b'eggl

so i woke up early this morning to drive my mom to work so i could in turn commandeer her vehicle, but then my stepdad decided he didn't need his, so now i'm both at home and with vehicle. think i might head off to a coffee shop for a bit and read the fountainhead until it's reached a decent hour to visit people, such as my grandparents. we bought my grandaddy a VCR years ago, but he never watches the movies we buy him, so i'm headed over there today to watch seabiscuit, which i haven't seen.

yesterday i FINALLY got my mom to see "something's got to give." it was our third attempt, the previous two attempts of the weekend being completely sold out. it was fun to go to a 10 a.m. movie and have a peppermint mocha instead of popcorn.

i also had lunch with michael and finally got to see his house which he built within the past year if memory serves me (and it usually doesn't). funny, i feel as if i should identify people by their blog names- michael being "mm" the majority of the time.

anyway, off to read :)

greetings from arizona!

did i mention one of the great things about arizona is that it's low lowercase?

yes joey, i can post from the road :) (or "home" as the case may be) - "home" in quotes as blacksburg is now more home than here, although i still feel at home here.. so discuss amongst yourselves :) or just to yourself, or don't discuss at all - your choice.

so i've taken a break from my busy shopping schedule to post- that's right- straight from the airport to the mall, a few breaks to eat and watch "cold mountain" which was good, sad, and long all at the same time - i give... 4.5 stars out of 5- with no real reason for the missing .5 other than that i prefer more uplifting movies -- was at the mall again today- bought lots of good stuff :) and then at a friend's graduation party this evening where i got to see most of the old group from highschool :) good stuff.

amazing to see what everyone has "grown up" to be - we had an aspiring dentist, lawyer, doctor of the mayo clinic, phd of finance, and those that are already in roles of teacher, ICU nurse, account managers, etc. neat to look around the room and think about that ;)

okay, off to bed - more shopping tomorrow i suspect :) got to get my fix while i'm here!

track santa tonight!

http://noradsanta.org

more christmas goodies-- (from 1897)

Dear Editor,

I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says if you see it in The Sun, it's so. Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Clause?

Virginia O'Hanlon


Virginia,
Your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except that which they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the countless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! How dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias.

There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies. You might get your papa to have men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if you did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders that are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which the strongest men, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart. Only faith, poetry, love and romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernatural beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus!?

Thank God! He lives and lives forever.

The Gift of the Magi

i love this story - especially around christmas time :) merry christmas!

http://www.night.net/christmas/Gift-Magi.html

christmas eve :)

happy christmas eve! i didn't make the christmas card cutoff this year- so.... when you don't receive a card from me, it's not that i don't love you, it's that i couldn't get it together early enough to send any out :)

in honor of the season, i'm posting a few better than ezra song lyrics from "Merry Christmas Eve"

Northern Wind,
Chimney Smoke,
Love and Pain,
Joy and Hope.

These are the days,
of Christmas.

Colored lights and mistle toe,
Cinnamon and Nat King Cole,
There's a miracle now
on 34th Street.

At the airport families wait on queue,
And they shout as the loved one comes in view.
Well the kids are just happy 'cause they're out of school.

How wonderful life is, on Christmas.

Sleigh bells and sing-a-longs,
the snow falls on the lawn,
there's a midnight mass,
for a birthday.

Hearin' tunes an laughter fill the room,
You forget all the thoughts that have troubled you.
Yeah I know times I hard, somehow you'll make it through.

How wonderful life is, on Christmas.

All is quiet,
Holy night,
To awaken,
Morning light.
Let is shine!
Let it fill our lives with light.

Then as someone says 'Santa Claus was here,'
One by one by the tree we all appear.
Grandmother saved paper to use next year.

How wonderful life is -
How wonderful life is -
How wonderful life is,
On Christmas -
On Christmas.

Merry Christmas Eve


(At the airport families wait on queue"
Merry Christmas Eve

(As they smile and they cry as you fade from view)
Merry Christmas Eve

(Well the folks are just happy 'cause they saw you)
Merry Christmas Eve

Merry Christmas Eve
Merry Christmas Eve

(How wonderful life is, how wonderful life is, how wonderful life is.)
Merry Christmas Eve

Dinner With the Metrophobe

by Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Metrophobia is the fear of poetry.

