Camera ubiquitous
December 2, 2009
I have always loved to take photographs. I bought my first film SLR as a senior in high school, and I still have it and it still works. But I haven’t used it in seven years. I went digital. And then I went iPhone.
I never thought of my previous cell phones as acceptable cameras for the simple reason that I’m a Mac girl and I didn’t have an easy way to offload the pictures. I also never used to do a data plan for my cell phones. Then iPhone came along.
Now I not only have a computer and the internet in my pocket, but I have a camera that is always with me. It couldn’t be easier to get images off of in any number of ways. With the ease of emailing and/or uploading from within apps such as Facebook, I have become an indiscriminate snapper of pictures. No occasion is too trivial. No subject is too insignificant.
It’s just too bad that on the first generation iPhone (which mine is) the camera is not of better quality. A good portion of my life is being captured in subpar pixels. But gosh, you just can’t beat the convenience. And with third-parrty photography apps for iPhone, its capabilities are extended. My favorite is Pano for iPhone which does all the heavy lifting for you to manufacture a pretty darned good panoramic image stitched together from up to 16 individual photos.
My favorite theme of iPhone photography has turned out to be self-portraits. Once I figured out how to hold iPhone in one hand and touch the shutter button with a nearby finger it was all over. Now I document the daily mundanity of myself and the universe I move through. It just wouldn’t work with my “big” camera.
I also use iPhone’s camera to make notes for myself. If I see a poster for something I’m interested in, if I sample a new beer or wine while I’m out, any number of things, it’s quite easier to just snap a shot of it to jog my memory than it would be to type a note (even though that’s very straightforward on iPhone, just like everything). And if I’m pressed for time or being particularly lazy, I will use it in lieu of my scanner to digitize something on paper, such as my handwritten notes from yesterday’s post.
Its constant companionship causes its overuse. This is the most recent photo from earlier this evening. I felt it necessary to preserve for posterity my joy at trying Magic Hat Brewing’s Black as Night Winter Lager.
iPhone is a constant companion, and I see I’m calling it iPhone like that’s its name, without any preceding articles or possessive pronouns. People name their cars. Do you other iPhone users name your iPhones?
My name is Tiny-bunny and I live in firewood
December 1, 2009
Mein Name ist Kaninchen und ich lebe im Holz.
This is the beginning kernel of the idea for my first viable creative writing activity in 20 years. I know some of you will be expecting the results of this inspiration here tonight. But what happened was actually happened was exactly what I was hoping for when I got my Monday night bowling team involved in brainstorming ideas—the concept took on a life of its own, and I couldn’t possibly do it justice when it’s almost 1:00am on a work night and I’ve had plenty of beer. All three of my teammates really came through for me, and we had four games’ worth (three hours) of plot genesis. If you check out tonight’s previous entry, you’ll see what their names are. Shout out, guys!
When I was an English major in college in my composition classes, brainstorming was presented as the opportunity to say whatever tangentially came to mind from some starting point. It didn’t matter however seemingly silly or unrelated it was. The idea was to not censor yourself and to not judge others’ ideas, because somewhere would be the kernel that someone could sink their teeth into.
These days at work, we call it brainstorming, but there is a lot of linear thinking and censoring that happens, and that frunstartes me (frustrates—you know who you are). Every utterance isn’t supposed to be a well-formed, logical idea. It’s just supposed to be a kernel that might turn into something useful because you didn’t think of it before and you didn’t think of it on your own.
As for Mein Name ist Kaninchen und ich lebe im Holz, that is a useful phrase that someone learned in another language, to indicate that she doesn’t actually know German. Seems to me that Ich spreche kein Deusche would be just as effective, but Mein Name ist Kaninchen und ich lebe im Holz is definitely more fun.
My useful phrase in another language was ¡Qué casualidad! or, What a coincidence! in Spanish. I had two years of Spanish in high school and this was a phrase that stuck. Sometimes, a foreign phrase just has a better feel and connotation for the situation than your regular, native language. The other word I like is from my two years of college German—barsängerin, which literally translates as bar singer, but as I learned it, is used more idiomatically as torch singer, along the lines of Edith Piaf, though she might be a little too schmaltzy for barsängerin. Anyway, it’s not one I get to use too often. At least I can work in ¡Qué casualidad! every now and then.
So, stay tuned for the adventures of Rocket Dog feat. Tiny-Bunny and his firewood in the coming weeks. I anticipated tonight, and took along a little notebook in which to jot down ideas–in that respect, it’s a well-crafted plan. Execution is always wildly different than intention, at least in my world.
I’ve artfully un-blurred key ideas from my notes to whet your appetite.
