Ants

After watching a particularly buggy episode of Lost last night, I had a dream that I kept stepping on and getting bit by these tiny harmless scorpions. The source of this dream material probably has more to do with the tiny but kind of slow ants that have found a home right next to my bathtub through a crack in the sealant. The other day one of them nibbled on my toe a little bit (he died). And I'm concerned about them (the landlady is sending over an exterminator) but in a very kind of lazy and un-panicked way that I don't usually experience when I'm thinking about bugs. But I actually really like ants.

My parents took me to the zoo for the first time when I was two and I spent all my time looking at the ants in the sidewalk cracks, probably equally fascinated by both sidewalk and ants. Because I'm sure we had ants at home, but they just don't stand out really until you have a proper background against which they can be observed. Given the lack of sidewalks in my childhood I wonder if perhaps that trip to the zoo was the first time I'd had a good occasion to notice them?

The ants in my bathtub also remind me of a green wet morning in Laos when it was pouring and pouring, raining so hard. I waited for Sarah to arrive on her scooter after the rain eased, and when she did I took her to the bedroom where I had noticed an unusual number of ants. They were hard to see because the smooth hardwood floors were quite dark, but they were moving fast, along a virtual ant highway. Where I had first noticed them the highway was wide, diffuse, and confused, to the point that it looked directionless. But she found the trail and soon we could see that it narrowed to an efficient stream no less than 10-20 ants thick. And they were carrying eggs. "Oooh" she breathed "Look, they've been rained out of their nest and they're finding a new one." Sure enough, she pointed to the wall, where the highway snaked vertically up to the side of the window to a crack to the outside. It did not take us long to figure out their destination either: a small crack in the tiles near the bathtub. Then we found the queen at the thickest part of the highway. We crouched on either side and watched, our faces close to the floor, in silence for a few moments. Sarah closed the door to the bedroom, "if the Mai-ban finds us she will kill all of them." In that moment I could not think of any worse thing than that.

But the hardwood floor was as dark as the ants and I could not see them well. I grabbed my head lamp for a closer look, but all movement on the highway stopped when I shined it on them. Sarah grabbed the light away from me, "Stop!" she said, "You're confusing them!" And indeed, it was as if I had sliced the colony in two with the light beam. Half continued on with eggs to the bathroom, and the others stopped while the pool of ants coming from the window side grew larger and larger. They were having a serious conference and apparently second thoughts about the way to their new home. Within moments the pool of ants was 4 inches in diameter. They conferenced for a few moments more before heading back towards the window.

"You've just changed their history," she said. "They will remember the great divide of the tribe, perhaps." We stayed to watch the bathroom ants carry the last of their eggs into the crack. Sarah told me that in her house (in everyone's house) there are many colonies. You get to know them, just like neighborhoods. She said she and her roommates once spent an entire day tracking the ants and making a map of the territories because someone had left a mango or two out and the entire house of ants knew about it. But in every day life the Mai-ban comes and cleans up the mango and wipes away the ants for a few hours.

But here the ants are not an inevitable part of our home culture. So the landlady is informed, an exterminator is called, and the contractor wants to know if the ants are indicative of plumbing problems deep within the wall. The ants illustrate that somewhere in this building the seal between the inside and outside world is broken.

My friend did not share in the rebirth of my childhood fascination when I told him the story of the morning. "You let a colony of ants move into my bathroom? Thanks for that."

"Well, only half a colony."

My new tiny obsession

When you're building a model of what could go between Pike Place Market and the Aquarium if you take away the viaduct (take that, Chopp!), you spend hours bent over foam core, chip board, sheets of acetate and tacky glue (ugh! how tacky!), and you sometimes need just the right music to keep your fingers at it until long after the buses have stopped running in the night.

My secret new weapon is bitter:sweet. I heard The Mating Game on Friday afternoon in Office Depot (um yes, I did), I bought it that night and since then I've been in that junky addiction I get for new music. Now I feel like I have a James Bond-ish soundtrack to my model building endeavors. Wellll, maybe not James Bond exactly. More like funny kitchy sexy parody of James Bond cutting up foam core and dancing arouund the design studio when I don't think any one else is looking (seantoki does look sometimes).

Probably my model would look a lot more exciting after a martini or two.

The:thing:about:bitter:sweet:is:this:
Will they pass the Ace of Base Test? When I was 16 I was totally obsessed with Ace of Base for about a month until someone (DTG, probably) astutely pointed out the obnoxious over-use of that SAME beat in EVERY song...er which I had somehow missed until that moment. And when the honeymoon ended, boy did it end! And then I felt a bit embarassed.

I hope bitter:sweet will not go the way of Ace of Base.

I mean, I don't think it bodes well that I "found" them at Office Depot.

At least it's great how this music (on the tail end of Madonna's Hung Up) lets me at least fantasize about getting outrageously in shape and dancing a hole in the floor.

Rarrgh! Watch out! I'll dance YOU!

Sometimes...

Sometimes the best thing to do is go home with the emptied-out day in your pocket before it starts to swallow you. And when you get home, then, after eating a little snacky bit, and starting to feel warm defenses coming back in, it should change outside from dull hail to purple skies and soft gray snow falling under streetlights and making cushions on each leaf. When you go out for a crik-crunchy walk in it, it's best to get your feet wet and nearly fall over for looking up and always up and then to meet someone from Arizona who has just made her first snowman on the sidewalk and her first snow angel in the street. It's also a good idea to find tracks (of cars maybe) and hunt them down, all their quotidienne secrets revealed, aha! I make my own tracks too, to see if you can follow them. Mysterious dark tracks, commas, questions, and snakes. If you can write something on the ground at the school yard that is good too. The best is throwing snowballs at a friendly window to make him come outside for a chat.

