Poem for Tuesday

The Vision
By John Clare

I lost the love of heaven above,
  I spurned the lust of earth below,
I felt the sweets of fancied love,
  And hell itself my only foe.

I lost earth's joys, but felt the glow
  Of heaven's flame abound in me,
Till loveliness and I did grow
  The bard of immortality.

I loved but woman fell away,
  I hid me from her faded flame.
I snatched the sun's eternal ray
  And wrote till earth was but a name,

In every language upon earth,
  On every shore, o'er every sea,
I gave my name immortal birth
  And kept my spirit with the free.

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I am sure I did something of importance today worth mentioning here but damned if I can think what it is. Oh wait, I do know one thing: all my icons are now here in my scrapbook instead of at littlereview.com where they used to be! I haven't uploaded every single one and there are some there that I didn't make, but were made for me, and I don't have any credits or comments yet. But that's where they will ultimately reside. A lot of them really suck but I kept them for nostalgia's sake anyway. And I need a Tenth Doctor icon, and I suppose a Heroes icon and maybe even a Shark icon.

Otherwise I did some work, folded some laundry, watched some animated Star Trek so I can review it, got my son's violin teacher's keys so we can take care of her birds while she's out of town for Thanksgiving, had a war with Buy.com's rebate form and managed to get younger son to practice the violin before he went flying downstairs to the Wii, which he only got to play on a school day in the first place because there's no homework this week as so many kids are out of town. One of his classmates is moving back to Fiji after several years in the US, so they are having a class party for her on Wednesday.

Loved this week's Heroes -- I had it in my head that they were headed into a cliffhanger and break, so I was very pleased to get a coming attraction! Though I like the show a lot, I really don't think about it as soon as it ends -- I'm not in the fandom as such, not trying to work out the mysteries, so it took me until Peter was looking at the scan of the painting to realize that, duh, if Peter absorbs other people's powers, he could die and come back just like Claire if she was with him when he died. I did like the ambiguity about which cheerleader needed to be saved and which one Sylar wanted to kill...I'd been wondering whether we were going to find out that Jessica had been a cheerleader or something to throw everyone off. "Are you the one? By saving you did I save the world?" "I don't know, I'm just a cheerleader." And then poor Peter getting carted off...I hope he's out of jail by the end of next week's episode or I will be very angry with Claire's father! Then we watched the end of Monday Night Football, where Jeremy Shockey looks just enough like Boromir to keep me happy but Chris Berman's tie should come with a warning for epileptics.


This bee at the National Arboretum on Sunday is apparently confused about which season it is...it was only in the 50s and very few flowers remained.


And the poor bee inside this flower apparently did not realize it was sniffing around a fly trap!


The National Capitol Columns, probably the most recognizable feature for people who have been to the arboretum. These used to hold up the Capitol dome (more info here, more photos of them tagged). They seem very Ozymandias to me, despite the pretty fountains in the middle.


A koi surfaces in the big pond by the visitor's center.


The water has black dye in it to keep algae that is bad for the fish from growing there. People can get fish food in the summer, but in the winter the koi are supposed to hang out at the bottom of the pond, and they looked most displeased at the lack of free food.


This is the view of the Anacostia River from through an enclosure -- we crunched through all those leaves.

Just found out that I cannot go to the family Chanukah party, which my cousin scheduled around her side of the family without asking us, because we will be at my in-laws for Christmas (the party is technically the day after Chanukah ends). My father's uncle is quite ill and it is quite possible this could be his last family Chanukah party, so I am torn, but we have tickets to see a Dickens show in Pennsylvania already. Sigh.