Irrationally Exuberant

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As Tagged By Susanwrites
A Memory Meme:

1. The rules of the game get posted at the beginning.
2. Each player answers the questions about themselves.
3. At the end of the post, the player then tags 5-6 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read the player’s blog.
4. Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer.

What were you doing ten years ago?

I'd just graduated from Roanoke College--which was depressing not just because I'd enjoyed it (after an extra-long time getting there...I didn't start till I was two months shy of 25 years old), but also because I'd felt like I'd wasted a lot of my time there (as in not spending very much of it with the friends I'd made there--this didn't have anything to do with "I was too busy studying", by the way), and I was dreading my student teaching. Thanks to the student teaching, though, I was able to hold on to my two much-loved campus jobs: managing editor of the Roanoke Review, and a dispatcher for the campus police (a job I got with

alemya's help).

What are five things on your to-do list for today (not in any particular order):

1. Write another Appalachian-themed or -set poem.
2. Dread our first freshman orientation session, coming Saturday.
3. Post a locked LJ entry about my future educational prospects.
4. Get dinner.
5. Oh yeah, and work, since I'm at the library tonight.

What are some snacks you enjoy?

Homestead Creamery ice cream
Spicy Nacho Cheese Doritos
Hershey Bars dipped in peanut butter. ("You got your chocolate in my peanut butter!" all over again)
Graham crackers
Extra sharp cheddar cheese

What would you do if you were a billionaire?

Buy lots of books. Oh wait, I do that already. OK, built a nearly or completely self-sufficient community that already has an invite list waiting, complete with lots of land deep in the mountains. Donate large sums of money to animal rescue organizations and to restore the St. Francis De Sales school in Rock Castle, Virginia. Buy and reopen Virginia's Explore Park, along with rebuilding the late great SW Virginia amusement park known as Lakeside. Fund private space exploration. Join the Bilderbergers. Find out what the government really knows about UFOs.

What are three of your bad habits?

Procrastination. Writing memes instead of real content. Spending too much time living in my head.

What are five places where you have lived?

1. Vinton, VA
2. Buchanan, VA
3. Frederick, MD
4. Aldie, VA
5. Glade Hill, VA

What are five jobs you have had?

1. Literary magazine managing editor, Roanoke College / Roanoke Review
2. Campus police dispatcher, Roanoke College
3. Park attendant, Virginia's Explore Park
4. Naval defense contractor, CACI
5. College librarian, Ferrum College

What six people do you want to tag?

~~Erm--anyone who wants to play?~~

I tag anyone who volunteers to play. Once you've volunteered I'll add you to the list and people can go look at your answers!

1.

atlanta06
2.

mysticsong

Current Mood: Memory-able
Current Music: "Bus Stop", by the Hollies

Things That Make Me Go "Holy Crap"
A three-year-old roll of film I recently had developed reminded me of just how freakin' long I have let my hair get in the past.

Big honkin' hair that splayed across my shoulders when I stood up straight. The young lady next to me is Jenna, one of my "kids" who graduated in 2005 (and whom I got to see again last February while visiting Northern Virginia), and yes, my hair was longer than hers.

I just found out that Liz, one of my kids from the Class of 2007, threatened to cut my hair in my sleep. In retrospect I kind of wish she had. Somebody should have done an intervention! :D

Current Mood: Stunned
Current Music: "Waxen flaxen HAIR!"

I'll Take It Whenever And Wherever I Can Get It
This morning I woke up with an incredibly stiff neck that had been fine when I'd awoken an hour earlier, and with that occasional and depressing fatigue that makes pretty much everything seem like too much effort. Then the Writer Brain rescued me, albeit not necessarily in a practical way: I should have been working on the Neo-Arthurian Book, but instead it insisted I start writing out story notes and character biographies for the forthcoming historical epic, Shenandoah.

I know this is likely not exactly professional behavior, but following my instincts proved the right thing to do today. (Following my instincts almost invariably proves the right thing to do in any case.) The ideas gushed like a broken faucet: I wrote out page after page of notes during lunch, including having nearly the entire first chapter laid before me in a great single spread, and I've also been writing character biographies from the early 18th century up until 1942. (The book will follow three families across the generations.) So no work on the WIP but lots of story-building on the novel that's gotten me the most excited since the Camelot Book.

Going with the ideas my brain is pushing on me, at least this time, I hope has the effect of letting my brain know that I am willing to entertain any story ideas it gives me, wherever and whenever they may happen. Now I just want a neck massage.

