home (whatever that is) again ------ Monday 31 January

I'm back in Houston, and I'm exhausted. The weather wasn't too great on the way back from Dallas (lots of blowing rain and mist, and the windshield wipers on the car were not at the top of their game), and then after I picked up my car in Clear Lake (read: way-the-heck-far-out-other-corner-of-Houston, nearly an hour or so-- without traffic-- from my parents' house) I was loathe to try to make it all the way back to Katy (parents' house) in 5pm rush hour traffic, so I stopped at Kristin's apartment for a while to let the worst of the daily gridlock dissolve. I'm ready for bed. Wiki is progressing. Look for major changes (a whole new site!) soon.

Kazakhstan reunion ------ still Sunday

In all the excitement of the music, I'd forgotten to mention another exciting happening:
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

The show was INCREDIBLE! And I do mean the unable-to-believe-it original facet of that much-overused word, in addition to the more usual amazing-wonderful-tubular-stellar flavour. Not unbelievable because I didn't already think the band was great, but unbelievable because the show was really that good. Things came together in only the way that a live performance can-- no amount of rehearsal, however productive or fun or tight, can possibly replicate the adrenaline rush and intensity that comes with performing for a good crowd. And when the stars align and good karmas collide, channeling that intensity and high into the music produces something spectacular. And then it all feeds on itself. A non-vicious circle of momentum and energy.

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.

blogging in Dallas ------ Saturday 29 January

I'm in Dallas now, sitting on the bed in the guestroom at Randy and Leslie's house, blogging away on Randy's laptop that he so kindly set up in here for me. It's a much calmer Saturday morning than I had thought it would be. My friend Lauren and her friend Brian flew down from Tulsa earlier today, and they're tooling around the museum district right now. We had discussed meeting for lunch, but they ate a late breakfast, and I've got a final rehearsal at 2:00 this afternoon, so I won't see them till tonight. Andrew was going to come down from Oklahoma City, but he's feeling puny and may not be able to make it. So I'm free to spend my morning here, relaxing and learning about CSS from Randy. The craziness starts later. Around 2:00. Half the band has been sick (Andrew, who plays lead guitar, rehearsed last night with a fleecy hat pulled down over his ears and a scarf wrapped around his neck and over his chin, terrified he was going to catch someone's cold), and this is a big night for them all, so I'll be the sane one tonight. And I'll be performing! I'm very, very excited about that. Music is intended to be shared, and it's difficult to keep playing if no one's ever listening.

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.

to alleviate misunderstandings ------- Thursday 27 January

The new title of this blog, "one wiseman and ten thousand idiots," is not as conceited as some might assume. Mostly I just liked the rhythm of the saying--- go ahead, roll it around in your mouth. Sing it in your head: "one wiseman and ten thousand idiots". It's nice; admit it. And it follows in the path of some of my earlier titles, such as "don't take your ordo to another monastery" and "I'm a pasha, you're a pasha". If anyone is determined to assume that I had any self-descriptive motivation for using this phrase, one should consider the idea that perhaps they're all, one wiseman and ten thousand idiots, in my head.

falling asleep ------ Wednesday 26 January

I don't think I'll be staying up quite as late tonight as I have the past several nights. In fact, after I'm finished with this, I'm shutting down the computer and reading the Ramayana for a while before I wander into sleep.

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.

it was only a headache ----- Tuesday 25 January

Mondays don't really stink when you don't have a job. Why would they? I have trouble remembering what day of the week it is anyhow. I usually have to check my computer or my cell phone to answer that conundrum. But I had at some point during the day acquired an irritating headache, and my negative post title was a result of that. Finally, after the administration of some hot cocoa late last night, the headache did disappear, and I discovered wonderful things in the world of the internet....

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.

Mondays stink, even without a job ------ Monday 24 January

Rehearsal on Saturday went well. They were fans of my playing, I was a fan of their playing, we were all fans. It was a very feel-good, music-is-wonderful sort of time. One last run-through this coming Friday night (assuming I can make it) and then the show is Saturday night at Trees in Deep Ellum. Doors open at 9pm, if anyone is in Dallas and wants to come listen.

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.

huh ------ Thursday 20 January

I really thought that I had posted something earlier this week. Apparently not. Lately I'm been dreaming extra-vividly and have had many moments what I thought had actually occurred was in "reality" only a piece of a dream.

