so here i am back at mom's house for a couple of days. mom gets back home friday...and sis and i are excited for so many reasons.
it's actually raining here. i have to admit, the rain sounds much nicer at mom's house than mine. more eaves = more drippy noises. however, this also means running the dog outside in the rain for a potty break. thankfully she's sitting in front of the heater at the moment, staring at it and weaving slightly. i think the heater makes the dog inebriated. or something.
saturday g and i trekked up to julian to watch the fremonts play. bailey's is *always* a trip and a half. it's like all the slightly strange people in the world are concentrated up there. there's the hippies, the belly dancer, the mountain men, the, um, jealous lesbians (one of whom was intoxicated enough at the beginning of the evening that she fell off her stool within 15 minutes of arriving), the woman who got hot and borrowed a shirt from one of the other women...and changed by the door and proceeded to run around with it hanging open. rumors from the band mention that there wasn't anything on underneath. and no, they say it wasn't a pretty sight. oh, and if you ever make it to bailey's bbq for dinner...bring your own sauce. i'm not sure what is in their's, but it's pretty tomato-y - like they mixed a few spices with tomato sauce and called it bbq sauce. i brought my own from what mom brought me back from the saltlick. the bottle's now half gone after sharing it with the table.
other than that, sis is too gleeful that she doesn't have to drive in to work from mom's in the rain. that tacks on about an hour to the trip...and that's if you leave late. i dunno what it is, but californians just don't know how to drive in wet stuff. you'd think the sky was falling.
i've decided i'm most happy to be at home in my usual routines. perhaps that makes me boring, but i like to think that it just makes travel that much more interesting. i've been dog-sitting at mom's house since last friday, and i'm ready to be back home doing my own thing. not having to drive 25 miles to work or my own place. having more clothes than just the ones i brought with me (which, i might add, were not really appropriate for the cooler weather we started having). being in my own warm apartment. (mom's house is like an icebox!) having wireless high-speed internet...
it's my last night tonight for a bit. hooray!
being at my mom's house with just the dog and listening to the coyotes outside howling and creating a loud ruckus is rather...scary. not a lot of incentive to venture out to let the dog out - especially not a dog who's snack-food sized anyway. (no offense to keely. love her to death. but she is small!)
i hadn't been to disneyland when it was super busy in quite a while. didn't think about it being a holiday weekend and such when we ventured up this weekend to disney's ca adventure. i'll also admit, that going to dca is fun...about once every two years. i prefer disneyland. i never get tired of it. probably why i have a pass.
guess i'll head off to bed since i have a built-in alarm clock set for 5am in the shape of a fuzzy dog body keeping me company for the next few days. ;)
re my previous post:
not allowing "space-shifting" and "format changing" as fair use creates a few problems, namely in the on-line realm. and these are just what i would see as legal uses:
1. when downloading (and paying for) music for the purpose of putting it on your ipod - isn't that "space shifting" when you move it from computer to ipod? is that suddenly not going to be allowed?
2. what about backup copies? on the computer for the ipod. on the ipod for the computer. on a cd for either the ipod or the computer. on a cd as a backup for a cd so you don't have to take the original in the car and risk it being stolen. i believe that "backup copies" are expressly one infringing use they are looking to enforce. ("The same filing also had this to say: "Similarly, creating a back-up copy of a music CD is not a non-infringing use...."") are you going to guarantee that if my music is stolen out of my car or my ipod/computer is stolen or damaged so that the music is lost that you'll replace it for free? you're preventing me from making that assurance for myself.
granted, i know the riaa is trying to protect the interests of its members, but it seems to me that i read the amount of music being bought is going up, not down, especially with the ease of using the online stores like itunes and the fact that the average price of a cd is around $15 instead of $19. think of all the bands that give themselves an online presence just to get people to listen to their music. enough people listen and inform their friends, and you've got a grassroots following...and soon you might be signed. and then there's the stuff the signed bands release for publicity...
i guess i think they're making a bigger issue out of the bits that aren't costing them the bulk of the money they say their losing. fighting places like napster where people are bulk-sharing music i can see. going after sally smith who's making a backup copy of the music she downloaded off of itunes in case her computer crashes? c'mon. what do they think people will do? buy an electronic version AND a cd? uh, no. if anything, they'll see that people stop buying cds as much if they're not going to be able to put it on their mp3 player. as i recall, itunes gives me the right to make copies onto 5 computers or mp3 players, and they recommend that i burn it to cd to make a backup copy in case something happens. wonder if i'll still get to keep those rights for those songs since those were the conditions under which i bought the music.
