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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
seekyr's LiveJournal:
| Wednesday, June 2nd, 2004 | |
| 11:31 am | human league how long? driving sunday morning, almost all i could tune in on the radio were countdown shows. . . y'know, casey and rick dees and that guy from american idol. . . and one of them {casey, i think} was saying that it was this week twenty-two years ago that the human league's "don't you want me" was all the rage on the charts. twenty-two years? my, but i still do love that song. |
| Tuesday, June 1st, 2004 | |
| 1:25 pm | mary schiebel, 1924-2004 my mother's mother passed away this past thursday, after a pair of strokes that began last sunday. she was eighty. she and my grandfather had been married for sixty years and raised eight children, of whom my mother is the oldest. we buried her yesterday, memorial day 2004. my grandmother was a writer. she wrote every day in her diary, largely factual information about who did what or who called. it's a reference for our family, a catalogue of what happened when. i have a copy of the page from the day when i was born. she passed quickly and did not suffer, and for this i am so thankful. the first stroke hit her at home, at the kitchen table. she had finished writing a newspaper column for the verylocal paper on the minutes of the grange meeting. she had sent my grandfather into town to drop off the column, which she probably typed on a veryold manual typewriter. my grandfather found her on the floor when he returned, and she was rushed to the hospital. as of sunday, she was blinking her eyes distantly and gently touching people's hands and moving her one leg. the doctors thought then that she might recover. all that movement stopped monday, probably the result of a second stroke. soon after, a ventilator was doing all of her breathing for her. on tuesday, i got the call to come quickly. i dropped everything and did. i saw her that night. on wednesday, i saw her again and then stayed at the house with my grandfather, who wouldn't go into the hospital. he was so upset, seeing her like that, and was not dealing well at all. by thursday, the doctors were ready to pronounce her brain dead, and six of the surviving seven children were there with my grandfather to decide that they approved of a possible organ transplant. in the midst of preparation, though, her heart simply stopped, despite the pacemaker. the doctors tried to help her, but they had been instructed not to keep her alive on machines only. most of the family had actually just left the hospital, knowing the doctors would work on the transplant procedure. but she went when she wanted to, when most had left, and all was quieter. all of this was in central new york, an hour or hour and a half away. i went to my own home late on friday, to collect myself, to grieve some on my own, and to get clothes. the viewing was on sunday. on monday we buried her. my grandmother had such a warmth and dignity about her. she listened actively. she offered advice, but usually when asked. the way she would say, "honey" had all of the warmth of the world in that one, elongated word. i will miss her so verymuch. |
| Tuesday, May 11th, 2004 | |
| 11:02 am | the post-semester movie-watching begins grades were in last week. i still have to be on campus for some meetings and then commencement {sunday}, and then summer classes begin, and i will be on campus somewhat. but yesterday i went to see the company at the spectrum 8, in the afternoon, and i enjoyed the movie quite a bit. loose plotlines. not overdone. wonderful handheld stuff. a mixture of rehearsal and then actual performance. dancers' lives, on stage and off. neve campbell as the dancer she used to be. malcolm mcdowell as such the director, in yellow scarf, shouting praise in passing and addressing his dancers as "babies." and altman's direction. it's just the beginning of movie season for me, which happens to fall in the summertime, blockbuster season or not. |
| Friday, May 7th, 2004 | |
| 9:33 am | new focus my new focus is this: one paper at a time. just one. do it. finish up. and then another one. and then, well, you know. it's the last day of the exam period, and i am writing final responses. |
| Wednesday, May 5th, 2004 | |
| 11:25 am | last days: part II the next time that i say anything about the final days of the semester looking ok or me being ahead of the game, PLEASE STOP ME. for the love of all that's good, please stop me before i say such things. {{it's for my own damned good.}} |
| Monday, May 3rd, 2004 | |
| 4:36 pm | dreaming music i don't usually dream music, or if i do, i don't remember it at all. but this morning i woke up dreaming bits of morrissey's "irish blood, english heart": "I've been dreaming of a time when the English are sick to death of Labour, and Tories and spit upon the name Oliver Cromwell and denounce this royal line that still salute him and will salute him FOREVER..." dunno what to make of that, especially since the morrissey song that usually gets lodged in my head is "suedehead." |
| Friday, April 30th, 2004 | |
| 8:57 am | last day of classes it's the last day of classes today. i collect lots of stuff to grade, hand back some other stuff already graded, and then march all academic-like & present an award at our honors convocation. grading some grammar tests, i am seeing lots of students writing 40 as "fourty," which makes me wonder why 4 is "four" but 40 is "forty." strange origins, i bet. still, the error is an interesting one. |
| Wednesday, April 28th, 2004 | |
| 5:54 pm | last days i have just finished up one of my classes-- well, taught the final class meeting of said class, not actually finished anything or completed my work on the class-- and the end of all of my classes is only two days away. all things considered, i'm actually in somewhat better shape than i frequently am at this time of year. i've scheduled stuff on the early side and actually kept deadlines in place and then responded in a more timely fashion than i would have predicted. so the picture ain't half-bad {at least not yet}. |
