Bookworm

Today

Today I went to work and to choir practice

Today I hoped that an upcoming medical test for a loved one would yield a positive result.

Today I dreamed of somehow having more time to craft, read, and sleep.

Today I forgot to call my Mom after choir to make plans for Father's Day.

Today I heard my daughter sing her school's alma mater perfectly.

Today I said "I love you."

Today I read blog posts, Twitter posts, and Facebook posts, but no books. I need to make more time for that.  

Today I watched two episodes of So You Think You Can Dance -- my summertime show to relax with.

Today I believed that everything will be okay.

Today I felt productive, but tired by the end of the day.

Today I wondered how I will find the necessary motivation to get in shape.

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• Written on  6/17/2011, but written about 6/16, so published with that date
• I don't update this section of the blog often, but you will find me updating more often here.

 

Reverb 10 | Day Two | Writing

Prompt: Writing. What do you do each day that doesn't contribute to your writing -- and can you eliminate it? [Leo Baubata]

I'm wrestling with this one a bit.  Leo is a writer, so it makes sense that this would be the type of thing he would ask himself regularly.  I am not a writer by trade, so should I be asking this about my professional work?  About my favorite hobbies/avocations?  Or should I quit wasting time and answer the question?

Most of my daily activities do not contribute to my writing.  I choose not to upend 90 percent of my existance in the service of my writing, therefore I am not sure anything will change with regard to this in 2011. 

I do enjoy writing.  I tweet, I blog, I write email to friends, I write stories that become part of my scrapbook pages.  Writing a book would be on my bucket list, if I had one.  I would like to work at home as a writer and photographer, but my deep desire for stability and the ability to support my family will likely keep me in my current profession until retirement age. 

If writing a book is important enough to me, at some point it will rise to the surface.  I will become as engaged with writing that book as I currently am with scrapbooking and writing will become my predominent passion outside of work. 

Five Years Ago: Blackout (August 14, 2003)

"A surge of electricity to western New York and Canada touched off a series of power failures and enforced blackouts yesterday that left parts of at least eight states in the Northeast and the Midwest without electricity. . .  In an instant that one utility official called ''a blink-of-the-eye second'' shortly after 4 p.m., the grid that distributes electricity to the eastern United States became overloaded. As circuit breakers tripped at generating stations from New York to Michigan and into Canada, millions of people were instantly caught up in the largest blackout in American history."
NY Times; August 15, 2003 edition

A picture of the front page of the 8/15/2003 Times can be seen here.

My husband and I were getting ready to go to an orchestra concert at SPAC in upstate New York. While we were getting ready, the power dipped to “brownout” conditions. We thought it was a little odd, since it hadn’t been storming, but didn’t think much about it. Our journey was uneventful. When we arrived in Saratoga and stopped at a restaurant for dinner, we were turned away because of a power outage. Wendy’s was still dispensing salads, so we noshed on those, still not really connecting the brownouts at home with the outages in Saratoga. Then we arrived at SPAC, and found our seats in the open air theater. Since it was summer, it wasn’t dark yet. I don’t recall the details now, whether SPAC had a back-up generator and/or battery-powered lights for the music stands, but the concert took place and was wonderful. Martha Argerich played Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3 and the Philadelphia Orchestra played Shostakovich’s 5th Symphony. It wasn’t until later that we realized the magnitude of the blackout.

Letting Go

I've been working on decluttering my den for ages.  I have a hard time letting go of pieces of paper sometimes and find it remarkably easy to acquire them.  Articles from newspapers and magazines, letters and cards, notes and papers from college, concert programs, ephemera from trips.

Some things I'm organizing.  All my correspondence is in hanging file folders with the correspondent's name on it.  I also scanned a gigantic binder of letters for electronic storage.  Items that I want to scrapbook I will also organize in folders. 

Some things I'm dumping, such as saved articles.  If I truly think I'll want them again, I'm either scanning the hard copy or finding it online. 

You wouldn't think it would take a great deal of introspection to get rid of some of this, but sometimes it does.  There are multiple reasons for this, but one major one is that if I get rid of articles on a topic I once researched in school, it's like saying I'm not that person anymore, I won't ever pursue anything scholarly again.  But how insane is it to keep pieces of paper just as a badge that says I might write a scholarly paper sometime?

In the closet I have a small collection of Sports Illustrated magazines with Yankees-related covers.  I collected them during the time in the late 90's when the team had such success.  Now, I really feel ambivalent towards them.  I still follow the team -- I guess I don't feel the need to keep as much memorabilia related to them.

We have storage cupboards in the living room.  One of them is half-filled with records, as in LPs and 45s.  We have a turntable, but it's not part of our current stereo setup.  I can't remember the last time it was used.  Over the weekend, husband was musing about whether we even needed our tape deck anymore.  We should probably get rid of the turntable and the records, for sure.  There's great "content" there, but we're never, ever going to take the time to digitize it.  We're too lazy to even have the turntable set up.  And our little kidlet could certainly use more storage space for her many toys and puzzles. 

