I didn’t realize that it had been almost two weeks since my last post. So … I made it to almost three weeks of posting every weekday. I think that’s a new personal record, and I’m not going to sweat the fact that I stopped posting.

Basically I just wanted to put this here because leaving that last post up there was starting to bother me. I’ve had a few encouraging days since the 18th, and I wanted to say so.

Consider yourselves told.

I’ll be back later this week. I promise.

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2. Random Saturday Weekly Wrap Up or Whatever
3. I don’t know why I do this to myself.

This has not been a particularly encouraging day.

No related posts.

The to-do list I made at 5:30 this morning

(1. Funny how a four-month-old kitten burrowing under the covers to attack one’s bare feet works just as well as a kettle of cold water getting dumping over one’s head in terms of efficient wake-up methods;

2. Funny also how despite several so-called productivity apps on my phone I still find writing out my tasks and chores to be the most effective way of getting things done)

was about a page long, and it’s over half done. The tasks yet to be done can wait until my next day off. I feel remarkably accomplished.

I read a third of a review book, did important wedding plans things, cleaned up around the dining room, started making my Valentines but decided it would be best to wait until both cats are sleeping because they were very curious and wanted to help, there’s a pot of black bean soup simmering on the stove, my nails are done, I’m almost done with this week’s Code Year lesson, I’ve watched the most recent Downton Abbey episode, and I’ve written this entire post on my phone because there’s a cat on my lap.

A really good day. And I’m still in my pajamas!

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1. Happy anniversary, Brooklyn.
2. Nothing productive happens after 7:00 pm
3. I don’t know why I do this to myself.

Someone called me a “real writer” today, and not as a joke! I haven’t felt like a writer in a while, though — writers write, and I haven’t really been doing that, except for here, which … doesn’t count for some reason? OK, that’s crazy talk.

And then I don’t have time to write a proper post today because I had other paid writing obligations, which I somehow also don’t count as real writing? Because it’s paid labor? Wait a minute, what?

You know, if I stop to think about what I think, I realize how crazypants it is. Remember what I was saying about my brain being the worst? Prime example.

Me: Why isn’t this “real writing”?
My brain: Because you do it for fun.
Me: So why aren’t the book reviews “real writing”?
Brain: Because it’s not the writing you want to be doing.
Me: OK, smartypants, what writing do I want to be doing?
Brain: Hell if I know. You figure it out.
Me: You remind me of the babe.
Brain: What babe?
Me: The babe with the power.
Brain: What power?
Me: The power of voodoo!
Brain: … I see where this is going. Good day to you.
Me: But…
Brain: I SAID GOOD DAY.

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2. Learning to Code
3. A Minnesota State Fair Love Story

Before I left to meet a friend for lunch I started writing today’s post, but finishing it means going down a not very pleasant part of memory lane and I’m not emotionally there yet. I want to write it, I feel like it will be good for me to write it, but it’s 4:30 and getting dark and despite having two cups of fairly strong coffee I have the post-eatie sleepies and I kind of want to slack off at the moment and since I am the boss of me, I’m going to allow myself to do just that.

(It’s not even a terribly traumatic thing that I want to write about. I don’t want to build it up to be some sort of DEFINING MOMENT in my life. But considering that it happened when I was 7 and I still think about it and it still kinda bothers me … maybe it is a defining moment. In any case, it’s worth putting more mental energy into it than I have right now.)

(Also I just want to knit. Or play Skyrim.)

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2. A Minnesota State Fair Love Story
3. Learning to Code

1. Finish review book
2. Start drafting review
3. Tidy up in kitchen
4. Tidy up in bathroom
5. Start organizing office [bah...this can wait...]
6. Watch new Downton Abbey episodes

And speaking of Downton Abbey, Sir Richard

is also Father Octavian from those second Weeping Angel episodes of Doctor Who:

And apparently the actor, Iain Glen, is also in Game of Thrones, which I have yet to watch.

That’s all I got today.

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Y’know, I read The Happiness Project a couple years ago (I wrote about that here) and decided then that I was going to implement a lot of what Gretchen Rubin talks about, but then for whatever reason or group of reasons I never really did to any great extent. It might have been because I didn’t know and/or didn’t want to take the time to figure out what really did make me happy, and was just basing my own rules on hers — and to be fair, her rules are good. Especially the one about keeping things neat, and that if something takes less than a minute to do, don’t put it off. We thoroughly cleaned our apartment just before the new year and though it needs a good sweeping again, we’ve managed to maintain a decent level of respectability for almost two weeks, and I’m very proud of that, and yes — it does make me happier to not be surrounded by so much clutter.