Hill of beans
November 29, 2009
If my mom didn???t like it, she didn???t make it to eat, and vice versa. And we had an eat-everything-on-your-plate policy, in which I had no say. Consequently, I wasted hours of my young life at the dinner table choking down the last few bites of chicken liver or the last two canned green beans.
That???s also the reason why I never experienced the euphoria of tasting steamed asparagus with a little bit of butter until I was 30. I asked my mom why she never made it and she said because she didn???t like the texture. One stringy piece and it was all ruined for her. She has a thing about food textures. We didn???t have peas either, except the ones that came in the frozen pot pies. I was allowed to pick those out and leave them. Beans were another thing my mom just didn???t like so we never had. Even in chili, there wasn???t a kidney bean to be found. Again, I was 30 before I embraced beans as a food group. I???m very glad I did. I could easily subsist on beans, cheese, and sauce. The mind boggles at all the variations. Another thing I???m glad I did was give myself permission not to eat everything if I don???t want to. That was very liberating. I also haven???t eaten a chicken liver for 30 years.Crossing a line
November 28, 2009
My crappy little Hyundai was the first brand new car I’ve ever owned. But even when I first got it, I never felt the need to protect it by taking up two parking spaces. People who do that make me chuckle. In the lot outside the office kitchen window, I frequently see a little sporty convertible that parks all crooked in the corner spot. One day when I was down there anyway I got curious, so I checked out the car. It was only a Saturn. It would make more sense to me if it had been a Jaguar or a BMW or something fancy like that, but it wasn’t. It was just a Saturn. I know people get all emotional about their cars and get MY BMR vanity plates and give them names and such. I am not one of those people.
Maybe if I had a ’67 Mustang, I’d feel differently.What???s your musical guilty pleasure?
November 27, 2009
What artist are you ashamed to admit that you like? What gets your toes tapping that shouldn’t? What sends you into an irrational revery? For me, it’s the Russian group ???????? (t.A.T.u. for their English-language releases).
I like what I like and I’m not embarrassed to admit it. There is so much out there and you never know what’s going to catch your fancy. ???????? is a band that most people would probably think unlikely that I’d enjoy. But I do! I like them better when they sing in Russian, but I always find their English lyric versions to be interesting and wonder how the literal meanings compare between the English and the Russian.
I learned of ???????? one day at work while I was researching school uniforms for the children’s book series I was working on. I came across their video for ?? ?????????? ?? ?????? / All The Things She Said (Russian version / English version). The music instantly hooked me. I watched a few more videos and found those to be oddly interesting, too, with the sexual and violent themes that seem to be ????????’s trademark.
I bought both the Russian and English versions of their debut album (200 ???? ?????????????????? / 200 km/h in the Wrong Lane). There’s a killer cover of the Smith’s “How Soon Is Now” on the English version.
Nobody eats anybody else, so it???s alright
November 26, 2009
Okay, just so you know, it wasn’t my choice to finally write about my furry sweeties. Honest. I am merely a slave to the random topic that came up. So let’s not waste any more time.
My first rabbit (#1) was Hazel. He was a couple of years old when Dhia the cat arrived (tortoiseshell). She was six weeks old and imprinted on Hazel. I had never lived with a cat before, so when she was still spazzing out at close to two years old, I decided she needed a feline playmate. That’s when Yul came along (black). He was about three months old, still young enough to be influenced by rabbitly ways. Dhia and Yul were nice enough to each other, but they both loved Hazel. Hazel lived to the ripe old rabbit age of 10-1/2. His mind was still strong, but his little body gave out on him. He sat in a shallow cardboard box when I took him to the vet to be euthanized. He gnawed on the edges while we were waiting, until I stroked his head and told him he didn’t have to fight anymore. Don’t try and tell me we don’t have a connection with our animal friends. I waited a few months before I brought Hilda home as a nine-week-old bunny (#2). She was a Checkered Giant (papillon), a breed I had decided on a few years before, not that I was rushing Hazel. I named her Hilda because one day when Chris Gargan was asking about Hazel, he called him “Hilda” instead. It stuck in my mind. She was a fine rabbit, and Dhia and Yul loved her even more than they loved Hazel. Unfortunately, the breed is relatively short-lived, and we lost her at 3-1/2 to what seemed like a bunny heart attack. We were devastated. What am I saying? We’re devastated every time. I didn’t have any ideas for our next rabbit. One day I brought home Daisy (#3). She was a standard Rex who turned out to be defective in a number of ways. She had a full-blown case of cataracts at five months (successfully operated on), and when she was spayed, the vet discovered she had only one ovary. She only made it to about seven months. I came home from work one evening to find her in a bad way. We went right to the emergency clinic, but it wasn’t long