Short term memory problems

I just cut my inbox size in half! Terribly exciting. Granted, this still means I have over 100 messages. In one of five e-mail accounts I have. But the biggest one has been sliced.

I've also updated three of the four blogs I maintain today. Another positive. ;)

Decided to change poems. That first one was too much. OK, so I'm typing from memory here... the punctuation might not be accurate...

FIRST FIG
Edna St. Vincent Millay

My candle burns at both ends
It will not last the night
But ah, my foes and oh, my friends
It gives a lovely light.

So one down, anyway. Think I'm going to go for a longer one next:

Do not go gentle into that good night
old age something something raving something
Rage, rage against something...

Aw, heck.

Poem #1

Ah yes - didn't I say I needed to get around to memorizing some poems? Gotta get on that.
------------------------------------

For Whom the Bell Tolls

John Donne

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manner of thine own
Or of thine friend’s were.
Each man’s death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

What can Brown do for you?

Oof. Why oh why did I volunteer to help my father at work? I ended up driving all over creation, making 6 deliveries for a total of 1000 pounds of lugging crap, not exaggerating. I'm not in pain; just freakin' exhausted. And dirty. And smelly. And hot. I have a whole new appreciation for folks who do this for a living. There's a lot to be said for an office job.

I don't ordinarily get like this, but I'm so proud of Justin (not Jason!) Morneau I can't even stand it. What a guy. 'Bout time he gets a little more credit. He's so unassuming, folks forget about him. But some of us know.

This time of year there's about a million little summer events and festivals. Summer's so short in the Midwest, we have to be outside when we have the chance. Went to yet another one recently. Love the things, really. You're outside, they're generally free, and as we landed free parking as well things turned out rather well. Concert was pretty good; food was overpriced. Some darn fine musicians.

Quote of the day from Twins manager Ron Gardenhire - I just love the last sentence: "We don't strike out. ... We're pretty good at putting the ball in play, shortening your swing, and understanding all of that. I think that probably bodes well for getting some hits. We chop balls, bloop balls. Put it in play and run like hell."

Idiots in Sports

Anybody who knows me can tell you I'm no more a sports geek than I am a gamer. I grasp neither concept, really. But I did manage to run into the sports blog:

http://www.firejoemorgan.com/

Oh my.

What's likely my favorite recent post encapsulates quite well why I don't really care for football or anything else other than baseball, really: idiots. And I quote...

Sunday, February 10, 2008

This Might Be Dangerous

On a slow Sunday, Vikes' fullback Tony Richardson talks about his long-term plans:

"I don't want to move at this point in my career. I had a good meeting with the owners. I've got some gas left in the wheel and want to keep playing."

One assumes there is a corresponding tread in his tank. Both problems should be fixed post haste.

posted by Ken Tremendous # 12:56 PM

In Flanders Fields
Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army



In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.


We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.


Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

So I walked in the door after work today, Jimmy John's in hand, to find the radio on. Hmm. Could have sworn I'd turned it off. What the heck...

Oh Lord.

Turns out, somebody who shall remain nameless (my money is on the Littler of the two Sh!t Sisters pictured in the heading of this blog.) decided to dig for China in the plant limping along on the buffet next to the radio.

Dirt and plant bits everywhere, the water bowl contents turned to mud. I hope they were thirsty while I was gone, darn it.

And of course by the time I get home the deed is done and it's too late to yell at anyone. You have to strike when the iron is hot, and they'd both long forgotten when I finally saw the evidence. *sigh*


I've just been cranky lately. I swear everything is going to hell. I've sent out enough sympathy cards in the last few weeks that I should have bought stock in Hallmark, work is insane to the point that I'm spending only two extra hours a day there on a good day, and I'm so late doing more work at home I'm not getting any sleep. When I do finally get to bed I'm too wound up to relax. I'm thinking about all I have to do.

And that one letter on my keyboard? It's not working again, at least not consistently. I can no longer say things about Peeves the Poltergeist.

OK, now it's working. WTH?

'Kay, rant done. Time for bed. Shout out to any of you in Cali who may be reading this. Stay safe.




"One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important." ~Bertrand Russell

“Stress is when you wake up screaming and you realize you haven't fallen asleep yet”

“Stress: The confusion created when one's mind overrides the body's basic desire to choke the living daylights out of some jerk who desperately deserves it”

Soul Renewal and Robert Frost

Soul Renewal

It's the first sunny day in weeks. I've almost forgotten the color of a truly blue sky. I decide to make the 4 mile walk to the lake and back. Who knows when a day this nice will come again.

