I say… And you think…?
Like this meme? Play along here.
I’m listening to Blues Traveller on Napster, and this song came one. The lyrics have nothing to do with the subject of this entry, but the title is appropriate, so I’m borrowing it.
First, though, here’s a picture of the OTHER desk in my office. It’s an antique writing desk that my mother bought for $400 at a garage sale about 10 years ago, and I inherited when she moved to Mexico.
Click picture for larger image
This is where I keep stamps and stickers, and have an entire drawer (under the fold-out table part of the desk) devoted to greeting cards.
The drawers aren’t visible, but the drawer-pulls are daisies. I think that’s a really cool touch. The calendar on the wall is, in fact, a Winnie-the-Pooh calendar, a gift from my godmother to my inner child.
Also evident in this picture is proof of my total geekiness – yes, it’s true – I watch TNG while I’m working in the afternoon, even though I’ve seen every episode many (many, many) times.
The darkness in this image is due to my camera flash deciding not to work, and the fact that I left the desklamp turned on, but I kind of like the moodiness.
But back to the letter from a friend bit, I received one earlier this week, from a friend in NZ, and in it was an entire page (newspaper page) of boots and shoes. It totally made me smile.
A while ago I mentioned my green glass desk, and a few people wanted pictures. Below is an offering, from a couple of days ago. It’s taken without flash, so that I could get the trees beyond the window, which means it may be kind of murky if your brightness isn’t turned way up.
Click photo for larger image.
So, there’s where I work, and where I write, but not generally where I blog, as I tend to do that from my laptop, in bed. *sigh* I suppose this means I have to take a picture of the laptop propped on pillows now, too.
Speaking of pillows, Cleo and Zorro are both curled up in the space where Fuzzy’s pillow generally resides (I’m using his pillow as my laptop holder tonight). I’ve just finished a glass of lovely syrah, and some pepperoni pizza, and tonight’s episode of ER, and am now watching Better than Chocolate on the Independent Film Channel, and thinking about editing the article I just finished.
Today was one of those days where I know I accomplished things but still feel as though I got nothing done.
Tomorrow the pool repair guys come.
I am so ready for the weekend.
Zing! #1
So, I finally had time yesterday to play with my spiffy new electronic tuner, and had the top three strings on my cello harmonizing delightfully when I got to the C-string.
I’ve had an adversarial relationships with C-strings since I was about nine, and had one pop and hit me in the face. Ever since then, no matter how many teachers and helpful music store folk have guided me through restringing my cello, that string has terrified me. I think because it’s so thick, and heavy.
I’m a strictly amateur hobbyist cello player. I noodle for fun. I’m good enough for community orchestras or church, but not good enough to be a soloist, and that’s cool, because I have a job, as well as two or three other things that I’d really prefer to have as a second career (writing). The cello I have is an advanced-student-quality “Virtuoso” cello from StringWorks in Wisconsin. It’s pretty, with rosewood fittings (pegs and tailpiece) and a really nice tone.
But I’m beginning to think that my problem with the C-string (this is the second time I’ve snapped one, while tuning, with less than half-step increments) might not be that I’m afraid of the string, and might be related to the peg and pegbox itself, because this string slips far too often to be normal. I’ve tried using stuff to help that, and it doesn’t work.
So, I’ve asked our choirmaster, who works at SMU, to ask any cello friends there if they can recommend an actual luthier, who can look at my peg box and figure out if I’m stupid, or if there’s really a problem.
Zing! #2
Last night, at about 7:00, I was in the kitchen waiting for Cleo to come inside from herpost-dinner trip to the rain-damp back yard. She likes to jumb into the raised flower box that runs behind the swimming pool, and then step onto the brick back wall of the pool, so she’s closer to the trees and has a better view of the birds she’s stalking. This gives her a doggie runway that is the length of the pool (about 20 feet), two feet above the surface of the water, and eight inches wide.
We often joke that one of these days she’s going to over-balance on her landing, and land in the pool.
Last night, probably because the rain made the brick slick, she did just that.
