Conservation of Ampersands--Keptin, she's gonna blow!

Okay, so I don't know how to rotate yet...

but I have a camera! 

I've imported the pictures that were stuck on the old camera, & the new ones, like this little guy, who will soon be a wire thing that will then have cool things like fruit hammocks attached.

& my friend Ellen Klages is coming tomorrow!

& a bunch of us are going to play poker!

& it's October the 5th, which means my boys have twenty-seventhed as of yesterday!

& I'm wayyyy over-quota on ampersands & (oops) exclamation points. (see my reserve! oops.)

Anyway, just want to Octoberate

& celebrate.

Blog alternative:

239. Do a little itty bit of one of your goals. (I took a walk around Circle Street to check "walk" off my list. Hey, it was better than no walk at all, & I've been very busy doing all sorts of cool & important stuff today. Do you have any idea how much energy it takes to generate so many ampersands? I didn't think so.)

Buckminster Fuller vs. the Dragonfly

After the Buckminster Fuller conference (actual title: ReViewing 4:Looking Forward at Buckminster Fuller's Legacy) at UNCA, I arranged a rendezvous, walked the maze, drove home, made Hamburger Helper, watched some Texas Hold'em (Poker Superstars Invitational, disc 1) & now am writing this to you.

I am willing to bet I am the only one from Buckyville who consumed Ultimate Cheeseburger Macaroni following the seminars on tensegrity & synergy & such. But it worked for me...

I have my eye on a camera, a Lumix. I'm going to decide by the end of next week or so, because I have an extra $5 (yay!) coupon from Best Buy. (Wow, does this post feel like product placement central. Don't you wonder who is paying me? Could it be Best Buy? Hamburger Helper? But no, it is the ghost of Buckminster Fuller. He is paying me in jitterbug polyhedrons, in translational rotational transformation.)

Or perhaps I am sponsored by this dragonfly...

September has been an amazing month. Organization. Creation. Great weather. Investment success. Cosmic visions. Sweet walks. & now, Bucky's buddies. What will October hold? Enough & a feast.

Blog alternative:
238. Pick a sponsor, corporate or otherwise. You can even make it a reverse sponsorship, where you sponsor a business or a tree or send a positive psychic message to someone else's baby. (How do you sponsor a tree? Give it a glass of water or tie a ribbon around a branch or the ever-popular hug.)

Queen Faraday's new daughter, Princess Whatchamacaller

Adieu, sweet princess glasses

Yesterday was the Tangerine Ball, a benefit for the Arts Council, which provides funding for art in the schools. I wore a dress that has splashes of tangerine & fuschia, with a couple scarves & a peach sari liner that Susan Paul bought me in India. Then, the piece de resistance, my Cracker Barrel tiara glasses that proclaim "Queen for a Day." You may recall that these very glasses inspired my alter ego, Queen Faraday. I even read a biography of Michael Faraday, who instantly became my new hero.

Last night, at Aloft, a new hotel downtown that used to have a fabulous martini (what were you thinking, Aloft, to take the muddled cucumber & sour apple martini off your menu?) a young woman (possibly named Melanie? Melody?) asked to buy them off my face. She was willing to give me $20 but I told her $10 was sufficient.

How could I sell those pivotal glasses, you ask? I am Queen Faraday. I need no glasses to prove it.

We were at Aloft--even though we already knew they had abandoned the beloved martini--because the Tangerine Ball had no seating. Zip. (Unless you were wearing glitter & lingerie & doing burlesque poses.) Derrick helped build the set--a very fine set--so he had a free ticket. Mine was essentially free, because--along with $10 from the new princess--I found $40 in the little seafoam green purse I chose to carry my accoutrements in. Woo hoo!

Anyway, a fun time was had. Princess glasses were sent on their new quest.

Blog alternative:
238. Give away some meaningful possession. Know that you still possess the meaning.

Blue Moon

Tonight is a blue moon, the second full moon in a month, a rare occasion. It is also my parents' 54th anniversary. They went out to Carter's Camp, Nye's only eating/drinking establishment. I wish them many more good years.

I'm taking (slight) advantage of my last opportunity to post in August. A lovely month it has been, full of creativity & growth.

