Saturday, November 25, 2000
Ever wonder what the rest of the world thinks about our election process? Take a peek at what the BBC has to say about it all.
I said good-bye to my cat again this morning as we headed down the road again. (she hates it when i put clothes in bags and tries to distract me or climb in my way) Ciro and i rolled along down to Montgomery, AL. We didn't see much of it though, it was dark when we got here and pouring down rain. We did take a trip to a bookstore though to pick up
Skinny Legs and All to read during our long drive to Ros~something texas tomorrow. Gee, a book that takes an amused look at middle eastern politics and the turn of the millenium just seemed appropriate right now. That's right, only mere 37 days now left in this millenium. Strange there doesn't seem to be as much to-do about the turn of the millenium as there was over y2k. I guess people are just too busy watching presidential candidates fight legal battles over dimples in ballots to worry about old prophecies. That's fine by me. Although, i've notices that my christmas travel plans seem more chaotic this year than last year, but maybe that's just me.
Anyway, we plan to take a break from our new book and driving tomorrow to have lunch in New Orleans at our favorite oyster spot, the Acme Oyster House. If we're lucky we might even catch up with a long lost poet pal of ours. But, i have a feeling that even with his help we'd never beat the current record there of 32 dozen oysters in less than 4 hours. I'd be happy with 1/2 a dozen. ~w
wendi's 2:40 AM ravings
Friday, November 24, 2000
Happy Thanksgiving! Oh, it's over. That must be why i feel stuffed and nostalgic. Holiday gatherings have a way of making me think about time. So much changes in the course of a year from one stuffing to the next. Also, after being so alone for so long it's quite an overdose to be in a houseful of friends. Fortunately for me, when i run out of conversation i make a great toy for a couple of 4 year olds. Let's see, i was "melted" by carrot man and his side kick "heat miser," attacked by "lions" and then "bees," and otherwised toyed with for most of the evening. Probably partly my own fault for making goofy faces and sounds when poked, prodded, and carrot wangled. Although, i was also educated on witches (good witches wear white clothes, bad ones wear black), fairies (the snow fairy can be made real only on christmas by building a fairy out of snow and saying the magic words), and informed that basically the whole world is magic. Ah, to be 4 years old again and know so much...
But all good things must come to an end. So, even though allan warned me to watch out for all the, um, cars as i was backing out, i managed to slide into the bumper of his dad's car. Fortunately, his car seems to be fine. Fortunately, i wasn't driving a hertz car. Fortunately, i was going slow. But, my front fender now has a dent in it. It's not bad, just...dented. Figures i would go and ding it up before i'd even had it a year. Ugh! I think i better keep my eyes open, i can't seem to do anything lately without beating up on myself or those closest to me. I should wear a warning sign "accident waiting to happen" just to be fair to folks who might stumble in my way.
And, what better way to end an evening of stuffing yourself silly on the American Dream than watching the bloody hollywood movie Gladiator about two men struggling for what they thought was the "right" thing for Rome's government? Hey, why don't we put Bush and Gore in a coliseum with swords and see what happens? This is actually a true test of our government structure to see if it can withstand divided public opinion and government officials full of hubris. After all, that's what killed off the ancient democracies.
On that note, i think i'll browse over to check on when the new Harry Potter book will come out and see if i can find something cheery to dream about. ~w
wendi's 3:59 AM ravings
Thursday, November 23, 2000
I had a day off at HOME!! So what did i do? I ran around town doing errands. I did get some quality lounging time in the morning though, went through mail and all that good stuff. Of course now i have paper cuts from opening too many junk mail envelopes that might have been something important. The pile is much smaller when you weed out all the garbage. I even had the chance to visit with friends this evening whose names were not ciro. Not that i mind hanging out with ciro, he's my best friend, but he didn't want to hang out and i did and it was nice to have other people to talk to. We even watched a video, Mononoke Hime. Actually, i was the only one who stayed awake during the whole thing, but maybe that was because i really enjoyed it. Now it is a little slow in some parts, and a little didactic sounding in others, but the animation and plot line are overall excellent. We picked it up on a whim and though it isn't quite Akira, i would rank it pretty high.