Now, when we first moved in here, I took both dogs into the pool, and taught them where the stairs were, so that if they ever managed to fall in, they’d have a decent chance of getting out.
I forgot two things, however.
1) Dogs live in the now. Things that are not reinforced daily, fly right out of their furry little brains.
2) Animals panic when they cease to have ground beneath their feet, and panic more when they land in deep pools of water.
So, it’s twilight, made darker by rain, and I’ve got a scared dog splashing in the pool. I could have gone in after her, of course, but since the filter is broken the water is kind of icky with fallen flower petals and an array of bugs. So I called her.
She ignored me, and kept splashing toward the wall she’d fallen from, which, from that direction, is sheer.
I went to the corner of the pool, on the deck, and clapped, and got her attention, and she turned in the water, but, because she was trying to see me, moved into a position that was almost vertical. I had images of Cleo turning into a black and white canine Titanic, and plummetting to the bottom, but she didn’t, and I moved a bit closer to the pool stairs, calling her the whole time.
Slowly, the clue intercepted the canine brain, and she figured out that I was leading her to the stairs. It took about five minutes, but finally a wet and bedraggled Cleo-pet pushed herself onto the top step,and then onto the deck, where, immediately, she tried to jump into my arms, for comfort, while simultaneously shaking off all the water.
She spent the next half hour drying near the space heater in the bathroom.
I spent the next half hour mopping up the path of watery doom from the kitchen and living room floors.
Two hours later, she was back outside, where she went to the edge of the pool, peered cautiously over it, and into the water, chuffed, and then lowered herself onto her belly, stalking it.
I’m not sure, but I think she won.
The first time I ever went to any kind of Renaissance festival was the weekend of Liz and Brett‘s wedding, when a bunch of us drove to Casa de Fruta, for the faire there. I loved it, but felt a bit overwhelemed at all the sights and sounds.
Last year, we didn’t make it to any faires because we were moving and packing, and then in a new state, and the faires here tend to be in spring and fall when the weather is mild. Still, when I saw the first ad for Scarborough Faire, I informed Fuzzy that we were going.
The first week of the faire, he was on call. The second, I had something that interfered. And so last weekend, we finally made it there, taking the long way to Waxahachie in an attempt to avoid freeway construction. Everything was green and springy, and the wildflowers were in full bloom, so the long way wasn’t bad – either way it’s only about forty minutes.
Scarborough Faire has a permanent location, with actual flushing toilets – actual CLEAN flushing toilets. I generally detest public restrooms, but I was seriously impressed with how clean these were. (Note: the restrooms near the falconry stage have the least amount of traffic.) They also have a gorgeous creekside setting with lots of bridges that get you back and forth to the various parts of the faire – it’s spread over 35 acres, after all.
The vendors are the usual array of jewelry and pottery artists. Fuzzy bought me a watermelon tourmaline necklace from Lucia, the people who also do the gem designs for Angel Sword, and I found a lovely pair of earrings that look like curls of gold ribbon, and weigh nothing.
We enjoyed the Falconry demonstration, which, aside from showing off a bunch of gorgeous birds, also confirmed for us that the large winged predators we see in the skies around here are, in fact, red-tailed hawks. Zorro, at eight and a half pounds, is about the same size as a wild rabbit, so when we got home, I had a conversation with him about being cautious when he’s outside. (We also have an owl in our neighborhood, and I’ve had friends who’ve lost chihuahuas to such birds.)
The food, of course, was pretty typical – turkey legs, steak on a stake, and my favorite, the tasty (if disturbingly phallic) sausage on a stick. Mmm. Bratwurst with mustard and ice cold cider, eaten at a picnic table in a pecan grove on a warm spring day. Perfection.
Fuzzy introduced me to funnel cake. I could have lived without that. Afterwards, we did some more shopping and browsing, and then I demanded alcohol. The large version of the program had informed me that of the eight pubs and taverns at the faire, only one, the White Horse, had hard cider, so we went to find it. This is the pub where all the “cool kids” hang out. It’s not attached to any of the food places, but tucked away on a cliff over the creek, with a canopy of trees. There’s a stage, where there were musicians, and you can hear the running water under the boisterous conversation. I had my lovely pear cider, and then we wandered toward the joust.
