Second things second: tomorrow is the first day of summer quarter, in which I will be taking a business class (”Interpersonal Communication in the Workplace”) and finishing up some incomplete classes from last quarter. I won’t go into what happened, but … last quarter was pretty bad. I still think I will come out with a 4.0, once I get the work turned in, but… what possesses me to allow myself to get into situations like that? Where there’s so much work to be done, and not enough time to do it? I went into this Medical Assisting program thinking that since I’d been through hell and back my first time in college, this would be a piece of cake, but it hasn’t been. I’m glad I’ve been working hard the whole time.

During spring break, I thought a lot about WTF I am doing in general, and came to the realization that this blog is nothing special, and I’m okay with that. I thought when I started it that it would end up being special somehow, but… it’s mostly just a confessional, a place to dredge up the sad things in my life and mull them over and bare my revelations for any random person to see. This is not a bad thing ultimately, but it’s not what I had hoped to create. In any case, I feel like I have a more realistic view of what this blog is and is not, and I’ve though about how I might make up for the things it is not through other types of writing and creativity.

At the very least, it is a public record, written in realtime, of the things I’m feeling and thinking– and as much as bloggers are made fun of for being self-serving, short on discretion, full of bullshit and delusions of grandeur– I don’t really mind being grouped with them. N00b writers are given a voice, and what do you expect to come out? Melodious poetry? No, it’s just normal things that people think and feel. (Anyway, the best thing about blogs that displease you is that you don’t have to read them.)

It is in my nature to be self-disparaging and to not take myself seriously, but I have made an effort to be somewhat serious when writing here. I do need to talk about things that are important to me, and I can do it here as a near-monologue, where no one can interrupt and cause me to lose my train of though. (Oh, it happens so easily).

My best friend Jen over at Miniature Wonderments, who has such a soulful, uncynical, unapologetic way of writing, has been writing about her experience with cancer, and connecting with people that way. I think people like her make the best types of bloggers, because she does not give a flying fuck about being Internet Cool. There are so many ways to be a self-absorbed asshole online (as there are in real life), but she doesn’t spend enough time online to even know about most of them. It makes her so innocent! I love it.

I went to Lake Chelan with family the weekend before last, and took this photo in Stevens Pass on the way home:

Lovely, dark and deep, 2009 (For sale.)

This morning I stepped outside onto the warm bricks and wrote a haiku:

Mockingbirds, stray cat
Lizards scurry underfoot
Today will be hot.

And here is a video of our contrail shadow and a weak glory, as viewed from the window on the flight to our layover in Georgia. Do you see it? If so, give yourself a pat on the back.

Now it’s time for my first Cuban coffee of this vacation. Yes.

The above was supposed to somehow segue into a topical video of my cat doing a funny trick, but I no longer find myself interested in segueing, so you just get the cat video. (Whatever. This is the internet. Cats are always topical.)

Tricks are performed in the following order:

1. Boogie
2. Shake
3. Nom
4. Groom

I made a tiny montage of some of the sea creatures I saw– the only thing I’ve ID’d in the following video is Dendrochirus biocellatus, a.k.a. the twospot turkeyfish, a.k.a. the fu manchu lionfish. If you recognize anything, let me know!

(Music used is Secret Code off of Filmworks III by John Zorn.)

No, it actually is exciting to me, and I don’t know why.  I suppose it’s because those are the types of things that I pay attention to.  You are likely to find me stopped, staring up into a tree, arrested by the sight of shifting color patterns, while walking to work.  (That is, if you’re following me around– please don’t.)  I love plants, and I love them more in the flesh than in photos (even though I do have a lot of fun photographing them); taking video of them being quiet in their environment in their own planty ways adds a little more of that ineffable “plantness” to the media.

Maybe at this point you have no idea what I’m talking about.  It’s cool.  I’m just going to link up a video I made last night to show you what I mean. (link it up, Mott!)

(Track used is “Hlemmur” off of “Hlemmur” by Sigur Rós (2003).) By the way, embedding this video completely breaks my blog in Firefox 3. Wow. Are you guys seeing this?

Update 7/18/08: I finally upgraded Wordpress to the most current stable version, and now FF3.0.1 does not completely break my blog with this post– it just won’t show the video. Fine with me for now.

Anyway, here’s mini movie of some things I saw walking to and from work a few days ago. This could win as the world’s most boring video, but I like it… in the way that I love looking at photographs of ordinary things in other people’s neighborhoods.

I still haven’t figured out how to make flickr respect the poster frame I have set… right now the preview is just a black screen.

I went to the Seattle Tilth plant sale with her this weekend, and I got some video of her giving advice about how to properly leave voicemail.

Man, Jen makes me laugh so much. My life would be much darker without her.