cybergeisha

[click to see the best typo ever]

This was in an article titled Women Saved from Burning Building published on KOMO’s website. The article has since been edited to add detail, as well as, presumably, to fix the faux pas.

You may have noticed back in the beginning of December that I suddenly stopped posting here. I had been posting a travel journal of my and Erik’s November road trip to San Francisco, but abruptly stopped about halfway through with no explanation. Any work on my site or Internet presence sort of went silent.

Well, I have an explanation - but I couldn’t let everyone know at the time. It was actually a much bigger secret than my Internet absence of the past few weeks. A huge secret, over which I was giddy for months, but required to maintain confidentiality until the project was public.

And now, it is. I can finally share this incredible, unbelievable awesomeness with the whole world.

I was finishing the Official Information Society Website!

I’ve taken on duties as the site administrator, so I will be doing the updates and such, in addition to having done the visual design and layout of the site - but the meaty tasty code underneath was only possible once I brought Erik on board to help. So indeed, I had somewhere to be. ;)

The Whole Story

Since August, I’ve been in communication with Paul Robb, of Information Society. When InSoc played in Portland last summer, I was so there. The day after the show, I visited the Information Society MySpace and clicked over to the “Official Website” link. There wasn’t anything there except a “coming soon” type splash page.

So, being the type of person I am, I clicked “E-mail This Person!” on the MySpace profile and sent an e-mail to Information Society saying I noticed they didn’t have a site up, and that I’m a web designer and would love to help out, gave a link to my portfolio and my e-mail address, and sent it off into cyberspace, thinking I’d never hear anything.

Not more than a few days went by before I found an e-mail from Paul in my inbox saying he liked my work, and I’ve been in contact and working with him on the project ever since. Given the confidential nature of the project, I couldn’t tell anybody - except Erik, who came onboard the project in October to do the high-level coding and debugging to get the site to be what I’d envisioned.

An Excused Absence

So why did I disappear? Because in early December, Paul said “Okay, let’s do this thing,” and we said “You got it,” kicked it into high gear and said we’d have the site ready to go live by the first week of January - and on 07 January 2007, the Official Information Society Website is finally online, and Erik and I have never been more proud of something we’ve produced.

visit the site now!

Welcome to Peace and Love, Inc.

Well, my birthday has not been the relaxing, lazy day that I’d planned, but nonetheless it has been fairly mellow. We had to go to work, even though it is quite the wintery, icy, snowy day. If I’d wanted to I suppose I could have cut work, but I kind of like that whole “paycheck” thing, and also the concept of “keeping my job.”

I suppose that it turned out to be a good thing, overall.

I knew, almost as soon as we stepped out the door, that it was going to be an interesting day. On the walk downtown to catch the bus, we saw the most awesome snowman in the history of snowmen. Some inspired people built a snowman on their front porch’s wide stone railing, and as we walked by they were just putting the finishing touches on their snowman/revolutionary/protester - complete with a “The End is Near!” type of sign on a pole. He even had on some sunglasses - probably to look cool.

But the best part was the message written on his sign. Since it’s hard to read in the picture, but too funny not to share, I typed up the the dire message from the snowman’s sign:

THE ICE AGE IS COMING!
EMBRACE YOUR ICY DEMISE!

…bitches.

After laughing riotously and high-fiving a few times, we asked the “artists” if we could photograph their snow-creation. They said “Sure!” so we did, and continued on our way. The streets were slushy and slick, but once we got to downtown it was less so - in places. That was somewhat expected, though - the steep incline of Capitol Hill, where we live, keeps it much more icy than other parts of the city.

The bus was late, but we’d expected it would be at least a bit late - if it came at all. Once we were on the bus, we just kind of kicked back and rode to work. I nearly slipped down the hill walking from the bus stop to work, but other than that, the morning was wholly uneventful. Uneventful, that is, until the UPS delivery man arrived with a very large package for me.

I’d been expecting two things delivered to me at work, since my shift does not allow for me to be at home to sign for packages during delivery hours. The first item was my new camcorder, which I picked up last night at the UPS center after they couldn not deliver it - they’d tried at home, though I had asked they deliver it to work and they confirmed it. That was a little puzzling. But at least I was finally united with the wayward electronic device without much frustration.

What I was waiting on, and was expecting, was my GameCube, which I’d found (new!) on Amazon.com for a bargain price. So, after signing for the oddly huge box I brought it back to my desk, curious to get at the goodies inside. When I tore open the top, I couldn’t have even attempted to come up with something more baffling and hilarious to find instead of a video game console.

