doing so incessantly can be hazardous

I think I could listen to Chopin's "Minute Waltz" on repeat about ten hours a day for the rest of my life. It'd encourage such marvelous decorum; were it in a movie soundtrack, it would accompany a scene of, say, some British fellow taking his tea and coming to a premise for a novel as he scribbles on a napkin.

I found it in testing Smurfer's new music menu and upload GUI. Ah, it was a wonderful programming project; I could only have found it more pleasant had it been a professional job. Intelligent people who just haven't bothered to learn programming make the most delightful managers, and Smurfer was very appreciative to boot. Also, I've realized I'm quite yellow about programming: something as creative and flashy as a DOM-based music menu suits me perfectly. Old-school Javascript-based client-side includes disappointed my impulse toward green elegance, but I couldn't be bothered to learn newfangled XMLHTTP requests just for one job. (Yeah, I will. Soon.) And both do degrade very gracefully lacking Javascript.

It was sort of funny writing the songChange() function, actually. I first tried grabbing the embed object with getElementById(), then setting its src attribute to the proper URI, even telling it to Play() when that didn't work, but to no avail. Testing showed that it was, in fact, remembering the new src, just disregarding it entirely. Time for drastic measures. Wrapped the embed in a div id="musicBox", then told it to throw away all the musicBox's children and append a new embed element with each songChange(). Quite amusing, a music box in an apparatus designed to shake it to bits and rebuild its entire mechanism. Ah well. It works, at least. (It's particularly effective at using up my entire bandwidth allotment.) And I didn't have to resort to the innerHTML property, retch. The GUI, on the other hand, is a wonder of graceful, intuitive design, though the backend Perl's a little sloppy. Amazing functionality I discovered: Firefox updates the source code to reflect DOM changes. Seriously, try it. View the source, change the song, reload the source. Divine.

But yeah, song's brilliant. Apparently the Piano Society people rock: free classical mp3's. I've taken to many needless trips into the hall, theoretically to make nachos, but actually just to dance. I don't know how to waltz, unfortunately, so it looks more like a rejected ballerina traversing a cluttered floor before bed after a long night at the pub, but ah, great fun.

Anyway, chronological stuff. Ummmm, immediately after my last entry, 'Brozy broke up with me. Yeah, big gasps and such. No great catastrophe, though; we attended Jassa's wedding reception together (congratulations, Janssen and Bart, and thanks for the food!), and I still seem to spend most of my time outside the house in her company, if admittedly largely by my own doing, offering to help move and whatnot.

Oh, the reception story rocks, actually. First, our crazy travels en route. (Spray means driving randomly. We left Provo at 7:00 and arrived at 9:00. Oh, and it's absolutely freaking impossible to draw arrows with a trackpad.) As you can see, we very nearly ended up in Park City at one point. We also wandered all the way up to Foothill, where I finally admitted I was lost and pulled over for wifi access. Immediately as we pulled over, an old woman ran out of the house up to our car and asked us to come inside, where her equally agèd, Parkinson-afflicted sister had fallen. It became obvious that old women, despite birdlike bones, are no sacks of feathers; I would guess in sincerity that this woman weighed 250 pounds. Yeah, fair bit for a dead lift. You'll please note, though, that barbells neither 1) constantly shift and slide out of your grip nor 2) moan in fear and pain. This was no happy glowy service project, despite the proffered popsicles of gratitude. (Great band name.) It even made my trachea sore.

Ding, please turn the page. Right, breakup. I'll include a bit of emo I wrote shortly thereafter, if you'll permit.

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It's funny. I left one thing out of my last entry, a dream I had Monday night. I dreamed that I was back home with the family, lying on the kitchen floor, listening to the pleasant babble as everyone tried to talk at once, as they always do. My German Shepherd walked into the room. Hobbled, rather; she has hip dysplasia, and always appears now to move forward by willpower alone, dragging her hind legs forward in shaking tugs, with the same nobility but none of the grace she displayed as a young dog running back and forth between family members to keep us safe when our little flock dispersed on walks. Amie's her name, French for "friend," but "guardian" would probably be better; she always retreats back to her blanket in the living room once she knows everyone's protected. This time, though, she walked up to me and, haltingly lifting paws one by one, lay down directly on my chest. No one else noticed. Done eavesdropping, I now listened only to her breathing as it slowed and finally stopped. "Mum," I said, "Amie's stopped breathing. Do you want me to try to bring her back?" She gasped and ran over, but before we did anything, Amie opened her eyes and told us to please just let her go, that she was done suffering. I woke up, not in surprise at her speech, but because the dream came to an halt, and immediately, as I realized it had only been a dream, broke down sobbing as I realized that in a matter of months I'll have to say goodbye to her again, but that this time, it'll be not with her reassurance but her struggles as we restrain her to be euthanized.

