#178 Pardon my Absence

Yes, I haven't been here for a while.  No, I'm just fine.  It's just that it's beginning to look like Spring, and I've suddenly found all kinds of energy, and I'm busy elsewhere.  Yes, the egg is still standing on the laundry room bath counter.  The zillions of daffodils on the lower bank have benefited from the past two years of brush-clearing, and they are multiplying and growing and budding like crazy.  Basement cleaning is back on the agenda and proceeding apace.  I'm running out of space for the "go to the dump" pile.  The paper is all recycleable, but there's just so much of it....  Paper! 

Paper!! 

Paper!!!

Agghhh!!! Paper avalanche!!!

Jay was worse at saving paper than I am.  The north end of the basement is full of stuff he brought with him from Texas twenty years ago - and I'm finding high school and college notebooks, souvenir fliers from every place he'd ever visited, newspapers from Texas, on and on.  I haven't even attempted the south end.  That's full of boxes from when he left The Company, containing every piece of paper, every core dump, every manual that ever crossed his desk, more than twenty years' worth.

I had planned to take all this paper to the recycle center, but it's just too much.  It'll take me thirty trips with the van, and "they" will be mad at me for filling up their bins.   I'm now thinking I'll just burn it all in the fireplace.

So - don't worry if I'm "gone" for a while.  I'm just busy.

#177 Haiku

It is not sufficient for haiku to simply convey a message in a 5-7-5 pattern.  Good haiku flies and flutters.  There's a beauty in the rhythm alone, but each individual word seems a jewel.  Shorter words seem to work better than longer.  It should curl back on itself.  In your mind, it should look like this:

It should not be rectangular.      It should not be open-ended.      It should not point the mind outward away from itself.

(Of course, need I say that this is only my opinion?)

#176 Razzelfrats!

I need to get this out before I go to bed or I'll never get to sleep.  I'll lie there chewing nails.

I'm annoyed at those who say "We've got to reduce our dependence on oil!", and then work to kill mass transit.  Buses are dead except in a few large cities.  Streetcars and trams are dead, except as a tourist attraction.  Trains are dying, and the current administration is working to pull the last plug. 

We have (or had) a local bus one could take into Kingston or Poughkeepsie, but it came into the village only, and there is no place to park in the village.  Same with the trains - I can take Amtrak from Rhinecliff, or Metro North from Poughkeepsie, into New York City or wherever, BUT there's no place safe to leave my car in Rhinecliff or Poughkeepsie (there are lots, but they're already inadequate for the current crop of commuters), and of course there's no bus to the Rhinecliff train station, and no place to leave my car to take the bus from the village to Poughkeepsie.

Why can't we learn from Europe?  You pretty much don't need a car anywhere - even out in the boonies.  There are clean cheap on-time trains and buses within a mile of everywhere!

The newscasters are marveling that gasoline might get to $2.10 this week.  WOW!  It's going down?  It's been $2.45ish around here since last summer!  It's funny - you go up around Albany, where the tax bills are passed, and gas is like $.20 or more cheaper than anywhere else in the state.

Folks are also speculating about whether OPEC's decision to increase production will bring the cost down.  No, it won't.  The price went up because the administration and the oil companies want Alaska oil, and it won't go down until they get it.  Pure and simple.  They keep saying that forking the caribou will "release us from dependence on Arab oil".  Well, they don't mention that less than 15% of our oil comes from OPEC countries.  Most of our oil comes from Mexico and Canada.  And the piddling little bit they'd get from Alaska won't make the tiniest dent.

Blah!

I don't understand.

#175 I Am Metal, Hear Me Clunk!

Another silly test, but I'm amazed at how it came out.  Almost every phrase is close to true (she says with false modesty....)

The Which Chemical Element Am I Test

Zn... Zinc
You scored 10 Mass, 34 Electronegativity, 63 Metal, and 0 Radioactivity! You have a strong sense of the communal good and you aren't too demanding. You know better than to mess with the powers that be. You value being surrounded by the right people, but don't care too much about what people beyond your group think of you. You are also the last element to be mentioned in every vitamin commercial, and have gained recognition throughout the 50+ community as the very symbol of "completeness." Hmm, you might be good at taking care of sick people, but that might be hogwash too.

#174 How to Read Poetry

I haven't the faintest idea where I originally got this from.  I found it in an old file.  Don't know where it lived before that.  But I hope that including the author's name, and saying that I love it, will buy me legal  absolution.

Introduction to Poetry    Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

#174 This Week Is Lost!

I went to New Jersey to visit Daughter on Monday, and returned Tuesday in the most miserable traffic.  It would have been better had there been a blizzard - at least then there would have been fewer cars on the road.  But it was light flurries, an inch or two on the ground, and I swear I didn't get past 10 mph the whole way through NJ, cars packed all around me, many spun off in the ditch.  The 2.5 hour trip took more than 5 hours. 

