Woof. Been a while.

I'm ashamed to say I don't even really have a good reason for not blogging to this blog in so long. It's gotten a little blurry, what goes to the main blog and what goes here... and furthermore, I just haven't felt much like writing anything particularly deep. Either this means I've been too depressed, or just not depressed enough--probably depends on the day. At any rate, I'm not quite prepared to kill this blog yet, though I know that only approximately 2 people read it even when I am posting. I still need a place to vent and moan.

The bizarre event of the last week involves the death of a high school classmate--not one I'd kept in touch with, and not one I'd ever been particularly close to--unlike last year at this time, when Paul's death by overdose rocked my world rather a bit. But the thing is, when you go to a school of only a few hundred people, and it's a K-12, you're inevitably friends with everyone. There are cliques and anger and bad feelings and meanness--but there's not a lot of room for it to go very deeply. The cliquish girls in middle school were all the same people I'd been in girl scouts with for 6 years of grade school. The boys on the football team were also the boys in band/orchestra with me, who were also the boys I'd played kickball with on the playground in second grade. So really, I don't hold hard feelings about anyone in particular from school, and I was sorry to hear that he'd died.

What kind of got me thinking--and this happened with Paul as well--was when I started poking around Facebook after I'd heard he died, and I found his page. Facebook pages are this kind of strange limboesque thing. It's not a memorial to him; but until someone takes that facebook page down, he's still alive in a meta internet sense. You look at his profile, and it tells you all the things he IS doing--not WAS doing, but IS still doing, frozen in time until the page gets removed or edited. Which it may never be, if no one has his password. I presume Facebook has some way of dealing with removing pages of the deceased by request of the family... With Paul it was particularly disturbing, as I was able to read all of his recent blog posts on MySpace, particularly the ones about having beaten his heroin addiction and how excited he was to be starting his life over. Sucks to read something like that when you already know how the book ends, so to speak.

Anyway. It just struck me as an odd and unforeseen facet of the internet age, with its endless caches of pages and free social networking/hosting sites, that people will continue to have a sort of ghostly virtual existence for months or years after they auger on. Frankly, it kind of gives me the willies.

A Wax Lion of One's Own

I just got round to checking this blog again (filled as I was with fear and loathing that some of those hardcore folks might follow me home from Jane's blog comments) and realized I'd left things on rather a downer note over here. So hey, September's here, the cat is on the mend, and my job is frustrating but tolerable. The toy company we're partnered with which rhymes with Eggo has been having some issues with our budget--namely, not enough of it is being spent on Eggo models. So for our next exhibit, they're requesting a guarantee of a certain amount being spent on Eggo, which may pretty much shoot all our ideas for using interesting technology for our interactivity. This makes me sad... But I am all about the trying to find ways to combine models with interactives. I'm trying to look at the whole thing as a spur for my creativity rather than an "Aw, crap, seriously??"

In other news, checking my sitemeter to see who the hell has been bothering to hit on this thing (so to speak) in the last month, I see that I am most commonly found by people who are trying to track down the wax lion from Wonderfalls. That is, of course, my moniker for a reason--I love the lion. He's a wise sage, and yet fantastically annoying, two things I aspire to in both my home and professional life. But if you're honestly looking for a wax lion of your very own, you need to find a Mold-a-Rama machine with the Standing Lion die, and pony up the $1.50 to get it. I got mine at the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago; the lion Mold-a-Rama is right outside the exit to the dolphin building, and when I was there a year ago, it did indeed have orange wax loaded in for us big nerds. It won't be all smooshed and melty, mind you... but we can't all be defective.

Back and Forth

I haven't been posting much on this blog lately, obviously. I can't really say for sure whether it's that I've been in a good mood (this being the blog I channel the moodiness to, and when I'm feeling good I'm more likely to post to the main one) or whether it's actually that I've been mildly depressed on and off lately, but felt that blogging about it would be unproductive. Not that blogging is ever all that Productive to begin with, mind you!

