42 posts tagged “photos”
I'm also feeling teary...and confused...and sad...and... I don't know. We learned on Tuesday that our school board is now seriously considering closing my school. If that happens, I don't know if it would happen before Fall 2009. Then again, we don't know what's going to happen at this point. There was a long board meeting on Monday night and the newspaper account made it sound like they put pretty much everything on the table in terms of options. There's another board meeting on Thursday night, and given that one of the main thrusts of that article was closing our school, I expect there'll be a big turnout from parents at the next meeting.
The first thought I had upon waking this morning was that I'd gladly surrender my job if my salary could be put toward saving a music or art or language or science class...or toward a librarian's salary. After all, pretty much anyone could be trained to do what I'm paid to do. All the value-added stuff--all the stuff that makes me valuable to my school--I basically donate because it falls outside my job description. Those kinds of thoughts lead to other thoughts. What do I really want to do anyway? Because it's not about any particular job. I've had a zillion of them. And that's all they are to me--jobs. They're work I perform at others' beck and call in return for a steady paycheck.
It's not like I haven't been asking myself that question for decades. Although, to be honest, I probably came to that question much later than most of you, because in childhood, adolescence and even into my 20's, I thought only other people got to do what they wanted to do. It took me awhile to fully grasp that no matter what messages were handed down--and what messages were fully absorbed by a younger version of yourself--the possibilities are endless.
Thank you so very much for your sweet comments on my cruise post. As someone said yesterday when I informed my coworkers that I'd be missing one extra day of work because of the cruise: the winds of change are blowing...and there's no better place for pondering those changes than the open water...
We may know more about the work situation (see previous post) after tonight's school board meeting. As soon as I arrived at work yesterday one of my coworkers told me a new rumor that's floating around. In that particular scenario, I'd most likely be out of a job. But here's the thing--everything's in flux right now. There are so many scenarios being tossed around. All one can do is just let it unfold as it's meant to...and go with the flow. Still, I do feel awfully emotional when I think about how much I love interacting with the kids at school and how much I love our school, despite its flaws.
I'll save my 'panties in a twist' energy for the election stuff. I'll be watching the debate tonight and most likely burning up Twitter with my fellow political junkies. ;)
On the personal side, the best prescription is looking at the moon...marveling at nature...feeling grateful for all of you...and enjoying a good laugh. And to that end, I present to you my favorite comic, Brian Regan. Here's "I walked on the moon." Happy Thursday!
Saturday afternoon I went for a bike ride. My first stop was at a horse pasture on campus. It's literally a block or two from I-80, but when I go there (it's one of my favorite places here), I feel like I'm in the country. Those daffodils were growing near there. I love The Eggheads--Robert Arneson sculptures that dot the campus. You can read more about them here. I feel fortunate to live just a few blocks from the eastern edge of the UC Davis campus, since it's a great place to bike...not to mention a lovely place. That pond is on the western side of the UC Davis Arboretum.
I met a friend for coffee yesterday afternoon. She and her family moved here from Chicago last summer and, like me, she's had a hard time adjusting to this place. Davis is portrayed as a very liberal and progressive place (probably considered one of the most liberal towns in the country), but scratch the surface and you'll find that it's not all that progressive. And it's certainly not very diverse. Yet another reason to be grateful for the university and the culture and diversity its presence brings to our town. And yet another reason to feel grateful for the tribe I have here. ;)
I'm off work today for the holiday and plan to spend a good chunk of it offline and just relaxing. Happy Monday!
Last week I was a bit off in my photo-a-day efforts. Between accidentally deleting (on my camera) several sunset and moon shots...spending all my energy shooting school activities on Thursday (and I keep those off my blog)...and two days flat out forgetting (in all the craziness) to even shoot a daily photo...well, let's just say I'm glad I'm doing this only for myself and not playing by anyone else's rules. Here's a sample of what my week looked like with just a tiny bit of 'cheating'...
Monday - I really shot this the day before (on Sunday afternoon). I was getting out of the truck at a strip mall on the northern edge of town when I suddenly noticed this barn across the road in the distance. I do love the zoom on my new camera.
