HomeNovember 18, 1997
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daphniphyllumIf you want to look something up in reference materials, on-line or off, it helps to be able to spell it. I have been spelling daphniphyllum wrong for the past two weeks. Therefore, I found no references. Now that I know how to spell it, maybe I can write the travel journal entry about looking for it on a dreadfully narrow road deep in the snowy woods and living to tell the tale. I've slowed down on getting the travel journal transcribed because whenever I read it, it seems inadequate, dry, sketchy... not Basho. I feel like I did a particularly poor job of diary keeping on this trip. I know I was reluctant to sit down at the end of each day and write, so I tended to jot down a few notes to catch up on later. This was mostly due to my inability to sit on the floor Japanese-style at the low table in our living room long enough to get much done. My legs went to sleep before I could get a good rousing journal entry going. The best entries are the ones I wrote in Mister Donut on the post-Earthwatch Kushiro/Sapporo part of the trip. And those did not involve the search for daphniphyllum (the spelling of which I have now taught the spell checker for future reference). pale violet and cool marbleThe pale violet and cool marble vertical lines here are what I was trying to do on yesterday's entry, but the colors kept coming out wrong. It turns out that the color selection tool works for text color, but when I used it for the background color it plugged in the words "pale violet" and "cool marble" instead of the number. That would have been OK if Netscape understood them, but no. They meant something to Netscape, just not the violet and gray shades I was after. I spent a fair amount of time this morning roughing out a simple web page for Joan-west and this afternoon working on one for the tree atlas project. At least having gone through that with yesterday's journal entry meant that when I started working on a web page for the tree atlas project, I knew how to get the greens I was after. The Joan-west one didn't involve weird background colors in table columns so my new found knowledge of how to get around the color selection tool didn't help with that one. I called and left voice mail for Joan-west to look at what I've done so far before I go down that path. Zsolt won't be back in town until December so I have more time to figure out the tree page. I feel like I should do a top to bottom redesign of my own pages so it looks like I know what I'm doing. When I started the journal I was on a very slow old Mac and using lynx as my browser, so I kept it really simple and graphics free. After I got the new Mac and new tools, I sort of drifted into new designs a little at a time as the need arose, without ever stopping to put together a consistent look. When I started this site, I mainly just wanted to have something on the web to avoid being left behind as technology changed around me. I didn't intend to become a web designer. Graphic design is not my strong suit by a longshot. of brakes and timing beltsOne of the reasons I stuck close to home and worked on web projects today is that the Auntmobile was in the shop all day. I finally took it in to find out why it sounded like the brakes were stuck on whenever I backed up. Turns out the rear brakes were stuck on. Well, at least one caliper was stuck. So the Honda Barn tended to the rear brakes, did an oil change, and changed the timing belt. The timing belt? Yup. Honda recommends changing the timing belt at 90,000 miles (how can I have that many miles on the Auntmobile?) so I decided to do it. The day the timing belt broke on my last Honda is one of the defining traumas of my life, if not the defining trauma. In the dark night of the soul, the timing belt is forever breaking in the freezing cold morning when I'm trying to catch an early flight to Washington, my cat has just had knee surgery, and relatives are dying. It was a dark and stormy night ... No actually it was a frozen New England morning. I shiver just thinking about it. I'm getting deja vu about having already written this but here goes... It is, as I said, a frozen New England morning. I go outside and start the car to let the ice melt a little before I scrape it. I go back inside to locate Ada, the cat who had just had knee surgery, and isolate her in one room so the cat sitter can find her to give her antibiotics twice a day while I'm at Huge Important Customer for 2 days. I hear a loud bang. I look out the window. The car is no longer running. Uh oh! Is this what I think it is? It can't be! I call AAA. They come. "Where do you want us to tow it, lady?" "The Honda Barn". Uh oh! It is what I think it is. Damn. I hope the engine isn't wrecked. At some point in there I started crying uncontrollably. Then I booked a later flight, got Boston Coach to drive me to the airport. Called Huge Important Customer to reschedule one of the meetings for later in the day. Went to Huge Important Customer. Made presentations. Had meetings. Called Thomas from Huge Important Customer to ask him for a ride from the airport to the Honda Barn.. "Oh, your car is in the shop? Kathleen's in the shop too." It just got worse and worse... Thomas was stoned when he picked me up and couldn't find his car. Steven was home sick with the n-th occurrence of pneumonia and I kept asking Thomas when he was going to tell La Madre about Steven's illness. I didn't like being the only one in the family who knew. I said if I ever wrote a memoir, I'd call it "the elephant in the living room" - everybody walks around it, nobody says anything... But at least the engine wasn't damaged, the timing belt got replaced, Ada went down hill after the knee surgery and died of kidney failure a few months later. Kathleen and Steven hung on for a few more years. The car eventually started to fall apart in a thousand different ways and I bought the present Auntmobile, which now has over 90,000 miles on it. And Honda now recommends changing the timing belt as a preventive maintenance item. |
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