Johann Georg Hainz’s Cabinet of Curiosities, circa 1666. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons During the Renaissance, cabinet of curiosities came into fashion as a collection of objects that would often defy classification. As a precursor to the modern museum, the cabinet referred to room(s), not actual furniture, of things that piqued the owners interest and would be collected and displayed in an aesthetically pleasing manner. Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes is my 21st century interpretation of that idea.
Dear Internet,
The other day I was on the toilet, reading National Geographic as you do, when I had a panic attack.
Let me repeat this:
I’m on the toilet.
Taking a dump.
Reading National Geographic.
Having a panic attack.
I was more surprised rather than panicked about what was happening, and thankfully the attack came and went fairly quickly. This little episode seems to sum up what’s been going on with my brain as of late, which is to say, an even more chaotic mess.
A few weeks ago I was scheduled to see my medicating doctor for my monthly visit and a few days before the appointment, I had irrational fight with a friend online. The fight was not serious by any context, but I was able to step back and see what is going on before it DID get serious. But the fact the fight happened at all was a huge wake-up call. A few days before that, TheHusband made an off hand comment I had been acting “weird,” but he didn’t really qualify it other than he didn’t think things were going well with me and he was concerned.
During the session with my medicating therapist, when I relayed all of this to him, it sounded like the lithium was not working as well as he had hoped. I agreed. He upped me another 300mg, for a total of 1500mg to be split over the course of the day (morning, afternoon, night).
A week and half later, I find myself sitting in the shadows of a room steaming over god knows what.
I got some relief on the first few days after the dosage was upped, but since then I’ve been super lethargic and now overly anxious. The lethargy is destroying much of my productivity because I have zero motivation and will and it’s a struggle to stay awake. I’m bordering on always being on panic mode. That feeling gets intensified when all of these fixes for ffor my brain chaos stop working and the cycle seemingly always repeats itself.
I can’t get any relief and I feel like I am going crazy on fixing my crazy.
Tomorrow I am calling my medicating doctor to get off of Lithium. I’m not sure what has changed with my body chemistry in the last month but I thought the lithium was at least a cure-all for my bipolar and instead, it’s now destroying me. He’s made suggestions of putting me on Depakote to work with the lithium but so far I’ve read or heard nothing but terrible reviews. I’m at the point right now, six months after starting it, that I have not seen enough evidence to continue taking it. A space of her own.
The quasi-fight TheHusband and I are having is about space. Some couples fight about money, some couples fight about temperature control, TheHusband and I fight about space. The fact we have too much of it, it seems.
Throbbing Manor, including the finished bits of the basement, is 3200 sqft. According to my European friends, I live in a goddamned mansion. According to the American contingent, we live in a nice place. We know it is too big, and we also know how we use space doesn’t mesh with the flow of the house. Yes, the house is nice.Yes, we live in a desirable neighborhood. But this house isn’t us. We don’t use the space that is here, instead we hang out in only a few of the many rooms. Because we’re not hanging out in many of the rooms, wer’re not buying any furniture, household goods, or wall art to finish the rooms off. We’ve lived here for 2.5 years and people have asked me for updated pictures and I’m embarrassed to say there aren’t any.
The sunroom (or solarium) has been one of those rooms where we go back and forth on what to do with it. First it was indoor/outdoor furniture to turn it into a cozy reading/hang out area, then it was double it up with plants, then it was get a drafting desk so TheHusband could draw and paint, and I could calligraphy.
In the nearly two years we’ve been having this discussion, we’ve bought three large plants, of which one is nearly dead and we’ve commissioned the handcrafted table that goes over the absurdly long radiator. In the winter, during the holiday times, if we’re feeling like putting a tree up, it goes in here. But any of the aforementioned items I’ve mentioned we were considering on purchasing – we haven’t purchased. The indoor/outdoor furniture is never right for his taste, we can’t find a drafting desk to meet his needs, and so forth and so on. Finally, I decided to take a stand and turn the space into a writing area.
And this is where the argument starts.
