I finally digitized my project from the Super 8 filmmaking class I took 7 years ago. It features squashed fruit moving in reverse, teeming ladybugs, teevee, and titles formed from found words. The soundtrack is Rasputina's "Stumpside"

Got the flu on Halloween! You know when you get that fevery, prickly skin feeling that makes any item of clothing you may be wearing feel like burlap? Luckily the worst of it was over within 12 hours. But somehow, this thing is sticking around long enough to make me feel sufficiently fine to host a party and talk my voice completely hoarse within a matter of hours. Now, when I try to talk, my voice alternates between whisper and croak every 2 seconds. Not cute.

I've been doing a lot of lucid dreaming lately, perhaps due to the disruption of my normal sleep cycles. An article I read recently described one useful test for determining whether it's a dream: Just look in a mirror, and if you're dreaming, the article claims, you probably won't see a proper reflection. Turns out that in my dreams, I can see myself in mirrors, so this is not a reliable test. Thus far, my most reliable dream-test involves jumping up in the air, and trying to foil the effects of gravity by swimming upward. 99% of the time, I can slow my fall to the ground enough to realize "It's a dream!" Then, I'm free to explore.

One drawback of this dreaming style is, now that I have control over myself, I have trouble controlling what the other characters do. It seems that I can make them appear, but they're soooo boring. I want to be able to make them DO stuff.

A few things learned on recent 1-week trip to Boston & New York City:

1. Jet Blue rocks. More legroom, and personal cable tv really do make me forget about sitting in one place for 5 hours.
2. The friend I was visiting in Boston really does have superhuman friends: Multitalented, articulate, worldly, and as if that weren't enough, beautiful.
3. One word: Countercuisine.
4. It takes too much energy to spell things correctly while texting.
5. It takes too much energy to take out my map. Often I prefer to get a little lost in the city.
6. Don't choose a Broadway show based on the humorous title.
7. Don't walk 10+ miles in Chaco sandals.
8. People have the power! To jaywalk.
9. The subway traps all heat.
10. One week isn't nearly enough to get to know either city. But I do feel like I've been gone for longer than a week, so I can't complain.

Photos Here

Today's bus ride downtown was free because someone shat on the bus, making the front door inaccessible. The woman next to me was acting like we all should evacuate because, like, Biohazard!!! I just snickered to myself and quickly plotted what I would splurge on to celebrate saving $1.50. Hmm, how about a medium Slurpee? Or perhaps a tiny organic tomato? Wow, riding the bus sure is cheap compared with normal prices these days...

If you ever need proof of the essential role of grease, try the new Kettle Honey Hickory Baked (minimal oil) potato chips. They did an admirable job with the spices, and especially the thin crispitude, but I could not stop eating them, hoping that the next morsel would be the one that finally made me feel satisfied. No such luck. With regular chips, I naturally stop eating them because the oil creates a sensation of fullness. Not these things. The experience was strangely empty for me. Bleh!

Such a sharp contrast with the Terra Red Bliss Balsamic Vinegar and Tomato chips I had a few weeks ago. Now THOSE qualify as completely satisfying. All the herbs make you think you're eating a meal!

Now I will go follow Michael Pollan's advice of not eating anything my great-grandmother wouldn't recognize.

In two days I'll be receiving an upright piano into my home. It's the same one I played as a teenager. I am also acquiring all the Chopin sheet music I can handle, which has been passed down through the generations. I am hoping that by surrounding myself with piano, guitar and cello, I will not miss the television that I have unceremoniously banished to the garage. Also, I am putting myself on a severe blog restriction diet.

In other news, I was jubilant to discover that I can bike to the water taxi pier near Alki in nearly ten minutes. It's all made possible by the human body, and a little secret road called Fairmount which cleaves right through a ravine below Admiral. Then, it's entirely flat all the way past Beach Drive, until I decide to head home. Then it's the punishing uphill Admiral that reminds me I am but a mere mortal. Once I hit the peak by my happy water tower, (painted with clouds, photo to come shortly) it's once again a smooth glide back home. Total biking time: about 1.5 hours. Outdoor temperature: 67 degrees!