I guess watching Clean Sweep on TLC has infiltrated a bit, especially the concept that you should keep what's special to you, what's unique and irreplaceable, and get rid of things that don't have meaning and are keeping you from enjoying your living space. 

Garrison Keillor, Everybody in the pool!

". . . [J]oy has the power to sweep misery away. This is true. Nobody "gets over" anything, there is no closure, hearts stay broken for a long time. Love is a tumult and it's a wonder anyone survives it. But you look out the window and imagine joy is waiting for you somewhere. A long cathedral fairway between tall trees and a sweet shot with a 3-iron. The Pacific Coast Highway up through Mendocino. You and your beloved naked in Sorrento, making some finiculi-finicula. I hope you find it." [Salon]

Camera in my hands tomorrow? Crossing fingers

My original camera order, placed on 5/7, was delayed, delayed, delayed, and finally canceled because the online retailer could not procure it for me.  Newer model, 8 MP instead of 7.1, but otherwise, seems to be identical, now on order.  Having waited three long weeks already, I opted for two day shipping.  My package is located ~40 miles from my house as I type, so presumably it will, indeed, arrive tomorrow. 

Gas Stats

"On Friday, gasoline prices reached yet another record, a nationwide average of nearly $3.88 a gallon. That figure was up 4 cents in one day and is 65 cents higher than this time last year, according to AAA. . . The driver behind high gasoline prices is the high price of oil, which is being driven up by soaring worldwide demand. Oil reached a new record above $133 a barrel this week, nearly five times as expensive as it was five years ago. All this has led to a massive transfer of wealth from American drivers to domestic and foreign oil producers. Every one-cent increase in gasoline prices means Americans pay $1.42 billion more a year for gas, according to Stephen P. Brown, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. Nearly two-thirds of that goes to foreign producers." [NY Times; emphasis mine]

Kindness

Found this story on someone's blog and couldn't resist sharing:

". . . in May we had ordered several pairs of shoes from Zappos for my mom. . . Out of seven pairs, only two fit. . . The rest were here waiting to be returned. Because of various circumstances. . . the shoes were never sent back. There’s a time limit on the return of 15 days. Remember this. When you do a return to them, they pay the shipping, but you have to get the shoes to UPS yourself. Remember this, also.

When I came home this last time, I had an email from Zappos asking about the shoes, since they hadn’t received them. I was just back and not ready to deal with that, so I replied that my mom had died but that I’d send the shoes as soon as I could. They emailed back that they had arranged with UPS to pick up the shoes, so I wouldn’t have to take the time to do it myself. I was so touched. That’s going against corporate policy.

Yesterday, when I came home from town, a florist delivery man was just leaving. It was a beautiful arrangement in a basket with white lilies and roses and carnations. Big and lush and fragrant. I opened the card, and it was from Zappos. I burst into tears. I’m a sucker for kindness, and if that isn’t one of the nicest things I’ve ever had happen to me, I don’t know what is. So…

IF YOU BUY SHOES ONLINE, GET THEM FROM ZAPPOS.

With hearts like theirs, you know they’re good to do business with. [Link: Writing - Cooking - Life � Blog Archive � I Heart Zappos]

US Bridge Map - Interactive US Map of Bridges

Do you drive over any structurally deficient bridges on your daily commute?  I just found out that I drive over one that was built in 1929.  This is the most useful Google Maps mashup I've ever seen -- US Bridge Map - Interactive US Map of Bridges.

Monday Thoughts

• I'm really glad I took some pictures over the weekend and put masses of 2007 shots up on Snapfish.
• It was worth taking the extra time this morning to get two birthday cards in the mail instead of waiting until tomorrow. 
• It was worth taking the extra time to drop off some book donations in the public library's drop box.
• I'm really pleased with the Firefox extension called Better Gmail, particularly the ability to integrate Google Reader (for RSS feeds) into the same window as the email function.  (I use Gmail primarily for "storage" or emailing things to myself instead of for correspondence.) I was using the web-based version of Newsgator for feed reading and there are things I like better about the 'Gator interface.  But what I decided to do was to subscribe to my top 10-20 favorite feeds in Google Reader and keep the rest in Newsgator.  So now I'll just keep a perpetual Google Mail/Reader window open at work and keep Newsgator closed.  I'm hoping that a side effect of reading fewer feeds at work will mean that I do more writing and more work.
• Found a great new tool for tracking/logging work: the Printable CEO Emergent Task Timer.  It's in alpha release, built in Flash; can use it web-based or download a PC or Mac version.  Couldn't be easier to use -- click to fill in a bubble (reminiscent of childhood tests) and click to type what you did in that 15 minute block of time.  At the end of the day, print it out.