before she checked out. I’m convinced she had fought to hold on until I gotten home and we could say good-bye. Soon thereafter, I contacted Hilda’s breeder for a new bunny, because I really liked the personality of the Checkered Giant. I brought home Belle(#4), and it was an instant lovefest between her and Dhia and Yul. Those cats adored that little creature, and I was convinced that she was going to be the perfect rabbit. She had all of the character of Hilda without the aggression. (Hilda sometimes had personal space issues with me. That’s how I got that scar on my lower lip.) But alas, she turned out to be a hemophiliac and died from post-spay internal bleeding at four months. Belle was our third rabbit gone in less than a year. Maybe you’ll think I’m nuts when I say that I think the cats were jaded by all those losses in their reception to Robbin (#5). He was about eight weeks old and the cats liked him well enough, yet were a little stand-offish with him. It was for that reason that when Robbin was about three, I decided that he needed a companion of his own kind. I took him on some bunny dates to the Humane Society, and he picked Bibi (#6). They doted on each other. Bibi had come from another multispecies household apparently and didn’t seem too bothered by Dhia and Yul, who by this time were in their mid-teens. Dhia had had a kidney attack and had to be hospitalized for five days. The vet was amazed that she pulled through. I visited her twice a day, and then gave her subcutaneous fluids for the last two years of her life. Yul had come down with hyperthyroidism and required twice-daily pills. He developed pneumonia at the end and didn’t make it through treatment at the vet’s office. He was 16-1/2. Dhia developed a bladder infection. She didn’t improve with initial treatment and when I took her back in for more potent antibiotics, she gave me a look willing it to stop. We gave her a different injection. She was 18. That was a hard one. She was my Sweet Pea. I figured it would be a good while before I began looking for a new cat. The universe had other plans. My mom volunteers with the rabbits at her local Humane Society in central Wisconsin and gets me to go to their website to check them out. After I lost Dhia (that was in a March), I casually clicked over to the Cats section and was struck by a bolt of lightning when I saw CJ’s mugshot (black, inset). Look at that little white tuft and that cocked head! It was April and karma kept her available until I could pass through town in May on my annual Chicago bowling tournament trip to pick her up. I kept directing my mom to visit her to see what she thought. My mom is not a cat person, but she and CJ formed an instant bond; so much so that when I met CJ for the first time, she shunned me for my mother. That was a year and a half ago. I don’t know if it was the stress of welcoming a new, young, boisterous cat but within weeks of CJ’s arrival, Bibi developed gut stasis (a common rabbit ailment) and never recovered from surgery. She was such a sweetheart, and I was worried about how Robbin would react. Bonded rabbits often go into steep decline when they lose their companion. But Robbin’s still going strong. I think because he was an only rabbit for a number of years, and was very definitely the alpha over everyone of every species, he bounced back with no ill-effect. We’ll just stay a one-rabbit family now. But CJ and Robbin never hit it off. I attribute that to CJ’s being a twoish-year-old adult by the time she met him. She was inexperienced in rabbit. She knew he was different but didn’t know what to do about it. It was for that reason that I decided she should have a feline companion, because she wanted to be friendly, but there wasn’t anyone to bond with. I went on a few cat dates and finally decided on Dasie (black and white). She was about eight months old when she came home about eight months ago, and has been the light of our lives. She and CJ didn’t take very long at all before they became buddies. I’m certain that they actually like each other, unlike Dhia and Yul who were civil but always a little chilly. You might think that CJ and Dasie would gang up on Robbin, but he’s still large and in charge. Neither cat really understands rabbit. They’re curious, but can’t stop themselves from swatting at his behind. This, in turn, causes Robbin to wheel around and chase the offending cat, sometimes back and forth from one end of the apartment to the other and sometimes not, but always with the result of the cat being treed on the bed, window sill, or other high place. I watch his ears. They’re not flattened against his back, so I think he’s not taking it too seriously. And I think the cats believe that it’s an elaborate form of play.Nobody eats anybody else, so it’s alright.
English wannabe
November 25, 2009
Does loving beer, cheese, and solid breakfasts qualify me?
You???re gonna make it after all
November 24, 2009
I was talking to a new friend yesterday who wondered if maybe I wasn’t being a little unnecessarily hard on myself with all this talk of laziness and lack of motivation and sitting on my bum like some big old theater that’s been languishing without renovation for the last 10 years. So tonight I thought that, instead of regretting that I hadn’t written a proper entry last Friday when the topic was “Take something apart” and I had planned on that something being myself, I would try to look at myself a little objectively in the other direction and maybe see what he does.
