I have started a new blog where I’ll be putting most of my “literary” posts. It’s called “Electric tightrope.”
My first post there (after the introductory one) is about my trip to Wisconsin.
I’m working on it. But I wanted to have some real content there.
This blog will remain home to shorter posts and quick-hit photos. Sort of like tumblr, but less scrapbooky.
Time for a more advanced blogging experience!
Shot a bunch of photos of various unusual scenes including this “mourning” scene at the Stadium View bar near Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
The trip was a blast. We flew into Minneapolis, drove past Eau Claire and Chippewa Falls, gawked at Rib Mountain’s towering presence over Wausau, and then stayed a night before going into Green Bay. There, we attended wedding festivities and basically drank a lot of beer with the family (hey it’s Wisco) before heading out to Door County to drink more beer and gawk at beautiful scenery. There was also a lot of free-flowing cherry wine. Such good wine.
Then it was down through Oshkosh and through a bunch of small towns before visiting West Salem and Sparta just east of the Mississippi River. My grandma has a farm out there over by the crazy FAST boneyard. And then back to Minneapolis to check out some of my parents’ old haunts. They met at the University of Minnesota and got married in that city. And then a 3-D movie at the Mall of America and back to Atlanta, in my case.
Check out the full set of photos.
A little over two months remains until San Diego Comic-Con, roughly, and there’s so much that needs to be prepared ahead of time.
This goes beyond getting the proper fit of Spandex for my Wonder-Woman costume, although there’s a little of that too. No, this is much more about knowing what you’re talking about and being prepared. You don’t want to ask a question without the proper background.
The stylish curves of the convention center welcome all who dare make the pilgrimage inside its glass-enclosed walls. And then, they sort themselves according to what they like. In my case, science fiction and especially Star Trek are what seem to interest me. But there’s all kinds of different nerdy strokes for different folks.
Comic books, not as much, but the products of such things, yes. Movies and cartoons. Storylines. Then again, I can’t really recall the last time I did a whole lot of reading of comic books. So maybe I don’t even know. Maybe it’s untapped. I’m always intimidated by the detailed canons, reboots, alternate storylines, intersections between different comic universes, you name it, what have you.
Not to mention, I could use a distraction from real life. Sometimes reality can be a drag, let’s face it. Not that one should attempt to run away from the daily grind, but a little strategic distraction can’t hurt too badly. That’s the place where I’m at right now.
So to all ye who draw comics and color within the lines in just this one aspect of your lives, I salute you.
Well my life is starting to feel empty without a daily challenge, so it’s time to start a new one. I’m going to try to write a new poem each day. Here’s my first real introductory piece, not those ones I did on my phone earlier that sucked. I wonder how long I can keep this up!
Now, you might wonder what happened to 365 Hats. Well the actual challenge is over. (Although I still keep getting new hats. The latest is a cheesehead.) I finished that project as far as gathering material, and I even edited a video, believe it or not, but haven’t published it. The reality is I never completely finished the video editing because of musical concerns. I had started composing a track in GarageBand that is pretty much ready to go. Just a matter of getting it in there. But I really do need some better music … I’m so close, might as well.
It’s the beginning of 2011 and time to make New Year’s resolutions. While I sort of cringe at the thought of caving in to “year pressure,” I mostly kept my resolutions from 2010, and it helps to think ahead, so why not? This year is a whole different ball game than last year. FIrst, it’s a milestone year. My fifth anniversary at work is in May, and I’ll be attending my 10-year high school reunion in the fall. So, I’m naturally thinking about my life right now. Also interestingly, people I know are moving around left and right, thinking about their futures, building their families and relocating to different states or even countries. 2011 may be the most mobile year in recent memory; while I’m not planning any big moves at the moment, watching everyone do this to themselves despite (or because of) the rough economy is sort of a wake-up call for me to assess where I currently stand and make any needed improvements — big or small.
