I was just browsing around in Gary Denness’ Flickr Account (he’s a blogger who lives in Mexico City) and I was struck, once again, by the realization that being surrounded by good architecture is critical to the health of my soul.

This is all my parents’ fault. Of course. When I was little they bought a huge beautiful Victorian house (this followed living in a tent for a year). The house had soaring 15 foot ceilings and 6 bay windows, 2 of them in the living room. It had 8 bedrooms and 2 kitchens. It had 3 floors, a full basement, a barn, several outbuildings and so much more that any real estate agent would get writer’s cramp trying to take it all down.

But most of what that house had was classy architecture. It was beautiful inside and out. Every surface was nice, from the polished wooden floors to the fancy woodwork around the windows to the plush red carpeting on the wide staircases. There was room for everything and the spaces honored the people in them. It was a house that graced its occupants, it made you feel good. And everyone loved being in that house, it was always full of friends and family and neighbors and stray animals and I even remember a duck, once.

That house spoiled me. No house I’ve lived in since has felt so generous or so gracious. No house I’ve lived in since has made me feel honored like that. But when I see really beautiful buildings I get a taste of that back. And someday I’d like to buy another house that I really, really love. But this one can be a little smaller, that way maybe I can afford to, you know, paint it.

P.S. Check out Gary’s blog: The Mexile.

I know I shouldn’t tempt the fates, but how many more things can go wrong? I’m killing myself trying to please all my web clients but all they want is more and they want it yesterday. I’m now going on 3 weeks without a day off. And my coming weekend already has a client appointment marring it.

I’ve had two real estate deals in a row fall apart, the most recent one due to unethical behavior and a list of stupidities committed on both sides. It’s like a comedy of errors. I spent dozens of hours on this last deal and now it’s all for nothing. Imagine all the great things I could have wasted those hours on?

All this crap raining down is actually amusing and, for once, I’m not finding this depressing. But I am sick of feeling like with my abilities, experience and talents I can’t do better than this? What the fuck? I keep on learning the lessons, so when does all this learning pay off?

When I was in college I learned to be a perfectionist. I learned that the rewards were there for hard work. But since coming to live in Mexico I’ve been getting the message that greed rules and that the quality of the work is not important. All people seem to care about is making money and they will stab you in the back to get it. I’m tired of it. I want to go back to having people notice that I’m actually good at what I do and want to pay me well for it, is that too much to ask?

I’ve long been a fan of Vanity Fair magazine. It’s chock-full of intelligent articles on things I wouldn’t necessarily make myself read (much) about (like the art scene in China and how much the Iraq war is actually costing). And these days, with Bush in office, Vanity Fair is quite critical of U.S. Government, which I fully appreciate. Vanity Fair also has fashion ads which I actually don’t see anywhere else (because I don’t read trashy women’s magazines). So I get to keep up a little with the world of fashion without having to, you know, stoop.

In the back of each issue of Vanity Fair is the Proust Questionnaire; each month they ask a different celebrity to answer the questions. I’ve always wondered what my own answers would be, so we are going to find out:

What is your idea of perfect happiness?
A vacation where I have time to exercise for many hours everyday and still have time to read and to play.

What is your greatest fear?
Being bored.

What is your most marked characteristic?
No idea, perhaps my busy self-deprecating mind.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
I sometimes have trouble saying “no” when I should.

Which living person do you most despise?
President George Bush.

What is your greatest extravagance?
Moving to Mexico and using so much of my savings in the process.

What is your current state of mind?
Happy and tired.

What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
Chastity (make love not war).

On what occasion do you lie?
When the truth hurts or when I am not brave enough.

What do you dislike about your appearance?
My arms.

What is the quality you most like in a man?
The ability to listen.

What is the quality you most like in a woman?
The ability be realistic.

Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
“You know”, “I mean”, there are others I can’t think of.

What or who is the greatest love of your life?
My husband and my daughter.

When and where were you happiest?
The day I married my husband, April 6, 2001, on “the Hill” in Boulder, Colorado.

If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
I would have started taking better care of my body at a younger age.

