doctoral candidate in rhetoric and scientific and technical communication
Archive for December, 2006
*thud*
0
That’s the sound of my head hitting my desk over and over and over.
*thud*
*thud*
*thud*
Sometimes I just say stupid things. I get nervous. I talk too much when I’m nervous. I say stupid things.
Firefighter guy called on Saturday morning to explain that he couldn’t come because of his back. A conversation ensued. We started talking about some of the things we’ve done in the past and some things that we like to do. He talked about how he used to be a tandem parachute guide (the guy who flies with you when you jump from an airplane). He told me a bit about his brothers (one lives in Britain).
In his profile, he has an image of him poised on red rocks – the Toroweap lookout at the Grand Canyon. And so we started talking about the Canyon and about river trips. I’m pretty familiar with the whole river trip issue. Most of the trips originate from here (most of the big rafting companies are located here) and a lot of Canyon/Colorado River research trips are led by professors from my university.
Then he asks me if I’ve ever rafted or if I’ve ever wanted to raft.
“Oh!” I exclaim. “I’ve always thought that a full river trip would be a great honeymoon!”
Ahem.
So, one of the things that I do realize is that you don’t talk about marriage in your first phone conversation. And yet, what does Dawn do? Oh, yes. And it’s not even like marriage is on my mind. Oh, no. It’s not.
I’ve just always thought that would be a cool honeymoon. But it’s probably not the wisest thing to talk about during that first phone call.
And I have a feeling that I may have said the wrong thing. He said he’d call again yesterday but didn’t. This is the second time he said he’d call and didn’t. Apparently, I open my mouth and say stupid things and people are repelled by that.
And yes, yes…I know that I may be jumping to conclusions. But I also know that he was online since we last talked so it’s not like he’s dead or anything. He just didn’t call (again) when he said he would. And that irritates me.
Oy.
bread soup
05 years ago
american life in poetry: column 090
by ted kooser, u.s. poet laureate, 2004-2006
Anyone can write a poem that nobody can understand, but poetry is a means of communication, and this column specializes in poems that communicate. What comes more naturally to us than to instruct someone in how to do something? Here the Minnesota poet and essayist Bill Holm, who is of Icelandic parentage, shows us how to make something delicious to eat.
Bread Soup: An Old Icelandic Recipe
Start with the square heavy loaf
steamed a whole day in a hot spring
until the coarse rye, sugar, yeast
grow dense as a black hole of bread.
Let it age and dry a little,
then soak the old loaf for a day
in warm water flavored
with raisins and lemon slices.
Boil it until it is thick as molasses.
Pour it in a flat white bowl.
Ladle a good dollop of whipped cream
to melt in its brown belly.
This soup is alive as any animal,
and the yeast and cream and rye
will sing inside you after eating
for a long time.
Reprinted from “Playing the Black Piano,” Milkweed Editions, 2004, by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 2004 by Bill Holm. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
the lost room
05 years ago
by dawn
in television
The firefighter wasn’t able to come today. He hurt his back and was taking some muscle relaxants and couldn’t drive the 4 hours to get here (understandably).
So, I stayed home (the weather is bad and we’re due for a big snow storm) and watched the SciFi Channel’s The Lost Room.
What a show. It kept me riveted to the television for six hours straight (it’s a three part mini-series).
It’s interesting and engaging. I didn’t know where it was going to go next (which is unusual).
Peter Krause (of Six Feet Under fame) plays the main character.
It will be showing again tomorrow so if you’re interested in an original mystery, give it a try (I actually Tivo’d it and that made it a bit less than 6 hours).
The ending doesn’t tie things up neatly — but I understand that there is a chance to make this a series. I’d welcome that.
awakened
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“Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart! Else it may be their miserable fortune, when some mightier touch than their own may have awakened all her sensibilities, to be reproached even for the calm content, the marble image of happiness, which they will have imposed upon her as the warm reality.”
~ Nathaniel Hawthorne ~
So, a while back I joined match.com. I figured it couldn’t hurt. Plus, there were more men from my area in there now than there used to be. Just a whim, mind you. A lark.
And a few guys have written me. I am a catch after all. Heh.
I had tea with tea guy.
Tomorrow I have a date – a date? – with the firefighter guy. He’s coming over from Las Vegas.
When we were planning on his visit, he asked me if I liked motorcycles. He really likes to ride. He also likes his toys – taking a 4×4 out to the sand dunes, etc.
And I thought – he sounds just like my brothers. Firefighter. Motorcycle. Sand dunes.
Even if I don’t fall in love with him, my family will adore him. I know this already. He’s exactly the type of guy they will like.
I’m not getting my hopes up, though. A lot can happen. Chemistry may or may not be there. On either side.
We may go up to the Grand Canyon. We will have lunch together. Beyond that, I don’t know. We’re playing it by ear, depending on the weather.
I’m nervous.
I’m trying not to think about it too much.
new age
05 years ago
I work in a department where most of us are pretty geeky. We get excited about things that most people roll their eyes at. Sometimes, it’s almost like we’re out-geeking one another.
Let’s learn a new language! PHP, SQL, whatever. It sounds good.
