The Friday Afternoon Post

Here I am, Erin!

Now that I am writing, I'm thinking perhaps the real problem behind my seeming lack of creative thought was a lack of caffeine. Because today I have had more than plenty and my fingers are eager to flit about the keyboard in a manner reminiscent of yesteryear (and by yesteryear I mean a couple months ago.) We'll see if we can keep this going.

Let's see...tales to tell...last night, having returned home from various wedding related errands (relating not to my own wedding- don't worry, I have no surprising news that I've chosen to reveal to everyone by burying the lede in a random blog post - but rather to the TWO friends' I am looking forward to participating in come January), I spent a leisurely hour or so just pottering around before going to Lacey's. You know, stacking up unopened mail, eating pasta, taking a shower - that sort of thing. Francis was darting around, being his usual weird self, but I noticed he was taking particular interest in a pair of heels that were laying on the floor beside the couch.

Not that I blamed him, these shoes being bright red and of the J. Crew persuasion, but up til now he hasn't really demonstrated that much interest in footwear so I decided to check it out. Then I thought to myself, what is that smallish fuzzy looking thing huddled in my shoe, where the ball of one's foot would usually rest? The cat quickly darted away as I exclaimed my surprise at realizing it was a relatively small rodent, of the mouse persuasion. After collecting myself, I realized that Francois had terrified the poor thing into a state some might call frozen, as it was not moving, except to wring its tiny hands/feet.

At this point I reached a conundrum. Initially, out of surprise, I could not think for the life of me what one would do with a small mouse. I stood in the living room, perplexed, as the tiny thing continued to wring his hands, crouched in my shoe. If I put him outside, he will surely freeze to death because even though I have yet to turn my heaters on this winter (please see this post for explanation on that), it has to be warmer inside than out and he is surely a domesticated mouse. However, one clearly (unless one is Phoebe) doesn't just let rodents run rampant in one's home, plus Francis would surely put a swift and grisly end to that anyhow.

I settled on placing the little fella, whom I named Stuart, in the stairwell of our small apartment building, thinking that it would be warmer than outside but less health-hazardish than letting him live in my apartment/putting him in a shoe box. I decided over night that I would put something in the stairwell for him to live with, like a sock or something, and share some of Francis' food with him. Unfortunately...let's just say this plan was unsuccessful. I'm comforting myself by thinking that he was an elderly mouse, and lived out his final days (barring a harrowing adventure with le chat) in the peace and comfort of my apartment building.

Just so we don't end on kind of a downer note (sorry about that), speaking of mice, please look at this amazing picture of Claire's child, dressed as Minnie Mouse for Halloween:


Pretty much my favorite child.

An Eternal Flame

Firefighting. Just one more facet to the myriad of skills I am picking up in my sojourn through the world of publishing. Unlike some skills (for instance my apparently incredible quickly-stapling-things skills, which my boss suggested I could utilize as a full-time career), firefighting is one that I really wouldn't have thought would come in handy here, but you learn something new every day.

It was a happy day for the folks in the creative services department - a catered lunch, how pleasant. The conference room beside my desk filled with the happy sounds of people eating quesadillas and black beans.

After lunch, however, when the delighted munching was merely a memory, I went in to turn off the light and what to my wondering eyes should appear but the light of not one, not two, but four flickering sterno lanterns. Cheerily burning away in the empty room, dutifully warming two large aluminum pans full of water.

I consulted the folks in creative services about this, and they had decided that it was difficult to put them out, so they would just let them burn until there was no more fire left in them. On another, colder day in the office, I might have accepted this, and huddled like a Hooverville hobo over the warmth of the little gas flame, rubbing my hands together as I propped my bandana tied to a stick against the wall. Today however, it was more temperate in the office, and I chose instead to alert my boss. His first attempt at squelching the flames with a plastic serving spoon only seemed to make them angrier. After removing the hot aluminum pans filled with water, however, he was able to extinguish them with bursts of breath, leaving the office safe for one more day.

