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28 February 2004

 

Elizabeth had a groovy birthday at the Mekong along with Con, Dave, Montrose, Chris, Ann, Geraldine, Henessey, Looper, SJ, Michael, and me. We were put in a banquet room, and laughed a lot. SJ and Michael brought an Elvis cake down from Seattle. I was pretty exhausted.


 
I just posted a new Vivian Oblivion. I think it's nicer to have an idea what's behind the links, like the other one, but this one is spring-y. I made it while thinking about Halisa's love for anime -- has some Japanese influence. I should make another one that's easier to understand.


 
Email from E

IH VK

I ONLY HAVE IN MY PILLS I ONLY HAVE 4 IN MY PILLS V MY HAERT PILLS AND MY
ANOTHER

ONE HAS A ONLY 3 IN MY TETRACYCLINE PILLS AND WE NEED TO0 GO AT LONGS DRUGS
STORE

VK?


IM with E

Vivian says:
I'll pick you up at 4:30 so we can get your pills
Vivian says:
Will you FORWARD the email from the coach?
MISS ELIZABETH . SARAH . says:
HE SAID TOO ME IS POWER LIFTING
Vivian says:
Forward it to me.
MISS ELIZABETH . SARAH . says:
START IN MONDAY AND FRIDAY TOO AND ON 1 - 5 SO WILL LET KNOW I JIM
Vivian says:
How do you sign up?
MISS ELIZABETH . SARAH . says:
[name of coach] OK HE WILL E-MAIL ME BACK TOO ME SOON AT WORK AND I WILL LET HIM KNOW WENT YOU SAID ABOUT SIN UP TOO WILL VK
Vivian says:
Where is powerlifting?
MISS ELIZABETH . SARAH . says:
I DO NOT KNOW YET FROM JIM D. YET I WILL LET YOU KNOW OK VK
Vivian says:
I will pick you up at 4:30 so you can get your pills.
MISS ELIZABETH . SARAH . says:
OK VK
Vivian says:
bye



26 February 2004

 
Nothing against the Depot -- however the computer desk I ordered as a Christmas present for Elizabeth never arrived, and I finally said, "I need the desk or the money -- one or the other." "They (UPS) tried to deliver... They left notes on the door." "No notes were EVER left on the door." Part of the problem might've been that they told me it would not be delivered until Day X, but then actually tried to deliver it (somewhere) two weeks before that (first time was before she came back from NY). So, she didn't get her desk. Yesterday I bought the same desk online from Staples, and today a nice young man came and dropped it off. He'd driven all the way around the lake by mistake. "I'll put it anywhere you want," he told me. That's always nice for me to hear. It was $25 cheaper, too.


 
Me: Wall paper paste is often just wheat paste -- but it sounds like you made it super thick! Yay! A good strength checker! I was thinking of unorthodox things for the inside -- canaries! Um... maybe not! Springs! A favorite is money. Yay! Money! Your pinata sounds very handsome! I love rockets.
Yes, I have difficulty imagining a world (just 5 years ago!) without Caitlin and Keats.

Anji: oh hello, your here and now.
i just looked at some 'pinata' sites, just for some cheating, and there are some doozeys, 'bin
laden' 'gw bush', not just your every day donkey , tho aren't those blokes in the latter group
anyway.
other things to put inside the pinata....hmmm, fortune cookies, condoms (tho i wouldn't want the
little kids asking questions), fur balls, oh the possibilities are endless and horrendoud.
ahh there's ryan.

Me: Yes, "W" -- the reviled one -- is in the elephant party. I wish one would sit on him. I haven't looked at the pinatas to see what or who is on the stinky list, but I can well imagine. The people who enjoy that kind of thing are a baser human type than any I wish to know. I'm such a smug snotball, ain't I? What about UNCOOKED EGGS? Loads of fun! If you stand back. GUMMY WORMS! People would throw up. Yay! Here you can get chocolate wrapped to look like eyeballs. I can imagine a rain of eyeballs and gummy worms! Yay!

Put that baby DOWN!! He will NOT FIT in the pinata.