The other day whilst making a sandwich, I pulled out half a tomato from my fridge that I had wrapped in plastic a couple days before. As I got ready to start slicing it, I peered inside it and thought "Weird, I don't remember buying sprouts..." There were all these robust-looking sprouts growing out of my tomato. It was a revelation for me. I promptly threw the thing away though, too scared to eat it.

Here is something I did not know until this week: The post office requires 13 additional cents above first class postage to send your letter if your envelope weighs LESS than one ounce. So, please keep this in mind when you are sending your single sheet-of-paper-backed-with-styrofoam moving announcements.

Also, today is the day that I achieved electrical burliness. Now I can finally say that I've hardwired something. It was a motion-detecting security light for the garage. At dusk I am going to test it out by tempting it with various sneaky backyard dances.

Also, I have a great new idea for a product: The Studfinder Finder. Does anyone else always spend at least 15 minutes looking for their studfinder? Well, those days will be long gone because my soon-to-be patented product will scan your entire household for the whereabouts of this essential gadget. It will even have a Sabbath mode.

I took a look at my new oven this morning, and the sunlight was shining just right for me to see all the potential LED messages on the iridescent display at once. You know, that tight little grid of letter and number segments, packed in so efficiently? Anyway, amid all the AUTO-COOK-PREHEAT-BAKE verbiage, I saw this word:

SABBATH

My oven has a Sabbath mode! Since I am loathe to read product manuals, I can only speculate what this means for me and my cooking practices. Does the oven take one day off per week? If so, is it the Saturday or Sunday? (Please let my oven be Jewish) If so, then perhaps this is just the right setting for baking Challah...

One of the main benefits of changing web hosts is my dramatic drop in spam. By losing my "flea" address, and getting rid of the "info" address link on my website, I am miraculously spam-free for one day and counting. I don't expect this condition to last all that long, but hopefully I won't even get close to the hundred or so spams I was receiving daily at my old Drizzle address.

Now I can devote more time to things like personal grooming, hydration, and getting out from under all these packing boxes.

For the first time in 5 years, I have moved! Thanks to the powers of the Treehouse for so many fine years of arboreal living. Over the past few years, I have learned how to properly gaze out over Ballard, sleep in a cozy closet, and pose for optimal skin flattering in the crossroads of 4 directions of light in my hallway.

But now, I have found it necessary to live in West Seattle, to cut down on my commute. This neighborhood makes me happy. I can walk to Alaska Junction, Admiral Junction, and tons o' buses quite easily. There is even a modest view of the Cascades and downtown. The neighbors on either side of me are friendly, and I'm part of a cluster of 8 crafty houses with one builder in common. From 1918!

The first night in my house was splendid. One way I know I'm home is that my toes can knead the carpet under my feet as I type this. I'll post more when things get less hectic.

I don't think it's going to take Hercule Poirot to figure out what went on in my kitchen yesterday afternoon. I arrived home just at sunset, to find a broken coconut shell right under the cabinet by the kitchen sink. Funny, I thought, I haven't opened that coconut yet.

Let me be the first person to state with certainty that coconuts do indeed explode. And with quite a bit of force, really, considering the myriad surfaces within ten feet of the fruit bowl that are now sticky. Half the liquid looks as if it sprayed out, while the other half seems strangely to have landed in an adjacent fruit bowl. Thankfully, no windows were broken, and my delicate sensibilities were not traumatized in any way. However, my brain got a chilling surge of realization that this very thing is possible, and must now be worried about. So, please take it from me, and store your coconut in a cool, dry place, or it might burst. And if it does, throw the rancid thing away immediately.

The other coincidence is that of all days to be meticulous, I had chosen that morning to scrub the entire kitchen from top to bottom, even replacing the crusty old burners with new aluminum foil, and getting down on hands and knees to wash the entire floor with a hand sponge. The universe is really messing with me this month.

