses and descriptions of what we liked about each of them. I’m mainly posting this for my own purposes, so I can compare it with my thoughts after actually visiting the houses! If you happen to be interested for whatever reason, read on…
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Houses, redux

Against my better judgment, I upgraded to the newest version of Twitter Tools, because Alex King kept saying it was crucial to update. Ever since I did, it’s been going crazy and posting my tweet digest like 50 times – and Alex hasn’t replied to my Twitter @ messages on the topic. I don’t want to disable Twitter Tools but I might have to, because this is stupid.

Anyway, in my zeal to delete the most recent batch of offending posts this morning, I apparently deleted the post I wrote yesterday about house-hunting, Whittier Mill, Ormewood Park, and other things. I can’t remember what all I said – it couldn’t have been that important – but I do remember I posted pictures. So here they are again.

We went to Whittier Mill Village yesterday and I had my camera with me. See the full Flickr set here.

And here are some houses we saw yesterday and liked. The first two pictures (exterior and interior) are of the same house – our favorite, in Ormewood Park.

Unrelated: can anyone tell me, quickly and easily, without telling me to go read some f*%&ng man page, how to restrict virtual directory listings?

Ramble

Not sure where to start or what to say… but alas most of life isn’t a nice consistent narrative. But then, when I was going through my archives to tag old posts (I gave up ’round about 2004) it reminded me that I used to blog more freely before I didn’t feel the constraints of titles, tags, potential audience, and a million other things. (I’ve told you a million times not to exaggerate!)

Been having a weird week so far. Sometimes I have these “lapses”… not sure what else to call ‘em. Oh and first of all, if my mom reads this (which I don’t think she does lately, she’s been so busy with other things) DON’T GET ALL WORRIED ABOUT ME. It’s a characteristic of depression, unfortunately; sometimes, even though I’m taking my meds and doing everything I’m supposed to do to take care of myself, I have bad days or weeks. Often I can’t put my finger on a particular “trigger,” but that doesn’t stop me from trying.

I really need to find a therapist that doesn’t suck. Truthfully, I haven’t had a good therapist since I lived in Texas. She was one of the only good things about living there. Her, and my apartment. And being driving distance from Niki. That was basically it.

Anyway, one thing that I’ve identified that has been bothering me is that I’m just so ready to find our house and move out of our apartment. For the longest time I was not at all worked up about home-ownership (unlike a lot of other people who just seemed to jump into it because it was “the thing to do,” even though they hadn’t done any proper planning) but I always figured when the time came for it to be right for me, I would know. And now it’s here, and I know. I’m not living paycheck-to-paycheck anymore (fingers crossed that it stays that way!), Rusty and I are together, I don’t want to leave Atlanta, etc. – it all makes sense. I think being mentally ready to move on – mentally already having moved on, in some ways – heightens my frustration. I feel like things are breaking all the time. Like this week, our garbage disposal broke twice (and as of now isn’t fixed for good yet). I try not to complain because I know about having it better than a lot of people, blah blah. But this is my blog so deal.

It’s very important to me to have a “home base” where I truly feel at home, and where things are clean, organized, in their place, and feel comfortable. For a long time that place was our apartment, but increasingly I don’t feel that way about it – I just feel annoyed. I want furniture that isn’t made out of particle board. I’m tired of concrete floors. I hate that there are marks on our walls from where the movers banged shit around when we moved in. All these things didn’t used to bother me (well, the marks on the walls always did), but now they do, and I can only conclude it’s because I’m ready to move on to the next stage. I’m annoyed with nothing feeling “settled.”

I’m sick of: strange noises coming from the upstairs neighbors’ apartment, as if they’re running a wood shop (seriously, we’ve heard sawing noises); the kid in some apartment somewhere that I can always hear from my bathroom, who screams and wails all the freaking time; weird smells in the hallway because apparently some of our neighbors are disgusting; the Phantom Pooper.

Don’t get me wrong, I have no sparkly illusions about home-ownership being the solution to all problems oh except for the part where if anything breaks you have to fix it yourself and buy your own HVAC unit etc. etc. But I am ready.

I felt a little better last night after talking to Rusty about some of this. But I still feel kind of out of whack (<– correct spelling?).

Here are some photos of houses I like:

More later.

Houses, again (I feel like I should have titles that are more interesting)

We did more of the “driving around looking at houses” routine today. One of the places we visited was Kirkwood – and I absolutely loved it! Kirkwood has definitely been catapulted to the top of the list of places we’re considering, no question. I like the little downtown/village area (even the new condo development thing they built isn’t as obnoxious as in some other places) and I just had a good gut feeling from it overall.