TheHusband states I’m taking over space by putting my stamp everywhere (duh, I live here. I should be able to do that anyway!) and I now have essentially two offices. Then he’s pissed because we had to move one of his plants (a lime tree) to another space in the room, but the damn tree is dying anyway. A 6′ lateral move is not going to hasten its death!
Secondly, getting to know myself as intimately as I have in the last six months, in order to cope with my ADHD drug free, I need solitude space of no interruption. This means TheHusband. He says I should just close the door to my office on the second floor, but it isn’t the same. Sitting here in solarium has a different vibe then siting upstairs. The view is better. I’m away from external noise that comes from the other side of the house. The chair is not as comfy so the likelihood of me fucking off while doing work is less likely. And most importantly, I’m close to my books.
The final big reason is we decided to turn the bedroom into a gadget free zone once we get to the point where we move the bedroom TV up to the cabin, forcing us to watch TV in the Rumpus Room. I’m started that process early by moving my laptop out of the room and into the solarium. At least here I can work with minimal interruption.
I told TheHusband if he buys a drafting desk, we buy the indoor/outdoor furniture, or any of the other things we talked about doing to this room, I’ll gladly move this desk back upstairs and live will continue on as normal. My desktop, TheHusband’s old laptop that is wire bound now, is slowly dying so the move may be sooner than I think.
Pro tip: Marriage is overrated.
x0x0x,
Lisa
Johann Georg Hainz’s Cabinet of Curiosities, circa 1666. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons During the Renaissance, cabinet of curiosities came into fashion as a collection of objects that would often defy classification. As a precursor to the modern museum, the cabinet referred to room(s), not actual furniture, of things that piqued the owners interest and would be collected and displayed in an aesthetically pleasing manner. Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes is my 21st century interpretation of that idea.
Life After Life ( Amazon | Local Library | Goodreads)
by Kate Atkinson
Kate Atkinson, along with Terry Pratchett, Jasper Fforde, and several other writers, are ones whom no matter what argument I make to save cash, I always pre-order their books when said boks are released. For Atkinson this year, I found out a friend was going to give me an ARC she had received of Life After Life, so I dutifully canceled my pre-order. Except, I apparently didn’t. The pre-ordere arrived before my trip to see my friend, so I kept it in the hopes I could get it finished before heading to see her so we can talk about the book. It didn’t quite work out that way for it’s two months later and I’m just now getting started on the book.
While I would describe myself as an ardent Atkinson fangirl, I’m only 25 pages in to this title and have no opinion of this offering as of yet. But at least I’m reading, and that’s something.
Watching
Case Histories, Season 2
I found out season 2 of Case Histories was being shown in the UK by accident, even though I had thought I had tapped myself into the places that would keep me abreast of such things. I greedily watched all three episodes in two sittings, and I can’t get enough of Jackson Brodie or who he is or what he does. Sure, sure, Jason Isaacs isn’t bad to look at, but the tortured soul of a man who walks (rather runs) to his own moral code is amazing to behold. I don’t know if there are plans to show it in the US on PBS this year or if there will be a third season or if Atkinson has plans for another Brodie book. I’m really hoping all of those things become true, the Brodie world of Edinburgh is one where I want to live.
True Blood
Speaking of tortured men with complicated pasts, True Blood started its sixth season this past Sunday. To me, TB is always the start of the summer, the days feel better knowing I have TB to watch on Sundays. As for the plot, well, what’s being set up in the first episode of S6 is slow. TheHusband and I raised several eyebrows during the hour and we’re hoping TB picks up some speed (and interest!) during the forthcoming season. TheHusband put forth the show has finally jumped the shark, but I don’t think that’s happened. Yet. I DO wish they would clarify more on Pam’s dick whipped attitude towards Eric, since it’s been made pretty clear they were never really lovers in so much as BFFs during their 100 years together. Pam’s randomly shown weakness for Eric when certain conditions apply (but not all conditions that match, just some) is annoying.