Oh! I want to do that in Flash — those slideshows you are doing are antiquated, don’t you know. (All said with a hint of one-upsmanship and a knowing geeky wink and nod.)
So, it’s not surprising that most of us have laptops. Some of us have tablet PCs. Some of us have PDAs. Some of us have iPods (no Zunes yet — but that’s probably wise since I’ve heard they are not all that great). Heck, we even had 2 co-workers bring in an XBox360 and a Wii so we could see the differences (and…uhhh…play with them).
What happens when you have an intelligent group of well-read geeks getting together? Well, of course, they’d want to start a bookclub. But it can’t be any ordinary bookclub, can it?
Oh, no.
We gather around and decide to have an audible bookclub.
Yes. That’s right.
We are all downloading books to our iPods and listening and then getting together in 6 weeks (I know, seems like a long time but many of us are in school, all of us work a lot, and we need time to actually read…uhhh…listen) to discuss the current book.
So, I have been listening to podcasts on my Nano for a long time. I listen to books from podcasts. But they are usually broken up by chapter. That makes it easy for me because I can choose exactly when to end it and come back to it.
I started listening to Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game last night. The file is large. Five plus hours for the first part of the book. And like a good book, I didn’t want to unplug. I was getting caught up in the story.
I listened on my way home from work. I listened as I did my household chores. I missed some things but I chalked it up to that phenomenon where I gloss over words when reading, too.
Still, it requires a bit of concentration that is like reading but also different. I think about things differently than I do when reading. I conjure up images differently.
I don’t think I’ll ever put books down. I like the smell of them and the feel of them in my hands. But this is a nice way to get some different reading in.
breathless
05 years ago
A friend came into my office yesterday and was telling me how she was lamenting that she hadn’t seen any of the current meteor shower. She had just moved into my area, which is very dark (and we are at an elevation of 7000 feet), and has huge windows in her house. She has been watching the night sky to see a “shooting star” and hadn’t seen one. She said that her husband had been delighted by the view that they had and had seen quite a few.
Then, while in bed, she watched out the window and the night sky lit up with a meteor. She said she was excited by it. Her entire face lit up and it made me smile.
It’s the small things, isn’t it? Those beautiful nothings we can’t control that surprise the heck out of us.
I love those moments. They come out of nowhere and take my breath away.
And I got one of those this morning.
I was driving to work, thinking about what is on my agenda this morning and listening to NPR. Here I was listening to a report about the pervasive poisonings that the KGB has done throughout the history of that organization. This led me to think about the space race between the US and Russia in the past and how we are now more global in how we go into space (or seemingly so, anyway — more collaborative, anyway).
Then…shooting across the sky, my very own shooting star.
It literally took my breath away.
A blip.
That made me smile and think about how amazing this earth is around us and how fortunate we are to be able to see things like that.
A beautiful nothing blip that took my breath away.
late
05 years ago
Yesterday was my birthday. My mom did not talk to me. She didn’t bother to pick up the phone to call me to wish me a happy birthday.
She did write a blog entry (which I just found). So, here’s to my beginnings.
My daughter Dawn Maurie turned forty years old today, hard to believe, so I thought in honor of her day I would tell some of the story that led up to and how she was born.
Dawn’s daddy and I were going to be married on Feburary 12, 1966, on his 30 day leave before he went to his next duty station, but as guys sometimes do, he got cold feet. My sister in San Diego had lost her baby sitter so within a few days I was there living with her and her three little boys.
Charles and I stayed in touch, he called and we wrote letters. After a month or so I noticed I was gaining weight, and told my sister I thought I might be pregnant. I always wanted to be a mommy, I wanted six children as far back as I could remember.
I was thrilled, and could hardly wait, I wrote my Charlie a letter the night I found out, but did not tell him we had to get married, just the opposite, I told him that this was my baby and I was going to have it and keep it no matter what he decided to do, and I ment it, I think I still have the letter.
Probably a week or so later I got a call from a really drunk sailor crying and telling me he was going to be a daddy, and he would make arrangments for me to fly to Florida to be married. We were married, Charlie went out to sea and I went to Idaho to have our baby.
Six months later at about midnight or one a.m. I woke up Mom and told her I thought I was in labor, we sure hoped so because I was 2 weeks over due. I had decided to go to Sacred Heart Hospital, the catholic hospital in our town. My pains didn’t seem real bad but the nuns said I was in labor, and sent me to a room.
They gave me something for the pain so most of what I remember is pretty foggy. I remember Mom sitting beside the bed and rubbing my back when the pain radiated, she was so sweet. Mostly I just didn’t want to be touched, especially when the nuns and nurses would check to see how much I had dialated. Finally that morning the doctor showed up and told me it was getting close, wow, finally it seemed to take so long.
I had a paracervical block, which at the time was pretty new to birthing and still considered experimental, it was amazing because as soon as it takes effect the pain goes away. So at 1:36 in the afternoonon December 10, 1966 Dawn was born.They didn’t let ya watch then, and wisked my baby off so fast I hardly got to see her and didn’t see her until many hours later.
