I'm a pasha, you're a pasha...
so who's going to drive the donkey?
Thursday, February 03, 2005
ha! ----- Thursday 3 February
Tuesday, February 01, 2005
sar5ah.com ----- Tuesday 1 February
Monday, January 31, 2005
home (whatever that is) again ------ Monday 31 January
Sunday, January 30, 2005
Kazakhstan reunion ------ still Sunday
One of the difficult things about the times I've spent overseas is that I never again (so far) see the friends I make in other countries. And I'm such an atrocious correspondent that I tend to lose touch with people, even if I really resolve to maintain contact. There are a very few people that I write and hear from sporadically (on the order of maybe once a year), and each time it's a miracle that contact information has remained enough the same that communication attempts are successful. My friend Murat is on this shortlist. He was one of my closest friends the summer I spent in Kazakhstan, and over the past four and a half years (I was there in the summer of 2000) we've managed somehow not to lose each other completely. I had an email from him last Wednesday night that said he was in the U.S., in Houston, for a training seminar (he's a petroleum engineer), and he wanted my phone number so that we could at least talk, since it wouldn't be an international call. He had no idea I was living in Houston, since the last he heard I was back in Oklahoma and thinking of returning to school there. So I was very pleased to be able to write him back and not only give him my phone numbers but also let him know I was living in the same city. He called on Thursday evening, and we talked for the first time in more than four years. That was a great feeling. My travels have too often left me feeling very disconnected-- the life I build somewhere else, even if only for a summer, is necessarily so different from life in the U.S., and I very rarely have people around me with whom I've shared those other lives. Murat will be in Houston for almost two more months, and I'm really looking forward to spending time with him. I told him I'd call as soon as I got back in town from my exuberant weekend of music in Dallas.
WOW ---- Sunday 30 January
So, even though I didn't get to bed until almost 5:00 this morning and by that point I was so drained I was nearly running into walls, I'm still partially riding the high of a good performance. And, as the bass player put it, I've been "annexed" by the band. The edict says that I will be returning to Dallas for future rehearsals and recording sessions and shows. In fact, I've already started working on some new songs with them.
I also really enjoyed The Chemistry Set, the band that played right before us. I just looked up their website to include in this post [www.thechemset.com], and apparently they're playing in Houston at Rudyard's on 5 February, which is this coming Saturday. I'll definitely be there. I'm not sure that anyone around Houston reads this blog (though Matt the keyboard/guitar player did check it out once, which is how this whole musical expedition got started), but if anyone is out there, let me know if you want to go.
Saturday, January 29, 2005
blogging in Dallas ------ Saturday 29 January
Randy just set up a corner of his webspace for me to use until I can get my own, so as soon as I get my domain name set up-- probably the inevitable www.sar5ah.net-- I can get started on my wiki. If you still don't know what wiki is, and you're curious about why I keep harping on it, check out Wikipedia.org for a glimpse at what hypertext can be. I'm going to develop a site that's basically a sar5ahpedia-- which will grow and grow and grow in all directions. The internet is a multi-dimensional web, not a linear construct, and the chronological confines of my blog were distressing me. As anyone acquainted with me well knows, I don't like being limited.
In keeping with all this craze over webpages and internet ideas, I've been seriously considering eventually getting a masters in library and information science. I've been doing some reading on careers for "foreign-language aficionados" (as one book calls us), and LIS career paths are highly recommended. It encompasses many of my interests too, since it would combine both the academic and the computer design aspects of my background. And I could choose to emphasize one or the other, without making a major life-altering epiphanic decision to cut loose and run in another direction. Built-in change seems to be a good idea for me. And really, one could say that LIS potentially encompasses all of my interests. Everything these days is connected somehow.
So that's been the thought lately, as I've been looking for library jobs (in addition to some other areas) and sporadically thinking about the future. The University of Texas at Austin has a wonderful LIS program that I've seriously looked at in the past, and my new and evolving Texas residency would still help out with that. In the meantime, I'm going to start applying at Starbucks locations as soon as I get back to Houston. I figure I could get into a lot of random conversations with people that way. And get a great discount on my beloved Sumatra coffee.
Thursday, January 27, 2005
to alleviate misunderstandings ------- Thursday 27 January
Wednesday, January 26, 2005
falling asleep ------ Wednesday 26 January
Working on my website has been both rewarding and frustrating-- I'm enjoying the design process, but some strange and very irritating difficulties with my computer are detracting from the pure pleasure of puttering with style sheets and HTML. Still, there is something up for your viewing pleasure, so take a gander if you care to: faculty-staff.ou.edu/P/Sarah.E.Potter-1/. If any of the links are broken, don't worry about it-- that means there's no page with content out there yet anyhow. The OU server, Dreamweaver, and I are currently in negotiations over some structural issues, but I'm sure talks will be resolved shortly.
