Have any of you ever noticed how certain decisions that seem to make sense to the people making them really make no sense for the people who actually have to carry them out? Yeah. That's the vague statement of the day, but really.

I'm fighting this strong urge to write in the style of "The Mists of Avalon," which I'm almost finished reading for the second time. I'm usually more of a character development type of girl myself, but books that are nothing but plot can be so darn good. It's total brain candy, a 900-page retelling of the Arthur legend in a feminist cast -- and I seriously doubt that an author relying on language and style to hold a reader's interest could pull of 900 pages. Can you imagine if "To the Lighthouse" was that long? Or used phrases like "go thither my lord," or used the same adjective three or four times in a single sentence (as in "on the icy cold evening, she put her icy hands in her cloak to protect her raven hair from the icy wind")? You'd go insane. But in the right context the storyline itself is so strong you don't even notice. I wish I was in my nice decision-less bed reading it right now... some realm whither no mortal makes decisions but thine own self alone...

"We too are so dazzled by power and prestige as to forget our essential fragility.... Forgetting that we are all in the ghetto, that the ghetto is walled in, that outside the ghetto reign the lords of death, and that close by the train is waiting."

--Primo Levy, "The Drowned and The Saved"

Wow. Primo Levi is really amazing -- I read two of his books in college but didn't know he was still alive, or still an active writer. This article is definitely making me want to read more...

Doughnut of my Life, get back to work. You know who you are. :)

There's a new journal entry. It's about babies. Gah.

I was just on the Harry Potter Web site -- it's well done, although it should be harrypotter.sellout.com instead of harrypotter.warnerbros.com. I guess you can't blame old J.K. for wanting to make some (more and more and more) cash, and she definitely gets credit for sticking to her guns about casting little British actors instead of that kid from the Sixth Sense, but I don't think a Harry Potter movie is a great idea. And I definitely don't think manufacturing stomach-turning quantities of Harry Potter Warner Brothers merchandise is a good idea. The beauty of those books is that they're *so* in your head, and I don't want to see someone else's idea of what Harry Pottery looks like plastered all over mugs and t-shirts and toothbrushes and microwave popcorn and your mom. Unfortunately none of them consulted me. Chalk another victory up for the almighty dollar. Sigh.

Why did I start talking about this? Oh yeah -- when you first get on the site they have this nice little Flash intro that has this synthesized, creepy, howly mood music with wind and water in the back. It's a nice touch. But I left the site (and I only have this one browser running) and now I hear the shwooshy music behind my mp3 player. It's a really interesting result... Aimee Mann's singing "Cigarettes and red vines.... whhhoooooshshshhshhh... just close your eyes 'cause baby you never do now... hoot hoot whhhoooWHOOOshshhh..."

A beautiful day in the neighborhood, both virtual and actual. Sara is the best for writing this -- have I mentioned I love her site? Once or twice? :) And it is inescapably gorgeous outside and it's almost the weekend and this thing I'm working on at my job is going well and I'm going to play backgammon while watching bad movies with a friend tonight and I'm going to the kite festival on the mall Sunday if the weather's nice and yeah. I gotta say I'm pleased with life right now.

Speaking of NOW, I was just looking around their site, which is really interesting and has a bunch of great articles like this one, about women and the Web and writing for an audience. Everyone who has a site has thought about this stuff at one point or another, and it's incredibly well-put. Plus I'm seething with jealousy at both the content and the aesthetics of maura.com.

So. I have a journal. Right now I'm relishing the fact that it doesn't look like the rest of my site... there's no reason it should, right? Right. Who cares. And using diaryland is taking the wimpy way out, yes, but it's just really easy and convenient for someone who doesn't know how to set up her own archiving system. Who cares again. You can go read the new entry if you want. And you can email me if you want to contribute a haiku for that little place on the left. That would make me happy. :) What would REALLY make me happy, though, is if I knew how to do that thing where people can type directly onto the page and contribute their own -- does anyone out there know how to do that and feel like sharing?

Hurrah! Let's hear it for our absolutely Kafka-esque, totally inefficient, tax-dollar-wasting judicial system! Hip hip hooray! (By the way, that's probably the most exclamation points that will *ever* appear in a single entry here, especially in a row. But it's really worth it. Being liberated from jury duty is a new lease on life, I tell you!)

Turns out I was indeed selected for a jury, but the trial was cancelled/postponed/whocaresatleastIdon'thavetogoagain. Woo hoo! The details are interesting but I still feel a little sketchy about posting them here, so I'm going to err on the side of safety and paranoia. Suffice it to say that I've never been so happy to be at work in my entire life.

So jury duty. I have it. Here is a list of things I don't like about jury duty:
1. It's really boring.
2. It's so boring it's hard to be that bored.
3. It's not over. I have to go back on Monday.
4. I'm not allowed to talk about the case at all. At. All. Not easy.

A list of things I do like about jury duty:
Um, yeah.
There isn't one. Although I did feel happy when I woke up this morning knowing I could come to my nice office instead of going to the courthouse again, so I guess it's making me appreciate my job. Maybe that counts? Reason 4 (combined with my paranoia that the government would somehow know if I broke its rules) prevents me from talking about it a whole lot so I'll shut up now. But I'm not the happiest person on earth today.

