February 2012!

 I just finished reading The Girl Who Fell From The Sky. Great book!

I went to a yoga class today for the first time since I broke my arm last November. It was good to go back. Humbling, too.

I saw Matthew Zapruder read a few weeks ago at Loggernaut. That was great.

Happy February everyone. It is winter.

January 2012!

My first collage of 2012. I am using 4 x 4 collages instead of ATCs these days.

The Ducks won the Rose Bowl today. I was at work but the rest of the family was in McMinnville watching the game.

Melinda saw it live in Pasadena!

I have been making New Year's resolutions. I like this time of year.

Joshua Marie Wilkinson is doing lots of cool poetry things at The Volta.

New Year's Eve

Laura and I went to see The Muppets today.

I am reading The Sense of An Ending by Julian Barnes and enjoying it.  Max gave it to me for Christmas.

Going out tonight but I doubt we'll stay out until midnight.

Going to make some resolutions! I'm looking forward to the new year.

Boxing Day Burning the Old Year

Boxing Day! I love boxing day. I have watched three Fred Astaire movies since Christmas. Which was just yesterday. We had a good Christmas!

The photo is a picture of Aslan, the lion from the Chronicles of Narnia. My friend had this drawing when we were kids in Corvallis. Her mom had an artist draw it for her. It hung in her room when we were kids.

Last summer when I went to see her she gave it to me.  A few months later she died.

I am thinking about not keeping it.  Sometimes I think about just burning the whole picture. It sums up a part of our childhood that is now, well, gone. She's gone and her mom's gone and I'm here.  I wonder if it's not helpful for me to hold onto it.

I remember a few years ago calling this same friend around New Years, and telling her about that "burning the year" ritual. Where you write things on pieces of paper - things about yourself that you want to say good bye to in the New Year - and you burn them.  I did that that year. It's a fun ritual, but most of those things I burned that year are still with me.

So there's that!

I am reading The Leftovers.  I'm off all week and I like that!

Coffee's Important!

  I've pretty much abandoned this blog but am posting a little sporadically on Caffeine Destiny Tumblr . I will probably start posting more in the New Year there. Or I might return here. I can't decide which one I prefer.

This has been a strange autumn. My grandmother died, my best friend who I'd known over 40 years died, one of our dogs died. Then exactly a month after my best friend died I fell while running and broke my humerus and had to have surgery.

Life continues though and I am still looking forward!

In Southern California!

Took this yesterday at a beach in Encinitas

Where I'll Be Tomorrow Night!

April Is Poetry Month

Ada Limon is posting poems all through this month, with Jennifer Knox and friends. Check it out.

I'm also attempting a poem a day, but they are very much drafts and not fit for even a little public consumption.

I'm reading Cutting For Stone. I like it.

I made this collage today.

Find Me on Mead Hunter's Blog

Happy Spring!

The irrepressible Mead Hunter (pictured at left) featured one of my poems on his blog this week. Thanks Mead!

Cheese party last night! Turning in grades today.

Tsunami Warning Sunrise

I was so pleased to spend time in North Bend with authors Carol Ann Bassett, Henry Hughes and Jennifer Richter!

One nice thing about leaving North Bend before dawn is driving Highway 38 at sunrise. With the mist and fog hovering over the pastures, the Umpqua River on the roadside, and the elk, cows and sheep in the early morning light - it was all quite lovely.

Except for having to leave my hotel room at the crack of dawn! Thank you, people who own the Reedsport gas station on 101 who opened early so people like me could get gas. They had two pit bulls and pit bull puppies in the office - I didn't have much contact with the dogs, though.

After the gas station, and after I turned on to Highway 38, I stopped at the Sugar Shack Bakery (pictured above). It was just getting light when I left there.

Turns out the warning was just a warning, and by the time I'd reached the Denny's in Albany (in the clothes I'd slept in), I wasn't all that worried about tsunamis anyway.

But my thoughts are with the people of Japan. I can't imagine the terror so many people there must be living through right now.

