since we've had our first snow day...

i'm posting the first poem i ever brought to a class workshop...

The First Day Snow Fell

I realized the beating of my own heart too late.
The morning frost had edged leaves
still too green to see November,
I watched you walk with her.

It was so unexpected
that for at least five minutes
I must have stood there
until it started to snow in oversized flakes
that landed on my cheeks,
fell frozen on my eyelashes.

Suddenly, not wanting to be seen
by you, or more so, the girl-
i turned away.

In front of me,
a tree had not yet lost its leaves.
but they fell with the snow that day,
leaves and snowflakes swirling
to the ground together.

roller skates

so i went roller skating tonight - it was awesome - i bought these skecher skates a year ago - very cute and blue and sparkly - basically they look like skecher sneakers with 4 blue sparkly wheels. and i haven't used them before! so i got to tonight, which was quite exciting. granted, we drastically raised the average age of the rink, but it was lots of fun.

i also saw "the missing," which was v. good - highly recommend. won't say anything further so i don't ruin the suspense for the rest of you.

and cassie's boyfriend is here (from phoenix)- so he took her out for a surprise dinner- which basically involved, blindfolding her, driving her around until she was good and confused (and until they almost ran out of gas), and then taking her to the cellar (her favorite, 1 mile from our apartment).

all in all, a great evening ;) night night

happy turkey day!

it's a happy day for everyone but... well... turkeys. enjoy it!

REALLY rough draft

so in line with my latest resolution...

errazuriz

we’re sitting at the bar when they begin
to play again, we’ll be here
until midnight they said. every time
a song has ended i feel as if i should snap
my fingers in applause, but then, shouldn’t i
be wearing black? the bartender, a fellow
libra as i found out when he glanced
at my ID, brings another glass of wine
that neither he or i can pronounce quite
right. errazuriz. rolls off the tongue
like jazz across the room.

turkey day ETA?

one day! today, i will be at work until around four, then it's off to the airport to pick up "the ryan." what's on the menu for turkey day? ummm... turkey, and stuffing, and gravy, and cranberry sauce, and mashed potatoes (which cassie insists on making from scratch even though you can buy this tasty tasty packet of garlic mashed potatoes that are fantastic and all you have to do is add water...) and pumpkin pie and i can't remember what else, but it's all quite traditional - aren't we quaint?

lastnight, ian made lasagna - which was wonderful, and then we all headed to the cellar for some jazz - tweedle made a cool point about jazz that i never really thought about: how all the musicians can be doing their own thing but it still sounds great - so now, i like it more than i did before :) (and i liked it before)

i should really write poetry more often, so that's my latest resolution - in the time that i've got off school, i should be able to get going again - :)

did someone say coffee?

cause i could really use some right now. eh, actually i'm not that tired - maybe it's just out of habit ;) soo...cassie woke me up at like 12:30 lastnight cause the electricity kept going out in various parts of the apartment- it was like one of those bad horror movies when the whole place is dark and you flip a switch and of course, nothing happens cause the power's out stupid. but we flipped a couple of circuit breakers and all was lit again.

i also saw the matrix lastnight - i'd give it... 3 of 5 stars. i guess it's worth seeing if you still care what happens to the matrix and whatnot - as for me, i went for the popcorn and still don't quite understand how it all makes sense - for several reasons.

1. i just don't care
2. i can never remember what happened at the end or during the previous movie
3. okay, maybe not several reasons

back to work :)

15% of my brain is at work today

the other 85% is ostensibly missing entirely.

pseudo thanksgiving was wonderful :) wonderful food, even better people, and lots of people i haven't seen a lot of lately :) there was cookies, there was cake, there was ham, there were casseroles, and pies, and cider.. the list goes on and on :) can we do a repeat for christmas?

pseudo-thanksgiving

so...pseudo-thanksgiving is on wednesday night (we've finally decided). it's potluck-bring-whatever's-in-your-cabinet-and-make-something-out-of-it style - r-dawg, you bring the poptarts and the wine, cassie and i will handle the ... something else random - i think we should make efforts to make this the most random dinner ever (except for that time we really DID take everything out of the cabinets and make dinner out of it... that's pretty hard to beat on the random scale).

exciting weekend stuff? i have 7 of 10-15 research paper pages written - which is perfect- it's due tonight at midnight, so the math emporioum and i will be spending some quality time together this evening :)

was in north carolina yesterday for shopping :) also v. exciting - got lots of christmas shopping done - AND got to eat at macaroni grill, an added bonus.

i love my hair :) it was straight last friday, and now is back to it's usual curly self - was fun to have it straight for awhile though.

okay- back to being the productivity extraordinaire - i will not be a vicitim to monday today! :)

this poem...