I’ve tried to come up with a list of things that are both easy to do and hard to master. In other words, I can dabble and succeed, or I can really delve in and take it and run with it. Maybe I won’t keep these resolutions, but thinking about the things I want to do is probably the best step in actually making them happen. Hopefully I’ll turn back to this list and try to make it happen, and hopefully I’ll be inspired to take on and achieve even more cooler things this year.
Here’s my somewhat banal-but-important list of 13 things for 2011:
1. Get my thoughts on real and digital paper. Writing is what I do best, and if I don’t actually write, I won’t get any better at it. Write at least one poem per day, even if it’s a silly haiku about wikipedia. Dream up storylines and explore the human condition through the power of the written word.
2. Read more of everything — eat a more balanced media diet. I hate buying paper books, but I’m kind of addicted to eBooks, so maybe getting a reader is in order. Allow the inner geek out to play, and investigate comics and films in that vein.
3. Blog more. Tumble often. Sign up for tons of sites that I never use, and find out why I keep coming back to the few that I do. Continue to explore online communities and the management challenges therein. Find out what the creative types are up to, and get to know them. Maybe meet up with some community organizations.
4. Shoot and edit more video outside work, even if it sucks; experiment and go crazy. Doing a video project can be very intimidating because it’s hard to do it really well, but as they used to say in the Arizona Lottery, you can’t win if you don’t play.
5. Play more music, even if it’s just GarageBand. Better if it’s something I do on an instrument. Pick up the clarinet every now and then, and then obtain a guitar or keyboard that I could potentially hook up to my computer. I have a decent keyboard at home, but it’s too big to take back with me.
6. Try to shoot at least one photo per day; preferably of but not limited to hat wear. Finish the 365 hats project from 2010 and carry it forward into 2011 in all its, um, glory.
7. Educate myself informally and perhaps even formally — educational resolutions might even be their own category in and of themselves. This is really something that I started in 2010 but want to continue. Expand my vocabulary, and continue to read up on world history. Learn about the city of Atlanta and the southern region; and even though it’s sometimes depressing, read the local news and try to feel like a part of the community. If I was a community reporter in this town, like maybe working for the college paper or something, what would I report on? Reconnect with my alma mater and catch up with former classmates, which I’m traditionally pretty horrible at. Figure out where I stand on furthering my education, and maybe take a class or so. Keep up with sports, music, languages, the cosmos and humanity’s Big Questions.
8. This is kind of cheating as a resolution, but there’s something to be said for setting goals you can keep: Travel to new places this year as well as old favorites. Do the midwest and SoCal in July. Maybe go to Europe in the fall. Hopefully make it out to the mid-Atlantic again this year, and maybe do the Northwest and New England, which are both kind of mysterious to me. Could a trip to Austin also be worthwhile this year? What about Disney World and Miami? Any good day treeps in Georgia? And of course, head out to the American west.
9. Eat more nutritious foods and fresh fruits and vegetables. Order the healthy stuff when eating out, and rely less on frozen dinners. Fire up the stove once a week. Keep my calorie counts within daily recommended limits. Alcohol in moderation as always.
10. Pay attention to my physical being. Work on exercise and balance, and defeat arthritis. Just a little a day goes a long way. Refresh my wardrobe and replace things that have overstayed their welcome in my closet.
11. Nurture an optimistic spirit and ignore negativity as best as possible. Try to be more forgiving and less judgmental of other people’s foibles and quirks and occasional self-absorption. Continue to work on understanding my fellow human beings, socializing more and feeling less anxiety in unfamiliar or uncomfortable situations. If we all listened better and raged less, the world would be a better place.
12. Become geographically independent. Knock off the Atlanta must-do’s list; eat a Ghetto Burger for God’s sake. Feel at home wherever I am. Live in the present and make my apartment feel like a place I want to come home to. At the same time, dabble in other geographies and try to understand where people who prefer tree-infested landscapes over the desert are coming from.
13. Get more wheels and rolling things in my life, from cars to bikes to balls. Do trains have wheels? Planes do. Actually, this might be the first thing to tackle out of the whole list, perhaps Priority Numero Uno. I’ll get started on that right away.