Sons of Anarchy
I had no interest in this show, really, until Beth forwarded me a video of Walton Goggins (Boyd Crowder on Justified) as Venus Van Dam, a transvestite prostitute on SOA. After getting over myself of extreme jealous of how beautiful Goggins makes as a woman, I decided to check the show out. I had been working on finding a nice long show I can get into while I do things around the house, knit/cross-stitch, or fall asleep to and SOA fits that bill. TheHusband, on the other hand, was razzing me that I seem to be haphazardly watching all the FX originals as I come across them (The Americans, Archer, Justified, Louie (TheHusband’s choice), It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (TheHusband’s choice)), but hey! That’s ok. FX has created really great content in the last few years and they are pushing the boundaries of what network television should look like. Other networks better start taking notes.
Nurse Jackie
Just when it looks like Jackie’s life is finally getting under control, a twist. There is always a twist. While I do like this show, this season was definitely not the best and it ranked pretty poorly. Dr. Roman? She just needs to go. Though I do love Zooey’s new love interest and that made me very happy how that panned out.
Fitbit Flex
Lisa-mas was a few weeks ago and presents were still rolling in so I decided to divvy up the reviews over the next few weeks to not overload this post. This week, it’s the Fitbit Flex.
I know Fitbit has been popular around the social sphere for some time, but what got me interested was when Kate and I were discussing fitness regimes and she mentioned the Flex, a Fitbit product designed to be a bracelet with the Fitbit unit cleverly hidden and unobtrusive. I’ve tried pedometers in the past and found most of them lacking. I know some friends have had good luck with phone apps for sleeping and pedometering, but I found this was not a particular good solution since many pairs of my bottoms don’t always have pockets to put the phone in and the way some pedometers are designed to be clipped, also doesn’t work with how my body is shaped.
The line of Fitbit products are designed to track, learn, and help you manage:
Fitness goals
Food consumption
Water consumption
Sleeping
Much, much more
Much of this is done by your input on the website or app but the core information, steps walked/calories burned, is done by the device. You can manage, within the app and website, all of your health needs fairly simply and easily, which is of great interest to me. It is also shower proof and mostly water proof (though, I’d probably take it off for swimming).
What I really loved is the Flex, because it was something I could wear, like jewelry, and only time I’d have to take it off is to recharge the Fitbit unit, which is about once a week. When I wore the Flex to work, one my student workers thought it was a post-modern bracelet, another person though it was a fancy watch. Inso far as design aesthetic goes, Fitbit gets top scores.
TheHusband ordered the Flex and the accessory bands from Amazon, and the items was on massive back order until mid-late July at Amazon and at Fitbit.com. So imagine my surprise when I received the Flex a few days after my birthday! But the accessory bands, which were scheduled to arrive first, still haven’t arrived and are still marked on backorder.
The package comes with the Fitbit unit, two bracelets sized small and large in a single color (you can choose between black or slate, TheHusband ordered slate), charging dongle, and wifi synch dongle. Setting up the Fitbit was fairly easy, as well as setting up an account. I choose to create an account rather then use Facebook or Google as the login. You can also find friends via Facebook/Google but Kate and I found this was kind of a pain in the arse (Kate had ordered another Fitbit product a few weeks prior). In addition to the website dashboard, there is also an app, available for iOS and Android. You can also sync with other products, like MyFitnessPal, which rocks if you’re already using MyFitnessPal to track your food.
Downsides:
You can sync your Fitbit to your phone using bluetooth when you have the app installed, and you can synch the Fitbit when the dongle is plugged into a computer, but you cannot synch it with any other mobile devices using bluetooth. This means if you want to synch it to your iPad or another device, you’re out of luck.
The iOS app is available on the iPhone only, and while you can install it on the iPad, it’s clunky. You also don’t have all of the options available you do when it’s in its native environment.
The Fitbit Flex system includes the bracelets, Fitbit unit, charging dongle, wifi synch dongle, and yet they did not include a pouch or any kind of carrying case for travel. I was able to find a small pouch to use to hold all the accouterments (and have space for the other bracelets), but it just seemed odd the pouch/carrying case was not included or even made available in the store as an accessory.
Going into sleep mode, to track my sleep habits, can be a bit wonky.
