Journal

Gender Roles

There are lots of things that I like that are traditionally considered feminine. For example: big poofy white wedding dresses. There are lots of things of things that I like that are traditionally considered masculine. Like pipe tobacco smoke (which is because I have memories of my dad smoking a pipe when I was a really little kid and he played with us a lot).

I don’t reject wearing things, or decorating my house with them, because they fit one gender role or another. I simply don’t care about gender roles; if I like something, I wear it, regardless of whether it fits with society’s conventions or not. I intend to get married in a big poofy wedding dress, and if that doesn’t fit with your image of me, then you don’t know me very well.

So when it comes to the subject of purses: I just don’t like the way they look. I don’t carry one because it’s a visual that I don’t like, regardless of what the gender role of it is. If I carry a purse, I look like an old lady, or a soccer mom, which has a lot to do with the purse in conjunction with the size of my butt. It just doesn’t look right on me.

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Chicago Pictures

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We wound up our long weekend on Monday by going to Chicago with Stephanie and Lisa to visit the Art Institute, do a little site-seeing, and shop at the Fluevog store for some super cool new shoes.

Art Institute
Fluevog Store
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The Importance of Sleep

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Harvard study on the importance of sleep:

Van Cauter also showed that sleep-deprived subjects had reduced levels of leptin, a molecule secreted by fat cells that acts in the brain to inhibit appetite. “During nights of sleep deprivation, you feel that your eating goes wacky,” says Stickgold. “Up at 2 a.m., working on a paper, a steak or pasta is not very attractive. You’ll grab the candy bar instead. It probably has to do with the glucose regulation going off. It could be that a good chunk of our epidemic of obesity is actually an epidemic of sleep deprivation.”
…
Your mother was right: You’ll get sick, become fat, and won’t work as well if you don’t get a good night’s sleep. So make time for rest and recovery. Stickgold likes to compare two hypothetical people, one sleeping eight hours, the other four. The latter person is awake 20 hours a day, compared to 16 hours for the first. “But if the person on four hours is just 20 percent less efficient while awake, then in 20 hours of waking he or she will get only 16 hours of work done, so it’s a wash,” he says. “Except that they are living on four hours of sleep a night. They’re not gaining anything, but are losing a huge amount: you’ll see it in their health, their social interactions, their ability to learn and think clearly. And I cannot believe they are not losing at least 20 percent in their efficiency.”

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the nine reasons we don’t do what we should

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Via Lifehack: a great article on why we don’t get stuff done that we should.
Fear
Lack of Self-Confidence
Lack of Knowledge
Trying to Do Too Much Alone
Trying to Do Too Much
Loss of Self
Lack of Energy
Lack of Reward
It Can’t Be Done
UPDATE: the more closely I read the article, the more I like it, and think it’s important. There are some really great things here that I need to learn.

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Art Car Day

Yesterday’s fun in Louisville was pretty exhausting. We got up very early to try to make it in time to see the art cars outside the The Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft, on Main Street in Louisville, which is one of the really interesting, beautiful areas of town. It’s part of downtown Louisville, and is filled with art galleries, small storefront shops, cafes and the Louisville Slugger Museum, which we visited on a previous trip. We only spent a few minutes in the Museum using the restroom, unfortunately, because there were some awesome clocks by Randall Cleaver and by Ross Brown I really wanted to see more closely. But there was so much going on that it was hard to stop and peruse much.
We met up with Stephanie’s friend Lisa who drove up from Durham, North Carolina. Stephanie became friends with Lisa through the large New Beetle car show they attend every year in Roswell; Lisa drives a silver biodiesel New Beetle called Spacepod.

Spacepod in Louisville

Spacepod in Louisville

We also met Lisa’s friend Sarah, who had one of the art cars in the show, called Undersea Mah Jongg. It’s a blue sedan covered with under water decor including fishes that play Mah Jongg on the hood of the car. It also features a bubble machine that tricks out the underwater theme by giving you the impression you’re deep-sea diving. And driving behind the car while it’s producing mass quantities of bubbles is pretty entertaining.

Undersea Mah Jongg

Undersea Mah Jongg

There were 20-some cars there, and some other interesting vehicles, like a giant rat fashioned out of a tiny motocycle, and a riding mower converted into an artwork with a working ferris wheel on the back.

