TAG, I'm weird (not very weird, but very tagged)

I am tagged by Schuyler and Miranda both with this heavy onus:

Each person who gets tagged needs to write a blog post of their own 6 weird things as well as clearly state this rule. After you state your 6 weird things, you need to choose 6 people to be tagged and list their names. Don't forget to leave a comment that says "you're tagged" in their comments and tell them to read your blog for information as to what it means. So here goes.

I suppose that means I have to write twelve weird things. If someone is already tagged,and has already written six weird things, then is she (or he, for those few male humans in this neighborhood) immune to further taggings?

One weird thing is I always have questions.

2) I'm not very good on a PC but like a racecar driver on any familiar Mac. So of course I love those Mac commercials with the kid who saved the universe (that other universe, or planet at least) in Galaxy Quest, who plays "the Mac."

3) I am a Sam Rockwell fan. That may not be too weird, unless weird is defined simply as unusual, against expectations or the majority. When I saw Sam Rockwell in Charlie's Angels, I kept looking at him and looking at him and I wrote his name on my arm during the credits to come home and look him up (I love IMDB, but that's not weird). So IMDB says he's in Midsummer Night's Dream and Galaxy Quest. So I'm very familiar with both of those movies which makes me SURE there is not ANYbody who's on both. But it turns out my favorite bit in Midsummer Night's Dream, which I have dragged my friends in to see, is him. (Thisbe, in the play-within-a-play.) And he's Guy in the other. Crazy, scared "the monster will get Guy!" guy. So I discover at that moment that he's a total genius and we rent The Green Mile.

4) I like to talk to people, and I can speak in public, but I don't like to make phone calls to strangers. Calling to make an appointment or to see if a shop has something or if my car's ready at the shop makes me very uncomfortable.

5) I can't remember numbers.

6) I can remember the words to songs, and jingles from TV commercials from the 50's and 60's.

7) I can't swim.

8) I don't know what people look like. It takes several meetings for me to recognize a face well. When people change clothes or hats or hair, I get confused. But once I know them well, I still don't really know what they look like that season, because I keep the memories of all the ways I've known them and it kind of all mushes together in my head. I guess that means my identifying parts of people are not very much their physical appearance. (That one's hard to describe.)

9) I forget the rules to games, but I hardly ever forget a law or a policy if I know the details. It seems they would be the same thing in my head, but somehow they're not. Or I remember one game very well (rummy) and forget another (poker). I've never figured out what that is.

10) I have friends who don't know my name. Or they know me as "AElflaed" (my name in the Society for Creative Anachronism) and don't know what my real name is.

11) I developed an allergy to cedar in the past few years. If I get a cedar splinter I get really sick. If I mess with cedar bark, ditto. That's sad, because it smells wonderful and the bark can be peeled into the finest, curliest kindling, and I used to do that with my fingernails while I watched movies in the den, and I guess that's why I got the allergy, shoving teensy mini-cedar splinters under my fingernails. It affects my liver. My friend who knows Chinese medicine told me to drink carrot and celery juice and Keith has a juicer. So I didn't die, and I'm glad I figured it out. [I still mess with cedar sometimes.]

12) I used to collect chain letters, when they were hand-written on paper. I wish I had saved all I ever got when I was a kid. I kept collecting them when they were typed, and then when they were photocopied. I quit collecting them when they started to go around by e-mail. I've always broken them, and never suffered the bad luck, and so I'm brave about breaking this one.

I'm not tagging, but I did do a double report as penance.

Cameras

I've always liked and feared cameras. Camera stories are traumatic for me; my first one was stolen when I was little, and I've had other camera-bad-luck.

Holly took that photo of herself inside a play-tent she has. She got it out to check its condition in preparation for taking it to her babysitting job tomorrow. They've been making tents of sheets, but Holly had a pop-up play tent she bought with her own money several years ago. One stick was missing, so we trimmed a broken yardstick to fit. I was enjoying seeing what it was doing to her hair.

