Tibbar Tibbar

Yesterday's wedding brought to mind a joke and a picture. 
First the joke:  What do Prince Charles, a bald man, and a gorilla have in common?  Answer to follow after the picture.

The Queen's dress reminded me of another yellow dress in the memory banks complete with hat and purse.

Answer:  Charles is the heir apparent, a bald man has no hair apparent, and a gorilla has a hairy parent.  HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!

Royal Wedding Day

I don't suppose the royal couple will have a rubber raft full of beer and ice.  Nor will they have a single mixed fruit salad in a carved watermelon sitting on a table underneath a canvas tent strung with little multicolored Christmas lights.  Nor will their poppy seed wedding cake be undercooked because the oven didn't get preheated.  The officiant will likely not have worn Birkenstocks and there won't be a single violinist to play Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring.  But I'm sure it will all turn out just fine.

Apr 28

Since the 10 days we've been at the lake, the snow has melted, the thermometer points higher on the dial, and the flannel sheets are cloying rather than comforting.

It's time for screen cleaning and the family haircuts.  Time to find rhubarb.  Time to uncover the air conditioner and bare the arms.  Avert your eyes, here goes.

Apr 27

Small yellow mouths clamoring to be fed; Cinderella, Cinderella, wash the windows, scrub the floors.  All those niggling to-dos pulling on the sleeves and pant legs.  To be or not to be, To do is to be, Do be do be do, do me do me do me; Shakespeare, Descartes, Sinatra, Snooky.  Or something like that.

Apr 26

Two things today:
First, I forgot to blog before charging off into the city for the weekly weigh-in.  (Down 1 pound :-))
Our job for the next week is to find 5 foods never eaten before and prepare them. 

Let's see.  There are reasons I haven't tried Tuscan chicken livers on toast,

which looks like Daisy's bowl in the morning,

or mahi mahi, celery and salt cod cassserole, chilled beet borscht, or baba ganoush.
And second, our dining room calendar is an Audubon special showing swallows for April.

in honor of his birthday, according to Google.

Christmas in April

The word count is beyond 40K!  Yay!  Whee!  Sweeet!

Finding le mot juste is not so difficult.

Like shooting fish in a barrel,

drinking at an Irish wedding,

discovering eggs hidden for Easter.

The egg hunt this morning was photographed.  We didn't get around to hiding yesterday.  One year we couldn't find the last egg of a dozen.  But the year after, Daisy helped find the missing one.  Eew.  I think it was in the three-pronged outlet for the generator.

  Today with photographic evidence nary an egg, word, drink, fish will be lost.

Happy Easter!

Easter Bunny, won't you please

Let us be your Easter geese?

It's a day of pastels, egg hunts, bonnets, chocolate, lilies, rabbits, Peeps, Glory Hallelujahs, and a pork-based meal.

After the eggs are dyed, Jim finds the last of the snow



and unleashes his inner Jackson Pollack.

Apr 23

Glassy water

The tensile strength of a smooth surface grabs onto the floats of a seaplane and threatens to stick like a frog's tongue to the insect legs of the airplane.  This stickiness can force the airplane upside down, into a most stable but undesirable position.

Can't it just be a beautiful sunrise?

Does it have to be dangerous too?

Earth Day

 It is a blue lake today in honor of Earth Day,

and a far cry from just a month ago. 

Moss covers the rocks and ground and makes for soft running. 

The novel has reached a familiar place in week three; trash it or push it forward.  The novelist took three days off and now is making up for lost time writing 40 minutes on and 20 minutes off until the hair pulling starts.  Today the litter and pulled hair will be picked up along the walking paths behind the lake house during one of the writing breaks.  It'll take almost 15 minutes since few ever go back there to litter in the first place.  In honor of Gaia, the Sweet One.

Apr 21

The swallows have returned to catch bugs off the surface of the water.
Hundreds of swallows, millions of bugs.
It is still too early for the bugs to have learned their purpose in life, and we have escaped any mosquito or black fly bites thus far. 

Bites and swallows;
No matter how I try, I can't keep the theme of food out of here.

Apr 20

It is whispered in the ancient words that once the ice is freed from the shore, it sinks in the dark of night while no one is watching.  And so it did.

Lucky, Lucky, Lucky, that I wore my high water pants today.  Inspection of the shore shows that some of the work from last autumn will need to be redone.

But right now there is thunder and it has begun to rain. The loons are calling.  Perfect timing.

Apr 19

The novel has taken a turn.  On its way to the center, it has stepped on a Fairy Godmother, who has not appreciated the gaffe.  She has set up obstacles instead of clearing the way.  Today must be spent appeasing this fierce manifestation of a usually benign grandmotherly type.  We will be sharpening our spears and stoking the fires, readying for battle.  Who is this 'we'?  Is it really the Wii?

Full Pink Moon

Continuing with the theme of Beauty and Bliss:
Yesterday there was a fire ritual with recitation of Sri Sukta during which the wind blew and the rain fell.  Afterwards, the sun came out and a rainbow marked where the pot of gold could be found.

Pink has been surfacing with the rising of this month's full moon.  The floor outside the lecture hall is composed of the most beautiful pink triangles.
 

