today's random picture

just to prove this really is random. i only eschew repeats, and this, obviously, is not one. it is Chipley. 

today's random picture

 

flowers from boot

 

ol' faithful

 

today's random picture

 

beignets

 

beignets

 

today's random picture

grace! 

today's random picture

 

today's random picture

 

today's random picture

 

today's random picture

 

laginappe for boot

 

today's random picture

 

today's random picture

 

news!

tomorrow i will be writing in a new blog, the story of e, and untitled will revert to its original purpose as an artblog. stay tuned for the new site!

the book meme

via poppy

Most of the underlined (or just plain type) books are ones I know little or nothing about, but if someone gives me a book, I'll always at least consider reading it. The italicized books are ones I own but haven't read yet. All the books but one on here that I have read, I read decades ago, which may just mean that i'm old. I have no idea why these particular books--hey, it's a meme.

Have read
Intend to read
Won't read (as much as there is any book that i won't read)
might consider reading if somebody gave it to me (or just plain type, ditto, because i can't figure out how to make this thing underline)
started but never finished
*finished but hated

The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy - Douglas Adams
The Great Gatsby - F.Scott Fitzgerald
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter 6) - J.K. Rowling
Life of Pi - Yann Martel
Animal Farm: A Fairy Story - George Orwell
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
1984 - George Orwell
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Book 3) - J.K. Rowling
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Book 4) - J.K. Rowling
The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter 5) - J.K. Rowling
Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut
Angels and Demons - Dan Brown*
Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (Book 1) - J.K. Rowling
Neuromancer - William Gibson
Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson*
The Secret History - Donna Tartt
A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Book 2) - J.K. Rowling
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
American Gods - Neil Gaiman
Ender's Game (the Ender Saga) - Orson Scott Card
Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson
A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis
Middlesex - Jefrey Eugenides
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Good Omens - Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman
Atonement - Ian McEwan
The Shadow Of The Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway
The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
Dune - Frank Herbert

so today

I wasn't home. I had to get out, having been in for two days, so I ended up talking to Karen about her ebay store. Plan to set that up this weekend. Still haven't heard anything from Dennis, so it doesn't look like I'll be driving to New Orleans this weekend, which is just as well. Saw Gina at the knit shop, to which I'd taken Debbie in the afternoon. Doing some ebay research and errand running tomorrow.

Every morning i get up wondering what the hell I'm doing. I'm concentrating on three primary things and three secondary things. Primary: teaching art, selling the land and the ebay thing. Secondary: the thesis, the house and garden fixup, and learning to spin. I gotta do something on a primary every day and also work in artmaking too, at some point. Aargh. nothing really seems to be happening, and yet if I do something each day i'm hoping a pattern will form. Tomorrow: the ebay thing and the house again, and the knit shop at 3:30. next week, maybe the land sale and artmaking, I don't know. hopefully I'll hear from unemployment. sigh. saw Dot at the knit shop, she hadn't looked at her email. she doesn't know anybody, but she'l be a resource anyway. an email when i got home from Rob asking about Mr. Washington, who remains not at home. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow....this is the end of week three (where week 1 was a given loss, I already knew.)

okay!

some progress made: i cleaned out the bedroom. i dusted and washed and cleared, the surfaces, anyway, and tomorrow i must do the insides of drawers and the closets. gone, gone, gone! and take Debbie to the knit shop in the afternoon. still haven't figured out the rusted toilet bolts. but I applied for 2 jobs at loyola, nola! can't imagine what might happen there, but I'm trying. "do you think god sees me?"

mary says sam got his sweaters. whew!

i am jo spanglemonkey!

i will post every thought, like she does, I guess. in my case it will serve to make be believe i am doing something besides running the meter. o, to be jo spanglemonkey! :)

more applications

to USF and also to Loyola in New Orleans, which seems to have two professional positions that might look like me? how would I do that? i don't know, i'll cross that bridge if I come to it. Also thinking of driving over there on Sunday, to see what i can find there, but is that just stupid? I'll have to hear from Dennis.

