Jenny Boriss
Designer and HCI Ninja
Summary of site. Title of the song. Naive expression of love.
Welcome
8.16.06 - Gwillen, Frances, and I went to an Italian restaurant
8.12.06
8.8.06 - Today I drew a USB drive
8.5.06 - I need to enjoy the present as much as the future
A realization hit me today. You don't want to read my journal. No, no, don't apologize, it's alright. People just don't like reading text. People like pictures. So, this journal will now be a journal of images. I'm still going to record my thoughts and experiences, but it's going to be visual. This way I get to try something a little more interesting, and you don't have to squint at your screen.
4.25.06 - items of note:
- I'm going to be working at VMware in Palo Alto again this summer. Though it's not quite what I'd planned, I'm becoming excited about it. I have friends to share a house with, once I find a house, and since I have my bearings in California now I want to concentrate on making my time valuable. What is valuable and to whom is another question. There will be Learning, and there will be Things Produced, and with any luck there will be a visit from Ben.
- I'm looking into studying abroad either semester next year. I've written to someone at the Polytechnic University in Hong Kong and will soon be finding out more about the University of New South Wales, where apparently some people from my department have had amazing experiences. I really wish I'd started this process earlier and perhaps gone abroad last year - the different days of different semesters in different countries will prove a huge challenge. However, the mere thought of studying elsewhere is exciting my insatiable wanderlust.
- The end of the semester is always stressful. But there is love, and there is life, and I maintain a stubborn sense of optimism.
- Carnival happened. KGB's booth presented a theory (and demonstration) of how the settlers of Roanoke became zombies. I was resident historian for a few hours.
3.26.06 - another good trip to the UK
Sitting in the Detroit airport with a battered Dostoevsky novel and a spilled apple cider, this seems like a good time to reflect on the past couple weeks a bit. I wish I could say it's great to be back in the US, but the truth is each time I return is more of a letdown. When I move to another country for the first time, I suspect it will be a welcome change.
I used to think I loved the US because I was so glad to come home after my first trip to Europe in 2000. But I later realized I was only glad to be out of a cramped French car with my family, where I spent those three weeks. Since then I've traveled to Europe thrice and always had a great time. To be fair, seeing Ben and being on holiday is preferable to the work and stress of college, but it's so refreshing to spend time Somewhere Else Entirely (TM). The things I miss are small American conveniences like water fountains, free bathrooms & refills, cheap food, and hot showers with lots of water pressure - nothing too serious. But really. Stop charging for bathrooms.
Would still love to see other places on the planet though, nice as Manchester is. Maybe Ben can meet me at some. Working on that. At least when it happens there won't be a repeat of Hong Kong Gate - my parents seem to have wisely backed off from my Crazy Plans.
I'm on a tangent already.
The trip started with my plane to London being 4 hours late, thus I missed all subsequent booked travel. Luckily, my pleading tale of how I'll join London's homeless if you won't let me ride your big shiny bus was a consistent winner and I made it to Urbane Haus. I even had time to pay a visit to Buckingham Palace (pictures later).
This trip itself may not have been spectacular, with colored lights and explosions and a showdown at high-noon, but it was needed, welcome, relaxing, and went according to plan. The difficulty was that I was visiting Ben during my spring break, but his own life was stressful and his days were packed. At first he was working around the clock to produce all the graphics for a debating conference in Manchester. It was a job that someone else may have finished in a few hours, but Ben chooses when to be a perfectionist and he choose this project. As soon as the conference was over, Ben had to take on the stressful job of running a Powerpoint presentation simultaneously in Belfast & London and Belfast & Australia. Each country had its own unique problems in getting this to work, but Ben did get it running, still won't let me use Wesley Crusher as a pet name.
At this point I had been in Manchester a week but had hardly spent time with Ben. Luckily, he had little going on after these two projects and we made up for lost time. We didn't do much aside from spend time together, which was exactly what was needed. My three goals of the trip were to relax, get healthy, and see Ben - these all happened. I also made the poor boy quite sick... luckily as not as sick as I was.
In this time we had some needed conversations about the challenges long-distance was providing for us specifically. Ironically, most of the issues arise in the short amount of time we have together - not enough time to really develop normal lives together, as one of us is always "on holiday" and not living their normal life with the other. There's other aspects of the strange arrangement that we have varying levels of difficulty with - not issues I'll discuss here, but suffice to say we had constructive and honest discussions about how we're doing and while there's much to work on, we're optimistic about our future and very much in love. Sunday was our 9 month anniversary. To many more! ::clink::.
