November 2007 Archives

sex and lucia

Y tu mama tambien

I can always tell when it's time for my next haircut because I instinctively start wearing it pulled back. I used to wear my hair pulled up and back all the time. I was all about the funky braids and twists and such. Now I try to wear it down, at least for work. The weekends are when it gets pulled back, into the I-just-don't-care ponytail/bun.

I find it interesting that now-a-days, putting your hair up or back is often the relaxed state. (The exception of course is the fancy up-do. But that's not what I'm talking about.) It used to be that women always wore their hair up. It was a sign of being a woman -- only unmarried maids wore their hair long and straight. I suppose it made a lot of sense from a practical stand point. When you spend your hours sweating over an open coal fire it's easier not to think about your hair going up in flames. Then there are the sayings that go along with it. "Letting your hair down."

Having your hair down used to be the wild, non-public view. It was an intimate moment between spouses and lovers. Is it the over sexing of society that caused that flip? Having our hair down all the time puts us in a constant state of titalation? Is it just the rebellion against the old fashioned norms? Prove you aren't your mother's (or should we say great-grandmother's) daughter, subject to her rules?

Sure wearing it down is easier than doing a fancy up-do everyday. But pulling it into a bun is a lot easier than making sure it doesn't fly out in all directions and the bangs aren't too funky. In any case, I'm glad I'm going to the salon tomorrow.

I always liked my maiden name. Berlingo. It's fun to type - the way the keys roll under your fingers. The "lingo" always made me think of that Bingo song from childhood. It was unusual, but not hard to pronounce like Chiara is. And it really shouted my Italian roots from the treetops.

When I married C, I didn't really think twice about taking his name. For all my feminist leanings, I do have a rather conservative side. Or rather, perhaps it's better put saying there are some traditions I am proud to hold on to. So, I became a foxy lady (which always made me giggle).

When I got divorced, I thought long and hard about changing my name back. I didn't really want to keep the association with C. But everyone in the IA industry knew me as Fox. I was published under Fox. Plus, it's a pain in the ass to change your name. There's a lot of paperwork and plus they charge you for the privilege if it's because of a divorce (it's free when you get married). So, I remained foxy.

Now that E and I are engaged, I've been thinking about my name again. E says that he doesn't care what name I use as long as it isn't the one I have now. I can't really say that I blame him. I have no problem becoming an Ogan. My initials will be CFO -- an upgrade or promotion of sorts. :)

What I keep thinking about, is how to let everyone know about the name change? What name do I put on the invitations? I'm thinking of using Chiara Berlingo Fox, dropping the Florence cause 4 is just too many names. That way folks who know me now will realize it's me, and family and such will also realize it's still me. Emails are easy enough to redirect. Same with domain names. But what do I do with all the logins I have that use Fox in the name? It's going to be strange to keep using that name in some places but not others. Of course, my NY Times account still uses Berlingo. heh.

Then part of me says, how many of my friends have other friends named Chiara? I mean really. It's not like I live in Italy. Perhaps it won't be as confusing as I fear it might be.

Yesterday a cargo ship hit the Bay Bridge. The bridge is (mostly) okay, but the ship is not. It's leaked 58,000 gallons of oil into the Bay waters. Yuck! Beaches are closed, wildlife is dying.

The Save The Bay organization has put together a great page of information about the spill. It includes resources if you want to volunteer, donate money, document spills, or just learn more about what is going on.

E and I are going to find out if we can help out this weekend. There's never been a better time to act locally folks!

I learned about a neato genealogy site today called Geni. Thanks Lou! This site appeals to me on many levels. First, it's family history. I am such my father's child in that I get totally excited about genealogy stuff. I love filling in the forms and building the trees and seeing how everyone is connects. Yes, I know I'm weird.

Second, it's a nicely done site with lots of Ajaxy-goodness. They walk you through the process step by step, but in a gentle manner. There are a lot of nice touches, such as you are never asked to set a password. Rather, a password is created for you and mailed to you in a behind the scenes step (the email just appears in your inbox while you are playing with the site). If you want to create your own password, one of your set-up steps you are prompted to do is to confirm a permanent password. This is a housekeeping task that shouldn't get in the way of you using the site, and Geni does a great job of doing just that.

You spend a lot of time in the tree view adding folks and defining relationships. They have pared down the amount that you have to enter to get up and running. You don't need everyone's birthday and where they got married in order to add them to the system. In fact, unless you go into a detailed view you'd never know that you should have that information.