so here i am again

attempting to control the freak. sell the land, will the land sell, even? applied for jobs at USF, i haven't even heard on the ones i applied for before, not even karen's, not a word. i'm wondering if somebody in the dean's office is giving me a bad reference, or something, but who? everybody says they're just great, that place makes one so paranoid. made the daube last night. so that was meat, anyway. Mr. Washington wasn't home so i'll try again tonight. control the freak, control the freak...

freak control

here's my list which i shall annotate with my current progress, in an attempt to keep my sanity:


1. learn to spin: Gina offered to show me how and we were going up to Uncommon Threads, but she hasn't contacted me. CALL HER.
2. restore house and garden: beginning to take things apart, lay junk out. FINISH CLEANING BEDROOM TOMORROW AND GET OFFICE DEPOT BOXES FOR PACKING UP. FIGURE OUT HOW TO GET THE %$&*^@(*& RUSTED TOILET SEAT BOLTS OFF.
3. knit all planned projects: working on them, almost finished susan's socks, should be tonight.
4. downsize, downsize, downsize--sell possessions, streamline, stop acquiring: made decision on selling land. sent Dot an email for real estate advice. TRY TO FIND THE PORT CHARLOTTE WOMAN.
5. find work teaching art: CALL MR. WASHINGTON TONIGHT (Rob's connection)
6. continue making art: not yet
7. show art for possible sale:not yet
8. aesthetics thesis: J mentioned this, too, but not yet
9. regain health: still eating crap MAKE CREOLE DAUBE
10.stay afloat: so far

I need to keep looking at this periodically, so i won't run screaming into the void. Also, I must call Debbie today. After I get the Daube started. And I need to go Deposit checks at the CU.

today i

submited 2 USF applications
set up delicious tags
called on an elementary art position at DeSoto (no soap)
tried to register on monster.com to no avail--the computer must be down
started to research seling my land

tonight i call charles washington (retired principal) to see how to go about finding teaching work

2005

2005:

(x)=yes ( )=no (*)=only in my dreams

(x) stayed single
( ) kissed someone new
( ) made out in a car
( ) kissed in the snow
( ) kissed in the rain
( ) fell in love
( ) fell in love with a fool
( ) had your heart broken
( ) broke someone else's heart
( ) had a good relationship with someone
( ) questioned your sexual orientation
( ) gotten pregnant
( ) gotten someone else pregnant
( ) kissed someone of the same sex
( ) dated someone you'll never forget
( ) done something you've regretted
( ) lost your true love forever
( ) lost faith in love
( ) kissed under miseltoe

WORK/SCHOOL

( ) got a promotion
(x) got a pay raise
(x) changed jobs
(x) got a second job
(x) lost your job
( ) quit your job
( ) dated a co-worker
( ) dated your boss
( ) dated your boss' daughter/son
( ) got fired from your job
( ) did something you were proud of
(x) discovered a new talent
(x) proved yourself an idiot
(x) were involved in something you'll never forget

OTHER

(x) painted a picture
(x) wrote a poem
( ) ran a mile
(x) listened to music you couldn't stand
( ) double-dipped
( ) skinny-dipped
( ) went to a sleepover
( ) went to camp
( ) threw a surprise party
( ) laughed till you cried
( ) laughed till you peed in your pants
( ) flirted shamelessly
( ) visited a foreign country
(x) visited a foreign state
( ) cooked a disastrous meal
(x) lost something important to you
( ) got a gift you adore
(x) realized something new about yourself
( ) tried to gain weight
(x) dyed your hair red
( ) came close to losing your life
( ) someone close to you died
( ) reunited with a friend
(x) made all new friends
( ) made an accomplishment that shocked everyone
( ) realized your truest friends
( ) told a secret that would ruin your life if revealed
( ) threw a party
(x) went to a party
( ) did (a) drug(s)
( ) got arrested
( ) read a great book
( ) saw a great movie
( ) saw a movie so scary that it made you cry
( ) saw your favorite band/artist live
( ) saw someone famous in person
( ) did something you want to tell everyone
(*) Enjoyed this year overall

okay

i'm officialy freaking..

today i

got the insurance guy dealt with
reapplied for unemployment on the phone
3 hours at store
got the mortgage paid with christy
paid and mailed the bills!
received retirement loan proceeds

a new year

may it be all different, and all your dreams come true

Happy Holidays from Technical Services!

these guys have given me something to miss about the place. thanks, guys!

