Ephemeral

Tuesday, September 1, 1998
One year ago: By This Axe, I Shall Rule!

This is the year anniversary of me being called "Satan" by Ray German. From Satan to role model; depending on who is doing the naming, these might not be so far apart!

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My friend Jon Singer seems to be starting some periodic writing on the web, called "An Ephemeral Item". (Of course, I advised him to make it not ephemeral, but to archive them and turn it into a journal-type of thing.) His topic today about analysis and synthesis reminds me of Alexei Panshin's novel, Rite of Passage. It's been a long time since I read it. I should look at it again! Synthesist was a possible career for one of the characters, who were going through the coming of age experience by being dropped on a planet. When I mentioned this to Jon, he told me that the novel was the cause of a big feud between Panshin and Heinlein, but I don't know the details.

I went to Two-Tone Tuesday for the third time tonight. The air conditioning was not functioning at first, but the owner and his helpers did some climbing around on the roof and got it going. Good thing, because there was a big crowd, and it was getting warm fast. I entered the "Jack and Jill" dance contest, but didn't make the finals. A dance contest in this format is one where you don't have pre-arranged partners; you are judged individually as leads and follows, and you rotate partners several times through the dance. I'll keep trying with the contests. The main thing for me is participating. I'd be thrilled to win, of course, but the prizes are usually tokens, and there are so many fine dancers that the competition is stiff!

My friend Adam (formerly A-- L---) was there with some friends. I do enjoy dancing with him! He is still a beginner at swing, but coming along fast, and the ballroom dance skills he has already work for him (mostly), not against him. He takes his dancing seriously! He told me he was starting lindy classes, at a ballroom dance studio on the east side. I wonder about this, and told him I'd be very interested to see how he does!

I ended up staying way too late, past midnight. The beginning of my sleep debt for this week!

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Tech notes for this month's design: I dug into my big CD-ROM archive of images and grabbed from the Bead area. Image Composer and the Impressionist plug-in (small Marker Strokes on White) processed the images I cut out. I was at a loss for ideas, but the May design got so many compliments that I decided to start from there for layout and CSS ideas. The font I used in the graphics is Fiorenza II, created by David F. Nalle, from the Scriptorium at Ragnarok Press.