There were a few inches of snow on the driveway when I got home, but I was able to bull through the plow-pile at the end, and make it up to the top, and it was supposed to be warmish Wednesday, so I haven't bothered to clear it.

Last night I was supposed to go to a fish dinner at a fire hall in LaGrange, and then to a meeting where someone was going to talk about this place - I can't remember what it's called, "Materials Exchange" I think, but they accept what would normally be manufacturing trash - like round wood blanks, scraps of carpeting, and so on, and artists and small businesses can go there and take whatever they can use - and I really wanted to go, because the place has moved and I don't know where it is now, but snow was predicted, so I didn't.  Sigh.

Instead, I went to the grocery store.  I brought a few bags of groceries in, and left the sliding door of the van open to get the rest, and got distracted.  By the time I remembered, the bay of the van had filled with about two inches of fresh snow.  Sigh.  Oh well, at least the frozen stuff was still frozen.  But so was the milk.  Bigger sigh.

I was supposed to go to a meeting this morning of Company retirees, they want to sue for restoration of benefits, to the level we all were promised when we retired, but with the overnight snow out there, I didn't want to get up to clear it so I could get out.  The meeting started at 10 am in Poughkeepsie, so I'd have to leave here by 9, so I'd have to start clearing the drive by 7 to allow time to clean me up afterward, so bleck, no way!  Of course, I could have parked the van at the end of the drive, then all I'd have to clear is the plow-pile, but I didn't think of that, so that shows you how dedicated I really am.  I suspect I was looking/hoping for an excuse not to go.  But I think I did want to go, just at a more convenient place and time, I guess.  But it's all still so depressing.  

The  Woodstock Goddess Festival is this evening and tomorrow.  On the one hand I'd like to go.  On the other hand, ...................... fill in the blank. 

I think I'll touch up my roots, pay some bills, wrestle with some paper piles, and eat some sugar.  I'll clear the driveway, tomorrow.  Maybe.  Maybe not.

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One more thing - howcum it's very bad to show a panty line, but it's ok to expose bra straps?  I don't understand.

#173 So Tired Today

I am so very tired, and I don't know why.  My legs are especially tired.  They feel like they can't hold me up, let alone carry me someplace.  (Actually, they're working fine - they just FEEL tired.)  Arms, too.  And an ache at the back of my neck that promises a headache if I'm not careful.

Maybe I didn't get enough sleep last night.  I actually went to bed at a reasonable time, about 11:30, and woke at 10 am with the pencil in my hair, evidence that I fell asleep right off while working the crossword puzzle.  That's at least 10 hours' sleep, which should be enough.

I think maybe it was dreams.  I always dream a lot anyway.  Occasionally I have erotic dreams (those are especially hard to wake up from, and leave me tired), and until this morning's, all those dreams have involved Jay. 

Now, before I go any further, I have to admit that I have strange taste in men.  Like, I find Gene Wilder and Morgan Freeman sexy.  The friend in Washington that I had a crush on was nicknamed "The Ugliest Man in the World".  I find intelligence, sweetness, strength of character, and humor attractive, no "bad boys" for me.  You'll recall that I highly recommend nerds.  (There are also a lot of  pretty guys I like to look at, but I don't particularly want to touch them - they're just a nice view.)

Never, ever, in a million years, have I thought of Bill Gates in either way!   Neither to look at nor to snuggle with.  Not even thought about thinking about.  Not on the horizon.  Super-nerd, yes, but even a nerd needs other attributes....

But  - he was the subject of a very interesting dream this morning.   Good enough that I hit the snooze button on the alarm clock six times before I gave up and got up. 

Maybe it was a message from Jay.  If he went out to find me someone, that's exactly what he'd drag home.

#172 (P) Sunset Photos

"johnmscalzi" in By the Way... has asked journalers to post photographs they have taken of sunsets in their areas.  Here's mine, taken from the deck:

The village of Woodstock, New York, is just beyond and to the left of the pointy peak in the center.  You may be able to see a darker ridge in front of the farther mountains - the Hudson River runs just below that, about two miles from the house as the crow flies.

Jay admiring this same sunset:

These photos were taken in probably 1995 or '96.

#171 Flash! Egg Is Up

I stood an egg on the kitchen counter last night, on the first try, very easily, using one finger on the top of the egg - two full weeks before the equinox.  I wish I'd tried earlier.  It stood all night, then fell over when I slammed the cabinet door under it.  I've reset it twice since (I keep using that cabinet...).  It's one of those almost-round eggs, and it wasn't until after I'd set it that I discovered it was standing on the pointy end!  Amazing!

Either it's a really good egg, or I'm getting really good at this, or we're in for an amazing year - probably very interesting weather.

Next time it falls, I'll set it up on the laundry room bathroom counter, where it won't get bumped.

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"They" say there's no rhyme for orange.  If the grass in my field turns orange, can I graze my cows on your range?