1. pick a domain name. (status: done)
2. register a domain name (status: done)
3. find hosting (status: done)
4. design brainstorm (keeping css in mind) (status: ongoing)
5. find introductory css resources (status: ongoing)
6. be confused by css (status: ongoing)
7. get/configure phpBB (status: done)
8. get/configure wordpress (status: done)
9. become tired of learning css; find a website using beautiful/amazing css, view source, steal source, customize source (status: done)
10. conscience attack w.r.t. 9 above; scrap source (status: done)
11. continue looking for css reading material (status: slow going)
12. ??? (status: 404 internal oracle failure, cannot read from source "future")
13. website done! profit! (status: I don't want to talk about it)


bugger bugger bugger sod.

I'll keep you updated. till then, this. notify me of bugs, if you happen across any.


trial-and-erroringly,
-matt.

when talking in real time to silly girls in australia, don't be sick. sick means slow, slow means inarticulate, and inarticulate means disillusionment.

I enjoyed myself, I really did. but I think they were straining to.

we needed more people on the line. (where were you guys, anyway?)

..and not much else. explore:

the question was/is 'what is there about being married that suprises you?'

the answer was/is

I do more dishes than I ever have in my life. when you cook real food (instead of bachelor food, which consists of cereal, ramen noodles, sandwiches, and macaroni & cheese), you suddenly have to use more real dishes. not just one bowl one spoon one cup per week rinse-after-each-use. those days are gone. the days of collandars and garlic presses and goblets and food processors and 12-piece dining sets are here. we have seating enough for four and place settings enough for a major holiday family get-together, and somehow this is all supposed to make sense.

also gone are the days of thinking in terms of 'I.' there is no 'I' anymore, except when I need to answer the question of who will do the dishes. (hint: the answer is always 'I will, sweetie.') everything is 'we.' this is certainly the hardest part for me, because very often the focus of my life, intended or not, is 'I.'

there's all the adjusting in the world to be done when living with another person for the first time. for example, I can't simply plan to sleep in on a random weekend morning. like, say, tomorrow. I enjoy the weekends for the sleep I can afford to have. she enjoys the weekends for the time we can spend doing things. it follows that this is a big problem for us. (see also 'in defense of the night life.') we're simply polar sleep-schedule opposites. among other sorts of opposites.

I am absolutely phlegmatic. she is absolutely not. I am an istj (things should be done well, and order is king). she is an intp. (things should be done with efficiency, and efficiency is king. she would copy edit that last sentence because the word 'efficiency' is in there too many times—it's not efficient.) I am eeyore. she is [fictional character who is completely unlike eeyore in every way and who would likely berate eeyore for taking too long to get over his depression]. you get the picture.


[aside: I am, of course, very curious to know what all you imaginary internet people are as far as meyers-briggs can tell. I would, of course, expect you to respond with your results. I do, of course, demand that you do.]


things get tense occasionally. for example. she likes to plan, plan, plan. currently neither of us has a real job. I'm looking and she temps as a secretary at a local university. she hates it; she's overqualified and the work is absolutely menial. (file this, collate that, staple these, deliver those, change the font on all our corporate documents to 13-point comic sans, …) the current understanding is that our situation could reverse completely within a week's time, incidentally dropping us off in any one of x-teen major cities in the region. planning in an atmosphere like this is tricky and short-term at best. oh how she hates it. and it's hard on me because it doesn't really bother me all that much. I'm just waiting to see, and she's not a wait-and-see kind of girl. I don't know how to deal with crying (not to insinuate it's something to 'be dealt with,' you understand) because it's not something I do every day, but I'm learning. slowly. it's all very taxing. it taxes me.

you think you know a person well enough to marry her (him, it, etc.), but you really don't know her at all. it's like this: think of a relationship as getting an education. so far for me it's been like graduating from grade school, giving eight years a miss and going straight to graduate work, and my professors don't bother to have any sympathy. they assign papers and homework and projects and it's just assumed that I'll keep up. I don't even know what all the words mean, and I'm supposed to have read and analyzed the book by now and I have a presentation due in five minutes and sparknotes can't help me WHAT DO I DO?

She loves coffee. I don't. I ride a scooter when I need to make short trips down to the store or to the post office or wherever and she hates my scooter and threatens to throw it out. I play time-intensive games like axis & allies; she plays easily-digestible games like rook and poker and threatens to throw my games out. I wear silly impractical shirts and she threatens to throw them out. she listens to tim mcgraw; I listen to led zeppelin and she threatens to throw them out. I very frequently threaten to throw her out.

and through all this retarded drama, somehow, miraculously, we're making it. we're not perfect but nothing is. so we do the best we can. she makes her coffee, I make my ramen noodles. we compromise. we're special naked friends. we're happy.

The saddest thing in the universe is a student pigeonholed into studying on a Saturday night, when he could very easily NOT be studying on a Saturday night. Finals week is lame, kids.

My sister at the seashore, spellbound by her first glimpse of ocean.

A soft rain on a spring day, on a walk that was the last walk I would take in the place I love.

Steam rising from a lake in the early morning.

Sunlight in long angles through the window, igniting the dust in the air in the late afternoon.

The top of a mountain, with valley falling away on all sides.

Three boys swimming in the river in summertime.

Red hair over a beautiful, intelligent face, mischievous, playful, titillating, promising. The bright petals of an iris, held by her. I touch her cheek.

The first night of July, when I lay in the grass and the air moved and the meteors fell from the sky. And the stars slowly fading the next morning.

It took me a long time to see her as I see her now. We would go on picnics, and she would point out to me the ubiquitous ants that had somehow sneaked into the basket. On those walks in the woods, I sometimes pretended to see the birds high in the trees, angry and ashamed that I never could. She would talk, and I would hear but not listen.

I never noticed the soft forest ground cover on bare feet, until she took off my shoes before we entered the woods. It was slightly spongy, holding the outline of our feet for only a few seconds after we had lifted them. The cold water came as a shock to me as we slow-stepped through the knee-high stream; the mud on the bottom squishing through our toes reminded her of a tube of toothpaste, but just made me cringe.

A sudden burst of movement left me kneeling in the water, soaked. She collapsed in laughter. Walking back to the car across the hot pavement of the parking lot, I saw her face, in profile, catch the sun. At that moment I felt an unexpected urge to grab her by the hand, run back among the pine trees, and lay under one, with her, forever. Somehow I knew she felt the same.

"I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back anymore—the feeling that I could last forever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effort—to death; the triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in a handful of dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expires—and expires, too soon, too soon—before life itself."
-Joseph Conrad


That's perfect. What a way to start.

I read somewhere recently that some tremendously important court somewhere might make LSD, mescaline, and several other Schedule 1 drugs legal.

Hmm.

I think the site might be reporting half the story, but if not, and if this court actually goes through with it, then who knows—I just might try some of that crazy mescaline stuff. I've read "The Doors Of Perception" by Aldous Huxley about fifty times. I feel something in that book. And it makes me curious. But the way things are now, I'm too much a pussy to go asking around for the stuff. One doesn't get far in life by getting busted for possession. If you know what I mean.

It's about 4:30 on a Saturday morning. I'm shivering, not because I'm cold but because I've been up too long. I wonder why I do it.