I'm kind of suspicious it's the latter. I haven't really been rolling with the various punches all that well in the last couple months, and relatively little bitty stuff has been rocking my world a bit. Work today was good, I got to do some fun stuff... and yet there were some setbacks on a couple projects I'm working on, and I came home with a hefty dose of angry sitting somewhere in my midsection which has yet to fully wear off. Tomorrow, I suspect, will be much the same. But these things don't last forever, and the state fair is this week. There's nothing wrong with me that a corndog and a lemon shake-up won't cure...

This Seems Like a Bad Start.

I'm in the airport, en route to England, and already we're under an "air traffic delay." I should have been on my way to Newark a half hour ago already, and instead I ponied up $8 for wi-fi and am sitting staring out the window at the plane I am not yet permitted to board. To add to the indignity, I really have to go to the bathroom but do not feel like packing up the laptop and hauling my two carry-ons up the concourse so as not to leave them unattended as targets for bomb sniffing dogs. Sigh.

Ironically, the plane's engine reads "Express Jet." Right now, I am expressly not jetting anywhere.

Returned from the Depths...

Howdy, folks. Been a while. The month of May was utterly hellish--started with death, ended with disease, and there was more fun in between. But I have bounced back with a flourish, more or less.

I was going to do some serious downer blogging about my friend who died, and I just never could make myself do it. I had so many thoughts swirling around in my brain, and just couldn't quite get them to gel--it had to do with friendship and the nature thereof, and how you sort out a person's true self from all the crud that can accrue over years of substance abuse. Was the Paul I knew more the "real" Paul than the one that the other 200 people at his funeral had come to know over the last 20 years? How do you separate out his growth as a person from all the messed-up-shit that came from too much acid and heroin? I couldn't come to a satisfactory answer, and thinking about it just made me sad.

However, I'd been mulling over another post that I think turns out to be in some ways related. I've been reading Spandau, which is a diary account of life inside Spandau prison by Hitler's architect, Albert Speer. I've always been troubled by the question of how Hitler's Reich came about--how someone who (to modern American eyes) seems so un-charismatic, and so obviously on the brink of madness, could have persuaded an entire nation of people to embark upon a war of aggression against the entirety of Europe. Not every German who joined the National Socialists was made of pure evil (my mother's opinions of the German nation to the contrary.) So what are we to make of someone like Speer, who seems in so many ways to be an intelligent, thoughtful, and entirely normal man--and yet played a key part in the most monstrous genocidal act in history? Speer was the only one of Hitler's close associates to admit his culpability at Nuremburg, though he denied having had direct knowledge of the death camps. Of course that probably wasn't true--it's hard to imagine that he wouldn't have, and there's some evidence to the contrary. But what interests me more about Spandau is Speer's own musings--he had 20 years to think about it--on why he did what he did, and whether Speer-the-architect-of-the-Reich was the true Albert Speer. Was he a different person before he met Hitler? And did admitting guilt and taking punishment for the acts committed on Hitler's orders absolve him at all? It's interesting, and I've been thinking about it a lot. (Had plenty of time for thinking and reading while I was sick... bleh.) Anyway, hopefully back to a more regular posting schedule now--and hopefully less depressing posts!

A Week of Glorious Triumph

This week at work consisted of prep for big meetings, then three solid days of said big meetings with our exhibit partner whose name is similar to "Eggo," only their product is small plastic interlocking bricks rather than fortified breakfast waffles. It went really well. I think we showed them a good time, and our upcoming exhibit looks to be nothing short of fantastic. We may have the opportunity to create further exhibits with their toys if this one pans out, including a hot movie property whose name rhymes with "Bar Floors."

Honestly, I probably could be a lot more forthright about who we're working with, but it's way more entertaining to make up code words. Or maybe I'm just still giddy at the thought of one of my exhibit proposal documents being read by someone at Mucousfilm....

