2008: The Year of the Blog

Tomorrow we start a new year. I'm not much for resolutions; I mean, if I were capable of the discipline required to wake earlier, eat healthier, or exercise more I'd do it, be it a new year or a new day. And while I will continue to strive toward those ends it's not like I see 2009 as a fresh start in regard to any aspect of my life (except perhaps politically!). In fact, I'm going to be pretty happy if the next 365 days afford me the luxury of continuing to meander through life as I have been.

Looking back though, I see 2008 as the year of the blog (before that there was the year of Girl Scouts, and then the year of ebay). Comparatively, I have to say I liked the year of the blog the best. Still, it's over now. I'm not saying I'll never post (on onesmallsquare.com) anymore but it's not something worthy of the attention I gave it. I wanted to try it, and I did pretty well I think.

You never know how things will unfold but I'm thinking that '09 will be the year of bringing my education up to date. I need to gain a deeper understanding of perspective, architectural drawing, and portraiture. After that I'm going to learn Photoshop, Corel, and any other necessary design applications. Wish me luck!

Today: Cal discovered the dog's new tennis balls and spent the day playing with them until he wore himself out, we took down the tree and decorations, and did some cleaning. The house looks good............for now. :)

TalkiNg to mYself........

Once again I'm trying to make this blog thing work. Hopefully this is the answer; it will be a personal journal, not really a blog. And since I'm only talking to myself I'm not sure why I'm even explaining..........I guess old habits die hard, or it's just "for the record"/a starting point.

I've worked out Zoe's schedule for the semester and will be happy if we end the year with a solid, meaningful, grasp on pre-algebra and if we are able to generate a little interested enthusiasm through science. Larry's schedule for her includes anthropology, Joseph Campbell, philosophy, Antartica, and what ever else he decides on. That's all for now. I've been dorking with this all morning!

i really should be cleaning the house right now......

(Zoe helping me make Christmas cookies yesterday)

Happy Holidays!

Yesterday

How can you get very far,
If you don't know Who You Are?
How can you do what you ought,
If you don't know What You've Got?
And if you don't know Which To Do
Of all things in front of you,
Then what you'll have when you are through
Is just a mess without a clue
Of all the best that can come true
If you know What and Which and Who.

~Benjamin Hoff The Tao of Pooh

Thursday night I had just gotten back from town, stoked the fire, fed Purr, and changed back into my comfy lounge pants only to find that my mac wouldn't start. Okay, not a big deal. It must
be a fluke, right? So I tried it again................and again...........and again..........x 100............with no luck.

When we bought our very first computer I did some research and learned that Mac's were supposed to be simpler and more reliable. Since I'd never used a computer before I knew that I had no choice but to shell out the extra dollars; I definitely needed something idiot proof. So I bought an imac. Great, I was hooked. It lasted for years until at some point 96 mb of memory seemed woefully inadequate and high speed internet finally came to the back woods. Then I splurged and bought a new emac (note the mistake here is "emac" and I don't have any recollection of how I decided on that!). It was big, heavy, expensive, and had the stupid "on" button hidden BEHIND the machine. Still, I was happy. OS X was wonderful. About a year later it died. Yep, dead, gone, kaput.........a door stop. Normally that wouldn't have been a problem except that this is Wyoming and no one in our area would/could work on a mac. At the time it was our only computer (for the three of us) so we decided to buy a cheap pc (emachine) to use in the interim while I shipped the "good" computer to Montana. 4 months and much hassle later they shipped it back to us with a brand new motherboard courtesy of Apple. Great! Now Zoe had a cheap pc of her own, and Larry and I had our mac back. That was 3 years ago. Since then Zoe is still using her emachine and Larry is on his second PC .....which I won't go into.

Back to Thursday.............I soothed myself by declaring out loud that "its no big deal. I mean we can just share until I decide what to do............right?........... right?!"

~insert resounding silence here~.

Okay I decide, I'll just run into town and pick up a monitor at the Salvation Army and use Larry's old pc until I get this worked out..............an idea which was enthusiastically seconded by everyone. So that's what we did. First thing Friday morning (before the blizzard) we ran to town and bought a cheap monitor ($10). I then spent the next several hours bookmarking, removing programs, downloading, installing software and vehemently cursing Microsoft's ineptitude. I mean what is the deal with all of the infernal back ups, updates, and security threats. And for crying out loud YES, I REALLY DO WANT TO EMPTY THE FREAKIN RECYCLE BIN ALREADY!!! Interspersed between shaking my head in frustrated disgust I tried to remind myself how lucky I was to even have this option. By early afternoon everything was good and I was back in business; my Mac sitting forlornly (and dustily) at my feet. But true to my slightly OCD nature I just couldn't let it go (as if spending the entire morning dorking with computers wasn't enough). So I sat down on the floor and tried to get it to boot.......again. (and again and again). no luck. I tried to start it from the installation cd and while that worked Disk Utility failed to verify or repair the hard drive..........repeatedly! So I tried safe mode.........nope..........single user mode.......no way.............I reset the pram.......several times...........nothing. (dragging this out for hours!) Finally I decided to partition the hard drive and what do you know, it worked!!! I lost everything but it worked! I was thrilled. Then, as I repeated my morning of changing settings and installing software in preparation for returning the Mac to it's rightful place on my desk, reality set in. The emac only successfully burnt discs about a tenth of the time. It never configured Photoshop properly so images had to be opened in preview, copied to Appleworks, resized, imported to Photoshop, edited, saved to desktop, and imported to iphoto before they could be used or printed. And while I love OS X for it's elegant simplicity Larry's old reject burnt discs flawlessly, was faster on the internet, and has (the more extensive and versatile) Photo Impact.