Current Mood: hopeful
Current Music: "The Entertainer"

Log Cabins And Clouded Mountains (5 Pictures)
These shots were taken late this morning about a fifteen-minute drive from where Laurie and I live, near the church where our friends Bobbi's /

daisyfair32's and Todd's youngest children, the twins Benjamin and Daniel, were both baptized and became our godsons.

And yes, that log cabin in the pictures behind the cut is an honest-to-goodness 19th century log cabin. :)

( +4 )

Current Mood: melancholy
Current Music: Opening music from *The Patriot*

Watch How Quickly It Goes Away
Dear President Bush--

Thank you for the Economic Stimulus money. If by "economic stimulus" you meant "pillage used bookstores", then I'm happy to report that I've done my bit!

Yours, Danny

P.S. I also saved some of it, paid an electric bill, and bought stuff that would help me grow my own food. Sorry.

P.P.S. I also bought three toys that will be Christmas presents, and realized too late I was robbing the country of a little bit of its expected December economic bounce. I'm sorry about that too.

Current Mood: productive
Current Music: "Another Brick In Hadrian's Wall"

Re: Lack Of Content
In lieu of apparently not having anything better to post today, I offer up two question memes, the first taken from (of all people)

docbrite (who called it the Long Dumb Survey), and the second from

silk_noir.

( Interviewing myself )

Current Mood: frustrated
Current Music: "We Didn't Start The Fire", by Billy Joel

A Bit More Progress (With 4 Pictures)
Adding some more to the already-been.

( ILLUSTRATED PROGRESS REPORT )

Current Mood: quixotic
Current Music: Jono Manson

Wilder: New Cat #2 Settles In (With 5 Photos)
In his original and previously only home with our friend Marisha, Wilder had been the dominant cat, occasionally reasserting this by pouncing on and attacking his elder sister, Andi (aka New Cat #1). But since Andi came to us first, Wilder is now the sixth out of six cats on our totem pole, and his adjustment wasn't easy--especially since all of our native cats were willing to pounce right back. Wilder had been hiding out, avoiding both humans and cats, and generally being uncharacteristically asocial.

But he's started coming around these last few days. He's still a little antsy, but he's snuggling up with Laurie and me again (which is typical for him), and has even started warming up to some of the cats, like the Other Black Cat, Friday. He still gets hissed at from time to time--even from Nate, who loves everybody--thanks to his earlier actions. But there are signs of peace at last, like Wilder and Hayes sharing a windowsill during the Office Testing earlier today.

These shots are from Sunday night and earlier this afternoon.

Wilder starting to realize he likes hanging out with the rest of us.

( +4 )

Current Mood: okay
Current Music: "Something Tells Me Im Into Something Good", by H's Hs

Trying Out A Room
Today was the perfect day for my new office's maiden voyage: Sunlight was streaming through the windows, for example, and I was downwind from the forest, so the smell of the woods mixed with a moist early spring flowed in through the open window next to the computer. (The cats much appreciated this also--I love watching Nate and Hayes close their eyes and lift their faces to a breeze.)

I tried out the "background music"--what I play before writing to work up a particular mood. (I don't actually listen to music while I'm writing, at least while writing prose--the quieter, the better. Poetry I can write anywhere, and sometimes the more noise, the better.) The Neo-Arthurian Book is fun in that I can play Celtic Circle, Evanescence, Queen, and the Appalachian Picking Society (dulcimers) back to back, and all are utterly appropriate for different parts of the story.

I tried out my own instruments too: recorder, harmonicas (C, D, and G), and a little pecking on my synthesizer. (My dulcimer, I think, is permanently out of tune thanks to the stripped tuning bolts, I'm sorry to say.) I don't claim to be particularly good at any of those instruments (which I play by ear, as I've never learned to read music), but I'm good enough to entertain myself and to get the creative juices flowing.

All of this "testing" lasted for about an hour (a long indulgence of time for me) before I finally sat down at the computer and started typing prose on the Neo-Arthurian Book for the first time in nearly three weeks. It was like I hadn't left, though the non-writing bouts of depression were pushed back a good ways. I managed my daily minimum, 1000 words, which wasn't too bad considering that I didn't have much of an idea of what I was going to write after the first line.

In more detail:

( PROGRESS REPORT )

Current Mood: mellow
Current Music: "When Silence Was Golden", ala the Appalachian Picking Society

"Erasing The Universe's Chalkboard"
Finally, despite my griping about how out of the submission loop I've been lately, I sold another poem: I had a message waiting for me this morning from

stillnotbored letting me know that my SF poem "Erasing the Universe's Chalkboard" would appear in a forthcoming issue of Ideomancer. Woot!