Other items of note:
- Saw Utopia Limited performed by the Manchester University Gilbert and Sullivan Society (MUGGS). Three of Ben's housemates were in the show - Paul as the Brummie public exploder, John as sea admiral/flower of progress, and Kathy as Supernanny/MUGGified flower of progress. The show was great & was adapted to current events very well. I thought the 2nd act dropped off without resolving itself fully, but overall very well done. The Utopian judges performed fantastically as a pair.
- Saw Jerry Springer the Opera, which was also great. The Opera caused much controversy in the UK, as some Evangelical Christian groups protested the show's satire of Christianity. The night we went was opening night, and many Christian protesters were expected outside of the theatre. In reality only a handful of Christian protesters showed up, but many people from a local comedy club showed up to protest the protest. With chants and dances that quite reminded me of KGB, they sported signs which proclaimed messages such as "It was this or the hoovering," "Mild peril to those those who oppose opera," "I don't care about blasphemy, I'm just hate opera." There may be no Manchester KGB, but as you can see the position is being well-filled.
- On the plane to London, I sat next to someone I'd been in a flamewar with on Fark. Not only this, but we found that we were buried in a geek-only section of the aircraft and passed away the 4-hour delay on lounge wankery. He was also on my plane from London to Detroit.
- Ben regrets living a childhood without Peewee Herman, I regret living one without Moomans, Wumbles in bowler hats, Jelly Babies.
- On the way back to the states I was on an overbooked flight and volunteered to spend a night in Detroit for, yes, another flight voucher! Woo-dippity-woo! Considering this whole trip was made on a similar voucher, my goal of having my international flights sustain themselves seems nigh.
2.19.06 - this journal created
Today I finished creating most of these sites. As for this journal... I'm not quite sure what will go here yet. The fact that this website is public will partially dictate content, and I already have an active LiveJournal account for more private subjects.
What I think I'll use this for is occasional summarising updates about life rather than a "how I'm feeling" update on a daily basis. Hopefully this will be useful in seeing how things evolve over time. Trying to tell how life is going from reading my LiveJournal is like trying to tell the time by looking at the second hand.
1.16.06 - back from Belfast
Well I'm back, and I had a fantastic time in Belfast. Here's some stuff I did:
But what Ben and I did most was just lie around, doing nothing, enjoying each other's company. We've both had stressful semesters, and more than be tourists we just wanted to be together. Those were really the best memories of the trip.
Here's the photo album from the trip.
11.2.05 - back from Manchester
Mission successful, if a tad insane. I just flew to the UK to surprise Ben on Halloween. I showed up to his Halloween party in costume, unrecognizable, and hung out a good two hours communicating only in pantomime so no one would know I was American. Eventually, curiosity got the best of Ben and he took my mask off. Jaw-droppage, etc. It was a fantastic trip. And here's the album.
8.27.05 - life at Carnegie Mellon begins anew
Well, I'm back in Pittsburgh. I'm not sure how it happened. I flew from California to St. Louis, and within two days began the drive to Pittsburgh. My head is reeling... but all has gone according to plan.
I was slightly nervous because I'd never seen my room before... but it is wonderful. It's good-sized room for one person with a view of just trees! It's also made for someone in a wheelchair, so the position of everything makes me feel tall. The closet bar is so low you have to fold clothes in half before putting them on a hangar. And remember in Fellowship of the Ring, that Bree door that had a man-height and hobbit-height peep hole? My door totally has that. Oh, and it turns out my friend Carolyne is the broad sharing my bathroom, so it seems I'll get to know her better this year.
5.20.05 - summertime will be a'lovin' there
Tonight my sister gradumacated from high school. Hooray for Boriss' gradumacated sister. Boo for airhorns at gradumacation ceremony.
It has been a week of getting little done save for buying some much-needed shiny. So now, broke and happy, I suffer a couple more hours of St. Louis. After these, I fly into a splendiforous sunrise to VMware in San Francisco to begin my summer as a responsible adult.
Status report:
Mind: ready
Body: exhausted
Bank account: exhausted
Bags: packed with Monty Python
Flowers: in hair
