Tuesday is trash night, and I'm lazy

Second attempt. Computer viciously devoured first. Unlimited Control Z's at work. At home, seriously deficient!

Tuesday nights in our neighborhood are for setting out trash, with the recycling going out every other week. I like Tuesdays because when I get home, I can be lazy, take the dogs out for their walk and deposit their offerings in the waiting trash cans along the curbs, rather than cleaning up after them in my back yard.

Dogs like it, too. So many fascinating, enticing smells. Especially when there is snow on the ground. The needle noses go deep into the white stuff and the snorting begins

However, lazy not such a good thing. Too addictive. Its' OK in the realm of walking dogs around the neighborhood on trash night, but anything that lets you cut corners, say in the name of efficiency, can really turn your brain away from creative thought.

I battle laziness on a daily basis. I have a creative streak, but I have an Eeyore streak too. I like solitude -- as far as I'm concerned there is nothing better than curling up with a glass of wine and a book or perching on a kitchen stool with a cup of coffee and a newspaper. And as much as I like to challenge my test-your-talents creative streak, my soak-up-things-streak is stronger.

Once in a while I get things really right and the two mesh. Once in a while.

There was a great site, newspagedesigner.com, that allowed print designers to post jpegs of their pages. I had a bunch, only a few of which I was really proud of but, still, you have to show what you do. It seems there is an effort to save it (I think it was a nonprofit site), which would be wonderful because its lovely to see what other print designers, illustrators and graphic artists are doing. 

Apropos of that, here is a link to a design site from a coworker, James Hilston, who is a real aficionado
http://www.booooooom.com/2009/02/09/typewriter-ribbon-tin-collection/

I have discs of some of my pages floating around somewhere. Soon, pictures!

Too long between posts. Computer in the office. TV in the office. Husband watching TV. Noise of hoops game. Channel surfing. Quiet living room calling. No laptop. Explanation? Excuse? No matter.

In brief. My India trip is approaching and my baby sister Suzy, whom I was to visit before the winter was over, sent me this card after I backed out of the visit.

"Happy Birthday and Bon Voyage" was the message in gold-pen calligraphy. I don't know if she drew it, or where she found the stamp. I love the creativity of the card. That's Suzy. So sweet and so creative.

I had asked my mother earlier about shots... she wasn't able to respond immediately but today I got a lovely belated birthday letter from her that included my long ago record of vaccines. It was a long letter and her handwriting got a bit crabbed toward the end. Signed, "Love Your Momma." Thank you, Mom (79 years in June). And I love you.

About the immunization records, though I haven't done the research, it appears I could have skipped the typhoid  vaccine, since I had it more than 40 years ago. We were in France then, and of course, times were different, but I wonder why I needed a typhoid vaccine in Europe at age 9. More questions for my mother.

A shot of my vaccine record. I had three oral doses of polio. Thank goodness. Kept my shoulders free and ripe for all the shots I've had in the past couple weeks!

Superstition and courage

My birthday and dinner

Dinner with two good friends and traveling companions, Virginia, me in the center, and Ellen.

Yesterday was my birthday. I took the day off and snoozed in for a bit, drove my husband to the light rail, walked the dogs for a lazy, muddy hour in the park, then took a long walk by myself on a warm February day. Most of the rest of the day I spent in the car, driving to and from Cranberry to shots at a travel health clinic. And I got some free advice from my nurse there, who had a really nice, simple and small nose piercing, which I've been tempted to do since last summer. She told me where she had it done: Hot Rod Tattoos on the South Side (this is an nurse we are talking about here -- Hot Rod Tattoos on the South Side?) Then I heard about her tatts -- all on her back -- and her 18-year-old daughter who is presently backpacking by herself in the Dominican Republic.  Guess she's never heard of helicopter parenting. Yay!

The good thing about driving that far, 20 miles or so, is that its all  interstate and 279 and 79 north, to me, seemed designed for speed. I like driving fast -- not recklessly -- but fast. In fact, it's the only thing I like about driving. I like how the car feels when its at 60 or 70 or 80. I don't know if its the quality of the car we drive -- a VWPassat (??) -- or the fact that its a manual transmission, or that on those particular highways, there's not much but interstate, hills, exit signs and trees. It's pretty countryside, like the Ohio Turnpike. Never mind though. I drove fast and the end of my day was still not my own. Focus & breathe & all is fine.

Dinner.

Two of my loveliest friends, Virginia and Ellen, and I started a tradition I don't know how many years ago when we were all working together, of lunch, which turned into dinner, on our birthdays. I'm in February, Virginia in March and Ellen in May. From dinner came travel plans and we started with a trip one spring Savage River Lodge in western Maryland.

http://www.savageriverlodge.com/

We had such a good time. Stopped at Whole Foods in the East End and bought prepared food and breads, brought wine, got there I think at about 7 or 8 on a Friday night. Stayed up into the deep darkness noshing and talking and then slept Oh! so late. It is so quiet there. No crickets since it was early spring, just forest silence. It was just lovely to have that time; long walk on Saturday and I think Ellen and Virginia had a run. I think that's what gave us the nudge to experiment with other trips. Most were to NYC but we did do a D.C. weekend a few years ago.

So we've kept up the birthday dinners and expanded the travel tradition. We went to Paris last fall with another good friend, Carol Morton, and I feel lucky to have fallen in to such a good, fun smart group. I think what's nice is that all of us are self sufficient, in varying degrees. We have enough individual interests so that, on a trip or even in a dinner conversation! we can find different places to go that we are all interested in.

