2001 solstice

[http://dummy.us.eu.org/robert (Robert)]

Happy Winter Solstice!

In case you lose my e-mail address or contact information, please
confine your searches of me to:

http://www.whowhere.com
http://www.findmemail.com
http://www.emailbook.com
http://www.everythingemail.com
http://everythingemail.net

You can look me up by my work address/e-mail or my home address.  Of
course, you can always use keywords, too, which should be pretty
obvious. (See http://dummy.us.eu.org/robert/keywords.html .)
(Note that you may get a sneakemail.com address for me.  I use this to
control SPAM.)

Also, you should be able to find me through www.hotbot.com,
http://www.cutedoggy.com, http://www.vivisimo.com, or
http://www.savvysearch.com using appropriate keywords.

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I've been feeling better psychologically this year.  I discovered that I
_can_ have too much chocolate.  It seems to increase the pain in my hands
(my RSI), and the caffeine makes me much more angry.  I'm working hard at
being mellow despite all the tension and impatience around me here in
Boston.  I feel proud when cars honk their horns at me.  The longer they lay
on the horn, the more relaxed I feel.

You'll notice that I have a different e-mail address
(http://dummy.us.eu.org/robert).  I finally bought a domain name.  I had
been thinking about this particular domain name for a while and was happy
that it was available.  In any case, I bought it to see if there was any
way on Earth that somebody would pay me to hack on open source/free
software.  (The web site has not yet been set up.  Under construction, I
suppose...)

Noelle and I went to London, England earlier this year
(March).  It was cold, but the rates were good (although
they're probably much better now). It snowed a few times
while there, but it quickly evaporated.  (Needless to say,
the weather in jolly olde England was much better than
anywhere in New England.) It was my first trip off the
North American continent.  They kept wanting to look at my
passport -- I guess I look suspicious?  (And this was
before September 11th!)

I also went to Seattle with my parents, mostly to visit my
sister, but also to visit 'Greeners there.  Some of it was
boring, and my nephews were quite frustrating at times,
but it was good catching up with everyone's lives there
('though, due to my annual mailings, most of them already
knew about my life!).  I really loved Seattle and
reinforced how much I missed the west coast -- there
people are just so different.

Speaking of travelling, Noelle and I will be in Ca from January 19th
through January 28th.  We'll be flying into LA, but will be spending time in
the SF Bay Area.  If you didn't already receive an e-mail about this, and
you want to know about the future details, please contact me.

We went to New York City on December 1st (Noelle's birthday).  We stayed in
Milford, CT (my dad's home town) and took the train.

We spent New Year's day (and New Year's weekend) at
Kripalu, the yoga and health center in western
Ma (Lenox).  We actually didn't enroll in any
yoga programs there (I can't do yoga due to my hands); we
did the Rest & Relaxation program.  We got to go sledding
there (that was a blast) and we attended a massage 

Amazingly, we finally got the roof leaky fixed.  It's nice
not having to worry about where the water will come out
next.  We also managed to get a back door storm door
installed.  This may help with winter heating bills. (It's
undoubtedly due to the economic slowdown.)  I'm looking
forward to getting more repairs done this Spring.  I may
end up doing it myself if I get laid off or my company
goes under by then.  You never know what the future will
bring.

My work had a 15% lay off in early September.  I was not among them, but it
did leave me as the sole vegetarian in the company.  (As many of you
probably don't know, only 40% of all workplaces accomodate employees with
special/religious-based diets.) In any case, if any of you knows of any cool
Linux-based jobs, please tell me about 'em.

Noelle's garden was fruitful this year, at least, tomato-wise.  (Tomatoes
are fruit, right?) We also get a lot of string beans and pole beans (given
to us by our neighbor).  The kale didn't do as well this year, and there was
no arugula (rocket) at all this year.  We got a couple of pumpkins which may
very well become pie!

In my part of the "garden" (just the small area around the front of the
house), the lamb's ear is doing well, but my hen&chickens (a type of leek)
doesn't look so hot.  The St. John's Wort never came back.  The ecinhactia
does continually well.  We'll probably spread the seeds around to see if it
can beat out the weeds.  Also, Noelle planted a tomatillo plant against the
house and it did remarkably well.  In fact, it was alive 'til the end of
October.  We got several tomatillos, but they were all very tiny.

