Elena's Journal

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 18:53:31 GMT

Everyone should read this.

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 20:16:06 GMT

Dear LJ:

http://billijean.livejournal.com/1313771.html

"I wanted substance; I wanted meaningful interaction. My journal began to change then, and so did my friends list. I wasn't the only one. I saw lots of complaints over the next few years about frequent, low substance updaters. The tide had changed. And so did my friends page. There were fewer and fewer one or two line updates and more and more longer posts. I got to know you better. Some people became essay writers. More of us got digital cameras and began adding photos to our posts.

But that change also brought pressure to "properly prepare" an entry. There was an unspoken rule against the one-line entry, or more than x number of entries in a day. Entries had to be detailed and forthcoming because the vague post (except maybe with acknowledgement and apologies) was also out of vogue. And then there were the days that were too full to allow time to sit and write up a 'proper' entry and we were afraid of 'cluttering' each other's friends pages with multiple entries, so we wouldn't write one, and that happened more and more often until we were out of the habit of sharing with each other, largely for fear of not following the new rules."

possibly offensive to some

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 17:09:40 GMT

hilarious to secular heretic heathens like me.

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 19:39:04 GMT

GIP

Sun, 27 Dec 2009 18:37:32 GMT

It gets much, much worse.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/35-awesome-holiday-album-covers

Sun, 27 Dec 2009 17:19:32 GMT

I had a dream that I was selling high tech machinery and computers illegally, and tried to escape but they held me hostage because I had amazing computer skills -- though in the dream I still only really had the same knowledge I do now.

However, while being watched, I formatted the mainframe, and then was chased through the Florida wilderness by the evil Asian supervillain I was working for.

Sat, 26 Dec 2009 23:05:20 GMT

and just for the last panel

Why are you making sex to me?

Sat, 26 Dec 2009 22:23:46 GMT

The Reality of the Chinese Economy

Click the LJ-Cut for a Year's Worth of Images

Sat, 26 Dec 2009 17:36:13 GMT

The One Day of Snow this year. This is my ex-roommate. She had some fun.

I made snowboobs this year.

I took my sister, Erik, and some friends to SOLAR.

This outfit was not approved.

Me and John Waldrip went to a waterballoon fight.

I had a month of bad tire luck.

Leland planned my Birthday party because she is the best. The food was amazing.

I went up to Charlotte for my BDay and got an awesome back massage. This picture of Erik riding a lion commemorates the occasion.

We went to an art museum and saw quilts... and this piece of Japanese art.

Just FYI, I have a slightly lazy eye. I wrote for this picture:
"This is the phenomenon my friends and family lovingly refer to as either 'her eye doing the thing' or 'food eyeball'. I am told that my voracious appetite for all things delicious causes my eye to become lazy and freak out. Seen most often when drinking sweet tea or opening my gargantuan maw to consume something yummy."

Thane pulled a prank on Rob at SOLAR with these cicada skins. It was very hilarious.

I got Rob a job. This is him working real hard. I have since quit that job, be he's still there, as is the ex-roommate I also got a job there.

PIMP

I took this picture at my new job. My boss's cat, Paniros (pon-er-ros).

Spent Thanksgiving with my sister and Erik and friends. Was delicious.

Met a guy named Evan. He was moving into a new apartment and had no silverware but for tongs. I made do.

Scott had a pirate-themed birthday party. It was good.

This is the boss's other cat, Maybe. She is my favorite. I will miss her at the new office. :(

My sister and I made a Christmas cake.

The tree

I gave my family a basket of tasty foodstuffs for xmas.

We did Jewish Christmas for dinner at Sichuan House. Sichuan House is the most amazing Chinese place ever. (It's listed as one of the top 100 Chinese restaurants in the US)

My sister is unfamiliar with the idea of an ashtray.

The reason why I don't live with my parents.

Xmas Pictures

Fri, 25 Dec 2009 22:46:37 GMT

Best ornament EVER. 1994 by Hallmark. :3

Speaks for itself

They REALLY like Dunkin Donuts coffee...

My sister also printed gourd fabric from Spoonflower from some pictures my mom took... and made pillows.

We don't really know why, only that they are still in the original box, and that's pretty amazing.

That's a LOT of barbecue sauce...

Copyright 1991 lol

Garlic pickles <3 <3 <3

The Loot/Damage

Fri, 25 Dec 2009 17:03:43 GMT

A Dremel <3 <3 <3
A Dremel flex shaft/extension
A Bunnicula eating Twilight shirt (made by Julia)
Up on DVD
A gallon of home made barbecue sauce
a giant jar of home made garlic pickles
A variety of edibles and snacks
A Star Trek Enterprise bottle opener
Foot and Hand Warmers
A framed picture that says "Housework if done properly will kill you"
Chili's Gift Cards
A giant anemone koosh...thing
ink cartredges

pictures later

Chillin with the folks

Fri, 25 Dec 2009 01:17:54 GMT

My sister tells me I've been pretty grumpy and anti-Christmas the last few years. I guess I didn't really make a note of it, but I'm not huge on the whole Christmas spirit type of deal. She thinks that me wanting to make a Christmas Cake is a sign of me getting over my grumpitude.

I don't know how closely related this grumpiness is tied to my dad passing away. This is eight years ago (plus four days) now, so I guess maybe it's about time to stop being holiday grouchy.

I think a part of my desire to do relatively Christmas-y things (I still loathe Christmas music and I am not big on decorating Christmas trees or wearing green and red together) is because it's been really laid back with my family this holiday season. We're all able-bodied, stable, and independent enough and close enough to be able to work out logistics and coalescing haphazardly without much planning or work.

