ask

21 days for Dreamwidth, #19:
Any questions from the audience?

Feel free to ask and I'll happily answer, either in comments or in a separate post. (The answer may be "None of your business" or "I don't feel like talking about that," but it's still an answer.)

In fact, I've got a couple left over from last month that I never got around to:

Are you still learning Perl? How's that going?

At this point I know enough Perl to get by, I have a small stable of scripts I can easily modify for my uses, and (most importantly) I know where to look in the camel book when I forget the syntax for whatever regex I'm trying to write. So, not really "learning" so much as "using, on occasions that grow ever more rare."

How were you able to resist naming your blog "Tuckered Out?"

Having a given name of "John" left me with an atrophied sense of humor about name-based jokes, and the "Take Away Tucker" sign at the to-go order counter at Outback Steak House dealt it a fatal blow.

Every place has something, be it an awesome video store or a Chinese place that just does perfect crab wonton. What would be The Place that you'll miss from DC?

The AFI Silver, hands down the best movie theatre I've been in.

If you could send one text message (140 chars, no more) to yourself at any point in the past, how much would it suck to realize that the point you'd pick is before you bought a cell phone?

heh. It'd mostly just be frustrating. "Well, there's... no. Or how about... no. Or maybe... no, not quite. Dammit." To the left, it's not like I'd be losing anything I hadn't just gotten for no reason about three minutes ago, so it wouldn't be /that/ bad.

Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?

... either more drugs, or fewer.

weaving time in a tapestry

I don't know if it's being an Army brat, or having been a student for so long, or just hating the heat in general, but my relationship with the seasons seems to be different from most people's.

Autumn is a time of beginnings. New house, new neighborhood, new school, new classes, new people. The oppressive heat of summer's broken and there are leaves that want scuffing through. Autumn has always been my favorite time of year.

Winter is when the living happens. I've been here long enough to get comfortable and I know what's expected of me. I can just get on with being where I am. The snowfall and the occasional random days off it brings are nice as well.

Spring and summer are for endings and waitings and transitions. February is traditionally when things start to go to hell, and then it all falls apart in spring, and I spend summer picking up the pieces. For a long time spring and summer were the same season to me: bright sunlight, green trees, too miserably warm outside to do anything other than swim or roast.

Of course, the last couple of years have turned all that on its head, culminating in my now making a huge life change in the middle of spring.

I'm pretty much okay with this. I'm tired of my old patterns; I'm ready for some new ones. Like a job where my boss is willing to move metaphorical mountains to keep me, or relationships built on affection, communication, and concern for each other's well-being, or a drive to tell stories that's strong enough (and sufficiently fed by the rest of my life) to overcome fear and laziness and exhaustion.

Summer approaches, but it's not the heavy, stagnant, life-leaching summer I'm used to. It's more like autumn, only with better light and longer evenings.

I think I'll be able to get used to it.