Quotidian comments

I just got home from work; it was my day to drive. This morning there was an accident on the freeway just before the exit before the exit to our building and another one almost right in front of me as cars suddenly slowed. It's been very windy (the cold, dry variety of wind), so the sky and landscape are spectacular with all the smog blown away.

My car seems to be going just fine. Over the weekend, my battery conked out, only it gave no indication of being weak until I was getting on the freeway and the car just stopped. Fortunately, I made it almost all the way onto the shoulder before it froze up, and, thankfully, my parents happened to be visiting from out of town and were with me. A nice stranger stopped and jumped started my car, giving the battery enough umph to make it twenty-five miles home. We bought a new battery and my dad installed it.

I'm thinking maybe I should get a cell phone for such occasions, especially since I'm usually alone in the car. I do have AAA, but the phones by the side of the freeway don't always work. But I really, really don't want a cell phone.

Other moral of the story: Check to see how old your battery is, even if you have no problems starting the car. The "warranty" period on the battery is more like an "expiration" date, and you may want to change the battery once it is over the warranty time.

Today I got a new credit card in the mail. The company changed my credit card number, which I now have to re-memorize. I had never memorized my card number until the advent of Amazon.com and other online companies. Now it just rolls off my fingertips or tongue.

My professor also sent back the draft of the paper I submitted last week with helpful comments. Now, to finish it....

Letters

A favorite quote from Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place by Terry Tempest Williams (a book given to me by an aunt):

Our correspondences show us where our intimacies lie. There is something very sensual about a letter. The physical contact of pen to paper, the time set aside to focus thoughts, the folding of the paper into the envelope, licking it closed, addressing it, a chosen stamp, and then the release of the letter to the mailbox—are all acts of tenderness.

And it doesn't stop there. Our correspondences have wings—paper birds that fly from my house to yours—flocks of ideas crisscrossing the country. Once opened, a connection is made. We are not alone in the world. (p. 84)

Already—the book was published in 1991 about events in the early 1980s—the practice of writing letters seems outdated, replaced by e-mail and weblogs. When was the last time I sat down to write a real letter (not just send a card), with pen and paper?

For the meantime

I'm recovering from an intense week and weekend about which I want to write but not at the moment. I just got to the Sunday paper this morning and read a review of a book I want to add to my reading list: Atonement by Ian McEwan.

Here's an excerpt from Atonement that's printed with the review:

Trapped between the urge to write a simple diary account of her day's experiences and the ambition to make something greater of them that would be polished, self-contained and obscure, she sat for many minutes frowning at her sheet of paper and its infantile quotation and did not write another word. Actions she thought she could describe well enough, and she had the hang of dialogue. She could do the woods in winter, and the grimness of a castle wall. But how to do feelings? All very well to write, She felt sad, or describe what a sad person might do, but what of sadness itself, how was that put across so it could be felt in all its lowering immediacy? Even harder was the threat, or the confusion of feeling contradictory things. Pen in hand, she stared across the room toward her hard-faced dolls, the estranged companions of a childhood she considered closed. It was a chilly sensation, growing up.

Note from professor

The best part of a paper is the ?.
END.

Barely hanging on

I've been submersed in trying to finish a rough draft of a paper, which I sent to the professor tonight. I certainly do not feel the relief of a job well done or even sufficiently done, but the professor told me to send the paper "as is" by 8:00 PM tonight, so I swallowed my pride, trampled on my insecurities, and sent it.

No other thinking has been going on. My primary emotional state has been a dull numbness of wanting to get this over with. The few bright spots in this bleak landscape included playing for the English and Spanish services at church on Sunday, escaping to my job that pays money and offers the satisfactions of defined tasks and sociability, and taking walks in the neighborhood to revel in the freshness of spring.

Nature's landscape continues to be glorious, in spite of me:

Spring in SoCal

One of the indications of spring here in So. California is the brilliant blooming of ice plants. These photos were taken at the Huntington just over a week ago.



Some of my neighbors have bright purple plants.

Pictures!

I finally got another roll of film developed. Here are a few pictures.

Loretta has become very camera shy; she runs as soon as she sees the camera, so it's becoming more difficult to photograph her.

Leo, on the other hand, is unfazed and only slightly annoyed.

However, he cannot stay annoyed for long.