Oh God. We're Back To The Miserable A2K Topics Malaise...

Yes, you do. And, you sell yourself short, I'm thinking....

I saw that you have taken to crashing on the floor, amid dogs. I hope you can stay rested!!

Crashing on the floor is HOW I stay rested.

So... how's you educationicle quest?

OMG. I can't believe I'm blurting this--but I won a poetry award. They present it to me on Honors Night. The prize is tiny, but being able to list it on scholarship applications is way cool and helpful. Plus, it's cool to win something, even if my poetry did suck, which it did.

Waiting to hear from UGA. Ready to move to Athens.

So, when do you finish? (I know you just started. Just curious.)

Oh. Most importantly, I make it to the bed before crashing.

Poor lil k.

So, your heart's set on Athens? Did you go visit? Will you post your award winning poetry?

I finish about this time of year, two years from now. It might be an odd time to start a new teaching job. It'll be a good time to look for one for fall, though. And, with all the baby boomers retiring, there should be openings.... but, I'm thinking I'll have to live for months on substitute teaching jobs while trying to pay off my student loans.

Be careful what you wish for, I'm loading photo discs on to my new computer. I've been in offline tharn. Apparently Qwest, the only dsl supplier in our area, does not support Mac. (Don't tell me about Comcast cable, I've watched Dys deal with his modem from hell....)

Qwest failed to ask me if I had a mac when I signed up, and I spent weeks trying to get my old computer and now my new one to work. They mean support in two ways. The premium service (there are three), which I've now long paid for, is msn premium, and it won't work with a mac at all. Then, after many phone calls with them troubleshooting why I couldn't get on line, they finally changed me to qwest.net and refunded some money. But, they wouldn't walk me through anything and it took a while to get my user id and password from them. Then no support for signing up. Apple care has helped me, but I still can't email.

At some point (actually, I have the date, time, guy's name, and (discussion) number for the phone call, a fellow told me that "nobody uses a mac". This second meaning for no support means that they - the only phone company, I gather - don't train their tech support re signing on with a mac and, one told me, will tell them not to help. (You can say that again, re no training, not even when you call to sign up for dsl.)

This morning I got a phone call, answered it right away since not that many people know my number here, and got a sweet young thing wanting to tell me about all sorts of Qwest services. My inner cold bitch rose up and murmured something like "No" in icicle tones and hung up. Not her fault, but geez.

Once I get going on the house, you'll reach a new level of thoroughgoing boredom..

I want house pics!

I have a mac (as you know), and have been (mostly) happy with Earthlink DSL. The (mostly) qualifier seems to have a lot to do with where we are in terms of DSL range -- we're at the very edge of the range, like 40 more yards and we'd be out of it, or something. As in, if you're in a better range, the rest of it has been pretty good.

Yeah, I've heard too, that with the boomers retiring, the openings will be incredible.

I had given a batch of poems to my comp prof for an assignment, and even then, signed them "anonymous," because they SUCK. (We had to submit some as a part of the course.) That was Nov 2005. I had no idea he's done anything with them. He called a few days ago, sort of sheepishly and basically said I had to go to Honors Night.

HE forwarded them to the contest, and I don't know which one won. Honors night is the 20th. If you really want to see it, I'll PM to you after the 20th,...if you swear to perform the internet equivalent of burning it after you read it, and forgetting it.

Of the four, it's got to be either a short one about winter/loss or an epic about my uncle's funeral--I had a thread about it. I nearly peed myself laughing as I wrote that one.

______________________

I haven't visited Athens, but yes re heart. And, my daughter and her fiance are moving there. He's in a band, and they're moving for the band scene. They have won a couple of "battle of the band" gigs and are getting good buzz....so, seems like an adventure!!

They're doing another one in a couple of weeks in Atlanta. I'm going to this one. <excited>

Lilk-- my student loans will be paid off if I work in poor counties for a couple of years. Can you do the same thing, or would you just rather not? <don't know how safe poor counties may be in that area.>

osso-- You are so artistic and creative and you have such a fabulous, otherworldy way of describing things, I relish your tales of renovation. Can't believe they said nobody uses a mac....

Hmmm, I can imagine me being at the edge of the range. I should look into that. I didn't know earthlink did dsl. I had them in the old days for dialup, before I got pacbell dsl (now sbcyahoo).

In the meantime, I'm happy for Lash, and happy for littleK.

LittleK, I think you need a vacation somewhere along the line. I'll go so far as to suggest you go to Eurp for a bit. Nothing extravagant, but some kind of reward once a year or so.