Other than that, i finished updating the chapbooks online and uploaded a new version of Crossing Bridges. A completely self-indulgent practice, but hey, nobody's teaching me how to write good clean html so i have to practice on something to figure it out. The more i learn, the more annoying microsoft frontpage becomes with all it's "corrections" and "additions" to the source code, but i keep forgetting to hunt down a good basic html editor that is a little more powerful than notepad (which is what i revert to when frontpage is stupid). Don't worry, i'll get out of this techno geek mode when i drop everything and run away to join the circus. Oh wait, i think i've already done that...dang it didn't stop me.~w
wendi's 3:47 AM ravings
Wednesday, November 22, 2000
I just read the Florida Supreme Court Ruling on whether the recounts will count. It's a little long and dry, but very thorough. I found it interesting to see how something like that comes together after having seen on TV the actual hearing.~w
wendi's 9:21 AM ravings
We made it to Asheville! There is some snow still on the ground, but the roads were bare and drive. Boy the cops were out in full force catching holiday travelers. I think ciro counted 6 or 7 on our side of the interstate just between Memphis and Nashville. So it was a long (slow) drive. We made it though, and my cat has been following me around the house ever since. Fortunately she has given up typing and is now simply curled up next to me in a little purr ball. Aw, so cute.
Earlier today we did 5 classroom workshops with kids. I was having a blast, though i think i got a little carried away with the kids because a couple of teachers apologized for the way their classes behaved and i thought they were rowdy, but doing exactly what i wanted them to do. (boy, that was a long sentence, good thing i don't teach english grammar) I mean it's poetry after all, and in the 4th and 5th grade it's all about being crazy and silly before they expain the whole birds and bees things just in time for the hormones to start messing with their brains. That's certainly a time i would be happy never to face again. Suddenly image mattered and who was friends with who was important and it never made much sense to me.
Yikes my eyelids are getting heavy. That's a switch! Well i'd better heed the call and find sleep soon.~w
wendi's 1:45 AM ravings
Tuesday, November 21, 2000
The shows this morning flew by so fast i hardly had time to wake up before they were over. The ran smooth as silk and the kids were super. Forest came and checked out our show since he's done until after thanksgiving and happens to live nearby. I asked a teacher what the local lunch spot was and she directed us to the Oasis Grill. Now, the Oasis is not the place to order chicken fried steak. Ciro was highly disappointed when they brought out a small lump of hamburger covered in brown gravy. Not what he was expecting. However, the "Oasis Salad" was quite the pile of lettuce, cucumbers, radishes, carrots, cheese, shrimp, ham, and barbeque pork. I think that just made ciro feel worse about his lump of steak. I'm saving the half i couldn't eat for lunch tomorrow. (I hope it survives, i've never been good at figuring out what you can and can't eat leftover. It is in a fridge though.) So, if you're ever in Olive Branch, MS eat at the Oasis, but avoid the steak.
I played with my phone today...hehe. Lots of fun buttons and noises and it works. My dad was the first to call me on it (figures since he was the first one to get the number), but he called while i was pumping gas and ciro answered. My dear friend Darlene was the first to use the voicemail (i hadn't even thought to set it up yet, but it worked) since i was on the phone and didn't figure out the call waiting in time. Actually, i really dislike call waiting, or as my step-dad calls it "call interrupt." Totally geeky, i know, but it's a new toy. It was a lot more fun than the rest of the phone time i spent finding hotels for next week and getting the low down on our crazy 4 show a day schedule next week. It also gave me something to do with all the excess energy that i had today that seemed to do nothing more than annoy ciro (he wasn't mad at me, just frustrated that i seemed to keep finishing sentences for him, sometimes inaccurately). Still, it's pretty crazy to find joy in playing with a phone.