patricia says farewell

david says goodbye

 on my last day.

christmas kerrel

feet of our only patron, Homeless Guy, with nowhere better to go this Florida Christmastide

a borrorwed dayplan

wake up
cappuccino
check email, etc
Work
brunch
do errands
walk
read
dinner with knitting
bed, sleep

this after christmas for a week or and then on Jan 3, begin finding my new way.

the year e

since 2006 is hereby the year of me, i here make a list of 10 things to be accomplished, in no particular order:

1. learn to spin
2. restore house and garden
3. knit all planned projects
4. downsize, downsize, downsize--sell possessions, streamline, stop acquiring
5. find work teaching art
6. continue making art
7. show art for possible sale
8. aesthetics thesis
9. regain health
10.stay afloat

New Orleans is not okay.

Hundreds of thousands of its people remain displaced, their homes uninhabitable; vast swaths of the city remain empty and lifeless, with no utilities or public services; businesses remain shuttered, their owners unsure when customers will return.

The city has put on a brave front, preparing for Mardi Gras and conventions to jump-start its tourism-driven economy. But when will its people come home?
Since Katrina hit on August 29, 2005, the city has struggled for answers about how to restore, rebuild and repopulate its devastated residential neighborhoods and commercial zones. The reality is that New Orleans residents will not truly begin the long recovery process until they feel adequately protected from the next deadly hurricane.


One Voice for New Orleans is a grassroots campaign to educate Americans and rally them around legislative efforts to protect and restore New Orleans.

New Orleans is one of the most historic, vibrant and culturally rich cities in America, but today the city needs your help to thrive once again.

If you care about the city or its residents, tell congress that you want to protect the city from future storms.

It is time for Washington to address the deadliest civil engineering failure in this country's history-one that has cost more than 1,000 lives, has destroyed 250,000 homes and has fractured thousands of families now spread across 48 states.

The levee breaches that allowed Katrina to wash over New Orleans were caused by an act of negligence - not an act of nature - the failure to properly construct and maintain the region's flood protection system.

Right now the federal government is considering funding for a fortified levee system built to withstand strong storms and protect the city from future flooding.

Without your help, New Orleans may die. We need your help NOW.

* Forward this email to your colleagues, friends and family - especially those outside of Louisiana so that they can learn about the plight of New Orleans.
* Email your state's Congressional leaders to tell them that New Orleans matters to you.

We aren't looking for handouts, just a helping hand. Together we can save a great American city.

Thank you,
One Voice for New Orleans
OVNO.org
If your are unable to click on the links in this message, please go to OVNO.org and click on the "Take Action" link to automatically email your reprsentative.

Gmail - WWOZ Update from New Orleans

Gmail - WWOZ Update from New OrleansHoliday Greetings from New Orleans! That's right. After our over 100-day exile, OZ has returned home to the Crescent City, to our new temporary office and studio space at the French Market. It is good to be back. There is still no electricity in the studios in Armstrong Park, so we plan to be at the French Market for the foreseeable future.

Blothday

in noticing it's been just about a month since i posted, i realized as well that it will be a year since i started blogging on the 28th. We'll have a Blothday! (Until then, things are gonna be tight s i finish out THE LAST TEN DAYS ON THIS JOB!!!!)

across the road

 
 

my inheritance

 
 

open for bidness

NOLAdays: "i simply cannot stand it, not one minute more, i'm going back to new orleans. flying in for two days only this time, found a package, cannot wait for St. Charles to open in a month i'll drive back then, but for now i cannot wait. This weekend I am going home!!"

I Found This!

NOLA cafe in Tampa Florida!

It's really true!

beignets! sunday morning in Tampa!

Play here

me writing with beignets in Tampa! (powder sugar smudgies on the screen...)