Tuesday - You already know we had In-n-Out on Super Tuesday. :)
Thursday - This is to replace the pretty sunset photos I had taken. It was sunny last week and it began to feel like Spring was on her way. (I took a lot of photos on Thursday for two school events.)
Saturday - You'll have to settle for this cheesy, free souvenir photo from the golf tournament (with Jeffrey's closed eyes).
Although I was late for all of the prompts, I did write three poems yesterday for Sunday Scribblings (2/3 prompt was "foul" and 2/10 prompt was "fridge space") and Writers Island (2/4 prompt was "magic"). The poems are here: foul, fridge space and do you believe?
And now, I'm going to spend my holiday day off seeing if I can get caught up a tiny bit. ;) Happy Monday!
Where my energy has gone over the past week...
- forgetting that creativity even exists (except in a few random moments)
- feeling really stressed out about how much I have to do at work in the coming weeks and how much I'll have to rush to meet the deadlines
- spending a lot of time with family since my folks were visiting most of the week
- hauling 5 loads of laundry to the laundromat in the rain
- not sleeping enough
- forgetting to drink water
- spending a lot of time following the election (although I'm not going to feel bad about this since this is truly a history-making time)
- forgetting to buy shampoo
- running out of bottled water at home (we don't drink tap)
- feeling like I spent most of the week 'pedal to the metal'
I'm spending my Sunday winding down...since I have to really gear up the minute I hit work Monday morning. The sun's out and I'm just going with the flow. I'm not going to try to 'accomplish' anything today (although I might get around to putting away the laundry.) Jeffrey was gone all day Saturday at a recording session in Marin County and he's gone till late afternoon today doing his regular Sunday gig. Here's a photo recap of last week...
It's burning up the internet, but just in case you haven't seen Will.I.Am's new song and video for Barack, check it out...
Okay, I'm back. See, told ya it wouldn't be long. I just needed the 3-day weekend to kind of chill. I don't have any impressive stories about creative things I did over the past few days. I just needed to not think about having to come up with a blog post. To enjoy my quiet, solo time at home...and I did.
I've been keeping up the with 'photo a day' thing, but I haven't been writing much poetry. I decided over this holiday weekend that I'd like to write at least two poems a week in 2008. That's 104 poems for the year. That sounds like a lot, but two a week sounds easy-peasy. I'd only written three so far this year, so I needed to write three more just to catch me up through last week. I did that this morning (after watching the Oscar noms being announced live at Oscars.com). In order, they're here and here and here.
They're all sort of about the same thing, I guess, even though I paused in between writing each one to do something else and wasn't intentionally writing some sort of trilogy. The middle one is about my fear of setting goals. Writing it I realized my fear isn't so much about the action as it is about the negative connotation the word "goals" carries for me. So I've decided to use "steps" instead (as I wrote in the poem). Here are two steps for me in 2008:
- ~ take at least 1 photo each day
- ~ write at least 2 poems each week
And that, my friends, is all I've got today. Happy Tuesday! (I started to write "Happy Monday" and then realized with glee...ooooh, only 4 days of work this week...yay!) :)
THANK YOU for all of your birthday wishes and comments. I'm a bit overwhelmed by them...because as I read them, a part of me wondered: what on earth did I do to earn such love and support?!
When I was younger, I used to stress out like you wouldn't believe over my birthday. Back when I drank (hello, insanity, my old friend) I used to plan my own birthday gatherings--sometimes hosting a party, sometimes getting together with friends to go out to dinner, whatever. And although I had some fun moments, I truly never really had a good time. You can guess why, right? Because I was trying to make my birthday perfect. God, I was an idiot. So I always spent my party time worrying and stressed out over trying to make it--and everyone around me--be whatever I had concocted in my head would constitute the perfect gathering. Somewhere along the way I had convinced myself (and done a good job of it) that if I could just once have a perfect birthday, my life would somehow magically transform overnight and become perfect. Mind you, I didn't waste my time actually thinking through whether or not this seemed remotely likely, possible or viable--I just thought it would happen by magic. It took me awhile, but I finally figured out that the magic isn't in the imagined perfection...it's in the LETTING GO.