What else? My creative juices seem to be at an impasse. I wrote a song back in August, but i've been pretty bland since. I just haven't been sparked into action lately. Could be i'm spending too much energy thinking about web pages and cell phones, and other techno distractions. I'll have to sit myself down with pen and paper again soon to see if i can get anything to leak out. For now, i'll just try to sleep and come up with some cool dreams.~w
wendi's 3:04 AM ravings
Monday, November 20, 2000
AHHHH! I succumbed to techno geek consumerism and bought a cell phone cuz it was on sale for $80 off today. It was a bargain i couldn't refuse since i've been lusting after a phone ever since ciro got one. I found that i've missed getting calls from friends and family every now and then just to say hello. But hey, it's the wave of the future right? You can slap me upside the head if you catch me talking on it while eating in a restaurant or letting it ring in a theatre though. There are some places where phones just don't belong. Like, while you're being interviewed on TV. I swear i heard more than one cell phone ring when folks were gabbing about the election in Florida last week. TACKY! But, this one at least has a vibrate feature so i don't have to listen to an annoying beeping sound. So, now i just have to activate it. I'm waiting till tomorrow though. Too much excitement already for one day. It's scary to realize that i've allowed myself to make a splurge when i've been so careful with my money the last few months. It was a concession though. I've been trying to justify spending money on a Handspring Visor and just didn't see that as a reasonable expense. This is quite a bit cheaper, and while it doesn't do as many cool things, it's still a great little toy. So happy early birthday/christmas to me! heehee
In other news, we made it down the road to Olive Branch, MS today for our last two shows before the Thanksgiving break. Actually it will be a brief break since we have to be down in La Joya, TX the following monday, but i'll get to go home and visit my cat for a couple of days. It's kinda strange that "the place where my cat lives" defines home, but it's true. These hotel rooms here are really cushy though, a gift from the school. It's nice to have a cozy pad to relax in when it's chilly outside. I'm just hoping the snow in Asheville doesn't cause us problems when we drive there on tuesday. Well this is early for me, but i must call it a day since tomorrow the alarm will ring at 5:15am. ~w
wendi's 12:10 AM ravings
Sunday, November 19, 2000
After sitting in one town for 2 weeks i'm out of practice sitting in a car for 7 hours. Dang, but today's drive seemed long! I tried reading some of The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett out loud, but it was putting ciro to sleep after a while so i had to stop. Too many strange names and places to keep track of in the beginning. So, we babbled about life and elections and watched the scenery pass us by. What did we talk about? I can't quite remember. I know that at one point we were singing "on the road again" after catching a blip on a passing station of someone singing a satire of it that changed the lyrics to "the life i love is making money with my friends." At another point we were singing "don't go back to rockville" after passing a town called rockwall or something of the sort. The sky today was a "hazy shade of winter" so that song popped into my head for a while too, but ciro didn't recognize it so it died out.
We were sore and tired from sitting in the car by the time we got to Memphis so we ditched the idea of trying to track down stray poets. Instead we just called up Forest who was home from his leg of the Poetry Alive tour and went to dinner with him and traded "war stories." You know those "i can't believe the time we" and "the most amazing moment was" and all that stuff that makes no sense to normal sane people who live their lives in one town. Like waking up and panicking cuz you can't remember what town you're in and when you were supposed to wake up and what the room might look like once the lights are on. (Okay, we didn't actually talk about all that, it's just how i felt when ciro called and woke me up this morning asking if i was ready to check out.) We did trade "favorite moments" from the tour. All the warm fuzzy memories of the children you can never forget. Well except that one of Sammy smashing Andre into the glass cover of the fire extinguisher 30 seconds after i turn 75 kids loose to work on their poems for the show. That one's not so warm and fuzzy, but hey, it was a football poem and they were practicing, and Andre was back after receiving bandaids from the school nurse. But, like Forest picking a kid to be his "uncle" who drives the car and having the principal lean over to him to whisper "you know he's retarded don't you?" Forest ignores the comment and brings the kid up anyway to the cheers of the audience and the boy "drives" better than most people with driver's licenses. So, for one day that kid was a star and strutted off stage in the glow of his adoring classmates. Or, the deaf kid who i picked for my "cousin" that on cue says "hey y'all" loud and clear enough for the whole audience to hear. Or, ciro working with a boy and girl who were arguing over a poem called "Cambodian's Lament" by Chet Chia and helping them to understand that the poem was about both of them even though her parent's were from Cambodia and his parents were from Alabama or Mississippi or something but their ancestors were from somewhere in Africa. Or the amazing kid, who's name i never got, at Johnston Elem in Abilene that was wearing a bright orange shirt that caught my eye who on stage became the best Jabberwocky i've ever seen. (Though there's a young man in Brewton, AL that remains the best Hero for that poem.) The list goes on and on, but i can never remember them all at once. The time seems to fly by and they start to all blend into this huge watercolor painting i call my life. Wasn't it just yesterday that ciro and forest and i were sitting in a hotel room in asheville, nc? No, that was months ago now.
Anyway, it's late and i should try to catch some zzzzzs.~w
wendi's 4:43 AM ravings
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