So many things I've done & so many things I haven't. Grin. Isn't that the way of it? (Don't ask my son, Nick, that question. You will get an answer of things chosen & done, with a book written about the doing to boot.

Blog alternative:
237. What would you do, once in a blue moon? Come up with an idea or two. Maybe even do it.

Emperor of your own life

It is August twenty-oneth. Oops.

I mean, "Hi everybody--hope your August has been going well. Hope you're doing a good job being the emperor of your life." (More of a Vespasian or a Trajan than a Caligula.)

I'm writing an essay for Real Simple magazine's fifth annual Life Lessons Essay Contest. Having a great deal of fun, although the theme is "If you could change one decision that you made in the past, what would it be?" I'm not a big regretter, but I have come up with a cool spin on the topic that gives me juice.

I'm heading for poker soon, so I won't make this a long post, but I did want to mention a lovely artist encounter with a woman named Brit J. Oie. We were speaking about the mountains in her art, something I appreciate, having grown up at Nye. She said they were inspired by the mountains in Norway, where she was born & raised. "Oh!" I said. "I'm five eighths Norwegian and there's a little town in Norway that has my family name." She looked it up on her iPad & found out that she grew up less than 2 hours away from Hjelvik, Norway. How cool is that?

I'm tired of not having pictures, even though my camera has broked & I haven't figured out how to get the photos that I have taken into my new computer, so here's an older one of this cool stand I bought at a place that was going out of business for about 6 months or so. The owner kept claiming that this was perhaps the last day. It's the same place I bought the trumpet...

Anyway, I was carrying the stand home & got tired of it, so I called Derrick up & found that he & his pickup were not far away. I parked the stand & hung the top sideways so I could look through it to the construction on the jail.

Blog alternative:
236. Think about a decision you made in your past that might not have been one you'd make today--or even would have made then, if you weren't drunk or hormonal or peer pressured or somesuch. Go to realsimple.com/lifelessonscontest & see if you want to write it up & give me some competition. The deadline is September 13th.

Mica harvest season

So, back to some old tricks of not blogging until the wee hours (wee days?) of the month. I have been doing stuff: walking, sudokuing, movie watching, pokering, reading, meditating, poeting, festivaling (Bele Chere was this weekend; I saw a tiny bit of it), cleaning & organizing, inventing, prototyping (in the wee scale), arting, etcetera-ing. (This program is weird--it thinks I'm not typing real words. grin.)

I know this doesn't count as a real blog post. (But perhaps we can average the word count with my last massive missive & call it a wash.)

My camera died--the day AFTER its service contract expired. No lie. I'll get a new, different camera in a month or 2. I liked many things about my Nikon Coolpix; however, the time (just short of forever) before you could take another picture was not one of them.

I may speak to you before July has taken off her lovely green costume, scattered with thunderstorms.

Blog alternative:
235. Make a list of what you've been doing. Celebrate. (Make sure you count things like naps & walks & appreciating--oh! I harvested a bunch of mica on my walk today. That should definitely make the list.)

The Jury Duty Shuffle

On Monday I had my first experience with jury duty.

Actually, it was more like my second experience, or first experience deferred. I'd received a summons directing me to show up in the midst of my planned road trip time, with the date to be potentially recused by the judge 2 days after I was due to leave.

I wrote up a plea, saying I wasn't trying to get out of this, since as a writer I craved new experiences, complete with a dated google map route showing where I would be (I was wrong) on my jury duty date & took a copy to that local, so-exclusive hotspot, "The Jury Lounge." (Jurors Only) Would I even be admitted, as I was not yet a juror?

Heart pounding, I entered the sanctum & presented my case to the woman at the desk. "No problem," she said, as I began to present my case. "We'll just reschedule you."

"You don't need this?" I asked, indicating my carefully-crafted letter with all my reasons why I needed to be where I was going to be when I was going to be there & my clever map.

"No," she said.

I was disappointed. "At least look at my map," I said.

She dutifully looked at my map, agreed it was very clever, & rescheduled me for the ninth of July.

Monday. I showed up, as directed, at 8:45 a.m. Who am I kidding -- I was there by 8:30.

