...Bueller?

[iridium]

This journal of mine is due for some poking-at soon. The bits about why and how I'm using it are mine to figure out, but as it's to some extent functioning as a broadcast medium, it would be interesting to know who's reading it, and why. (Also, it's been feeling kinda crickets-and-tumbleweeds lately, and that makes me wonder about these things.)

So, then: are you reading this? Poke in, say hi, tell me why if you feel like it, tell me a story, tell me your thoughts. Ask me a question or three.

Comments

[mtgat]

Hi!

*abstains from other questions*

[iridium.livejournal.com]

hi! no questions is just fine too. :)
also -- i haven't managed to read all of the stories you post, which is probably good, because then i'd have to go read up on enough comics to follow who the heck all the characters are. but i read some of them, and they make me smile.

[dreams-of-wings.livejournal.com]

I'm reading!
I read because I like your writing, particularly when you are lyrical.

And because you are close to some of the people I love. And through them I've held onto a certain desire to know how you are.

[iridium.livejournal.com]

thank you, and hi!
it's been good to see you so lifted-and-twirled by your happiness.

[re-folk.livejournal.com]

Hi. I'm reading ya.

[iridium.livejournal.com]

woohoo!

[tshuma]

Aloha!

I'm here because you have thoughts that spur thinking in me, you write about things that interest me, and you live too bloody far away to get to know easily through casual socializing.

[iridium.livejournal.com]

hallo! and thank you. works for me, and hopefully our paths will at least continue to cross occasionally.

[coraline]

*waves*

what do you want to make in your class? i can't wait to see whatever it is!

[iridium.livejournal.com]

*waves back*

i've just finished tempering the centerpunch, and this evening started on the scrollwork for the rather weighty medievalish candleholder that's the second project for the class. after that...well, without easy access to welding (since i don't actually know how to do that yet), most of the pieces that are floating around in my brain are small ones. i'd like to play with making leaves and branches, and with hot-cutting tools. i'll probably do a set of hooks, just for practice. not sure what else!

[snowninja7.livejournal.com]

Yo!

I read to see what you're up to and what's going on in your head so I don't have to waste time with the basics when we actually meet up. And it's frequently interesting.

[iridium.livejournal.com]

heya! and thank you.
and also, we're seriously due for some quiltmaking. somehow my life has gotten all full off stuff-to-do, and i'm still having difficulty sitting down and studying for more than a couple of hours at a time...but quilts are important. :)

what've you been up to lately?

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

hi! i read it because i don't get to spend real time with you as much as i'd like. plus, pictures of fence and other wonderful things.

right now my life is sorta trying to be the suck and i am trying to rise cheerfully above it. don't bogart that helium tank, man, i needs it bad.

make sure you schedule time in your next visit for stjarni!!

what's your favorite fruit?

[iridium.livejournal.com]

*smile* i've got two notes-on-riding that need to get written, from my visits to Georgia over the winter holidays. and my next visit (late March!) will absolutely have time scheduled in for Stjarni. i'd love to have time for cocoa or a drink or two with you, too, if that works. :)

you're welcome to all the helium i've got; i'm working hard to keep this tank full. also: warm socks, and power tools, and cocoa, and chocolate-dipped strawberries. and a baby sloth up in the icon, for good measure.

fruit: hmmmm. it's all situation-dependent. when the world is dark and scary and my appetite shuts down, i slice a tart apple thinly and eat it with good cheese, and it's something that i can eat; it's often even something that tastes good when little else will. satsumas are the fruit that my grandmother and grandfather pulled off the branches of their trees in Mississippi to eat with breakfast, before the hurricane took the trees and heart failure took my grandfather. but before he died, there were new baby trees in pots on the porch, blooming as hard as they could. and now those trees are in my grandmother's garden, and my next-to-littlest cousin goes down and pulls the satsumas off and eats them right there, leaving a little bit of peel hanging on the tree. (which is why satsumas are often shipped stems-and-leaves.) there are plums and blackberries, dusty and warm off of their trees and brambles, and there are the utterly-ignorant-of-season amazing strawberries from my farmer's market, which make me want to just sit down right there in the middle of the walkway and savor them, red all the way through and sweet as honey.

[warlord-mit.livejournal.com]

Hey. I'm still here, for some strange reason :)

[iridium.livejournal.com]

hallo! works for me. :)

[missionista.livejournal.com]

I read although am often to busy to post while at work. I really liked the flame piece from your prior forge days! What amde you start blacksmithing in the first place?