"That Car!"

That Car!

motorized rat

motorized rat

Ferris Wheel Lawn Tractor

Ferris Wheel Lawn Tractor

Louisville has several instances of public art similar to the New York and Chicago art cows. They have numerous horses (for Derby days) decorated various ways by different local artists, and this year on Main Street they also had giant heads decorated as well.

Derby Horse

Derby Horse

public sculpture

public sculpture

After checking out the cars at the Museum, we drove with the cars through Louisville in a small parade, where they ended up in a church parking lot where people came and talked to the drivers and there were prizes for the best car. Sarah won third place in the people’s choice contest.
We were all pretty beat after the parade; so we visited Lynn’s Paradise Cafe again on this visit, to get some air conditioning and much needed rest. And later we said goodbye to Sarah at the hotel and Lisa caravaned with us up to Indianapolis.
Photo Set: Kentucky Art Cart Weekend 2005.

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Errors

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Ever have one of those days where you make mistakes and EVERYONE points them out to you? Family members, co-workers, complete strangers on the street stop you to tell you your wrong?
You do a ton of work and get 7000 things perfectly correct, perform miracles and move mountains, but you overlook one thing and people just have to point it out and make it an issue. You find yourself constantly explaining your actions, and you get to a point where you just don’t want to interact with anyone any more, or do anything, because you’re sure you’ll fuck it up?
I’ve been having that for the last three months.

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Open-Heart Surgery on TV

Battlestar Galactica: on a recent episode, Captain Adama was shot, and was starting to code blue. Not having a defibulator handy, the medic opted to crack open his chest and massage his heart to restart it. Immediately after the procedure they show him lying on the table, with very few monitors around, with a simple tube in his nose. The scar from the surgery was too high up, it started at the base of his neck, and it looked like a simple red mound, not sewn-together flesh, as it should have looked. It should also have a lump at the top of the scar where a hematoma forms, and there should be other scars where drainage tubes would be inserted, etc.
I know the show is set thousands of years in the past, when their technology was far more advanced than ours (according to the show’s mythology) but not a very convincing portrayal of the surgery, nonetheless. I’m betting that, contrary to what it would be like in real life, he recovers soon and is up and about giving commands and being active.
Wonderfalls: In one of the episodes, a security guard from the gift shop has a heart attack during a robbery. In the cut outtakes of the show, the guard returns later after bypass surgery to show off his (very unrealistic) scar.
Heck, costume & makeup guys, you can find video on the internet that not only lets you see a surgery in progress, it shows what the scars looks like immediately afterward and at various points during the recovery process. There’s no reason you should not get the scars right on a TV show.

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Weekend Update: King Kong at IMA

Stephanie and I saw King Kong with Dan and Doug, Josh, and David and Garrett on the Terrace at the IMA. It was great fun; the sound was much better than in the past, and I love seeing movies with Dan and Doug; I haven’t done that much recently, and I miss it. I spent a few minutes in the giftshop of the IMA while I was waiting around to buy tickets. They don’t carry as many art books as they used to, but it all looks very nice. I’m looking forward to visiting the IMA to see exhibits.

George and Timmy enjoy Kong

George and Timmy enjoy Kong

Photo Set: Pictures from the King Kong.
On Saturday, I got a lot of weeding done (I filled my entire trash dumpster with weeds) and managed to put a few items on eBay, so I rewarded myself with playing Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets on Xbox. It’s an older game I got used, but it’s a lot of fun. Stephanie and I caught up on watching Big Brother 6 in the evening.
Sunday morning, I mowed the lawn for the very first time since my surgery. I felt fine and really had fun doing it. I love mowing the lawn. I also did more weeding and cleaned up the side of the house where we broke out the stairs a bit. There’s lots more to do there, but it looks better. And I spent the afternoon at Stephanie’s house helping her and her dad get her basement organized and building shelves for her VW collection.
I’ve been feeling much better lately; like I did before the surgery, only with more energy. There were times before where I was doing something active and I felt like I was climbing a steep hill; now I can do the same things and have energy left over. I’m not as strong as I used to be; I can’t lift things like I could before. But that’s just because I was fairly inactive for four months. I’ll regain muscle as I keep working.

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