Other than that, not a lot going on this afternoon. Happy Wednesday!

Silence is golden?

It's awfully nice of you people (my aunt, Walker & Tap, Chase) to notice that I have become the worst blogger ever in terms of actually writing in my blog - for you I will try! I honestly don't know what's up with my brain lately. Maybe I haven't been reading enough? Whatever it is I have just not been in the literary mindset. I think it's a possibility that the problem is the sub-arctic temperatures we've been enduring in the office lately. Supposedly, the computers in the IT room have to be kept at a certain temperature, to the detriment of everyone's extremities, but I'm pretty sure that's a sham. It's not like we just got the computers, and it hasn't always been this cold in here...

Writing is one of those things (like most things, I suppose) where if you try too hard to come up with something great, you just end up coming up with nothing at all. You wonder so much why it is that your brain used to be fine at coming up with nonsense to ramble about and now can only think of the fact that it can't come up with nonsense to ramble about. I feel like Kathleen Kelly in You've Got Mail when she's recalling how when someone says something awful to her, she wants so badly to say something in return but her mind is a complete blank. "Even now, days later...nothing."

I'm starting to get ready for the holiday season. I'm not to Amy Grant Christmas mode yet (you at least have to wait til after halloween) but now that it's fall I'm getting more and more ready to watch Home Alone.

Every year at Thanksgiving, I have the honor of attending the feast on the night before Thanksgiving at Catherine's house, with her family and also Scott, another honorary guest. We all gather around the table with the candles glinting off the silver and the glasses and share a delightful meal, though my favorite part is after dinner. We've established a tradition over the years of going around the table to say what we've been particularly thankful for, and then some of our favorite things over the course of the year, like movies or books or albums. I've already started considering my options for these important questions, though obviously it is too early to reveal the contenders.

And now I'm going home. I'll give it another shot tomorrow and hope it turns out more clever than this.

Friday Afternoon Post

Hullo everyone, it's the Friday Afternoon Post.

I do hope you haven't given up on me. I am hoping that fall will provide me with ample inspiration and the font of words will once again begin to flow. For now I am mostly inspired by my inability to sit still. I am experiencing "fall fever," the autumnal equivalent of the spring affliction of similar nomenclature. Every 30 seconds I turn and look out of my patio here at work (read: the windowed storage closet behind my desk) and bounce a bit in anticipation of being outside. I am having visions of myself, and others, walking down leaf-strewn sidewalks in sweaters and boots, perhaps carrying books and listening to Chris Thile on ipods.

College football starts this weekend, and though I am certainly not the most avid football fan, it does fill my little Auburn heart with cheer to think of College Gameday - even attending the UTC Mocs game last night (record setting attendance of more than 14,000 people in Finley Stadium...yeah, big time) made me happy.

Oh how I pine for a hint of cool in the evenings that I might wear my new cape (yep, it's a cape. And it's navy, with gold buttons. And it has a sash. Oh fine, it is this, from Modcloth:

As I think this post is almost completely ridiculous by this point, I might as well close with some poetry:

To Autumn - William Blake

O Autumn, laden with fruit, and stain'd
With the blood of the grape, pass not, but sit
Beneath my shady roof; there thou may'st rest,
And tune thy jolly voice to my fresh pipe,
And all the daughters of the year shall dance!
Sing now the lusty song of fruits and flowers.

'The narrow bud opens her beauties to
The sun, and love runs in her thrilling veins;
Blossoms hang round the brows of Morning, and
Flourish down the bright cheek of modest Eve,
Till clust'ring Summer breaks forth into singing,
And feather'd clouds strew flowers round her head.

'The spirits of the air live in the smells
Of fruit; and Joy, with pinions light, roves round
The gardens, or sits singing in the trees.'
Thus sang the jolly Autumn as he sat,
Then rose, girded himself, and o'er the bleak
Hills fled from our sight; but left his golden load.

