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Entries from January 2009

Paying Attention to Bits of Everyday Life

January 31st, 2009 · 6 Comments

When writing-related blogs ask their writing audience when, exactly, they “knew” they were writers, the answer most commonly offered is: I’ve always wanted to write.
Not so, in my case. Up until seventh grade, I had no such ambition, although teachers and family members had often complimented me on my writing. (I remember one grandmother — [...]

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Tags: Looking Backward · Paying Attention · Short Fiction · Writing

Deciding to Stop; Deciding to Start Again

January 30th, 2009 · 5 Comments

From whiskey river:
I remember the word and forget the word
                   although the word
Hovers in flame around me.
Summer hovers in flame around me.
The overcast breaks like a bone above the Blue Ridge.
A loneliness west of solitude
Splinters into the landscape
                   uncomforting as Braille.
We are our final vocabulary,
   [...]

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Tags: Music · Ruminations · Style and Craft · Writing

Shucks, Folks. I’m Speechless.

January 29th, 2009 · 12 Comments

I’m a godawful blogger in at least one sense: I don’t do much to promote RAMH, other than to visit sites I like — visit them regularly, for the most part — and just let this site be discovered, if the reader should choose, by (a) following the link to it from the “JES” in [...]

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Tags: Running After My Hat · The Online World · Writing

Man of Mystery

January 29th, 2009 · No Comments

Recognize the handsome guy at left? Neither did I.
Then I read Edgar Allan Poe: An Illustrated Companion to His Tell-Tale Stories, by Harry Lee Poe (a distant cousin of its subject). Turns out that this painting, by Samuel Stillman Osgood, was rendered in about 1845 — four years before EAP’s death.
Right: he had no mustache [...]

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Tags: Book Reviews · Reading · Research/Resources · Writing

Real-Life Dialogue

January 28th, 2009 · 5 Comments

He: So what kind of car did she get?
She: I don’t know, I forget. It starts with an “E.” Some kind of American car.
He: [...prolonged thoughtful silence...]
[time passes]
She: I wish I could remember what kind of car it was.
He: Well, the only kind I could think of that started with an “E” is “Elantra,” but [...]

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Tags: Everyday Life · Language · Real-Life Dialogue

“Shoulda Thoughta That.” And the Worst. Songs. Evah.

January 27th, 2009 · 6 Comments

One of The Missus’s ongoing laments involves the infamous curve, which she seems forever ahead of. “Did you see,” she’ll say to me, “that [insert name of formerly unknown person] just made [insert some number which includes many zeroes and a currency symbol] from [insert random clever idea here]? I can’t believe it. That was [...]

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Tags: In the News · Language · Looking Backward · Music · The Missus · Writing

A Career Made of Fiberglass, Foam, and Fun

January 26th, 2009 · 5 Comments

[Gotta get back into the online rhythm again after a couple days off... digging out the draft of a post I'd meant to put up some time ago...]
If I had my own personal MacArthur Foundation-like setup for rendering “genius grants” to people in all walks of life, I would give one tomorrow to Mark Cline. [...]

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Tags: Everyday Life · History · In the News

The Satisfactions of the Small, Found in the Large

January 23rd, 2009 · 4 Comments

From whiskey river:
Only horizon and sky are given up easily. Take the numbing distance in small doses and gorge on the little details that beckon.
(William Least Heat-Moon)
Not from whiskey river (one of The Missus’s favorite poems):
I Am Too Near
I am too near to be dreamt of by him.
I do not fly over him, do not [...]

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Tags: Everyday Life · Humor · Looking Backward · Ruminations · The Missus · whiskey river Fridays

A Cat’s Departure

January 22nd, 2009 · 9 Comments

[With a cat -- Dilly, I'm told, but to me the stripes
rather say, Nameless -- sometime in 1993.]

Dilly first entered the life and home of The Missus-to-be sometime in the spring of 1993, shortly after I myself moved down here and some months before we moved in together.
As with her predecessor, Nameless, Dilly probably [...]

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Tags: Everyday Life · Looking Backward · Nature & Pets · Ruminations · The Missus

Forward Bravely, into the Past!

January 21st, 2009 · 7 Comments

This March — the 12th, and isn’t it interesting I remember the exact date? — marks my 30th year as a computer guy.
When I started out at AT&T, my job title was Member of Programming Staff (with a digression into Managerhood); at my present job, I’ve been a Distributed Systems Specialist, a Business Systems Analyst, [...]

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Tags: Computers · Linux/Ubuntu · Looking Backward · Operating Systems · Programming, Web Design, Databases · Tech · The Internet · Windows