There's a million people out. We know and appreciate the rarity of a nice day, here in October in the Midwest. It's been so rainy lately; the sky lowering all the time. But somehow, no one is talking. It's like we all agree on the value of nothingness, of just being.

It's warm enough for shorts and t-shirts, another rarity in October.

The sound of the bike gears catching as the old man passes me, bright blue bike helmet and backpack on, wearing reflectors on his arms and legs even though it is the middle of a sunny day. He struggles his way up the hill. I am almost pacing him. Then the hill crests and his pace increases. He continues on without me, blazing a trail for me to follow.

Black ducks almost as far as I could see, taking a break for a rest and a drink before continuing their southward journey.

A sailboat catching the stiff breeze passes a fishing boat steaming out hopefully towards a possible walleye feast.

A stream giggling it's way towards the lake.

The woman wearing an iPod on one hip and her cell phone in the opposite ear, chattering away. The only possible conclusion is that she must be clinically insane.

The only sounds the wind as it rustles past my ears, through the leaves still clutching to the tree that is their summer home.

Scuffling through the fallen leaves to hear them crackle and crunch.

I'm almost home when I feel my shoulders drop into the place designed for them; I tend to forget that my habitual clench is not natural.

I wish this would last, but fall is inherently ephemeral. That may be the real reason for it's beauty.

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

"There were four million people in the American Colonies and we had Jefferson and Franklin. Now we have over 200 million and the two top guys are Clinton and Dole. What can you draw from this? Darwin was wrong!"
-Mort Sahl

Darn that Ken Burns and curse PBS. I should know better than to watch that station. I get sucked into a program and then before I know it I've lost a week. Happens every time. The music is particularly good; generally Burns sticks with folk and popular music of the time but this time he included some classical stuff including the Faure Elegy and I think I might have heard Beethoven 7 at some point. As usual from Burns, incredible work.

Gotta go now - 3rd installment on any minute now.

"Personally, I feel that some such setback as that -- tragic though it was for many Americans, for whom it would always be too late -- was not entirely a bad thing. It was all right to have a good opinion of ourselves, but we Americans were so smug with our cockiness. We somehow felt that just because we were Americans we could whip our weight in wildcats. And we had got it into our heads that production alone would win the war."
-Ernie Pyle on the disasters in North Africa

"There’re only six things you need if you want to snag a good woman: A guitar, chicken, wine, a car, running water, and some permanent markers. If you don’t have a guitar, a lute will do. You get those six things and you’re Don Juan, trust me."

-Creed Bratton

"It is really true what philosophy tells us, that life must be understood backwards. But with this, one forgets the second proposition, that it must be lived forwards. A proposition which, the more it is subjected to careful thought, the more it ends up concluding precisely that life at any given moment cannot really ever be fully understood; exactly because there is no single moment where time stops completely in order for me to take position [to do this]: going backwards."

(Or, as it is often shortened to: "Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.") - Søren Kierkegaard, Danish philosopher (1813-1855). From Journalen JJ:167 (1843)


So here I sit on a rainy (for once) Saturday morning, the cat's tail firmly planted on my keyboard as she sinks down low, only her ears and alert whiskers showing out the window to the two crows causing a ruckus outside. She tips her head up so she can see and doesn't move a muscle, barely breathing. This is Great White Hunter mode, and I see it fairly often due to the abundance of squirrels and birds of various sorts around here. What she thinks she'd do with these crows if she got them I don't know, and I don't want to know. Yesterday we had a squirrel on the deck, munching on one of my plants that I have a hard enough time keeping alive as it is, thank you very much. They both sleeked down into Hunter Mode, the one flat to the floor in front of the patio door, the other pasted to the back of the couch, only eyes moving, an occasional ear twitch. The squirrel just sat there calmly eating lunch, its front two paws shoving the stolen goods into its mouth, for whatever reason not realizing that there was a deadly predator less than 8 feet away. It got done and made to run across the deck, and that's when it finally noticed it was being stalked. Squirrel panic! It shot a couple of feet back and forth in indecision, then down the corner pole and away. The cats seemed disappointed. But there's always another creature to stalk. Perhaps next time they'll really kill the Big Bad Milk Jug Ring before it escapes. One never knows. It pays to be prepared, always.

29 folks in the hospital, 8 still missing and presumed dead. The NTSB figures the south end of the bridge shifted 81 feet but they're thinking that's not the cause of the problem. What that means, I don't know. Dubya spent time today crawling around on the wreckage, or doing whatever his Secret Service people and his spin doctors felt he should do. Unfortunate that more couldn't have been done before, instead of all this flurry after. But then, that's the way it always happens, isn't it?