It seems as though some Armaggeddon-type storm is rapidly approaching my office right now. My lovely friend and co-worker and I take a little lap around the building every day so we can get out in the fresh air and gossip about things, and there are these thick, massive black clouds rolling toward us. I love thunderstorms -- I feel like we're in Pre-"Wizard of Oz" Land... hold on to your slippers, Dorothy...

Another entry in the "It's Gotta Be Jersey" category: You know how most states, when you cross the border, have those kind of antiquated big green signs saying "Welcome to Delaware" in nice flowery white letters? With the name of the governor and the state flower and all that? Well, after you cross the Delaware Memorial Bridge, New Jersey has a massive, hideous, highway-emergency-type sign, of the kind they usually use to say "Horrendous traffic-causing accident up ahead, you will be delayed forever". And in red lightbulb-letters, it says "Welcome to New Jersey." Subtext: "Everything is tacky here. It may suck, but we are proud of our crappiness, damn it." Don't get upset, Jersey people (i.e. Harlan)... I know you can't help yourselves... :)

Taking advantage of my aunt's Internet access for an exciting weekend post. Just spent a fun-filled Saturday night doing my taxes with my accounting-professor father. It was actually pretty painless, and I'm getting a little cash back too. Not as much as last year, but hey, what can you do. Who says "hey, what can you do"? Me, apparantly. :) Spending the evening with my grandmother probably had something to do with it -- pretty soon I'll be calling everyone "doll" and spouting off some good Yiddish phrases...

Driving her back to Philadelphia, my father and I got her and her oldest friend, who joined us in our reservation for 12 at dinner, talking about the Depression... I know it's naive to romanticize the past. And I know there was a lot of horrendous stuff (sexism, racism, etc.) that went along with those times. But there definitely is this part of me, despite everything, that wishes I lived in a time of coal furnaces and iceboxes, in a family with 8 kids (Abe, Samuel, Morris, Anna, Harry, Lillian, Jean and Sylvia, in Aunt Lil's case) who sat out on the stoop of their South Philly townhouse on sweltering summer nights and licked the icy cream off the top of frozen milkbottles on winter mornings. When I really think about it I know I'm glad I wasn't around then -- but every once in a while I would definitely trade in my cell phone for a game of stickball, you know?

Almost time to leave the office and head for Jersey, where the relatives live. It's my grandmother's 88th birthday (technically it was Tuesday, but it's being celebrated this weekend). She really is a marvelous, funny, amazing woman and deserves to be celebrated. And she doesn't know yet, but she'll be receiving a Gwen Original Piece of Pottery -- a little pot/jar/whatever intended to keep rings in when you take them off for the night. So it's time for me and half the rest of the civilized world to head up 95... I've got about 4 good hours of NPR to look forward to...

Woo hoo! Let's hear it for BlogVoices. That really was unbelievably easy to install. Oh, thoughts to be shared, the comments to be commented...

Allright, in case you were worried, I think the marvelous Webmonkey and a new HTML book that arrived from Amazon yesterday have joined forces to convince me that stylesheets are not, in fact, difficult to use and that I should give them a shot. As someone who considers herself not particularly computer-ly adept, my life certainly revolves around the damn little buggers. And I do get excited -- like little-kid-in-a-toy-store excited -- when I look at all the possibilities they hold... okay, I'm a dork. Sue me.

It is totally silent in my office right now. Totally. Silent. My office. Actually a newsroom, which is usually full of ringing phones and chattering police scanners and people interviewing and typing and yelling and laughing. It's really sort of lovely, if I can forget about the the reason it's silent -- which is that I'm here after everyone else has gone, waiting for the editor to make that magical phone call and tell me my pages are done. Now it's just me and the steady, calming hum of a billion computers and their various other electronic friends. Buildings are kind of sad when they're empty, but they're kind of dignified, somehow... phone! Saved by the ring before the melodramatic tangent gets any further.

Sometimes (read: all the time) the writers on Salon express things better than I can think of them. Is there anything left to say?

Here's the other thing I tried to say: There are some seriously screwed up things going on in the world today. In no particular order, we've got kids shooting other kids in California, Cheney having a heart attack, and The Storm That Wasn't (at least here). But you know what they say about not worrying about things you can't control -- so I'm just going to concentrate on my little font problem, here. That's the plan.

Oops. Hold on a sec. Something went wrong. What I tried to say is this: Write to me. And help me with this font crisis.

Say, who knows fonts? I'm having a font problem. I just don't get it. Verdana is ugly. Times New Roman is definitely ugly. Helvetica is ugly, albeit less ugly than the other choices. And I feel like I know a bit about fonts from my on-paper design job, but I'm intimidated by Web fonts -- I would love to have something on here that's nice and narrow, a little informal, but clearly legible. It's hard to steal other people's ideas, too, because they're all cool enough to have stylesheets and I'm not. Anyone have any font suggestions? Anyone not have font suggestions, but want to test my new email address that Harlan has been so kind as to set up? No comments:

Clearly the design here is far, far, far from finished -- I suddenly understand why everyone's always unhappy with the designs of their sites... you spend so much time formatting and uploading and tweaking and whatevering, and then you realize you started out without a design idea in your head in the first place. And I think I am already rather sick of orange.

But at least it's a start, right? Right.