Archives
June 2000

June 24 --- Introduction Link This is my first attempt at keeping thoughts online. I am doing this mainly as an attempt at frequent writing, and I hope that anyone who reads will enjoy. Mainly the entries here will not be "today I did ... " recounts---because a lot of my days would bore anyone else to tears!

I am relatively new to the whole notion of keeping personal thoughts online. I read my very first online journal in November 1999, and have become utterly hooked on the phenomenon. I would like to avoid controversy, yet I don't intend to write entries where the most stringent thing I say is, "I like certain rose colors better than others!"

I do not plan to make disparaging remarks about friends. Nor do I plan to discuss private things that it would embarrass me for anyone to know.

If you know me, and have found this on your own, it means I didn't think to tell you, or that you just surfed on in before I had a chance!

I am good about responding to e-mail, by the way.

So who am I? I'm a single woman with her very own small business, which I hope will have its very own website soon. I do editing and proofreading (and it is easier to proofread something someone else did, in case I present you with typos), along with online research (for business use; not offering homework help), and some word processing. I also crochet, and am making efforts this summer to sell more of my work. Oh, and I offer repairs to crocheted or knitted items.

In the middle of all this, I'm learning HTML.

I'm a college graduate, with a Bachelor's in Psychology.

The most important lesson I learned from my mother was every person deserved my respect, and I theirs.

I'm pretty liberal---don't confuse single with old maid---and I don't have much patience with narrow-mindedness.

I love music of all sorts, and play piano and flute. I also love computers and related peripherals. For a very long time I have known I loved to write. And I'm an avid reader. I also am quite fond of dogs and cats.

And at this stage in my life, I make no apology for liking fiction and watching television. Nor do I apologize for much else that doesn't impinge on anyone.

June 25 --- Polite Link I'm from the South. Southerners are generally regarded as being polite, and we usually mean the polite. But we are known to be polite even in moments when we're being insincere about it...case in point: last week my apartment complex' parking lot was being resurfaced. Since it's a fairly large complex, the resurfacing was being done to segments of the lot on different days. According to an earlier notice, management was supposed to let us know the day before our segment was "up." They had arranged to tow any cars (at the owners' expense) left in the way of the resurfacing.

Well, in my segment's case, no notice was given. I was awakened on resurfacing day by a member of the management, banging on my front door and demanding that I move my car NOW. So I put on enough clothes to be legally dressed, grabbed my keys, and moved the car. While I was walking back to my apartment, I noticed there were two neighboring cars being towed. And the manager in question was standing in the middle of the lot. As I passed him, I went into full polite. I told him I was sorry for any inconvenience, then added,"But you know, we weren't notified yesterday." I enjoyed watching him squirm as he thanked me for moving my car. He was squirming because the lack of notification meant the management would have to arrange payment of the towing fees, and it was probably his fault.

A friend of mine has suggested that there are only about 275 jokes circulating in e-mail. I'd like to know why I seem to get them ALL in one day's mail, from one person. Of course, being polite about it means you delete the damned things, one by one, after opening, just in case the sender knows how to check the status of mail sent. Politeness does NOT require separate "Thank you!" e-notes sent for each joke, in case you were wondering.

As soon as I came in to write this, a young man came to my front door, seeking donations for some sort of art project. Since I'm dealing with the financial vagaries of freelance work, of necessity all my charitable donations this month are going to the "Becky Benevolent Fund," so I said, "Sorry, no." Which led him to believe that opening a small folio and showing me a photo of some painting or other, while asking me again, would by some miracle open my wallet. Umm, it didn't. At that point, he had used up his quota of my politeness, so I said "NO!" a bit louder, and shut the door. Think he got the message that time?

June 26 --- Upstairs Link I live in a ground-floor apartment, and have a neighbor upstairs. I believe there's a requirement in the lease for that apartment: tenant must be willing to stomp constantly when on the premises. And so far, all the tenants who have lived there have been good at fulfilling the clause. This year's version is a thin person, but a damned fine stomper. He must have sore legs from all the work he puts into the performance of his duties.

This one specializes in the stomp-start. That's the art of slamming both feet down on the floor, then stomping across the room. If this were an Olympic event, my neighbor would get the gold.

Over the years, there have been several stupid people who lived upstairs. The worst of them was a tenant who called maintenance to repair a leaky pipe, then stomped out to work without leaving maintenance a key to her extra lock. Mercifully, it was a slow leak. But anywhere there was a conduit for water to come visit me, it did! Ever seen a smoke detector drip?

I sorta-deliberately don't make friends with the upstairs neighbor, whoever it is. Let's just say it's easier to yell curses at the occupant of the space above the ceiling if you don't have plans for coffee with the accursed.

June 27 --- Thanks for Calling! Link During the days before I started doing strictly freelance work, I had a job that was of the administrative assistant type for a non-profit organization. Some of the phone calls I dealt with led me to conclude that my name and number(s) were written on a wall somewhere, with the notation: "Call Becky if you need to be stupid. She won't mind!" A few of the better ones:

---the man who called me one rainy morning to ask if I knew we had holes in the building roof. He had been at the top of a hill the day before, happened to look down at the building, and had seen holes. I could tell from his tone that he really expected me to go up on the roof and fix things NOW. Well, I was pretty sure what he had seen, and a call to the property guru confirmed it---the building had a flat roof and the holes were indeed there, leading to the downspouts. Thanks for calling!

