web-goddess

Friday Five:
My answers are going to suck this week, as I know jack squat about genealogy.

1. What is your lineage? Where are your ancestors from?
Well, one-quarter is Korean. That’s my maternal grandmother. The other three grandparents are all American. I really haven’t done any research, but I’m pretty sure that the “Howard” side of the family is British. (Sidenote: There’s a Castle Howard in England! I bet I’m in line for the throne.) The “Manns” and “Harter” sides probably lean towards German. When the Snook and I visited last year, my grandma showed us all these old scrapbooks she had and pointed out a picture of a Native American woman. Apparently that was, like, my great-great-grandmother or something. I had no idea. So throw in a little Cherokee too.

2. Of those countries, which would you most like to visit?
Definitely Korea. Ideally I’d like to take my mom and grandmother along on a big trip, if I could afford it. It’s so close to Australia (relatively speaking), though, I may end up taking a mini-trip with the Snook if we can swing it.

3. Which would you least like to visit? Why?
Well, it’s not really a country, but quite frankly, the “American Indian” bit is the least interesting to me. I’ve never really romanticized that culture and I don’t think this familial revelation is going to change that. I’m scared of horses. I’m not a big outdoorsy person. (I did see Pocahontas, like, five times though.) So that’s the part I’d probably least like to “revisit”.

4. Do you do anything during the year to celebrate or recognize your heritage?
Nope. We eat Korean food every now and then, but not on any specific occasion.

5. Who were the first ancestors to move to your present country (parents, grandparents, etc)?
Wait. My “present” country? That’s Australia, which would make it… ME. Yep, I’m my first ancestor to move here. (In terms of America, I have no clue. Man, I wish somebody in my family would research this stuff.)

When it rains, it pours.
Remember that job interview I had last week? I got it! It’s another contract project where I’ll be working from home. I’ll be developing an entire site – database, backend, frontend, everything – all by myself. I’m excited to start. And guess what else? I have two more interviews on Monday! One is another contract IT position, and the other is a part-time position working front of house at the nearby Enmore Theatre. To be honest, I’m more excited about the latter. It’s a great venue, and they get all sorts of concerts and shows. (That’s where we saw Ben Folds.) In fact, I’m going to ask about a job for the Snook as well. It’s only a couple nights a week, and it would be so fun to do it together. I’ll keep you posted on the outcome.

As the SUV debates continue to rage, I thought I might try to track down the WW2 carpool scare poster Tricia mentioned. Once again, Google Image Search did not disappoint. Here it is, as found on this page (which also contains another good one with Uncle Sam). Remember kids! When you ride ALONE, you ride with Hitler! Especially in big SUVs. Nazis need lots of room.

Ebert’s got a nice story about Clint Eastwood, who’s one of Snookums’s and my dad’s favorite movie stars. I like a guy who admits his age. I don’t like Westerns so much myself, so I haven’t seen a lot of his work. He was damn sexy in this movie, though.

Evan Dando has been spotted in Melbourne. *flashing back to alterna-teen youth* Ahh, the Lemonheads. Sassy. Converse Chuck Taylor’s. I remember once reading that a fan asked Evan Dando to go to Prom with her and he went. Embarrassingly, at the time I wished it had been me. I wonder if he still has his beautiful long hair?

“Tiger Woods, Nike spokesman and unmarried father of none…”
Ooh, this is such a good rant. The author takes on sportswriters who always include a woman’s marital or family status when writing about female competitors, as if they can hardly believe that a mother could also be a first-class athlete. In a roundabout way, it also reminds me of something that happened in London a year or two ago, where a woman was killed outside a train station. Every headline blared “MOTHER OF THREE GUNNED DOWN” or something similar. As if crimes are somehow more senseless when perpetuated against a breeder. Why should the fact that she had children have anything to do with it? Somebody died, that’s horrible. Somebody won a race, that’s great. This need to single out women (whether for additional pity or congratulations) on the basis of their “domestic achievements” is patronising and unnecessary.

I just took the Which ‘Six Feet Under’ Character Are You? quiz and it was so wrong. I don’t want to be Peter Krause; I want to possess Peter Krause. I also took the supporting cast quiz and scored “Dead.” As in, I’m a frickin’ corpse. These quizzes suck. (Link courtesy of Beau.)

New Poll! In honor of my near death experience, I want your opinion on my fearsome attacker.

The suburban jungle…
Yes, this is your first glimpse of our new house. Isn’t it cute? I just love the brick. The house is narrow but it goes back pretty far. Ma Snook took this picture when she came down to help us move a few weeks ago. (That’s me looking particularly unattractive on the right, and the Snook himself peering out of the front door.) I’m hoping to get indoor photos taken soon, as soon as we get the last of the new furniture and hang up all our pictures.

Okay, see, that’s where the post was supposed to end. Instead we now have to talk about something scary: spiders. I’m not a fan. In fact, I’ve been developing a rather severe case of arachnophobia since we moved. See, all the most poisonous beasties in the world are here in Australia. Most of them, the snakes and jellyfish and stuff, don’t live in the middle of the city and I don’t have to worry about them. The spiders, however, do. And some of them are downright nasty. (Last week at the Slashdot meetup, even the most hardened lifelong Sydneysiders admitted to being petrified of funnel web spiders.) In our nice little modern apartment, I didn’t even think about creepy crawlies. Now we live in an old house, a house with street-level entrances and a back garden. I think about them. I especially think about them when I go out to the shed to do the laundry. I just know they’re going to be in there. Anyway, this is all background information. The point of all this rambling is…

This bastard crawled across my hand tonight. It’s a Huntsman spider, which is technically supposed to be one of the harmless ones. It was still frickin’ huge and hairy and scary though. I was out on the front porch moving the trash and recycling bins out onto the curb. I reached for the recycling bin and suddenly this thing was crawling over my hand. I seriously jumped, like, three feet straight backwards and started shaking my arms like mad. (There may have been some screaming, but to be honest, I’ve blacked most of it out.) I ended up on the sidewalk with the spider sitting on the welcome mat looking at me. I had no idea what kind it was, nor whether it would bite me if further provoked. So I did the only thing I could do… I stood there and yelled for Snookums to come rescue me. He showed up and explained that it was harmless, and then proceeded to bash it with a newspaper since I was still hyperventilating. Dude, I can still feel it. I have a feeling my phobia’s only going to get worse.

Do you share my pain? Or are you a friend to the eight-legged freaks?

In case you’re wondering, we haven’t forgotten to pay the electricity bill. CouchCam has simply been down for a couple days without us noticing. I tend to surf with images turned off (because of our slow connection), so neither of us caught the error til today. It’s been uploading nothing but blackness for 72 hours. You guys are supposed to tell me this stuff! Anyway, I’m going to take it down for awhile until we get it fixed.