the everyday adventures of sabrina

* twork isn't sure /me likes this batch of coffee beans.

<twork> but, better than nothing.
* niqui will soonly finish up her bootstrap coffee and will have a chance to try the new stuff

<twork> would this be the kernel coffee or the init coffee?
um, how about sched coffee?

<twork> "sched"?

<niqui> ps -fp 0!

<twork> oh, yeah. solaris weenie.

<niqui> lignux dork.

<twork> solaris weenie.

<niqui> ...shut up.

<twork> tool of the man.

<niqui> well-compensated by publicly-traded companies.

<twork> you? since when?

<niqui> ...shut up.

...

<niqui> hmm. yeah, i dunno about this coffee.

for a long time, i’ve wanted this one specific painting. it was priced at $3000, thus waaay out of my price range, thus i sort of sat miserably and waited for it to sell to someone else. which it eventually did, not all that long ago. i was very sad.

but today i got an email that prints were available. and they were much more affordable. so i bought one. and it’s being shipped second day air. and there’s a framing shop about four blocks away from my house. IT COULD BE HANGING ON MY WALL IN TWO WEEKS. i am so, so happy about this. i can’t even tell you. SO. HAPPY.

i see we’re back to the insomniac part of our program. that’s nice. i enjoy sleepwalking through my day.

hopefully this phase doesn’t last three or four months like it did last time.

it all began in the fifth grade, with an obligatory st. valentine’s day card — undoubtedly bearing the countenance of some cartoon character — from melissa weinstein:

i could have forgiven that transgression, and the thousand that followed it, had it not become so ridiculously common.

i admit that my name is not common — either first or last. ‘downard’ i would be slightly more inclined to forgive misspellings/mispronunciation of if only people wouldn’t always misspell/mispronounce it the exact same way. yes, i know that there is a word in the english language that bears striking resemblance to my surname; however, that word is not my surname no matter how much you would like it to be.

and that’s just half of the problem.

little known fact: i will answer to samantha and stephanie in addition to sabrina. why? simple: it’s easier than fighting back. for some reason, the name sabrina slips out of people’s heads like sand through a sieve, and it is most frequently replaced by those two runners-up. i gave up correcting people long since.

(you’d think that, with two major motion pictures and a television series sharing my name, the name might stick in your head. you would be wrong, sadly.)

when i was younger, i used to promise myself that as soon as i turned eighteen, i was going to change my name to something people wouldn’t screw up all the time. of course by the time i turned eighteen, i was too stubborn — if you can’t figure out my name that’s your problem, not mine.

and sometimes it even works out to my advantage:

at the risk of making this blog too meme-heavy, based on recent activity:

THREE NAMES YOU GO BY: i go by only one name.

THREE SCREEN NAMES YOU HAVE HAD: sdownard, viv, véronique.

THREE PHYSICAL THINGS YOU LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF: biceps, my scars, the curve of my hip.

THREE PHYSICAL THINGS YOU DON’T LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF: combination skin, triceps, my weakened wrists.

THREE PARTS OF YOUR HERITAGE: midwesterner born and bred, fourth (?) generation english-american, grits with butter and salt.

THREE THINGS THAT SCARE YOU: falling, my cats dying, my grandmothers dying.

THREE OF YOUR EVERYDAY ESSENTIALS: lip balm, cell phone, toenail polish.

THREE THINGS YOU ARE WEARING RIGHT NOW: flannel pajamas, ralph lauren blue, bare feet.

THREE OF YOUR FAVORITE BANDS OR MUSICAL ARTISTS: pink floyd, the who, radiohead.

THREE THINGS YOU WANT (GOT) IN A RELATIONSHIP: don’t bitch if i don’t do the laundry, like my cats, let me be solitary when i want.

TWO TRUTHS AND A LIE (in no particular order): i am pedantic, i don’t care how i look, i enjoyed high school.

THREE PHYSICAL THINGS ABOUT THE PREFERRED SEX(es) THAT APPEAL TO YOU: hands, facial bone structure, not-long hair.

THREE OF YOUR FAVORITE HOBBIES: planning road trips, listening to music, futzing about on the internet.

