Topics seem likely to include: Disability, pain, knitting, spinning, adaptive technologies, random sociological observations, comments/reviews/pondering about what I’m reading, occasional photographs that aren’t fiber-related, and me typing about what all is in my head. MAH BRANES IZ NOT SO GUD lately, but reaching out to the world is one of the things that helps, and is so hard to do when I feel down. Meep. MAH BONEZ IZ HURTY, too, and I feel helpless a lot of the time. I have some reasons for optimism, but they are hard to hang onto in the abyss.

On the bright side, I’ve been reading John Varley again, and just recommended Octavia Butler to someone else, so neurons are firing in happy-strange ways at least a little of the time. Cirroco Jones in the Gaea trilogy is a great distraction from all that ails me. And I am not so alone as the book-opening vampire in Fledgling, or Lilith in Dawn.

I’m thinking really hard about relationships and technology, how people in relationships use different kinds of technology to mediate distance when we’re apart from each other. The class of folks I’m most focused on right now are people in long-distance relationships, since the issues that come up are bigger and more obvious when the distances are longer. I’m finding, though, that there’s a lot that’s fascinating in how we use technology over the course of the day to talk to a sweetie in another building across town.

Here in Vienna I’ll be looking at internet cafes, particularly immigrant internet cafes, to compare experiences across cultures. But I love talking to everyone about this — and so far, everyone has had something wonderful to contribute to my thinking. So I’m also going to talk to the other artists-in-residence, and to folks at metalab, and to my hacker friends and other friends all around the world. More perspectives seem good to me. Having a few weeks to work without any “real world” problems is an incredible gift. Yay!

Vienna is just as beautiful as I remembered from my last visit here. I’m so glad I get to stay longer! I’m over my jetlag, and over the cold/grippe/possible-swine-flu that made me sleep 28 hours, and I’ve found out about the wonderful coffee drink called “melange” (sort of a short latte, or a biggish cappuccino). The Museumsquartier is the best place ever, and my apartment is ginormous, and monochrom-ish mischief is afoot already: Santa vs. Christkindl! My splendid boyfriend is blogging up a storm himself at Testing Range, and posting his zillions of Gigapans of Vienna online at the Gigapan project’s pages. I have the bestest plus-one a girl could ask for!