When I finally got to be with my little girl I really didn’t know what to do, she was so tiny, precious, and pretty, had all her fingers, all her toes blue eyes like her dad and a hint of red hair. Dawn nor I new how to nurse, we had a pretty hard start at it. The hospital was so regimented, I couldn’t get up and walk around like you can now, and the worst of it was we had to stay for five days because they didn’t know what kind of reactions we might get from the block.
We had decided to name her Dawn Marie, but she was to special for Marie so I added the u for Maurie. Dawn Maurie Armfield and her mom went home to Grandpa and Grandma Robinson’s until daddy came home in February.
Mom had my room ready with the bassenett next to my bed and my Dad was crazy about her as soon as he would get home from work he would start wiggling the bassenet and trying to wake her up so he could hold her.
Grandpa and Grandma Armfield with Connie, Steve and Tammy came between Christmas and New Years to see our new girl.
Well, those are Dawn’s beginnings, she couldn’t have been loved nor wanted more than her mommy loved and wanted her. Happy Birthday Punkin, I love you.
Sunday December 10, 2006 – 08:51pm (MST)
no children, no pets
05 years ago
american life in poetry: column 089
by ted kooser, u.s. poet laureate, 2004-2006
Loss can defeat us or serve as the impetus for positive change. Here, Sue Ellen Thompson of Connecticut shows us how to mourn inevitable changes, tuck the memories away, then go on to see the possibility of a new and promising chapter in one’s life.
No Children, No Pets
I bring the cat’s body home from the vet’s
in a running-shoe box held shut
with elastic bands. Then I clean
the corners where she has eaten and
slept, scrubbing the hard bits of food
from the baseboard, dumping the litter
and blasting the pan with a hose. The plastic
dishes I hide in the basement, the pee-
soaked towel I put in the trash. I put
the catnip mouse in the box and I put
the box away, too, in a deep
dirt drawer in the earth.When the death-energy leaves me,
I go to the room where my daughter slept
in nursery school, grammar school, high school,
I lie on her milky bedspread and think
of the day I left her at college, how nothing
could keep me from gouging the melted candle-wax
out from between her floorboards,
or taking a razor blade to the decal
that said to the firemen, “Break
this window first.” I close my eyes now
and enter a place that’s clearly
expecting me, swaddled in loss
and then losing that, too, as I move
from room to bone-white room
in the house of the rest of my life.
Reprinted from “Nimrod International Journal: The Healing Arts,” Vol. 49, No. 2, Spring-Summer, 2006, by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 2006 by Sue Ellen Thompson, whose latest book is “The Golden Hour,” Autumn House Press, 2006. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
self-portrait, week #8
05 years ago
by dawn
in self portrait
“An identity would seem to be arrived at by the way in which the person faces and uses his experience.”
James Baldwin
It is the journey.
The journey we take makes us who we are. Right?
People are proud of me. How far I’ve come. What I’ve made of my life. What I’ve gotten through. How well I’m doing. What I’m doing. Who I am.
Who I am?
Who am I?
Ever since I was a kid, I have looked in the mirror and not recognized the face looking back. That person isn’t me. I don’t know that person. The elements are right. Blue eyes. Freckles. Reddish hair (it used to be much more red and I wonder what happened to that, too). But something isn’t right. Hasn’t been right.
I am translucent. See? Right through me.
The sums of my experiences make me like this. Translucent.
I don’t feel strong. I don’t feel accomplished. I don’t feel special or unique or amazing.
I just am.
We live through the things we live through because the alternative is so much worse. We survive because if we don’t, what else is left?
But what does that mean? You see me as one thing. I see me as another. Someone else sees me in a totally different light. And what does all of that mean? Who am I? Really? Which one of those images is the real me?
Will the real dawn please stand up?
distance
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OK. I’m going to admit something. Are you ready?
My solitude during the holiday season is not all the doing of my single-ness. I bring a lot of it on myself.
I know. You’re amazed, aren’t you?
Take, for instance, the departmental holiday party coming up next Friday. It’s a big potluck affair being held at my supervisor’s house. Employees are encouraged to bring their partners/spouses and kids.
And therein lies the problem.
I’m ok with it if it was just co-workers. I deal with them every day. I like them. I enjoy spending time with them. But then you throw in a bunch of other people who I don’t know, who I will see *maybe* once a year and a bunch of kids and I’m instantly in a zone where discomfort is overwhelming.
I’d rather just stay away than attend.
And then said supervisor announces in the staff meeting yesterday that I avoid these get-togethers (true) and that the staff should go out of their way to encourage me to attend.
Ahem.
Great. Now I’m on the spot (and embarrassed).
I told them I would be happy to IM them during the party, taking part virtually. We could even do virtual hugs if they were so inclined.
Someone asked me if I knew how to do a virtual hug. “Yes,” I replied (having given and received many over the years).
“I find that disturbing.”
Oh.
He was joking of course (I hope). But this just heightens my discomfort with people and not feeling really understood. And why would I want to immerse myself in a house with double the people who don’t get me?
I wouldn’t.
And won’t.
And will end up watching a good movie or something instead.