 
From My Niece Anji, in Australia

ahhh, good tips on the pinata (yes spelling now correct)...
i did use a balloon, with papier mache, i used wall paper paste, ha lets see all the so called male athletes of the party break into it, should be interesting. i am making a rocket, silver cone and fins, green tissue body area, orange cellophane flames out the bottom, a door with a little spaceman sticking out, and 10,,9,8,7 etc blastoff written somewhere, this is in my head at the mo, have to actually construct the thing on the weekend.. the base is as hard as a rock, 10 or more layers, i dropped it on the floor and it didn't dent at all. i'll take pictures.
have a good party for elizabeth.
when ryan wakes up we are going to the party shop to find things to put in the pinata, aside
from lollies, and also wacky things for prizes for the games i have planned. we have some adult
games and kid games.
yes the year has gone fast, and caitlin will be 5 in april...blimey.
hoorooo for now
anji,
ps we are going to fiji in august for a week...fun in the sun.
staying on one of the little islands. (mana)

My Missive

Pinata with a ~ over the "n" -- I used to know La Cancion de la Pinata" -- from a visiting artist who taught the children to make pinatas. My advice is: use wheat paste because if you use white glue no one will ever be able to break it (the voice of experience).

um...
Andale Ryan, non te dilates,
Con la canasta de los cacachuates.
No quiero oro ni quiero plata
yo lo que quiero es romper la piƱata.
Dale, dale, dale, no perdas el tino,
porque si lo perdes, pierdes el camino.

cacahuates are peanuts. It means something like " Go on, Ryan, don't wait for the basket of peanuts. I don't want gold or silver, I just want to break the pinata. Hit, hit, hit. Don't lose count of your steps or you'll lose your way.

Something like that ;-)

Traditional pinatas were clay pots, then long, pointed "horns" were added,and everything was covered with frilled tissue paper. You can start with a balloon and use papier mache. After it dries cut a door for the sweets, cover it with tissue (time consuming but looks nice). Fill it. Smash it.

Some friends of mine had a ship pinata at their wedding reception. It is inadvisable to use baseball bats inside to smash the pinata, especially when the blind-folded adults are drunk, and it's SOMEONE ELSE'S APARTMENT. Destroyed one pinata and one friendship.

I can't freakin' believe Ryan is a year old. Jeeze!! Elizabeth's birthday is March 2nd. We're having a get-together at a Thai restaurant next Saturday with a group of friends - I should call a make a reservation. One, two... 14 people?? sheesh Connie, Dave, Lucia, Jim, Susan, John, Keats, Ann, Chris, Geraldine, SJ,
Michael, E, me. It was Susan's birthday on Friday -- she came to visit me and Keats told us that he was "the master." We threw him out the window into the lake... no we didn't. THOUGHT about it, though! He played the "Butch Mushroom " game and made some monsters on this "monsterism" site.
The monster thing is cool as you can pick your background, head, arms, etc. and make your own monster. Butch Mushroom has to eat bugs for points, using the arrow keys (Keats could only manage the left arrow, but he did ok).






25 February 2004

 
As I drank coffee this morning I was reading Discover and Smithsonian magazines. One had an article about bomb shelters. In about 1965 I became friends with a girl who was moving from Devon to a nice old farm near me in Chester Springs. They had both places for a little period, and I went to visit them in the Devon house, where her father, Otto, made tempura. That was my first tempura. I don't remember her mother much -- I think her name was Mrs. They had a Volkswagen Beetle and smoked heavily, gassing me and my friend in the back (normal to gas children at that time). In the basement (finished, with a reclining chair) they had a BOMB SHELTER. We'd sneak in and eat tinned peaches. So, when I read the article about bomb shelters this morning, I looked in the photographs. Right in front -- TINNED PEACHES. Obviously there's a link. I don't remember being frightened of atomic bombs, but I scream every time I open a tin of peaches.


 
I forgot to say that I also had a horrific headache half of Sunday and all-day Monday. I was trying to hold my head together so I could read. Painful! Why read? Well, it's not possible for me to not read.

