Afloat by Lawrence Raab

After the interesting guest at the party
declared that Giorgione's The Storm
was the strangest painting ever made,
you flew to Venice to see it. And the canals,
of course, the celebrated light
on the water, all the churches
where someone might be playing Bach
or Vivaldi while off in a shadowy corner
another masterpiece begs to be seen.
So, for a while, yours is a life
of important surprises, which is what
life should be, and usually is
only briefly. You'd like to forget
that Venice is sinking, and no one
knows how to save it. But today
walking across the flooded piazza feels
almost instructive: the mortal
just touching our need for permanence.
So much, after all, is vanishing.
And still the doomed city is afloat,
the water you don't want to fall into
glittering cheerfully as you cross the bridge
to the Accademia, where at last you will find
the enigmatic Tempesta, a picture much admired
by Byron, who in general detested painting
unless it could remind him
of something he had seen
or some day might see.

(Note: Giorgione's La Tempesta, from RAI International)

run for the border

exciting work news: i get to go to mexico to help with a week-long deal. i also get to train some of the associates there, so i'm very excited ;) seeing other faclities of ours is always interesting. even more exciting, we're flying in to san diego, so i may get to see the ocean (if only from a plane) for the first time in a long time! we used to take all our vacations to san diego since it's only a hop, skip, and a six hour drive from phoenix. in other news, nate and i finally weeded the garden and staked up our tomatoes. i sat and weeded while cleo ran up and down the fence trying to keep up with nate's nifty mowing pace.
this weekend so far, i've taken a deep sleep nap, been to the cellar, and now am at work! later today, the massive cleaning effort will begin in preparation for my mom's visit!

take a dip in the french dips you dip

we're having french dips for dinner tonight -- yum. i'm really looking forward to them. lastnight nate made salmon and cajun shrimp skewers on the grill. it was tasty. add in a little gardening (and whoa, did our tomatoes take a beating in that last rain!) and some SNES mario, and the evening was complete. tonight, we're getting a group together for the pub slam poetry reading, then headed to christine's birthday bash! should be fun :) now all i have to do is leave work... suppose i should stop blogging so that can happen!

reminiscence

hard to believe i've already been living and breathing in blacksburg for three years now. when i moved here, i knew no one. i hardly had any furniture, save a bed that was my graduation gift, and a few lawn chairs in the living room, faced toward my tv that sat directly on the floor. eventually, i decided they weren't comfortable at length, and pulled the twin mattress from my extra room in. a big night for me was stopping by kroger after work to purchase a frozen pizza and a bottle of wine. and since i didn't have cable, the guy at video update thought i had nothing better to do than rent a movie every day of the week. i did love my little windsor hills apartment, the first residence of my very own. i kept things freakishly clean, for at least two reasons (1) i had all kinds of time on my hands (2) there was no furniture to move!
i did some random things though that i enjoyed and now, would probably never find time for! i wandered blacksburg, took pictures of anything and everything: lyric, farmers' market, golf course, barns, ellet valley. i drove to pulaski one weekend and wandered around, lured by the furniture company there, but figured out it wasn't my style and ended up just kind of wandering through the sleepy downtown. i drove up to roanoke, down the parkway, went to every retail store in the county. it's funny now to think back on all that, as most times i am surrounded by great friends and keep a pleasant running pace outside of work :) it only took about six months for several things to occur: my sister moved here, we started hanging out with our neighbors, my company hired several more people my age, etcetera. all resulting in my quite happy existence now :)

if i had cake, why wouldn't i eat it?

yum. a beautiful piece of chocolate cake and a side of ice cream just arrived at my desk. so i not only have cake, but i'm eating it too :)
did anyone else realize that it's already july 18th? this is craziness! i have to go back to school in a month? booo. i'm enjoying my carefree, obligation free summer!
on the bright side, as time moves along, the time when my mom's coming to visit comes closer! she'll be here starting next tuesday, july 26. events in the running are: virginia creeper, dinner at cabo, farmers' market, dinners at home, wine, dog show, and much much more!

you can't have everything, where would you put it?

today i feel like melanie griffith in working girl. well...actually there's not many similarities at all, other than (1) i'm a girl (2) i'm at work. but, reason enough! monday morning is off to a busy start and i'm enjoying the rapid pace at which the day is passing by.

rainy days are here again!

but it's all the same when you're inside the building ;)

betelgeuse! betelgeuse! betelgeuse!