My point being that yesterday was a long journey to nowhere. My mac is still on the floor and I'm typing this on WordPad not Appleworks.............by choice. But, when I've finally had enough of Vista and chuck this baby out of the window, I'll still have my emac.........just in case.

Suheir Hammad - Def Poetry

"......i do not know who is responsible. read too many books, know
too many people to believe what i am told. i don't give a fuck about
bin laden. his vision of the world does not include me or those i
love. and petitions have been going around for years trying to get
the u.s. sponsored taliban out of power. shit is complicated, and i
don't know what to think......"

The Gods Showing Off.....

(A re-post for Tiff....originally posted 3/20/08)

Today (3/20/08) has been one of those days when things just aren't falling into place like they should. Anyways, I wanted to post but haven't had a coherent thought all day (and still haven't put this morning's laundry in the dryer yet!). So it's 4:30 and I'm just going to let go of the idea of posting something current and instead will share this big boy with you. He stopped by last December and when I looked up and saw him right outside the sliding glass doors my heart raced! Elk are so much bigger up close than you can imagine. I ran upstairs, grabbed my camera, and then behaved completely without dignity; stalking him like he was Hugh Laurie. Next time I'm going try to be cool, but I grew up in a midwestern suburb and stuff like this just takes my breath away!

This Is Why I Don't Have a Goat......

(Moonbeam)
The arctic cold front seems to have found us so Moonbeam, Kitara, and Sweetheart have been moved into the mudroom. Normally they wander the yard free during the day and we pen them up at night in a sheltered horse stall beside the barn. But a couple of times each year when we get weather like this we bring them in the house (much to their delight). In their minds they are supposed to live inside with us all of the time and they spend many an hour standing at the sliding glass door just waiting for someone to come along and open it. Mattie, our chocolate lab, is happy that we don't allow that because she's terrified of them and has to run through the mudroom and past them to get outside.

From weather.com:
".....VISIBILITIES WILL BECOME POOR WITH WHITEOUT CONDITIONS AT TIMES. THOSE VENTURING OUTDOORS MAY BECOME LOST OR DISORIENTED SO PERSONS IN THE WARNING AREA ARE ADVISED TO STAY INDOORS. THOSE WITH VULNERABLE LIVESTOCK SHOULD TAKE PRECAUTIONS TO PROTECT THEM FROM THE BITTER COLD."

(Kitara and the dryer. We won't be doing a laundry for a couple of days.)

(Sweetheart....we didn't name him!)

This is Star Thrower. He normally lives outside too. To read what happened the last time he was allowed inside click here.

(Looking out my studio window toward Larry's studio and the barn.)

I hope you are all warm and snuggly and enjoying your weekend!

Guest Blogger Larry:

The Strangeness of Christmas Carols by Larry

I grew up when Christmas carols were an integral part of Christmas. There were manger scenes in all the public places of Toledo, Ohio blasting "Oh Little Town of Bethlehem" etc. morning, noon, and night. They were sung in the school system and if you didn't join in you were considered weird. We were not a religious family but we did go to a Unitarian Church. That's the place where you get the ethics without the dogma.

However, since my childhood, I have grown out of a need for an established religion. In fact you might say I have grown in the opposite direction and have become a critic. At the present time, I am writing a book called the Shape of Nothing. It's two parts are science and religion. In the religion section, I present a reasonably accurate historical presentation of the true roots of Christianity originating within the political and religious systems of the Roman Empire and Judaism. In this regard, the New Testament becomes more of a political document of the times than a God given revelation of the teachings of Jesus Christ.

However, sometime around the first of December we start playing our small collection of discs of Christmas music. They're interspersed with Santa Baby, Santa Claus Is Coming to Town, and I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus but most are hard core religious Christmas carols. Strangely, I find myself completely immersed in the celebration of their joyful simplicity. In fact, I have a more intense prejudice against Shakespeare and opera than Christmas carols. Go Figure!

Cut Adrift.......

We've been without internet. I can't tell you how many times today I've headed for the computer to do something before reminding myself that our connection to the outside world has been severed. It's strange how integral a part of our days it has become when just 10 years ago we lived perfectly fulfilling lives without it. Still, I'm glad it's fixed!

(Hanging Horn behaving badly.)

(The twins with Kitara.)

Weirdos

One of our traditions has always been to make our Christmas tree out of natural materials; sticks, sagebrush, pine cones, pampas grass, straw, poppy stems, or grapevines. It started because I’ve never liked the idea of killing a tree.........it just didn’t seem festive. I know how ridiculous that is as most trees are a renewable resource, grown on farms expressly for harvest, and replaced by seedlings. But still, it never quite sat right with me. Making our own was fun and Larry never seemed to mind. We did do an artificial tree for a couple of years so that Zoe had some semblance of normalcy but we ended up donating that to my girl scout troop in ‘05 for one of their projects. My point with all of this is that there’s been a coup and my holiday dictatorship has been momentarily over thrown in favor of democracy by a vote of 2 to 1. This is the first year since I moved out of my parents house that we’re having a cut tree and it’s beautiful. This is what Zoe wrote on her blog:

“Wanna know something pathetic?
Today was the first time I've ever had a REAL Christmas tree. You know, the living ones with the needles and everything? Yeah.....my parents....won't even get a actual tree for Christmas until now, because they "don't wanna kill the tree". Weirdos.”

I imagine this will be a Christmas to remember for her; her first tree. She’s asked if we could have one every year from now on............hmmm, I don’t know. But I’m glad she’s gotten to have this one. She is really loving it and come New Years we are going to take it outside (stand and all) and decorate it with peanut butter bird seed pine cones and popcorn for the birds, which was Larry’s idea. Isn’t he great?!