But that happiness is more like contentment. It’s different from the kind of happy I get when I start a new project, as I am about to do within the next few days. And I don’t mean a new knitting pattern I’m really excited about, but a brand new craft (well, one I haven’t delved into since grade school). Oh my, am I giddy. And this on top of yesterday’s coding-related elation. I am SUPER GIDDY! AND YELLING! THAT’S HOW GIDDY I AM! NO, I WILL NOT BE QUIET!

My project inspiration this time came from a post on The Hairpin about writing thank-you notes — something I will become an expert at before this year is over, I am sure. All it took was half a sentence, something about sending Valentine’s Day cards to friends, that sent me on a web surfing spree to look at various card sets. I’ve never sent out December holiday cards, though I think about doing so every year (thought that counts?) Aside from thank-you notes, which I haven’t written since … college graduation? I’ve never mass-mailed or handed out any sort of card except Valentine’s cards, and then not since grade school. In grade school Valentine’s cards were mandatory, as was the arts & crafts session in which you took construction paper, paper doilies, crayons and glitter and made special Valentine’s cards for your parents, grandparents, or whoever — or if you were me, you planned to make something beautiful and frame-worthy and instead made some sort of abstract thing that looked like it came out of a dumpster and were thus left creatively unfulfilled — all because someone else had the one pair of left-handed scissors.

But yes, Valentines! Me! I really dislike Valentine’s Day! But I am really into the idea of making my own cards! (Take that, Hallmark!) And I do like the idea of sending cards to friends and family, especially since they won’t be expecting it at all. (Well, NOW they will. But still.)

I wasn’t thrilled with what I found online, though I was intrigued by a Valentine’s card kit with pre-cut hearts and fancy paper and ribbon. I almost bought that, but then thought, “Why buy a kit with things you probably won’t use? There’s an art supply store nearby, I bet they have what you’d need to make your own cards.”

So at lunch I went with Stephanie to the art store nearby, found a bunch of lovely colored card stock and matching envelopes, and shimmery hearts, and glitter glue, and a lovely pen, and I was helped and rung up by a friendly and delightful man who seemed just as excited about this project as I am (his first comment: “Just like Julia Child!”), and who, after I cracked a joke about having to make a “Choo-Choo-Choose You” card for someone special, busted out with all sorts of other Ralph Wiggum quotes to the point where I had to rest my head on the counter because I was laughing so hard. That guy has made me a customer for life. Seriously my favorite part of this project so far, and needing to share just this one part of my day is what prompted this whole post. I should make him a card.

All my supplies, by the way, cost twice as much as the one kit would have — even though I got a discount for being so awesome. (I assume that’s what the discount was for. I suppose it could have been because I was purchasing more than 25 units.) But I don’t care. This is going to be so much fun. I’m going to run to the 99-cent shop tomorrow for paper doilies, and this weekend I’m going to start designing some cards.

Seriously. I’m so giddy.

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3. Learning to Code

I joined Code Year 2012 yesterday. Not (necessarily) in an effort to improve myself, by which I mean my chances at finding full-time or more freelance employment, but primarily because my love for learning new things has been somewhat reclusive of late, unwilling to take chances or risks for fear of … something. Failure, probably. Or that I’d be just mediocre at it. I don’t know why my brain can’t be satisfied with just being OK at something, but no. It insists I be brilliant at all things from the moment I try them. My brain is the worst.

But one of my new year’s resolutions is “learn something new,” and I was in the right sort of curious mindset when I read a brief article about Code Year yesterday morning, and actually I do want to learn more programming stuff to help my job prospects, and I’ve always been interested in how the Internet gets made. When I was still in graduate school I taught myself HTML, just for fun. I think I was drawn to the mathiness of code; after spending so much of my mental energy grading papers, creating lesson plans, reading difficult theory books and writing both my dissertation proposal and a slew of conference papers and proposals, it was so nice to write something not abstract. Something that, if it didn’t work, had a concrete solution.

I got to the point where I could create a really crappy website from scratch (and did, and wow was it crappy. Not, like, Geocities or Angelfire crappy, but close), and I started learning about CSS and then Javascript before I had to turn my attention to what I was supposed to be doing, and I never got back to it. (Unless I had to tweak something in an already written CSS, which I am occasionally called upon to do. Usually with my own websites with their pre-existing themes.)

So I’m pleased that Code Year 2012 starts off with basic Javascript programming, and even more pleased that I find it challenging yet doable. I’ve finished the first week’s eight-part lesson already, and I cruised through the first five or six parts, tricking my brain into thinking I am a programming GENIUS, and then I got stuck. And I didn’t get stuck in a “how do I do this” way, I got stuck in a “why did that work” way. I got the go-ahead to move on to the next lesson, but I could see that the code wasn’t right. Dan had to explain later that while my version of the code was technically correct, I had it ordered incorrectly.