This morning T, from the bottom of the house, rang me to say there was NO HOT WATER, and that I should call Mr. Landlord. If I'd known this was going to happen I wouldn't've stayed up until the middle of the night -- anyway I checked, and yes, we had no hot water. I rang Mr. L., but I was barely awake so he had to be patient with my incoherency. I did what he told me, then rang back two hours later and did as he told me again. So we're shifted to the electrical back-up system. Or maybe we'll just blow up because I didn't have enough sleep+coffee.


Elizabeth's birthday is 2 March, and "we" are meeting at the Mekong on Saturday. Even with many people bowing out we will still be a large party -- 14 or so. SWMNBMIMB has a Russian houseguest, and can't come -- but that's too bad. An Elvis-themed birthday extravaganza seems like it would be understandable to Russians.

Hey Flummel, if you run into Elizabeth you wouldn't scare her by saying, "Hello." She has a super-strong ego inherited from my father, and thinks it's perfectly normal for people to know her/be interested in her. Remember, when I told her the counter on her website was over a thousand she said, "I have a fan club!"



24 February 2004

 
This has been a rather taxing few days, as there was no water from before I woke up Saturday, to last night at about 5pm. Ugh, and no heat, which is not so bad here as it was not cold, but STILL. The water pump had died (could it be related to the NOISE I complained of for weeks and weeks?? That magically ceased a week ago? And sounded like some turning on and off and on and off ad infinitum? I learned one thing -- it's difficult but not impossible to sleep in earplugs, but they don't block all the noise.) and that was an unhappy thing.
As if that wasn't bad enough MY BLOG WAS DOWN -- actually my whole hosting company had their plug pulled.
Marty wrote: "This server outage was due to a current customer using their account to send unsolicited bulk email (SPAM) over our network. Our Network Operations Center caught the violator before we did, and took the extreme (in our opinion) action of completely severing our server's connected to the internet. Yes, this prevented the spammer from continuing to spam, but it also resulted in ALL or ouf clients losing connectivity to their website and email, as well as us. "
I wrote: "It's ok we still love you."
Marty replied: "Thanks! :)

So I spent a lot of time in There, and funny things happened. I was sitting down looking at something when a fellow (he was in England) came over and started talking to me. It turned out he had just started a free taxi company, and asked me if I wanted to join. I said sure, and that I would design some shirts (this is all virtual you understand). Then I was in the Boneyard, and loaned my board to a newbie. Someone was hovering nearby, and when the newbie left he said, "I can't resist, hehe," and fired his paintgun at the newbie. I ran down the hill yelling, "Put your forcefield up!!" Then a dunebuggy appeared and I asked if I could get in. The driver said yes, and when I explained what'd happened, asked me if the paintgun guy needed to be taught a lesson. Some funny back-and-forth patter -- then the driver leapt out of the buggy and fired HIS paintgun, bam bam bam, at the other guy. We rode around for a while then I took off. It was all very hilarious.



19 February 2004

 
I was cleaning this morning, which is always difficult and traumatic. I was thinking as I did (very few actually) tasks about the associations that pop into my head unbidden every time I see something. I have a pan, and every time I consciously look at that pan I think about how several people have exclaimed over it, "What a nice old pan!" Same words, even. And it's not an old pan, it's just a Cordon Bleu seasoned saute pan from Sur la Table in Seattle. Makes me think people don't have seasoned pans -- why would that be? And I have some brown cedar on the wall that came from a cleansing ceremony a few years ago, and every time I see it I think about one of the people I was with -- dead, now. Every time I drive past her office building, too. I know -- I've talked about this before -- how the landscape becomes complicated with associations and references and out-dated bits of information. My friend b5th has a HUGE amount of referential material. Some people are social hubs or people-focussed and store up links. I'm not like that, so I think my links stockpile is smaller than say, b5th's. Some people jettison links easily, other keep them forever.

I'm working on a project for b5th, and it's coming together well. It started one way, then I suggested a different direction -- now it's taken off and makes sense (to me, anyway). No, I'm not telling.

Secretfaces, in Germany, is going to participate in Thrift Shop Tag! I'm so excited! I made the site, then immediately tagged conflem, who was going to go to France soon after. As Mr. Looper pointed out, the Tag thing has been moribund for months -- so it's time to get it going. Secretfaces has no one willing to be tagged, so next will be Mrs. Monster, as a prerequisite to borrowing a digital camera. She's a divine thrift shopper, so I look forward to that.