Tuesday, January 25, 2005
it was only a headache ----- Tuesday 25 January
Wiki. It all started with stumbling onto www.pmwiki.org through a test site of my friend Randy. And then I started learning about the concept of the WikiWikiWeb. I was immediately intrigued and quickly hooked. Webpages that exist to be edited by one and all who might run across them? A community of contributors that potentially includes every browser ever to access the page? Of course, there are ways to set up password-protected pages and wiki sites, in which case the remote-access site maintenance possibilities are endless, not to mention the ways I could revolutionize my blog. In fact, Laura has already done this-- her new blog is part of her new wiki.
Learning about wiki cemented the recent resolution I had made (post-New Year's) to restart a website. So I reinstalled Dreamweaver (my hard drive was reformatted last fall following a particularly horrible system crash) and went to find out what sort of webspace comes with the DSL connection we have here at the house. Unfortunately, it's crap-- some SBC Yahoo! Geocities junk that's so user-friendly it can't be used-- so that bogged me down temporarily, till I remembered that if my OU email account is still active, then my OU webpage is too. Unfortunately, in the midst of all this I encountered problems with my Dreamweaver installation (which these days is the best FTP I have, since WS_FTP decided to start charging for everything) and this morning I
Edgar just walked through with a bird wing-- just the wing-- in his mouth. It has now been disposed of, and I was unable to locate any other part of the bird in the house.
As I was saying, I uploaded PmWiki but encountered problems getting it set up-- which I am mostly sure is something to do with the OU server. Anyhow. Wiki will have to wait. Once my income resumes, I'll get my own space. In the meantime, I'll put together some things on my OU space--- which is evidently still located on the faculty-staff server rather than the student (OU is nothing if not behind), so the current link is:
faculty-staff.ou.edu/P/Sarah.E.Potter-1/
Something should be up by the end of today.
And now, the grocery store.
Monday, January 24, 2005
Mondays stink, even without a job ------ Monday 24 January
I had dinner with my friends Randy and Leslie Saturday evening and took the tour of their new house-- which includes a very comfortable guest room, where I'll be staying this coming weekend. This past Saturday night I did indeed stay with Chris and Christy, who had less than a week before moved into their apartment. Bless them for accepting a last-minute house guest.
I called my parents to check in after I got back to Houston (though not home) Sunday night, and my mom informed me that my sister's car window had been shot out Friday night. This time the rash of vandalism made the Sunday night newscast.
Apparently I need to watch a video of my many-toed cat. My attention to such is being requested. More here later.
Thursday, January 20, 2005
huh ------ Thursday 20 January
This week has been particularly busy (though not with work, unfortunately), but I'll hit some highlights. Tuesday night Kristin and I went up to College Station with a fellow OU graduate we'd met at the national championship watch party. It was OU at Texas A&M, and we enjoyed eating at a local college hang-out (Layne's Chicken) and then watching our team stomp the Aggies. The car ride home from a game is so much more pleasant when your team has won the game.
Yesterday I took Kristin to the airport for her flight to D.C. (she's attending the inauguration and an inaugural ball, tickets courtesy of a friend of ours who works for a Colorado senator; I'm glad she's going, because I know she'll enjoy it-- I, on the other hand, would stand there and weep, while dejectedly waving an anti-Bush banner) and then fought rush-hour traffic to get home for supper. That was about a three hour round-trip. Houston is so big. After sharing a meal with my grumpy parents (bad days at work), I zoomed on over to the nearby ATA Black Belt Academy, where I participated in my first taekwondo class. After joining the class for the keep-you-hopping (literally) cardio warm-up, one of the head instructors worked with me one-on-one to teach me some of the basic stances, blocks, punches, and kicks. I'll go for my second trial class on Monday, and then the new session starts the next week. Unfortunately, I don't think I'm quite ready for this financial burden-- given my continuing lack of income-- so I may need to delay my enrollment till a later session.
I got a phone call today from Matt, the guy who went with Kristin and me to College Station on Tuesday. I'd found out then that he plays in a band (which explains all his rapid-fire email questions about my cello-playing ability after he'd found out from this blog that I play), and so yesterday, to satisfy my personal curiosity, I did a little internet research on the group, which is called Red Monroe, and found out they're pretty good. (One is always a bit suspicious of the phrase, "yeah, I'm in a band." Frightening what the unwary could be subjected to. I know. I've played in a couple not-so-spectacular ensembles myself.) So, having already been impressed with their sound, when Matt called today to ask me to join them for a few songs at their CD release show in Dallas next week, I was able to answer in the affirmative with sincerity and pleasure. (Trusting souls, these folks. They've never heard me play a note. Of course, that's the job of a good soundman-- just mute that channel if there are any guest-performer-regrets. Musicians can be wonderfully passive-aggressive.) I'm currently engaged in making arrangements to go to Dallas this Saturday to rehearse, and hopefully I'll stay that night with my friends Chris and Christy (Christy's approval pending) and then be back in Houston Sunday evening in time to pick Kristin up from the airport. Since I have all of her keys, it's rather important that I return for her return.
So that's some bits of the past few days. Oh-- if anyone's interested, you can find out more about Red Monroe at www.redmonroe.com.