abada abada

Yeah I’m shouting. This is my annual me-festival, one of the made-up holidays that I celebrate because I find the standard palette of holidays uninspiring, though I do enjoy many of them.

The idea, which started sometime before my blog, is that Virgos are uptight and overly analytical and so they need to take some time off and chill out, regularly. I think my friend Anne and I thought this up, or maybe it was her idea alone. In any case, I’ve run with it and made some sort of mention of it online every year. I also attempt to unwind and pay special attention to my stress levels and try to moderate them as best I can. The punch line is that the Virgo month is also the beginning of school and all sorts of crazy things happen [9/11 happened, Jet Blue does a special sale that I'm always tempted to buy in to, I'm frequently in transit, school is starting, this month there is a lot of paperwork that I'm dying to be done with] and it’s usually the very opposite of relaxing and haw haw, the stereotype is correct after all.

So, to recap, the Virgo Month of Leisure started today. It’s been slow going so far–I was interviewed in the Montpelier ACLU office for a cable access project about privacy and then I had a delicious dinner with pie–but I expect it to ramp up. Here, because it’s funny, is a linked list of the last fourteen years of Month of Leisure failures.

• 2011: OK so far!
• 2010: Finished writing a book
• 2009: Several trips including one out of the country
• 2008: Turned 40, got a fancy picture-taking bicycle, moved
• 2007: Became a lifeguard
• 2006: Incoming terrible roommate & trip to Maine and later North Dakota, Mom in hospital
• 2005: trip to New York, trip to Indiana
• 2004: Slow month, possibly the first since this all started.
• 2003: I move to Vermont full-time, I start a new job.
• 2002: Working on a book.
• 2001: I start a postcard project, we know what happened after that.
• 2000: Burning Man followed by the hospital
• 1999: driving cross-country & my barn roof blows off
• 1998: in Guatemala
• 1997: Bought a house

I’ve also created an event on facebook. If you’re a facebooker, you can sign up to “attend” over there. My birthday is on September 5th. I’m hoping it’s a good one.

I licked my iPhone today and it reminded me of my dad. Family members will get this immediately, but for everyone else… My dad used to get up in the morning and do the exact same thing every day (as near as I can remember, being a little kid when he still lived at home). Shower with the same soap, come downstairs with his hair combed and wet, fold his shirt cuffs up to his wrists and stick his glasses in his mouth to clean them off. He was sort of blowing on them but I think maybe licking them as well. My iPhone was all grotty from my sweaty fingers and it seemed like the thing to do at the time. Sure did work.

In any case, I am still doing okay and improving. It is funny, however, how subjectively I really feel like I am doing pretty well but objectively I’m not really all there. I am clumsier than usual, my proprioception is all off. I bent a fingernail nearly off while doing the dishes the other day, hitting it against the fridge. I bumped my head bending over to do something and forgetting the window was above me. I’m generally sharper than that. More objectively there is my online trivia league. I won’t say that I’m awesome but I usually hold my own. I started in the Rookie League, went up to the C League where I stayed for five seasons, and this season I wound up demoted to the D League which didn’t even exist when I started. This is clearly, to me, a sign that I’m not all there and this is mostly fine. It’s summertime.

Jim was up for a long holiday weekend and we got to eat food, go exploring (see above, this is in my backyard), play bocce, roast marshmallows, watch a parade, see a free concert, ride bikes, sleep in, go to the drive-in and stare at birds. I made a little post on MetaFilter about birders which you might enjoy if you like that sort of thing. Small public service announcement: I feel like we’ve told everyone but if you wanted to come to the Celebration of Life thing that we’re doing in memory of my dad, it’s July 23 in Westport and feel free to contact me for more details. I’ll be zipzipping around planning stuff, so if you’d just like to see me, this may not be the time for it, but there will be plenty of time over the next few months. It’s summer time.

This was a rainy weekend. This is mostly fine with me because the improved weather has made me insta-wistful for all the chilly indoor data projects that I got to muck around with over the winter that will now lie fallow-ish until it gets nasty out again. But with the rains, comes a little extra time.

So my new nerdy project is to go back and photograph all the 251 towns (and four gores) that Vermont has and that I have been to. Some of this is simple–I have been to most of the towns around here hundreds of times–and some is difficult. When people talk about data collection and organization and how it’s all on the internet and really you go to school to be a librarian? and bla bla bla, I look at teeny little stuff like this. Of course, with a phone and geolocation and a ready Flickr account, starting this project today is simpler [for all the towns where I can get a cell signal, which is an interesting statistic in and of itself] than starting it would have been back in 2004 when my first photo is from. Similarly, many older photo and information organizing projects are these long tatting projects merging metadata and content, preferably in some sort of machine-readable way, where previously there had been a box of photos in an attic. I could do this stuff forever. Enjoying organization and metadata in this day and age, pretty much means that I will always have a job that will make me happy.

My workflow for today has been amusing, filling in some blanks. I figure I have about 1/4 to 1/3 of Vermont’s towns photographed. Here’s an example of what I’ve been doing.