It's a five o'clock world. Happy Labor Day, all!

Starr

Yesterday was my Aunt Starr's birthday. I am a bad niece and missed it by a day. I don't usually do the birthday posts, so if you have a birthday (that would be everyone who reads this) and I don't write about you on it, please don't be annoyed with me or think that perhaps we aren't real friends.

Starr is my mom's little sister. She is several years younger, so when I was little, she was kind of like my really cool older sister as opposed to my aunt. I used to spend the night with her and she would make me laugh, and we would drive around in her cool car and listen to Shawn Colvin sing "Riding shotgun down the avalanche, mmm mmm mmm..." She gave me (perhaps unintentionally...) the first cds I ever owned (Counting Crows "August and Everything After" and Harry Connick, Jr. "25", in case you're looking for those, Starr...) and she and her husband gave me my first cd player. Her husband, my uncle Kendall, was there for me in lots of ways when I was a kid, and helped teach me how to drive (and even allowed me to play Ben Harper while doing so even though he is more of an Eagles type of guy.)

All that to say that I'm lucky to have a Starr like her and I love her and I hope she had a very happy birthday!
Starr with her little girl Lauren. Alas, no pictures of us together on the world wide web.

Get thee to an apple orchard

Or something to that effect. There are a lot of places that fall immediately makes me wish to visit, and since today it was like 85 degrees instead of 90, everyone is talking about fall and how it's happening and so I want to visit those places.

Mostly, fall makes me long for college campuses. I'd settle for any pretty one (ah, Sewanee), but my own in particular. As soon as I stepped outside for lunch today, the cool breeze (aided by the shade of the TFP overhang at the door) and sunny blue skies immediately tossed my mind back to Auburn. Walking down Magnolia with my backpack and a crisp breeze, past Erskine Ramsey hall and the Art building, through Toomer's Corner, along the sidewalk under the canopy of trees...

It is kind of a bummer that backpacks play no part in my daily life now. I loved my little navy L.L. Bean backpack that traveled all the way through high school and college with me. It's in the trunk of my car (along with a whole lot of other things...) still stuffed with notebooks. I also miss sitting in history classes, taking pages and pages of notes on the Civil War or Argentinian politics or H.L. Mencken. I'd like to see all the RVs start gathering in their spots in the field with the orange and blue paper lanterns and giant, inflatable, light-up Aubies, and the tailgaters relaxing in their lawn chairs, waiting until 4 so they can rope off their spots for gameday. The rolling plains of Dixie are beautiful at lots of points in the year, but I love them especially in the fall.

So war eagle for autumn, I suppose is what I have ended up saying.

Story hour suggestions and Politifact

In preparation for the Ali's Challenge 3 post (due tomorrow) I was just reading the imdb site for "The Rescuers." You see, this week Ali and Kevin (of this tale) are enjoying beignets and crawfish (hopefully seperately) in NOLA, leaving me challengeless. So I told Ali that perhaps I would instead write a story about their adventures on the bayou, a la "The Rescuers," which is one of the more awesome Disney movies of all time (Miss Bianca? Bernard? Evinrude? So great!)

However now I'm a little skeptical of this idea as a) I can't get a good grasp on an idea and b) how do you improve on "The Rescuers" (without making "The Rescuers Down Under," which has already been done though isn't so much an improvement as a lateral move on the awesome scale) and c) would I be messing with some sort of copyright restrictions by tampering with their storyline?

Anyhow, if you have any suggestions for this week's fun fact that I can utilize in the challenge, feel free to submit them.

Also, I heard a guy from this website talking on NPR yesterday, and in looking at it, it seems pretty handy for those who prefer facts to hyperbole when considering things like politics and healthcare. The site is meant to provide non-partisan analysis and "just the facts, ma'am." How rare. Also, in case you've been wondering where one might read the thousands of pages of the Healthcare bill itself, here you go.