I could tell from our onion blossom
this was all a mistake. There was no
'flower' of fried petals, but a soggy mess
in a napkin-lined wicker basket instead,

a bad corsage at the end of prom night.
But at work he was kind—always had
an extra envelope, a red pen, offered
to get me coffee from the machine

downstairs. He was the only one
who didn't gasp when I cut eight inches
off my hair. There was no competition
over publications (he never even read

The New Yorker), and sometimes, he'd hold
my elbow as we climbed staircases.
So when he asked me out for dinner over
e-mail, I thought it was just his way.

I had to lower my silly poet-standards
of expecting roses with each question,
a clever note snuck in my coat pocket
about my eyelashes breaking his heart

or how he must see me right now. I never
expected this guy's hands to shake all over
our appetizer of clams casino—shook so hard
his shell spilled its stewy contents on his tie.

The clatter of his teeth on his sweaty
water glass as he dribbled. The hives.
All I said was Don't be too nice to me.
One day I might write this all down.

all i need is a tumbleweed...

and the abandoned ghost town image will be complete. okay, so it's not THAT empty, but it's definitely quiet. really easy to get a good parking spot too, go figure.

so i saw two movies this weekend: return of the king, and stuck on you. both good. i wasn't all too excited about seeing stuck on you, but cassie was, so we saw it and it was actually funny AND it had a plot. good stuff- and who can beat matt damon and greg kinnear acting as conjoined twins? well actually, return of the king's multiple camera shots of aragorn beat it hands down -- won't ruin it for anyone by giving details though - between the three movies, i'd say the second was my favorite.

feel as if i should find some christmas type poetry or something - or maybe we can all have a holiday limerick competition ;) oh the possibilities...

class lastnight

okay pop quiz-- lastnight in class we:

a) discovered wireless internet reaches in our classroom
b) watched the lion king
c) played texas hold 'em
d) held tannagram competitions

whatever your choice, you're wrong! trick question- we did all of that. we also had quite an ingenious system since our professor insists on calling on one person in blacksburg (remember, he's in northern virginia) after each group's presentation. so we just had each person pay attention to one presentation and write down a question which was passed to whoever our professor called on. quite effective ;)

at one point, when we got particularly loud, our professor stopped the group presenting and pointed out that unlike every other class this semester, this time, a microphone was constantly on and they could hear everything we were doing. oops :) oh well, hopefully it's too late for him to fail us all.

now that i'm writing this, seems like it was probably more funny at the time - ah well ;) hopefully it wasn't totally pointless reading.

hot to hot-wire a car

just kidding. however, that is the subject of my day-by-day calendar today.

mm - so lots of questions -- what does "poetry is in the eye of the beholder" mean? i'll provide my very own opinionated answer. my poems were never "graded," in fact, i think it would be quite difficult to grade a poem-- however, i did receive feedback from them, and my classmates. writing is rewriting-- but as the writer of whatever it is, ultimately, you would decide what advice to take, and which to not. and of course, it all comes complete with a grain of salt BECAUSE poetry is in the eye of the beholder -- but that can apply to anything- like architecture -- i forget the details but some famous architect failed his final project because the professor said the building was ridiculous and the architect later went on to build that building and it's famous. it would be helpful and much more convincing if i could remember the details- but i can't, so deal with it!

libra b -- you're lucky i know you're baiting me or you'd be in big trouble mister, BIG trouble. ps: legally i can't really drive right now- this should please you to some end.

time for lunch, but later will post funny story from my LAST class of the semester, which was technically held after the university had closed for Fall 2003, but who's counting?

sara teasdale

i first found sara teasdale my freshman year of college. i was in hicks undergrad library, wandering through the poetry section (as i was in my first poetry class and newly interested in reading poetry, not just writing journal poetry) and i found the collected poems of sara teasdale. it's funny whenever you read about people reading one of her poems for the first time, they talk about being sucked in, or immediately identifying with her, which was how i felt - i think i stood in the aisle for a long time, just reading, and then finally checked it out. eventually, i found my own copy, at one of those antique book sales (actually, my copy is haunted which is a whole separate story :)

sara teasdale won the pulitzer prize for poetry in 1918, just one year before carl sandburg did.

besides, poetry is in the eye of the beholder. that's what's i think is so wonderful about it. i think sara teasdale's poetry is lyrical, beautiful, and not at all pretentious.