I had to crack a smile last week while on my bike, when a car passed me in Fremont, blasting This Mortal Coil.

In other biking news, it took all my ethical energy to resist plucking the perfectly plump apricots hanging in overladen bunches just inches from my handlebars on 67th near Greenlake. In all, I would drive by those same tempting fruits 5 times within the next couple of days, each time noticing that NO ONE appeared to like apricots in that godforsaken household. Or maybe they were on vacation. Still, I had to sigh, when I spied several of the orange treasures sitting dejectedly in the street. Fruit should never be wasted.

The time has come to describe a funny little dance I do with my iMac, when I want to put it to sleep. My computer is a little like an infant--as soon as I select "Sleep" from the Apple menu, and step away from the desk, it wakes right up again, wanting to be played with. I suspect there is some kind of magnetic field that I disrupt when I get up from the chair, which rouses the computer from slumber. Often it would take three tries before the Sleep would "stick." But somewhere around January, I realized that if I run away from the desk fast enough, I can avoid disturbing the field. So, imagine me doing the menu thingy, then leaping up and sprinting as far away as possible, then listening for distant signs of hard drive spin. I am so well trained.

I have rediscovered the board game Deluxe Mastermind. It's like scratching a deep brain itch. Now I want to learn more about code breaking.

Why do backhoes need to have such a loud backup beep, and how can a backhoe operator manage to keep BACKING UP for the majority of an hour? And when you have a machine whose engine is so loud in the first place, is beeping really necessary?

I was in a decent mood when I began writing this, but now I am feeling the need to flee.

I've managed to avoid all the icky virii this year, except for now. There's just no denying this sore throat, and I've run out of (my savior) Airborne. Bleh.

In other news, I no longer have loooooong hair. Well, technically, I suppose I do, but it's sitting there in a ponytail on my nightstand, waiting to be donated to Locks for Love. I'm procrastinating, because I do get a sense of pride whenever I look over at the small pile of effervescent curls and realize that it came from my head! But really, I am loving the short haired lifestyle, as I knew I would. It's just so much more practical when I don't have to worry about getting it stuck in the car window, or in the beards of men I may happen to embrace. And perhaps the money I am saving in shampoo will balance out the more regular expenditures at the stylist. Probably not though, because, in medical fashion, she is making me come back every 5 weeks so she can further shape her "artistic vision."

What else? I am starting my 4th season with the Screaming Sirens softball team, and have been trying to become more physically strong, so that I may surprise a few people who try to play me too close. In addition, I am trying to develop a more reliable "squeeze" reflex so that I don't scare my teammates as much with my near-miss acrobatic catches. We shall see.

Got back from the Big Island of Hawaii. Not quite ready to come back. Not thinking in full sentences yet. One of the highlights of the trip was scuba diving at night with enormous manta rays. I can't think of anything to compare it to, except maybe a primordial liquidy circus ballet. At sunset the dive boat takes you out to a particular cove near the Kona Airport, where, for some reason, the plankton is especially prolific. The mantas need to ingest tons of plankton every day, and seem to appreciate the light that divers bring with them. And the divers get a wonderfully reliable show almost every night. The dive procedure is incredibly simple. Just descend about 30 feet, kneel on the ocean floor, and shine your light upward. The mantas will swoop and undulate just inches from your head, hungry for all the plankton that you are illuminating!

The recent rains and tides have exposed countless more treasures at Apocalypse Beach. I had an incredibly tiny slice of time this past weekend, during which the advancing tides and weather cooperated enough to yield several great finds.

The baby doll wedged between rubble just took my breath away. The sun managed to poke through the doll's hand in a one-in-a-million photo opportunity. Thank goodness I was able to grab that shot, right before my camera battery died.

The other fascinating thing was an old road closure sign for Perkins Lane, which had found its way down the entire cliffside. I had to clamber partly up a muddy hillside to grab this shot. With a piece of driftwood, I tried to uncover more of the writing on the sign, but the mud was so tenacious, I decided to leave the sign embedded right where I found it.