By that time, my feet hurt, and there was no way I was going to stand to watch the tournament, so Fuzzy went off to do that, and I watched the women in one of the clothing stores dress a young woman in period clothing. They caught me watching, and ended up dressing me, as well, and so now, I own a lovely forest green and antique rose ensemble – basic, but comfortable. If Fuzzy isn’t on call this weekend, we’re going back (possibly meeting up with some local folks)on Saturday, so I’ll get to wear it all day, instead of just for a couple of hours.
We didn’t really get to see any of the shows, and they have an improv group and a twisted Shakespeare group, so I want to see those when we go back, rather than shop, though I’ll definitely have them braid my hair again.
I’ve often said that if I were truly rich my biggest luxury would be to have someone wash my hair for me. I’m changing that. I’d have someone braid it for me. Oh, I know it was just french braids, twisted and pinned, but I don’t have the ability to braid my own hair. Never could.
Fuzzy has promised to learn, though. :)
Actually, I was still in bed, half asleep from antihistamine taken at far to late an hour before bed, when the pool filter clicked on, and I heard, not the customary bubbling and whirring, but a sound rather like a flushing toilet.
“This is not good!” I informed Zorro and Cleo, who looked at me with slitty eyes, as I left the bed and threw on ratty sweats, so that I could go out to the pool filter and check on things.
Note to self: when walking across lava rocks, wearing shoes is a wise choice.
The stepping stones that lead through the lava-rock landscaping and trailing ivy to the pool filter were immersed in six inches of cold chlorinated water (it felt lovely on my feet, actually), and more was flowing from the intake pipe – the pipe that filters hose water, and is responsible for automatically maintaining the water level of the pool – and the filter cannister was lying on the ground.
I managed to stop MOST of the water, and reduce the pressure enough to turn off the filter, but then I resorted to calling Fuzzy home from work, because I just wasn’t strong enough to turn the stop-cock on the water hose.
We’ve put in a call to our Home Warranty company (note to any who own real estate: if you do not have a home warranty, get one, if you have one, and it comes due for renewal, DO IT. If, as I suspect, we need a new pump for the pool, our total outlay will be $50 because we made sure the pool was ON the home warranty), which, in turn, send out a call to a local company to come look at the stuff. But they haven’t come yet. I’ll be following up in the morning, of course.
In the meantime, I can’t turn on the ppol filter because I can’t figure out how to bypass the intake pipe.
ARGH.
The vinyl pool was SO much easier to take care of.
On the up-side, the chlorinated water will kill all the weeds.
Like the sky that threatened rain, but did not make good on it, my muse is full of empty promises today. I’ve stared at the screen for hours, but no words have come, even though scenes I want to write keep playing in my head when I have no pen or paper, no keyboard at hand.
I watched six episodes of ER, from early seasons, tivo’d from TNT’s daytime schedule, and am trying to figure out why I only started watching the show this year. Yet another thing to begin collecting on DVD, I suppose.
This morning I drank iced raspberry mocha and ate a warm chocolate-almond croissant and flirted with the wind, letting it move through my unbound hair and whisper around my bare feet, just as it whispers through the trees.
I am bored with all the tea I have.
I brought my laptop upstairs for a project, then never got to the project.
This week, I resent that my job is intruding upon my life. It sucks my writing energy away when I have to decrypt bad handwriting on applications, and make numbers add up to a loan approval.
I haven’t been to the gym, and I miss it, and I’m afraid to go back.
I went to eight elementary schools, two junior high schools and two high schools, and spent far too much of my childhood being the New Girl, and right now, I feel like the New Girl in my own skin.
The best part of my day was sitting on Fuzzy’s lap, making out with him as if we were teenagers in the back of someone else’s car, instead of a married couple with a mortgage and stress. He always smells like sunshine.
Tomorrow, when I’m more coherent, I’ll write about Saturday at the Ren Faire, including stuff about hair and clothing. And then I’ll write about the movie we saw today.