Thursday night Marty took some photos without flash of a candlelit thing we were doing here, and I'm thrilled to have those. He took photos, I uploaded them, and then the camera died. So we (Holly and I) got another one Saturday so I could take photos of Marty dressed up, and because we've just become very accustomed to taking photos. Is it another addiction? A dependency? It's a tool. I don't like to be without my customary tools, starting with spoons, going through hammers to scissors to small kitchen appliances, vacuum cleaner, washer and dryer... working automobile.

I certainly remember NOT having many tools, when we were younger and poorer.

Some of the photos from Thursday are here: http://sandradodd.com/guestfest/artanandaziza It's a local SCA project I'm doing, so in that context I'm AElflaed, Keith is Gunwaldt and Marty is Bardolf. I named Kirby and Holly normally because they were downstairs playing Wii and board games with some other kids.

The new camera has an operational macro function and zoom. Good. I need to take flower photos in a few months. By "need" I mean need to in order to feel satisfaction about blogs and webpages.

This new camera can get some good detals on closeups.
(I don't know if much detail can show up here at this size.)



The thought of learning a new camera exhausts me. The booklet is too, too long and the print is too, too small. Maybe I'm just getting too, too old. It's a Fujifilm FinePix S 5200 for those who might've been curious. I bought it because Consumer Reports liked the make.

Marty is off to the Winter Ball

Marty has left with Kirby's friend Beth's sister Monica to La Cueva High School's Winter Ball. Holly took a few photos before they left, and Monica's mom will take more seriously posed ones at her house. Then they're going to Bennigan's with several other couples, and then to the dance. Maybe there will be other photos later, then, but here's a glimpse of the evening.

New on my Unschooling pages

http://sandradodd.com/unschool/gettingit
Short new bit added to Unschooling: Getting It

http://sandradodd.com/game/reading
Hayden reads the back of the World of Warcraft expansion set box aloud--check it out.

http://sandradodd.com/bedtime
well... bedtime! choices, sleep...

health food and multiple intelligences--totally unrelated to one another:

http://sandradodd.com/eating/healthfood
Short new page on eating,
and the main food page is cleaned up and improved
http://sandradodd.com/food

I'm working on a page on Gardner's Multiple Intelligences. If you're interested, check back by Wednesday, by when I'll have added more.

http://sandradodd.com/intelligences

Those things are announced in two places, on a announcements list at yahoogroups http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sandradodd/
and on a blog dedicated to just such things: http://sandradodd.com/blog, but for some reason I had the urge to announce these new bits here. Weird. But there it is.

A really nice moment

Holly is going to take a babysitting job. The offer was made on a local homeschooling list. When I wrote and said Holly might be interested, the mom wrote back "That would be a dream come true." The day had several conversations about how it would all work out, when she would be working, what she might want to consider.

Late last night, Kirby told me that he had a call back from Client Logic, and orientation was Monday. "You got the job?"

Yeah, he said. It's a call center that does customer support contract work.

When I asked why he hadn't told us earlier, he said everyone had been excited about Holly's new job and he hadn't wanted to steal her thunder. He didn't say it in any pouty way, not any way at all except totally sincerely. He's had new jobs before, and Holly never had, so he let her have the day.

Marty's off at his birthday party. They're going to spend the night at Sadie's house, where the party is. When I see him next, he'll be eighteen years old.

I love my kids.

Swirly Life

This September blog entry was shown on a giant screen and discussed in Dan Vilter's internet talk at the Live and Learn conference last fall, but I didn't hear that part until today, January 7. He said, "Look at that--picture of your truck!" (I was in the room, and heard lots of the talk, but people kept asking me questions, because I was by the main door, so I'm glad I have the recordings, and decided to listen to some of them today.)

My whole online life lacks immediacy. Here I'm writing about last September. I've been editing and putting up things I wrote in 1991 and that. http://sandradodd.com/tw. On the other hand, I answer list posts pretty quickly, and I've put two little articles online today that were written yesterday.

Dan said "I wonder if she talked about us in her blog." What I did was make a page of Dan's online stuff: http://sandradodd.com/danvilter which is linked several places, principally here: sandradodd.com/unschooling.

As much as I use the internet every single day, I just don't use it very linearally. Neither is my website very linear. Neither is my mind. All swirly...

It snowed again, this much.

Unlike last time, though, we're home without company and responsibilities, just being quiet and warm.