OK. I did not take pix but I am working my way up to being brave enough to point my camera in places like the morning bus, Starbucks, etc. But for what its worth, here is my word picture of waiting for a train at the Gateway Center light rail stop at 8:30 on a Thursday night.

It's really a pretty station. There is a gorgeous mural of Pittsburgh's history by Romare Beardon that never fails to intrigue me. Here's a link on Downtown Pittsburgh places that includes the mural
http://www.popcitymedia.com/photoessays/publicart/bearden.aspx#

The mirror image-abstract composition, the shapes hinting at Pittsburgh's history and the Native American silhouetteded figures at the far left, watching as their home is invaded and overcome, are all the more fascinating for being so stark. I wonder why it's in a transit station? There are lots of pictures of the station on the Internet. I need to make one of my own. I was so tired. Ellen dropped me off and I waited a minimum seven minutes for a train. In Pittsburgh, the underground stations have classical music piped in. Gateway was moderately crowded, but I found and empty granite bench, sat down and leaned my head back to listen. I recognized the music, but not the composer. Soaring, but sad and funereal. "Schindler's List?" I don't know. But near me, muffled couple conversation and as I tried to listen to the music, their words kept wafting over. Weird words, kind of trashy.

Then the train came, fast, rolling but as I thought about it, nowhere near as fast or noisy as then NY or Paris subways, which just hurtle! But as I got on the car and this couple embraced. She got on, blond, bulky shapeless yellow jacket, blond hair half pulled into a pony and half hanging. He stayed on the platform, shaped trimmed beard and black sweatshirt and slacks and as the train pulled away, knocked a couple times on her window, pointed to her and waved. She waved too, then leaned her head against the glass.

The train pulled out. And wherever we were going at 8:50 on Feb. 12 of 2009, we were all on our way. 

My birthday, and remembering college

My birthday is coming up. Seems like only yesterday that I was celebrating my 50th birthday by watching the implosion of Three Rivers Stadium in Feb. 2001 from high above the North Side of Pittsburgh, at a friend's house in Fineview. It was such a fun party and breathtaking to watch the old stadium stand motionless for seconds after the charges were set, then collapse into a heap of concrete and rebar moments later. Considering that taxpayers spent a lot of money for its replacement, and that Three Rivers itself wasn't even paid off by the time it was taken down, perhaps it wasn't such a great day for celebration. But it was also my birthday. And any day you get a chance to drink champagne on a Sunday morning in February is a good day.
I've been feeling that I have not had much to say lately, but look, here I already have a whole paragraph and the start of another. College seems like a hundred years ago but one of the things I remember is that it was a time when calling long distance was a big deal (on my rotary dial phone) and that writing letters posted to the U.S. Postal Service was a weekly .. I don't think duty is exactly the right word but that's the one I'm going to use. I wrote weekly to my parents, my sister Elizabeth, friends I had met who had moved on to different schools, my Dad's mother. Quite frequently I looked at the sheet of paper thinking I had nothing to say and before I knew it, pages would be filled.
Looking back, it seems hard to believe that, as a young woman in college, I would have nothing to write about. It was one of the most interesting and exciting and best times of my life. Perhaps the best.
It didn't start out all that well, what with me in Morrill Tower at Ohio State in a pod with 11 other very young women. The two women who were my roomates in our pod (four bunkbeds but only three occupied) didn't make it past, respectively, the first quarter and the first year. Maybe that's part of what throwing a bunch of young strangers together in close quarters is all about. Weeding out the partiers and those who are destined to become pregnant.
Sophomore year I bunked with one new roommate, from Rumson, N.J. and two from freshman year. Our bathroom mirror on North Campus read "Free the Nosker Four." We never did find out what that meant. Nancy, the Rumson girl, and I became good friends but she moved on to art school in Philly after one year at OSU. The other two, Mary Jo and Donna, found an apartment together after our sophomore year. And I quit. For a year or so. Then went back and my last two years, after finally choosing a major and meeting someone who is still a friend today, were tremendous. I got a job, stayed on campus during the summer, had an apartment and desperately did not want to leave after graduation in March 1978 (yikes! 31 years ago).
Things I remember about those last two years. Donna and Mary Jo throw a party at their new apartment, somewhere near Chittenden, I drink too much at their housewarming party and a football player carries me upstairs to a bedroom, where I pass out. Seeing "Star Wars" at the theater on High Street, near Lane Avenue and being totally awed by the opening scene as the starship zooms into view. Sitting on a High Street curb on a summer evening with my friend Heidi, watching people go by, talking about everything and nothing. Reading the Citizen Journal, a failing afternoon Scripps Howard paper (perhaps that should have been my cue to choose a major other than journalism), at my secretarial job in the department of anthropology. Reading papers by professors in said department as I typed them and wondering why they had no grasp of the English language. Sitting by Mirror Lake, reading, and realizing that across the "lake" someone was taking my picture. Juggling at a Renaissance festival outside Ohio Union. Watching soap operas inside Ohio Union (whose cafeteria line, in retrospect, seemed a lot like the one in "Animal House". Working at Quisno's (not the chain) Sub Shop and taking salt pills when it was hot and chopping hot yellow peppers to put on the subs. Seeing an old boyfriend who always made my heart stop come in to same shop and smile at me and me not being able to even acknowledge him. Another boyfriend and I cocooned away in my apartment during a fierce January or February snowstorm (back when we had real winters!)
Look at me. Sentences and paragraphs later. And I remember it all like it was yesterday. Of course. We all do.
Present day. Its been cold and white for what now seems like forever and for what seems likely to continue to be forever. But the cold world is not devoid of beauty. The picture at the start of this entry is of the sunset from my neighborhood from the past weekend.