[iridium.livejournal.com]

thank you!

blacksmithing: i grew up in Charleston, where there is truly gorgeous ironwork everywhere, so it crept in as a familiar art form. when i got to MIT, i ended up in a freshman seminar for materials science & engineering, and part of that seminar involved playing in the forge down in the basement of the Infinite Corridor. we did some smelting of copper and silver, i know, and we may also have done some ironwork. but the smell of the coal and fire and hot metal got into me something fierce, and that's a good part of why i ended up in that major. as it turned out, the professor who served as my advisor for 3.5 years was also in charge of the forge, and i spent as much time there as i could. (which wasn't much, sadly, but it was something; i did also manage to do some foundry work and glassblowing.)

when my internship for my third summer fell through, i was having a rough time and thinking of withdrawing; instead, i went home for the summer and decided to do something completely different for a bit. through a convoluted series of connections, i ended up being something of an apprentice at the Simmons Forge for the summer. spending hours of a South Carolina summer in a tin-roofed shack, with an old coal forge and a very reticent blacksmith...it was amazing.

this makes the second blacksmithing class i've taken since then.

[jered]

Hello!

I read when I have the time. It's an pitiful substitute for real social interaction, but that's fair enough because you're not nearby.

[iridium.livejournal.com]

*smile* same here.
thank you.

[amber-phoenix.livejournal.com]

hi. i'm here 'cause you're nifty and local and it's an easy way to keep numbering you among my extended community. (boring, perhaps, but true.)

[iridium.livejournal.com]

fair enough. :)
and it keeps me posted for when you're doing fun things with food, and oddly enough it means i kinda-sorta keep up with how longueur is doing. (i hope he's feeling better, too.)

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

I pop in now and then.

[iridium.livejournal.com]

works for me. and i owe you an email... life just got all suddenly full for the past week or so.

[starphire.livejournal.com]

Hi. I'm a skimmer most of the time, but a sucker for your lj-cuts (must be clever choice of words or something). It is striking to me that we seem to know a fair number of people in common that I wouldn't otherwise assume would have much of a connection to each other.

[iridium.livejournal.com]

hallo! the people-in-common look to be all connections either through MIT (though sometimes with a few extra connections) or through Burning Man. the world is a small place.

anyhow, thanks, and maybe one of these days i'll meet you for more than a moment or two at a time.

[cortneyofeden.livejournal.com]

I actually saw this because I'm being bad and ignoring work. But now I'm going back to it. I like to read, in an attempt to get to know you (and how your brain works) better since I don't see you often enough.

[iridium.livejournal.com]

hi, and thank you, and ditto. :)

[veek.livejournal.com]

hi! i have no brain, but i'm reading. because you were one of the sunshiny people in the desert.

[iridium.livejournal.com]

mmmmm, braiiiins.

i miss the desert, sometimes -- the Black Rock playa, though the feel of the desert there is more in my memories from the first few days, before most people showed up, when there was darkness at night and the long lines of perspective running out all the way to the mountains, and also the desert outside of Phoenix, and the long stretches of desert and red rock all across the southwest. on the roadtrip, i'd pull over and stop the car at sunset, because there was no way i was safe to drive with that much beauty going on.

[imalion.livejournal.com]

I started reading when you posted picutres from burning man, and since you continue to post interesting things, I continue to read :)

[iridium.livejournal.com]

works for me. hallo!
and hopefully one of these days i'll catch up with you again somewhere. :)

[desultor.livejournal.com]

hello! um, cause this seems to be the way to keep up with people nowadays... :)

[iridium.livejournal.com]

hallo! and yeah, it does. it's a good thing, i think, to have a little easier time keeping up with the day-to-day of friends' lives when they're far away.

how are you doing? what are you doing for work these days?

[tamnonlinear.livejournal.com]

*waves*

Out of words error at present, please assume general note of affection and compliments on your wordsmithery.

[iridium.livejournal.com]

*hug* words are not always necessary. thank you!

[jnbm.livejournal.com]

I read your journal... I read it to see how you are. And though I don't know you well in real life I find it interesting to see what you are thinking and doing. I guess i'm a sort of creepy voyeur. I'm pretty shy in person so i tend to keep up to date with people via the internet more than is probably healthy. I developed bad social habits early in life from BBSes.

Do you ever find yourself journal hopping and consistently reading people that possibly have no idea that you read their journal?

