tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20146389103243469692011-04-21T23:22:33.966-04:00Digressions of a hermit, from literature to my re-introduction to programming including, along the way, the medieval, religion, life, death and eternity, math, chess, music, movies, reading and writing, teaching and learning, solitude and uTube, and the remains of the daySnarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13953788717504860077noreply@blogger.comBlogger481100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2014638910324346969.post-53764452233317227612008-08-24T11:52:00.002-04:002008-08-24T11:56:49.180-04:00

Thank you for your thoughts and prayers. Kaye had to stay overnight even though it was supposed to be day surgery, but she appears to be fine, other than having a pain in the neck (thyroidectomy and intubation during the surgery) besides James and me. She's tired but she'll be okay, I think.James is glad to have us home, and I'm glad he made it through the night.

Snarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13953788717504860077noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2014638910324346969.post-43349769697632492422008-08-22T08:15:00.002-04:002008-08-22T08:17:58.880-04:00

My partner is having a five-hour operation thyroidectomy because she might have thyroid cancer, and doing a biopsy is practically removing everything, so that’s what we (she, her doctors and I) decided to go with. It’s always nerve-wracking for me to hang around hospitals alone – and I’ll be alone for over five hours, wondering. You can smack me for being whiny, but if anyone reads this and

Snarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13953788717504860077noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2014638910324346969.post-84176439558234938842008-08-12T21:46:00.003-04:002008-08-12T22:02:07.846-04:00

After spending most of Monday putting up my new blog about my new church, I have destroyed it. The reason I put it up at all is that there's sort of a policy against flogging dead horses. The problem is, I always think the horse is viable. So I thought this would be a good way to lay off the priests and get my frustrations out in the open. But after a nap, I realized that I didn't want to do

Snarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13953788717504860077noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2014638910324346969.post-14720774421782841422008-08-11T12:52:00.002-04:002008-08-11T12:58:40.813-04:00

My new blog dealing with my tentative steps into the Episcopal Church -- actually, any church -- is up. I think the first entry will be the longest, so bear with me. It's not like you've had to read anything I've written since May. B)All my heathen friends, do bear with me. I mean, they still might throw me out. There's hope for me yet.

Snarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13953788717504860077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2014638910324346969.post-56993660351382097172008-08-10T20:28:00.004-04:002008-08-10T20:38:41.455-04:00

Sorry I’ve been away so long. Things have piled up, and I’ve let my responsibilities to friends and even myself slide. Loads of illnesses, crises, and just plain laziness have kept me away. I’ve started attending church, a local Episcopal church, after about twenty-five years away. I grew up in the Methodist Church but left once I got too big for my parents to drag, and haven’t been back

Snarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13953788717504860077noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2014638910324346969.post-63431420346598901892008-05-21T22:17:00.001-04:002008-05-21T22:19:31.403-04:00

My mother is in Minnesota (a long way from North Carolina) this week because her husband’s daughter is graduating from St. Olaf’s. (Well-done, Katie!) When I saw that my mother was to be out of the area for about a week just for one graduation ceremony (I didn’t even go the less than two miles to attend my last two, but that’s me), I asked her if they were driving, thinking maybe they were

Snarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13953788717504860077noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2014638910324346969.post-89576526498418422932008-05-13T17:35:00.001-04:002008-05-13T17:36:59.448-04:00

I have not died, but I’ve been keeping pretty busy staying sick and even making plans to. So far this year there’s been a septoplasty, pleurisy, pneumonia, bronchitis, various lesser infections, migraine after migraine, and now I get to have a biopsy next week to make sure I don’t have some form of cancer (they don’t think so; they’re just checking), and then abdominal surgery. We are not

Snarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13953788717504860077noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2014638910324346969.post-70632996043493084802008-05-02T13:53:00.004-04:002008-05-02T13:56:06.368-04:00

