okay. today's been fairly stressful, but it's all work-related, so i'm counting that as a good thing. i've got so much on my mind - so many details! - that i keep getting distracted. like this blog entry. perfect example of a distraction.

anyway. i talked to my grandmother last night and she's in good spirits. weary, but holding up. my grandfather was very agitated at the hospital ("because hospitals are where people go to die") so they took him home against medical advice. but he's been calmer at home. the familiar is better for him. he's got some tests scheduled, so i'm adopting a wait and see attitude there.

and shannon's doing good. i talked to her today at lunch. she's posting on her livejournal, so i'll let her say what she needs to say. but she should know that i love her. *smootch*

friends of ours have invited me over to dinner tonight in an attempt to get me out of the house, which i appreciate. so that's good. mmmm.... pork loin.

and now back to sending out cds for the upgrade.

i'm still waiting for illinois to get their fucking cd so i can actually do something. if it doesn't arrive soon, i'm going to start in on pennsylvania. i just froze my ass off walking back and forth to the dot to deliver my reports (which weren't running properly because someone changed an attribute in one table, which fucked everything up. so certain reports were coming up all zeroes but nobody's taking credit for making the change. so far).

and i got more news about my grandfather. according to my aunt, the mri showed that grandpa had a series of mini-strokes and has some kind of white blood cell problem. wonderful. he's scheduled for a spinal tap and an eeg. so now i'm starting to edge over the double yellow line back into "worried." and my aunt wants my grandmother to drive him down to dc so he can get better medical treatment. i don't know how i feel about that, to be honest...

he's getting off ativan and he's on risperdal, which is an antipsychotic. risperdal's some pretty serious stuff, but it's also an old standby - doctors routinely prescribe that stuff whenever there's some kind of mental problem where the patient isn't entirely coherent. everyone and their sister is on that stuff. trust me: eighteen months as a pharmacy technician gives you an idea of how popular certain drugs are. and risperdal's near the top of the charts in terms of fast movers.

so that's my day in a nutshell. oh, and shan's doing good. she sends along her love to everyone and to me in particular. (sorry, i got first dibs!) thanks to everyone who's written. i appreciate your support. it really means a lot to me right now...

like the weather channel and cnn: constant updates.

i'm sitting around waiting for cds to get delivered (damn you, fed ex!) so i can steal time to update.

shannon called. she made her plane okay, so that's good news. i was really hoping that she didn't have to spend the night in chicago. she would've been with boa, who is the hostest with the mostest, but its better that there were no more complications. she just made the plane, too. she ran the whole way there and yelled for them to hold for her.

and my mom called. my grandfather (who is one of my personal heroes) has been an alcoholic for decades. the week before last, he decided to stop drinking. my mother thinks that his current mental difficulties are from the detox process, which makes sense. they ran an mri and found no signs of a stroke and physically he's in good shape (for a man of his age). it's just that he doesn't know where he is or what's going on. and that's tough to deal with because he's one of the sharpest people i know. and i value that aspect of him. i love having conversations with him and i don't think i could handle not being able to. not right now.

so i'm probably not going up to new york this weekend, which is good in some ways. at least i won't have people worrying about me being on the road, too.

my uncle is up there helping out, which is good. my grandmother, though, is in some major denial. she keeps saying that he only ever drank a glass of wine and an occasional scotch and soda and i know that's just not true. she's always been one of those people who thought if you worked hard enough and had faith, everything will turn out all right. in this case, i hope that's true.

so that's my middle of the day update. work calls, but so does lunch. and i need food.

okay. i got a few minutes before all hell breaks loose for the day. thanks to everyone who wrote and left messages. i'm not going to have a chance to sit down and draft proper replies until sometime this evening, when i'm home from work and checking the umpteen thousand emails that the culture list has deposited in my inbox. but. it is good to know that people are out there thinking about me. the support system is in place and i appreciate it. it makes me feel better.

and work is going to be busy, but that's not such a bad thing, i think. it just means that i won't be worried about stuff that i can't do anything about. take my mind off things for a few hours.

