I spent my long weekend painting the two grotty little bedrooms in the basement, and turning one of them into an office. I also install chair mats for office use for safety and comfort. It was one of those projects that, for much of the weekend, felt like I’d never get to the other side of it. First I had to move all the furniture out of those little rooms — I’d been using one as a guest room, so other than moving a queen-sized mattress by myself, it was pretty simple. But the other room I’d been using as a…
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When I was in France a couple of years ago, we shopped in the local ville most nights. it was more expensive than going to the big Carrefour warehouse store, but it was much more convenient and we liked the idea of supporting the local economy. Plus the butcher was loquacious and fun to visit, and despite his heavy Provencal accent, after a few days, I began to understand him and could converse a little. It was a lovely store — not only cuts of meat, but any number of prepared foods as well, and if you wanted to buy…
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Sorry for the hiatus but sometimes trouble comes knocking … my mother had a fall, from which she’s recovering … and there’s bad news from a friend who is up against a dark diagnosis. I’ll be back … but for now, I’m just trying to fight fires, keep my job, and get through a bad patch. It’ll be fine. I’m fine. But people I love need my attention.. something needs to give for a bit, and it’s the blog …
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To live with the Santa Ana is to accept, consciously or unconsciously, a deeply mechanistic view of human behavior…Whenever and wherever a foehn wind blows, doctors hear about headaches and nausea and allergies, about ‘nervousness,’ about ‘depression.’ … . Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem Even for Livingston, a place where the wind routinely blows so hard that they have to divert truck traffic off the interstate …
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We got a little snow last night, and as I opened the door this morning to let the dogs out and get the paper, a very cheerful-looking man zipped past my house. I’ve never seen him before, but there he was on his 4-wheeler equipped with a snowplow. He plowed my whole side of the block. The dogs barked, the man grinned, happy to be zipping around the neighborhood like some early-morning sidewalk elf. And then he was gone. It was a strange and fleeting little small-town moment, and it’s kept a smile on my face all day long.
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Not much to say, really, except it’s twenty below zero this morning! Twenty below! When I was a kid that was the magic number — the number at which even the grownups would concede that it was Really Cold Outside. Twenty below and Dad would drive me to school instead of making me go wait for the bus. Twenty below and the parents would set the egg timer when we were really little, so we wouldn’t get frostbitten (except for that time Up North when they all got chatting and forgot us, and I had to sit on Ray Kennedy’s…
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A little zen saying to start off the New Year. I had all sorts of good intentions for my week off — I had freelance projects on deck, and I really really really need to get back to the memoir, which I’ve neglected shamefully in the last couple of months as my “real” job at the Big Company has gotten way better, but also way busier. But as I zoomed through the past couple of months, packing 3 jobs into every day, zinging from deadline to deadline, making them all but driving myself a little crazy in the process I…
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I’ve been working working working … hence the unfortunate but necessary negelct of the blog. But now, now it’s Chrismas! Christmastime in Montana this year is delightful, snowy, and very very cold … supposed to be well below zero tonight. I’ve been so busy and fried that I hadn’t really thought much about Christmas — a couple of weeks ago I got sucked in at the grocery store and bought some of those icicle lights — they twinkle! So tacky but I love them — hung them on the front porch and they’re sort of like having a fire —…
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Dreadful blogger that I am — I didn’t blog my fabulous Thanksgiving — nine adults and two kids and I carved a lovely grotto-like dining room out of the basement — it’s a wonder what you can do with many tablecloths, a couple of sheets to partition off the basement-y stuff, and pine boughs stapled to the bare rafters and intertwined with twinkle lights. “It’s like a restaurant in Prague!” my friend Margie said as we all sat down with plates laden with ham and turkey and all the trimmings. It was very festive and I’m now done entertaining for…
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Home after a week in San Jose for work — it was a good week — I actually got a lot done, and spent two days talking to folks from the other theaters about translation and localization issues, which was nerdy, but interesting. It’s nice to be engaged in my job again — I officially made the transition back to editing a couple of weeks ago, so I’m back to what I do best — strategizing how to document these products, thinking about the pedagogical project that an admin or user guide represents, and then just doing a lot of…