This leads me to the tridoku book, a gift and recent phenomenon in the form of triangles.

On the way home I shall listen to Pink sing "Dear Diary".

Apr 17

The floors are nicely waxed and shiny.  It is customary to remove shoes before entering the dorm room.  I love to see the shoes lined up like people waiting for someone to punch their ticket.  I have three pair snugged up against the wall; one pair for running, one for walking outside and one for indoor traveling.  Pack light indeed.

Apr 16

At the ashram in the women's dorm instead of a separate room.  Garrgh!  This should be interesting.  The last time I stayed in the dorm, it was 95 degrees, the room packed like sardines, and everyone snored.  Today it is springrime, there are children in attendance playing card games on the floor, and it's forecasted to rain.

Turns out it very comfortable indeed.

Apr 15

Halfway through the novelling month, there are 2,000 words to go today, along with 6 hours of travel, a seminar to attend, a dorm to sleep in.  I should learn to write with a tape recorder that has voice recognition soft wear and can translate my words onto the page.  I should have written more words yesterday.  I should have Should Should Should, the little engine that Should.

Happy Half Birthday!

The sun came out today after the deluge of yesterday.  The skies are no longer the pale blue of winter, but cast a turquoise hue like the gaudy cracked turquoise ring the weirdly arty Public Arts Director gave to me years ago in Albuquerque.

I saw him again on television last night in a little film about Carhenge in Alliance, NE.  So much to think about.  So many small items on which to focus obsessively.

Apr 13

Another day for Wave of Beauty and Wave of Bliss.

Stopped by Camp Beauty on the way to the lake to visit with Tommy who is here from Wyoming.  He is selling Beauty and drove his van out to pack up what he could.  Tommy is an astronomer and has all the accouterments for star gazing, like telescope, yurt, green laser pointer.  He is also a perpetual renovator.  One of his best jobs was placing tiny tiles lovingly on the walls and floor of the bathroom at Beauty.

Saundaryalahari

Wave of Beauty, Wave of Bliss

The Peepers have returned!
Last night Daisy and I were walking out in the tree nursery.  Both of us were so excited to hear the peepers that I took a bad phone video of them and Daisy ran straight to the middle of a raspberry bramble patch.  Ouch, ouch!
Last year the wave of peepers sounded on April 2.
Last year the word count at Peeper Time was over 2,000.  This year the count is beyond 18,000.
During presentations in Medicine training we were taught brevity, being succinct, summarizing with as few words as possible.  While the peepers have a tiny body and a brief life, nothing about their voice is small or succinct.  They are the embodiment of Saundaryalahari,
Wave of Beauty, Wave of Bliss.

Apr 11

A few days with temperatures of 50 degrees or better have made the snow nearly disappear. The redwing blackbirds have returned. The robins never really left, those dopes. The geese are flying. The ground is loosening up for the moles to make their humpy mounds. The morning is rife with song. Too bad the recording is so quiet.

Apr 10

Booking for Dub.

This is a new version of blogdom.  A new Internet Explorer.
But I didn't ask for this.  Where did "My Favorites" go?
Why won't the "Publish Post" button function?
Thank God, at least the government is still operational!

Day One of the Habit of Happiness.

Maybe a Marx Brothers Movie will help.

Apr 9

STOP!

Let sleeping dogs lie.

But, no...

She's gotta poke a stick into the calm waters and stir it up,

Churning butter,

Dredging up the bottom,

Mixing the earth with the sky and the heaven with the hell.

That's what novelists do.

And then they go for a walk.

Elixir 29

Just one magic dropperful and you have 1,667 newly minted words on the page today. Plus you can run with abandon, accompanied by Day 4 of the Couch to 5K program. Not only that, she said entrepreneurially, you add and divide complex numbers in your head, have a dust free house without dusting, and arrive from here to there in the blink of an eye.

Spare root

To parse out - diagram a sentence grammatically (From Latin pars orationalis)

Parsimony- come to the most spare or fundamental hypothesis (From Latin parsus - to spare)

Parsnips - root vegetable (From hell)

Howells box in the basement root cellar - From parsibly the oldest carboard in my possession.

No wonder I can't lose weight. I blame it on this box containing papers from my second career, the one after Fotomate and before graduate student. Burn, Baby, Burn.

Apr 6

Oops-a-Daisy!

Many items on the check-off list took the attention away from the writing. Many excuses for not keeping up. Taxes, exercise, meetings, blah blah blah.

Today would be better for writing, except that it's airport day. This morning instead of writing I started a Couch to 5K program. It plays my own music, but the last time any music had been played on the phone was a over a year ago. It was amusing to hear the training program say "Run, now" and at the same time hear Johnny Cash singing Hurt, by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails (not Kurt Cobain as originally thought).

Off we go!

Apr 5

Places to go, people to see, things to do.

Another list from the bottom to the top.

Antarctica

Giza

Khajuraho

Jerusalem

Mt. Everest

Assisi

Stonehenge

A friend added Ulanbaator to ride the Mongolian ponies long and far. But I did not connect that line to the destination. Too fearsome for me.

While night descends in the novel, as dark as the rotting wood at the bottom of a stagnant pond, Sonny tries on prom dresses.