I find the deterioration of everyday objects captivating, because it's so unintended by the original designer. Since I've been visiting this beach, I have become familiar with at least 3 rusty bathtubs, 1 gargantuan tire, 1 tractor, 1 impossible tree, 1 waffle iron, 1 piano, 1 typewriter, and many other items in the process of decay. One day I hope to exhibit my photography to document this place.

Holy hell, I'm turning into a curmudgeon because of all the pointless choices that add so much time and uncertainty to the buying process. For example, it used to take zero brain power for me to go to the store and grab my chosen toothpaste (Crest Sensitive) and leave without bemoaning the fate of humanity. Nowadays, I have given up ENTIRELY on mainstream toothpaste, due to to marketing overload of the WHITENING phenomenon. I should state now that I am against "tooth whitening," because I would like to preserve my precious enamel, thank you very much. I've come to terms with the fact that my teeth will probably never be whiter than my eyeballs.

I used to rely on the "Sensitive" formula of Crest, because it seemed to keep my teeth from stinging when I ate tart foods. But now, with every single mainstream toothpaste brand redesigning their entire lines to EMBRACE IMPOSE the whitening trend, I can't even buy a SENSITIVE toothpaste without tumbling headfirst into the whitening category. (can you see the parallel to Hybrid SUV's here?) And the kicker is, when I delved into the fine print on the back of the box, I found a WARNING that advised me against using the product for more than 6 weeks at a time! People? This is toothpaste! I don't want a medical product invading this niche in my life. And I'm not even going to get into the egregious naming of these products, except to mention that there is indeed a whitening agent by the name of "Nocturnal Expressions."

But it doesn't stop there. I should inform you that the fabric softener known as Bounce, has implemented a "scent speedometer" on its packaging. You might think that when the "needle" is midway through the meter, you have a product with a "normal" amount of scent. But you'd be wrong, because Bounce has actually upped their perfume to stratospheric levels. In order to get the "original" scent, you have to be sure to purchase the box with the speedometer set to zero. I found this out the hard way, when I kept on getting distracted by this awful perfume which turned out to be emanating from...hello...MY PERSON. I don't understand, did consumers tell Bounce that they wanted their clothes to be more aromatic? My theory is that it was probably the opposite: consumers who are chemically sensitive probably complained about too many scents, and Bounce decided to give consumers more CONTROL in return. However, their scale is now entirely skewed toward the stinky end of the spectrum.

And it looks like OB has taken a page from Starbucks' playbook. No, you won't find a Venti version, but the scale goes something like this: Regular, Heavy, Super, and ULTRA. I can't help but notice that tampon sizes are creeping upward again, despite efforts to make them smaller for safety reasons several years ago.

It's annoying to have scales change all the time to reflect "consumer tastes." With clothing, it's enough to make me wonder if I still exist. After all, I sometimes fit quite comfortably into size zero.

This recent boho/hobo clothing trend is really shredding my patience. I'm not talking about seeing today's youth in scrappy clothing; that doesn't bug me. It's the fact that every clothing store in the city seems to be stocking nothing but hole-ridden (or soon-to-be threadbare) clothing. This includes everything from $100 jeans with mangled knees, to enormous doilies meant to drape over one's torso. I guess it's all about layering, so that you can be sure to cover up all the HOLES with more and more layers of holes until you have some big MOIRE outfit. Well, the moire thing might actually be fascinating, but considering that I've always had a problem finding stuff to suit my vanishingly-thin fashion tastes, today's veritable HOLE-fest got me on the verge of depression.

I'm to the point of looking in my closet and pulling out things at random, hacking them to pieces and sewing them up all ragdoll-like. If today's fashion trends are any indication, I'd be at least tripling the value of my wardrobe. And when I get better at the cello, I could fit right in with Rasputina, minus the corsetry.

My mom just sold her first painting! She has been creating abstract collages from fine papers for several years, and just made her first sale through the Bainbridge Island Art Gallery. Get a glimpse of her work.