---I was also the honcho for parking permission. We occasionally allowed people not involved with the organization to use our parking lot. One college professor who was disinclined to pay the school's parking fee thought she could use her teacher-voice to force me to give her a permit. I told her we had a lot of applicants, and she was on my list. (Please note I failed to mention it was my shit list.) Thanks for calling!

---along the same lines, a member of the organization who wanted a long-term permit for a friend made the decision to call me at home one day when I was sick. He had been told I made such decisions and was out. Did his friend need it that day? No. Did I tell him to call the office later? Yes. Did he, and did his friend subsequently get the permit? No and no. Thanks for calling!

---a woman who called to ask me to go call her husband to the phone; he was in the building for a meeting and she wanted him to run an errand on his way home. I would have been happy to help her, except she got confused and called me at home on a weekend. Thanks for calling!

.....but please don't call again!

June 28 --- Friends Link Having friends is one of the nicer things in life. I am privileged to have some really good ones. Some I've known for a very long time, and some are more recently come into my life. Each friendship is unique, of course, but they are all important.

Something the Internet makes easier is keeping in touch with friends. And sometimes it lets you make new ones. You run across a thought that catches your interest, you send e-mail, and if you're lucky, you wind up with a friend.

Today I'm going to talk about one of my newer friends, brought into my life courtesy of the World Wide Web.

As I said in my first entry, I am a relative newcomer to the whole notion of personal websites and online journals. The very first personal website I ever came to was David's . He is a gifted writer who has a good handle on what's important in life. He's also a fine web designer. And he can tell you pretty much anything you want to know about grocery stores!

David and I share North Carolina as a home state, though he's in California now. I knew pretty early on in my reading that this was someone with whom I wanted to be friends. So I wrote, saying pretty much just that.

He's been very supportive of my efforts in writing (including this one) and other creative pursuits. And he let me have the honor of doing a guest entry ("Mr. and Mrs. Grocer") for the grocery site. So it is my pleasure to link to my friend David and tell you to go read this man's stuff.

June 29 --- Random Link Last night we had a several-hour rainstorm. It changed the tenor of the evening from one of midsummer to that of a midwinter's night. A night when the major pleasure was being inside, with a hot meal. It made me grateful once again for the pleasures of having a safe, comfortable place in which to dwell.

Today I spent a lot of time playing computer solitaire, waiting for information to arrive via e-mail for one of my clients. Every time I signed on to check for the information, there was indeed mail. I can now tell you where to get a car loan (no, thanks, don't need one), where to buy a computer (have two, thanks), how to lose weight (mind your own business), and that my ISP has a new access number I might want to try (no, since it's a long-distance call for me). What I want to know is where to apply for a job as a spam reader?

I love being my own boss, though sometimes the potential clients of someone working freelance have some unrealistic expectations. Here's an example: a would-be client called the night before she had a major research paper due. She was unable to grasp why I wasn't willing to start typing her paper later on that night, because, as she said, "it wasn't due till 9:00 tomorrow morning." She had lost her chance to hire me before that comment, though, by scolding me for my home phone line's being busy during the few minutes before she was able to reach me. I did remember to be polite when I reminded her that the business day had ended several hours earlier. I did take her name and number, to remind myself that I didn't ever want to do work for her. Sanity being more important than money, you understand.

June 30 --- Big Four Link First, thanks for the fan mail! Y'all have really made me feel welcome on the Web!

This afternoon, Bill Guthridge announced his retirement as head coach of the UNC-Chapel Hill basketball team. I certainly join all in wishing him a happy retirement.

News of his impending retirement leaked last night, on local tv news programs. And that got me started thinking about The Big Four.

One of the things you learn about pretty early in North Carolina is The Big Four. That means four universities, folks. They are Duke, N.C. State, UNC-Chapel Hill (Carolina), and Wake Forest. For the record, I'm a Carolina grad, and proud to be just that.

All the "Big Four" are known for academic excellence, and for doing great things for this state and nation.

I'll admit that back in the Dark Ages when I arrived at Carolina, I was surprised that Carolina and Duke (which are twelve miles away from each other) cooperated so much in matters academic. My goodness---you could register for a class AT THE OTHER SCHOOL! Then I found out the two of them joined with N.C. State to set up something called Triangle Universities' Computation Center (this is the Research Triangle area of North Carolina BECAUSE of the three universities' being so close to each other). And TUCC, the mainframe shared by the schools, was the first computer I ever worked with, courtesy of a sociology class project.

But when sports are involved, there are some pretty fierce rivalries. And I stay the hell out of them! I came to Carolina for purely personal reasons, not anything against any other school.

I am, of course, pleased when Carolina wins something. But I can get pretty happy for the other schools. Can't help it, folks, it's in my genes. One of my grandfathers went to N.C. State; the other to Duke (when it was still Trinity College). My father did part of his undergraduate work at Carolina, then went to Law School at Wake Forest. My mother wisely avoided the fray, and went to Salem College and on to Columbia University's Teacher's College.

I know some of my fellow alumni must question my sanity.