"oh sea cucumber..."

About a year ago, I got an email. It was from a web form, and it showed up in the evening, on 10 April 2002.

I remember very distinctly reading the email, being completely flabbergasted, and sitting and shivering for a while afterwards. My roommate at the time, James, and his girlfriend Alison were in the room, and they were ... I think mostly amused at my reaction. It was quite a reaction. I was flat blown away that somebody had taken the time to fully fill out my online date application form, which I'd put up in jest, just to highlight the absurdity of the Tech Ratio and to make fun of myself. Well, Esther filled it out and bloody well (in the free response section) wrote a limerick about the Battle of Hastings, a haiku about a sea cucumber (the directions only specified an animal -- she chose the sea cucumber), and a sonnet about Richard Stallman.

So the rest of my evening that night was consumed with trying to track down this remarkable young woman (she proved to be relatively online-stalkable) and by Wed, 10 Apr 2002 23:46:38 -0400 (EDT), I'd found a few pages and sent an email in reply to her Online Date Request. She got the Grooviest Person I've Met Today Award for 10 April 2002.

Mad props go out to Jennifer (vivianeq) who read git.talk.haiku at the appropriate moment to find my post to find my page and forwarded the link to Esther :) In case anyone was wondering, I've been well pleased with the results.

Love you, Esther :)

(no subject)

In two hours, the Bosstones concert starts. I'm pretty well excited :)

There are about a billion other things to do. It seems like it would be unhealthy to miss a Bosstones concert happening a few hundred meters away, though. It's not every day that one's Very Favourite Band shows up and plays in your back yard.

This is not a happy place, Tech ... it seems, at least to me, like over the past few days everybody's been walking around looking grim and hollow. Very few smiles happening. It probably has to do with the fact that it's all suddenly cold and rainy and dreary, but aside from that, it's hitting the fan, and we're all alternately dug in, panicking, or despairing at the end of the semester... or maybe that's just me. It's like the Black Iron Prison in Radio Free Albemuth (PKD rocks the universe) ... like the physical world, it's not real in any meaningful sense, but... it's all you can see. So it feels real. But there's an outside reality, and the wise know how to ignore it... and Christ knows how to dynamite it into oblivion. And that's a joyful thing.

Reality is a summer in Tallahassee, or at least a morning spent in a particular state park, a morning that's hot in that particular way that only happens when you've got a ten miles lined up to do ... that's about the best sort of hot :)

... and Esther's coming tomorrow :) :) ...