Word Shadows

Word Shadows: "Just like that. Just stepped back and closed the door on the Father of God and his bag of solar systems. "

Operation Eden: The Surreal Life: East of Eden

Clayton James Cubitt: "And there it is, for now. The internet saved my family. My camera saved my family. I'm a high school dropout, but my writing saved my family. If this had happened ten years ago, my photos, my writing, wouldn't have saved anybody, because nobody would have seen it. It wasn't on CNN. It wasn't on the broadcast networks. It wasn't even on PBS. It was on a plain, small, free website, and that's the only reason Elizabeth saw it, and brought her family into the effort."

moonkill

or this one?

for 'mouse

Library joke

Seven things

Picked up from Kimberly--

Seven things I plan to do before I die:
1. live in New Orleans
2. make art work
3. pay off my debts
4. retire in time to have 30 more years for me
5. design and knit my entire wardrobe
6. find my community again IRL
7. play my piano

Seven things I can do:
1. make art
2. knit
3. write/talk your brains out
4. Think analytically… sometimes too analytically (Thanks, Kimberly.)
5. link up seemingly everything into one mondo malleable megaconcept
6. work without ceasing until I fall over
7. help

Seven things I cannot do:
1. Shut up
2. Solve much of anything
3. Breathe around cats or dogs
4. listen to talk radio
5. find enough time
6. stop once I've started
7. figure out why

Seven things that attract me to the opposite sex:
1. Intelligence
2. Sense of humor (synonymous with 1.)
3. kindness/gentleness
4. Way with words
5. Competence
6. emotional strength
7. talent

Seven things that I say most often:
1. crap
2. I don't know
3. may i help you?
4. sigh
5. you there?
6. I give up
7. ...

Seven celebrity crushes:
1. Dopey
2. Sneezy
3. Happy
4. Grumpy
5. Bashful
6. Sleepy
7. Johnny Depp

Would anyone else like to do this? If you do, or have, let me know. I’d love to read yours.

Say Goodbye to Romance

"Burger King is offering a $6000 signing bonus and $8 an hour to full time workers right now. You have to sign a contract promising to work in a hurricane affected store for 1 year. They are offering part time workers a $3000 signing bonus! There aren't enough fast food workers to open most restaurants right now, so they're in high demand."

not quite paradise

this is the view from the lunchroom at my library assignment...

oh, and...

oh and this is...the, erm, college of business building...

(click to enlarge)

Meanwhile...

"An enormous pink bunny has been erected on an Italian mountainside where it will stay for the next 20 years."

update

untitled: "my first meme" snow got slapped by somebody else, so I'm now choosing.....no, Jo did her....um...Ginny!

my first meme

Rules:
1. Go into your archive.
2. Find your 23rd post.
3. Find the fifth sentence (or closest to).
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.
5. Tag five some other people to do the same.

“I got the call waiting feature AND, it seems, the DSL."

Ah, the quotidian. once again, the indefinability, the complete unsearchability of the picture blog. perhaps my tagged friends can do better.

So now I’ll tag: Ted, snow, 'mouse', bake, and jackie o. wait, not 'mouse, he only has 3 posts. how bout...merc! and just for good measure: Scrine! (squwaaak?)

Meanwhile...

a summer cold is a different animal.

Meanwhile...

Halliburton Gets Contract To Pry Gold Fillings From New Orleans Corpses' Teeth

all together, now...

meanwhile...

Bush allows Katrina contractors to pay below prevailing wage - Sep. 9, 2005: "The administration is using the devastation of Hurricane Katrina to cut the wages of people desperately trying to rebuild their lives and their communities,"

via ted

The Fragile Society

Walgreens sends me an email that my regular asthma prescription will be ready to pick up this week. Yesterday I saw on WWL-TV a story about a young man named Paul who got off his shift at a New Orleans Walgreens a week ago and didn't get to go home, but was instead evacuated from New Orleans in his Walgreens uniform, to Baton Rouge. He, of course, lost everything but his Walgreens uniform. He walked into a Baton Rouge Walgreens, I believe the company had told their employees to do that, and he told the manager there that he was a Walgreens employee from NO--when I saw him on TV yesterday he seemed rather in shock still, so he probably wasn't his most presentable when meeting that manager--and the manager took him in the back. The manager tried to give him money but he didn't want it, he wanted to go to work. The manager made him take the money anyway, perhaps Walgreens had directed their stores to do so, I don't know. And then the manager said when do you want to start and the man, whose name was Paul, said right now. And Paul began to work for Walgreens in Baton Rouge right then.

Later on, Paul was sitting out in the parking lot, presumably in the dazed state he remained in even yesterday, and a customer saw him and asked him if he needed a place to live and so now Paul lives with her and the 17 others who are now living at her house in Baton Rouge and they look fine.

