So I bought $12.99 worth of really ugly clip art. Why? As readers may have noted before, I am wicked insecure about my graphics ability, visual literacy, ability to express myself in icons... Viewing a $12.99 CD of clip art as the solution is lunacy in and of itself, but here I go trying way too hard again.
stupid computer tricks
A number of on-line journalers have recently contemplated giving it up. Me too. It's hard. I haven't had time or power or the computer all at the same time for days and days. Not to mention the computer makes me sleepy lately. Too bad I never learned to sleep sitting up. I could use the computer to cure my insomnia. I get in front of the monitor and my eyelids grow heavy, I start yawning... I crawl into the bedroom ... and ... I'm wide awake!
The computer has decided to play a new trick on me. Yesterday it wouldn't start up. Today it wouldn't shut down. I now obsessively run Norton Utilities to check the disk every time I turn this machine on or off... I am tired of looking at Peter Norton's smug face ... egad, if everyone who wrote a UNIX device driver had to look at my face every time their driver ran a substantial part of the nerd population would have turned to stone by now.
turns to stone
Speaking of Medusa, which among other things is my favorite Louise Bogan poem, I asked my Mom's buddy Joanne (cousin of Louise Bogan) about the discrepancy in pronunciation. According to Joanne only Louise pronounced it the odd way. Also, the poet had little use for the rest of the Bogan clan. Joanne recommended a couple of good biographies, but she wasn't sure if they dealt with the odd pronunciation issue. I mean if you don't want your name to sound Irish, why not just change it? Why pronounce it like it's French?
Don't get me wrong, I really like her poems. Blue Estuaries is one of my favorite books. I just get hung up on pretentiousness.
the fish that changed the world
Well, I'm still reading Cod. I'm up to the part where all the countries adopt a 200-mile limit for their territorial waters. My cod world site is still part of my journal. I think I should make it a separate site eventually but I think I'll wait until I've gotten some feedback on it. I sent e-mail to Janet Crane but it bounced. I also e-mailed Cheryl Foster at URI and she promises to check out cod world when she gets back from vacation.
I'm still trying to figure out how I can squeeze in a trip to the Sea Summit in Newfoundland in September when I haven't even made arrangements for my Earthwatch expedition to Hokkaido yet. Earthwatch is pestering me for the paperwork now. I'm procrastinating on this big time almost as bad as last year's Russia trip. I really want to go to Hokkaido but I'm afraid with my knee I'll be useless. I'm also having a sudden attack of not wanting to leave home ever again. I can feel the boundaries of my world shrinking around me. Pretty soon I'll stay in the house. Then I'll take to my bed. Then, who knows... :-)
Seriously, I am starting to feel constricted again, like I have to fight to push out the limits and stay involved in the big wide world. Somebody at Starbucks asked me today if it was true that I'm a travel writer. I told her no, I wrote about computers. She said I don't look like a computer person. She's Russian. She didn't understand why on earth I went to Vladivostok. Anyway, she quit her soulless job in software development and was so uncomfortable with "having nothing to do" that she immediately jumped into going back to school for a degree in financial management. Whatever floats your boat. She studies money, I clean litterboxes. What has any of this got to do with cod?
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