personally, i think that the riaa needs to be whapped over the head with The 2x4 of Common Sense (tm) and quick.
in short - "As part of the on-going DMCA rule-making proceedings, the RIAA and other copyright industry associations submitted a filing that included this gem as part of their argument that space-shifting and format-shifting do not count as noninfringing uses, even when you are talking about making copies of your own CDs."
boy. they're really trying to piss off consumers, aren't they? do they really want us to listen to their music? or someday are all musicians going to move to a deserted island and play for themselves while the rest of us just dream about the music that we used to enjoy?
i wonder how long it is before a group decides to start a boycott of certain music labels?
"...Lord, help thou my unbelief." (mark 9:24)
one thing i have always admired madeleine l'engle for is her frankness about her "atheistic periods" in her life - the times when she has trouble believing for one reason or another, the times when she is mad at God. i expect that it would be difficult to believe 100% of the time; i know i have never been able to do so. there are things that happen that, on the surface, make no sense, that fly in the face of your belief, that make you doubt. sometimes it's revealed later on why something has happened, sometimes it isn't. still, it's hard in the muddle of things to be unshaken.
c.s. lewis said that "simply to say prayers is not to pray," however, sometimes in those atheistic periods, continuing to say those prayers, with (or without) the faintest glimmer of hope that perhaps someone/something higher is listening, is the best you can do. continuing to pray is an act of faith in and of itself - you can't get all the way to God by yourself. faith is about reaching out to him through your unbelief so he can reach out to you and "help your unbelief."
i suppose that is why i'm glad the episcopal church has a prayer book for services and daily use. there are times when i don't have the words or even thoughts to pray, and it loosens my tongue.
and one last one that made me chuckle...
"You and I are here to do good to others. What the others are here for, I don't know." --W. H. Auden
"Most days I side with the French oddsmaker, Blaise Pascal, whose gambit instructs that it is better to believe in something that isn't than to disbelieve in something that is." --Thomas Lynch
...for those who feel like they need a "just in case" reason or excuse for their faith. when you're going through an atheistic period, though, it might be enough to cling to.
"In daily life we must see that it is not happiness that makes us grateful, but gratefullness that makes us happy." --Unknown
"As Christians, we can't love the whole world. But we should remember that God has placed us in a specific community at a particular time. We're called to love those around us. Loving them means serving them - and in doing so, we become the best of citizens." --C.S. Lewis
"If we are going to be made into wine, we will have to be crushed; you cannot drink grapes." -- Oswald Chambers
"You've got to take it one game at a time, one hitter at a time. You've got to go on doing the things you've talked about and agreed about beforehand. You can't get three outs at a time or five runs at a time. You've got to concentrate on each play, each hitter, each pitch. All this makes the game much slower and much clearer. It breaks it down to its smallest part. If you take the game like that - one pitch, one hitter, one innning at a time, and then one game at a time - the next thing you know, you look up and you've won. --Rick Dempsey, baseball catcher
As you begin to pray the rosary, however, do not allow yourself to become distracted with questions about whether or not what you are doing is meaningful or accomplishing anything. In prayer we come into God's presence in faith, and that is what we do with the rosary. We come, then, not to accomplish something, but to be with God, offering ourselves anew to Him that He might accomplish something in us. --Rev. Gilbert Turner Crosby, "Praying the Rosary"
that seems to be nearly exactly what c.s. lewis was trying to say in "the efficacy of prayer," which was what i was reading before i picked up "praying the rosary." food for thought, since many of the things in our life nowadays seem to be prioritized or valued based on how meaningful it is or how much it has allowed us to accomplish.
wednesday night, headed out of the office, on the way down the stairs. somehow i managed to slip or catch me heel...something and ended up spraining my knee. those of you who know me well know that this is an old injury that reaggrivates itself periodically. this time it was bad enough that i thought i should see the doctor. thankfully, she said all my ligaments still seem to be intact, even after this and me busting my butt in new york on the ice.
for now, it's a good excuse to have my leg propped up on my desk while i work and shiver my way through one of my thrice-daily "icing downs" of my knee. at least it seems to be helping.
phone capers
i have to wonder how a phone jack decides to stop working. i removed my land line when i got rid of my dsl. i decided to put a digital phone back in, and now one of my phone jacks doesn't work. which is odd...and sucks as it's the phone line in the office and is the one that i really wanted to use. at least i can buzz people in on the gate phone now.