I think that rounds it up. The Lucky 13. Here’s to an awesome year.
It’s almost 5 a.m. on the last day of the year 2010. I just got up super early to take one last “365 hats in 2010” photo and celebrate a year well done. I didn’t stick with the “one hat per day” plan entirely, but then again, I did still manage to keep the concept going all year in spirit if not in exactitude.
When I set out, the goal was to challenge myself to think creatively. This was certainly the case. In terms of sticking with a goal, improvising with what you have, and having fun over the course of a year, this project satisfied its original criteria. Some of the “hats” aren’t really hats, just things I fashioned out of household objects. Some of them are folded or handmade hats. Others are hats adapted into new hats.
If you’re reading this, I’d encourage you to take a moment and peruse the now 365 images that populate the Picasa photo gallery that was set up to hold the photos. They kinda give you an idea of what happened this year. A lot of my personal milestones and big vacations, and even news events, were strangely enough best described by using hats. Here’s a rundown of what the hats can tell you about this year’s biggest events and surprises:
It was strangely reassuring for me to know that every day would have a photo associated with it, good or bad, and that there would always be more days and more hats. Some pictures were taken in different locations or with different backgrounds, my hair changed length, etcetera.
In a couple instances you’ll note a hat appears multiple times. An order of two separate hats ended up being an order of two identical pink hats, so they appear together in the shots. Also, I lost my purple hat twice, so it appears three times throughout the snapshots.
Also, there are a couple shots in there of friends, coworkers, random people and a cat. The goal, again, was to have fun, and I thought a few surprises here and there wouldn’t hurt.
Since I’m on vacation and doing the holiday thing, I’m not going to go into extreme detail for this little year in review. But I just want you, dear reader, to know that it’s been a pretty great year and I get a little wistful thinking about all the things that have happened this past year. A lot of it’s been really good, with only a few little bumps in between. Hopefully 2011 will be even better.
The 10-year reunion is in less than a year, and that’s a horrifying thought. Being home always reminds me of these things. A flip through the high school yearbook was a reminder of where I came from, and the path I thought I’d take. I remember imagining what I’d be like in 10 years. In most ways, I’m either on par or way better off than I thought I’d be, but in some other ways, I was completely off base.
So that’s why I’m typing this stuff right now; both in the spirit of being thankful for what you have and preparing for a future retrospective, if that makes sense. I know that without a real, working flux capacitor, this message will never get to you, even posted on this blog in “Channel 55: All Back to the Future, All the Time,” but I wanted to write this note just in case. Just in case.
On the positive side, I’m employed in a thriving division of a company that is doing well. I do work that is seen daily by people around the world. Many days, I thank my lucky stars that I get paid to do some of the things I do. In exchange for engaging in my sometimes manic profession, I really do get to travel and enjoy life. I’m able to live in another state and still make it home to spend time with the Zonies in my life. Outside of work, I have my own apartment and I also have a circle of friends. I go out and do things, and even attend parties. I take care of myself and am more confident. As a shy, awkward youngster who ate lunch by herself for years while dodging bullies, this was hard to imagine. None of this is small beans, so I’m thankful for my lucky stars.
On the negative side, staying healthy is a challenge. Living in a different place makes me feel chronically uneasy. Atlanta is definitely different culturally, intellectually, physically, etc. I miss my family and friends, and I miss the desert. I don’t own a car and I expend too much of my income on housing. My personality and thinking style are assets and liabilities sometimes. My chosen field forces me to stretch the limits of how I express myself.
I will actively choose to believe that these “bad” things are actually good things, because it means I’m at the bleeding edge of change in my life.
Oh, and most of the stuff that I was preoccupied with in high school has turned out to be total B.S., and I should have relaxed and enjoyed myself more in college (but made a greater effort to make it to class).
What will I say to myself 10 years from today? I shudder to think about my 37-year-old self, but it beats the alternative. I hope she’s doing well.