[As a completely unrelated aside, those were two pretty long sentences. One of my current work projects is writing about science for six- or seven-year-olds. We must keep word count per sentence as small as possible, and vocabulary as simple. I feel very decadent with those two opening sentences written for adults!] It’s human nature to be hard on yourself and to have difficulty believing that you measure up to anyone else. In the end, you are your own worst critic. So what have I done for myself lately? As detailed in “Work out, work hard,” I have managed to keep up a workout regimen for eight months now. That’s pretty amazing. How many people do you know who buy the gym membership, go for a couple of weeks, and then just throw away the auto-payment every month? Maybe you’re one of them. GO TO THE GYM! Another unexpected achievement is how I’ve kept up with writing this blog for the last few weeks. Granted, I missed a few days last week, but that’s because my work schedule has gone into warp drive until the end of December. I try to do a little overtime on the evenings I’m home, and last week I had just gotten so tired that I had to mind my health and go to bed rather than stay up for another hour working on this. It’s been very exhilarating writing again. Part of the reason why I’m anxious to keep up with the daily entries is because I see it as practice for my second career as some sort of writer. And I see my second career as some sort of writer as part of what will facilitate my move to London. I may be deluded on that point but I don’t care. I’m having fun! HAVE FUN! I guess to an outsider, all the kids’ books that I’ve written for work might seem a little noteworthy. To me, it’s just what I’ve been doing every day for 12 years. I am completely blasé about it. But when I look at this photo of all of the books that I’ve authored together on my bookshelf, even I smile, cross my arms, and nod to myself. GIVE YOURSELF CREDIT! Maybe even my avid participation on the TweakToday.com website could be viewed as achievement but I think that’s stretching it. Still, DO SOMETHING NEW EVERY DAY! Okay, that’s all I’ve got. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * The inspiration for tonight’s entry was the assignment of photographing a local public sculpture. I chose the bronze Mary Tyler Moore on Nicollet Mall, which is near where I work. The title comes from the lyrics of the theme song for the tv show, which I wanted to include in the vein of positive self-affirmation; I found a couple of videos of an early version (note that Mary’s driving a 1970 Ford Mustang—I wasn’t the only girl who liked them!) and a later version of the opening montage instead. In the Wikipedia entry about the show, I learned things about Mary that are now kind of interesting since I’ve lived in the Twin Cities for a long time, including that the deluxe apartment that she moved on up to was in the complex of now-not-glamorous high rises in my current home neighborhood.Shout out to TweakToday
November 23, 2009
How do I come up with the scintillating topics for my blog, you may wonder. It’s easy. Whatever the mission is on TweakToday.com, that’s what I write about. The cat’s out of the bag. That’s cheating, some of you may think. It’s true that I don’t invent my own topics, and that might seem easy. On the other hand, I don’t invent my own topics and have to find some way to make the TweakToday mission into a little story about me. Not always so easy. But it always makes me think, and it has been a way to get me back into writing. Who doesn’t want to be a writer?
I had been keeping up with writing every day very well, until my crazy work schedule caught up with me last week. I had to put my health before my blog and skip a couple of nights, or risk slumping into unconsciousness at my desk only to wake up with lifelong back problems. For those of you who are already going through withdrawal after my three-day absence, I’ll give you a quick little fix.
Nov. 19: Take a picture of your bedroom
My bedroom is a mess. I spend the least time there—well, the least waking time—so it is a repository for stuff I never unpacked four years ago and clothing that never made it into a drawer or a closet. There are three large, miscellaneous items hung on the walls. None of it goes with anything else.
Nov. 20: Take something apart
I was looking forward to writing on this subject, actually, because I planned to take an in-depth look at all the things that are wrong with my personality. But, oh well, that story will have to go untold for now. The photo for this day was of the pieces of my little coffee maker at the office. I have my own pot because in the 14 years that I’ve worked there, I remain the only person who drinks decaffeinated coffee. Not only that, but I drink decaf in the morning when I get there and regular in the afternoon some time after lunch. That’s when I find the pick-me-up more useful. In the morning I have presumably just had a good night’s sleep and shouldn’t be tired. It makes sense to me.
Nov. 21: Spell a word with nearby objects
SOCKS. Why were my socks nearby so that I could spell socks with them? Because I hate doing laundry. And the only thing I hate more than laundry (in the context of household chores) is folding laundry. So the socks and underwear usually get used from the laundry basket that never made it off the top of my dryer. My washer and dryer are in the middle of my place because they are portable. I roll my washer up to the kitchen sink and attach it temporarily to that faucet. The only thing that makes doing laundry more tolerable is that I no longer have to leave my apartment to do it and go through the five doors to get to the laundry room. Well, maybe technically three doors, as two of them are double.
Nov. 22: Take a picture of the main screen of your fave website
And that brings us to today. TweakToday is currently my favorite because I get to be creative photographically (usually), and because it provides this inspiration, which I hope will in some way be useful down the road. The screen shot is the page that was the topic of my first entry back on November 1.
Oh, bother!
November 19, 2009
Kelly’s Unnecessary Blog 