bwah! shannon called from the plane to tell me that chicago is under a snowstorm and that her flight arrived ten minutes before her connector left. it was my mission to track down phone numbers of our friends in chicago in case she had to spend the night there.

andi and boa came through. i was able to get in touch and secure lodgings, if need be. fortunately, the need passed (they delayed her connecting flight to allow for incoming flights) but it was spectacular that people - friends - came through in the pinch. thanks, guys! you gave me peace of mind, at the very least. i owe you several.

busy day. busy night. and another busy day tomorrow. and another busy week next week.

when we last left our intrepid couple, matt was starting out his long day of installations and would be shortly visited by a delegation of giddy management types, to his utter disgust.

then shannon called with news that her grandfather died and that she was leaving for los angeles that very evening. unfortunately, matt was chained to his desk for the next four hours, until he could leave for home. he was able to give her a hug, a kiss and find out about his grandfather (who seems to be suffering from extreme dts. maybe) before taking her to the airport. and she won't be back until sunday. whee. curb my enthusiasm. his enthusiasm. sorry.

there's (always) more, but this is depressing enough as it is.

i've officially started the upgrade. i'm watching the clock while the first step (backing up the computer) counts down. this is a blast, lemme tell you. so no conversations today. my email is turned off. just work. and music, when i'm not talking to analysts.

watch me go.

still no word on my grandfather. i'll probably call him tomorrow.

and we're meant to be seeing michael moore tonight at olssen's in arlington. that should be fun.

i hate feburary. i always have. it may have something to do with the weather or just the fact that it's the shortest month of the year. but i think it has to do more with the fact that it's the end of winter and i'm ready for the world to be green again, please.

all of this hit me with a vengance yesterday. i've got a head cold (again) due to the constant weather changes, which never makes me happy. then i woke up yesterday morning to discover that i'd slept wrong and my neck gave me sharp, shooting pains from my jaw to my shoulder whenever i moved my head. so that was nice.

on top of that, i talked to my mother, who told me that my grandfather is in the hospital. he's not doing so good and there are reasons to be concerned, apparently. it fell to me to pass this information on to my cousins. and there is about a 50% chance that i'll be headed up to new york to see him this weekend. that depends on how things go, obviously. but still.

my cousin eric is in town with his wife and daughter so i went over to see them. i ended up spending two hours watching three couples and their children. i haven't felt that much like an outsider in the context of my family in a long time. they have their lives and are focussed on their children. but if that's a club that i have to have children to join, then i'm just fine right here, thanks.

at the end of last night, shannon and i were playing scrabble. my neck still hurt and we'd just watched series 7: the contenders (which was actually a fairly interesting take on the future of reality shows). her mom calls and tells her to call her grandmother. shannon calls her grandmother and discovers that her grandfather is in the hospital, too. except that no one thought to call shannon and tell her this. and that made me angry. my mother called when she could. but nobody thought to call shannon. it's bad enough that she has to deal with the hospital, but being left out of the loop does nothing to make you feel like you're included.

so that was my sunday. and a big part of why i tend to not like febuary. it just doesn't feel like a cheerful month. not to me, it doesn't.

and i got an email this morning from warren ellis's mailing list (that he's started up again) saying that his father just died. cosmic coincidence?

sorry to be so maudlin. those of you who know me know that i'm not a very openly emotional person. my family taught me to keep my feelings in check. so i do. and i prefer to share the triumphs in my life because, well, because that's the face i choose to put forward. suffering is never fun to share, especially with people who can't do much to help abate that suffering. a kind word and a thought in the right direction are as much as i'll accept, usually. and unless you have the magical ability to make all of my troubles go away, there's not much else you can do.

a parting thought from cesare pavese: "One stops being a child when one realises that telling one's troubles does not make it better." i keep that written on a piece of paper just to the right of my monitor. just in case i ever feel compelled to wallow at times when i really shouldn't be. and that's all for now.

gah. just finished reading a big ol' stack of comics from my monthly trip to the comics store. it seems that a lot of storylines these days are revolving around the idea that superheros can help earth transcend into another reality. or something. very odd. just a random observation.

it looks as though they're here to stay.