Nowadays, I don't plan anything for my birthday. We didn't even know until 4:00 that we'd postpone having our family dinner--we had tentatively thought we might have a birthday dinner without my brother. He's missed every one of my birthdays since we came back to the States because he hosts a golf tournament in Mesquite, NV during this week. The first year I thought: wha...WHAT?! You're not going to be here for my birthday?! That was the old perfect demon talking. Then sanity took over and I realized: oh, okay, no biggie--we'll just get together another night and I can prolong my birthday celebration. (Sanity is so much more fun to hang out with than insanity.) So now I don't plan anything...I just let the day unfold...
Linda said she wanted details on the birthday cake Jeffrey made for me. I hope she wasn't expecting anything too elaborate. ;) Bless his heart, there it is in the upper left corner. (I don't know why the time on the coffee-maker is wrong...he must have unplugged it at some point...because I shot that about 5 am.) Then there was brie and a baguette (in addition to whatever each of us was eating for lunch) and another chocolate cake (and coffee ice cream, my fave) at work. The gift was from Carolyn and I just had to snap a photo of it before I unwrapped it because she always wraps her gifts so beautifully. It's three fabulous hurricane candles for our front porch now that we've redone the yard. Our Advanced Choir always comes into the office to sing "Happy Birthday" when one of us is celebrating one, so that was a treat yesterday...not to mention that the Choir Director brought cookies with her. And dinner was at Thai Nakorn, our favorite Thai place a few blocks from home. It's owned by the family of a student at my school (the mother is just a delight.) Notice my Thai iced tea...LOVE.
My Dad, never the king of subtlety, had already let the cat out of the bag that they didn't know what to get me (and I was no help at all--when my stepmother asked what I wanted for my birthday, I think my response was, "....uh....uh....I don't know...") so had sent me a check instead. Their cards (because it's his tradition to always give two*...and lest you think he sends my stepmother to the card store...oh no, my Dad is hugely sentimental and spends time in the card aisle himself picking out just the right ones) arrived yesterday along with a (very generous) check. (*This is a tradition Jeffrey adopted from my Dad years ago. So each year from each of them I get a sentimental card and a funny one.)
And there was something else in the mail yesterday...something I'd forgotten about... When I wrote my post about LEAP! being my theme word for 2008, I said that re the Creative Every Day project for the year, I'd told Leah that two things I really wanted to pursue this year were photography and poetry. I can't even begin to tell you how hard that was to say that 'out loud.' All those old voices came up... Who the hell are YOU?...What the hell makes you think anyone wants to see what YOU'VE photographed or written?...Have you not looked around the blogosphere?...Do you not understand that there are TONS more people out there more talented than you?...For god's sake, you don't even own an appropriate camera!... You know, the whole angelic choir. Cue the harp music...more like harpie music. And the thought that someone might pay me for anything I create. Let's not even go there... But I will tell you this: A couple of weeks ago, I said to myself--mind you, I didn't write it in a journal...I didn't post about it...I didn't even dare (yet) to write it on a slip of paper and put it in my God box--but I said to myself: this year, I'd like to be paid for my photography. And then the harpies got so loud that I had to quickly change the channel in my head. So imagine how I gasped for a moment when I opened our mailbox yesterday to find sitting next to my Dad's cards, an envelope from Ploughshares Fund. A couple of months ago, I got a Flickr mail from their Communications Director asking if they could use one of my photos in their annual report. She said they would, of course, give me photo credit and that they could offer a small payment. I just went back to look and that email arrived on Halloween. I'd forgotten about it! Sure enough, they used one of my candlelight photos (twice) of the Youth for Hope candlelight vigil in our downtown park on New Year's Eve 2006 (the one that Jeffrey and I helped to create)...and sent me a check...