But right now, I’m suffering from carb crash, and three days of too much sun and too little rest.
I was actually TOO TIRED to drink the iced mocha I bought on the way home. It’s sitting in the fridge.
So, off to watch a bit of 1776 on On Demand before sleep.
I changed my default phone number in LiveJournal’s phone-post setup, and finished setting up AudioBlog for this site, in preparation for today’s little adventure, but did I use either one? No.
Fuzzy and I spent the day trekking half way across Texas, and back, to help a guy named Tank get home. Tank’s a one-year-old Rottweiller who’s been in foster-care here in the DFW area for a month (he was in a shelter before that), but he’s been adopted by a woman who lives in Alambama, and we were part of the group of volunteers that got him there.
Pet transports aren’t new to me, though this is the first one I’ve done in Texas. And Tank is a very sweet dog, but he was large – 97 pounds – and I’d forgotten how much Rotties drool. Sometimes I think they perceive all humans as napkins with hands.
In any case, our original leg of Tank’s transport was supposed to be from Dallas to Tyler, which is about 95 miles. NOt a bad way to spend a spring afternoon, really, especially since LadyBird Johnson’s legacy of wildflowers makes itself known in every highway median in the state. I mean, I am still dazzled by the amount of forested greenspace there is here, as I expected all of Texas to be indistinguishable from…oh, I don’t know…Nevada, or the Mohave Desert. Scrub and cactus.
But anyway…the woman who was supposed to take over at Tyler fell and broke her ankle this morning, which must be pretty painful as even just spraining an ankle turns me into a sobbing mess, so we said, “Ok, we’ll drive all the way to Shreveport.”
It’s still not a bad drive. 185 miles through lush greenery, past a camel farm, lots of horses and cows, and a place where they sell – and I am not making this up – Lavender tractors. I had to wonder if this color choice was in response to pink razors aimed at woman, and if the marketing was something like, “Lady CAT, for the woman who loves the purr of machinery.”
Anyway, we left 40 minutes late because Tank was still being groomed at 3:15, and then his foster human wanted pictures taken – which is fine, but we were already late. Then, outside of Tyler – *just* outside of Tyler, there was an accident that stopped traffic on I-20, and it took us forty minutes to get to the exit for 271 so that we could go around the accident, and loop back to I-20.
We ended up being almost an hour late to the rendezvous point, but the woman who has Tank overnight was late also, and only had to wait about 20 minutes.
I hate being late.
So we transferred the dog, had dinner, and headed home, and I’m now practically comatose but felt guilty about not blogging.
I’m sitting here in bed, about to turn out the light, appreciating the fact that I have tiny, spry dogs, who don’t have to be lifted into the back of the car, and weigh nothing, so that even if I had to lift them, it wouldn’t be a big deal.
Because, yeah, Tank had never seen an SUV before, and didn’t know how to jump into the back.
My penmanship has slowly decomposed from bold calligraphic writing with strong downstrokes and true horizontals to a wobbly, childish scrawl. I blame carpal tunnel, but in truth, I think it’s just that I’ve become used to composing at the keyboard. After all, holding a pen and using chopsticks use similar muscle movements, and no one’s ever caught me asking for a fork in a Japanese restaurant.
A blogger I read mentioned handwriting in his blog recently, and an exchange of comments and emails has me musing. I know that my ‘voice’ differs greatly when I’m using pen and ink. My keyboard compositions tend to be breezy, fast, and use one line paragraphs for emphasis or just for cadence.
On the rare occasions when I do things more organically, my words come slowly, with more introspection and consideration.
I ask, therefore, that people share their answers to the following:
1) Do you keep a handwritten journal in addition to your online writing?
2) Do you compose journal or blog entries at the keyboard, or do you create them on paper first?
3) Do you find that your voice changes with the medium in which you write?
4) If you do other writing (fiction, essays, etc.) that is not in your blog/diary/journal, do you approach it the same way?
This entry crossposted to OpenDiary and to LiveJournal. Apologies to those who encounter it more than once.