and that's about it from this lazy saturday afternoon.

put on your high-heeled sneakers and put your wig-hat on your head...

yeah. listening to the blues first thing in the morning is always a good way to put a smile on your face.

random things that i forgot about last night:

lane bryant does not allow their employees to give out the display posters in the store to random people in off the street. that sucks. there was one poster in particular that i really wanted. but nooo.

i found this when i was rereading weapons of devotion last night: “If you have an opportunity to do something, do it. Lean over and kiss the girl. Always always always lean over and kiss the girl. It doesn’t matter what her reaction is. What matters is that you made the effort and you won’t be stuck with regrets and that nagging feeling that comes from knowing you missed your chance.” appropos? i tend to think so.

the upgrade has been scheduled, which means that the next two weeks (at least) are going to be hectic as fuck. fun.

i finished the wishbones last night, too. i read the last page as i was walking through the parking garage at the metro. good book. written by the same guy who wrote election (yes, that was a novel before it was a movie). so what did i think of the wishbones? i'd call it a cross between high fidelity and the commitments. but american. good stuff. and now i'm reading staring at the sun by julian barnes. i was thinking about reading the manuscript from saragossa, but that looks like a complicated book to read and i'm not sure that i want to tax my brain all that much right now. soon, though. soon.

[cue australian (sic) voice] "it's the rare evening post, captured in the wild. isn't it a beaut?" [/cav]

uh. yeah. right-o. just sitting here killing time before shannon checks her email. (hi!)

i submitted the article to nerve today. fingers crossed. that was the most nervous i've been in a loooong time. i even changed my user line (who the email is from) so that instead of saying "loop hole how are you" it said "Matt Rhodes." and i removed the sig and even wrote in all capitals. you know it's serious when i resort to the shift key.

oh. and i want to give a shout out to the comcast user who has this page bookmarked. big props. n'arlington mon. (if you could identify yourself, that would be nice. after the show is fine.)

i love stupid ip tricks. makes me feel all knowledgable and shit. like i know what i'm doing.

funny story from this evening: shan and i are in the car and i was telling her where i got my cell phone stats from. "there are four driver related factor fields," i said. "primary, secondary, tertiary and.. four." she laughed. do i know how to use the language or what? yeah... chef boy-are-dee.

my head is feeling better today. if i didn't know any better, i'd say that walking three blocks in the rain last night (from dr. dremo's to cafe asia) was what helped. at any rate, shannon and i went out and played pool with our friends joe and jenny last night, which was fun. we haven't seen them since laser tag and it was a lot longer before that. everyone else ate way too much sushi, while i had egg noodles. yummy egg noodles.

the premiere party for the city morgue was last night at dr. dremo's also (coincidentally) and i had a handful of pictures published in it. plug plug. it's a good looking magazine and i'm not just saying that because one of the editors is a very good friend of mine, either.

and this was brought to my attention by the amanda on the culture list, who found it on metafilter. but i think it's cool. art by psychotics.

oh yeah. and i finally decided to do some digging. i went into our database at work and queried the driver related factors field to discover how many times cell phone usage is cited as a factor in fatal crashes across the country. interesting results. out of 37,409 total crashes in 2000, only 101 of them had cell phone usage as a factor. out of 37,140 crashes in 1999, only 94 had cell phone usage as a factor. just the facts.

i've got the sniffles, which means that my nose is bright red. i'm keeping it moisturized with lip balm, but i just realized that i forgot my throat lozenges today. crap. but i took a nyquil last night, so i slept like a log. disturbed shannon a bit (oops) but still a good sleep.

i'm working up the nerve to submit an article to nerve, which is a funny looking sentance, if you think about it. more on that later.

the primary thought today is about god. first we have ashcroft, who says that "Islam is a religion in which God requires you to send your son to die for him. Christianity is a faith in which God sends his son to die for you." that's great. he also contrasted the way of god and the way of the terrorists. because, you know, the terrorists have no claim on god whatsoever. ah. religious fanatics attacking the country and religious fanatics defending the country. what a wonderful way to live.

