and finally . . .

Dona nobis pacem

pacem*

31 posts in 31 days
hooray for me, and peace to you in the new year
and always



*not my blog language, but latin for 'give us peace, peace'

[image from: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/greece/sikyon/]

tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. . .

Looking back before looking ahead, I think that in this past year I have learned that I'm not a one-a-day, or even once-a-week, person. Back when I was writing regularly, "regularly" meant write for 3 or 4 days, then don't write for about the same amount of time, then do that again until I was done. I think this is a more natural rate and method of production for me. Charge, discharge, recharge. With deadlines. Deadlines of some kind are essential. Also through the year, I've also been watching the things that have turned me into a green-eye'd monster. Armed with these two twigs of self-something- or-other (knowledge? awareness?), I'll see about concocting some modest goals for '09.

About a year and a half ago, I went on a retreat built around Soul Collage -- a practice that uses collage (obviously) to create a something like a personal tarot deck. This is the card I made for "working." The general idea is that work is comprised of inspiration, research, the actual working/doing of the thing, and that there must be some joy in the work, and joy is a big part of the reward/award. I think I will meditate on this whilst conjuring goals for '09.

7 of seven

I live in the house I grew up in, the house my grandfather built in the 1930s. My mother, now 83, has lived here for all but 6 years of her life.

this and that

Yesterday, bad: Frustrated trying to start a new Moby Dick Panel.
Today, good: Made a drawing. My local SAQA group is putting together a show with the theme of "Fiber + Thread = Art" and I wanted to do something new, but had not a niggle of an idea. This loopy drawing is an idea. I used to make these kinds of drawings all the time, usually they were h-u-g-e and on the sidewalk in colored chalk.
Yesterday, bad: Worked some more on that story I mentioned glancingly the other day. (That kind of creative writing makes me headachy and cranky and not much fun to be around.)
Today, good: Read it over and it's not half bad. I know what I need to do to finish it and I think I can get it done this week during the hiatus from work. This is a massive departure from 'normal' -- I've barely begun, and haven't finished, any writing since 1999.

As some of you know, I've been collecting the word verification words with the idea of creating a kind of language, or at least some blog slang. I have 67, I'm aiming for a list of 200.
I have a list of interrogatives:
(I may rethink these so that they all end with an "i")
scoli = who
ossesc = what
morti = when
pinen = where
ofierti = why
tayla = how
And a catch-all courtesy word, calat, which I like using to mean please and thank you, hello and goodbye. Dinah asked for a word to mean "blogging buddies" and I suggested eringla -- which she deemed "splendid" and immediately put to use. Beyond that I've been sorting things into categories depending on whether something has the feel of a noun or an adjective, or if it suggests a way it might be conjugated (tosipsyp) as a verb. The challenge has been to avoid sound-alike associations, ersads for ersatz, and thinking of everything as an exclamation: Oboli! One of my students was studying linguistics and she gave me a list of core words, words that express fundamental and necessary concepts across a wide range of languages, such as water, me, you, mother, father, etc that I think will be helpful with this project. So buff up your thinking caps -- when I have 200 WVs it's Rosetta stone time.

no ho-ho

Traditionally, there comes a day in this season of mandatory rejoicing and frivolity when I think that I may die of sadness. Today is that day. Tomorrow -- or the next day -- it will have passed. But today is that day. So not much of a post, but also not a good enough reason to bail on the one-a-day commitment given that the 31st is so close.

Help, please

Does anyone know why this is happening -- and, more importantly, how to Make It Stop?

I have a Dell Dimension E510 with Microsoft XP. I want to save a word file on to a disk. This should be simple -- but I keep getting a message that says I don't have access to the "D" folder and I should "see my administrator for access." There is no administrator, this is my home computer.

There must be a place in the software where I click a box that says: "Idiot machine, I am the administrator and always have been!" But where is it?

6 of seven

My maternal grandparents were married the year I was born.

[shhhhhh. . . my mother would be horrified that I told you this so don't tell her I told you. ]