| Monday, April 26th, 2004 | |
| 9:31 am | end of semester music listened to much of once more with feeling on friday afternoon and was struck by what stayed with me. . . "going through the motions" hits hard, as ever. "bunnies" makes things better, but not completely. but the music that really haunts me is the orchestral stuff near the end, "sacrifice" from "the gift," the season six finale. then again, that's better than "close your eyes," which gets stuck in my head all too easily. all of which is to say that this is all just signs of the times {and not in a prince sense}. |
| Thursday, April 22nd, 2004 | |
| 1:11 pm | more o.c. yea. fox renewed the o.c. for next season. this makes me happy, even if i am a few episodes behind right now. |
| Wednesday, April 21st, 2004 | |
| 2:29 pm | rereading _the onion girl_ i do so love charles de lint's books. i just reread the onion girl, which already had lots of places for me to break down and cry, but the place that most got to me and had tears openly flowing was when the crow girls come to jilly at the end-- when almost all has been said and done-- and offer her two feathers and the wish that they could have done some- -thing. wow. i had forgotten that scene, and it just wowed me straight through. i do love the crow girls although i can't tell them apart either. |
| Monday, April 19th, 2004 | |
| 9:08 am | and speaking of music. . . . . .i cannot seem to get blue oyster cult's "don't fear the reaper" out of my head. all these music references are making me sound such the classic rock guy. {{well, except for cheezy jazz covers, i guess.}} |
| 9:03 am | office listening music there's something very satisfying about sitting in my office at the college listening to pink floyd. now, i'm not about to listen to this with my door open-- not secure enough for that, really-- but i like the counterstatement of music and place. in other listening news, i picked up a lovely jazz cover cd yesterday: jazz for couch potatoes. it includes jazz interpretations or variations on themes from sanford and son, peter gunn. gilligan's island, m*a*s*h*, and bewitched mixed with i dream of genie. cool stuff. |
| Thursday, April 15th, 2004 | |
| 9:47 am | since it is *that* day filing taxes in two states when you only have income in one seems kinda silly, especially when the one you live in has a higher rate {and it's not like any of the income was actually earned there}. that is all. yes, the paperwork is only going in today. it's a habit-thing. honest. |
| Monday, March 22nd, 2004 | |
| 1:38 pm | really real philadelphia so the venerable < snicker > real world will not be filming in philadelphia after all. following protests, mtv is pulling back. it seems they wanted to do remodelling work on their intended home using non-union workers. that didn't sit well. no real world: philly now. {{not that i really particularly care about the series at this point: i am so beyond the age and behavior demographic at this stage of my life. BUT this was so influential among the not-scripted, but edited-into-drama television shows, so i do pay attention. . .}} |
| Friday, March 12th, 2004 | |
| 9:22 am | quizzie thing ok, so here's your morning time-[insert verb here]-er, a fill-in-the-blank quiz on 80's song lyrics. i scored an 81.5, by the way. special props to shadorunr for linking to the quiz. my personal favorites: 51, 55, 66, and 72 {i love 72, but i've never been able to make out that missing word. and now i know. . . . . .and knowing is half the battle.} |
| Wednesday, March 10th, 2004 | |
| 1:46 pm | my new favorite collection of poetry here it is: blue wizard is about to die by seth "fingers" flynn barkan and published by rusty immelman press. the subtitle? "prose, poems, and emoto-versitronic expressionist pieces about videogames (1980-2003)" i mean, the title harkens back to gauntlet. there's a nice little poem on smash tv. the collection even has ANNOTATIONS of details from particular games and gaming experiences. such fun. |
| Wednesday, March 3rd, 2004 | |
| 2:26 pm | all politics is local just a little while ago, i got to shake the hand of the governor of vermont. he was on campus to do a press conference and was leaving and turned as i was moving to leave, and he shook my hand. no questions on the aberrant vote here to give dean an after-the-fact victory, but there was a question on the town of killington's vote to secede from vermont {to join new hampshire}. the gov's press guy said something about there having just been a call from cnn on that same question {while the conference was going on. . .} the answer was waffley, but hell, a ski resort wanting to defect to a border a ways away is kinda kooky in and of itself. |
| Wednesday, February 18th, 2004 | |
| 9:11 am | recently been feeling like death with various sickness-stuffs. cold, flu, general ick. {ok, hopefully not flu, but beyond a certain point, i do start to get weirded.} very hard to be productive when you're feeling like this, especially as the room seems to heat up and then rapidly cool down, without any real reason. entertainment news: the wb has cancelled angel. it's a show i've wanted to watch and enjoy, but in a time slot where there are two other shows that i try to watch (west wing and oc), it's been a tough thing to do. still, i like the joss-verse, as well as familiar faces and old friends. |
| Monday, February 9th, 2004 | |
| 9:18 am | julius schwartz julie schwartz is dead. what neil gaiman wrote here was moving, but what mark evanier wrote here brought tears to my eyes. i was a silver age comics reader. actually, i still am. and while i have a certain fascination with reinventions of the golden age {and their children}, it's the silver age stuff that has been the heart of my comics life: the legion of superheroes, the justice league of america {in all of its incarnations}, the versions of continuity that the screens-- big and little-- brought to life beyond fandom. julie schwartz was the father of the silver age, the hand that guided so many writers. his influence had great influence in my early reading and my love of comics. he will be missed. |