First Iris of Spring

 Iris season has officially begun in our back yard.

Yay!

Waiting for Irises

I think this year is going to be a low-iris year.    They haven't bloomed yet, but they're very close.  Then again, I could be wrong.  Looking back at previous posts, the iris typically open around the beginning of May.  Then we have two weeks of them.

Gym, Writing, and Pollen

Tuesday night's writing session was marginal.  I've got two shorts that are awaiting critique, so I'm sort of focused on those.  I did a review of a Mary Stewart pastiche and made some minor edits.  It's not too bad, and I like the writing in it, but the character is distant--part of this is the first-person narration, and I need to go back and look at the narrator's and the remembered narrator's character and see how I might increase the stakes and tension.  After that, I did some free-form writing, and ended up writing a raunchy farce (with one of the characters sounding like Edwina from "Absolutely Fabulous").   I suppose the dialog is okay; I'm noticing a trend of writing talking-heads stories.  One earlier was more a "bitching heads" story, and I suppose the farce attempt would be "vapid heads." 

Afterwords, I met up with the Wordos and we had an interesting discussion of artificial intelligence. 

On the gym front, I went to the gym Wednesday.  Did the standard routine.  Wednesday was a weird schedule day, it seemed like I was running five minutes late for everything and that everyone else's schedule was off, too.  This resulted in many instances of someone sitting down at the same workout station five seconds before I wanted it.

I'm not sure what is blooming, but it's making my nose run and my eyes goopy in the morning.  I think it's also making me a little tired, but that might be residual sugar crashes from Easter.  Mark got an air filter for our bedroom, which supposedly filters pollen, so I'm not sure if I would be worse if we didn't have it or not. 

April Flowers

Managed to go to the gym Monday.  I did the regular routine, but I felt fatigued for most of it.  I blame Sunday's sugar-fest.  Oddly, when I stepped on the scale at the end of my workout, I'd gotten down to a weight of 171 (down from 174 on Friday).  I think this time around I'll take the scale's lies. 

I thought maybe I might have more bird dreams after Sunday's crow visitation, but I don't remember any dreams at all -- there's one hovering just beyond the curtain of recall, but it's not coming forward into the spotlight.
 

Spring is, I think, a little late this year.  April has been cooler than I remember, and the blooms are only just now beginning to appear.  Or at least it seems that way.  I will have to go back to previous year's posts and see what the azalea was doing and when. 






At least various bulbs are flowering.  Mark got some tulips and planted them in a planter box so they would actually flower instead of looking like some blighted Frankenstein experiment, which is what usually happens when he plants them straight into the ground.

Our neighbor has some lovely yellow tulips that like her yard's soil, as she had to divide and spread them out last fall to prevent them from over crowding. 

Easter Auguary

Easter Sunday, as the assembled family was eating hors d'oeuvres out on the back deck,...

a crow flew overhead, alighted on the telephone pole serving our house,

... and began eating a red striped garter snake.

 A second crow joined it ...

and received strips of the disemboweled snake from the first crow's beak to its own.









Because the birds were eating a snake on top of a telephone pole, the whole thing reminded me of a painting by Cristóbal de Villalpando, "Moses and the Brazen Serpent and the Transfiguration of Jesus."  The Brazen Serpent is from the Book of Numbers.  (There's a better picture of it at the MET, here: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/719315 )

• https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/719315
• 
  

And now, of course, I'm wanting to write a story with a title like "Transubstantiation of the Serpent," or "Communion of Crows," or start working on a Brazen Serpent for a Halloween Front Lawn Diorama.

Easter Tins

Easter Sunday we hosted my family at our house (this required a lot of cleaning...mostly of craft supplies....okay, and the bathroom.). 

The kids had a Easter egg hunt, and we ate a lot of good food.  Mark did a lot of pre-event prep, which paid off.

For place settings, everyone got an Altoids Tin Easter Tableau (mostly featuring bunnies). 

Mark and The Child made a chocolate cloud cake, and decorated the top with chocolate eggs and a nest made out of chocolate branches (I think Mark took a picture...). 

My folks left mid-afternoon, and my sister's family stayed and visited for a few hours longer.

My niece really really wanted to take her bunny tin apart because she was convinced there was something hidden behind the purple cut-out square trellis the brown bunny sat in front of.  I don't know if she was expecting to find money, or a secret message, or candy, or something else.