Okay, it’s my second day mostly out of bed, and I’m feeling pretty good. Just tired. When I went to the ER two weeks ago, the nurse asked me if I’d had a pneumonia vaccine. I’m thinking, “there’s a pneumonia vaccine?” and just saying, “No.” Does everybody out there know that there’s a pneumonia vaccine? Well, now you do. You should probably get one next season.The good thing is, besides

Snarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13953788717504860077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2014638910324346969.post-12182485252793173902008-04-22T18:00:00.002-04:002008-04-22T18:02:24.633-04:00

I’ll be back in a couple of days. Lately I’ve been busy having pleurisy and pneumonia and reading really bad novels with James at my side. I don’t know whether his clinginess is because he’s concerned or just happy to have someone to hang around with. I’m going to pretend it’s the former. While I’m in bed, he assumes the “nurse’s position” in his bed on the bed.

Snarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13953788717504860077noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2014638910324346969.post-1693183196783897672008-04-18T11:29:00.002-04:002008-12-10T15:09:34.414-05:00

Today is, if I remember correctly, the 625th anniversary of the Chaucer pilgrimage. I will observe it by reading the following (from The Manciple's Tale) to James, as I’m sure he will appreciate it: Lat take a cat, and fostre hym wel with milkAnd tendre flessh, and make his couche of silk,And lat hym seen a mous go by the wal,Anon he weyveth milk and flessh and al,And every deyntee that is in

Snarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13953788717504860077noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2014638910324346969.post-69589828297253841262008-04-12T10:25:00.005-04:002008-12-10T15:09:34.561-05:00

I’ve been reading like mad in between bouts of one or another annoying health problem. Nothing deadly, just annoying. I finally managed to get a Kindle, the amazon.com e-reader. I had my doubts at first, which is why I wasn’t one of the ones to get it when it first came out. Since then, I’ve been waiting impatiently in line for them to make new ones. I mean, how long can it take? Suddenly I

Snarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13953788717504860077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2014638910324346969.post-10633687426407507642008-04-07T18:17:00.004-04:002008-04-07T18:21:23.698-04:00

Kaye and I have been together for twenty-three years today. It’s never something that’s noted by anyone, though at least my mother has known the date for a good many years now. I feel pretty sure that she’s sent my brother and his wife anniversary cards since September, 1996. It’s not that I want any fuss. In practical terms, I’m somewhat relieved that it goes unnoticed. I’m somewhat

Snarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13953788717504860077noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2014638910324346969.post-19116159356918706422008-04-03T13:28:00.005-04:002008-12-10T15:09:34.912-05:00

From the album Precious Friend, by Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie. Arlo introduces "Garden Song" with some thoughts on how we learn. I wish I'd had Arlo to fall back on in grad school, because by the time I got there, they figured the "boring method" (i.e., some rote memorization from which you can draw new conclusions, create new ideas) was very much looked down upon. I think there's some

Snarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13953788717504860077noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2014638910324346969.post-86897407168646846862008-04-02T15:34:00.004-04:002008-04-02T15:41:03.163-04:00

My guitar teacher insists that I am doing better than I think. I don’t know if that’s so I don’t have a nervous breakdown over a transition to a D chord (almost got that without buzzing now). I guess I quit classical guitar mostly because I went to them with a sinking feeling and drove home in tears. I was probably more sensitive to criticism then, not having had nearly as much time to fail at

Snarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13953788717504860077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2014638910324346969.post-9143019902327625592008-04-02T09:38:00.006-04:002008-12-10T15:09:35.102-05:00

To ring in April, no fooling, here is one of my favorite “April” poems. It’s from Ted Hughes’ Birthday Letters, a collection of poems he wrote to Sylvia Plath after her death and published shortly before his own. It is one of my favorite poems. Chaucer ‘Whan that Aprille with his shoures sooteThe droghte of March hath perced to the roote . . .’At the top of your voice, where you swayed on

Snarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13953788717504860077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2014638910324346969.post-16596508359210448992008-04-01T11:28:00.004-04:002008-12-10T15:11:58.526-05:00