This would only be better if I were able to do some writing today. :)

Current Mood: satisfied
Current Music: "I Want You To Want Me"

Graduation 2008 With 16 Pictures)
Obviously this entry has a pretty limited interest--unless you like shots of students getting their diplomas and posing for pictures afterwards. :) But come on in if you like...

I got a lot of good diploma shots, but I had a lot fewer pictures after the ceremony than usual since most of the students I wanted to see afterwards left pretty quickly. (I'm doubly glad there wasn't rain, as then I may not have even been able to get inside the gym for the diploma shots. Anyway, to the pictures.)

( GRADUATION )

Current Mood: melancholy
Current Music: "Comedy Tonight" from *A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum*

Bittersweet
A depressing day for me and a happy one for about a hundred and fifty students: Graduation Day. I'm always sad to see each of these come, though the last couple have been especially hard as I watch students I've known for years and especially care about head off. I guess since Laurie and I don't have children and aren't planning to have any of our own, our "kids" leaving every May is our version of the Empty Nest.

I'm holed up in the library, though I can see the podium through the glass doors. The ceremony is going on right now, but is still into the early speechifying. My sole interest is getting pictures of the students I know as they get their diplomas, and then seeing each of them, as many as I can, afterwards, before they leave.

I'm also mad at myself because I can't find my Senior Book--the one I bring every year to Graduation and ask the seniors I know to sign for me. I feel in that small way like I'm losing an entire senior class too.

Jacqueline, Ned, Luke, Joe, Meghan, Amy, Dee-Lee, Andrew, Julia, Desha, Kym, Laura, Heidi, Katie...and more, the list could go on...but most of that list I've known since they were freshmen (earlier, in Ned's and Meghan's cases). Heck, some I taught as freshman, when I was still teaching computer basics. Wow, I'm already missing you.

Current Mood: sad
Current Music: Closing music from *Centennial*

When Freecycle Makes Me Cry
Occasionally the Want / Need posts make me laugh, like the guy who "needed" a particularly expensive and very specific variety of an antique car. Or the fellow asking for a houseboat. Or the couple who wanted an RV. But now and again I get an Offer that makes me cry. This latest case because I was in Richmond when the items were offered and snatched up:

6 full stamp albums plus packets of loose stamps

Those philatelists among you will know why I still choke up when I think about missing this one.

Current Mood: disappointed
Current Music: "Day Tripper", by the Beatles

And Then There Were Six
Yet another new cat is arriving today.

This one is Wilder--Andi's (much younger) "brother". Wilder reacted to Andi's disappearance by peeing all over Marisha's house.

In exchange for the extra cat, Marisha will be helping out with future vet bills and is also delivering a 40-pound bag of cat food.

And this still isn't a record for us--the Junior Mafia brought us to a total of eight cats, though those three were only around for a few months.

(Kn haz no mor! K'thanx!)

I will, without a doubt, have pictures later . . .

Current Mood: Whoa!
Current Music: Meow? Meow? Meow!

Link Stew, With Corn And Grains

Penalty for crossing an al-Qaeda boss? A nasty memo. "Your boss is not your Mom."

British bank bailouts to be kept secret. Taking a page from the Bush Administration's book about...pretty much everything related to the Bush Administration.

Dry spell almost killed off race. Of DNA and droughts.

DNA confirms identities of Czar's children. And they weren't even talking about Anastasia this time.

Why Are Food Prices Rising? An excellent series from the Financial Times, particularly if you think that the food crisis is due to just one cause. Yes, biofuels contribute. Yes, the various droughts from Asia and Australia to the American Southwest contribute. So do commodities speculations, farmland being developed, the price of fertilizer doubling, the rising cost of oil, the proliferation of seedless GM crops, etc. etc. Not to mention the fact that Africa has lost 70% of this year's wheat crop to a fungus, and maybe even that American farmers are going to Mexico.

The Guerilla Gardening Homepage. With thanks to

ebonypearl for the heads-up.

Kim Jong-il builds "Thunderbirds" runway for war in North Korea. Never mind that North Korea most likely has nuclear weapons and spreads nuke technology to the Middle East. We have other pesky Axis of Evil members to deal with.

Military propaganda pushed me off TV. How the "liberal media" edged out an anti-Iraq War commentator as we were counting down towards the Iraqi invasion.

Many states appear to be in recession. I wonder how much of the current economic crisis can be found in the sum of its parts.

Administration brings back one-year Treasury bills. I have no idea if this would be a good investment right now or not--just that the government wants you to buy lots and lots.