[iridium.livejournal.com]

*smile* no problem -- you were one of those people at Haus that i'd wished i'd gotten to know better before i left town, so it's kinda nice to keep up with you in bits and pieces through this medium.

i only occasionally go journal-hopping, and i don't think i consistently read anyone without poking in to say hi. i make a bad secret-voyeur. :) there are a few people that i've never met and that i have fairly tenuous connections to whose journals i read, because they write things that i enjoy reading, or that make me think.

[roozle.livejournal.com]

I read.
I don't comment much.
I like to feel that connected thread, I like to see your name on my friends page, I like to think of you.

[iridium.livejournal.com]

*smile* works for me.
are you going to be around in late March? it'd be good to see you again.

Very caffeinated and busy so why not post a comment...

[dragonvpm.livejournal.com]

Poking in to say hi because you're just too fucking cool for words :).

Once upon a time I found myself swamped with lots of work, lots of stress from that work, and very little time for online stuff. I'm spending a lot of time juggling 1,001 various things and hoping desperately that I didn't forget something. Fun. However life should be cool once this major project is done... One would hope. The happily ever after remains to be seen, but life is busy and interesting if nothing else.

I think I need a vacation. I miss you and hope you're doing well.

How's life?

*hugs*

(I think I covered all the requested bases and you get a free hug just because ;)

Re: Very caffeinated and busy so why not post a comment...

[iridium.livejournal.com]

*hug* thank you! i have to say, you're pretty damn awesome yourself.

i'm glad you were able to take a day and run around the caves with me when i came through. you've been extra-busy for a good long time now...but then, *little smile* life does that. a lot. good luck on the big project, and i hope the money end of things gets easier soon. (and, hell, all the rest of it too. :)

you're welcome out here if you find time for that sort of vacation. my current home is a bit smaller than the last one, but the couch is big and comfortable.

life...hm. full. always seems to be full. there are still some rough, hard bits -- some new, some left over and unfinished from the past six months, and some older than that by a long while -- but there are some really wonderful bits, too. i had a chill fun time with my parents when they came to visit a few weeks ago, and that actually felt like a real vacation, which i don't think i'd had since i got back from the roadtrip. (and, hey, good fun unstressful quality time with my parents is pretty awesome.) my sweetie came out to visit last weekend, and that whole relationship continues to be a wonderful part of my life. i'm trying to focus and locate my discipline for MCAT-studying, with moderate success. i'll have my first visit with a regular hospice patient next week. i'm doing blacksmithing again. i'm still trying to not go crazy, and not feel disconnected and/or hermitish. i bake bread once or twice a week, which rocks. i miss the twisty long highways and sunsets over the desert and the mountains, but i have green hills here from which to watch the sun setting in the ocean. i have strawberries and avocados and satsumas.

*smile* anything else? i've run out of words.

*extra hugs*

[corivax.livejournal.com]

Hi! I'm reading you, though I just got back from a vacation and so I barely managed to catch this. :) I really enjoy your posts about traveling - you shine through that sort of thing very well.

[iridium.livejournal.com]

*smile* i've much enjoyed reading what you write, too, especially the bits about making-things and about travelling. thank you!

[callmetc.livejournal.com]

*waves* && *promises to come up for air after this latest corporate misadventure*

[iridium.livejournal.com]

*waves back*
good luck! take care of yourself.

[jencallisto]

hello. :)
i finally got to know you well, and then i moved away, and even when i lived in the Bay Area i feel like i saw you too little due to our both being busy (and due to Oakland being farther from Stanford than ideal). it is a wonderful thing to be able to keep up at least partially through these words.

it is even more wonderful that i get to see you soon!

[iridium.livejournal.com]

*does the seeing-jencallisto-soon dance*
*dance dance dance*

also: i'm baking bread, so hopefully there'll be some fresh bread left when you get here tomorrow!

[clunymph.livejournal.com]

i like your perspective on things, and reminder for the slow-fine things in life ;) hope the pre-med stuff is going well. i have a student companion for mol. cell. bio, do you want it? maybe i'll bring it up just in case. i also do not like 1st yr chemistry. my sister thinks i'm wierd for not liking chemistry, and i think she's wierd for loving it!

[iridium.livejournal.com]

hallo, and thank you! the student book for MCB would be great, if you can bring it up. when are you going to be here again?

(snowninja7 said something about a dinner on Saturday, but jencallisto (yet another Haus alum) is staying with me that night, and i think we've got plans elsewhere already.)

i had a lot more fun with chemistry when i got to upper-level classes that explained more of the physics behind the models, and more of the applications and consequences of it. the uber-simplified stuff makes my brain tune out quickly, but i need to re-learn it. meh.