Tuesday

April 24, 2001

Tex-Mex house

still life of cat on a bark mulch bed

I woke up with difficulty since I'd stayed up late fighting with Fireworks, trying to bend it to my will without learning everything I should first. I was, I realized after being awake a few minutes, dreaming. But I couldn't get back inside the dream and describe it except for two images. In one I was masking something with a rounded corner square. Not on the computer, but with a piece of paper in that shape. The other image was of a bit of floor completely covered with Chalow sheddings. Those drifts of dog hair you get. But not one little drift in a corner. A sea of them. She was groomed yesterday, I might have mentioned.

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It's important to concentrate on one thing to get it done. I have a lot of trouble doing that. I flit about.

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I surf ebay a lot. You all know that. To relax. To look for stuff as a reference. To occasionally buy something. To rip off pictures to illustrate my journal. (Sorry, but who knows...someone may come buy your stuff!) When I first discovered it they had this 'items for sale' counter. It was at a few hundred thousand. I thought it was cool when they reached a million. Finally, they realized that I was using this total as a metric on the Internet economy. Well, maybe not. Anyway, one day it started saying 'over 5 million items for sale' and that was it. No more every-increasing count. How many items for sale now. Over five million. But how many?

It's hard to say. About fifty thousand comics items at any given time. Five hundred and eight items with 'smiley face' in the title when I looked the other day. Type in 'eiffel tower' and you'll see a few hundred items...paintings, postcards, textiles. As well as phones (there's a design called Eiffel Tower), Eames chairs (ditto) and tiny useless porcelain boxes.

Another fascinating ebay thing is that all these amateur sellers take pix in their homes or back yards. I'm always looking at the neat suburban kitchen or the rustic deck and thinking 'where and how do they live?'

There used to be a place on Burnet Road called Olla Linda. Owned by a guy I met at a party a few houses north. He sold Oaxacan animals and Mexican pots that he went to Mexico to get. When he closed, I was sad. It was a cool store. I saw in the paper a few days ago that Olla Linda survives as an ebay seller. Only he's mostly buying servers from defunct dot-coms around Austin and reselling them on ebay.

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When I got home from work, FFP had Who Wants to Be a Millionaire on the kitchen TV while he worked on dinner.

In December 1998, my parents came for Christmas. We had been in a sweat for about ten days worrying about my sister who had suffered a ruptured aneurysm followed by coincident strokes. We were trying to distract ourselves by working puzzles and entertaining each other. I didn't want them to go visit. Denver is icy in December. The parents didn't need to be there. In any case, my sister was in intensive care. It was hard, though, waiting out the crisis down here. We were working on this world map jigsaw puzzle. Studying a piece, I asked my dad (who was, at best, a reluctant puzzler compared to Mom and I) 'Where is Patagonia?" He didn't say. But he disappeared, located an Atlas and later reappeared to say it was in South America.

So, where am I going with this, you ask?

Well, my dad noticed Patagonia references several times after that and often pointed them out to me. This is the phenomena of learning something you never knew at all and then the info seems to be everywhere. (What do you call that? )

So, why are you telling us this, now?

Well, Who Wants to Make a Lot of Money But Will Chicken Out Before the Million was on the TV. There was a question: "In which of the following countries is Patagonia located." I called Dad. He answered and laughed and said, "Do you know where Patagonia is?" Sounded like the question cheered up a kind of sick guy.

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So, are you desperate for material today, LB?

Not really. I had a TexMex lunch at a place in our neighborhood (Elsi's) with SuRu. She wanted to come to our hood and let Zoey out. This also gave me the opportunity to shoot her cat. With the camera I mean. Cats pose. Dogs don't. Except for Chalow.

Forrest made spinach, beets and fish for dinner. Very tasty and I opened a Bourgogne with it.

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At work, I actually found out something I needed to find out (the fun with bureaucracy game) and worked through some interesting issues. It was sort of fun. In parts.

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