crystallyn.com

My brother had the Digital Derby

and my dad had the ever trendy Mattel Football...

Ahh, to be young and technologically unsophisticated again!

Posted by crystallyn at 07:30 PM | Comments (4)

irresponsible construction workers

this morning I had a crazy dream. Well, all of my dreams are vivid and pretty messed up but this one was really strange.

I dreamt that I was driving on a freeway and I came to a tunnel that was having some construction done to it. It was a HUGE tunnel and probably 4-6 lanes ran through it but what is very notable is how high the roof was. Anyway the flagmen and cops were allowing cars to go through even though they had to drive right through the center of the construction.

And I mean the center. Essentially the construction was being done by a massive dual backhoe, big enough (and tall enough) that cars could drive on the two lanes beneath it. It had buckets on two arms that could work on the outside lanes while the inside lanes were still being used by traffic.

I was a bit skeptical but when the cop waved me through I drove through the center, right beneath this backhoe thingy, realizing that the body of the machine came down really low and of course they must have calculated it so that cars could go through unharmed. Then I saw in a flash that it was going to come down too low and I would be crushed! I felt the roof of my car crunch a bit and I was sent skidding out from underneath the metal monster and out of the tunnel. My car was still movable, unlike the pieces of cars that had already been spit out and littered the road with twisted debris and glass. I pulled to the side and tried to find my cell phone, which looked more like my cordless home phone. It wasn't working because it was cracked on top. There weren't any cops or construction workers on that side of the tunnel and it was like they didn't realize that the cars were being harmed as they go through.

Some of the wrecks were pretty bad and I could see people in the crashed up cars. I kept trying to get my cell phone to work but nothing. Finally some cars came through unharmed and realized that a massive accident scene was upon them so they stopped to help. I was wondering what would happen when the cars began to back up in the tunnel.

Finally there was someone there to help me although I didn't need it very much. Or so I thought. I was trying to drive forward but it turns out that the front of my car was torn off when I tried to go through. Not sure how I missed that when I was standing next to my car watching the scene but suddenly four people came out of nowhere with a new car front and they slid it into place on my car. They said they couldn't fix the dent in my roof (and commented how lucky it was that my sunroof didn't break) but that I should be able to drive the car now. I remember thinking that it was good that I bought the extra insurance when I rented my car (because apparently I was in Canada and when you do that w/my company you are supposed to get the extra insurance, unlike in the US where the company insurance covers you).

I had stopped my car next to some shops on the side of the road and one of them was a cafe where it turned out a friend I have purposely lost contact with worked. I was shocked to see her and was trying to find words so that things wouldn't be so awkward and yet I was happy to see someone I knew in the midst of such chaos. I was spared the long awkward discussion when a plain clothes cop came up and told us a series of complicated things that each of us that had been involved would have to do in order to expose this fiasco to the rest of the world and to get the government to pay for our accidents and injuries. Something about pretending to be a reporter or a cop investigating the scene--that would scare them and they would come clean. Yah right.

I'm not sure what it means. Maybe that I can go through the thick of danger and still come through mostly unscathed? No clue.

Posted by crystallyn at 07:47 AM

July 19, 2005

PLUM RUBY REVIEW

the next issue is up! Whew! The accident really threw us off, but finally we're back on track. Go check it out. I really love the art this issue and we have some great poetry, fiction and nonfiction that I'm extra excited about.

Plum Ruby Review

Posted by crystallyn at 05:57 PM

July 11, 2005

ay?

So I'm off to Canada in the AM. Waterloo, to be exact. Heading up for some meetings and leaving Romeo here to take care of Joe. I'm not too terribly keen on travelling these days. In my past, I loved to travel. I wanted to manage all the trade shows specifically so I could be off and away. It's interesting...I realize that it's not because I dislike travel--but rather, I dislike travelling without Joe. Sort of sick and sappy, I know, but it's true.

I'm renting a car and driving an hour from Toronto to get there. It's trips like this where I'm off on my own where I feel strange--like how did I end up grown up enough to do this? To fly on my own, rent a car and drive some distance, stay by myself, etc. I don't feel scared, just strangely out of place--how did I get here? How did I manage to be grown up enough to do these things without anyone helping me? It's silly, especially since I've been doing these very things since I was 18 but it never ceases to make me feel a little nostalgic for those days when I was 8 years old and someone else packed my stuff, put me on a plane, in a car and just let me play slugbug in the backseat with my siblings.

off to sleep...because I have to be up at some ungodly hour. At least I saw Abreau nail 24 homeruns out of the park...with Ortiz on his tail with 17.

Posted by crystallyn at 09:41 PM | Comments (5)

July 07, 2005

little things today

like standing in the shower (before I knew Joe had turned the TV on) and thinking that something big/lifechanging/tragic is happening. Toweling off and just realizing that the TV is on...and knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is "breaking news" even though I have no clue what it might be about. And then the sick freaked out shock that I was right. I didn't know how to tell anyone. It sounds too weird.

Standing in the elevator today after I was leaving a PR meeting. A man in the elevator with me had a television camera. I realized that he had just come from the British Consulate, who was in the same building. When I left the parking garage...another news crew was set up on the lawn.

Finding out that our friend Phil was safe, but not sure how on earth he was going to get home from work downtown without any buses or subways running. His girlfriend expressed her relief to me today--it sounded like how running through a sheet of water on a hot day must feel. I don't know how to explain--the waves of fear rolling away from her as she explained he was okay.

Wondering why some stupid kids movie (with Paul Giamatti making a monkey of himself) was on channel five instead of Reign of Fire (not that it was a particularly stellar flick but I rather liked it). I mean, why is a futuristic apocalpytic movie about dragons toasting up the earth a big deal? Then I saw that it was set in London.

Thinking about how it is when 37 people die (and 700 wounded) in a big, modern city that it sends waves of shock through the world but we don't really seem to bat an eye at the 25,000 civilians dead in the Iraq War, the 3.4 million people that died of AIDS in Africa in 2004 or even last month when 36 people died and hundreds were wounded in Ethiopia during protests of the country's allegedly rigged elections...I could just go on and on about other losses of life in tragic ways in places out of the way. The well-developed countries are outraged when something tragic happens to them but we are sort of immune, blind, unwilling to see...when it comes to human life in places that aren't on the same "level" as those same developed countries. Note that I am NOT minimalizing what happened in London--only that the media perspective skews things so wildly. Those other tragedies seem so minimal in comparison even though the loss of human life is in many cases far far greater. Why is one life worth more than any other? I find myself very saddened by it all.

Posted by crystallyn at 11:15 PM | Comments (2)