In the box, under a mountain of packing peanuts, was a box. The box did not contain a GameCube. It was not even from Amazon. The box I pulled out in front of my astonished coworkers, was… some sort of kitchen appliance. Shaped like… a chicken. A big, plastic chicken! It was a Henrietta Hen Egg Cooker. Apparently, you can put up to seven eggs inside, and set it to either hard- or soft-boil the eggs and also to poach up to four eggs at once… and it clucks when the eggs are done. A clucking chicken shaped egg-cooker.

Ordered from QVC, no less.

I checked the order receipt and was relieved to see that it really was delivered to me in error and wasn’t the wrong item - if I’d gotten an egg-cooker (chicken shaped or not) rather than a GameCube, I’d have been really upset.

After a short perusal of the order slip, and the box, I pieced together what had happened. The original recipient lives in the building next to mine - so when I had my package redirected and sent to my work, rather than home. Well, at some point it would seem that someone at UPS screwed up and put the sticker for my camera onto the egg cooker box since the addresses are so similar.

My last bit of worrying about the bizarre shipping mishap and turned to total hilarity when not even a few minutes later, a coworker brought me a package from the front door. It was, indeed, my gamecube. so, now, I’m actually the proud owner of a chicken-shaped doo-dad that cooks eggs, as WELL as a Gamecube.

What a birthday surprise.

Thank you to everyone who’s wished me a “happy birthday” today. I appreciate it.

It’s my birthday today! And I woke up to a beautiful, heavy blanket of snow falling on downtown Seattle, with no sign of letting up any time soon. There is already an accumulation of about four inches of snow on the street, for crying out loud. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to make it to work today - especially since we’ve been without a car and taking the bus. Being at the mercy of Metro is not easy or fun in times of adverse weather. I already hear sirens and horns, people must be driving like idiots out there.

It hasn’t even thawed out from the last heavy snow we had, and here it is pouring snow again. I am beginning to think perhaps the weather is confused and thinks it’s in Minneapolis or Denver. Not Seattle. The only time we see weather like this is when we go to the mountains to ski in it. But the fact that it’s downtown seattle, blanketed in snow as if it were the midwest or the East Coast, is astonishing. And beautiful! I thought I’d never want to see snow again after that miserable blizzard in which Erik and I walked home from work (10 miles!), but this is different. Special!

And not just the fact that it’s snowed this winter - sometimes it doesn’t snow at all - but we’ve had snow (real snow!) three times this year so far, and twice IN A ROW - without thawing between - just this week. Strange things are afoot at the circle K, to quote Bill and Ted.

Anyhow, yes. Happy birthday to me! I’m very excited to have gotten all this beautiful fluffy snow to make my birthday pretty. Something about today is different from all the rest of my birthdays. In general, I don’t like celebrating it - for some reason, I’ve had a anomalous number of birthdays that have been unpleasant in one way or another and I have grown to somewhat dislike my birthday. But today feels like it is going to be special - maybe even beautiful. The snow is sure helping with that part.

So, pending on whether I can get to work today, perhaps I’ll relax in my pajamas and watch the snow fall on the street outside, work on the Information Society website and related design work, and if we can make it up there, go up to the coffee shop with Erik and get some warm beverages and pastries for breakfast.

Yeah, I think today is going to be a good day.

[ View all my birthday morning snowstorm pictures on Flickr ]

Oh dear lord! Bees! - The Awful Forums

“Flannel Bob” wrote:

We looked out back and noticed a swarm of honeybees congregating on the swingset. There are a lot of kids around, including my sister’s 3 kids. They were inside at the time, fortunately.

The neighbor called a bee removal company and they said they wouldn’t come out unless we paid a hefty fee, […] so we did the next best thing. Started fucking with the bees.

If you know me at all, you know one of my favorite exclaimations is “Oh, god! The bees!” followed by barking, buzzing, and other nonsense that Eliza and I find mind-bendingly hilarious, and other people seem to find retarded. Their loss.

A month or so ago, Erik and I freaked out at finding two HUGE bees in the car, inexplicably, as if they’d appeared out of thin air, on a miserably rainy day. The entire experience was, in short, wicked funny and when I retold the story to Eliza, her reaction was “That is EPIC.”

I thought that she’d never be able to top it. Granted, it was hilarious - how on earth did bees get in our car? And yes, I’ll post the whole story here some time. But today… she proved that is WAY more bee-funny out there.

BEST BEES EVER!

Awesome!