Last week in Homer was made more lively than usual by crossing paths with Philip Greenspun.  We got connected through Dave Winer, who Brad just met at Gnomedex in Seattle and who pointed out the synchronicity of them being in Homer at the same time.  We met Philip for dinner at The Homestead Restaurant.  It’s great to meet people who live literally on the other side of the continent (our old stomping grounds, Cambridge, Mass) through a couple of degrees of separation.  We had a lively conversation about the nature of success and definitions of "enough" and why it’s so hard to find someone to share your life with — and the other usual topics.  The next night we had dinner at Fat Olives, which is the local gourmet pizza place (who knew you could get Gorgonzola, mandarin orange pizza in Homer?  Yum!) and came back to our house and kept talking.  I like to talk.  And sometimes like to listen.  Philip is definitely an interesting guy.  I hope he comes and stays with us next summer.

Now I feel like a real blogger — I got my first trackback spam this morning to my email Inbox.  TypePad sends me email whenever anybody puts a link to my blog on their blog, so that I can be all excited and happy that anyone out there actually reads what I’m writing.  My trackback this morning was from http://violent-sex.inctteens.com/gang-rape.html.  Somehow that didn’t seem like anything that I, or any woman, or any thinking human, really, would be excited about linking to.  I clicked through the link and arrived at this site http://www.atspace.com/hosting_news_section.html, which claims to be a free hosting service of Zetta Hosting.  Very classy, Zetta Hosting.  I don’t know what marketing genius sold you the idea that it’s good to link your brand to gang rape and violent sex.  It’s not.  I’m not your target market, and don’t want to know anyone who is.

Went to a theoretically more advanced yoga class today (Yoga II) since I didn’t get rolling this morning in time for the Gentle Yoga class.  Brad stayed home to talk on the phone and say things like "participating preferred" and "revised cap tables," which is fun for him.  The class was still pretty gentle, no crazy ashtanga vinyasa stuff, which I’m not quite ready for this summer.  I’ll get there, maybe next week.  It feels so great to open the chest and sternum.  One of my middle vertebrae (T3? T4?) released with a nice crack in upward bow pose today — aaaaahhhhh.  All this sitting and typing is great fun, but doesn’t help fight gravity and slumping shoulders.  Definitely going to keep doing the yoga thing.

We’re moving away from the summer solstice and toward the autumnal equinox — it’s just after midnight and it’s dark outside, even here in the northern lattitudes.

So our friends who visited us here in Homer were talking about the enneagram and personality types and I didn’t know what type I was.  I bought a couple of basic books at the local bookstore and worked through them and couldn’t figure out what type I was.  I ordered the book recommended by my friends from Amazon and still couldn’t figure out what type I was.  I took the 45 minute online quiz (only $10 to figure myself out?!?) and got this result:

Thank you for taking the Riso-Hudson Enneagram Type Indicator (RHETI Version 2.5) Your scores for each of the 9 Enneagram Types are below:

Type 1, The Reformer: 23

Type 2, The Helper: 12

Type 3, The Achiever: 15

Type 4, The Individualist: 14

Type 5, The Investigator: 17

Type 6, The Loyalist: 19

Type 7, The Enthusiast: 12

Type 8, The Challenger: 9

Type 9, The Peacemaker: 21

Your highest score was a tie or close tie between two or more personality types. One of these is likely your Enneagram type. Since your top score is a tie or so close as to be ambiguous, we’d like to offer you a free retake of the RHETI test. We recommend that you wait a week or two before retaking the test. Your test will remain active until you take it again. You can use the same user name and password:

So now I don’t know whether to feel honored that I’m so complex and enigmatic, or worried that I’m so formless and undefined. 

I’ll keep you posted on my development as a person in the next couple of weeks..

Today was the first day of what I think of as "real" Homer weather:  cloudy, gray, occasional showers, no sun.  It’s beautiful because the clouds are always changing and mysterious after the clarity of the sun.  I think it’s going to be like this for the next few days, by which point I’ll be ready to gnash my teeth and rend my garments and smear ash on my face and hibernate for months.  I really do like sun, but it’s too hot in Boulder.  I’m just a delicate flower.