I'm happy for you, osso. What you did was extraordinary.

How do you like the new area? As an artist, does it open up anything new for you? You paint plein air, yes?

Yes, do forward the poem, Lash! Good luck to your daughter's fiance. Athens can give a cold shoulder to new comers of the band variety, but they do warm up! -- no refunds for good deeds, here, unless I go into very specific special needs ed, like teaching the sight impaired.

Osso... I'd like to see house pix, too! As for vacation time - when? I have a class once per month for 2 years straight with homework between them all. I also have needy animals and a healthy debt. I'm afraif that a european vacation will have to wait until my second teacher's summer or beyond.....

Thanks, lashy. Alas, I am in a float and rest period, which could be described as overwhelming depression, but I prefer the term, getting my **** together.

This place is just plain gorgeous. I imagine I will soon learn about summer colors, but I'm very fond of the winter and early spring colors of the land. Yeh, I'll paint about here... but maybe not the usual hot vistas.

No, I don't paint plein air. I've tried it and find it aggravating, mostly. Though that was a while ago. I painted in Mexico a bit, got sand by mistake in the paintings, and in Los Angeles a bit. I hate all the packing and unpacking and wind and flies and ...
and besides, I am not all that interested in representing what my eyes see. I just use a landscape site as a starter for playing with paint. So I am fine with photos. (This is not a popular view re landscape painting.) Well, we'll see.

And even worse, I dislike bad plein air paintings being hallowed just for being plein air. So, you can traipse around with your kit and kaboodle.. Grrrrr.

Although, I'll back up. It is certain engaging and exhilarating for many. And the california landscape painters (see the Joan Irvine collection) are among my favorite paintings. Just not my thing.

I was a little stunned seeing 'overwhelming' depression' sitting there. Is it situational? Just all your stuff in a clump in a new place? I hope so.

I don't really know you, though I know some things about you--but I feel you are a person who requires a bit of orderliness and reliability. If that's so, it's quite understandable that you are a bit out of sorts.

Getting your **** together, hopefully, will lift you out of that funk. There are twenty people here, who would love to support you through it. You are loved.

I never thought about the basic things someone would hate about plein air painting...flies, sand... Made me laugh. You think of dramatic artists, Van Gogh, looking all serious in straw hats, creating masterpieces, and you've cut it down to size.

And, why don't they say plain air...?

I didn't mean a big vacation - more like we used to do from LA, as in three nights in Baja for (---) dollars.

I know you can't do anything long with your pet situation, nor even want to be away from them.

I don't want to put what I would think of as a reward along the way onto you... it's just the way I think, that after a long period of knuckling under, one gets some play... and that you don't need to wait the entire two plus years to play slightly.

I hadn't had a vacation of more than five days including weekend in, oh, fifteen years, when, a bit after I passed my three day landarch nat boards, I turned to my husband and said I really really want to go somewhere (or something like that).
I said, New York, London, Rome, Paris? (I was the money earner at that point, another whole subject). He picked Rome. And so began my thing with Italy, sort of a ducky imprinting.

Well, it doesn't have to be far, and it doesn't have to cost a lot, but reward yourself once in a while.

Just read your post, lash. I don't think of myself as depressed but my several psychologist friends would run me up a questionaire and say yes. I think of it as decompensating, or something. I have low money and a lot to do, and am just sort of hanging out, equilibrating, figuring out what I can tackle or not. (Those questions will be obvious when I post the photos.)

I've remodelled a few houses, and detailed a few houses, and have done the work, along with him, on J & my house in Venice.. but, y'know, at this point, I'd rather paint, and I may still have to earn a living by designing. So decisions swirl, re what to do and what I can pay for, and I don't think time pausing and observing what I think day to day is wasted. But it looks and feels a bit like sloth.

Yeah. Been there. So many ideas, and desire, but not enough money.

It is a transition, and I see decisions have to be made.

Hope you can remember who you are, where you've been and what you've achieved. You definitely have what is takes to make it fabulous. Hard to be patient amid falling plaster--but try to do yourself a favor and don't worry about it. Life is too short to waste on unnecessary worry.

The luxury to plan may be underrated.

<OK, no more Rebecca of Sunnybrook farm...>

Anyone who knows you, will know it's a masterpiece in progress.

Masterpiece... uh, not this house.

I was a happy clam with the Venice house (pics sometime in future).

But... I do plan this one to be comfortable, idiosyncratically me, even if it is ragged for a while.

Going to sign off and do some photo loading.