Hey, it's AWESOMETASTIC!

I woke up with a sinus headache this morning, which was awesometastically wonderful--it took me more than 2 hours to shake it and become the shining example of productivity that I normally am on weekend mornings. My excitement/obsession for the week unfortunately requires me to spend a lot of time staring at my computer screen, which doesn't mesh well with sinus headache for me. (I'm always inclined to call these things migraines, though I don't technically think that's what they are. They start as a sinus issue, but then they're worsened by visual stimulus like bright light or rapid eye movements--so maybe they're si-graines? or migruses? Anyway... whatever. Better now.)

The new fascination is with a fantastically expensive piece of animation software called "Toonboom Studio," which I discovered earlier this week. I downloaded the free 30 day trial version on my Mac, but the learning curve on it is rather steep and I fear most of the 30 days will be spent trying to figure out how the hell it works. (Much like Adobe Illustrator in this respect--I know full well that me using Adobe Illustrator is like your grandma taking her Lamborghini Reventon to the grocery store and back.) The problem is that 90% of its amazing features pertain to 3-D digital animation, and I'm interested primarily in 2-D. I know Flash is the starting place for most people with this, but my understanding is that Flash is primarily designed for people doing simple web animations and is a bit clunky for "real" (ie, film style) animation. I'm working my way through the Toonboom Studio tutorial, but I've already run into the hurdle that I do not own a Wacom tablet and have no intention of buying one. I'm just using my touchpad mouse to get through the tutorials. So the part where they say "trace over this figure" ends up looking like a deranged chimpanzee got hold of the Wacom stylus. But I'm hoping that working through the tutorials anyway will give me a handle of how basic features work, and I can apply them to imported 2-D pen and ink drawings which is what I had in mind in the first place. There's actually a stripped down "express" version of Toonboom Studio which is much cheaper, and I bet the features I'd lose by not buying the $350 version are the ones I'd not use anyway. But we'll see. I'm still looking for other 2-D programs to download and fiddle with.

When I finish a full 5 seconds of animation, I will post it here for you loyal readers and you can marvel at my drawin' skillz...

Stupid, Stupid, Stupid.

When I first started working at the game store in high school, there were a couple of guys about my age who were regular customers and occasional employees. One was named Brad, and one was named G.J. Brad had a fairly sunny disposition, was smart, had a good sense of humor, and I enjoyed his company. G.J. was kind of a dick; he took a long time to grow up, occasionally treated his friends badly, and was generally obnoxious. I didn't dislike him, he could be a nice guy when he wanted to--but he was difficult. Brad went on to work at the store for a few years back when I was the assistant manager, then moved on to other things. G.J. disappeared for a while, then reappeared looking for work one Xmas; I hired him to help in our seasonal puzzle store, he helped for a week or two, and then--as I remember it--quit. Later on I heard that G.J. had joined the military. Good for him, I thought--he's the sort that will be improved by a stint of enforced respect, organization, and responsibility. That was about 10 years ago.

In January, I unexpectedly ran into Brad. It was great to see him--he's managing a restaurant now. We caught up, and I told him that a few of our older coworkers had died in the last couple years. "Wow, that sucks," he said. "Did you hear about G.J.?"

Your premonition upon reading that sentence is probably correct. G.J. suffered a Traumatic Brain Injury in Iraq--but he didn't die in Iraq. It was a minor injury, he served out his deployment with increasingly bad migraine headaches. Then he came back to the states for treatment. He died in the Fort Knox "Warrior Transition Unit" in September of last year. He didn't die from his injury--the injury took place a full year before his death. He died from an accidental overdose of prescribed medications for his continuing pain and depression. He died in his bedroom at Fort Knox; no one checked on him for three days despite his failure to show up for mandatory roll-calls. He was apparently unconscious for a full day before he went into respiratory failure and died--during which 24 hours he could have been given treatment which probably would have saved him. They finally found his body because his increasingly frantic wife called the fort to find out why he wasn't returning her calls or picking up his messages. If you have a desire to read the full story of G.J.'s death and his family's fight to get answers from the military about how it happened, you can read it here.