There had a long-awaited v2.0 come out yesterday, so it was crowded. Everyone was There. They are expanding parts of the world, so whole islands are not on the map. It's exciting. Virtually exciting.



18 February 2004

 
Over at FLUMMEL my souvenir gallery is the cool site!! Yay!!



17 February 2004

 
I was incoherent today. That's a BIG help. And the big computer had to go and be rebuilt -- good. It's never run correctly.

I decided it would be helpful if I started to write down what each child expects to do the following week. There's a whole week between my times at school, so unless I write it down I just lose track. So:

Christy -- work on 8th yearbook page
Mercedes -- finish, photograph, and frame pastel/work on Pre-K yearbook page
Halisa -- scan dreamcatcher and work on Board yearbook page/graphics for store/frame pastel/other graphics
Tenaya -- start painting/work on 7th grade yearbook page
Scott/Josie -- work on 3rd grade class/activities pages by photographing, etc. Josie is using dolls background
Sam -- pitbull drawing
Gabe -- photographing and starting 4th grade yearbook page
Tammy -- 6th grade yearbook using Skyla's hallway photo
Dakota -- 6th grade activities -- photograph




15 February 2004

 
I just junked my comments and got a new commenting thing. I didn't have very many comments, but believe me, I appreciated the few I did get. It was sad to bid them adieu. Write me a new comment if you wish, and ...um... say something weird.


 
Still staggering onwards! Not feeling too horrible, though, which is great. Yesterday I was actually feeling rather good, and went to see 21 Grams with Lucia and Susan. Today I took those photos (and more!) in my friend Annie's store, got my water from the artesian well (last public one left in Olympia), and went grocery shopping while I was hungry, which has resulted in me eating a Cherry Garcia Peace Pop and buying other, similar crap which I'll stuff in my face AS SOON AS I CAN!! Annie was the first person I met in Olympia (in, maybe, 1980), when she had an antiques business. She and her store are always evolving and changing, and now (and for the past many years) she has a spice shop and a dog-things store. Same spot. At one time she had a restaurant and I worked as a waitress (my only time ever) and a (under duress) cook. I'm an excellent cook but I hate it. Waitressing I looked upon as a form of theatre and also nursing and spy-work. I worked with an extremely mean and rotten cook, so when someone would ask for, say, a slice of cheese on their sandwich (unforgiveable) I would fall to my knees in the middle of the restaurant and approach the cook with hands raised in a gesture of worshipful pleading. I made the cook laugh and she'd give the cheese -- "But make sure you charge $.25!" Anne got a shipment of 5-foot-long pencils in stock once, and made me wait tables with them. I'd rest it on my shoulder like a rifle, as I stuggled to write with it on a normal-sized pad. I loved it. Anne is amazing and zesty and fearless -- and you either "get" her or you don't. People would come into the restaurant all grumpy with low blood sugar, then turn into happy little customers after I fed them (nursing). I always felt that I saw way people really were -- the way they behaved to minions revealed how they really were. At that time Kathy was working at a gallery next door framing in the basement. We loathed and despaired of the gallery owner as she treated most people like... they were worth nothing. She would take "valuable" people to lunch at Buck's. After one lunch I found a piece of paper on which was written "M.F.A.=serious artist." AAAwwwk.






14 February 2004

 
This house has Giant House Spiders, which is a drag. I think MS would be enough with also having Giant House Spiders, which turn up occasionaly. I glimpse them, usually, out of the corner of my eye at the make their way, like Thing, from the Addams Family. One appeared yesterday in the living room --- waaay up high. I ignored it. Today I had peed and caught sight of it again -- much lower, and looking rather unsure of itself. I shut the door. After a while I went to the garage and got the vacuum hose for the in-wall vacuum, did a little edge of the floors cleaning, then opened the Door, turned on the Light, and... Farewell, Giant House Spider. I always feel a little sorry to do it -- but jeez -- I can't LIVE with them.



13 February 2004

 
My mum died last year on this date. I have had that feeling all day that the person to whom I was married referred to as "clouds in the stomach."