Which talent would you most like to have?
I always wanted to be a rock star, what do you call the “rock star” talent?

What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Raising my daughter to think for herself.

If you were to die and come back as a person or thing, what do you think it would be?
A cat.

Where would you like to live?
On the coast in Oregon, in the woods in New Hampshire, near my daughter in Colorado, near a trail up a mountain surrounded by wildflowers.

What is your most treasured possession?
My bed, or my hard disk drive, one or the other.

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
Living without hope.

What is your favorite occupation?
Loving my husband, discussing life with my daughter, petting my cats. Not in that order.

Who is your favorite hero of fiction?
Ophelia from Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

What are your favorite names?
Calais, Delilah, my family’s names.

What is it that you most dislike?
Dishonesty and lack of integrity.

How would you like to die?
In my sleep, after a long life.

What is your motto?
“If you are going through hell, keep going.” - Winston Churchill

I feel like a zombie. My internal clock is completely whacked and I can’t figure out if a nap would help or just make things worse.

Last night we attended a small, really nice party. But seeing as we both needed to work today (yes, it’s Sunday, and no, I have not taken that day off yet) we decided to cut out of the party on the early side. We got home before 9 pm, walked the dog and went to bed early.

But the next thing I knew husbandito was waking me up with incessant moaning and groaning. He was, apparently, dying; and it was my duty as his wife to somehow save him. Poor guy was a big mess. Turns out it was a bit of food poisoning. At yesterday’s party he’d eaten a hamburger and had been generous in his use of mayo (using mayo at an outdoor party here is not on my list of wise moves).

He spent several hours writhing in pain, swearing, telling me “estoy muriendo” (I’m dying) and making frequent trips to the bathroom. Finally, around 2:30 am, he was able to sleep. But by that time I was wide awake.

And so, in my sleepless state, I watched the second half of the Star Trek Generations movie. This one features Captain Kirk coming back from the dead (well back from the Nexus) to save the day. There’s little in life that I find more comforting than watching William Shatner overact. And by the end I was finally sleepy.

But at 4:22 am I was awakened by a loud BOOM followed quickly by the squealing tires of a car taking off down the street. At the same time our street’s security guard was blowing his whistle and I could hear him running and yelling. Of course we both woke up and then husbandito went out to see what was going on.

It turns out that someone had thrown a concrete block through the windshield of my next-door neighbor’s pick-up truck. At first we thought it might have been random vandalism. But now I think my neighbor was targeted deliberately. There were lots of other cars in the street to throw things at, and the other cars (including ours) were all lower to the ground than the truck. The truck is so tall that hitting its windshield took a very special effort. Why pick the toughest target?

So now I’m thinking that someone over there must have been schtupping someone they should not have been…or something. Anyway it sucks for them.

It turns out that there was a witness who saw the car leave in a big hurry (the guard was at the opposite end of the street when this began so he just saw tail lights). The veterinarian at the end of the street was performing emergency surgery on a dog when all this was going on. And the dog’s owner was hanging around outside right when the windshield smashers were tearing out of the street. So now the neighbor has a broken windshield and a good description of the car. That’s something, I guess.

Husbandito finally crawled back into bed at 5:30 am, that gave him one whole hour to sleep before getting up for work. Poor guy. I tried to get him to call in sick, but he wouldn’t do it. When he left he looked like he’d been beaten up.

I was able to sleep after he left. But I’m so off-schedule now that I feel weird, I’m even a little dizzy. Maybe I will take that nap…

Remember those old Calgon ads for bath products? Well in Mexico it’s not common practice to put in bathtubs. In fact, in this house our bathrooms are small and square so there’s no room at all for a bathtub, we just have a shower in the corner. But I digress. I want to take a bath because I need to de-stress in the worst way. So I wish Calgon could take me away…

I’ve been killing myself for work lately. I’ve worked part of each day every day in the last 2 weeks, so I’m in need of a serious day off. It might happen next Sunday, but that remains to be seen.

I’m close to finishing 2 big web projects. Both projects have been difficult for me. Both have shown me exactly what parts of project management I happen to SUCK at.