This has been big news in the local paper. Our governor is demanding answers from Ft. Knox, Ft. Knox is blaming his doctor, his doctor is blaming the military, the military is complaining that they're shorthanded. For myself, I don't know if the military made G.J. a better person; from some things I'd heard here and there over the last decade, it probably didn't. Once a kind-of-a-dick, always a kind-of-a-dick. Still, it was his career of choice, and if he had died on a battlefield in Iraq or Afghanistan, I could have been glad that he'd died doing something he personally believed in and cared about. But the military--that band of brothers that promises never to leave a man behind--lied to G.J. They left him behind, when a 10 minute walk to his room by the platoon sergeant who noticed his absence at roll call could have saved his stupid life. Fuckers.

My God.... It's Full of Stars...

I did it. I finally did it. I signed up for Marvel comics online. Now I can read through their library of thousands of comics in beautifully scanned gloriousness... What's even better is that if I pull up an old issue of, say, Uncanny X-Men to get the background of a particular character, they'll also let me know if that series of issues has been reprinted in a trade recently so if I wanted to own them in hard copy format, I could. But I like that this gives me a chance to read some books that I'd never bother to buy--never will I be bored on the internets again!

The tipping point was helping our collections department go through a collection of comics acquired from a local business scion's family on Monday. We wanted to grab some stuff that was likely to get used in the exhibit, and since I have a lot of basic knowledge about comics from the era during which this collection was amassed, I got to be the helper bee. Which meant in the course of about 7 hours I looked at the covers of probably about 10,000 comics. Mostly Spiderman, Batman, Superman, Hulk, X-Men in all their various stripes, and Fantastic Four--but plenty of other stuff too. It was great fun, pulling out suggestive or otherwise entertaining covers to show each other--Spiderman covers from the 1970's are endlessly hilarious--and of course tons of it was a trip down memory lane for me. I started collecting around 1985 or 86, and spent about $20 a month on comics until around 1996 or so. The collection we were picking up was amassed by a guy about my age, who spent more like $200 a month on comics during that exact same period of time. Our tastes were similar; so many of the books he had, I have, and I remember reading them with great fondness.

Might be time to drag out the longboxes and start reading from the beginning....

The Things That Pass For Knowledge...

Is it just me, or is there some sort of strange Steely Dan convergence going on in local radio at the moment?

I'm serious, every time I get in my car and flip through my radio stations, there's Steely Dan. And I've got nothing against them, mind you. I enjoyed them a lot back in the 80's, and I'm always happy to sing along with Reelin' In the Years now and then when I happen across it. But in the last two weeks, it's like there's some kind of Perfect Storm of Steely Dan on the radio. I noticed it at first when I'd be driving to work in the morning and hear I Got the News, and then on the drive home 8.5 hours later I'd hear it again, or another one just like it on a different station. Now it's to the point that when I got out of the car at Trader Joe's this evening, Black Cow was on 103.9; I got back in the car 20 minutes later and 93.9 is playing Deacon Blues. WTF, Steely Dan??? Why are you following me????

The likely possibility is that it's because two of the 5 stations I tend to listen to have recently gone to "Oldies of the 60's, 70's, and 80's" (and fuck you very much by the way, for including the 1980's in that format) and Steely Dan had a lot of hits in those decades. But I'm not hearing, say, America's Muskrat Love every day or two.... I'm not hearing the electronic stylin's of Duran Duran and Rio every time I start my car. It's weird, I tell you. Weird.