I just saw "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," which is very good -- a short documentary made by Irish filmmakers who were in Venezuela at the moment of the 2002 coup, and "got" the whole thing.

21 Grams is on Feb 14-18 -- it's on with "Girlhood," about incarcerated teens.

Feb 21-26 there's a showing of "House of Sand and Fog" that I'm mentioning but which I definitely DON'T want to see. However, I'm sure Ben Kingsley is wonderful -- but the book was more than enough for me. I don't need an outside reminder that things can quickly spin out of control. [On with "The Son," a French film that I know nothing much about.]

There's a Spanish-language film Feb 29-March 4 -- "War Takes," from Colombia, 2002. It's on with a Robert Altman film called "The Company," about ballet.

Looper wants to see 21 Grams -- I thought Tiff would want to see it as she liked "Amores Perros," but of course, this one isn't in Spanish.



12 February 2004

 
From the New York Times:

Chips Ahoy
"Intel said the technical advance, in which the researchers use a component made from pure silicon to send data at speeds more than 50 times as fast as the previous record, is the first step toward building low-cost networks that will move data on light waves seamlessly between chips and computers and across large digital communications systems.
Building laser communications into conventional computer chips also points to effective solutions to the so-called "last mile'' challenge of delivering digital information from the Internet to homes and offices - creating extremely fast, low-cost computer networks and significantly lowering the barriers to knitting together powerful servers and supercomputers based on multiple processors."


Interesting to me that I can get excited over that when medical-breakthrough news leaves me cold. I think it's the quickness with which the tech firms gear up for marketing -- then too, medical news is relayed to us at a much earlier point in the research. If a potential cure is discovered for something today it won't become available for, oh, ten years -- even if it pans out. The stage at which it is reported is when, say, a substance has an effect on lab mice burdened with an MS-simulating condition. Anyway, if it ever becomes available I won't be able to afford it, I'll be dead, or too messed up to care. But a new chip...!

Everything is Always About Me (cut that out, won't you?)
Went to Safura and had lamb souvlaki with Tiff, who has returned from her long sojourn in Arizona. Brad only had one knee done, not two as had previously been the plan. Tiff talked about K going to school in Sydney, which would be fun for her -- Sydney has a wonderful landscape and the weather is nice in the winter (I've never been there in the summer). Last time I was there to sightsee I went to the opera (der fliegende Hollander), several museums, a harbor tour, shopping and other places on the monorail (whatever is that place called with the little ravens mosaic-ed into the floor?), wandered downtown, The Rocks, rode buses, went to parks, went to the Sunday market, restaurants, the airport three times, etc., etc., etc. -- in two days. I had a great time -- alone, of course -- just a brief stopover after leaving my family in Melbourne and before flying out to Cali then Seattle. And I thought I was effed up with MS THEN -- before I got ill in 1990 I could've done four times as much. MS takes and takes from one's abilities until very little is left. However, I reckon I should keep my moaning for my shadow blog. How am I? I'm FINE.

There
I only type with my left hand, but There makes me wish I could type better. I keep having conversations with people about keyboarding -- last night at a hoverboard track someone told me he swears There is giving him carpal tunnel syndrome. I wouldn't be at all surprised if it were the case. Because There is global (but in English), I've talked to people from several places, including the Netherlands and England. It's very cool to talk in real time to someone who is doing what you are doing, when you are doing it. It makes it somewhat funny that I'm a hundred years old, but there are all ages in There, and many disabled people who enjoy virtual capabilities they don't have in real life. I've met people from 17 to my age, but I'd guess that most users are in their mid-twenties. It's a funny thing to be an "avatar" onscreen, but feel the constraints of one's age -- the pixels don't have an age -- I'm thinking a lot about the whole thing, which is hilariously virtual-with-a-real-aspect. If you are trying to get away from your physical self you have a different vibe than someone who is merely extending his/herself. Users of the second kind immediately want to know facts about you from the real world, whereas users of the first kind find those facts of no use in creating new experiences. After all, if the virtual world were to to constrain us as the world does, there would be no point in going there.