The full Altoids Bunny Tins set is here:  https://photos.app.goo.gl/Jk1appfouMUMvMPJ8 

Easter Craft

Follow! But! follow only if ye be men of valor, for the entrance to this cave is guarded by a creature so foul, so cruel that no man yet has fought with it and lived! Bones of four fifty men lie strewn about its lair. So, brave knights, if you do doubt your courage or your strength, come no further, for death awaits you all with nasty big pointy teeth.

Gym Bunnies

The last few days I've been working on Easter Craft; unfortunately, the paper I've been using in the paper cutter hasn't been the best--either too thick or too fibrous--and the cutter-plotter hasn't always produced the best cutouts.   And then there's some design critique:  "How come that bunny is in jail?" Mark asked of one product.  "John," The Child said, "that bunny is staring at me with devil eyes."   Ah well, Easter has got to be one of the roughest holidays.

On the gym front:  went Wednesday and did the usual routine.  I was particularly focused during the cable core curl on engaging my trapezoids, engaging my abdominals, keeping a wide stance, and keeping my hands at shoulder level as I slowly twisted away from the cable-machine and forced breath out of my body.  My masseuse wandered by and complimented me on my form.  I smiled and said, "thanks," instead of sharing the sublimely profane and intimate image pulsing through my fibre with each twist against the cable.  

(Yes.  I still remind myself--with an intensity like a Pre-Raphaelite Enchantress Invoking--that my husband Pointed and Laughed at my pre-gym pectorals and belly flab.  Like Circe preparing a feast, or Daedalus stacking stones for the Minotaur's Labyrinth, I sculpt the biceps, pectorals, and trapezoids he now loves.  It usually isn't a problem unless a combination of endorphins, imagery, or gym music strikes me as absurdly hysterical and I have to laugh maniacally.)   

My back felt wonderful after the standing triceps cable extension. 

Writing Update

Went writing Tuesday night.  Reviewed a short story (love spell, what could go wrong?) and made line edits on paper that need to be transcribed.  Sometimes working with paper works better for me than the screen when I'm editing, and editing on the mobile can be frustrating without a mouse to select offending words.  Moved on to a flash piece (bitching heads), which I didn't see happening, and as long as I keep things under 1000 words, I think it will work. 

The writing spot wasn't so good this time around; the weekly trivia event was louder than in previous weeks (I'm not quite sure why, but the venue had moved to the main bar from the back bar) -- it wasn't something putting on headphones didn't fix (and I write there with headphones on, anyway).  And then I gave a burger a try. It had (I think) too much Cajun spice (or something) on it and I had heartburn all night.  They did re-do the fries plain.  I want to like their food, but it appears (after a night on the couch with heartburn) I shouldn't eat there.

Bird God Dream

It's become clear to me that I need to get up around 5 or 5:30 if I want regular time to write.  Not that I'm going to give up Tuesday Writing Night or anything, but between the Day Jobbe, and Shuttling the Child, and other things, I'm don't have consistent Butt-In-Chair-Hands-On-Keyboard.  What I've found in the past is that it's easier to get up at 5 during the light half of the year; usually in November it becomes harder.

On the dream front... the other morning I dreamed I was traveling by train, and somehow the narrative became 1930's white European explorers in South America (possibly Deepest, Darkest Peru).  A group of us discovered a (fairly stereotypical Hollywood) village with grass-thatched huts and Copper-Age natives in homespun vines and cured hides -- somewhere between Star Trek Original Series natives and Gilligan's Island natives. 

Earlier in our travels, we had found a 18 inch or so high stone statue of a god.  It had a kind of helmet or half-mask on it, which covered the right side of its face.  I want to say the helmet-mask was made of feathers, but it might have been metal feathers with a beak.  A headman and what I assume were village elders met us.  I think we were trying to negotiate a trade -- there were five us of and we stood in a line in front of the elders.   We tilted the god's helmet-mask back (it rotated up along the ears) and revealed its smooth white featureless face (it waking life it resembled one of those ancient Cyclopean statues that are almost Art Deco).

Upon seeing the featureless face of the god revealed, the headman recited some ritual poetry along the lines, "As you have touched your hidden self / so must we seek our secret (or sacred?) selves."  Only longer, and much more meaningful.  I think there was supposed to be an esoteric meaning to "touching your secret self" but... after this recitation, the dream became extremely lascivious, and revealing the bird god's face was the signal for the natives to begin a heterosexual orgy (which I think was supposed to be spiritual, but from the dream POV as a native man wasn't).  