The dashboard via the web is different than the app version, which is okay, but some of the options available on the website are not available on the app, which is annoying. This always seems to be the biggest problem I run into with software developed for the web and the mobile apps come later: it’s assumed behaviors are not the same in both places, or expectations, when many of them are.
Overall, I really like the Flex. My goal is to figure out what I’m doing now and then improve on it to get more healthy. I also love that I can sync MyFitnessPal with Fitbit so that makes things easier for tracking food/exercise. Fitbit also uses gamification, which can be fun, but since I’m still pretty low on the totem pole on some things, it doesn’t seem to have the thrill yet. I do like how I want to walk everywhere to improve my total steps per day, but step count on the app is slightly off I’m a spaz and move around a lot without necessarily walking, thus the Fitbit counts those as steps. But so far, out of the other things i’ve tried, this is a really good way to get started getting fit.
x0x0,
Lisa
One of my goals today was to get my ALA Annual schedule in somewhat manageable order before the conference next week since I knew time was going to be precious over the course of the next few days AND I didn’t want to be caught unawares when I got to the conference. After going through the scheduler backwards and forwards numerous times, adding in meeting not on the official list, and food plans, I blanched when I saw how heavy I had booked myself. Some time slots had as little as two sessions planned, others as many as six. All of them, to some degree, equally important.
Originally, like my ACRL pre-conference post, I was going to load up my complete schedule here and so that people could find me and I could easily have it on my phone. Until I loaded the calendering from scheduler directly into my Google calendar and wept. (I apparently also broke Google calendar as I cannot even get it to load right now, and for that I’m sorry.)
So instead most of the below is my pre-arranged breakfast/lunch plans along with my after hours social obligations. If there is a Facebook event available, I linked to it but you should check out the fairly complete list of after-hours socials compiled by my favorite metal head, Lauren, for all the details on the events. As I’m leaving late Monday afternoon, my event calendaring ends around the lunch hour on Monday.
You can find me around the conference areas pretty easily: I’ll be the tall, short haired, person wearing one of my bazillion nerdy tshirts. This is specifically important if you want one of the #libtechwomen ribbons I’ll be handing out while I’m at ALA.
Lastly, if you want to meet up at one of the social events below or on the conference floor itself, you can always follow me on the twitters.
Dear Internet,
Today, everyone is posting about their grand adventures with their fathers, or reminiscing of the ones they had long past. For me, it’s a day of deep sorrow. My pops, Edison (1927 – 2001), circa 1952.
For reasons only my mother knows, she scythed a field of young potential connections between my father and I beginning with my birth, and then salted the earth that owned those stalks so that by the time my father passed away in 2001, he and I were barely on speaking terms and I knew nothing about him. It would not be until later, oh so much later, to find out much of what my mother told me was not actual truths but a series of lies she built around her own notion of truth to protect something she has yet to reveal.
When I was very young, my mother started laying down the path of the potentially of my father having molested me. The actual conversation of what trying to figure out what my mother ment, that stemmed from her lines, began in my teenager years which consisted of me asking and confronting her. These conversations, at least, are still pretty clear in my head even if the outcome at the time, from her lips, was muddled.
There are two things you, dear reader, must know. The first is my parents separated when I was five months old, so the total amount of time, as a child, I lived with my father was less than a year. Due to the custodial agreements, with me now living in the US and him in Canada, I rarely saw him for visits. The second thing you must know is my father is neither an angel nor is he the devil. He could read at an eighth grade level and was working on his high school diploma when he died. He was a recovering alcoholic. He had a very generous and had a big heart. He wanted me to have the world.
According to my mother, during the many trips I took with my father as a child when I would go to visit during vacations, there was whispers being made because of his age in relation to mine – 45 years – and what he could possibly be doing with such a young child? The whispers apparently came from hotel clerks when we would go traveling to amusement parks and such all over southern Ontario and from his landladies from where he was renting his apartments, and other places. Apparently, at one point, police were called numerous times on suspicion of kidnapping and abuse.