1. Remember that I had a photo of a trip I’d made to Bennington and Shaftsbury a few years ago, towns that weren’t yet on my list.
2. Search my email to find the exact date of the trip (because I’d mentioned it to folks)
3. Go through iphoto to figure out what photos that I’d taken on that day
4. Check my paper map and photo list to see which towns I didn’t have photos for
5. Try to figure out where random nature scenes were from using context clues (okay I’m pretty sure that Welcome to Vermont sign has a highway sign beyond it, zoom in… zoom in…)
6. Cross-check that info with the highlighted gazetteer I have which shows which roads I’ve been on to locate them
7. Upload photos with good metadata (tags, town name, add to VT 251 set)
8. Add uploaded photos to Flickr map
9. Manually put an x on the paper map
10. Add a strikethrough to the town list on the Flickr set page
11. Do a reality check and realize I’ve uploaded a photo once calling it Rupert and once calling it Pownal.
12. Repeat, trying to remember other trips I’ve made

Most of this starts because I have the memory of a photo. Often I can conflate that with a highlighted line on a map. Ultimately I’ll have clickable pixels and linked data and a neat thing to show people. I ge tto do this in-between keeping up with MetaFilter, running out to the post office and running out to the library where I just realized the book I am dying to read is actually checked in and on the shelf.

And speaking of neat things to show people, the other project for today was to start the Venture Vermont Outdoor Challenge. I know I sound like a weird shill for the Vermont State Parks, but really this is a fun project. A lot of little things to do, points assigned for the things you document, you send in documentation after you reach 250 points, you get a free parks pass for the rest of 2011 and all of 2012. It’s possible I lack imagination but I really enjoy the “Let’s pick from a list of things to do” process more than the “So, what do you want to do?” one. I started a little blog to keep track of what I’ve been doing on the project. That’s the rainy day report. There’s always something to sort around here.

I went back to Austin for TXLA and was pleased to get to eat at a ton of places that were terrific without the usual lines that sort of plague everything during SXSW. My write-up of the actual conference is over on librarian.net. Since most of what I did in Austin this time was eating, sleeping, or attending TXLA, I’ll cover all bases.

The sleeping part is simple. I stayed here, a very nice AirBnB place that was everything I could have wanted, except possibly not being a treehouse. Nice price, great location, well furnished, terrific. Having my own little apartment made it easier to manage my own schedule without having to put a Do Not Disturb sign on my door or get dressed to go have coffee. And the food, wow. We lost our only “Mexican” place here in town; it’s been replaced by a decent coffee shop so I can’t say I’m too disappointed, but I do hanker for guacamole and beans and rice, pretty much constantly.

I think the preponderance of food photos and food talk and food twittering online is often a way of letting people know both 1) I like food, I am a person of decent appetites and also 2) I am taking care of myself. See? Food! I feel self-conscious talking about food much since it’s always the cliche “I don’t care what you had for breakfast” response to people who like twitter/facebook/social media. But whatever. You might care what I had for breakfast. And if not, we are still internet-friends, or real ones.

• Sunday I drove/bused down to MA. I think I had cereal for dinner, maybe an apple.
• Monday was travel day. I had a bagel with cream cheese at Dunkin Donuts (my experience mirrors Jason’s, I don’t know what I was thinking except “cheap airport food”), airport crackers, and some cup o’ soup at my destination, maybe a powerbar.
• Tuesday was talk day. I hit the Korean BBQ taco truck for lunch and ran into Aaron who was having kimchee fries. Gave the talk and decided to head back to the nieghborhood I was staying in–mainly to see if I’d left my powercord at home, yes I had–and then went out walking down Cesar Chavez until I got to Las Cazuelas and got some take-out tostadas. I’m sure there are better Mexican places, but it was walking distance and tasty.
• Wednesday I met a local friend for BBQ at Green Mesquite which was an old timey place off South Congress. I got a pulled pork sandwich and some green beans but somehow neglecrted to photograph it. In the evening I took my friend Paul out for dinner to thank him for the airport pickup and we went to the Blue Dahlia Bistro a place I’d initially discounted because of a fruity website. The food was good though it was maybe a bit too upscale for my tastes (to be fair, I have very lowbrow tastes). I had some sort of black bean and corn salad with, yes, more avocado. We skipped out on that place for dessert and wound up at BANANARCHY which was hands-down the best thing I ate in Austin. Frozen banana, dipped in peanut butter topping, rolled in coconut. Joy. Pure joy.
• Thursday I miscalculated and wound up walking around hungry trying to figure out what I wanted to eat. I wound up in some place on 6th Street where I had tempura which was perfectly fine. Thursday evening, however was the Small Community Libraries Dessert Social which was at 7 so I stopped in, ate several desserts (example dessert) and then went to dinner at Guero’s which is some sort of massive tex-Mexican food place. I had tamales which I can never get out here, and was super duper happy.
• Friday I was up with coffee and met MetaFilter’s new mod Jeremy for some lunch before heading to the airport. She suggested Whip-In which is this crazy Indian restaurant in the side of a beer store. Oh and sometimes they play music. I had some Zambian seasoned rice and corn and peppers thing and Jeremy got a bowl of goat meat. It was a terrific send off to what had been a great week of eating. I had another power bar and some cereal before I went to bed in MA that night.
• Saturday my friends Andrea and Corey and I ate at the Great Taste Diner [formerly Danny's Diner] which is a Peruvian-type place but that didn’t mean the BLT there wasn’t terrific. I got home and had a cheeseburger.

This week I’m back on Jessamyn Chow which is mostly Kashi-type cereal, english muffins and a lot of brown rice and coffee. So far okay. If you’re wondering how I managed to maintain a list of all these places, I’ll point you to Foursquare where you are more than welcome to be my friend. It’s got limited utility, especially in a place like Vermont, but as a “Hey where did I eat last week?” listing machine, it can’t be beat.