Heads up folks! I've got a few things on my mind and I am about to reveal some of the contents here!
My muse appeared on the scene a week or so ago and helped me write an essay thingie that I thought was going to be about Memorial Day and the losses of war. It turned out to be something a little different. I will post it later this week.
Then she (my muse) shows up early one morning and we put together another one of "them thangs I do". I'm posting it here today, just to see if it speaks to anyone else (and maybe what it says to anyone else!). I've got a friend who knows about these kind of things and we disagree on the clarity of this one so I would appreciate your feedback.
That's about all I want to say, because I believe these things, like poetry or a photograph, or drawing, need to speak for themselves. The viewer needs to be free to see or hear whatever they need to hear or see. That can't be controlled by the creator of the piece.
I've had a few people mention the blog list I've added that shows the latest posts as they come through. My lovely friend Mindy helped me get mine going. But you know how, sometimes, a great cook will give one of their recipes, and they will leave out a key ingredient and your cake just does not turn out as good as their, and you can't figure out why?? Well, I'm not sayin' that's what she did, but it sure took a while for me to get my list working correctly! (And I am picking on Mindy, she was excellent help, and even stayed up almost past her bedtime to help me!)
Here's the secret ingredient, the thing you simply must know (the thing Mindy "forgot" to tell me!): You have to sign in at Blogger in Draft* or you will never be able to put the working list on your blog.
Once you sign in, just go to "layouts" and then click on the "page elements". From there you will click "add page elements" and when the list pops up, look for "my blog list" and select that. Then you follow the prompt and start adding your links. Once you are done, hit "save" and they should magically appear on your blog (unless I left out a key ingredient!).
My email is not listed below my profile. Let me know if you have any problems and I will try to help. If I can't figure out we will ask Mindy. She knows!
EDITED TO ADD:
*Ooops, my bad! The link to Blogger in Draft does not work. Go to Google and Google something like "blogger draft". You should get to the correct link fairly quickly. I'm in regular "Blogger" now making this post and that may be why I can't get the link to work correctly.
I just love watching these people do their thing! The movie is now showing in select locations, and my city is not one of them. It is showing an hour away from here...
I've tried to embed the movie trailer here and for some reason the link keeps messing up. Just go check it out. I especially enjoyed meet the singers and the big photo shoot.
I started this post on Saturday and now it is Sunday, and no, I did not make the drive to go see the movie!
Some of you will remember the video of Fred Kippers singing Coldplay's song "Fix You".
Here is an oddball photo I took of my speedometer with my camera phone using their "frames" setting.
You might notice I have added a second blog list. These are blogs that have caught my interest for various reasons, and I read them when I can, but I usually do not comment on them.
Unfortunately, this is about all I have for today. More excitement to come in the next week or so. Probably. There was something else I was going to say but I have forgotten what it was...
Not long when I was reading "The Van Gogh Blues" a question came up about a certain philosophical belief. I did as I often do, and wrote to a friend who knows more than I do about this stuff and questioned him. He explained it briefly and suggested I might want to pick up a beginning Philosophy textbook sometime if I thought I'd be interested in pursuing the subject. A few days later I was at the Goodwill store looking for old books that I could use in some of my "thangs I do" when I saw this little stack of textbooks. I could not decide which one I wanted so I splurged and bought them all at .89 each! The one in the middle has my bookmark where I started reading it. When I get done scannning through them for information (or when I get bored with Philosophy talk) I will use some of the pages for artsy-fartsy purposes.
Also, the wire basket the books are in is a sentimental reminder of my days working at the family owned sporting goods store where I worked for sixteen years, all combined. These were gym baskets we sold. When they fell out of regular use we used them to hold extra stock on our shelves. I remembered them from my days before elementary school when we would go to the pool and use them to store our shoes and towels while we swam.
Anyway, I always wanted a few of them, and I intended to ask my boss about them someday, but I never did. He probably would have given me all of them that I wanted, but I just never got around to asking. They had donated a bunch of leftover items to the Goodwill store and the baskets were in the lot of items. They only had two of them and I bought them both for something like .29 each.
I came home from the Goodwill store a happy camper that day.