Apres Moi, le Snowluge

Supposedly, we're having a blizzard tonight. Supposedly. I am all stoked to be snowed in; fed my parents' birds and fish a little extra this evening in case I can't make it there in the morning; stayed a few minutes late at work getting a project to a good stopping point in case I can't get in tomorrow. And so? The snow?

NOWHERE. Not a fucking flake so far, and it's now 4 hours after it was supposed to start coming down with a vengence. I cannot even convey how disappointing this is, it's like there's some kind of forcefield around the city preventing me, personally, from receiving the promised snow. Even the weather radar shows that I should be up to my ears in it by now--but direct Window-Cam technology confirms that this is a massive load of bull crap. I'm so depressed I may just go to bed early in hopes I will wake up to a winter wonderland and the museum being closed. (That almost never happens, though. I'd settle for my car being encased in ice for the better part of the morning.)

I know, I know. If this is the worst thing I can complain about, I should be pretty damn glad with my life. But what can I say? I'm a cranky bastard. And I wants my snow.

Ashtanga? Geseundheit.

It wasn't a New Year's resolution (I don't do those, it just leads to sadness) but I did attend my first ever yoga class this weekend. I'm tired of being in kind of awful shape, and my friends who do yoga seem to like it. I've always been leery of it, as I've got no interest in the spiritual aspects of yoga at all; I've got a spiritual system that works very well for me, and while there's certainly nothing wrong with the philosophies behind yoga, it just doesn't really jive with my personality. But my friend the expert informed me that ashtanga yoga does not have to have a spiritual component to it--there's no chanting or meditating, just a very intense athletic workout over a series of stretches. So I figured, what the hell Archie, wotthehell? and set off for a Saturday morning class.

The most surprising thing for me was that it was a lot easier than I expected. By easier, I don't mean that it wasn't a serious workout--I am mighty sore today--but I was anticipating that there would be some positions I just Could Not Do, Period. And that was not the case at all. There were plenty of stretches where my limited flexibility prevented my going "all the way," but nothing where I couldn't get at least a semblance of close. A lot of the stretches reminded me of the warmups we'd do before fencing practice in college--same essential position and movements, but the stretches are held instead of doing 10 quick repetitions of the movement and going on to something else. The hardest part for me were the balancing positions--my problem sinuses mean that my balance even under ideal conditions is rather poor--but I didn't actually fall over or crash into the person next to me, so I call that a success. I'll probably go at least a few more times to decide if I want to make a regular practice of it. Assuming that my hamstrings return to normal over the course of the week, that is.

Well That Was Unexpected

This week I experienced a huge crest in hits from people following a link I left on this year's Cavalcade of Bad Nativities; it's been entertaining looking at Sitemeter and seeing a radical level of geographic diversity! So far my favorite hit is from "Export, Pennsylvania," which I think is a hilarious name for a town.
Tragically, many underprivileged countries around the world experience painful shortages of scrapple, cheesesteaks, and Lancaster County tourist items. This is why we have begun our program to Export Pennsylvania.

I've been enjoying my week off, though of course it's still ending too soon and I've got tons of stuff to do. Unfortunately I discovered a spectacular time-waster on K2XL.com a few weeks ago, and in the last week it's been an utter time suck. With that warning in mind, if you like spacial puzzles, here it is: Psychopath. It's a series of puzzles wherein you try to find the shortest path between point A and B on a grid; as you complete each one you gain access to a new level/puzzle. There are 72 levels, I am now on Level 45, and Level 44 must have taken me well over 100 tries to finish. Infuriating, invariably on the levels where I get stuck I am making just one dumb error that costs me a couple moves and yet it takes me forever to find that error. Needless to say, I love it even as I'm cussing a blue streak at my computer screen.

And There Were in That Same Country Jawas Abiding in the Fields, Keeping Watch Over Their Droids By Night...

Click the picture for the full view.