Ah ha!  I think I have figured out how I was holding the guitar wrong by looking at pictures of folk guitarists at work.  The bottom of it (as in if you stood it up on the floor with the tuning pegs at the top) needed to be more under my right armpit than it was.  I was still feeling as if I were breaking all the rules by not standing the thing up on my left leg.  And I can change from an A back

Snarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13953788717504860077noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2014638910324346969.post-64842537606298430322008-03-31T15:21:00.007-04:002008-12-10T15:11:59.121-05:00

In practice, they aren't, as Yogi Berra noted.Less than one week into the guitar lessons, and I am frustrated as hell. Oddly enough, the fretting doesn’t hurt my fingers like it did some twenty years ago when I was studying classical guitar with nylon strings rather than steel. Well, as I said before, I suck at this. What is maddening is that I have never sucked at a musical instrument.

Snarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13953788717504860077noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2014638910324346969.post-35063022422966663302008-03-30T13:04:00.004-04:002008-03-30T14:42:12.942-04:00

I think I can say with some confidence that I can now play “Frère Jacques” on the guitar, at least the embarrassingly easy version I have. Still, I’m not getting the buzz on the chord that I was originally getting. I’m still struggling to move from A7 to D (the reverse is pretty easy). If I can do that by Wednesday, I will consider the week a success. I believe there’s a G chord in one of the

Snarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13953788717504860077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2014638910324346969.post-10066841821658617962008-03-27T07:28:00.003-04:002008-03-27T08:08:06.501-04:00

After one 45-minute guitar lesson, something I’ve long suspected became clear:  I suck at guitar.  Oh, I was prepared for this.  I used to teach something I’m better at, and I constantly told my students not to worry about the early papers, which were weighted much less than the later papers because I expected them to do poorly on the first assignments.  Over and over I said, to get good at

Snarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13953788717504860077noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2014638910324346969.post-39934630991134691642008-03-23T16:00:00.002-04:002008-03-23T16:03:39.998-04:00

When we got up this morning, barely realizing that it was Easter, but for the mention from my mother and Yvonne, a very loud grease-removal truck pulled up at the manhole in front of our house.  Kaye went out to ask if there was an emergency, figuring a city that closes the liquor stores on the non-existent holiday of Easter Monday would not violate the peace of Easter morning for no good reason.

Snarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13953788717504860077noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2014638910324346969.post-36545584301024438962008-03-21T12:20:00.009-04:002008-03-21T17:36:32.866-04:00

Yesterday was so busy. Between appointments and re-doing the house (to a point), I didn’t have time or energy to type much. We turned our guest room into a music room for me. I have four guitars, a banjo, a sax (Gran-Gran’s), a clarinet, a flute, a couple of recorders of different sizes and a keyboard. That takes care of the instruments, I think. The rest are electronic stuff and a guitar

Snarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13953788717504860077noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2014638910324346969.post-72614850794371834662008-03-19T18:48:00.004-04:002008-12-10T15:11:59.509-05:00

The itch from which I have suffered for months (or, but with interruptions, for years) has recently become unbearable and, for the last few nights, has almost completely kept me from sleeping. Besides, nothing appears on the outside; immediately under the skin, it is like a poison that wants to come out; an injection of extract of bedbugs.  Can it get more intense?  It doesn’t seem so.  But it

Snarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13953788717504860077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2014638910324346969.post-2387553722154232008-03-19T13:23:00.018-04:002008-03-19T13:52:55.047-04:00

The Atlantic has a great article out, “Caring for Your Introvert” that explains what it’s like to be shy to all the normal people who don’t know.  I don’t mean just shy.  I mean, have to work my way up to an event (which can be going to the grocery store) and recuperate the rest of the day.  I talk other people’s ears off when I get an attentive ear; I just don’t like conversations about nothing,

Snarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13953788717504860077noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2014638910324346969.post-28309818084568469602008-03-19T09:21:00.003-04:002008-03-19T09:33:43.294-04:00

