mycalicocat

sPorcupine was telling me on the phone about a young person who was adjusting to her first week in college, which made me think of all the moves I've made in my life, and the fact that it's one thing to pack up china and sheets and furniture and then unpack them -- but it's quite another thing to pack up oneself and relocate. You go to a new place and it isn't just that you don't know people. Also, they don't know you and it takes a while before they do, even in close proximity. And you can't just stand up on a soapbox and yell, "Hey, everybody, let me tell you who I am." I even find myself self-conscious about those little bios that go with blogs.
So here's the question: Which (choose as many as you like, and add some) of the following would best explain who you are to a total stranger?
1. Your favorite music (i.e. singer, band, whatever)
2. The best book you've read this year
3. Your political persuasion
4. Your spiritual beliefs
5. Something you collect
6. A hobby
7. What you named your dog or cat
8. How important or unimportant money is to you
9. Places you've lived besides here
10. What you find funny
11. What teams you cheer for
12. What makes you mad
13. What you think about George W. Bush
14. The sorrows you have known
15. What you're impressed by
16. What you're not impressed by
17. What magazines you subscribe to
18. What your family is like
19. Where you live
20. What you watch on television

I met Newt Gingrich today. No kidding. I think maybe I should make up a list the way birders do, in order to check off various sightings.

I don't know why everytime I try to post a photo i wind up posting two, but have a second helping.

For fun, try www.jacksonpollock.org
You can create your own pollock, or just fool around with colors.

I am going to post my chicken wings photo above, because it came out in the paper looking about the color of raw chicken. It was one of those days. So much for the perils of art. It was fun to play Jackson Pollock for a while after that.

Pet peeve - having one's work come to naught.

Kentucky has just released its new edition of the "Core Content for Assessment," which is a fairly good statement of what "students should know and be able to do." But I am very worried about the implications of the following fragment from the science section:

"Students will describe:
• the effect of the Suns’ energy on the Earth system."

I think the effect would be that we'd all be burned to a crisp.

I could have said pet peeves, but that has always implied to me that one cherishes such things. Anyway I invite one and all to share some things we find annoying. Some of mine are silly, some are specific to my profession (or seem to be) so I assume you have some silly ones too.
1. Lou Dobbs when he gets on his Mexican obsession.
2. All the immense piles of stuff that come in the Sunday newspaper and have to be thrown away, and the nothing that is left after that.
3. The plastic wine bottle corks that won't actually go back into the wine bottle after you open it. I have taken to trimming them with a sharp knife.
4. Elected and appointed officials who take on an expressionless stare while citizens speak a public hearings and then don't acknowledge what the citizen said. As in "Your two minutes is up. Next."
5. A certain kind of very fat, round loopy "Care Bear-Strawberry Shortcake" handwriting that is almost impossible to read, and which shows up most frequently on the forms used for engagement announcement.
6. Pills that come in those flat aluminum foil things with the bubbles to hold them in place.

http://llamachik.deviantart.com/gallery/

check it out.

At times in my newspaper writing I really get the feeling I'm channeling my mother. I sat down, a while ago, to write a food page column and immediately thought of "Meet Mr. Meatball."
Mama was published a whole lot and was paid for her work, but she still loved getting money in the mail. Once she made up a couple of sheets of meatball recipes, entitled "Meet Mr. Meatball" and she photocopied this and sold this through little classified ads in women's magazines for several years. It cost $1 --meaning a dollar bill and the buyer had to include an SASE. She illustrated her typed-up recipes (which probably had plenty of xxx's, her standard correction method) with a little meatball man. Usually Mama twisted my arm into illustrating anything she wanted illustrated -- like the time she badgered me into drawing little okra-people climbing up a ladder and sliding down into a pot -- but she drew this one herself, sort of like a lumpy bumpy Wal-mart smiley face with stick legs and arms.
sPorcupine may remember Mr. Meatball. I can see it clearly and I also just turned her idea into a column with recipes (with due credit to the original author of course).
This also led me to the realization that for all practical purposes I am paid NOTHING for writing a food column on a Friday night, so her dollar bills look pretty good in retrospect.

Check out inmuffinscorner.blogspot.com which is the new blog of the Queen of Sheba. I will get the link changed shortly.