on another tack, we have a little game, which challenges your convictions about god. because they should be challenged. play. discuss.

and that's all. minor content. but still alive. so that's okay.

i'm reading a load of different articles on blogging because, well, i like to see what i've gotten myself into. (and yes, that link points at the front page of blogger, but that's because they've got a great archive of articles.) what i think is interesting is how much people hate the idea of "this is what i ate today" blogs and want more experimental type crap. tell you what: if you, my readers, think i'm boring - don't read this anymore. very simple.

now that that's away, what else is there? well, eccles posted an article to the list about the british invading spain because they missed gibraltar. that was funny. and sad. and should shut up a few people who think that the us bombing the chinese embassy in belgrade was deliberate. not everyone can read maps. (which i think is silly, but there you go.)

and that's about it for the day. it's too early for me to be thinking or presenting original content. maybe i should wait until the end of every day to post instead. then the content will be more thoughtful and composed, full of things that i've seen during the course of the day. maybe. ah fuck it.

so i went over to greg's place this morning at about eleven and woke him up. shannon went off to annapolis and greg and i went off to see the fellowship of the ring at the matinee. (now, the saga of greg and i not seeing this movie until now is mostly just silly, but it's become a running joke. when the movie was over, i turned to him and said "okay, so we're seeing the next one next febuary?")

(oh, and greg's giving up football for lent.)

the movie was really good. i got a different (and better, i think) sense of what was going on during the story than i did when i was reading it. the only real problem that i had was with some of the camera-work - i think it was shaky in places. but if that's the only real criticism, then what's the big deal?

ian mckellan was spectacular and the effects were wonderous. i liked the balrog and the entire trip through moria. hell, all of the fight sequences. i'll see that again on video.

another saturday. where did my week go? ah. i see. it went nowhere...

last night we went to the concrete blonde concert, which was interesting. shannon loves them, but i've never really known who they were or what they did. then i heard some of their songs and went "oh. they did this?" i kept saying that, too. the only problem last night was that their music was filtered through a wall of feedback, which meant that i had a splitting headache by the end of the first ten minutes of the concert. it was like having multiple shards of static stabbing you in the brain. or me in the brain. whichever.

today was beautiful outside and we went to a wedding. it was one of shannon's co-workers, so i got to see everyone from her work. and my mother was there, because she's one of shannon's co-workers, too. so i talked to my parents for a while. and other people. that was odd, seeing my parents in a social situation that's outside the family dynamic.

even odder was when one of the co-workers walked by and said "keith?" "no," i said. "oh," she said. "i thought you were jeri's [my mother] son." "i am," i replied. "i'm matt. keith is my brother." "i didn't know jeri had two sons." "yes." "you look just like your mother." "i've been told that."

so i finished fear and loathing in las vegas. it was a really good book and i whipped through it in only a few hours (all told). i was really surprised at how close the movie was to the book. but now i appreciate the movie that much more. next on my list is the stone canal by ken macleod.

a few random links. yet another one from salon. i hadn't heard about this movie, but it looks good. i like the idea of nicole kidman doing some legitamate dramatic roles. she should. she's good. this link i found in uber, but i think it's from somewhere else. it's just one of those cases where people got creative. and they are really creative. go outlaws! don't let the man get you down!

and eccles has a small but enthusiastic fan club over at livejournal. i think he'll start picking up steam this weekend (not so many people were online last night, i think).

finally, our upgrade at work got pushed back yet another week. so it's even more hurry up and wait for me. whee.

happy vd! i love saying that.

um. only a few links this morning. first, something about a monkey. then an article from salon (again) about surrealist love poetry. which, as we all know, is just odd and appealing. at the same time, no less.

so i finished a prayer for owen meany last night. finally. (i mean, i'd been reading that since january. i took it with me to england, for god's sake.) it was good and well worth the read. but, like all of john irving's stuff, it just took forever to get into. this was a bit different than his previous stuff, though, because there were a few mysteries at the end and i want to see how he foreshadowed them. so i'll have to reread bits of it. at some point, anyway. not now.