I spoke with my new guitar teacher last night, and am set up for weekly lessons. I’m really enthusiastic about this, mainly because it is something I’ve always wanted to do but somehow never had the time, energy and money for all at once. Now, I don’t really have the money, but I think this qualifies as a need – certainly more than my Starbucks habit does. When I listen to music, it does

Snarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13953788717504860077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2014638910324346969.post-29799801791527741392008-03-18T17:33:00.013-04:002008-12-10T15:12:00.156-05:00

“You can’t read any genuine history – as that of Herodotus or the Venerable Bede – without perceiving that our interest depends not on the subject but on the man – on the manner in which he treats the subject and the importance he gives it. A feeble writer and without genius must have what he thinks a great theme, which we are already interested in through the accounts of others, but a genius –

Snarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13953788717504860077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2014638910324346969.post-64628691565792300752008-03-17T18:14:00.008-04:002008-12-10T15:12:00.572-05:00

"The story, the plot of a novel is of no interest to me. When I write a novel I aim at rendering a color, a shade. For instance, in my Carthaginian novel, I want to do something purple. The rest, the characters and the plot, is a mere detail. In Madame Bovary, all I wanted to do was to render a grey color, the moldy color of a wood-louse's existence. The story of the novel mattered so little to

Snarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13953788717504860077noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2014638910324346969.post-10644558650808606722008-03-15T11:26:00.003-04:002008-03-19T09:26:36.029-04:00

Beware the Ides of March. Since it’s March 15th, I wanted to remind anyone who could possibly forget to be extra careful today. Whether you’re standing in line at Starbucks, blogging or working on an assembly line, you don’t want to get stabbed in the toga. It’s seriously dangerous. Well, once it was.I am amused and annoyed that I have been pegged for a Jesus freak just for standing up for

Snarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13953788717504860077noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2014638910324346969.post-40977027188713739452008-03-14T23:12:00.002-04:002008-03-14T23:18:33.507-04:00

I’m hoping to begin guitar lessons next month. It’s really prohibitively expensive, but (potentially) priceless. And I’d do it on a month-to-month basis, so if I don’t like it or start living on couscous, I can bail. It’s just these four nice guitars I have staring at me, and twenty years of music I’ve bought – and sometimes learned – with the idea that sooner or later, I’d have time for it.

Snarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13953788717504860077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2014638910324346969.post-85615580177463735892008-03-14T17:55:00.019-04:002008-12-10T15:12:01.263-05:00

I'm trying to copy Qalmlea's "Free Rice" dohickey because I think it's neat, and, as Pete Seeger's professor father said, "Plagiarism is basic to all culture." So, if you click on the button below, you can play a neat vocabulary game in which your score contributes rice to the hungry:And while I'm at it:

Snarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13953788717504860077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2014638910324346969.post-52918446183911113582008-03-12T20:19:00.003-04:002008-03-12T22:26:14.992-04:00

Thanks to msnbc.com, I have discovered that I have a newly-defined psychiatric disorder, and so does Kaye: hoarding. Apparently, it’s genetic, which makes sense, knowing Memaw and Kaye’s father. We haven’t approached their level of “but this might be useful someday,” but I’m loathe to throw things out (except when I go on a purge and inevitably wind up throwing away something I have to buy

Snarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13953788717504860077noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2014638910324346969.post-8544816555144701842008-03-11T18:36:00.008-04:002008-03-12T22:25:40.298-04:00

Thomas’ blog alerted me to the seven new deadly sins. In grad school, I was playing at being a Medievalist (and did my thesis on the afterlife), so the seven deadly sins have been in my head for a while now. Well, I can always get six of them. I have to sit around and wait for God to tell me the one I’m forgetting – it’s never the same one. (I used to have my students come up with the seven

Snarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13953788717504860077noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2014638910324346969.post-84521555745220749972008-03-10T09:24:00.008-04:002008-12-10T15:12:01.598-05:00