Finally I calmed down, thought about writing an entry about it, and told myself, "Well, I can see why you restrict your yellowness to dogs. Glad girlfriends can't get hip dysplasia." That afternoon, 'Brozy told me that it didn't feel right, that she wanted to date other people. I didn't pace my hall in misery this time; in fact, I've had no swells of emotion at all. Mostly, I suppose, because it's my fault; where I pleaded with Lacie to reconsider, I recognize that 'Brozy's feelings are almost certainly inspired, and I'm to some measure glad that she isn't following me to destruction. I'm still sad, though. Sad that I've failed her, that everything can't just flow along smoothly, sad that we don't hold hands when we walk anymore. It's not despair, but disappointment; I no longer pretend that this means I'll die alone, and if I do, it'll be my own fault again. I just wish that this time could have worked, that now that I've found someone with whom I've developed a dialect, someone who remembers to lock my car door, someone whose family has, I think, largely accepted me, I could stop looking and rest here, content. It feels funny trying to start a relationship when you already care about someone else; I don't like having memories of courtship to compare. I wish you always just picked up where you left off. And I wish I were as good at honoring trust in real life as I was in my dream.

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I won't pretend I've been so mature as that would suggest; feeling emotionally fragile and rhetorically impotent, I sneered into black of purple for a while, but 'Brozy tugged me out, explaining that she still cares about me and finds my unmarriageability disappointing. That was all it took to leave me content; I don't really object to being a failure, so long as I'm a likeable failure. So yeah, I expect we'll stay close through the reasonable future. Unfortunate, the whole bit, but not crushing; I found my time with her deeply pleasant and psychologically instructive.

Other stuff? Made my little sister cry by cancelling Arizona trip plans at the last minute. Postponed until next week. Oooh, "cancellare" is an Italian word too. Pretty. (KAHN-chell-LAH-ray.)

Also attended two parties. First was a goodbye party for Melyngoch, who's basically the coolest person ever; she spent half an hour ignoring the multitudes of guests to instruct me personally on fascinating linguistic stuff. Deeply appreciated, Melyngoch. (I always have to go back and replace her real name; it sounds too much like a 'nym.) Also talked at length to Petra, a fairly new writer, who came over to talk when she saw me pondering the moon, trying to think of someone in the world whom I know personally and actively dislike. A nice girl and a purple. (Now that's a laudable combination.) Could see myself dating her, actually, insofar as she's almost exactly the same as Lacie, only more talkative. Maybe I'm hurt way too easily by purples, though. And besides, it's not like any girl is going to find me less dysfunctional or be more understanding than does Ambrosia. Need to fix myself.

Was very tired at tonight's party. Ridiculously Cute Toddler's parents made delectable pizza and supplied Costco cake and Brita-filtered water, though, and the orange entertainment was excellent. ('Brozy and I competed to make the fewest open comments, so it felt very much like watching a movie.)

Oh, I got my tires replaced a while ago, though I guess that goes without saying. Cost $200. Apparently my brake pads have regenerated since last checked. Keep it up, guys. Dunno why people are scared of dealing with auto shops; both of my experiences have been surprisingly pleasant. Social interaction, on the other hand, merits fear; it's far easier to act competent than act engaging. Gah, they made me share an interesting personal anecdote at tonight's party. Wait, no. They made me share a personal anecdote. Interesting was out of the question. Even just mentally reviewing social interactions, my heart rate is likely to double; small wonder that, according to John Locke's The De-Voicing of Society, "Perfectly normal people experience a significant rise in heart rate and blood pressure just by speaking or reaing to a stranger on a subject relating to everyday life. Doing so incessantly can be hazardous to one's health. Men who monopolize and dominate conversations are at greater risk for premature death than their softly spoken equivalents, even when no more hostile."

Still excellent four years later, God's response to 9-11, from the Onion.

Some of you may be familiar with the Sugar Beet, Mormonism's Onion. Generally, it's pretty harsh, even with awesome people like Eric D. Snider on board. I really enjoyed the article on boiling frogs, though.

Dannon's Click to End Hunger.

The Eggcorn Database and Pain in the English: learning by error.

Blue Letter Bible. "Blue Letter" in describing Bibles is, apparently, equivalent to "Blue Ribbon" in the pig-raising community; this thing rocks. Found through Feast Upon the Word's excellent resources list.

The Sitepal demo now includes text-to-voice in French and Italian, hurrah!

G'night.