I remember the Walgreens on St. Charles and Felicity, near where I stay in NO. I have heard that the place where I stay is in process of recovering, they have a web page message out, but of course who knows what will happen to any of us in the long run. Maybe the Walgreens on the corner in New Orleans, which fixed my prescription so quickly for me when I was there, is the one where Paul worked, I don't know. But today I got an email from the Walgreens on the corner here in Tampa. My regular asthma prescription is almost ready.

the thing is...

I'm going to have to take some time off from my time off. I'm going to have to clean up this house, for instance. Haven't unloaded the dishwasher for over a week and the dishes ready to be washed have piled up. When I mentioned this to a friend, she said enviously "you have a dishwasher!" Be that as it may, I still have to start at one end of the house and pick through the rubble, there is no reason for ME to have rubble, and sweep through all the way to the back of the house. maybe that will straighten my mind, too. I learned yesterday that the Red Cross won't take me anyway because I have asthma--oh, Merc, I have a link for you, I think I forgot to send it?--and that makes some sense as it's probably the mold. Email tells me this morning that Bakerina has helped get word of the wikipedia project out to the greater New York area. I'm not meaning to make myself so self-important that I neglect the necessities. So I'll see you later today, when I recognize myself again. Right after I find this link I had for Merc...

The Irish Trojan's blog - Brendan Loy's homepage: "ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!?!?!?!
"

It Matters!

I have been keying data on the Missing in Wikipedia as detailed below and it is so discouraging. Many posts don't have email addresses or contact info at all, the material is days old, it seems pointless. IT'S NOT POINTLESS! I was putting in a post from a missing forum on NOLA.com that recorded that someone was safe in a hospital, and I checked back to the post it referred to to get the stats on the person. On a whim I decided to call just to make sure they had gotten the info; I wasn't going to, it was two days old, they were probably exhausted, I was a stranger, but I decided to do it anyway...

They hadn't gotten it. They didn't know they had gotten a response two days before. I was able to tell them their loved one was okay, and give them the phone number to the hospital. The person who had responded had provided a paragraph of good information that I read to the guy. He didn't sound excited at all; he must have been in shock. I, on the other hand, am shaking.

I contacted Belo Corp, on the line they put up for their employees to call in, and asked them to get the message out to be announced on the air on WWL-TV (I think I was talking to the benefits guy so who knows? He called me back, though, so maybe...) People, check back on the fora frequently once you've posted your plea!! Ted says they're like messages in bottles tossed into the sea. But sometimes they work!

Unbelieveable. Unbelieveable that it's me doing this, too, from my bedroom which I haven't yet left today. It's not Armageddon, Grace; it's just the breakdown of civilization as we thought we knew it.

Keep stuffing those bottles. Keep typing.

PeopleFinderVolunteer - Katrina Help Wiki

PeopleFinderVolunteer - Katrina Help Wiki: "All you need to help is an internet connection and the ability to copy data onto a form. No other fancy tech skills are required."

Mary Landrieu: I'll Punch Bush, 'Literally'

Just in case you were thinking about it, too, this guy's timely public service consists of reminding us that "it is illegal to threaten the president with physical violence."

"Broussard: 'We have been abandoned by our own country.'

Here is the video of Aaron Broussard on Meet the Press today. Watch it all the way through to the end. Watch it while the Charmaine Neville Mardi Gras music is playing. Hell, watch it with the Neville video playing in the other window AND the music playing. Watch it all and weep. Nobody's coming to get us.

Item One: When the saints go marching in

Ted has posted a link to the Charmaine Neville video, in which she unburdens herself of her escape from New Orleans. For Charmaine in a prettier mood, go here. If these things can happen even to American music royalty, isn't it time for all artists at the very least to rethink?

Metroblogging New Orleans

Metroblogging New Orleans: "T'row me sumthin' mistah! Like a chance to go back.

Today is a MUCH brighter day than yesterday. And thank all of you for your kind words."

the stupid broad

on whatever morning "news" show that's looping back into the WDSU feed via Orlando just said in voiceover for some NOLA footage: "the calvary is coming!"

Too late, honey. It's obvious that Calvary is already here.