jackshoegazer: (MOnkey)
jackshoegazer ([personal profile] jackshoegazer) wrote2006-09-10 12:30 pm

(no subject)

Good morning.  Ok, so it's almost one in the afternoon, but I just finished breakfast so it's still morning to me.  Later I will head out for some errand-running and laundromat-visiting, but for now, I am procrastinating to the best of my ability.  Like playing around in Photoshop to make this portrait, this self-aggrandizing picture.



So now what, you ask?  What's going on?

I haven't been around much, I haven't even turned on my computer this week.  My power supply is all fucky so it takes upwards of a half of an hour to get it started.  Ethan started school this week and between family time and dinner and whatnot, I don't have the energy or time to sit around and get it up and going.  I've been checking in here and there with certain journals, but I haven't time to read everyone right now.  I've got my weekends to try and catch up, but it's just too much.  You people will just have to stop posting.  Not.

Everything has been great, actually.  Ethan is adjusting to his new school quite well, in fact it seems to be his favorite school and favorite batch of teachers yet.  His main teacher sent a note home informing me that he is an excellent student, very smart and quite creative.  I had a revelation about middle school as I dropped him off the other day.  There was a trio of girls walking down the sidewalk, obviously 8th graders  in the midst of puberty, appearing much more like high school students.  Directly behind them was another trio of girls yet to be pillaged by adolescent hormones.  They were small and looked like young children.  MIddle school is this strange place they put you for those most awkward years when we transform.  The middle school chrysalis, the junior high cocoon.

Jacquelyn has overloaded herself with coursework as usual, so she's sufficiently challenged and fretting.  We made a brief appearance at the Geography Department picnic.  I mostly talked with her advisor's wife about child-rearing.  I don't know jack-patooty about geography.  Most of the people seems to be broken off into little groups talking shop.  I felt sufficiently silenced by that, uncomfortable in the way of a family reunion where you barely know anyone and feel like you should talk to people but can't bring yourself to do so.

Afterward, we went to [profile] kiwikat and [profile] shevus' place to get caught up as we haven't talked to them in quite a while.  I had a headache from hell on top of major sinus congestion, so add that to a week of waking up at 5:30am, we didn't stay too long, but ties have been sufficiently reconnected, reconstructed and now I've seen some good videos of a guy juggling to music.  All is well in the world.

I just finished Oh The Glory Of It All by Sea Wilsey which was excellent.  I've started Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell.  I've been a book devouring fiend.  I'm pretty much on schedule for my FIFTY BOOK CHALLENGE.  I'm going to shower and get motivated.  There's alot to be done before Ethan comes back from his mum's place, wo I must bid you adieu!

[identity profile] brdgt.livejournal.com 2006-09-10 07:06 pm (UTC)(link)
[livejournal.com profile] strangedasein doesn't go to many of my department events - too much shop talk and too little understanding of the real world. Come to think of it, I don't go to too many of my department events...

[identity profile] jackshoegazer.livejournal.com 2006-09-10 11:19 pm (UTC)(link)
I'll keep that in mind when Jacqui really wants me to go. I'll be all, "Buuuuuttt Jooooel doeessssn't have to gooooooo!"

[identity profile] lagizma.livejournal.com 2006-09-10 09:39 pm (UTC)(link)
I loved the Wilsey memoir. Dede was such an evil shrew. I did some searching to learn more about her. What a great book. Plus, it made me go out and pick up Norweigan Wood.

[identity profile] jackshoegazer.livejournal.com 2006-09-10 11:04 pm (UTC)(link)
I would love to hear what Dede thought about the book when it came out. I'd like to see an addition in later edition where he talks about the aftermath of the release.

What's Norwegian Woiod?

[identity profile] lagizma.livejournal.com 2006-09-10 09:41 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh, and shop chit chat. I hate talking shop about my own job. I like to find spouses who have cool jobs or hobbies or families or stories. So don't feel shy at work-related events. There are people like me everywhere (I know because I meet them) and you'll have a blast talking to them. We usually look like crazy old ladies, or 25-year-old red heads who are clearly going to grow up to be crazy old ladies.

[identity profile] jackshoegazer.livejournal.com 2006-09-10 10:59 pm (UTC)(link)
That's why I talked about child-rearing with Jacqui's advisor's wife. At a regular party I can do fine as people are talking about just about everything, but at these things, it's all shop talk and I'm, well, not into it. I love hearing about Jacqui's work, but I wouldn't know where to begin in a conversation with these people.

[identity profile] bythebootstraps.livejournal.com 2006-09-11 02:12 am (UTC)(link)
that's a nice picture. have you lost weight?

[identity profile] jackshoegazer.livejournal.com 2006-09-11 03:04 am (UTC)(link)
Thanks, and I wish :P I've been hovering around 215ish for months and months. I just managed (somehow) to take a slightly more flattering picture from my less-photographed side :)

[identity profile] kiwikat.livejournal.com 2006-09-11 04:19 am (UTC)(link)
i finally started "oh the glory of it all" today. i'm about 110 pages in and enjoying myself, if finding the whole thing very evil and sad and funny. i can't wait to finish, as soon as i do i'm looking up all of these horrid people online. nothing like novels about the rich behaving badly....

sheesh.

that photo is flattering.

[identity profile] jackshoegazer.livejournal.com 2006-09-12 12:53 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh The Glory is one of those books I can't stop thinking about, days after I've finished it.

Thanks!

[identity profile] kiwikat.livejournal.com 2006-09-15 12:40 am (UTC)(link)
hey, i have to drop brian at the airport tomorrow right after work, but afterwards i have zero plans. do you guys want to maybe come hang out at my house around 6:30 ish? i'd make food.

I'm just wondering

[identity profile] jackhorkheimer.livejournal.com 2006-09-23 06:20 am (UTC)(link)
Are you my bastard child?

Re: I'm just wondering

[identity profile] jackshoegazer.livejournal.com 2006-09-23 12:51 pm (UTC)(link)
Since we're down here in Malkuth where linear time is the rule, and since according to Gregorian time-management structures, I am listed as approximately three solar-returns older than you, I would propose that you are MY bastard child, however produced when I was three years old, when the Zeta Reticulans removed sperm from my young toddler testicles and impregnated the real Marilyn Monroe, who they abducted back in the 60's and left a cloned corpse in her place, then trasnferred the full-term fetus into your "mother" and then implanted her and your "father" with the false memories of an entire nine month gestation period, when in fact, she was only pregnant for about an hour before you were born. Welcome home son!