I like this; time with family shouldn't feel like a chore. Granted, like usual my mom continuously finds things to criticize me about (and my sister has remarked that my parents are far more critical of me than her, which is interesting and makes sense), but I find enough crap to fling back in her face (semi-lovingly) that it doesn't matter as much as it usually does (and my sister is on my side, a plus).

I am going to go eat some Christmas cake and work on a puzzle, and be happy and content with life for awhile. :)

My idea of a perfect Father/Daughter Relationship

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 18:51:54 GMT

<3 <3 <3

Just a little bit

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 15:11:36 GMT

Fabric <3!

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 03:40:22 GMT

Check out the fabric my sister (mostly) and I worked on for my Gramma for Xmas.

http://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/ihavedna

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 18:17:45 GMT

Pictures from this weekend

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 03:27:13 GMT

Thanksgiving

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 16:46:02 GMT

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 15:29:07 GMT

I was talking to Leland the other night and I realized the reasons I don't write in here are unacceptable to me.

I'm sure I've mentioned before, some time ago (eight years? wow), that I decided to keep a Livejournal, because I wasn't able to keep a journal solely for myself. That means that in a way I am writing for an audience -- but I am writing about myself for an audience. It's a little weird, selfish and narcissistic. Expecting people to take an interest in the semi-intimate details of your life is a strange exercise, but it is interesting to some.

Then you can think about how sharing too much information can be bad for yourself, be too embarrassing to be comfortable, or come back and bite you on the ass in some way later, or maybe just invite opinions you really weren't looking for. So for this audience I write for, I censor out a lot of information I wish I could vent/share/talk about -- because I fear people talking about it beyond just here. It happens, for sure -- and I've done it to people, for sure -- but to a level I expect the things I write here to stay here.

Granted, there is something very important about the "friends only" and "custom settings" posts -- because that has not only to do with keeping thoughts private, but feeling a sense of trust enough to say what I'm feeling. I've learned that information, by its very nature and that of humanity, is apt to be spread.

However, I also think I need to be more honest and truthful with myself and with those around me about how I am feeling, what I am doing, and what I'm thinking. I kind of see a public journal as a great tool for understanding. It is a place where you can express your own feelings and thoughts without being interrupted, or (hopefully) misconstrued.

There were just a few very important entries in the last couple of years that shocked me in how they were used against me. I stopped writing so much (and so much publicly) after that. However, some of it was also that I've been depressed off and on, and feeling "worthless" in a way that I haven't written very much at all. A few times I think I started entries, but I have either privatized them or deleted them since.

Really, I think the most important thing about these journals is posterity. I wonder who will one day look back on these writings (my relatives? my children?) and learn things about me that they would otherwise never know -- and not necessarily always in a bad way. We are a society of people so close, yet so far from each other, I feel like sometimes.

So really, whats more important: the small-mindedness of a few or the ability to express what I'm feeling? And really, why should i give a damn about what people think but aren't willing to actually say?

I think the new job, and some new steps in a different direction will keep me from caring so goddamn much about the opinions of people in my local social circle. I hope so, anyway.

I really miss being able to write exactly what I thought and felt on this journal, but I honestly can't to some degree, because its no longer anonymous -- a cultural change of the internet over the span of Livejournal's existence. I miss only getting comments from people I had never met, because we could argue and discuss without ever worrying about In Person awkwardness or, in general, long term consequences of what was said.

That doesn't mean its bad that I have "Real Life Friends"... it is just a matter of fact that people I actually know are more important to my happiness. Sometimes, being bluntly honest all the time has unwanted consequences, and because of that there is an underlying fear I have about how my friends perceive me. But, the people that really matter will accept me no matter what stupid shit I end up saying or doing, I think or I hope. :B So I just have to teach myself to quit wanting so badly everyone's acceptance.

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 05:33:44 GMT

Anxiety Study -- super interesting

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 23:10:27 GMT

Understanding the Anxious

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/magazine/04anxiety-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=3&em

Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 21:15:25 GMT

"If you're not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original."

Alan Kay: A powerful idea about teaching ideas

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 21:09:24 GMT

Linked from tdj

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 10:43:21 GMT

To be happy I think you have to be doing something you not only enjoy, but admire. You have to be able to say, at the end, wow, that's pretty cool. This doesn't mean you have to make something. If you learn how to hang glide, or to speak a foreign language fluently, that will be enough to make you say, for a while at least, wow, that's pretty cool. What there has to be is a test.
...
Prestige is just fossilized inspiration. If you do anything well enough, you'll make it prestigious. Plenty of things we now consider prestigious were anything but at first...
Prestige is especially dangerous to the ambitious. If you want to make ambitious people waste their time on errands, the way to do it is to bait the hook with prestige. That's the recipe for getting people to give talks, write forewords, serve on committees, be department heads, and so on. It might be a good rule simply to avoid any prestigious task. If it didn't suck, they wouldn't have had to make it prestigious.
...
The test of whether people love what they do is whether they'd do it even if they weren't paid for it—even if they had to work at another job to make a living. How many corporate lawyers would do their current work if they had to do it for free, in their spare time, and take day jobs as waiters to support themselves?
...
It's hard to find work you love; it must be, if so few do. So don't underestimate this task. And don't feel bad if you haven't succeeded yet. In fact, if you admit to yourself that you're discontented, you're a step ahead of most people, who are still in denial. If you're surrounded by colleagues who claim to enjoy work that you find contemptible, odds are they're lying to themselves. Not necessarily, but probably.

http://www.paulgraham.com/love.html

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 15:30:05 GMT

There aren't that many ideas for an icon better to represent stupidity than a boy with a box on his head jumping on a trampoline.