THREE THINGS YOU WANT TO DO REALLY BADLY RIGHT NOW: lose fifty pounds, go swimming, curl up with a book without worrying that i’ll be too sleepy for work tomorrow if i stay up late.

THREE CAREERS YOU’RE CONSIDERING/YOU’VE CONSIDERED: teaching high-school french, unix system administration, middle management.

THREE PLACES YOU WANT TO GO ON VACATION: france, germany, russia.

THREE KID’S NAMES YOU LIKE: christian, jonathan, betty.

THREE THINGS YOU WANT TO DO BEFORE YOU DIE: become colloquially fluent in french, live abroad, understand the metric system.

THREE WAYS THAT YOU ARE STEREOTYPICALLY A BOY: i like action movies, i adore muscle cars, and i can’t flirt for shit.

THREE WAYS THAT YOU ARE STEREOTYPICALLY A CHICK: i like shoes, i get crushes easily, i wear lip color.

THREE CELEB CRUSHES: kevin spacey, vince vaughn, gillian anderson.

THREE PEOPLE THAT I WOULD LIKE TO SEE TAKE THIS QUIZ NOW: eddie izzard, vladimir putin, don baker.

from hubbit:

1) Total number of films I own on DVD/video:
140 on DVD, apparently. (if you don’t count the fact that apparently i loaned out Evil Dead to someone, as i’ve been trying to figure out what the hell i did with it as i haven’t been able to find it for months — if i loaned it to you, dear reader, will you please give it back?) i got rid of all my VHS tapes a while ago, except i kept “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “Twin Peaks.”

2) The last film I bought:
“Starsky & Hutch,” season 3, i think.

3) The last film I watched:
The Shawshank Redemption (on cable), Die Hard (on DVD), … uh, i can’t remember what big-screen film i watched last.

4) Five films that I watch a lot or that mean a lot to me:
how about “five films that never fail to entertain me”? Ghostbusters, Speed (shut up, it’s fun and i’m not making you watch it too — “oh, dennis hopper, quel méchant! et jeff daniels — jeff daniels est déjà mort!“), Die Hard, The Shawshank Redemption, and Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

5) Tag 5 people and have them put this in their journal:
i shan’t! it’s my blog and i shan’t! so there!

KITTEN!
WAR!

it’s like crack. only with kittens.

my god! could it be? i actually understand what the hell this sendmail stuff is supposed to be doing? with all the milters? and all the rewriting? and all the hardcoded mailers?

does that mean that this project might actually be finished someday?!?!?!?

30″ cinema display. And that’s the closest i’ll be getting to one of those babies.

sometimes, the hardest part about making up with a friend after a fight can be what he tells you about yourself that you don’t want to believe — complimentary things, i mean.

i wish i could believe that i’m somehow as cool, in ways that transcend the shallowly physical, as my friends make me feel sometimes. eamon, i’ll love you forever and without reservation for what you said on friday about how i looked. but the thing is that i still feel unworthy and that i’ll never get what i want, even if what i want is just another ordinary, shallow human with funny hair and silly pretensions like me.

oooh, waxing emo again. gotta stop that. okay: in the sheerly silly blogger form, i bought three CDs today! yay me! the magnetic fields, the charm of the highway strip; frank black and the catholics, pistolero; and public enemy, muse sick-n-hour mess age. special thanks to dgc for getting me hooked on the magnetic fields, which is whom i’m listening to right now as i write this. because i’m not sure, in all frankness, i would have lived my life as happily or completely without owning “i don’t believe you” (off i). which, incidentally, hearkens back to the original topic of this entry. it might sound awful, like i’m incapable of believing in myself, but it’s also kinda true.

i don’t believe you.

if you would like some handmade soap, send me your snail-mail address and i’ll send you some. i reserve the right to limit this offer in the event that i suddenly find myself faced with spending $100 on boxes and postage. :-)

email: blog at ziggurat dot org.

specify: unisex, girly, or dontcare, for fragrance choice purposes.

I’m abusing my moblog privileges outrageously, I know. I just love this view normally — on a sunny day — and the fog over downtown is gorgeous too, even if the picture probably won’t do it justice.

won’t everyone please welcome my new treo 650, and the attendant return of the moblog.

HOORAY!!!