The Plimoth Plantation Rare Breeds and Heirloom Seeds
celebration was held in May.  This year, due to the
outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, there were no animals
there at all.  But we bought more New England native
plants and seeds there.

We went frequented the Coolidge Corner Farmers market over
the summer.  The timing was kind of a pain 'cause they
close up at sunset.  (Being a public transit traveller
doesn't help, either.)  But we managed to get some good
local veggies and bread.

We managed to get to the Ma-based Garlic & Arts Festival.  This
festival had even more varieties of garlic than the Vermont-based one.
Needless to say, I went hog-wild.  We should have enough to last through
winter (at least).  While out that way in Ma, we worked our way
to the very corner of MA, to North Adams to visit the Ma Museum
of Contemporary Art (MOCA).  I didn't like it quite as much as the
Lincoln-based Decorduva Museum, but it was still pretty cool.

In May, we took a long trip out to the Asparagus Festival
in western Mass.  It was highly disappointing -- we ended
up having to buy some asparagus at a road-side stand.  But
we wouldn't have discovered the Garlic Festival if we
hadn't gone.

Boston No Kidding, the social activities organization for
people without children, and the project I had begun soon
after arriving in Boston, has had many ups and downs this
year.  The high was in October when a member had a dinner
party (in Concord, MA).  I think 14 people attended.  And
other events have been getting organized without me, which
I'm happy about.  For some reason, Lori Copeland, the
other person who was helping me with stuff, has virtually
disappeared.  However, another person, Anita Kite has
appeared and has been helping me out.  (She and her
husband moved to the Worcester area from Cupertino, CA, in
the SF Bay Area.)

The Lucy Parsons Center is Boston's radical bookstore.
I've been attending more talks there this year than last.
Back in April, Noelle and I attended a talk about
"Summerhill", the radical, free school in England.  Of
course, we're not going to have children, but I do believe
that education is important.  Certainly, the Boston school
system totally sucks, and I'd like to have an opinion on
what the alternatives might be.  At the beginning of
November, I went to a talk about "The Future of Anarchism"
there, too.  Mostly, Barry Pateman (from Berkeley) talked
about history of anarchists and anarchy.  Someone from The
Spartacus League went there and tried stirring up trouble
("what have anarchists actually accomplished?", etc.) but
it didn't work.  I think this particular set of anarchists
were too mellow :).

I've been more lazy about my pro-choice activities this
year.  I did take Good Friday as a vacation day so I could
help defend the Brookline Women's Clinic.  I've still been
consistently showing up the second Saturday of every month
to protest the anti-choicers in front of the local Planned
Parenthood.  (I am really happy that there's a clinic
close by.  That's something I never had in Berkeley.)
Although I did do one tabling event (Jazz River Festival
-- no, I'm not a jazz fan), I haven't participated in any
NARAL call-ins or surveys this year, 'though Noelle and I
attended the Chocolate Madness fund raiser earlier this
year (despite the fact that there were no vegan desserts
which I could eat).  And I've been completely out of the
loop with the Boston chapter of Zero Population Growth.

I haven't changed my bicycle much this year, although my
horn finally died and I put a more winter resiliant
ping-bell on instead.  My horn actually died while doing a
Critical Mass Bike ride -- I kept beeping during the
parade and it kept getting quieter and quieter.  I wish I
could have a horn 'though, too, because often cars just
can't hear my "ping".  I've been generally riding a lot
more and I plan on riding more this coming winter than
last winter.

Noelle and I have been attending very few Boston Vegetarian Society events.
We've only attended a few third Sunday talks -- they generally have not
sounded that interesting.  The most interesting was the talk about the WTO,
NATT, and FTAA and animals.  We haven't attended any first Wednesday dining
out events, mostly because Noelle gets frustrated with the picky vegetarians
who attend ("Does that have wheat in it?"  "Is that fried in oil?").