He also had to explain why this particular code would be useful to programmers. The code had to do with numbers, and it had to do with counting, and I failed to see the practical applications — unlike the other bits of code that prompted a user to enter his or her name. I see how THAT would be applied to a website or program immediately. This is a thing that has always been true of my learning process: Not only do I need immediate hands-on lessons (which is why Code Year is proving to be my favorite tutorial so far — I get right in there), but I also need to have concrete examples of why something might be useful. I’m sure getting a program to count up or down would be tremendously useful, but I’m not a programmer and don’t have a programmer’s imagination and I can’t think what I would use that code for. And it’s embarrassing to admit that, for surely there are programmers among you who are scoffing right now, but I’m fine with putting this here because it will serve as an (embarrassing) reminder when I finally cross over that barrier preventing me from seeing what you all see. Until then, I’m sticking with “Yay, I got the computer to count to 5 and then stop. So there’s a thing I can do now. Woo?”

I got super-stuck later on, after I’d finished the lesson and moved on to the extra project designed to test my new skills. I was supposed to write a program that would eventually count to 20, replacing each number divisible by 3 with “Fizz,” each number divisible by 5 with “Buzz,” and each number divisible by both 3 and 5 with “FizzBuzz.” I guess this is a a fairly well-known word game, though I’ve never heard of it before, and it’s also apparently a litmus test for programmers on the job hunt to filter out those who can’t program at all. In which case I think it’s absolutely fantastic that Code Year is using it in their very first lesson. What a fun inside joke.

I ran into my other learning process trap, though, in that I knew what I was supposed to do and I understood how I could make it happen, but I kept overlooking something in the code and couldn’t figure out what. And then, a few times, I was able to figure it out. And when I got the program to write “FizzBuzz” instead of 15? Huge endorphin rush. You’d think after all my time spent playing video games that I would be used to that by now, but the spark of pleasure that happens when I figure out how to get out of a room in Portal is very different from what happens when I finally figure out the answer to 63-Down, or when I finally get the code to work. I finally got the code to work! I made something happen on the Internet, sort of! That was cool.

And the people behind Code Year, the people of Codecademy, totally get why that’s cool, and that’s why their crash course in programming is loaded with rewards like badges and achievements. I love it. I have points! I don’t know what the points mean, maybe they’re totally arbitrary, but I have them! They’re mine!

I wish I hadn’t whizzed through the week’s worth of lessons. I want to learn more! I want to work ahead! Ah, the last obstacle in my learning process. You’d think it wouldn’t be an obstacle, but it is. I can’t slow down once I get started on something I’m excited about, and this sometimes leads to breezing past things I should pay more attention to. Something to keep in mind as I move forward.

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I’ll be honest: I thought about blogging through the weekend. I did. I thought about it for about ten seconds. Five seconds were devoted to “you should, you should write every day” and five seconds were spent persuading myself that I should take weekends off because weekends mean something to me now. (Not every week, but this past week it very much did.)

The downside of my decision is that I did very little this weekend, and thus have nothing much to report.

We took the cats back to the vet on Saturday, and I’m happy to report that all four are disease-free and in excellent condition. This second trip proved more trying for the kittens and for Gypsy. She spent most of the time under a bench, while Jayne shivered his way through it. Not at all like his usual antic self.

Jayne is not the cuddliest kitten, but I think he’s getting used to being held (and honestly, what kitten loves to be held? They all want to play! And eat! And attack feet! And play more!). He vocally protests most of the time I pick him up, but he doesn’t always squirm out of my arms right away and sometimes, if I catch him just as he’s waking up, he will even purr for two seconds. It’s soft, but it’s there.

He is, however, proving to be extremely entertaining. He almost plays fetch! That is, he will chase after a toy, carry it back to roughly where I am, play with it for a little bit, and then wait for me to throw it again. I have attempted many times to capture this on video, and this is the best I could do.

(I tried three times to upload that video here, but either I couldn’t get the code right or it wound up embedding sideways. So I posted it to Tumblr directly from my phone. Hopefully that will work. Not that it’s so important that you watch it. But it’s pretty damn cute.)

And other than playing fetch with Jayne, all I did was watch TV and knit, which is all I wanted to do this weekend, which is what I declared at the outset (didn’t even change out of pajamas on Sunday. It was ideal). I sailed through Downton Abbey for the second time, in preparation for the second season (which I can’t even start until Thursday, and it’s killing me!) and then watched the second part of The Forsyte Saga (the more recent adaptation), which I recommend for those who need more British period drama in their lives. The first part is on Netflix, which claims to have both seasons, but they lie. At any rate, I’m about halfway through the front to Dan’s sweater — couldn’t take a picture this morning because SOMEONE thought I meant for him to PLAY with the yarn I was holding — but I’m in good shape to be done by my self-imposed 2/14 deadline.