When I prod my mother now about these things to clarify and to know, she says she cannot remember. It was a long time ago. Why does it matter? Why can’t I let it go? (Because I cannot remember these instances you speak of mother!)
Then one day I came to the realization that:
If my father had molested me, my mother continually sent me back to him time and time again; she didn’t protect me
If my father had not molested me, she continued to pour the gasoline on this line of thinking for years and she literally destroyed any chance of me having a relationship with him, even after I had become an adult and had begun my own life
It was upon this day of realization, I stopped having any and all contact with my mother for I could not conceiving of a world where a person would willingly send their child off to be hurt OR would lie about unspeakable horrors to appease their own agenda. (We’re not the Lannisters!)
In my heart, I feel like if something did happen, but it was not with my father, but with someone else close to the family. Who? I don’t know. Infamously, I have no memory of my life before the age of 12, sometimes it feels like I sprung up fully formed like Athena.
From what I know now, and from what he was like during my teenage and later years, I never or ever felt like he was a threat to me sexually or otherwise. I never felt like something was “wrong,” only that my mother kept insisting something was wrong.
And I’m still coming to grips that I’ll never know the truth of the whys and hows of my mother’s reasoning to lie. I also am still working on accepting I will never have a relationship with my father and no matter how much I yell I AM SO FUCKING SORRY! to the void of the world, or cuddle his urn while murmuring like an insane person, this will never feel right. It will never be right. No matter how many tears of that are stripped from me, I will never ever have that chance to make it up to him.
This would be the point where I tell those of you with living fathers of all kinds, to love, cherish, and respect them. But I’m too sad and too angry to be graceful. This is not a day of celebration, this is my day of mourning. I cannot be gracious when my heart feels so utterly broken.
x0x0,
Lisa
Johann Georg Hainz’s Cabinet of Curiosities, circa 1666. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons During the Renaissance, cabinet of curiosities came into fashion as a collection of objects that would often defy classification. As a precursor to the modern museum, the cabinet referred to room(s), not actual furniture, of things that piqued the owners interest and would be collected and displayed in an aesthetically pleasing manner. Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes is my 21st century interpretation of that idea.
Burn Notice
We have a love hate relationship with this show: Fiona kicks ass, as you do, and Sam’s “Oh woe! Look at my handsome aging face and note I’m just here to get royalties” schtick is not as grating as one would think, but after awhile, the over arching storyline seems to get more muddled with each passing season. This will be the last season of Burn Notice, which it turns out, makes me sad.
Game of Thrones
If you’re paying attention on the Internet, you know what happens in the second to last episode of GoT, also known as Red Wedding. Because of this, the final episode for season three was very anti climatic and seemed to be almost, but not quite, a throw away. Some things are finally realised, through I do wish someone would just kill Theon Greyjoy and get his bit over with – he seems to be a pretty useless addition (and interestingly, only a very deep back ground filler when they can’t rustle anything else up to kill time) for the show. TheHusband sent me a link after the season finale to a great story on Grantland that is incredibly invaluable to anyone who has not read the series. Despite of some of the many flaws in the show, am I eagerly awaiting season 4? Do bears shit in the woods?
Johann Georg Hainz’s Cabinet of Curiosities, circa 1666. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons During the Renaissance, cabinet of curiosities came into fashion as a collection of objects that would often defy classification. As a precursor to the modern museum, the cabinet referred to room(s), not actual furniture, of things that piqued the owners interest and would be collected and displayed in an aesthetically pleasing manner. Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes is my 21st century interpretation of that idea.
Dear Internet,
Escape to the Country
Set up similarly to House Hunters, the idea behind Escape to the Country the buyer is looking to make a move from city to the country, sometimes from one part of England to another. Three houses are shown: Two that are known, and one that is the mystery house. The buyers can choose to buy any of the houses shown or choose not to buy any – which is the big difference between it and HH. The ending of the episode is not always stainless steel appliances and granite countertops.