I wore layers, brought knee socks in case it was cooler than bare ankles preferred, brought a magazine & a bottle of water & some roasted almonds. I brought along my library books & movies to return, in case I got excused early.

Eventually the jury lounge filled up, every seat. I watched some home makeover shows on HGTV & read a few magazines from the massive pile. The woman in charge -- "just Beverly" -- (which was kind of cool, now that I think of it, in terms her leading us into the service of justice) showed us a video & administered an oath. There were tons of people & not that many Bibles so I held my left hand on my heart (my true Bible) as I raised my right hand & swore to uphold justice.

Then there was more waiting, more HGTV. We were instructed that we couldn't take food, water, books or magazines into the courtrooms, so I piled all of that under my chair. There were 2 trials needing jurors, a criminal case & a civil case. When they called the names of the potential jurors for the criminal case, mine was not among them. (Non-alphabetical, so you didn't know if you were going to be called until the last name was announced.) More waiting. Then the civil case. Name after name & then "Laurel Winter." I gave my verbal affirmation (you'd be amazed how many people forgot to do that, even though she repeated the name until you acknowledged your assignment) & joined the scramble to line up at the door.

She led us to a big elevator -- even so, there were 2 batches of us -- & we went to the 7th floor, where we were seated in the back of a large courtroom with lovely furnishings & bad acoustics & were introduced to the members of the court. The judge -- who looked a lot like a cardiologist friend of mine back in Minnesota -- told us some stuff, including that we were NOT to talk to the lawyers or plaintiff or defendant or indeed anyone but the bailiff & then they called off 12 names, mine not included. The judge told all of us still sitting in the chilly seats at the back (I put my knee socks on, & my long-sleeved shirt) to pay attention to what was said, because we could be called up in the event that some of those jurors were cut. The plaintiff's lawyer then instructed those in the box & questioned them. It was fun to hear how even in the questions & instructions he had begun to try the case. 5 jurors got sent away & 5 new names called. Not mine. A couple more of those were weeded out & then the defense attorney got to have his turn. He spoke up much more clearly than plaintiff's lawyer had, which I'm sure made a good impression. He spoke to every juror, at some length, but didn't get rid of any.

Then it was lunch time. We were told to be back by 5 minutes to 2. I went back to the jury lounge for my books & movies. The jurors who hadn't been called were lined up at the desk getting their "excuses from the court" slips for missing a morning's work. "Do you have to go back?" one of them asked me.

"I get to go back," I said.

Took the stuff back to library & went to the Jackson Underground Cafe, with every step down (for they are indeed underground) thinking "please let it be gazpacho" because I so love it (theirs is cilantro-free, because the proprietress feels the same way I do about cilantro) & it was!

Back well before 2 but then was told we were not going to be in the same courtroom, but rather on the 9th floor. Dilemma, because our nice big elevators only went up to 8. Milled around a little. Saw the lawyers & their charges & remember NOT to ask them where we were supposed to go. Went back down to the jury lounge. Eventually all of us got there, well after 2. Turns out the judge had told the bailiff that the jurors should go to the jury room on the 9th floor since the 7th floor jury room was being used by the grand jury, but he didn't mean for the entire trial to be moved, so he had to go back down to the 7th floor & collect his stuff. Then the lawyers approached the bench & the judge instructed all of us that if the lawyers appeared abrupt in not responding to "hey, do you know where we're supposed to go?" questions that they were just doing what they were supposed to do, which was not to talk to jurors.

One alternate's name was called. Guess who it wasn't. That's right. Me. So I got to go back to the jury lounge & get my magazine & my water & my almonds & find out that my check for $12 will be mailed to me. A good day's work. I considered having just Beverly write me a slip excusing me from working for myself that morning, but I knew I'd get at least a poem (& a really long blog post) out of it, so claiming to have not been working would have been a lie. Wouldn't want to perjure myself.

So, that's my dance. The jury duty shuffle.

Blog alternative:
235. Imagine being a juror, perhaps on a famous trial. (O.J. anyone? Or a glass of Watergate?) I suggest you bring your knee socks. But no hat. Hats are not allowed. Neither, I imagine, are hoodies.