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The best part of my job (which is part-time, as I feel compelled to point out every time I mention it) is that it is close enough to walk there, which saves money on subway fare and provides the exercise I desperately need (so another reason I’m less than satisfied with this part-time thing is that I don’t have the excuse to walk every day, only some of the days, and as you all know by now if I don’t HAVE to do something then the likelihood of it getting done is laughably small).

My commute is about half an hour, give or take — if my walking playlist shuffles only quick tempo songs I can make it there in 25 minutes flat — and it takes me from my brownstone-laden neighborhood (please note I do not live in a brownstone, I just live near them — I don’t know why I feel like I have to mention that. Maybe because I would really like to live in a brownstone), across Atlantic Avenue, and over a few more brownstone-laden blocks in a different neighborhood. Along the way I pass through this part of Brooklyn that I guess is an extension of downtown, though it’s still several blocks away from actual downtown. Or maybe it’s still considered downtown, I don’t know. It’s not the prettiest or most functional part of Brooklyn, there’s a lot of construction going on so I pass under a lot of scaffolding that serves as urinals for both man and beast, and frequently on my way home from work, when it’s already dark, an unmarked van will slow down as it approaches me and then drive off when it’s clear I have no intention of getting in. But sometimes I see it stop for other people who do get in, and frankly the whole thing perplexes me. Is this a free service? A gypsy shuttle bus? It perplexed me at first and then I didn’t think much about it, until I read a police blotter story about a woman who was robbed after she got into a van at Atlantic Terminal, to help the driver with directions. (Which is a horrible thing that happened, and shame on the van driver for taking advantage of someone who was just trying to help, but come ON. I don’t care if Louis C.K. was driving the van. You don’t KNOW Louis C.K. Don’t get in his van.) (It would probably kill me not to get into Louis C.K.’s van. But I have nothing if I don’t have my principles.) (Shut up.)

So I’m on my way home yesterday evening, it’s a little after 6:00 pm and it’s dark outside, and I have my headphones on and the volume turned up loud enough to drown out most outside noise but not loud enough to not hear a car honking to warn me it’s about to mow me down (this also happened last night, even though I had the right of way, but that’s not my story), and I’m stopped at the light at the corner of Bond and Schermerhorn, and out of the corner of my eye I see a diminutive older woman approach, and it becomes clear that she’s saying something to me.

I assume she’s in need of directions (because why else approach me?), so I hold one of my headphone speakers away from my ear and say, “Excuse me?” And it turns out, she was just wishing me a happy new year. OK, so that’s nice, but now she’s not just a diminutive older woman, she’s also a crazy person. And I realize she also kind of looks like the old crone from Buttercup’s dream in The Princess Bride, the one who tells the court to “bow down to garbage!” So picture that woman, only more New Yorky.

But what she looks like isn’t important, and it’s still a nice gesture crazy or not (but you know why it’s crazy, right? Because you don’t just say “happy new year” to a random person on the street unless it’s between the hours of midnight and 5 am on January 1, and after that you only say it to strangers with which you have some sort of other transaction, like a cashier after she rings you up. You don’t start a conversation with it. Right? I’m sure I’m right on this), so I wish her a happy new year back, and not in a dismissive, “yeah, you too” way, which is probably what I should have done, because even though I am returning my headphones to my ears she is still talking to me. And I try to ignore her this time because the light is about to change and I am tired and I just want to go home, but she positions her body in front of me and she is way too close. So I pull my headphones away from my ear again and she’s asking, “What’s your name?” And I try to wave her off because this is no longer a conversation I have any desire to continue, but she’s BLOCKING MY PATH and cars are still flowing freely over Schermerhorn so I can’t push her aside to cross the street, and I am trapped and I become a little flustered because she’s bullying me now. “Why won’t you tell me your name? What’s the big deal?” and I shake my head at her and cry, “What does it matter?!” — but then I give her a fake name, and this, by the way, tells you something about me: I get irritated when asked things I’d rather not answer, but then I’ll feel obligated to answer them anyway, but I won’t answer truthfully out of resentment over the entire situation.

The woman doesn’t hear me say “Debra” (my go-to fake name, although now that you know that I’ll have to choose a new one), but she moves aside and as I brush past her I hear her say, “Fine then, I’ll just call you Stupid.”

Fair enough.

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