This morning I ran the Shamrock Run and this afternoon I folded laundry and watched Bright Star, the movie about John Keats and Fanny Brawne. I feel grateful to be able to engage in everyday, normal activities, when across the Pacific it's an entirely different story.

Manzanita

We had a great time on the tour to Manzanita. A quick trip with some great people. (Left to right, Lisa Ohlen Harris, Me, K.B. Dixon, Emily Chenoweth)

I want it to snow SO BAD. I feel like this is our last chance for a really great snow storm this winter! However it seems like the only times it ever snows it is totally unexpected. So I'm skeptical, but HOPEFUL.

Country Wrong

I saw the movie Country Strong last night. I liked it EXCEPT for the ending. How can Gwyneth sing that she's "country strong" and then give us that kind of ending? I shall not elaborate in case you are reading this and want to see it. If you like country music you'll like the movie.

Laura's birthday party was last night. She turns 17 Wednesday. I loved that there was a girl there who had known her since kindergarten, and someone who had been friends with her since she was younger than kindergarten!

I got an acceptance from Filter Literary Journal today. That was great news. Every issue is hand made!

Last night I had the weirdest dream. It is very boring when people talk about their dreams so stop reading if you don't like reading about dreams!

It was one of those dreams where you are in your bed, and you wake up. So I was in my bed, I woke up, and one of my teeth had fallen out. I took it out of my mouth and showed it to Michael, but then the tooth unfolded into a skull.

Then our house just started filling with people, mostly family members in various stages of their lives - so my son Max was there as a toddler but also an older kid, and my dad was there, in his 30's or 40's, but then there was also my Dad at his current age, walking around too.

And I realized, "I must be dead!" and I got worried in the dream because the dream was going on for so long I thought, this might not be a dream! I saw my friend Peggy there too. I hadn't dreamt about her in ages. At one point I had this small brown dog that I'd adopted and I thought maybe it had caused my death so I put it outside.

That was my dream. My friend Peggy died around the time Laura was born, so I think that might be why I dreamt about her. I hadn't dreamt about her in years.

I thought about it later today and I thought it was a dream telling me to lighten up about getting older. Because my house (life) is full of so many great experiences. And I'm still waking up alive! whew.

However I will not be adopting any small brown dogs in the future.

I'm reading GREAT HOUSE by Nicole Krauss and it's amazing! Perhaps the title of the book influenced my dream too some how.

Now I'm going to watch the Golden Globes red carpet!

Christmas Vacation!

I made risotto tonight from my Ruth Reichl cookbook. One of the things I love about vacation is having time to cook!

I finished Amy and Isabelle and now I'm reading Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro. I ordered Great House by Nicolle Kraus today - because I had a credit! Don't hate me local booksellers!

So far I've seen Black Swan, True Grit, and How Will You Know this vacation. I'm going to see The Tourist in Corvallis with my mom on Friday. Hoping to see The Fighter with Max, if I can tear him away from his playstation.

I like watching the Dick Van Dyke show on Netflix at night in bed on my laptop sometimes.  Vacations are good!

Just another word for nothing left to lose

That's right, I finished Freedom. The unfortunate side effect is that the stupid "Me and Bobby McGee" song lyrics keep going through my head.

I am glad I read Freedom. I haven't decided what I think of it, overall, and how I would assess it, but I have read some good reviews of it and some stupid reviews of it (one reviewer seems not to like it because Franzen uses words like "sucks" and because time spent reading Freedom is time that could be spent reading the classics, which seems like stupid things to point out in a review - okay I'm summarizing it poorly and unfairly, but still.)

Making five pies for Thanksgiving!

I finished my Deer story last month and now I am writing another story.

Back From Sunriver!

We had a great time in Sunriver! Michael won the Moore Cup this year!

The weather was great. Rode bikes a lot and went to the pool. Played Pictionairy last night with everyone. Alex and Max won. Laura and Natalie saw a porcupine.