now i'm reading fear and loathing in las vegas, which is a great romp after the somber tones of owen meany (which isn't at all comic, no matter what the cover says). and after that? i have some ken macleod to get through. and some jg ballard. and a julian barnes. and some jeff noon. and the blind assasin, by margaret atwood. so i've got stuff to read. a lot, actually. shannon ran through her books, but i've barely started. maybe i should tell her to take the christy report with her to read on the train. that would be good for a laugh and a strained shoulder...

y'know, i should really read articles from places like salon and nerve before i post here. that way, i can be contemporary and stuff. like yesterday, frex. there was a great article about the new dildos that are being made. but, due to my one post a day rule (generally), i felt bound to wait until today to post it. so there you go. new content, only 24 hours old.

and shannon is having fun with eccles. she's laughing, i'm laughing. we just hope that he's laughing, too. our friend carrie said that "eccles has a cute butt". that's positive.

but no lord of the rings last night. pushed back to sunday due to bad execution of a flawless plan. seriously, though. we'll see it on sunday. really. we will.

i read this article in the post this morning and laughed my ass off. it's good to know that as long as stuff like this is around, conservatism has not won. not yet, anyway.

and life just goes on. i banged my shoulder on my desk this morning, which was nice and painful. but i'm going to see lord of the rings tonight with my cousin. finally. so that should be fun. and that's the little dribbles of excitement that make up my life.

so i'm doing some reading and research on two subjects that i think go well together: porn and fair use. in fact, i think the whole negativland site should be read by everyone. they've really sat down and put some good, intelligent thought into what they're doing, both in terms of pushing the boundries of copyright infringement and in terms of commenting on media oversaturation.

and one of the things that i didn't think about when i decided to get a tattoo on my back was "how do you sleep with something like that?" my co-worker said it was like sleeping with a sunburn. i agreed with him, but the truth is that i've never had a sunburn. i just get tan instead. true dat.

so today, i'm listening to beck's mutations, which is a great album that i found buried in the trunk of my car (one of the things that shannon and i always say to each other is "we have to clean out the trunk." yep. right after we get more bookshelves and straighten up all the flat surfaces in the house...). the magistrate, though. he's putting on his gloves. and that's all i gotta say about that.

i notice i have some new regulars: rik, rich, rich's friend(s). hello. pull up a beanbag chair. they're scattered about. make yourself comfortable. ditto to anyone else i missed. i'm not going to bother explaining myself here because, well, most of the people who are reading this are people that i know from somewhere else. if you don't know me and you can't pick up who i am from the context of the content here, let me know.

on to other things. except that there aren't any, really. everyone liked the shirt i wore last night to catacomb, which was cool. it was a shirt that i pointed out to shannon in camden and she bought it for me. she has one with the same design, except that mine is red on black and hers is white on pink. but they're both cool. and people liked my tattoo. i also got slapped on the back twice, which resulted in me cringing both times. that wasn't so nice.

owie! fuck! okay. lesson learned. no more tattoos on my shoulder blades. that really hurt! but it looks nice (even though it will probably need some touch-up work done at some later point. cringe).

and yesterday, i was sitting in my office getting a massive headache. i went down the hall to ask my boss about it and it turns out that gold's gym right below us are putting in new floors and aren't ventilating their space properly. so all the headaches and bad smells are from them. and, of course, the ventilation in our suite empties right into my office. even stepping into the hallway made my headache go away. i was *yay* close to calling osha yesterday when the building services people came upstairs and opened up some doorways and turned our suite into a wind tunnel. and just like that, the headache went away. gosh. funny how that works...

there was frost on the ground this morning. and the metro was full of people. there's a crescent moon in the sky, which is my favorite phase, although i prefer looking at it over a sunset than over a sunrise. and my office building still reeks of linseed oil. uck.

there was an article in the post this morning about the plus sized fashion show that lane bryant put on just recently. normally i don't get at all worked up about newspaper articles, but this one struck me exactly the wrong way. i showed it to shannon and she got really offended by it - rightly so, i think. before i showed it to her, i'd already decided that i was going to write a letter to the author. it was that bad. in my opinion.

thank god it's friday, though, huh?