I set up my photograph not knowing for sure what I was going to put on it. I really like that Thic Naht Hanh quote and in looking at the photo with that quote on it and thinking about different beliefs and philosophies, the words of Christ came to me and I added them to the photo as well.
It's been a while since I done of these "thangs". There are all sorts of reason why I have not done any in a while. Some of them I don't understand myself. But I hope that I am once again opening to the possibilities of more inspiration coming my way.
A cell phone photo with a timely message:
Take time to refresh your spirit.
Notes:
--I added a couple of blogs to my blog roll, and used the Blogger tool to make it where the newest posts and post titles would show up at the top of the list (Thanks, Mindy!). Check some of them out. You might be missing something interesting!
--Some of you expressed curiosity as to why the gator looked like he was shoved in the corner guarding the trash can, stacking chairs and the snack machine. The gator used to stand under the open stairs in the administration building before Hurricane Rita (three years ago this September, I think, I lose track.) This gator was one of the survivors. Several were destroyed by the storm. The school doesn't have the building repairs completed and many of the classes are still being held in temporary buildings. This area is the temporary student lounge area. The main lounge was a free-standing building that was destroyed, and there was another lounge area in the administration building.
There are many people who know exactly how long ago the storm was, as they are still dealing with rebuilding and recuperating. I heard on the radio the other day they are predicting another rough hurricane season. It starts again in June. The good thing about a hurricane is that you get enough advance warning to get away, if you are inclined to do so. That is not always so with tornadoes and floods.
--I am so excited to have the day off tomorrow, don't know exactly what I will do, but I am happy not to be going in to work! This reminds me, I have an idea for a creation in my head and needed to get a photo from my mother's house for it. Maybe that's what I will work on tomorrow!
Linda chose my blog as one of the recipients of the "Arte y Pico" blog award back on May 10th and because I am grateful for her continued encouragement and because I sometimes think we may be long lost redneck cousins, I am finally going to acknowledge the award and follow the rules of receiving the award. Thanks Linda!
The Rules Are...
1) You have to pick 5 blogs that you consider deserve this award, for creativity, design, interesting material, and also contributes to the blogger community, no matter of language.
2) Each award has to have the name of the author and also a link to his or her blog to be visited by everyone.
3) Each award-winning blog has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given her or him the award itself.
4) Award-winning and the one who has given the prize have to show the link of "Arte y pico"blog so everyone will know the origin of this award.
5) To show these rules.
There are a couple of disclaimers I'd like to mention first. The Arte y Pico blog is in Spanish so you might not understand too much of what is written there. Secondly, it is always so hard for me to make choices like this. If you've never checked out some of the links on my sidebar, you should. All of them are blogs I read and enjoy regularly. I chose the blogs listed below mostly based on the creativity aspect. --
Here are a few of my choices, in no particular order:
SpookyRach is the proprietess at Skewed View who loves tooling around in old cemeteries and taking photos of tombstones. She is also very creative at coming up with stories that relate to the names and sayings on those tombstones.
Mindy, at Bits and Odd Pieces of Mindy's Kingdom claims to be "the Princess of Everything and Then Some". If she is not, she ought to be! She's a very generous crafty blogger who is single-handedly responsible for the invention of the great Pantipalooza project which takes place in February.
Jules, over at The Way I See It has several blogs going, and all of them are lovely to read and see. Her newest blogs is an ongoing tutorial on photography.
Simple Words I Understand is a recent discovery for me. She lives in New! York! City! and often has photographs of her surroundings but always has interesting overheard conversations to report. I enjoy her style of writing.
If Linda had not already received this award, I would have awarded it to her myself. Check out her drawings and watercolor art too.
Enjoy the links, and the long weekend!
This is a "not so great" cell phone shot of a forlorn gator in the lounge area of the local community college where I have been taking a class in Microsoft Excel. The class is offered to local businesses through some kind of state grant program. The bookkeeper in our office and I were the only two people to take advantage of this opportunity so we are the teacher's pets and will "graduate" as the top two in the class. Of course, we will also be the bottom two in the class. I suppose it is all a matter of perspective! I'm still putting in applications for civil service jobs and hoping eventually to convince someone to hire me. I am so ready to move on from the environment I am now in.