What does this mean for you, self of the past? Well I really can’t tell you, because I don’t want you to change anything or screw it all up for me. The fact that I’m reluctant to change the timeline tells me something must be going good with my life. Thanks a lot, science fiction.
The ’80s are the new ’50s … and the 1990s are the new 1960s, I guess. Eh?
A bit ago, I was listening to the radio (which I haven’t done on a regular basis in years) and except for the sonic gyrations of Katy Perry, everything was pretty much as it was the last time I regularly listened. Or, more accurately, it was like a time machine of my teen years. Alanis Morissette was swallowing her jagged little pill, Weezer was rocking out, Gavin Rossdale was crooning sans Bush, Usher was doing some R&Bing. I looked up some Weird Al Yankovic videos for good measure, because that’s what we listened to when I was 13. And just imagine cruising through certain parts of Maryvale or South Phoenix (or down Boulevard in Atlanta) with Eminem cranked up. Yes. You know the feeling. Or you don’t.
At that moment, I felt that it could have been 1995 or 2000 again. Really, I felt like a time traveler, which tells you something about radio. So imagine that you made a time machine that goes back all the way to 1995, or perhaps a couple years earlier to when Kurt Cobain was still alive and young boys weren’t mourning in pea-green sweater-veils and stringy hair. My, how much the world has changed.
My thoughts immediately turned to the first “Back to the Future,” which recently celebrated its 25th anniversary. In that film, the “future” is 1985. Heck, that’s almost before my past now. If you did a parody of that film in today’s world, you could have some kid go all the way back to 1995 and try to get their strung-out grunge-loving dad to marry their grunge-loving mom somewhere in a glamorized pre-hipster conceptualization of the Seattle rock culture. (You might want to bring in Weird Al if you’re planning any parodies.) Universal Studios is already working on the motion-simulator ride for its Hollywood and Orlando theme parks. Or not.
It seems like at the moment, the 1980s and 1990s are getting to be almost as fetishably foreign to us now as the 1950s were then. You already see a lot of romanticization of the 1980s, as evidenced by my recent iTune-age of the “1000 GREATEST HITS OF THE 1980s.”
Time and decades were a difficult concept for me to grasp as a child. “Happy Days” was the ultimate confusion. By that time in my youth, I had learned that there were old things and new things. But the advent of “Happy Days” was a layered mess of reruns of an old series that took place 20 or 30 years before. Very, very confusing for a youngster like me. At the time, people were fascinated with the 1950s in a very special way. Music from the era was all over oldies stations and was popular with other kids. (Side note: it won’t be long before the Phoenix, Arizona, oldies station KOOL FM will be playing Madonna instead of the Marvelettes.) Enter “Back to the Future,” which didn’t make much sense to me when I was very young. Particularly because the second film was coming out and they were going “back to the future” in the movie, weren’t they? But they had done that in the first movie? But that was set in the past, not the future … OK, I get it now.
Incidentally, Back to the Future (the first one) is one of the tightest films or stories I’ve ever seen, plot-wise, and I think that’s why its popularity has endured. Modern movies and films and music would do well to learn from this example, regardless of genre. The key to its memorable nature is its straightforward plot, built in two perfectly intertwined layers so that the time-travel plot is a device for the emotional exploration of Marty’s parents’ relationship. How many things have you seen that balance this dichotomy so well?
Anyway, the point of this post is: leg warmers are going the way of the poodle skirt, Happy Days was awesome, BTTF is awesome, and holy moly, Weird Al is still going strong. Oh, and Gavin Rossdale is still as appealing as he was back in the day. That is all.
I’m kind of fascinated by this whole “reading stuff online” thing. I’m currently checking out several electronic book platforms including readers, electronic print, iPhone apps, desktop sites and other venues. Reading the classics on my iPhone seems to be working OK for now, but I bet a larger screen would help. The question is, is it better to spring for an e-reader like a kindle, nook, literati or Sony model? Or just get a netbook instead? There’s at least a few versions for free. I can’t help but wonder if this will help fledgling authors build a following. Without further delay …
Online book sites of the day:
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