....will make you never want to order the same thing twice in a restaurant ever again - or at least - that's what it did to me... courtesy of michael blumenthal (my hands down favorite):

Restaurant

You were hungry for something once
and so you ate it, you ate it and ate it
and it was delicious by God it was good,

good, savory, delectible, you thought you
could never get enough of it, you thought
if you didn't keep eating it it would disappear,

it would leave you as hungry as you were
when you found it, it would leave you
starved, ravenous, lonely, going each night

to a different restaurant, so you said to
yourself, "Why not keep eating it? Why not
just stay with a good thing? though the flavor

grew slightly predictable, and the time
slowly came when you could no longer quite tell
if you were still going to the same restaurant,

still ordering the same thing from the menu, because
it was really what you wanted or because you had
merely lost your imagination, lost your appetite

for something new and specific, the sense of adventure
you once felt cruising the menu, but now you were
like a great chef grown famous for just one recipe,

so you kept eating and eating, you weren't going
to be one of those guys who went out for hamburger
and had steak in the freezer, you just kept

eating and eating, your eyelids grown heavy, your
face to the window, your old hungers circling
above you, calling your name, still loving you madly.

what would you do if you knew you could not fail?

by the way...

i'm touched that everyone's been so inspired to write their own poetry- a few notes:

michael- metallica wants their song back

r-dawg - ouch! -

cleo's new boyfriend

so cleo's got a new boyfriend- step aside norman! she met an english bulldog named vick - he's only 4 months old - they romped about for an hour tonight, it was really funny- or maybe just to me (and vick's parents) cause i'm oddly obsessed with my dog -

research paper progress? nothing written so far - but i fully intend on spending lots of time on it on wednesday - and i've been gathering and reading sources, so that's a start at least!

anyway, i'm off to bed, since it's already too late for my old lady self :) night night everyone!

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.

slacker

so, i'm a slacker, this much i know (at least when it comes to blogging this week). but really, nothing much of interest to share anyways cause all i've been doing is work or school - i'm pretty sure cleo thinks i've moved out.

so...here are things i'm looking forward to for the rest of the year:

the second annual "thanksgiving without turkey" dinner - date TBD - but for those of you who are local to this wonderful valley, potluck style thanksgiving dinner - probably the week before everyone's on break for tech.

getting my hair highlighted - actually, let's take a vote: yes, or no? i'm leaning yes, but haven't decided - i kind of want to do something drastic...

my research paper's due date was moved a few days - so that's nice - mostly, i'll be spending the weekend at the library (or simlair studious type places) working on it - lean six sigma, here i come!

Venice, But No Gondola

I: On the Way

He says out loud (not necessarily to me)
“If you want to see poverty, just go to Venice.”
Funny how they’re both water cities,
whether it’s Italy or Louisiana.
Instead of a gondola, I’m in a Chevy Suburban
traveling down a highway.

Houses on stilts line the roadside,
the smell of oil seems to hang
among the cars on blocks, dark swamps with bright
green algae on the surface. Natalie Merchant
wails from the car speakers, a borrowed CD.
I didn’t borrow it, the lyrics reach me anyway,
climbing over the old stone wall
I am bound for the riverside.

When I look out the window, the leather seats
seem wrong for the situation. I feel compelled
to respond to the poverty comment but don’t know
what to say and the awkward lapse inevitable
of a four hour car ride with a stranger
fills the car. Natalie sings anyway, unaware
there is nothing to say, find a place
on the riverbank
where the green rushes grow
see the wind
in the willow tree
in the branches hanging low

We reach the dock and I board a boat headed out
to the Gulf. I watch from the back deck as we push
through the heavy water and every now and then
my gaze lands on small houses, isolated
by the swamps , connected only by dilapidated
wooden docks. Later, I notice the water has cleared,
the houses are gone and ocean water laps the tall grass
all around us.

II: On the Rig

My shift will be midnight to noon. I learn
to love rising in the darkness, eating breakfast at 4:30 a.m.
I learn exactly what to tell “Q” in the mornings
to have my eggs cooked just right. I learn what to call
the men. Later, I even learn their names.

I find that when the metal
and the men and the mud
become too much,
I can always find the sea.
It stretches out so far that I can no longer remember
where I might find land. At night, I forget that it’s only water;
the other rigs light the skyline as if they are outskirts
of a metropolis.

One morning, as the sun rose on the water
I noticed that the blue was being overtaken by a deeper,
darker brown. It’s the Mississippi, they tell me, even
twelve miles of water between us, it still finds the way
all the silt spilling into the gulf,
staining the blue. child it's lovely
let the river take it all away
the mad pace, the hurry
the troubles, the worries
just the river take them all away
flow away.

working from home?

yep, that's right - i'm actually spending a sunday evening at home looking at a standard operating procedure - well, obviously not right this second, but i was! i swear!

i bought what is so far, a great poetry collection- called "good poems" by garrison keilor (think i spelled that wrong, but i'm too lazy to go get the book from the living room). i'll post some of those poems soon-

i also started working on my research paper cause it's due soon - i'm writing about six sigma methodologies and training, so that should be cool since it applies to work, but it's for school :)

notable: purdue won, the hokies won (and rushed the field)

that's it for now i suppose - back to work!