I'm not sure what would make me have a native orgy dream... although it does remind me a bit of Freud's dream of  Egyptian Birds with its innuendo word-play.

Weekend Cleaning

Saturday was a deep cleaning day.  Starting Friday night, I took everything out of the kitchen and then cleaned underneath it.  And cleaned the stove.   Saturday Mark, The Child, and I tackled the rest of the kitchen (I'd stopped around 10-something because I was tired an everyone else had gone to bed) and the living room.  It's surprising how much dust gets behind end-tables and couches and things.  Probably the most dramatic thing we did (aside from evicting the dust bunnies from inside the computer CPU cooling radiators) was move the sofa back into the living room and the table back into the kitchen nook.   I prefer the sofa in the living room because it makes the room seem larger, and also it's more convenient to cary meals a shorter distance.  Mark professed a preference for the sofa in the kitchen nook because it gets more light and there's more interesting things to see in our backyard. 

Went to the gym Saturday afternoon.  Did my usual routine.  I'm finding that my back really likes the sanding cable triceps extension. 

Sunday afternoon was Game Day with some friends (The Child and I played a spy game and another Arthurian-based game called, I think, Avalon).   In the evening I went to a violin-loop artist's show, which was fun.... although because it was in a bar and started at 8PM, I went by myself.

Gym and Writing

I went to the gym Monday and eased into standing rows.  I used 10 lb weights the first few standing dumbbell sets, and felt good enough to go up to the regular 20 lb for the last set.  Things seemed to be going well, so I went straight into the 45 lb barbell weights during the barbell press/row set.  And it felt really great. 

The rest of the week will be interesting -- little errands here and there are interfering with my regular gym schedule.


Tuesday night was writing night.  I worked a little here and there on three separate short story manuscripts.  One is a talking heads flash piece--actually I should say bitching heads piece:  the tone wants to be something clever by Noël Coward and is failing.   The second is a short harvest festival romance story, which is mostly finished.  The third is short story about a magic camera.  I need to sit down with all three and go paragraph-by-paragraph to clarify and amp up the stakes.   My characters tend to be interior, and their conflicts aren't always clear right away.

The local gay bar, and more importantly the quiet little lounge they have in back, was busy this week.  I don't know if there was some sort of event going on down town or a concert or something -- traffic was busy, and there were lots of new faces in the front bar.   In terms of a good quiet place to write, it's perfect; the only fly in the ointment is that they put too much pepper for my tastes on all of their food (even the salad).

It continues to be raining one moment, sunny the next here. 

April 2019 Flood

 According to the weather service, Eugene got 3.77 inches of rain over the last 48 hours.  This appears to have been typical up and down the Willamette Valley, and, accordingly, the river has flooded.

Mark and I went down to Alton Baker Park and I took some photos.

 The Eugene Park System features a scale model of the solar system.  The sun and the planets are at scale sizes and distances.  Mercury and Venus are the size of BB's, and their stands were almost submerged.  Here's the sun.  I want to say it's about five feet high.

 Probably the most photographed sign in Eugene today.

The Willamette River.  Normally it's blue.  And narrower.

 The water fowl seemed a little agitated and confused.  We hoped that the geese hadn't had too many nests (with eggs) inundated.  Normally, the railing this goose is on comes up to my elbows.

 I'm trying to think where the spillway from the goose pond is.  It's around here under the water somewhere....

 The Peter DeFazio Pedestrian Bridge usually has it's pylons resting on dry land.

 There's usually a paved walkway under the bridge.

 And benches for folks to sit.

The water looked a lot deeper than it actually was.  Still, I don't think I'd want to wade through it.

Arts and Crafts Sunday

 For a while, I've been thinking about ways that I might convert an Altoids tin into a kind of reliquary or shrine or portable diptych.  Serendipitously, when I last visited my folks, I discovered my Mom had about five hundred of the things -- she gladly donated five to me (my Dad was probably sorry that she donated only five...).

 I did some Internet research on portable altars, and lots of folks sand down and use paint stripper to prep their tins for a repaint job.  I suppose I should see if anyone pounds out the embossed "Altoids" legend, but so far folks have just dealt with the paint -- except for the one woman who encased her tin in Sculpey clay.