The tree view also automatically adjusts itself as you add more people. So my second cousins are collapsed when you are looking at my brother's kids. You can still get to them, but chances are it's just noise in the branches so they discreetly hide them.

The one thing that I don't like about the site so far is that amount of auto-complete breaks down at a crucial level. You tab through the fields entering country and state information, all of which has the standard auto-complete. But when you get to towns, you have to type the whole name of the town into the field. This is something that Family Tree Maker actually got right. A vast majority of family members are all in the same town. Sure spouses are likely to come from other places, but siblings are likely all born in the same place. Why not remember the towns of closely related family members and pre-populate the fields for me? Or even have an auto-complete for towns made up of all the towns I have entered so far. It gets tiring to have to type "Stamford" over and over and over.

I'm actually thinking of changing the genealogy site that I put together, Berlingo-Nardozza.com to just point to this one. Everyone in the family can edit it, so it's bound to be more up to date than what I can do. Bring the power to the people, so to speak.

Okay, I'll admit it. I'm addicted to Second Life. At least, that's the wording that I think E would use. I prefer to think of it as that place online that I like to go and hang out in. A lot. I know lots of folks "don't get it" when it comes to SL. Perhaps it's all the time I spent on the Muck when I was in college that warped my brain to be inclined to such things. After all, technically I met my first husband online. I don't know. I just know that I find it a fun way to fill the hours. Not that I really need more things to fill my hours. But it's more satisfying than watching TV. I guess I've traded one screen for another.

One thing I've been thinking about a lot lately is the role of friends in the virtual space. Sure it's fun to explore and go shopping on my own. But I much prefer to hang out with some of my SL buddies. There are 2 folks in particular that I've become friends with, and it's interesting to me to see how the friendships have changed over time.

One of the first friends I made online was J. J and I can talk about anything. It's great. He's in the Navy and is based in South Korea, at least for another month or so. Our friendship quickly outgrew the boundaries of SL and we traded emails and now spend more time emailing, chatting, and Skyping than we do in world together. We talk about things going on in our RLs with the folks that we love.

The other close friend I have is F. F is a SL friend only. I know he's a bit older than me, and that he lives in the mid-west. But that's about all I know of his RL. He made a rule when he started playing SL that he was going to keep the two worlds separate. We sometimes talk about RL things (how the weather has taken a turn for the cold where he lives, that I'm getting married), but I don't know what he looks like or what his name really is. We hang out in world, much like kids do after school. He's my buddy and we are always goofing around, trying to make the other one laugh.

It's a bit one-sided in the sense that I'm plastered all over the web. Do a search on my avatar's name and you'll find me very quickly, thank you work blog. So he knows my name and what I look like. But you know what? That's okay. It's choices we both made. I could have created another avatar separate from the one I used for work. But I like my av.

What I find interesting is the different levels of disclosure I have with these friends, and yet I feel very close to both of them. J knows the ins and outs of my life. He knows about the health issues I've been having and he checks up on me about them. F doesn't know about any of that. When I'm hanging out with him, it's truly escape time for me. I can forget about the stress of the day or how my body is feeling. I don't mix the worlds; partly out of respect for his decision to keep them separate. Partly because it feels so good to be able to get a respite.

I have friends in RL that have different levels of closeness to me. Some I let into the inner circle of my thoughts and feelings and some stay more on the surface. I think everyone has that. And it doesn't mean that I don't love and care about the folks who aren't in the inner circle. I certainly do. It's just hard for me to be that open with everyone. Yet, I'm discovering that in SL, those who would be on a "surface" level in RL feel more like the inner circle. I feel close to them even though I'm not sharing the gory details of my life.

And it makes me wonder. Is it something about the virtual experience that causes that? Is it the perceived intimacy of the computer screen that lulls us into that feeling? Can I really be close to F when I know so little about him? Is our friendship not as "real" as that I have with other friends, because we don't talk about RL? I spend more hours with F than with a lot of my real world friends - but logged hours doesn't seem an appropriate metric for measuring friendship. What are those basic elements of connection that cause someone to cross that line from stranger to friend?

I find it interesting to think about these things. I've always believed that people come in and out of your life for a reason. That there are things for you to learn from them, or for you to teach to them. I don't see why those we meet in cyberspace (*wavy hands* Oooooh! The fuuuuuuture! *wavy hands*) have to be treated any differently. J and F are still real people existing in the world, just like me.