white noise

Ooooh yeah. Check out my homepage for Everwild. I’m not completely satisfied with the layout, but I finally fixed it for liquid css layout AND for content-first accessibility (which pickles me tink). I still have a long way to go before I really understand how to manipulate the layout with divs, but I learned a lot from this excursion into the wild unknowns.

In other news, Jon turned me on to Notepad++ and if you’re determined (like me) to code css, php, or html in a text editor, you reallyreallyREALLY need to try this one. It’s the cat’s meow! And I do mean meow! I’ve only been using it for the last four days, but I just adore it. The syntax highlighting makes flow so easy to follow and while the option for preferences is a bit obscure, you can choose your own colors.

(Jon says I need to thank Ron for pointing us to this little gem of a proggie, so thanks Ron!)

Well, having decided my own ideas for mapping new worlds wasn’t the best (given that Jon frequently wrinkled his nose at them), I came up with a new idea for creating natural looking continents. Yes, that’s right. Cows.

The best breeds of cows I’ve found for this type of project are the Ayrshire and Holstein. They have the best markings that I’ve seen thus far to use for mapping purposes:

and

These two are only models taken from the web (cuz I’m lazy), and not the cows I’ve used, but look at the patterns on them. There’s great potential on both of these girls! Maybe not fit for a full archipelago, but man, there’s definitely some island action happening in there. :) The pattern in the lower right region of the bottom cow is a very nice bay or possibly just a cove with a small island off-center, while the youngster up top looks more like the archipelago type to me. But, you know — with the help of Photoshop, the imagination can just go wild.

So far, I have two working continents, and I’m on the search for more cows!

Coolness!

I was poking around online looking for info on Eva’s California Poets in the Schools and a Google search on her name brought up an online version of Metamorphoses. I lost my printed copy long, long ago, but it’s neat to see our work still hanging around out there on the web :) :

Metamorphoses

and

The Writers

(note: I also workshopped/grouped for 4 or 5 years with Eva, and Nancy & Ron Smith)

and

Alone Vs. Lonely

I know Eva Poole-Gilson well (in the sense that you know someone though not intimately). She’s taught me poetry and creative writing since the dawn of time! (I guess that means we’re both getting old. :) I started out as a mini poet in class when I was in fifth grade and the last class I had with her was the Cerro Coso creative writing class in 1998, just before I moved to Sacramento. Wow. She’s been the biggest influence on my writing throughout the course of my life now. Thanks gobs and oodles, Eva!

So far in the last month, I’ve had two fantastic telephone conversations with my sister. She’s so adult now that it’s almost frightening. She’s managed to overcome some incredible obstacles: a drug addiction, smoking, and a history that I’m sure still haunts her. I suppose I can’t ask or expect perfection, but she makes these steps, one at a time, towards a better life. I worry that she’s a fraud, that it’s all a plot to get something else, but perhaps the motivation she talks about — her two girls — is real.

Either way, the depth of love I felt for my sister when she was born remains as fathomless today. I’ve no idea how to convey this sort of emotion to her, especially not trusting her fully. I wait, watching her cautiously for the telltale signs that point to her being deceptive or evil. How can I blame her, though? She learned from the best, didn’t she? She had two very dysfunctional parents, one a drug addict and the other so co-dependent, she couldn’t get her head out of her nether regions.

And then she had me. However much I tried and however much my heart might have been in the right place, I wasn’t a parent. I had no clue what I was doing. I only knew that my father and Barbie were more like a wrecking crew than parents to Chelsea. She grew up with no boundaries and no values. How can my father bitch about her values now?

I called Chelsea yesterday to tell her that I’ve been thinking very seriously about Barbie’s funeral when she passes on. I’m the executor of her estate (so far, anyhow), and I’ve decided that she shouldn’t have a traditional funeral. It’s just not her style. Or, at least I don’t think it is. So, I asked Chelsea what she thought of a memorial endurance ride and she loved the idea. Me too, actually. It smacks of Barbie, and we can work it out so both horse people AND non-horse people can be involved.

Neat. :)

My heart felt a bit like lead yesterday when Marni called to say she was discontinuing the Teen Writers’ group. I could think of a hundred arguments, all selfish, of course, as to why this is a bad idea. Why walk away from something in its infancy when it hasn’t had the opportunity to be?

But I know the answer to that question. How do I argue against that? I don’t. I can’t and I shouldn’t. Although, I’d be happy to pick up where she’s leaving off. Not sure how much energy I’d have to throw into such a project, especially with it being so far away, but I do see it as a worthwhile endeavor.

Not if you’re miserable doing it, though. If there’s no satisfaction, no reward, and there’s nothing in it to keep one moving forward, I can see why it’s easy to want to focus that energy elsewhere.

Kids can be amazing creatures, though, you know? I’m impressed with Nora’s drive to write, but also at how much time and effort her parents (her mother?) have put into her home-schooling. I think I’m quite envious; if my parents had shown that much enthusiasm towards my education, hell, I’d be a rocket scientist (not really)!

More and more people I talk to homeschool their children. This growing trend in home-schooling does seem to have a better influence on these kids, too. They aren’t necessarily smarter, but they’re certainly getting the attention to detail they need. Any more, public schools are falling into pits of “broken curriculum” and become little more than free baby-sitting services for absentee parenting. It makes me wonder … do we need more stay-at-home mothers or fathers? In some cases, we need better teachers; in others, we need less red tape. And, in all cases, we need more parents engaged and interested in their children’s lives AND educations (says she who is childless by choice). :)

On the writing side of life, I now have 3 or 4 poems that are likely candidates for submission. I poke and prod at them almost daily right now, but I’m happy even with the small tweaks I make. Sooner or later, however, I’ll need to get back on the horse and actually submit them. I think I’m happy that many places still won’t take electronic submissions. The feeling that I’ve traveled with these submissions makes it seem more of an accomplishment somehow. Yes, I know, strange. I’m considering a rewrite of Ghost Rider after having a clearer, more detailed vision of how my clans are arranged.

I’m enthralled by mythology lately, especially mythology and death. The whole notion of death being a bad thing disturbs me. Death isn’t evil. It’s a very sad thing, especially when it happens to young folks, but we project ourselves on the dead, thinking they’ve been robbed of something because we’ve been robbed of them — of people we love. This hurts us, but I tend to doubt very seriously they care much about us beyond death. Not that they stop loving or caring in the sense that we cease to exist, although I do wonder about this often, too. But, we dwell on the misery of death and we can’t accept that death is as natural as life.