1. And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Jabba the Hutt, that all the galaxy should be taxed...
3. And all went to be taxed, every one unto his own planet.
4. And Darth Vader also went up from Coruscant, unto Tatooine, into the city of Mos Eisley, which is called a wretched hive of scum and villainy
5. To be taxed with Padme, his GFFL, being great with child...
7. And she brought forth her first born, twins, and wrapped them in Jedi robes, and laid them in a manger, because there was no room at the Cantina.
8. And there were in that same country jawas abiding in the field, keeping watch over their droids by night.
9. And Lo, Master Yoda came upon them, and the glory of the Force shone round about them, and they were sore afraid.
10. And Yoda said unto them, "Fear Not! Tidings of great joy I bring you!
11. For this day born in the city of Mos Eisley a Jedi, he is! Hmmmm?"
12. "And a SIGN unto you this shall be; find him, you will, wrapped in Jedi robes, lying in a manger. And he has....a sister! Yesss.... there is another!"
13. And suddenly there was with Master Yoda a multitude of rocking alien band members, jamming and saying,
14. "Glory to the Force in the highest, and in the galaxy peace, and goodwill toward all beings, men and otherwise!"

Curse You, Santa Claus!

I actually had to go out Xmas shopping tonight. After 14 years in retail at the holidays, if I never saw a mall again it would be too soon, and this is doubly true this time of year. The last couple of years I've managed to do all my shopping online and well in advance, so that when the holiday rolls around I do a leisurely bit of wrapping, put the presents under my tree for a few days for effect, and stress is kept to a minimum.

This year, however, is my first year with a real sort of an income in quite some time, and so I felt the need to thank my family for their love and support by going a little further this year--not overboard, just 2 CD's instead of 1, or a movie and a book as opposed to one or the other. I did my usual one-stop shopping at Amazon, only to find that their selection of Large Type books is awful and the one thing they had that wasn't boring or the Bible was out of stock. Plus mom wanted some kitchen stuff that I was too late to order from cooking.com... She's always hard to shop for anyway, I think one of the most successful presents I ever got her was a jar of Miss Scarlett's Olives because I knew it was something she would use. So tonight I braved the cold and headed out to Borders and Bed, Bath, and Buffoonery. Xmas shopping is always very stressful for me, if I don't find exactly the thing I'd had in mind then I get all sweaty and anxious trying to find a substitute, and I walk in circles around the store thinking if I just keep looking then the thing I had in mind will appear, mis-shelved in the self-help section or something. It never happens, though. So I stomp around with an expression of tense, barely contained fury on my face, frightening children and store clerks alike, until I suddenly come up with a new idea and go rabbiting off to see if I can find Thing 2. This can take way, wayyyy longer than I like to spend shopping; so it was a relief tonight that I found all the things mom wanted at the BBB (not the Better Business Bureau) in under 10 minutes. I did about 15 minutes in Borders before I broke down and asked a clerk to just TELL me if they had the book I was looking for in the computer (they did, obscurely shelved) and after another 5-6 minutes of line waiting, I was on my way back out into the cold and home to make chili.

So with all this grumping, what do I enjoy about the season? Why, a few rounds of Handbell Hero, of course! Thanks to SirValence and Bushi for that link, it's been hugely entertaining. Though I can't help but wish that this was real, too.....

We Wish You a Scary Christmas

Well, the manger scene turned out splendidly; I'll be linking to it on Flickr shortly. The addition of Jar-Jar as little drummer boy was fairly alarming. But frankly, if there's anything more annoying than Jar-Jar, it's that damn carol. Stupid drummer boy, with his incessant rum-pum-pumming. How I hate it. And now I'm working in a job where there is a high statistical likelihood that at any time I might walk out of my department and find it playing on the overhead speakers throughout the museum. GAH.