One of these projects is for a non-profit in the U.S. I got the contract for it a long time ago. But I didn’t realize how much work it would be to get the client to make decisions. The work hasn’t ended up taking significantly longer than I expected. But the number of meetings and emails and conference calls it’s taken to make all the needed decisions has literally added ONE YEAR to the project. I’m dumbfounded by this.

The client has even had personnel changes since we started working on this project together. And guess what? My new contact person there seems to hate me. She knows nothing of the history of the project, just that it’s behind schedule. So I get the blame, all the blame. Today she destroyed a conference call by interrupting, being condescending (she sounded like a bratty teenager), and finally hanging up on the rest of us.

The project is finally within mere weeks of being done. And now it’s getting derailed by a bad attitude? Grow up already. Let’s just focus on getting this shit done and fucking be nice about it.

My husband is that champion of “fuck it all”. When he heard about her little snit he said “tell her to fuck off.” We are 98% done and he wants me to walk out on the project because someone treated me like shit. He has no tolerance for bullshit, and that’s what I love about him. But I won’t be taking his advice, not this time anyway.

Recently I attended the first ever LatAm Bloggers Blowout. Sadly I was only able to attend the Friday night blowout, I had to miss the subsequent Saturday and Sunday blowouts.

The best part was meeting all those great bloggers. Us bloggers are a bunch of blabbermouth extroverts so there was no shortage good conversation. I wish I’d had more time to get to know everyone, but there’s always next time. Thanks again to Wayne for sacrificing his sanity to organize the event, he did a bang up job.

Attendees of the Blogger Blowout were given blog homework assignments which came from the book “No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog” by Margaret Mason.

My assignment:

How did you get those scars? The one on your thumb is from when you were three and you wondered whether scissors could cut skin. The one on your stomach is from your emergency appendectomy. Your boss figured you had to be in the hospital, because it was the only reason you’d ever be late to work without calling.

Your scars indicate what type of life you’ve lived. Whether you’re athletic, fighting for your health, or just occasionally clumsy, let each scar remind you of the story behind it.

My oldest scar is in the middle of one kneecap. The Momsicle tells me that I acquired it by jumping off a chair when I was about 18 months. I don’t remember exactly what she said and I don’t remember the event.

My next oldest scar is on my face, just by my eyebrow. It causes the nearby eyebrow hairs to poke out at weird angles. I was about 6 and I was trying to pull some piece of clothing out of my sister’s hands. I remember it being her clothing, or rather, I remember myself being guilty. She let go of the item and my own momentum sent me headlong into the corner of my bedpost. One inch over and I would have hit my eyeball on that bedpost.

Then I’ve got a scar just to the side of my other eye, it’s very small. This one was from a raging lunatic who had taken an ungodly amount of LSD and was drunk as well (terrible combination that is). He threw me down 3 flights of stairs. Before I passed out I remember hearing his mother yell “Call the cops before he kills her.” It apparently took 6 cops to get him into the patrol car, but I don’t remember that part. I’m lucky to remember anything at all.

I’ve also got a scar on one foot from a drop of hot oil that flew from a pan. That should have taught me not to cook barefoot…but it didn’t.

And my most recent scar is from a glass that one of my kitties broke. I brought the glass upstairs. When it was empty I placed it near the top of the stairs so I would remember to bring it down. Well my Lilah cat went romping and hit it and broke it. Then I walked by, didn’t see it, and got a deep cut in the top of one foot. That cut healed quickly, but left a distinct scar which still hurts.

I’ve got a few more scars from surgeries, but all were laparoscopic, so there’s almost no scarring on the outside. The inside, well, that’s another issue…

In the world of web design the use of frames is generally considered to be a bad thing, a big no-no. For those of you who don’t know what an html frame is it’s basically a way of making separate pages appear on screen as one.

There are many reasons why this is bad which I won’t get into. But basically it’s a rare site that actually needs to be coded with frames and which uses them to the clear benefit of the site’s visitors. And often sites using frames are hard both for users to navigate and for search engines to index. In short, frames suck both for the users and for the site owner.

