Blue Eyes Designs

I now have brand spanking new (and apparently much coveted) Gmail account. I’ve
been poking at it for a while now and I really like the user interface. It’s the
only webmail client that I actually like, although that doesn’t mean that
I would’t switch to a local client the minute they release one.

Thinking of correspondences in terms of coversations is initially quite a shift
in thinking, but it’s an idea that makes much more sense then “sent” and
“recieved” – it’s a super-threading sort of thing to which I’d not been exposed
before. The “labels” idea is externally not very different from named folders,
but labels allow you to apply more than one description to a conversation and
classify entire conversations at once. How cool is that?

One issue on which I’m still undecided is that of the advertisements. To be
completely honest, I haven’t really noticed them all that much, and when I have,
I haven’t found them all that relevant at all to the contents of the email.
Strange, coming from Google and all. As they take up screen realestate that’s
usually blank in webmail clients away, I don’t care much. At thi spoint I still
trust Google not to obscond with any important emailed info (i.e paypal etc) so
I’m not gonna complain.

Anyway, enough yammering about gmail. The address:

drlynn@gmail.com

Bet you saw that one coming…

I hate television. That’s not to say that I don’t love certain television
programs, but I HATE television. As I sat watching an episode of Star Trek:
Deep Space Nine* the other day, it occured to me that I was neglecting other
things, like food and my chores, to sit in front of this glowing box. I passed
it off as being engrossed in such a wonderfully written episode (and it was
wonderfully written) but I’m finding that that’s not the cause.

Today I found myself sitting down in front of the TV again, this time as a way
to occupy my eyes while eating my dinner. (Reading doesn’t work so well when I
have to keep setting it down/taking my eyes away.) When I finished my meal, I
found myself just sitting and staring. Even when whatever it was that I wanted
to watch was over, and some stupid sit-com came on, I sat tranfixed. I was
thinking the entire time about how I should doing things like puting my dishes
away, updating this thing, finishing my unpacking, but I didn’t move from my
seat. TV had made me stupid.

Part of me actually wanted to stay and watch that tripe. Why? I cannot say. Its
much harder to work up the will-power I guess, when all you have to fight is
yourself. It’s certainly not helped by the fact that most of the evening time in
my house is filled with television. Most of the dinner-eating is done in front
of the TV, the evening time when Dad reads the paper and such is done in front
of the TV. I don’t want to watch TV. I don’t need to watch yet another history
channel program on midevil castles. I want to read my book. That’s certainly
something that I can’t do in front of the TV. I’ve tried, but no matter how
stupid the program may be, I can’t concentrate. This leaves me with a dilemma.
Leave and neglect my ‘family time’ or stay and be most unproductive?

*sigh* and so I ramble on, when really, what I mean to say is that the solution
to my problem is TiVo. Record what I want to watch, watch it, then walk away.

What about the rest of the world? Well, I think that I’m one of the sorts of
people that watches TV for the content, the stories and the ideas. I think there
are a lot of people in the world that watch for the social (vicarious and
literal) aspects of it. It seems to me that it’s the latter aspects, and their
primary carrier: the sit-com (followed closely by the reality show) that makes
people so sluggish (myself included). I’m saddened to think that there could be
fantastic artisans, engineers, writers, or civic leaders out there, unknowing,
because they’ve been spoiling in front of the TV. (Don’t even get me started on
computer and console games…)

Thank you for sticking with me this far, those of you still reading. I suppose
this turned in to nothing but a rant with the general thesis “TV is bad.” I
can’t deny that, but I wish I could do something more than whine about it. I
suppose that the first step is to affect the world around me. Maybe tonight,
while Dad’s reading the paper, I’ll ask him to turn the TV off. Maybe you should
too.

* I used to be a Star Trek freak. After not being exposed to it for about three
years, I’ve returned to a point where I can enjoy watching it, appreciate the
writing and story-telling and only every now and then wish I lived in that 25th
century.

An entry containing an update on the house reconstruction, family matters, etc.
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I just woke up from a very… interesting… dream that’s left me with a very
strange feeling. I’ll spare you the details (one of the most detailed I’ve had
in a while.)

I was getting married. Because we’d been at school, (and they were paying for
it,) his mother and my mother (mostly) planned the wedding. It was the day of
and I was just finding out the all-important details like what the invitations
looked like (adorable! like old books with “classical” cats. perfect.) what my
bridesmaids were wearing… etc.

It took me a long time to get ready because I had several dresses (two of which
were reversable?) to choose from. Since I knew the ‘color’ of the wedding was a
soft blue, I went with one that fit. By the time that I got everything on, I was
running late for my own wedding. I ran through the building (I think we were
getting married in a highschool with a couple gyms – each party had one to get
ready and the wedding was in the third – kinda like IMSA, actually… creepy)
and got there just in time to walk down the isle (which was off center, and that
really bothered me.) As I got to the front, I realized that Kyle was late too,
so I didn’t feel so bad.

As things got started, I didn’t recognize the presiding minister, so I started
to get really nervous. I acquired a program and, reading though it, realized
that this was a very, very religious (and long) ceremony that had been planned.
Not at all what I would want my wedding to be about. That, combined with all
the stresses of the day so far sent me crying, then running, from the “church”
around a bunch of corners to collapse in a stairwell.

The only person to come find me was H. H. (of all people) and we talked about
what was bothering me and what we could do about it. We realized that she, with
a couple of our friends, could run a beautiful, more secular ceremony. Feeling
better, we parted – she to explain what would be happening, that we were going
to do this again the right way, and me back to my “dressing room” to put myself
together better than I had been before the run there and the run back out. Then
I woke up.

Emotions in dreams have always perplexed me. I sometimes dream things that I
would never feel in real life and I sometimes dream things that are so true to
what I feel that it’s scary. The emotions in this dream are so strong that I
don’t know what I feel about them. I mean, I was elated, estatic, completely
happy about the idea of getting married. I felt as much love for him as I ever
have and I was just… bursting at the seams. While I can understand why I would
dream about a wedding (C and S and all) why would I dream about my
wedding? Is this really what I feel? I find it funny that it would come about
after K’d upset me last night, though.

I just… wow. I feel so strange. Happy, but perplexed.