To be perfectly fair, they do also play reasonably good holiday music on the overhead occasionally; I've heard the Eurythmics version of "Winter Wonderland" and Trans-Siberian Orchestra's "Wizards in Winter" in years past, when I was working on contract. But there's a lot of hullabaloo about what music museums can or can't play over their public speakers these days, and if we don't have the proper agreements with ASCAP we might find ourselves listening to the Emmett Otter Jug Band all holiday season. Personally I'd love to hear them fire up DaVinci's Notebook's Dreidel Song, but I think the odds are against it.

Some Cheese with my Whine?

See, now I've whined about the sadness of our recent exhibit here.... I've discharged considerable frustration about it on a locked LJ post (and thanks to H for reminding me that I do, in fact, have a Livejournal and that I could be using it for something)... So what happens when the thing is open and it's time to move on? The following:

Work is silent. People are already leaving for Thanksgiving. I go downstairs for a cup of coffee. Refused access to the holiday "Yule Slide" I am forced to walk down the ramps. Upon returning to the Exhibits department, I am greeted with the following:

COWORKER #1: Ninja! (this is my nickname at the office. no, you cannot ask why.)
COWORKER #2: Ninja! We need you!
ME: Uh oh.
COWORKER #2: Specifically, we need your Star Wars action figures.
ME: Ok. No, wait, WHY?
COWORKER #1: We're making a nativity scene for the collections department.
COWORKER #2: We've got it all planned out. Anakin and Amadala will be Mary and Joseph, and we're going to use LEGO minifigures of Luke and Leia in the manger.
ME: ........
COWORKER #1: Will you help?
ME: Well, duh! Ok, wait, so who are our shepherds? Is the Emperor one of the wise men, or is he more a King Herod type...?

Yeah. I continue to play a vital part in the life of our museum, by supplying the rare but valuable element of Nerdolinium (periodic symbol: NRD) whenever needed.

A Gasp of Relief

Today the big exhibit opened. Instead of blogging about the trials and tribulations of the last week before opening, I wanted to give some serious thought to the emotional content of the exhibit.

It's intense. As I mentioned in the last post, I have to wonder about the intensity level for our visitor base. We're warning folks with kids under the age of 9 or 10 that we don't recommend it for them; this is all well and good to tell people, and yet on opening day I saw a hundred kids under the age of 10 zipping around the space. Did parents ignore the greeters? Did they not hear them? Does it matter? It might, at that. At several points, I saw small kids tugging on their mom's hand and saying, "I don't like this. Can we go?" And I've no idea if that was a reaction to content--the unfun subjects--or if it's a reaction to the fact that there are no activities geared for younger visitors in the gallery.

For me, this week, it's been a re-opening of the emotional responses I've had over the past 6 months to doing content research for the exhibit. On Monday, Ryan White's mom came to the gallery for the first time since the structures went up. I was applying some graphics of her son to a panel, and I stepped aside so she could read it. We exchanged pleasantries, I told her how happy we were to have her there and how I hoped she liked what we'd done. She's a lovely woman. And then she went into the "Ryan's Room" area of the exhibit, which is pretty much all of his stuff from his room at the time he died, all arranged as an immersive environment. And all I could think about was how I can't even begin to imagine what that would feel like--to walk into a museum exhibit, 16 years after the death of your son, and see his whole life on display like that. It was wrenching.

This exhibit has been a long series of emotional blows to the gut. Which is what it should be, don't get me wrong--I'm proud that we did this exhibit, it's important. But working on it has been months of that kind of wrenching. I watched films about the holocaust, and the children who experienced it--not just once, but over and over and over as I made selections for editing, transcribed them for captioning, and reviewed them before installation. I watched news films of kids who were my age back in 1986, talking about how they were going to kick Ryan's ass if he came back to their school, and interviews with Ryan's friends and family and Ryan himself talking about how that felt... over and over and over. To see the exhibit finally open gives me a sense of pride in the accomplishment of the small part I played in it, and a sense of relief; but most of all a sort of hollow sensation of knowing that working on this exhibit has changed me, too.