Here are some of the notable movies we've seen this year:

Waking Life


I finally signed up for high-speed internet.  I wish I had done this long
ago because it ameliorates the problem of the severe lack of good radio
stations around here -- we listen to good radio over the internet.  I figure
that signing up for high-speed internet is sorta like getting cable, but for
radio instead of TV.  (Getting sound to work under Linux was not easy.  And
RealPlayer is a real pain.)

In an effort to phase out my desktop computers, I bought a
laptop off of ebay.  I am very happy with it.  I installed
Windows (yuck!) so I could run my speech recognition
software.

I made a presentation to the Boston Voice Users group, a
loose users group of speech recognition technology in
mid-November.  I've only been using this particular
version of the speech recognition software (Dragon
Naturally Speaking Preferred 4.0) for about 2 months.  So,
it was pretty a sketchy, unorganized presentation.  And I
learned a lot from the audience!  In any case, I agreed to
do it since I was the only one in the group with speech
recognition installed on his laptop.  I got a number of
compliments, so I think it was helpful.

I've been occassionally going to a massage therapist (masseuse) in an
attempt to help my hands.  I'm not exactly sure whether it's helping or
not.  I also bought another massage tool (in addition to my existing
battlion), the ArmAID.  It does give me immediate relief, but I'm not sure
whether it's helping my tendinitis long-term.

I've been fairly regularly attending the informal RSI
Support Group held at a bookstore (fortuituously) on my
way home from work.  I settled my workers comp claim years
ago, but I attend mostly to help other people.  (Although,
I have gained some information for myself there
occassionally.)

I made a sad discovery this year: the cheap refillable Sheaffer fountain
pens which I completely depend upon for my organizer system (and also
because they are easier to write with with my RSI) are no longer being
produced.  I made a mad dash to buy up all the refillable ink cartridges I
could before they finally disappear as well.  (Apparently, Bic bought
Sheaffer and, I guessing, completely obliterated their refillable fountain
pen line :-( .)

i took an Assertiveness Training Class during the summer.  I figured that,
due to stresses and frustrations at work, that it would be a wise decision.
Unfortunately, I feel it wasn't helpful at all.  I think I would need an
"Assertiveness Training for Highly Sensitive People" class for it to be more
effective.

Evergreen had a Boston Alumni Gathering which I attended.
It was held at Glen Kreikenbach's house in Somerville
this year.  He and his boyfriend have a way cool house.
It is huge and is in a very nice neighborhood.  Noelle and
I were wowed.  We also met some nice people there, but for
some reason, we never heard from any of them :(.

Last January, three months after it happened, I got my
refund from the City of Boston after overpaying my
property taxes by accident.  I guess I'm not surprised by
the level of bureaucracy in Boston at this point.  I am
surprised that I got my my refund at all!

The Birkenstocks I bought when I drove out to Ca
with Brian in 1987 finally died.  The soles had to be
replaced.  I went ahead and had the soles replaced, but it
wasn't until the next day that I remembered that most
Birkenstock soles are made with leather!  Since it was too
late to change, I let it go through, guilt and all.  Next
time (in 14 years?), I'm just going to buy a new
non-Leather version.  (By the way, I was told that
Birkenstock supports anti-choice groups.  I did some
on-line research and have concluded that this is an urban
myth.)

Noelle spent a few days with my parents at Newburyport
during the first week in July.  I only spent some time on
July 4th itself.  It was nicer than staying in Boston on
the 4th.  All sorts of people come around 'cause they
wanna go to Boston Pops thing (something that I, needless
to say, have absolutely no interest in attending), and
there are lots of loud sounds throughout the night making
it impossible to get any sleep.  By contrast, in
Newburyport, the gentle rolling of the waves kept me sound
asleep, sorta like one of those expensive relaxation tapes.

I haven't been to any anti-war rallies yet, but I did attend an Anti-War
Teach-in sponsored by Boston Anarchists Against Militarism.  It was fairly
sparsely attended, probably because there had been an Ecofeminism Conference
going on at Boston University and another teach-in at Northeastern University.
Anyway, it was mostly interesting, but with G.W.'s approval rating being so
high, it's unlikely that war in Afghanistan will cease any time soon.