East Atlanta is currently second on our list of preferred places, although some of the people who live there are annoying, and I prefer to minimize drama in my life, so I there’s that to consider. It’s the same reason, albeit on a much smaller scale, that we’re not worked up about Midtown. (Rusty mentioned this in his post a few days ago, and Joeventures touched on it in a comment.) Living in Midtown would be nice because it’s close to work and is very walkable, Piedmont Park is right there, it’s centrally located… but so many of the people just suck! For example, here’s their latest trick. Part of me feels like we should move there and infiltrate the MNA, start a counter-revolution, and get Steve Gower thrown out in a coup; but realistically, I don’t know if my blood pressure could handle it. So, I’m torn. I would like to live in Midtown for the location, and if we found a really awesome deal we would definitely consider it; but being surrounded by a bunch of assholes is certainly a huge deterrent.

We’ve ruled out Grant Park and a lot of the North Decatur area, like the area around Northlake Mall and other stuff off of Clairmont and Lavista. We still like Westview and Adair Park, but Kirkwood and EAV win for walkability. Another place we discovered today, that we like and is surprisingly affordable, is the Medlock Park/University Heights area. One downside to it, though, is that a lot of the houses have only one bathroom (that was a trend in the early 1950s, apparently!), and that’s pretty much a deal-breaker for us.

Other areas still to explore: Home Park; Historic West End; Brookwood; Castleberry Hill; northwest/Bolton/Howell Mill area.

Here are some photos of one of our favorite houses that we saw today (which is moot, of course, since it won’t be on the market come January), a renovated 3bd/2ba built in 1928…

(I sized them down to fit my layout, which made them look a little distorted. My bad.)

Aside: the Georgia MLS site uses Ajax in a way that doesn’t suck. There should be an award for that.

Lots of stuff

I have several posts on particular topics saved as drafts, but since I’ll probably never actually write them all, I decided I’ll just do one post addressing all or most of them. Besides, reading my archives (which I’ve been doing periodically over the past week or so, as I slowly go through and tag the old pre-WP entries and update old URLs) made me remember that that’s how I used to write my blog all the time, that’s what comes naturally to me, and that’s why and how I started blogging in the first place. So, back to basics!
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More on houses

This morning, Rusty and I went to look at some houses on the west side of town. Before this we had looked in East Atlanta, Kirkwood, Edgewood, Grant Park, Midway (an area just south of Decatur), and some other parts of unincorporated Dekalb County, such as near where Avondale Mall used to be. We want to see and consider as many parts of town as possible, so that we can make an informed decision about where we want to live. We were interested in particular in Westview after reading this blog, and because a friend of mine from SPARK bought a house there last year.

We drove through Cascade Heights, Adams Park, Adair Park, Westview, and a little bit of West End. And probably some other places too – those are just what I remember from sign toppers. Turns out Westview is very cute, just like the blog had said; sure there are some ramshackle houses and foreclosures ready to be auctioned, but hey, it’s a neighborhood “in transition” (I really hate that term). The little village center reminds me of East Atlanta, and I bet it’s only a matter of time before a coffee shop opens there.

We also liked Adair Park. Initially we planned to go there to see if it was the ghetto, because we’d found what looked like the perfect house, at least from its online ad, and that’s where it is. We had been to Adair Park once before, in December, when we went to photograph the historic and sadly decaying Adair Park Elementary School; but we didn’t see much of the area at that time, as we just went to the school and then straight back home.

It was funny because you always hear people talk so badly about the “west side” and make comments about it being “rough” and, well, the ghetto – which is exactly why we went to check it out! As I mentioned on Twitter, driving around these neighborhoods made us realize (not that it was a surprise; so I guess I should say remember instead of realize) that a lot of the time when people say somewhere is “the ghetto” it’s just not-so-thinly-veiled racism. What I think of as “the ghetto” is an area that doesn’t seem to have a sense of permanence – lots of vacant houses, rental houses with revolving tenants, and people wandering around as if they have nowhere to be, for example. We’ve gotten that feeling from some parts of Grant Park and other “east side” intown neighborhoods. Whereas in Adair Park and Westview, there were active neighborhood organizations (signs everywhere for meetings), not many people just wandering around aimlessly, and it felt like the place was more stable and well-maintained and that a lot of the people living there had been there a while.

I know it’s tough to really make any coherent statements about this at all in Atlanta, because the reality is that a lot of places, one street is fine and the next street is sketchy. But just from this morning and our other driving-around jaunts, this is the impression we’ve gotten so far in general.

As for that “perfect house” I mentioned, I know we need to get over it, because it won’t be on the market when we’re actually ready to buy (early next year). Even if we could talk a seller into buying out our lease right now, realistically we need to save up some more money anyway. But here are a few photos of it, from the online ad:

(Yes, the kitchen is painted a shade strikingly close to Vols orange. So maybe it’s not 100% perfect!)

We need to do more research about all the areas of town we’re considering, but just thought I’d share some of our impressions from this morning. All is not always as it seems!