Brad and I went to a gentle yoga class together this morning at the Bay Club, which has a great view. I’m always a scaredy cat about going to a new class with a new teacher, especially now that my ass has its own zip code and some unlucky soul might have to stand behind me during forward bends.  But one of the many big lessons of yoga is that everyone has their own things and that each person changes from day to day.  I’ve never been able to do prayer-behind-the-back, but have always been able to touch my toes.  And after 75 minutes of breathing and being patient with where I’m at today and getting a little bit stronger, I feel peaceful and energized and happy that I moved the body around today.  We’ll play tennis this afternoon, where I’ll sweat a lot and run around like a maniac.  My tennis goal for the summer is to be able to get my racquet onto Brad’s serve — not to be able to return the serve, just to touch it.  I think that’s reasonable.  And tomorrow is another day, another chance to be grateful I’m strong and healthy.

One of my favorite things is to read the Sunday New York Times while listening to jazz in the afternoon, which is what I did today; but with the online version of the Times since the real thing is just not available here in Homer.  I usually find at least one article that causes me to froth at the mouth and jump up and down.  Sometimes I go on long "no news is good news" vacations from being informed about world events so that I can be a more calm and peaceful person.  Today’s frother is

QUOTATION OF THE DAY: "Has anybody else had to watch their husband die on television over and over?  I know that it’s public and I know that it’s national, but it’s so private for me."  Evelyn Husband, the widow of Rick Husband, who died on the space shuttle Columbia.

And to Mrs. Husband I would say, I am sad for your loss, and the public nature of that loss, but thousands of people have had to watch their husbands and wives die on television over and over again on September 11 and then again and again each time footage from that day is broadcast.  And Rick Husband volunteered for his work on the space shuttle Columbia. 

Done frothing for now, except to say that everyone needs to read Salman Rushdie’s brilliant editorial about rape in Pakistan and India.  A small excerpt:

Pakistan, however, has little to be proud of. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan says that there were 320 reported rapes in the first nine months of last year, and 350 reported gang rapes in the same period. The number of unreported rapes is believed to be much larger. The victim pressed charges in only one-third of the reported cases, and a mere 39 arrests were made. The use of rape in tribal disputes has become, one might say, normal. And the belief that a raped woman’s best recourse is to kill herself remains widespread and deeply ingrained.

Although I really do love to vacuum, I have had an incredible amount of fun today watching the Roomba do all the work.  Colin Angle, the co-founder of iRobot, the company which makes the Roomba, is a fraternity brother and friend of Brad’s from MIT, which makes it even more fun to watch such a great product in action.  Having a Roomba didn’t actually save me much housecleaning time today since I watched it zoom around for almost as long as I would have spent doing the work myself.  There’s something mesmerizing about watching this frisbee whirl around sucking up dirt.  We had an earlier version at our house in Boulder, but that house has lots of different levels and the Roomba doesn’t work as well there as it does here where the house is just an upstairs and a downstairs (okay, and an entry area, and the stairs themselves, of course).  This version has a docking station where it charges and the really cool thing is that after the Roomba has decided that it has covered the surface of the room, it returns itself to its home.  How cool is that!?!?  I sat on the stairs (thereby tamping them down significantly) and watched the end of the Roomba’s activity downstairs and got to see it scootch itself up to its station.  I’m still waiting on my teleporter machine, but am completely happy with the entertainment value and vacuuming skill of the Roomba.  Magic.

I love to vacuum.  I’ve always loved to vacuum.  There’s something so satisfying about seeing the progress of the clean vacuum tracks and paths across a room.  I stopped doing my own housecleaning when I moved in with Brad in Boston about fifteen years ago, but I do clean our house here in Homer.  Yesterday and the day before I scrubbed bathtubs and toilets and folded laundry and did lots of aerobic housecleaning; but yesterday I did my favorite household task of all.  I vacuumed the stairs until the carpet looked brand new, including the risers, which are so fluffy and nice now.  We have a central vacuum system here, which is awfully fancy, and very quiet.  I could vacuum for hours.  That’s only part of the crazy part, though.  The real craziness is that I then don’t really want anyone to walk on the carpet and tamp it down after I’ve made it all fluffy and nice.  It’s probably a good thing that our Eldorado Canyon house is all tile and stone flooring or I’d never be able to have friends over.