 Since I wasn't planning on taking my piece anywhere particularly wet, I opted for a paper liner on the inside.  For extra credit, I could maybe papier-mâché the lid, but this was more of a concept piece than anything.

The most fussy steps were figuring out the sizes of the lid and the box, which are a tenth of an inch different, so I could cut out a paper liner for them.  The compass came in very handy crafting the curved corners.  In theory, now that I have the measurements, I could use InkScape to cut out the two liner papers... I do wonder, however, how much fiddling I'd have to do have the measurements accurately come out on the Silhouette plotter-cutter.  That's another project...

 I figured I do a moon on the lid, and cut out a dark sky liner.  It felt a little pedestrian, but looking through various scrap paper shapes I had left over from previous paper art projects, it seemed obligatory that the sun be on the other side.

 The proportions of the shapes were in scale.  I wasn't sure what to do with the sun, which seemed a little lonely.  So I added some hills.  Bending strips of curve-cut green paper gave the hills some dimensionality.

So I gave the moon some hills, too.  The trickiest part was placing the sun and the moon to avoid a pareidolic face. 

At first I felt "terribly arty," and absurdly pleased with my own cleverness.  And then I realized this particular Altoids Diptych is dangerously close to Country Cute.

Oh well.

What works best in this particular example is the way the hills pop out of the box and are on both sides of the hinge.  Some other things I might try to add different levels would be making some Mucha-esque arches (the kind adorned with a frame of circles) in front of a Sarah Bernhardt figure.  In some of the Internet examples, folks had strung small beads or charms along the inside; it might be fun to try to work in an LED.   And if I were feeling intensely clever, I might figure out how construct and install a pop-up sundial...

Back to the Gym

With the demise of G+, some of my blog functions have stopped.  I suppose this is a reminder that I should figure out an archive of the blog should Google and Blogger decide to fold or transform into some other kind of service.

On the gym front, my PT-person says that I'm mostly better, and that I can go back to doing some of my more twisty excersises.  I'm still doing rows on an inclined bench, which is awkward, and means I'm on one of the gym's two inclined benches for a long period.   I'll have to see if I can do some standing rows soon.  I'm mostly back to my regular routine, and now I have to actually go to the gym three times a week and ease in to my normal weights.

My dreams have seemed extra vivid lately.  On April First (Monday) I had a twist on the College Anxiety Dream:  it was the first day of classes and all of the students were coming into class and I realized that I hadn't prepared a syllabus.  (While I work for the UO English Department, I do not teach.)

In another dream, I was sleeping on the couch (currently in the kitchen nook), and I looked up, and sitting on the end table was a creature best described as a knee-high, black-furred, melon-headed, cat-monkey.  With red eyes.  As I stared at it, it disappeared. 

The closest picture I have of it is this bird... the eyes are right, and the color and shape of the head are, too.

Perhaps I should take the Hieronymus Bosch Bot out of my Twitter feed...

Russian Cello on KWAX

Scene:  In the car on the drive to school.  KWAX has begun playing a cello Prelude and Gavotte by a Russian Composer who isn't Tchaikovsky or Shostakovitch or Stravinsky.


Me:  "Oh dear.  Is this 'Someone's Dead' music, or 'Someone's Dying' music?

TC:  "Mark calls this 'Dying Swan' music."

Me:  "Oh, we're in a cave, or a cellar.  And it's dark, but it doesn't matter, because everything's meaningless.  (music changes to major chord)  "Oh! Oh, wait!  The swan's feeling better."

TC:  "'I'm not dead yet!' (music reverts to original gloomy chord)  Oh, there's been a relapse. 'I want to go for a walk! / You're not fooling anyone.'"

Me:  "Oh man, this is like Reed College Sophomore Love."

TC:  "Was Love at Reed really that bad?"

Me (thinks back to The Freshman Mistake and the Mandatory Sophomore Crisis and...) "Sch-yeah...."

(Prelude finishes; the second movement, a gavotte, begins)

TC:  "Oh!  It's Happy Dying Swan Music now."

Corvallis Semi-wildlife

A couple of days ago I visited my folks.  They've got a nesting pair of red-tailed hawks near by, which I managed to get a few furtive photographs of.  

I had more success with their dog.

And some jays.

And tulips.