"Sara's poetry follows the feminine school of poetry in that love was the central theme. Even though her early work is girlish, her discipline and clean simplicity display the strength of understatement which characterizes the body of her work. She wrote of her emotions, her emotional response to the world and people around her." (from her biography Sara Teasdale, Woman & Poet, published in 1979 )

not bad for a rabid monkey with no arms ;)

second dose

The Giver
- Sara Teasdale

You bound strong sandals on my feet,
You gave me bread and wine,
And sent me under sun and stars,
For all the world was mine.

Oh, take the sandals off my feet,
You know not what you do;
For all my world is in your arms,
My sun and stars are you.

your poetry dose for the day

one of my old favorites, by sara teasdale:

Love Songs
To E.

I have remembered beauty in the night,
Against black silences I waked to see
A shower of sunlight over Italy
And green Ravello dreaming on her height;
I have remembered music in the dark,
The clean swift brightness of a fugue of Bach's,
And running water singing on the rocks
When once in English woods I heard a lark.

But all remembered beauty is no more
Than a vague prelude to the thought of you --
You are the rarest soul I ever knew,
Lover of beauty, knightliest and best;
My thoughts seek you as waves that seek the shore,
And when I think of you, I am at rest.

early morning blog

in order to avoid said corrective action request, i'm blogging early this morning :) well, not just to avoid corrective action, mainly cause i have time now, and i won't later --

feel like we should discuss something interesting... maybe i'll post my low-lowercase word list sometime soon. not to imply that that's interesting, but whatever. so i'm reading the fountainhead, loan courtesy of ryan -- so far, i like it, interesting book.

alexandre-gustave eiffel was born yesterday, which is mildly ironic, because yesterday, cassie painted this cool eiffel tower on our living room wall.

i think i remember learning about something ezra pound said about words being either buttery or shaggy - where buttery words are smooth and appealing, and shaggy words are less so in that they're kind of rough on the tongue or ear --

i'm quite wordy today.

slacker

so apparently i'm a slacker in the blog department - according to legatto anyway. ah well, i did absolutely nothing productive this weekend, including blogging, so there! :)

non-productive, but wonderful -- made potato cheese soup on friday night for cassie, bryan, and i -- went to gillie's with bryan on saturday morning and said goodbye to both him and ryan (who's gone home for the holidays). then a few pool games with the ians (and beat them soundly at 9-ball). then saw joe do a great job of playing jesus and then played scattegories (sp?) and did donuts in the elementary school parking lot (thanks jeff!) sunday cassie and i were lazy before going to see something's got to give which i LOVED and completely recommend. to girls. because, let's face it, it's a chick flick. not for the faint of heart men in our lives (or maybe only for the faint of heart men in our lives). then dinner at amanda and ben's (yummy) and a good game of girls vs. boys in cranium (which of course, we won).

and i'm out of school (yay!) so it's back to carpooling with the ians :) it's nice to have the dialogue on the way to and from work - or in some cases, heated discussion, but who's counting?

speaking of counting, 10 more days until christmas ;)

santa clause is coming to town....

was just played over the p.a. system - fun stuff :)

bloggity goodness

good morning! i'm surprisingly chipper this morning considering i was up until 1 a.m. and we all know i'm old and that's WAY past my bedtime. but what's stronger than my fatigue this morning people, is that all that's standing between me and christmas break is 1, that's right, 1 take home final and then i'm done! done i tell you! done!

we presented our final project in our distance learning class lastnight. so all semester, our professor has been lecturing (in 3 hour blocks mind you) from northern virginia (sidenote: when i first moved here, i thought nova was a town... not a region- i was like... wow, a lot of people are from that town nova...) and yesterday, he came in to town to see our presentations live and in person. and not only did he organize pizza before class, he also bought us a few rounds of drinks after class :) so it was fun to spend time socializing with the people i've had class with all semester, but didn't really get a chance to talk to them much -- and also to talk to people that we had seen on tv all semester, but never in person.

i also had one flash of skill at pool, and then lost miserably for the rest of the evening, but it was okay :) and of course, no evening is complete without a few drunk ian's, and i'll just say, the evening was complete. cassie was (sort of) keeping them in check though :) if you can call it that.

i love this time of year :) weekend agenda? we're going to see joe play jesus on saturday night, we plan on sitting in the front row and heckling him :) and bryan (good friend from HS) is coming to visit tonight! yay! and NO homework! none! mwahahahahahaha!

okay, that's it for now :) back to juggling swords....