I've had photos used online (with my permission) a few times, but this is the first time I've been paid for the use of a photo. And I can't tell you how happy it makes me that it's for an organization like the Ploughshares Fund and for a photo of a project that was so inspiring and for which I was so grateful to be a part of. 'Swords to ploughshares' is the idea of converting weapons over to peaceful applications. And two things really struck me yesterday along those lines. One is that we CAN make peace in this world if we want to. We live in such fear-mongering times that it can be hard not to get sucked up into that vortex. And the second thing that really struck me is that peace begins at home. And it's no accident that I put that "Choose peace" mantra on one side of my God box. I had such a great day yesterday, and I truly believe it's because I started my day by making that gratitude list (in the previous post). Compare that to the weird, off day I had on Monday where I started out the day by bitching and moaning about having to go back to work. So I'm going to make a conscious effort to adopt an ATTITUDE OF GRATITUDE this year. As the no-complaints challenge has shown me, I spend way too much time complaining and not nearly enough being thankful. So 10 things I'm grateful for on this 10th day of January...(I'm not going to post a gratitude list every day, but I just feel so blessed after that incredible day I had yesterday that I can't not do one today)...
1) declaring intentions and having them manifest
2) peace
3) photography
4) the enormous love that comes my way
5) more chocolate cake ;)
6) the willingness to learn from my (sometimes embarrassingly obvious) mistakes
7) family
8) friends (all of you)
9) coffee gift cards (since we're out at home) ;)
10) and, yes, those holiday lights on the bookshelves
"one step forward and a-back you go..."
"sometimes you're the windshield...sometimes you're the bug..."
"sometimes you're the Louisville slugger...sometimes you're the ball..."
"sometimes it all comes together...sometimes you gonna lose it all..."
Forgive Mark Knoepfler...for he knows not what fashion sins he committeth (wearing this headband)...
This song seems like an appropriate description of my first day back at work... ;)
And here I am shooting one of my favorite ways--blindly through the windshield or driver's side window. Although I suppose it's not great to be using the word "blindly" to describe an activity one's undertaking while driving... I don't care if anyone else likes these sorts of photos--I love them. I love the element of surprise--looking at them later to see what, if anything, I've captured.
I walked in...dumped my bag...flipped on my computer...hung my calendar...checked my voicemail...and got ready to check (work) email... No network connection. Tried to access the student database. Nope, no connection. Hmmm...they must have worked on the servers over the break and we're just not back up yet. I wandered toward the back of the office as we all checked in with each other, "How was your break?"...etc. The principal and I started talking politics (she knows I've been rooting for Obama all year). We chatted for awhile and then I went back to my desk to see if we were online yet. Rebooted. Nope, still no connection. Well, damn. Until it slowly dawned on me that everyone else in the office seemed to be working on their computers. Turns out it was just me! I started rooting around behind my desk, checking cables and connections and doing that unplug/replug thing we sometimes do just to see if it magically fixes things (it didn't). Finally I called Technology. The receptionist told me one of our tech guys would call me back, and he did a short while later. He had me try a few things over the phone. No go--we got an error message that I was disconnected from a server. He was mystified why it was only affecting me, so said he'd come out. He did--about 90 minutes later. And I could really do almost nothing without my computer, but during that time I had three families come in to enroll (a common occurrence after Winter break even though it's not semester break). He finally showed up. He started rooting around behind my desk, but didn't find anything...until he went to the back of the office to check on the server box (up next to the ceiling in a black box with a smoky black glass window)...the server was down! The server was DOWN...and yet everyone else had been able to connect to the network. Explain that one! (We were completely baffled.) I should really be more careful with my intentions. See, I said I didn't want to work...and the server provided me with the opportunity. But since it had only affected me, I knew in that moment that I wasn't the windshield...I was really...the bug. ;)
Since I've snapped quite a few shots out of the windshield or side windows, I made a Flickr set of them here.
Oh yeah, and just as we (staff) were getting ready to eat lunch (just as the kids had gotten settled in their 6th period classrooms after their lunch period)...the fire alarm went off. (No fire, fortunately.) Welcome back! :)