various things this morning. it was raining when i was walking to work. but then i noticed that there was snow on the ground. was it snowing last night? wow. and it turned to rain by seven am. how odd.

there was a good article about jon stewart in the new yorker this week. unfortunately, the website only puts certain articles online and that wasn't one of them. oh well. buy the magazine (or find me and borrow it from me). the article is worth reading in any case.

i got spam this morning from yahoo travel telling me about great deals to london in febuary. huh? have they been deliberately misreading my blog? that was odd.

i think that's about it for today. at least, i can't think of anything else i want to mention.

whew. i finally worked my way through all of the culture list backlog around about 11 this morning. now if only i could get this damned jetlag to go away...

yes. for those of you who have been wondering, that image below is the tattoo i'm planning on getting on saturday. we're going this weekend because fish, our friendly neighborhood tattoo artist is leaving for florida real soon. and we're not happy, but we want to support him and get permanent art at the same time.

so that's it for what passes as intelligent content these days. i really think i need a to do list because i've got so much catching up to figure out...

oh. and shannon has switched from a blog to a livejournal (boo! hiss! heh!) the change is reflected in the site links to the right side of this little page o' mine. so there you go.

lthis is the email critique that i got today from my friend leah (who i re-met at the high school reunion over thanksgiving). i think it's a good policy to post all critiques as i get them, good and bad. hell, i'm adult enough to learn where i can.

So, yes, I liked the book. I find it a really distinctly male novel. I'm not exactly sure I'm the right audience for it (then again, I like Nick Hornby and Hemingway, and I think they write very male books as well, so perhaps I am. I don't have anything against "male" novels per se.). What I mean is, the running problem is one which men will sort of enjoy immersing themselves in while, if I think about the actual plot too hard, I begin to consider it a problematized, somewhat absurd, male fantasy-- balanced, I think, by some really interesting and realistic consequences which don't generally accompany the male fascination with lesbians. That's what I find interesting and compelling about it-- the sort of ruination of (one of) the most prominent male fantasies. Overall, I really do like it-- I find the main characters interesting and quirky (in a good way) and I read it through to the end without feeling like I was forcing myself simply because I told you I would read it. I read it, mostly, in one sitting and stayed interested long enough to stay in front of my computer (and I find it really annoying to read off computer screens for a long period of time).

At the moment, the main problem I have is with some of the characters. The one who comes to mind immediately is Blue, though WageSlave is another one who I find problematic. Mostly, I'm not exactly sure what their functions are. WageSlave doesn't bother me as much because she's fairly well developed and I'm willing to accept her as this sort of interesting side line. But, the narrator keeps making allusions to Blue's weirdness and how insane she is, but other than dying her hair to celebrate their first sexual experience together, I'm not seeing much evidence of the insanity-- and that doesn't seem too far out there to me. Not as an isolated incident (I mean, if people get tattoos for the same reason, or lesser ones, why does some sort of temporary commemoration strike the narrator as out of the ordinary). She also seems to just disappear-- there is no real exit out of the story for her, and I'm wondering what would happen if she were simply taken out altogether. Or, if you have a reason why she needs to be in the book, then why isn't she there more? I guess I'm questioning what your vision for her is.

I have some of the same questions about his mother as well. She makes quite a late entrance, and other than as a marker of time passing, I'm not sure why she suddenly enters and then disappears again. It's an interesting foray into their relationship, especially in light of all the family entanglements, but her entrance into the story is a bit late for me, if she's going to come in. At the moment, she feels sort of like an afterthought.

I should say that these stick out for me because I think in general, your characters are really well rendered and alive, so it sort of surprises me that these three try to factor so importantly in the narrator's life and then fall relatively flat in comparison to the others he interacts with.

That's probably enough constructive (hopefully?) critique for now... I would love to hear your thoughts about it.

warning: this account involves excessive use of the pronoun "we." i tried to get an amateur noun, but there weren't any available that were willing to work with me. so, because i had to use a professional, i used it as much as possible, due to the fact that i was paying a flat rate. nevertheless, london abides.

and, as i check my email, i discover that there are yet more pictures. this time from john.