I am now officially possessed of a Freudian Slip. I did not expect it to be pink.
My guess is that K will show up somewhere in the middle of this writing, so I am prepared to use ellipses like you wouldn't believe.
The week was mixed, and mostly with good. I was very productive at work on Monday, and it more or less carried through the week, as I was able to clear out a fair amount of smaller, niggling tasks that had been languishing at the end of my priority queue. That was pleasing, to be sure, and it's a relief sometimes to look at the list of things to do and realize they're mostly long distance projects. It's a fair sight better, anyway, than the typical "do this in five minutes or you're toast" sorts of things.
We returned Sunday with Grandma in tow. I spent my evenings teaching her how to use her new laptop. I think she's going to be just fine. She read and wrote emails through the week and did some research on Google. For being in her 80s, she uses the computer very well. And she adapts pretty well to change. We were able to simplify some of the very laborious tasks of her old machine, and I'm really glad about that. She is, too.
Thursday was a down day of sorts, though I didn't find out until yesterday. A couple students who rarely show up came in. One left with the impression I didn't think he was a very good black belt, and the other left with broken fingers. I don't really think any of this was my fault, but it doesn't make me feel very good, nonetheless. I've been drafting an email in my head to their folks, who are really terrific people, but it mostly comes out the wrong way, mostly because of the former issue (not the latter). I, for one, don't see how an eleven-year-old kid can take the pressure of "straight-8s-or-you-fail"1 but I ask this guy a philosophical question about how symbols mean something because of the reality behind them and he feels put upon. That is one way to cheese me off.
Anyway, I'm probably going to sit on it for awhile.
Friday was lunch out. The boss hit his first hole-in-one last weekend, and we celebrated. I had a prime rib sandwich. It wasn't quite the same as J Alexander's, but it was pretty fantastic, and a very worthy lunch, if I do say so myself.
I taught and trained in the evening; B has returned more or less for good, I think, which means that I should have yet another good training partner. Training was good, though I ran out of gas pretty early on. I'm definitely out of shape. Of course, working on a wood floor is not the easiest way, either—there is no give at all.
Grandma and the folks departed Friday, also, so I came home to an empty house. I don't do well in large empty spaces (or small empty spaces, really), but it was late enough that I was able to just eat, watch a bit of a movie, and read.
Today is a dinner par-tay with K, to celebrate many things. C will come over, also, and we'll probably gorge on K's excellent cooking, C's dessert, my coffee, and perhaps watch a movie and/or play a game. I am hoping that D also comes over. It'd be fun to have him around.
Oh, I also cleaned up the pen the folks gave me back in '01...a present for publication. Hopefully it still works and writes well. I'm pretty retentive about my writing instrumentation.
[1] When we grade tests, we grade from below seven (Failing, or Retest) to nine. But no one ever gets above an 8. Like, ever. In '99 at State Games, I saw someone grade out to a nine on his staff form. It was absolutely flawless.
7 comments:
I think you must be the only person who puts footnotes in a blog.
My grandma hates computers with a passion, and might use one only if she found herself in hell with that as her eternal punishment. My other grandma (my mom's mom) has an ancient one that she likes to play games on, but I foresee her getting every computer virus known to humankind if she were able to do anything else with it.
Eleven year old kids don't have brains, didn't you know that? Don't ask them hard questions, you'll just get "I dunno, whatever" as an answer.
I want to see the pen! Is it a fountain pen-a nice expensive one like a Montblanc? Maybe you don't have the common leftie problem of insisting on using fountain pens even though they are designed just to make us blue-handed and miserable(well not me but that's because I had to learn how to write with dippers).
Pen collections are an art unto themselves. I know a guy who has a massive pen collection (way better than mine, which only fits in one bag) but I think most of his were stolen at one point or another in their history, which makes me a little less envious. A little.
As for the picture at my blog; the work of the Four was all highly symbolic, so the picture-and all of it's elements-have a very definite meaning. However the meaning assigned to the various elements in the Mackintoshes works is sometimes obscure, making them difficult to decipher.