11 February 2004

 
The Web is Unpredictable
Someone just asked to buy something in my souvenir gallery:
We are interested in your God Bless Our Mobile Home Plate, is that for sale and how old is it? Please let me know. Thanks, M

My Reply: Actually, I was just displaying and not trying to sell -- but isn't that the coolest plate? A friend found it at the Goodwill and gave it to me. I'm not sure of the age -- 40 years? What do you think?

Her Response: I think you are about right on the age. Really cool! Thanks, M


 
School
Tuesday worked out ok -- but no school tomorrow due to mid-winter break. Roseanne stopped in to give me the brushes for Tenaya, otherwise I'd've called her. Tiff was at school yesterday. She has me involved in a GED tutoring thing that may or may not happen. For one student. But I'd just do it when Tiff can't be there. Tiff's commute to school is long and terrible -- and very slow at any traffic-y time. If she has Spanish class she can't also be at school, so I get the opportunity to do it.

Yesterday Carmela came in and ran over to hug me, with a squeal. She's a former student and a great kid.

I cancelled my Centrum thing, and emailed the donors to give them the chance to get their $ back or let me use it for an in-school workshop. Various things happened: I didn't get two permission slips back, my chaperone is leaving, and if I could overcome those problems there's still the girls' b'ball games during the workshop week. Too much. It would've been good, but I have moved on and am looking around to see what else I can arrange. Centrum was just too far out of our comfort zone!

Virtual World
I bought a dog in There, and as "I" was running up a hill with him (Bosco*) I realised I'd recreated a particular moment from my past when I was running up a hill in the dark with my 3 dogs, and they crossed under my feet. I hit my third-finger-left-hand tip on, and the bone in my hand broke lengthwise from the impact. The finger was at a crazy angle, so I thought, "Maybe it's just dislocated," and gave it a solid yank to straighten it out -- rather excrutiating but made my finger straighten out, anyway. The next day I had to drive someone up Mt Rainier, which was highly painful, and my hand was black and twice its normal size. I resisted going to the doctor as I had no health insurance. I don't remember if I went up Rainier or to the doctor first, but I told them I'd broken a bone in my hand. They said, "We'll be the judge of that," and x-rayed it. And said, "You've broken a bone in your hand." They put a splint on it, and charged me a ton of money. I had already straightened it out, so if I'd just taped it to a popsicle stick I'd've be well ahead in time and money.
*I named him after the Italian word for "woods." A name I've been saving for a rabbit, but I don't think I'll get a rabbit as I have too many wires for it to gnaw on.

Mummy
It will be a year on the 13th, since my mother died. She gave me a Christmas cactus (which I don't like as they look like ant legs and never bloom for me) and last month it became covered with blooms. Weird.

Last year my mother and father died. I thought this year would HAVE to be better, but already Howard has died. Maybe the rest of this year will be better. Last year on my birthday - September 12 -- I was in the funeral home for my father. I'm not sure why I had to mention that. Maybe I need to remind myself that even though a year of grief is the least one requires to get back to normal, my "year" started with my mother's death, but re-started with my father's death. So maybe I'll be more like a person next autumn.

Headache
Another headache. Started while I was asleep. Go away. GO AWAY.






06 February 2004

 
Now it's February... and I'm still reading Don Quixote. Not exactly with great resolve, though, so I am almost through part one, but there is part two awaiting.

Roseanne started last week, as an auxilliary art teacher. I hope it works out. This week we did Tuesday and half of Thursday -- next week I take Tuesday and Roseanne takes all day Thursday. That still means some switching, but not as much as trying to fit everyone into Tuesday.

I despaired of trying to get all the kids changed to Tuesday, so I did what Brenda (vp) suggested as a possibility and put Roseanne on Thursday -- but I'm still trying to heft some kids over to her as I have 11 and she has 7 plus an un-named Second grader. My problem is I get so tired I can't deal with trying to fix things. My other problem is I am starting the yearbook and I don't have access to the Thursday kids now. I originally thought everyone would work on Tuesday, but the madhouse factor has changed my mind. In my room on Tuesdays there's speech therapising in one tiny room, plus tons of visitor-kids to Skunky, who is Performance, and has as his office the other tiny room. We can ignore people -- but some children are too easily distracted to function in a madhouse environment. It would've been workable (easily) before this room (which was my fall-back position after losing my artroom) became a share-for-all deal. Our movie studio, for video animation, was a huge loss to the children -- they talk about it a lot. The other room was computers -- and was nice to contain the wandering-paper effect. My piles stayed put. The truth is that I can't deal with STUFF, so I never recovered from moving from my artroom where things had a spot -- to this room, and now into part of this room where crap has been piled up from the small rooms and not put away. Things that have been put away, have been put in the most ridiculous places entirely inaccessible to me, and other things are just GONE -- maybe they exist but??? I don't think Roseanne knows any of this -- she just thinks I'm a #@%$#, most likely -- but actually we have done incredible and varied things -- then my program got trashed by my health and the moving


