Kelly's Quotidian

Dogs don’t appreciate daylight savings.
For 2 days in a row now, chubbapotomous has almost riotously interrupted my typing away at the computer. When I follow her urgent grunts into the living room she literally stampedes over to her bowl and points at it with her nose. Ears perked up she looks from the bowl to me in quick succession. I can almost see her thinking “Get my dinner you slow bitch!”. When I don’t move to remedy the situation tout suit, she snorts in disgust and points the nose from bowl to me again. To them it’s 6 o’clock and it’s dinner time, not 5. They don’t get the “Fall Back” collective arrangement we’ve got going on. Daylight savings is a fascinating cultural event. We all, except the crusty Arizona peeps, agree to change time. That’s amazing. Now we accept this with a few grumbles (especially in the Spring), but I can’t imagine what it was like when this practice was first instituted! To me it flushes to the surface how we really do create reality. So much of our reality is tied to time…Money as a belief system is the other phenomena that blows me away. The nice concreteness of barter systems is more my speed. But that’s another post’s business. Back to my pwups baleful eyes of hunger…I guess all I can really do is promise that in the Spring, the karma wheel will turn and bring the kibble sooner:-)

doesn’t mean you should;-) I spherically have a hard time with this:-)
I’ve run into the whole “googling” of people on more than one occasion and in more than one fashion. From searching to find out about new peeps to checking out what the “old” ones are doing as well…it’s a risky business. There’s this false intimacy that arises when you “discover” information about someone on the web-but it isn’t earned. True intimacy comes from the risk of self-disclosure. It requires some level of trust…I guess the interesting question given this then, is why the hell am I blogging:-)?! Am I inviting others into a superficially shared space? Maybe. Personally, I’d rather hear a story from a person than read it in FB or on their blog. But I will say that there are a lot of people I care for and can’t really give or get that kind of face time from. So I guess this is a medium of least resort-some small way to stay connected…I won’t even get into the motivational arrogance that probably drives posting-that’s a crappy perspective. I think I like the idea of just simply sharing…with anyone that’s interested enough to read:-)

Summer of travel. The first time I ever left the country I felt like I discovered aspects of myself that only a trip to Russia in the dead of winter could reveal. I assumed I was an uptight person before this trip. Further travels unveiled that, in fact, there are many sides to Kelly to be found, in many different places. It’s probably not that strange that breaking from the automatic rhythms of my days provides a distanced perspective on the busyness that occupies my life. Travel seems to provide me with the seemingly paradoxical opportunity to both let go and become more intentional. I seem to drop more deeply into the moments that I’m in. I also think there’s something to be said for not having a script of practiced expectations guiding me through every event. I feel strangely excited and relaxed when I travel. It is my goal now to try to bring some of these elements to my daily living. One of the ways I’ve achieved some simblance of this is through art. I’m not talking high art, but creative endeavors of some sort. There’s something very focussng and calming about art to me-enjoying seeing it as well as doing it. I was chatting with a woman who owns an art studio the other day. We talking about how the process of art, and life for that matter, isn’t appreciated in this country. It’s all about the outcome, product. I’ve had multiple times when I share that I’m doing art-whether it’s photography or otherwise-and had some response along the lines of “I wish I had time for art”. It’s a horribly corrosive, judgemental, and dismissive type of thing to say wrapped up in a seeminly small statement. It implies a frivolty and lack of serious doing; as if being calm and finding small joy in the day is a less than meaningful endeavor.  It bugs me, but I labor inwardly to leave it alone. It’s valid to me. It’s my little way of traveling while staying home.

I didn’t really make fire. I was speaking metaphorically:-) I recently acquired a laptop from my wheeling and dealing 11 year old niece. Little shit actually negotiated price with me! One of the reasons I wanted a new laptop is because my antiquated POS PC took, and I’m not kidding, 4 minutes to load web pages. Loading apps and any other activity was like watching water boil on a cold day:-( I loaded spybot on it and found that it was full of all kinds of crap, which I promptly destroyed…all to no avail. Still slow as crap-old lady driving on a one lane road your late for work slow. And so I decided to procure my niece’s utterly neglected iBookG4 (a hand-me-down from her father).

My anticipated joy at fast surfing and multiple app hopping was barely contained as I entered my domicile. I immediately tried to connect to my wireless router-a hit and miss affair for many a laptop who have come to Kelly land. I knew this.  And of course I was teased bt the fact that my new little friend could “see” my wireless network, but I kept getting the message “connection failed”. I imagined a little password in a long-jump competition wearing its little sneakers, running and jumping its little heart out; only to hit the bar and fall in disappointment. I loaded up the old tank to see if I could wireless through it…yes. Fuck. So then I figured that my router was a discriminating bastard who didn’t like Macs. I was right. I left the problem alone. For a day.

Next day, not to be deterred…I decided to force my asshole router to play nice-I manually reconfigured it using the start-up disc. No success. Then I tried to do so with my Mac mini. [Yes, I even have a REALLY old computer with linux loaded on it-why I have all this computing power, I'm not sure. Perhaps I'll find some nefarious deed in which to engage my little network...someday...but not with out a fucking router.]