That piece is one of those for me, and as it is apparently not a well known piece, I've never seen any commentary on it, or even the title to give me a hint. So I'm left to wonder, why are the female figures made of tree branches? What's with the things that look like drill presses with wings? Usually at this point I give up and just think "ah well it looks cool".
Man 16 year olds are just more accomplished at "I dunno whatever". They can say it like they are whatevering dog poop on their shoes.
You write up? quoi? How do you manage this? A lefty should write downwards, toward oneself. Obviously no one ever taught you how write correctly. Well if you didn't get "you're using the wrong hand." as instruction, you did better than most of us.
Okay now I am thinking you must write from above and behind your writing line... this is the only way I can write upwards and get the correct slant-and it doesn't look too messy.
Trevor's pens are almost exclusively art pens. He has a full set of rapidographs for example. But if you use a cool pen of any type in front of him, he'll start trying to hussle you out of it immediately. Trevor never gets to see my pen collection. :)
I want to see your dad's awesome pen now. Buddy with the suit and his pen collection sounds cool-particularly if he really worked the quirk factor.
What is actually in the CRM picture is less confusing than what the significance is.
Hope you are feeling better soon.
My word verification is lasmer, a laser which half turns things into fish.
Your way of writing sounds difficult. Just thought you should know that. I should make a tutorial in proper handwriting for all the lefties out there.
I have a better pen collection than somebody, right on. I suppose it would be more accurate to call it a writing utensil collection, in which case it metastasizes exponentially-especially if we include the nibs.
You just never talk to artists about pens. We obsess over the tooth of the paper and quality/colour/hardness/etc of line-those are some of the few things artists like to analyze.
You're sick and you're eating cheezits? Way to make it worse. Aren't cheesits made of regurgitated pig bile or something? What an insult to cheese. Ugh.
Pop and processed sludge. I'm sure your stomach thanks you for that. It seems you are in dire need of an intervention-one including perogies fried in onion butter and Grayson sausage. If you're going to burn your gut out do it with something that is worthy of the honour.
Okay I just thought maybe cheesits are those orange crackers, rather than cheezie-like things. Which puts them what, half a notch up on the "disgusting creations dubbed 'food' that are certainly inedible, likely poisonous and possibly radioactive" list. Maybe tied with Macdonalds food.
Cheezies of course are at rock bottom.
Haha Someone beat me to the tutorial. I just found a left hand writing workbook by way of google and they instruct kids to write the same way I do.
If you had been taught to write like grandmothers were, hand-tying would likely have been involved (I know it would have in my case), and you'd probably not have been a particularly neat writer anyway.
So not the best of deals IMO.
I imagine the cheese in cheesits is liken unto the jam in your toes. "Real" jam of course, but why would you eat it? Not everything that is permissible is beneficial.
You surely know that back in the day they would have just made you use your right hand. And since you are left handed you would never have been very proficient at it. Both my grandmothers were switched and neither one of them have really nice writing. The more left dominant of the two actually has downright illegible handwriting-and her mother had the perfect kind of handwriting that one learned in finishing school.
The secret to non-horrible left hand writing is to tilt your page so it sits at an angle and write toward yourself with your hand below the writing line. Look here is one of the tutes.
There now get a calligraphy pad and practice. This would be far more productive than eating cheesits.
But how are you holding the pen?
I admit, if I'm writing in the journal of mundanity or elsewhere fast, then my writing seems to be very large, messy and scrawly with letters in all the wrong places and tails going the wrong way. That is at least partly because of the way I am holding the pen.
Normally though my writing is perfectly legible and even neat until after a few pages or so, when my hand gets tired.
You too can write legibly! Maybe. :-P
Man I want to see what your writing looks like, just to know if it really is as bad as all that. Especially since you've already seen mine.
And where is the picture of that Montblanc? The fact that I now know someone (sorta) who knows someone who has one has put me the closest I will probably ever get to owning one and meh wan' seh.
You should hold your pen further away from the tip.
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