cassie found the beetlejuice dvd yesterday at walmart and was compelled to buy it. we spent a good portion of our childhood years watching this movie over and over again. ah, what a classic. i have to admit though, i forgot just how bad those sandworm graphics were, but the movie's still great :)
here's my public service announcement for the day: if you're at all skeptical about the wonders of rainX, don't be! that stuff is the best thing since sliced bread! i retreated my windshield recently and have been waiting not very patiently ever since for it to rain.
tonight, we're headed to the cellar to see maggie's wishlist, a band managed by the bass player of paul clark and the lonesome drifters (the 'honky-tonk' band that plays at the cellar every other thursday). apparently, the cellar has a monday night blues jam (new), tuesday night jazz, wednesday night i think is usually open except for this week, thursday night alternating blues and paul clark. that's a good lot of music!
while i'm plugging local events, easy chair bookstore is having two that i'm excited about. one is the harry potter launch party at 10 pm this friday, the other is the pub slam poetry reading at the underground on july 21.
products and events endorsed by this blog are in no way affiliated with this blogger ;)

the cow whisperer!

so this weekend, nate and i went on a walk down ramble road. the road passes by several cow fields and since we had the camera, i stopped to take a few photos of a distant cow through the fence.

apparently, he saw us by the fence, and ambled on over.

and then all the cows starting coming over! not just one or two, but the whole field. it started slowly and suddenly...

ALL the cows came over. the sweet looking brown cow was my favorite. anyone have any idea why all the cows came to see us? they had plenty of grass to eat... so it didn't seem like food would be a motivation. we tried walking away, and they formed a single file line and followed. when we walked, they walked; when we ran, they ran:

as soon as we'd stop, they'd all gather as if we had called a meeting. eventually, i had to give a speech to they wouldn't feel as if they'd gathered in waste ;) it was funny. but seriously though, anyone cow savvy enough to explain this phenomenon to me?

on a sidenote, we also discovered more blackberry bushes than you can shake a stick at! well...i suppose you could shake a stick at them, but most likely, you'd be too busy picking berries like we were! we gathered a handful and had them with ice cream after dinner. yum yum.

look ma, no hair!

happy birthday joey!

now you're old ;)

whoa wine...

oh cellar...why did you have bottles of wine for 1/2 price lastnight? ah well, i had fun ;) although, i think i was overly talkative if memory serves. no pictures to post of my hair yet, but will do that tonight :) i'm glad it's friday, even though it was only a 3.5 day week for me, it's felt long. oh i have a new title now, it's way fancier even though absoluting nothing about what i do has changed ;) no longer a "coordinator," i am an "area manager" - isn't that fancy? aren't you impressed? i work in a dilbert cartoon...

words from around the world

taken from cnn

If you walked through London yesterday, you would have been surrounded by screams of joy and laughter and songs of jubilation because of the surprise win of the Olympic bid. This evening as you walk through London there is an eerie silence; the only noise that can be heard is the putter of footsteps on the sidewalk as hundreds of commuters try to make their way home. Somewhere along the way the screams remain, but this time they are screams of pain; screams of sorrow, screams of anger and screams of anguish for those who have lost their lives and those who were injured when all they wanted to do was to get to work this morning.
Stella M; London, United Kingdom

We utterly condemn those atrocities. We condemn those responsible. Islam is a peaceful religion and it teaches peace. Those who are responsible must be brought to justice, no matter what religion or what country they belong to. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families and friends of those who have suffered in this atrocity. We the Scottish Muslims stand United and our prayers are with the families and friends of those who have been killed and all those injured in this atrocity. We appeal to the authorities that those who are responsible must be brought to justice.
Tahir Mohammed; Glasgow, Scotland

why i'm jealous of nate

so now we bloggers can finally post pictures without using hello or hosting them on another site. yipee! i expect that nate will soon post many pictures from his trip to italy as a result, but here's one of my favorites to the left.
expect many more pictures coming from this blogger :) including one of my new haircut!

a nod to london and england in this difficult time.

i don't really know what to say about what's happened, but wanted to acknowledge it. i remember what it felt like when our own country was terrorized.

(insert something interesting here)

much to my mother's dismay, i have again chopped off all of my hair. shortest it's ever been now i think - she even had to use that little razor thingy on my neck. sorry mom!
i haven't blogged in awhile, was keeping up a pretty good pace there the last couple of weeks and the poof! nothing for days. i spent first few days of the weekend at work, but then was freed to head to PA to spend time with nate's family and friends and their annual 4th celebration. it was a wonderful time! we spent a good portion of the day floating in the river, played an intense volleyball game, and a few other games like three-legged races and water balloon toss. overall, was a fun-filled holiday :)
this week, have been out to cabo with friends, had dinner made for me (tasty!), checked on our garden, which thanks to mark and natalie, is flourishing! if you're looking for some tasty veggies, i'll have plenty of them in a few more weeks! i'm most excited about the pear tomatoes which my mom grew years ago and i found when we were buying up all our plants to plant.
tonight? new river network get together thingy and maybe a movie at the lyric? to be seen....

everything's coming up roses

nate has safely arrived back in the usa, work is clicking along at a pleasant pace (which i hope continues since i will be here until 11 pm tonight!), and i overslept! why is that a good thing? because i still made it to work within about five minutes of when i should have, and was able to get about 30 minutes more sleep :)
other highlights - my mom will be here to visit the first week of august and cassie is headed to arizona today!