I have the yearbook to do, which is a full-color student-made 2-pages-per-class+team, staff, board pages, etc. We do it on the computer with Photoshop, using digital photographs and computer graphics, and print on our laser printer. I usually have Samantha collate, and get someone like Office Max to add an acetate top cover, a back cover, and coil bind. Skyla has begun work on an exciting 6th grade page -- but now she's a Thursday student and how can I see her? Christy is doing 8th, Mercedes is doing Pre-K (and I'm thinking she'll go on to do 1 and 2). We have Pre-K, K, 1-8. It's getting to be a somewhat daunting project. We formerly had combined grades, so it wasn't so huge. I should say trhat this is my project I've been doing for 14 years -- I arrived here and immediatedly started a yearbook for some unknown reason. The first two were xeroxed, free-wheeling, fun and informal books. Then I made formal ones that were printed by a real printing company in black and white. Then we went to color, printed at school on inkjet printers. Then I requested a laser printer. It's a way our art program can benefit the entire school.

Change is Afoot
Next week I am slated to begin my Tuesdays-only work life. On Wednesday Looper shared her helper with me -- Reynolds came over and we cleaned (mostly her but I'd already halfway killed myself before she got here). Things get closer and closer, tighter and tighter. Ugh.

www.tiger-swallowtail.com
Forcing myself to look for good things: a newspaperwoman emailed me about my "memorial websites" website.
She emailed: I'm a reporter at the St. Joseph News-Press in St. Joseph, Mo. We are working on a group of stories about innovative ways to remember and pay tribute to lost family members/friends, and I recently came across your web site. Please let me know as soon as you can if you would be willing to talk to me for this story. You can reach me at this e-mail address.

I replied:I'd be happy to email with you about this. I have a site for my mother (http://www.ncplus.net/~ekendall/joan.html), but I stopped working on it -- but I should add more stuff (it's good therapy!). I've always read obituaries because I am interested in the lives of real people. People are amazing and get up to so much in a lifetime! Memorial websites are a chance to keep the information around longer -- plus around here the newspapers charge a huge amount for obituaries. With a memorial website you can have
lots of text and photos, and list the website address in the newspaper obituary -- and have a guestbook, too, so eople can leave their thoughts.

Hi, Jim

KGF was going to visit, but she postponed until things settle a bit. Just writing that makes me think, "What, am I crazy? How're things going to settle?" But things do settle, even for a woman who has been traumatised by the unexpected and untimely death of her husband.

Marilee is coming tomorrow, also SWMNBMIMB.

Looper and I went to see Bubba Ho Tep last Saturday at the Capitol Theater. Reynolds has a particular fondness for the B-movie actor who starred, so we discussed it a wee bit. I said that for what they were trying to accomplish, they did it very well -- but they weren't trying to accomplish much. My home-movie-viewing has been interrupted because two films have yet to arrive -- "Red" and something-something. The library said they were overdue so I renewed them -- fervent in my belief they would arrive at any moment. I have no idea where they are or what happened to them -- hope they turn up before the library police come to investigate. The nice library rule about sending things to me is almost the only opposite I have experienced to what I call "the cripple tax." If I have to buy, say SaranWrap, instead of cheap food service film, because SaranWrap is THICKER and the box is easy to handle -- then I call the price difference (about 2 dollars?) the cripple tax. Or if I have to buy something nearby that is expensive instead of picking and choosing -- yep, it's the cripple tax again.

 

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I want to ask for thoughts about improving the world -- what do people need? How can things be organised?