One thing I love about vacation is being able to read a book in four days. I read America America by Ethan Canin this weekend.  I started it Thursday night before we left and finished it this afternoon in the car on the way home. It's so great to be able to read a book that fast. 

She's Back!

Laura returned last night from Illinois! Michael and I  sat in the backyard and watched her plane fly in. Then we hopped in the car and drove to the airport to pick her up - that's how close we live to the airport!

I dreamt last night we had Christopher Hitchens over for dinner.

Max's team lost yesterday, so baseball is over.

We are going camping at Timothy Lake this weekend.

I am going to clean my office this week and maybe make some jam. It's supposed to get hot!

I ran the Sauvie Island Half Marathon on the 4th of July. I set a PR. Yay me.

I have a prose poem is in the new issue of Quick Fiction.

I watched Thelma and Louise yesterday.  We also watched Invictus last night, which had lots and lots of rugby.

I finished Raven Stole the Moon (it was okay) and I'm reading The Elegance of the Hedgehog now - I started it a few months ago.

Monday Monday

I am reading Raven Stole the Moon: A Novel by Garth Stein, but - it is not his new novel! It's a re-release of a novel he published 12 years ago! Sneaky writers. But he cops to it in the preface so I am not too mad. I won it from Mead Hunter's blog (where Mead refers to it as "Garth's latest opus" ha!) a few months ago and I'm finally reading it. I like the Pacific Northwest aspect of it. And the Native American myths woven in.

I dropped off a bunch of Portland Arts and Lectures brochures at the library today and then checked out some books on Picasso, including Conversations with Picasso. After seeing all the Picassos in New York I am enjoying reading about him. Some. Or I WILL.

Sent Zanni a bunch of my prose poems from last week.

I have an Amazon affiliate account for Caffeine Destiny magazine and they have FOUND MY BLOG and so now whenever I post to my blog this other Amazon window comes up right next to the window I post in so I can find the titles of books and post links to Amazon in my posting. It's a little creepy - how did they find me?

The sun is out today. My desk at work is a disaster! It's the time of year when people send a lot of stuff my way..

Laura and I are going to watch the rest of IT'S COMPLICATED tonight, and I could do a search on Amazon and post the link to the DVD here but I'M NOT GOING TO.

Lee Montgomery has a cool column in the New York Times this week and there's a link on the Literary Arts Facebook page. I would look it up again and post it here but I have too much other stuff to do. It's worth looking up though!

Donna Stonecipher

“I wanted to avoid the line break. Line breaks are seductive, but for the time being neither they nor the silences at the ends of line breaks feel right. Line breaks feel like cliffs leading to a kind of dangerous euphoria.” - Donna Stonecipher

I finished Tinkers and actually read most of the most recent New Yorker, a feat I only accomplish when on vacation or while camping. Tinkers was good but it didn't blow my mind or anything. Jeffrey Eugenides story was kind of okay! I think I liked it.

Have been reading Donna Stonecipher's  The Cosmopolitan and I love it. Stu Wilson gave it to me when I was in Minnesota, so thanks Stu!

Wrote all around my vacation. Mostly prose poems and I'm digging that form.

There won't be any more issues of Caffeine Destiny. I know I said that once before, but I'm saying it again and I mean it.  I have loss the will to code and solicit, two things that needed to be done intensely before each issue went up. Some day I'd like to publish chapbooks, the hold-in-your-hand kind, but that's a project for later on.

It's raining again. It is June. Laura is singing for Portland Teen Idol this morning and we are leaving soon.

I will know I am at work tomorrow because there will be no labrador sleeping nearby. And my hair will be brushed.

Sawyer at the Beach, Laura's off to Outdoor School

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A great weekend at the coast and Sawyer got to see the beach for the first time. He loved the opportunities for digging that the sand provides! And he met a nice Doberman who wanted to be his friend.

Laura is off to Outdoor School to be a counselor this week.

I read the thriller Dark Places this weekend while I was at the beach.