On this date in 1970, I became a big sister to a baby boy named "Chris." I was a little put out that he wasn’t a sister, but I could tell Mommy liked him, so I suggested going back to the hospital the next week and getting a sister. Somehow, that never came through. Anyway, to start with, I thought he was interesting and he grew to think I was important. We’re both pretty much over that phase

Snarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13953788717504860077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2014638910324346969.post-36993838077295993682008-03-09T22:05:00.031-04:002008-12-10T15:12:02.026-05:00

I’ve just finished reading Panzram: A Journal of Murder, by Thomas E. Gaddis and James O. Long. It’s about a serial killer, rapist (mostly of men and boys), arsonist, thief, batterer, and conspirator (albeit largely failed). I’m sure I’ve left something out. I’m interested in what makes people do such evil (and often just plain weird) things. This book bothered me from the start, though, and

Snarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13953788717504860077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2014638910324346969.post-16602047838849264812008-03-07T19:10:00.006-05:002008-12-10T15:12:02.100-05:00

Every day, the first thing Kaye does after getting dressed is run outside to get the newspaper so that she can read the obituaries. I am bemused at this. Mostly she doesn’t find anyone she knows, although that happens. I hate it when it turns out to be a 59-year-old student of hers (that happened recently). It just reminds me how old she’s getting. True, I’m aging at roughly the same rate as

Snarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13953788717504860077noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2014638910324346969.post-2002003531825812282008-03-05T23:38:00.008-05:002008-12-10T15:12:02.323-05:00

I talked with my mother this afternoon. I talk with my mother on a more-or-less daily basis. She is willing to take my calls once a day. It sounds worse than it is, I guess. I mean, if I had to listen to me go on about nothing every day, I’d never answer the phone if it could possibly be me. Today, I was going on about the guitar and methods to try to use to learn it. She said, basically,

Snarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13953788717504860077noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2014638910324346969.post-47418541278050245392008-02-29T17:52:00.007-05:002008-03-10T16:18:50.128-04:00

I’ve been reading Ed Cray’s Ramblin’ Man: The Life and Times of Woody Guthrie the past couple of days. Somewhere in the house is another Woody biography that I read a few years back when I “discovered” Arlo. Having neurological problems that cause psychiatric problems and problems with fine motor skills, I’m drawn to his plight. His time and place on this earth didn’t help any. It’s a good

Snarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13953788717504860077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2014638910324346969.post-64648868070240952962008-02-29T10:41:00.002-05:002008-02-29T10:45:27.739-05:00

Apparently I was too obscure. That, and nobody much reads my blog. So I've added a few more clues that I hope will be helpful. When these things start to rot, I'll just fill in the blanks.

Snarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13953788717504860077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2014638910324346969.post-85474925158974424582008-02-27T20:10:00.005-05:002008-03-10T13:15:09.150-04:00

Since I live with a French teacher, many of my acquaintances know as many as five languages and can puzzle out others, so I feel a little out of the loop when they start speaking French. It's particularly disturbing when my name is the only word I can understand. What are they saying about me? I must learn French, Spanish and Italian (to read Dante, mainly) before I die. Anyway, I decided to

Snarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13953788717504860077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2014638910324346969.post-37592158117798051822008-02-27T10:47:00.021-05:002008-03-10T13:37:31.072-04:00

Okay, here are the answers. I gave an obscure list because I am drawn to the obscure. The more obscure it is, the more it belongs to me, I guess.I got this game from Qalmlea and decided to join in. Briefly, the idea is this: 1. Pick fifteen of your favorite movies.2. Go to imdb.com and find a quote from each movie.3. Post them here for everyone to guess.4. Fill in the film once it's

Snarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13953788717504860077noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2014638910324346969.post-71407699578910423722008-02-25T19:33:00.008-05:002008-12-10T15:12:02.654-05:00

My conscience has been bugging me lately. My mother and her husband, a Lutheran minister, just had someone neither of them knew spend the night at the parsonage because he was going to speak to the congregation Sunday about some Christian something-or-other. I said, “Mom, you cannot let total strangers spend the night in your house just because they’ve heard of Jesus!” I mean, who knows, he

Snarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13953788717504860077noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2014638910324346969.post-7563405777292778372008-02-23T12:02:00.012-05:002008-03-10T13:30:04.390-04:00

I got a response from the writer of the piece I cited in my last blog entry, which is posted under “The Illusion of Free Will,” and I would urge people to read it in its entirety. But here are some of my responses: ****I hope my blog entry didn't stereotype all Christians as "idiotic, bigoted, closed-minded [people]." *** You didn’t say that Christians per se were stupid, but it felt a little

Snarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13953788717504860077noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2014638910324346969.post-65393247910404521082008-02-22T16:41:00.009-05:002008-03-18T19:34:28.086-04:00

I happened across an interesting piece on the illusion of free will the other day. It doesn’t give any arguments I haven’t heard – or made – before, but it does make you stop and think. It makes me think I should read Erasmus and Luther instead of just thinking about it. But I guess that would require, well, maybe not entirely free will – if I had free will, I certainly never would have a

Snarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13953788717504860077noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2014638910324346969.post-5091148528136017662008-02-21T18:51:00.003-05:002008-03-19T09:10:20.796-04:00

It has been brought to my attention that my posts suddenly wouldn't allow comments. I didn't mean for this to happen, but this blog isn't quite a week old, and every day there's something new going haywire. So I think I have fixed this problem. If anything else stupid shows up, please let me know at snark@nc.rr.com, and I will try to track it down and fix it.

Snarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13953788717504860077noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2014638910324346969.post-65802953037151897942008-02-21T09:40:00.014-05:002008-12-10T15:12:03.026-05:00

I’m afraid to allow myself to think it in any coherent manner, as in words, let alone commit it to writing, but what the hell. Right now, my migraine is just a little bruised-feeling patch above my left eyeball. Usually, though, the day starts out looking promising enough. It takes about half an hour for the migraine to wake up and jump back in. This is why I generally try not to think a lot

Snarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13953788717504860077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2014638910324346969.post-66758041598848760612008-02-20T18:33:00.010-05:002008-03-19T09:06:08.729-04:00

I have just blown the whole day, pretty much, sleeping in and trying to shake the migraine I’ve been semi-ignoring for seven entire days now. It’s not working, so I’m still pretending it’s not there. I suppose there’s the off chance that I have a brain tumor or something real, but that never occurs to me with these headaches. Those things just live for people like me. I don’t know what “like

Snarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13953788717504860077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2014638910324346969.post-65125398933756012762008-02-19T10:18:00.009-05:002008-03-19T09:05:00.540-04:00

I was on the verge of becoming fairly pleased with my accomplishment with this blog. Here I had written two somewhat coherent entries, if longish. My teachers in college were always telling me there had to be a paragraph break before the page ended, surely, and that sentences didn’t need to span four lines. That was when I was a Computer Science major. The day I became an English major, I

Snarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13953788717504860077noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2014638910324346969.post-5030353539282835482008-02-17T22:06:00.021-05:002008-12-10T15:12:03.549-05:00

Last night, we did an amazing thing. We left the house, drove twenty-five miles, and got to see Arlo Guthrie on his Solo Reunion Tour: Together at Last. I must’ve snagged the last two tickets, because we were in the balcony, Row K, seats 1 and 3, which, oddly, were adjacent. That was all right, since I was expecting to have a total stranger sitting in between us, but that’s what we got. There is

Snarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13953788717504860077noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2014638910324346969.post-36887306112976855962008-02-15T12:45:00.025-05:002008-12-10T15:12:04.209-05:00

My great uncle Bill has been saying I should start a blog for, well, I didn't mark it down on my calendar, but for a long time now. I'm pretty sure that his suggestion was a defense mechanism to keep him from being the target of my every thought, but he put up with my e-mail for a good long time. Now he is eighty and cites that as an excuse for every little teensy thing, like not answering my

Snarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13953788717504860077noreply@blogger.com0