Monthly Archive: September 2009

30
Sep
2009

KEEP YOUR ARMS & LEGS INSIDE THE RIDE

Holy crap, it’s the last day of September! I am boggled by another year bending to the end again. If I look over my shoulder I can see April, the April that WAS, just disappearing out of the corner of my eye. It was spring just a minute ago, wasn’t it? Consolation: it will be spring again in a sec. Just wait. This morning there was a silver skin of ice on the windows of the car. The sun isn’t far enough up to break over the roofs of the houses that keep the car in shadow so I had...

28
Sep
2009

AT LEAST IT’S MORE THAN 140 CHARACTERS, EH?

I suppose that I may not complain about the dearth of posts from people I want to read when I have been lax about writing myself. Thinking of that was enough to make me un-duff and start writing. If only it was always so easy. Also, if only it resulted in a post worth reading! HAR! suckahs! 😛 It was damned cold out today—fall arrived with a snap and a vengeance. It took no prisoners in its announcement of arrival. Cold, rain, gusting winds, grey skies. BRRR…now I’m sort of bumming about my yummy lunch salads because it’s kind of...

24
Sep
2009

I’VE SOMETHING TO SHOW YOU, STAND HERE

Fragments, figments, shuffled bits of memory. I keep thinking about writing. But I don’t sit down and do it. Am I percolating? Or simply slothful? I miss my interactions here. I need a swift kick in the pants. KICK! You, who write, how do you begin? Have you got an outline? An agenda? A reel tape of remembrances that you can pull from your pocket like ticker tape? Where is the adrenaline and the motivation and the inspiration when you need it? Fragments and figments. I just wrote gifments. Hee! JPGments. Are those the snapshots of your mind in digital...

20
Sep
2009

WHAT IF FEELS LIKE

Even though I passed a truck piled high with sugar beets the other day on the highway, just as I was driving down the hill where I could see the plumes from the sugar factory smokestacks cottoning their way into the air, and even though the chill in the evening air is noticeable, and even though the speed limit through our little village has been lowered to its autumnal crawl zone of 30 MPH (thanks to those those same sugar-beet trucks), it does not FEEL like fall. It feels like summer. Still. Still summer. What with the endless cloudless blue...

19
Sep
2009

SEEING THE SIGHTS—END

Monday morning dawned bright and early for Labor Day but neither Mom nor I saw it as we were snoozing a bit late, despite needing to get up and get moving in good time to pack in the sights of our last day of “mini-vacation”. We finally hoisted our duffs out of bed and hit the road. Once again we drove west, this time nearly to the border. Our destination was Stockbridge and the Norman Rockwell Museum. Now I know a lot of people pooh-pooh Rockwell, for various reasons, but the man was incredible. In his lifetime he finished some...

15
Sep
2009

SEEING THE SIGHTS—MIDDLE

Mom got fired early on as navigator, even though she had several chances to redeem herself. She swears up and down that she CAN TOO read a map and follow directions, at least when she’s alone, but yeah, whatever, Mom, hand over the map. In her defense, it WAS damned confusing that we kept having to go what was actually north on a road called south and south on a road called north. Luckily, I had printed out directions and maps in advance to most of the places we were going and we knew that if we just kept backtracking...

14
Sep
2009

SEEING THE SIGHTS—START!

Having a 3-day weekend in the middle of my business trip was an unexpected bonus. I never think about Labor Day being in September anymore since the European Labor Day is May 1st and the only reason the American date ever crosses my radar is when I need an answer from someone in the US office and they’re not laboring because it’s Labor Day. The same thing happens on Memorial Day and St. Patrick’s Day and even, sadly, Thanksgiving. They’re not holidays here, so I don’t think about them as days off. Though I DO, now, think about Ascension Day...

12
Sep
2009

LIKE A WOLF

Does this give you any idea just how busy I was the last two weeks while I was away? In addition to only posting ONCE here (though I did try to keep caught up on the blog-reading), I am STILL READING THE SAME BOOK that I started the day before I left. TWO WEEKS AGO. Seriously. Two weeks and I am not done with a paperback. That’s insane. There goes my plan for beating my books-read-in-a-year record. On the bright side, I only have about 6 pages left and I have the biggest, gigandimundo pile of NEW BOOKS to read...

01
Sep
2009

DOING MY BIT FOR ECONOMIC STIMULATION

Hi there! I know, I know, I haven’t written in AGES. I have no excuse. Well, actually I do, but whatever. I flew to America on Saturday morning and I’ve been busy playing and working and shopping and shopping and shopping since. And I’m not done yet. Wheee! And every night we come back to the hotel, mom and I, and pretty much just collapse into bed because it is very late and we are very tired from all the shopping. I have been to the bookstore thrice. *happy dance* Nutshell report: Flight delay, hate customs, saw my suitcase go...