Current Mood: restless
Current Music: Music from *The Man In The Iron Mask*

Hiking The James River At Rock Castle (11 Pictures)
After the sightseeing, the women left us boys (James, his friend Matt, and me) to our own devices while they went errand-running before we had dinner with Marisha's parents. So us boys took James' 4X4 Jeep and headed down a muddy, rutted road through Belmead's 1000-acre conservation easement, parked at a James River overlook, and then took to our boots.

The river-facing sign at the overlook.

( Exploring the James River )

Current Mood: Wistful
Current Music: *King Arthur*

History On The James River, Part 3: St. Francis De Sales School And A Lost Community (18 Pictures)
St. Francis was built specifically to be a girl's school in 1895, and like St. Emma's, served minority students. It was also the center of a thriving and almost totally self-sufficient agricultural community that included dozens of houses and generated its own electricity with hydropower. Our friend Marisha's father grew up in that community--he and his family were Polish refugees during WWII who were repatriated to the U.S., and the Catholic community at St. Francis allowed them and many other Polish families to settle on the property.

Unfortunately the school didn't survive long after its philanthropic funding ran out, and it closed in 1970. The nuns who maintained the property got some bad legal advice about liability concerning the community buildings, and so every single "extra" building, from the houses to a brand new gymnasium, was demolished. Only the school building remains, but it's been unoccupied since 1989 and is in bad disrepair. (All of us felt the effects to one degree or another later of the mold and mildew infesting the building.)

(And if you know me well you know that I was wandering about that building wishing I could restore the school, rebuild the houses and the hydroelectric dam, plant the fields, and get that community running again. Laurie and Sister Marion actually talked about me in that regard a bit.)

A looming shot of the school's front--
there was no way for me to get it all in one picture.

( Exploring St. Francis )

Current Mood: sad
Current Music: Natalie Imbruglia

History On The James River, Part 2: More Belmead, The Grounds, Nuns, And A Baby (15 Pictures)

Laurie with our godson, Nikolai.

( More of the house and venturing outwards )

Current Mood: enthralled
Current Music: *King Arthur*

History On The James River, Part 1: Belmead (With 16 Pictures)
Missing Ravencon this past weekend didn't mean I missed seeing cool places altogether: on Sunday our friend Marisha took her husband James, her two sons Philip (age 4 1/2) and Nikolai (our 10-month-old godson), their friends Matt and Stephanie, Laurie, and me to Rock Castle, Virginia (a few miles upriver from Richmond) to visit around a huge antebellum castle called Belmead, along with a nearby Victorian-era school called St. Frances De Sales.

Belmead started out as a James River plantation built by one Philip St. George Cocke; the house was finished in 1854, just seven years before the start of the Civil War. (Cocke became a Brigadier General in the Confederacy and fought at the first battle of Bull Run, though a combination of events and possible illness led to his suicide not long afterward.) It was called a "medieval monstrosity" in its time, but now many architects and historians regard it as the finest example of Gothic architecture in a house anywhere on the East Coast. (Cocke wanted it to be reminiscent of his alma mater, West Point.) Locals just call it "The Castle".

After the war it became a struggling farm, then a school for minority boys called St. Emma's--including the first African-American military program in the country. Later it became the high school that Marisha attended. Now it's the home of a handful of nuns (one of whom taught at the school) and 1000 acres of a conservation easement, but it's caught in a rather vicious cycle: the building has fallen into some disrepair and no longer meets Powhatan County's code requirements to host paying events, but without that money scraping up funds to maintain and repair the building is difficult.

( Take a tour of the house and grounds )

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: Music from *The Postman*

Andi, The New Cat (With 5 Pictures)
As I mentioned in the previous entry, "new" only means how long we've had her--she's actually 11 years old. Her only previous owner was our friend Marisha, whom we stayed with while in Richmond this past weekend, but has had to decide to give up her (two) cats because her husband and both of her children have cat allergies. Laurie has had a long acquaintance with Andi--I'd met her briefly before, but naturally spent more time with her while we were at Marisha's house during this last visit, and let her snuggle up to me whenever she wanted.

Not to say that the trip down with her was easy. We headed home in the teeth of a storm that ended up spawning several tornadoes across Southeast Virginia, and Andi was vocally unhappy to be in a carrier for the whole 3 1/2 hour drive. She was a little out of sorts when we got home, but after a few moments of exploring her room (the guest room, until the other cats get used to her), a few more of hiding under the bed, then a few more of some lovings from Laurie and me, she started coming around. By the end of the night she was snuggling up on the bed either by herself or with us.

So now our eldest cat is the one we've had the least amount of time.

( +4 )

Current Mood: optimistic
Current Music: Music from *King Arthur*