Mac mini denied. The f#%^* set up disc only works on PC’s. At this point I figured my router wasn’t compatible with Macs, I was almost deterred. Almost. I went to bed. Hours wasted, the meaning of life in question.

The day of revelations began when I thought to google *****routers and macs. A bagillion links came up. Others had been in my hell. And they took notes:-) This is when I first learned that I could remotely hack into my bitchy little router from a web page. Holy crap. So I typed in the recommended IP address and found myself in a webpage, configuring my wireless router from my MacMini. The grin on my face burned calories. It worked, I was able to log in wirelessly from the mini-weeeeeee! Then the moment of truth came…I busted out the wee one. Found the router, entered the login…”connection failed”. Son of a bitch. I almost cried, but instead I went to bed.

Day 3. I’m alone and feel like I’ll never be saved:-) I go to my trusty friend google. I enter the taunting error message and I come to see the words hexadecimal passwords…I come to find that my new little laptop is a fickle bitch who needs $ before her passwords. Holy crap. Remote configurations happen ONE more time. The moment of truth arrives…

And a gmail login page loads.

One of the proudest moments of my life.

I MADE FIRE!!!!!

I just finished my first outdoor run post foot surgery. It was a success. I forgot about the redunculous heat though. Before the surgery I had been running 2 to 3 a week on the treadmill indoors for a few months. I was trying to take it easy on my feet. I just didn’ t realize I was taking it easy on the rest of my body. I’m happy to say I’m fairly heat tolerant, but that shit is menacing. I’m very thankfull for my tiny success today and wanted to give my shout-out of appreication in writing:-) I think it’s hard to truly appreciate any gift in life untill you’ve suffered its loss. Yeah for now!

So I had a cute conversation with my brother yesterday. I was telling him about my deliberations as to whether or not I consider myself a photographer. He chuckled and said that only I would sit around pondering such. I then corrected his assertion by explaining that I had told folks about my photography group having a *show* and that I had a couple of pictures in it. I could see that this conceptually became me “having my work on display at a gallery” and that I was being thought of as a photographer. I don’t really consider myself a photographer. I’m more of someone who takes pictures and occasionally gets lucky. But this all started me thinking about at what point would I consider myself any given “thing”. The act of doing a thing is so often the major requirement for classification. But I think that’s a bit too easy. Just cause someone does it, doesn’t mean classification is appropriate. We are so geared to judge/classify based on actions. Back to the photography, I enjoy the process very much. I always feel like there’s more to learn. The results never seem just right, which keeps me coming back for more:-) I’m not so process-bound as to not enjoy the pictures just in and of themselves though. I am constantly amazed by the talent and dedication of others. One of the pics I had in the show is below.

Picture of sunset at 2009 solstice

I went to a 50th birthday party last night.
This may not seem to be of note; which can be said of so much of life.
It was a party to celebrate the precious gift of life where moments and days are to be appreciated, not years. Our host has cancer and the ensuing hyper-focus on living before an anticipated end. There’s a terrible beauty in that. I go day after day, often in tedium, in the ambiguity of a distant and abstract end. I feel inspired by her pursuit of joy and merriment. I’d like to practice soaking in the moments of life more-even the dull and monotonous. Perhaps they wouldn’t be so if I walked into them realizing that they are of but a precious few. It seems daunting-trying to imbue meaning into the normalcy of my days. Maybe it’s about the striving to do so that’s important. I suspect this probably goes into a longstanding theme for me-the effort to be “present” in the moments that fill up my life. Seems silly easy when I write it down. But I’m also realizing I live my life on two levels-one that intellectually gets things and another that emotionally processes things. I hope they meet someday:-)

I’m back.

Seems my blog clock is about a year long.

Trials and tribulations have passed. Joys too.

I promise to try harder this time:-)

In the midst of being my dissertation proposal’s bitch, I’ve decided to take up learning how to use my expensive camera (which I bought while being a bitch to my comprehensive exams, I see a theme). It’s truly a lovely thing to start adding depth to an already pleasing experience. I love taking pictures. I never feel full pride because most of my shots are on auto settings-so while I do pick the subject matter, my camera does all the work-almost sounds like a boyfriend:-), but I digress. I recently met someone foolish enough to agree to teach me how to use my camera. The smallest of tips have felt like revolutions in understanding. I can’t believe I’ve gone this long just on auto focus-sound familiar to any other processes of life? I have always wanted to take night pics but 1) haven’t had a tripod and 2) didn’t have a clue as to how to do so on my camera other than by turning the dial to the little dude with a moon over his shoulder (doesn’t really work, not sure why “they” added this setting other than to give false hope and generally be mean). But a few eves ago, I became a photographer of the night:-) It was awesome. I love taking pictures at night. I’m dying to take “candid” night pics of people in their brightly lit windows in their dark abodes. I’m pretty sure I’ll have to refrain from this as I could probably get arrested for such activities. I really need to practice what I’ve learned because I’m afraid that my memory is just about at capacity with all this silly dissertation shit:-(