Lo, I am returned

I'm not sure what's kept me from blogging the past couple weeks; work has been alternating between busy and waiting for the other shoe to drop as we blitz forward toward the opening of our new exhibit. I've talked to a lot of you in person about this exhibit over the last few months... It's a history exhibit, fairly serious in its subject matter, and I think the community in general is going to have a bit of a shock reaction that we're talking about the Holocaust and Civil Rights and AIDS in an exhibit for kids. Most of the people I know who have kids have been really positive about the idea once I've explained the theory behind it; but I wonder how it's going to play in Peoria, so to speak. We'll see, I guess! I think it's a really amazing and ambitious exhibit in lots of ways. But the tension as we work to get it done by opening day is rather palpable.

You might wonder what working at a kid museum is like when the holidays roll around. Let me tell you, Halloween was awesome! Not only did I spend a Saturday volunteering at my work-away-from-work, the zoo, handing out candy to over a thousand little kids in a thousand cuter than hell costumes... but I got to dress up Wednesday and wear my costume all day. Every time I went out of my office and on the floor, kids would yell "Hey, Luke Skywalker!" at me; my next-door cube neighbor was an awesome Barbie, and the staff at the welcome desk were dressed as the Lollipop Guild. One of the interpretation managers was wearing a bright green track suit, unzipped slightly to reveal a yellow t-shirt underneath, and a pointy yellow foam cone with a tassle atop her head. "I'm Corn!" she cheerfully informed me--pronouncing it "COR-UN." It was fantabulous. Even with the spectre of Holocaust and AIDS looming, we manage to have a hell of a fun time.

I'll Miss You, Stmnnn Grnsmnsnsamm

I don't often have voice mails at work; I'm at my desk plenty, and even when I'm not, I don't get a lot of calls. Most of the people I need to talk to are in shouting distance, and if we don't want to shout we use email. But way back in July, I got the best voice mail ever.

PLEASANT FEMALE VOICE: This is a call for
COMPUTER GENERATED VOICE: Stmnn Grnsmmsnerhsnsmnn.
PFV: If you are not
CGV: Stmnn Grnsmmsnerhsnsmnn
PFV: then please hang up. If you are
CGV: Stmnn Grnsmmsnerhsnsmnn
PFV: please stay on the line. This is an attempt to collect a debt from
CGV: Stmnn Grnsmmsnerhsnsmnn.....

Obviously, some dude had given a fake phone # and name on some kind of credit app. The first name sounded kind of vaguely like it might have been "Stephen," but the last name was total gibberish as interpreted by the voice software stuff. So I laughed, and hung up, figuring that was the end of it.

Except, two weeks later, it happened again. Same message, same incessant repetition of the garbled name--and it said it in kind of a singsong, so it was more like StmNNN ... GrnsMMSnerhSNSmnn... and it reduced me to giggling fits as I listened to the entire message to see if there was some way to call them back and tell them they had the wrong number. There was a number; I called it, and got put on hold for 5 minutes before I gave up.

After the third or fourth time, I began to wonder why they never called while I was at my desk. I mean, it happened again and again--I even saved it in my voice mail so I could forward it to co-workers on slow days. Could it be that Stmnn Grnsmmsnerhsnsmnn was stalking me? Who IS Stmnn Grnsmmsnerhsnsmnn?? And why is he such a bad credit risk? What did he default on, and why is he haunting me?? The calls increased in frequency; I'd leave my desk for 10 minutes, come back, and there he'd be again. It was worrisome.

Then, last week, I got a call while at my desk. I said, "Hello, this is me" and there was a pause, like there is when a computer is dialing for someone, and then a voice came on the line. "Can I speak to Steven Peterson?" "Umm, nope--no one by that name here, sorry." "Thank you." And they hung up. A moment later I realized--was that the credit cops? Could this be the end of Stmnn Grnsmmsnerhsnsmnn?? It's OK, Stmnnn. You will always live on in my heart. And in my saved voice messages.