Saturday, February 25, 2006

Poem for Saturday

Nothing Ventured
By Kay Ryan


Nothing exists as a block
and cannot be parceled up.
So if nothing's ventured
it's not just talk;
it's the big wager.
Don't you wonder
how people think
the banks of space
and time don't matter?
How they'll drain
the big tanks down to
slime and salamanders
and want thanks?

--------

I had a lovely day. Spent the morning writing the site columns for TrekToday and my "Journey To Babel" review. Ate lunch, then drove out to interview Jennifer Cutting in her home and studio, which has 19th century tall ship paintings on the wall and glass suncatchers making rainbows in the windows and as many CDs as we have, and she made me PG Tips tea so I was all warm and bouncy and happy. (Fileg, she remembers you and your place.) And I was a total fangirl and asked her to sign my New St. George CD. What the hell, I am sure Lisa Moscatiello could have warned her that I was a total fangirl if she did not suspect already. And I think it's a great interview, with lots of stuff about her personal journey to make Ocean -- I can't wait to write it up.


This is Jennifer on keyboards and Lisa on guitar being introduced when they performed with the Ocean Orchestra at Borders the night Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was released. More pics here.


We had dinner with my parents and uncle, rushed because Paul had to be online to test some stuff with people from his company's Bangalore office. Came home and watched the figure skating exhibition...Cohen is just so much fun to watch when she isn't falling out of her triple-triple combinations, and I love that she performed to Barbra Streisand (I didn't even think about it before but of course with a name like Sasha Cohen she must be Jewish) and Arakawa performed beautifully...give the girl a gold medal and she skates like a gold medalist, even if I can't stand that music. We also saw the giant slalom in the snow, or tried to through the whiteness...I don't really understand how it is fair for some people to have gotten to ski while the skies were clear and other people had to fight through visibility so bad the camera couldn't track them and fluffy snow that must have been slowing them down. I don't ever remember blizzard conditions coming up before mid-event like that, though I am sure now someone will remind me of one!

Couldn't deal with the real news, again, so here is news I could deal with from my local station: fake penis problems and another evolutionary hole gets plugged, undoubtedly to the distress of proponents of Intelligent Design. Friday Fiver this week is an Oscar poll (not sure if we were supposed to vote for what we expected to win or what we wanted to win but in the case of Best Picture, the answer is the same anyway), and there is no new Fannish 5 as of this writing.

The Friday Five: Deep Thoughts
1. When does liking someone a lot become loving that person?
If there was an answer to this question, it would put poets, playwrights, novelists and advice columnists out of business.
2. Is there a job you would do for free, and is it your current job? I have done many jobs for free because I loved them...in freelance writing, there is a great deal that gets done for free because of a compulsion to write, though I am sure that if I were more rigorous about writing what would pay instead of what I want to write, I would have more money. I've had some luck with the Do What You Love, The Money Will Follow philosophy -- running a fan club for Kate Mulgrew got me my all-time favorite job, at AnotherUniverse.com -- but for the past many years, while I've had all the flexibility in hours I could want, I've been very poor!
3. What is one person/thing that inspired you to take action of some sort? I went to grad school because I wanted to be my freshman English professor. Not necessarily, I realized later, because I wanted to be AN English professor, but because I wanted to be just like her.
4. Though you might not believe in it, would you like fate to exist? Absolutely not. I despise the idea.
5. What's the kindest thing that anyone has ever done for you? Really understood, and told me so.


cruisedirector

Gold Medal Winner in...


QuizGalaxy!


Doing the Robot while Skiing and/or Skating


'What rejected olympic sport would you win gold in?' at QuizGalaxy.com


Being Led Astray is the perfect way to end an evening. *smooches responsible party and wishes her a good trip* Tomorrow early we have tickets to see the baby panda again, so I will be at the zoo!

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