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.

big Tonka trucks ------ Tuesday 11 January

The massive project to widen I-10 (my parents' house is about a mile south of this coast-to-coast interstate) continues, and yesterday morning construction crews began wiping out a nearby overpass. Last night my dad and I spent about three hours watching heavy machinery break concrete, move piles of twisted re-bar and pavement, and knock down heavy support beams. Very impressive. What was done in 12 hours yesterday would have taken weeks at a similar Oklahoma road construction site. We weren't the only spectators-- when we rolled into a suitably situated shopping center parking lot at about 9:30 pm, there were already more than a dozen folks sitting around taking in the sights. Some came equipped with lawn chairs (which they set up in their pick-up beds to get the birds' eye view) and beverages. Later, after we'd moved to the other side of the overpass and then decided to run home to get jackets to hold off the stiffening night breeze, we came back with some water (mine), diet Mountain Dew (my dad's), and spicy chicarones and dry roasted almonds. We sat on the tail-gate and companionably munched and watched till well after midnight.

welcome to Houston ----- Thursday 6 January

I'm filling out my online application to substitute teach in Katy ISD. I hate applications. I hate pieces of paper (or, in this case, computer screens) with cold, harsh blanks that leave no room for explanation or elaboration. (I'm a great one for elaboration.)

The past few days have been unexpectedly busy. Tuesday morning I went out to the curb to retrieve the emptied trash cans, only to discover that the rear window of my car had been shot out. Welcome to Houston, indeed. It seems that vandalism is quite rampant in this upper middle-class surburban haven I am to learn to call home. Vandalism that, moreover, tends to be of the destructive sort. Stealing mail (a handy little federal offense), trenching yards, knocking down mailboxes, shooting out windows with the pellet gun your doting parents gave you for Christmas.... I'm telling you, it's loads of fun down here.
So yesterday I had to get the window replaced (fortunately just BEFORE the rains came through yesterday evening), a feat that was vastly complicated by the absence of my father's van, which was already at the garage to have work done on the struts and various things. Somehow-- with the help of one of my sisters-- we managed to get my mother to school, my father to the lab across town, and me to both drop off and pick up my car. And we even picked up the van in the evening.

Kristin and I went to Biraporretti's Tuesday night to watch the game with the OU Club of Houston. We gave up by halftime, and I didn't see any of the rest of the debacle. Boomer Sooner. We did not get carded for our drinks (a tart gin gimlet and a smooth Nutty Irishman (Bailey's and Frangelico on the rocks)), so I still don't know about the usefulness of my temporary license. (Though it did pass muster under the scrutiny of the deputy who came to file a report on my shattered car window.)

UN-packing AGAIN ------ Sunday 2 January 2005

The past week or so has, of course, been wildly hectic. I'm behind on phone messages, emails, and blogging. The blog seemed the most egalitarian (so to speak) way to start communicating again, so as I take a break from unpacking I'm beginning here.

It's warm and muggy here. Of course. What else would it be? Though it did snow on Christmas Eve-- but I'm still suspicious that particular highly unlikely weather phenomenon is a big hoax perpetrated not only by my parents but also by the local media. Because certainly the news made the front page of the Houston Chronicle.
Anyhow, I've spent the past few days wearing t-shirts and sandals, and my dad's outside wearing shorts right now. Alexandria and Cairo were colder than this.

My dad and I went out last night to hear some music. We share the opinion that New Year's Eve is not the best night to be out gadding about town. We were dodging drunk drivers on the freeway last night as it was. But the music was good. After checking out Shakespeare's and discovering that at 10:30 the band was still nowhere within sight of the stage, we moved on to Dan Electro's to hear a pretty good blues band, and then finished up the night at Cosmos with The Zydeco Dots. I do enjoy zydeco music. It's the accordions and the washboard. Gets me every time.

Fortunately I didn't get ID-ed at any of those locations. Last Thursday I traded in my beloved Oklahoma driver's license for a piece of PAPER that supposedly is my temporary Texas license. My permanent one should come in the mail in the next two to four weeks-- which isn't in time for the Orange Bowl this Tuesday night. Since I'll probably be going to watch that someplace (we'll look for an OU alumni association gathering) with my friend Kristin, who has, I believe, occasionally been mistaken for one of her kindergarten students, I'm certain to be carded along with her. So we'll see how that goes.

Back to unpacking.