Great Houses with Julian Fellowes
Fellowes, he of Downton Abbey, takes his expertise and pedigree and tours the great homes of the United Kingdom, giving not only a historical entree into the house but the people, the land, and the era that surround it. I felt like I was watching an episode of History Detectives except with British accents at times, for I thought Fellowes spent a lot of time on the social history of the area rather than on the house itself. Only two episodes long, the show felt oddly rushed and compact.
Doctor Who
I don’t even know where to begin with this show. The ending? Then the departure of Matt Smith? The whole season felt forced and unnatural to me. Like it was stretching to be filler rather than tell a good story.
Rectify
The season has ended, as it begun, not with a bang but with a precipitous crawl. Will I be watching season two? You bet. (A summary can be found here.)
Dear Internet,
As you do, I was meandering around the web recently and came across a site that had exquisite minimalist detailing for its presentation. I was so struck by how much I liked the design, I decided to dump my current design and start somewhat fresh to mimic what I had seen. Within a few hours, I found a similiar theme and the glory of it is how little I’ve had to hack it. It literally was plug and play. But if some things are broken, please let me know.
The struggle with me is I want the site to be primarily about my content and not about flash whiz bang design BUT I also want people who come here to easily find my contact info, and my other projects without having to hunt/peck too much. So a menu or widgets have to be in order in the theme, at least one or preferably both and they cannot be obnoxious in placement. But it seems theme designers are all or nothing – you can have ALL THE WIDGETS or ALL THE MENUS or you can have nothing. It’s annoying. This is why I warmed up to the current theme so quickly when I found it that it provided both in easy to find ways but did not over power the content.
Speaking of contact, I found out a week or two ago the contact form has been broken, and more than likely it’s been broken since the move over to the new provider. TheHusband is aware and we’re looking into it. If you need to reach me, you can find me via various social media outlets or you know, email me. (Interestingly, while I’ve always had my email address and other forms of contact prominent on the site for years, I received more notices from people via the form. Go figure.)
For those of you who are curious about the huge influx of The Lisa Chronicles entries showing up in the CCCs, I’ve been working steadily through the back log to get the content into site, but I seem to be stuck in 2003 or 2011. It’s the luck of the draw of the backup.
Meandering through 2003 has been smile worthy as well as cringe worthy. There are one or two things I wish I had done differently, made a broader leap into the unknown but I console myself knowing unspoken agreements exist now and that it is understood it was always wanted but timing was always broken.
Love is everything.
x0x0,
Lisa
Johann Georg Hainz’s Cabinet of Curiosities, circa 1666. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons During the Renaissance, cabinet of curiosities came into fashion as a collection of objects that would often defy classification. As a precursor to the modern museum, the cabinet referred to room(s), not actual furniture, of things that piqued the owners interest and would be collected and displayed in an aesthetically pleasing manner. Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes is my 21st century interpretation of that idea.
Eurovision soundtrack
Eurovision is everything American Idol wants to be, but amped up 100 watts and on speed. Nearly 40 countries from around the European block (and then some) compete in a song off where each country submits its own entry to the contest. Over the course of three nights, two semi-finals and the grand finale, all of Europe votes for their favorite entry. The songs are often ridiculous, over the top, and borderline absurd. But that is what makes it so goddamned much fun. We caught Eurovision for the first time in the spring of 2010 when TheHusband and I were on our honeymoon and were able to watch it live. We were entranced. Every year we track down ways to watch, most often on delay. We are seriously considering planning our 2014 vacation around getting to a country to see it live (and by live, we mean live telecast). Eurovision has kindly put the videos of all the contestants up on YouTube for your enjoyment.
Elementary
Much to my chagrin, I found I rather enjoyed Elementary. The gender bending of Lucy Liu’s Watson and Johnny Lee Miller as Sherlock is fantastic, even more specifically Miller’s Sherlock is a mixture of sexualization of the Robert Downey Jr. interpretation and the staid, uptight Benedict Cumberbatch version. The fact that Miller is tattooed and a bit punk rock also doesn’t hurt. The final twist at the end was a twist I certainly didn’t see coming, and it was scarily clever. I dismissed the show based on the earlier trailers and I’m glad I owned up and started watching. I’m curious now how the second season will most definitely play out.
Life After Life (