So imagine my surprise when I visited the famed astrophysicist Stephen Hawking’s web site and found ugly, nasty, not user-friendly and most importantly NOT EVEN NEEDED frames in use (if your browser window is small enough you see scroll bars which indicate where the edges of the frames are).

One of the most intelligent men on earth has a web site with frames, what is the world coming to?

It’s been cold here in Cancun lately. What that means is that there’s been no need for a/c. And I’ve had to put on socks for a few days in a row to keep my feet warm. I normally only have a couple of need-socks days per year here, and they are in January. So this is pretty weird. I’m wearing sweaters at night, after sunset. And we’ve got a blanket on the bed.

On the other hand, we have all the windows in the house open. And I’m still wearing shorts and t-shirts (with socks). So I recognize that cold is a relative term.

When I moved here from Colorado it was July, and I felt like I’d moved into a blast furnace. I got heat stroke often when I first came here, especially when I was dumb enough to go for a run after say 10 am.

Since then I’ve gotten used to the tropical heat. And now I feel cold if the temp drops into the 70s (21°C to 26°C). I can even run outside at noon now without getting heat stroke symptoms.

But when the temp drops, and I’m beginning to suffer from the labor of having to heat my body, I often find myself unconsciously taunting my friends in northern climes. Without realizing I do it I find that I mention how tortuously cold it is to people who are living in Maine or Colorado or Canada or some other cold place. And of course they retort with a universal “shut up, you bitch.” Well, my mother doesn’t call me a bitch, but pretty much everyone else does.

Obviously, they don’t get it. Sun is setting now, time to find a sweater.

I’m giving myself a full 4 minutes to write this blog entry, so as my daughter’s preschool teacher used to say “you get what you get and you don’t throw a fit”. [Incidentally, she went to a preschool called Make a Mess and Make Believe, but the kids affectionately called it Make a Mess and Don’t Clean it Up.]

When I was walking Sam today we saw a dalmatian, it was a female. And it was hiding behind a tree as we walked by. She had a collar on. She was terrified of us but curious. She clearly needed someone. She was clearly lost. She had little boobies, which told me that she had been a mom, but is not currently lactating. Poor thing. Terrified. And Sam wanted to play with her, which scared her.

I just wanted to grab her and take her home. Someone misses her. But she’s so skittish that I wonder if her lost owners might have been abusive. But being a beautiful dalmatian she might be easily adoptable. Maybe I should go look for her (without Sam in tow). But then what if we don’t find a home for her? Or worse, what if we fall for her and can’t give her up (like I did with that dratted, lovely, perfect EmmaCat)?

Ok, time is up. More later.

Five things you were doing ten years ago?

• Earning 6 times more per year than I am now
• Driving 2 hours everyday
• Thinking about divorcing my first husband
• Working for an internet startup
• Making a lot of computer art

Five things you were doing one year ago?

• Trying, in vain, to take care of 16 web clients at once
• Not exercising enough
• Risking my neck on the road to the airport everyday
• Volunteering too much
• Enjoying all my cats

Five snacks you enjoy?

• Papas fritas, I’m a potato chip junkie
• Fresh berries, when I can get them
• Grannie Smith apples, but they have to be cold
• Carrot sticks or celery with ranch dressing
• Good dark chocolate from Belgium

Five songs you know all the lyrics to?

• Any song by Pearl Jam
• Bob Dylan Masters of War
• Sublime What I Got
• They Might Be Giants Birdhouse in Your Soul
• Weird Al Yankovic Smells Like Nirvana

Five things you would do if you were very wealthy?

• Set up a foundation to help Mexico’s street animals
• Travel for 3 months a year
• Make large donations to my many favorite causes
• Help my sister with money
• Adopt more animals

Five things you like doing?

• Watching good movies
• Running and dancing
• Sleeping late
• Eating Thai food
• Listening to my daughter talk about anything

Five things you would never do again?

• Hallucinogenic mushrooms
• Have casual sex
• Go to see Aerosmith live in concert
• Jump off a 25 foot cliff into a raging river
• Intentionally try to set off a point-release avalanche