If it starts to rain after all of that, however, best go back home. And don't throw snowballs at your girlfriend through the screen door. That makes the hot chocolate harder to make.

I forgot how to use a dishwasher

Yesterday when I went to "help" Magnificent at work, I accidentally ran the dishwasher with diswashing soap, rather than dishwashing detergent.

I remember thinking as I poured it in the little trays (BOTH pre wash and main wash): Wow it's so transparent! and so green!

So massive bubbling ensued. Plus an additional hour of scooping out soapy water and scrubbing the inside of the dishwasher, plus another two hours of running the dishwasher repeatedly and cleaning up subsequent suds and wiping up the floor. I don't know why I haven't made this particular mistake before in my life.* Perhaps because Mom always used the solid detergent flake things? Because I think of dishwashing soap as coming in smaller bottles than the detergent? Because soaps of all kinds now come in designer colors and textures so nothing surprises me any more?

Siiiigh. I dunno.

Both of us are still mystified why anyone would make a dishwasher that isn't even water tight.

Anyway, Magnificent, sorry that I wasn't that much of a help, but I loved spending the day with you anyway.

Your's truly,
Two Shoes (aka Amelia Bedelia)


*Mom, I know what you're thinking; that was the time some one ELSE (not me, and not Magnificent) put Cascade Liquid Gel in the stupid jet dry hole so that all the dishes got clean in the regular cycle and then had soap spewed over them and baked on in the "dry" cycle. But that WAS the two of us who gave up after weeks of trying to clean it and just didn't use the damn dishwasher the rest of the year.

Hung up is off the hook!

The thing is I really truly thought that Madonna didn't have it in her any more. I was so underwhelmed when that song "Hollywood" came out, all tinny and flat.

Then I came across her video "Hung Up" on you tube. Madonna takes this song (from ABBA's Gimme Gimme Gimme a Man after Midnight) and makes it better. (!)

Plus her leotard! Plus the Pink! The stretch sequ*n belts! The shoes! Oh my god can this woman dance; I love how she showcases the other dancers too. Plus I (heart) the boombox. I'm so impressed. Seantoki and I were listening to it on constant repeat last night and drinking beer and dancing in the kitchen. Fun times.

Mom, I really hope you watch this video!....Ooo, plus here is the video for the Milkshake song we were talking about.

And DTG, I don't know why, but I saw this one and it made me think you would find it funny too...tee hee!

And just so you don't think that I'm not studying, here's a special video about, um, urban planning...

Two Shoes

What I'd love to know is...

How can I keep Barack Obama from breaking my heart?

I was reading an article in the Stranger last week that reviewed his book "The Audacity of Hope," and when the reviewer started talking about the return of American Reason I got seriously choked up. I realized that I can simply not conceive of a life where I'm actually proud of a national leader. What if I even loved our president? What would happen then? Would I actually want to work harder to restore some sense of our national dignity?

What if I felt that way about a president and then something happened?

In many ways it seems like it would be easier to stay in a shell of cynicism: "we can't do anything about anything anyway." Of course. Cynicism is just too easy that way.

But I'm with you, Tater.

Let me know your thoughts...

Two Shoes

Possible Research Topics

Making a political statement for incorporating design into regional planning policies:

The impact of politics on incorporating design into regional planning policies

The intricate connection between design policies and balancing ecology with human settlement.

Creating an original regional design strategy for the Puget sound region

The Puget sound urban design team works with the Puget sound regional council to create a regional design strategy for the Puget sound region.

Giving regional design strategies political sussistance

sucotash

Fucking up my professional project

How I sucked at research design

Alon, just give me a 3.0

Then tell me how to do this dumb thing

This is stupid

F this

I’m watching Aqua Teen Hunger Force

Thank God For Tape

I don't know what I would do if I didn't have a trusty roll of scotch tape at my desk. I love the tape dispenser so much. Here's a list of things I have actually done with the tape in the last week.

1) BEST. Slowly pull out the tape so that the line from where it was stuck to the roll is on the serrated edge. Yank down sharply so the tape gets cut in perfect perforation (no tearing of corners) like with tiny perfect pinking shears. Then very carefully fold the tape in half, perfectly, with no bubbles, hairs, or sticky edges sticking out. Then throw it away. Repeat at leisure.

2) Tape a penny. To anything.

3) Use a small length of tape to pick up random fuzz from off my thighs

4) Put a piece of tape on the back of my hand. Watch it wrinkle and smooth itself as I type.

5) Roll one long smooth piece of tape around the ball point pen. Unroll it slowly, folding flaps in half, and tearing off pieces.

6) Use tape to cleverly clean the sides of the keys on the keyboard. All. of. them.

7) Tape over my finger print over and over. Look at the pretty patterns.

Seantoki says that when he is at work he actually works. (eye roll) But he also said someone caught him picking at his head (YEAH!!! A fellow HEADpicker!) and trying to get a small sillicon ball out from underneath his delete key. Whew! That was a relief to know. (take back the eye roll)

Which ones of these activities have you tried recently? Do you play with tape? What are some of the little tiny things you do for distraction at work?