random quotes for your amusement:

"Asthma doesn’t seem to bother me any more unless I’m around cigars or dogs. The thing that would bother me most would be a dog smoking a cigar."
- Steve Allen, 1955

"Don’t cross this field unless you can do it in 9.9 seconds. The bull can do it in 10."
- Anonymous, 1985

"If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster."
- Isaac Asimov, author of 289 books, 1984

"My vigor, vitality and cheek repel me. I am the kind of woman I would run from."
- Nancy, Lady Astor, 1955

"I don’t believe in dying. It’s been done. I’m working on a new exit. Besides, I can’t die now—I’m booked."
- George Burns, 1987

"We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don’t like?"
- Jean Cocteau, 1963

Simpson’s Contemporary Quotations, compiled by James B. Simpson. Copyright © 1988 by James B. Simpson.

ah, wednesday. half over or half left?

i'd rather say the week's half over ;) especially since the revised countdown is as follows:

presentation 1: done!
report 1: done!
take home exam: still to go! (due fri)
presentation 2: still to go! (thurs)
report 2: done!
report 3: done!
new addition: homework due thurs, still to go! (grr)

in other news, bryan dudley (good friend from highschool) who is now a marine pilot is coming to visit this weekend on his way to pensacola ;) which is really exciting :)

cassie and i are ALMOST done christmas shopping, which is also exciting. i have big plans to send out fancy christmas cards this year, so if you want one, e-mail me your address :)

so let's take a vote. i'm flying home from the 26th until the 31st of december. it's $100 each way to carry-on a dog. should i or shouldn't i? here's my rationale: everytime i leave her, she gets some kind of sickness, which ends up costing me at least half the cost of just taking her with me in the first place. discuss amongst yourselves.

a case of the mondays...

not really though ;) i'm having a good monday so far -- presentation to give today at 4, and then working on tying up the other project loose ends.

went to 103 lastnight for claymation rudolph and milk and cookies (thanks joey) :) and i'm also listening to my new christmas CD (thanks again joey!) :) and then cassie got us stuck in a parallel snow covered spot lastnight, so i got to play she-ra (is that how you spell she-ra?) and push the car out - even though she drives a del sol and the car was basically on ice, i still got to feel really strong for getting it moving - ;)

the ian's have kitties now! puffy and anna k. we took cleo to visit them yesterday, and mainly feared for cleo- i've never seen a cat spit and lash out its paw at the same time like that - scary stuff!

anyway, back to monday...

:)

back to the grindstone

so i'm back at "normal" work - if you can call it that. significant changes to the workplace while i've been out? well it seems the parking lot has been coated in snow, the lady that sits behind me has acquired headphones and now sings (loudly) at random, and my inbox, against any hope that the stack would shrink, has grown considerably.

but, i'm determined to hit the ground running and get lots done this morning (in between meetings of course) :)

school is winding down, in fact, i think it's time for a countdown.

project 1? done!
project 1 presentation? still to go (thurs)
project 2? still to go (mon)
project 2 presentation? still to go (mon)
take home final? eek!
paper for blow off class? due today

:) so the end is in sight, the light at the end of the tunnel is there, yadda yadda cliche cliche :)

A Green Ford

My mother used to tell me about
herself, at age sixteen and the boy
she wanted to love who drove
a green Ford Mustang, Mach II.
(and now, I think, isn’t that a razor?)

Now, 1:30 a.m. on a Thursday
night, years after I first heard the story,
I remember it. How she used to leave her light
on, late at night hoping a green Ford would pass
by and notice.

I remember laughing at her then.
What a silly idea, I told her.
Still, tonight the story has come back to me
as i sit watching the window, listening for car
doors, making excuses, even to myself to stay
awake in this room filled with light
realizing that when you come home
you’ll see it,
glowing yellow into the dark parking lot.

it's 8:15, do you know where your dog is?

i'm assuming mine's wondering where i am - since i'm on campus. but guess what's exciting? i'm in this training class this week at work on how to train/present/facilitate, and on thursday, we have to present on how to do something and instruct the class- so i'm doing dog training basics and bringing cleo to work as my visual aid! i love my job! :)

i should really get back to working on my project, but feel as if i've neglected the blog lately, so thanks for still keeping up with it to those of you who have :)

still revising errazuriz based on feedback from several people that they couldn't really picture the room -- :)

night night!