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January 31, 1998
I have a really nice feeling of satisfaction and completion right now, looking back at things. Mark and I have been together for over eleven
months, have owned our house and lived together for over six months, and have been married for over five months. The fact of our happy life
together is taking on a comfortable, reassuring weight, like that of a British pound coin dropped into the palm of one's hand.
Today will mark the last photograph in the sixth page of Untitled--one week per
page, one extra on the first page, 43 photographs and umpteen extras. There is a very good feeling to this--it marks over a month of
creating, a solid block of commitment to the project. I can feel myself waking up again creatively. And equally importantly, I'm
having an ungodly amount of fun with the project.
And the journal itself is finishing another "volume"--tomorrow will have a new title and new graphics, which is always fun for
me. I've been enjoying my journal a lot more since I've been able to put my own photography in here, and since I've been doing
more fun things with it. And I'll keep doing more in the future, because I had so much fun reading through my old paper journals,
seeing what I used to do and thinking of things I'd like to do in the future.
And there is also the feeling that I'm one month closer to spring and summer, that I've put another month of winter into the past.
Increasingly I've been yearning for summer when I can sit outside again, start a garden, take pictures outdoors without freezing my
tail off. Fortunately, I have enough fun things to do indoors that I can wait until it's warm out, but I'll be extremely
glad when spring comes.
We're going to put in our first pond this year. We're thinking of something about six feet in diameter and roughly circular to
start with. I want to put in one lotus, a little Momo Botan; some water plants including water clover, water sensitive, and water
mosaic; and a few waterlilies. My first choices for waterlilies (in descending order) would be a Chromatella, a very hardy waterlily with
exquisitely shaped blossoms; an Indiana, a changeable which goes from yellow to orange to red; a Pamela, a really lovely blue tropical; a
Virginalis, a big, stately white; and, oh...the others I can't remember exactly and would have to look up. Right now I have a little Helvola,
a tiny yellow waterlily which will continue to live in a tub on our deck. (Right now it's in the basement.)
Later.... I don't know why, but tonight I decided to read through some of the old emails Mark sent me while we were dating. Sweet stuff. I realized how
strange it is to have one's old love letters be email (although it's becoming much more common), thinking of the contrast between my parents' old love letters, kept
in a drawer, and my old love letters, saved in a Netscape folder, juxtaposed in my memory. Made me laugh. Made me feel very sappy and romantic, too. And he's just as sweet now as he was then,
if not even more so. I feel very sappy.
The necklace in these photos in one I made from a little lizard carved from bone and a...can't remember the name right now...it's one of those mineral
formations which forms in caves in little rosettes. I had a lot of fun with these tonight.
I really like what people have been doing with their lists of miscellaneous facts about themselves, and Renee
has compiled a great list of them, Is That a Fact?, and I'd like to play, too. So here's some strange, odd, and not-so-odd random facts about me....
I love ploughman's lunches--pickles, cheese, and bread. I especially like to pack them for airplane trips--I generally would pack a bunch of sweet pickles, dill pickles, slices of
several kinds of cheese, and slices of a couple different kinds of fancy-shmancy breads--heaven.
I'll brush my teeth in the bathtub (not while I'm taking a bath, mind you) before I'll disturb a cat sleeping in the sink. (Some of my cats like to sleep in the sink in the summer
because it's cooler there.)
I once filled up the huge deck behind the apartment I lived in with plastic tubs and kiddie pools and had tons of waterlilies and water plants and even one lotus in them.
I'm nuts about watergardens and hope to do the same thing again here, but with real ponds in the backyard and a big set-up in the basement for
overwintering.
I have five cats, all various kinds of Siamese, all strays. I mention them fairly often in here--they're Sammy, Ivan, Morgan, Wormie, and Al. I'm nuts about cats and grew up in a
household which generally averaged 10-15 cats at a time.
I own over 2000 books--too many to want to count, that's based off some rough guestimation. It might be a lot more than that. I'm a mad bibliophile and grew up in a bookstore. Some more
rough guestimation figures that I've read over 1000 books so far, probably a lot more than that. Like I said, I'm a mad bibliophile.
I have a very crooked tooth from when I was a toddler and fell out of a highchair. The adult tooth grew in crooked and I later had to have a root canal done on it. I could have had it pulled and replaced
with a bridge or cosmetic reasons, but I'm not that vain and dental work scares me--I hate needles and pain.
When I was little, I once tied the entire house up in a big web of yarn. The house was the kind with extra doors so you could walk all the way around it in a circle.
I tied the yarn all over the place until it resembled a giant, three-dimensional spider's web. I cleaned it all up, too, because I was one of those frighteningly well-behaved children--didn't even
have to be told to clean it up. Fortunately, I left it up long enough for my parents to see, otherwise I'd wonder if I had imagined the whole thing. It was neat and fun. Yes, I was
strange even as a child.
When I was a little older, I would play in the basement of my parents' store, making box fortresses and so on, and would explore the tunnels and grad houses of Purdue, often being chased by
janitors. And when I was very, very little, I used to "swim" in the reflection pool in front of the Purdue Memorial Union. hehe!
I once had a photo-exempt driver's license. Indiana gives those to Amish people (why can they drive if they can't have photos?), military personnel unable to get back to Indiana to renew, and other people
(like college students) who can't get back to Indiana to renew. It was neat. The next time I renewed, I lost it and wasn't able to turn it in--oh darn.
I still have Indiana residency because I own a business there and maintain a secondary household with my parents. This has a lot of benefits, although I have to pay taxes to two states (I think--this is the
first weird year and could include three states). I also have a permit to carry a gun in Indiana.
I'm a "genius" and am eligible to join MENSA, and probably will join one of these days just because it would be cool. But I wouldn't participate in anything. Asimov complained that the
participating members tended to be stuck-up and think they were better than people with lower IQ's. How idiotic--I guess having a high IQ doesn't grant one wisdom, eh?
Genetically, I'm German-Scottish-mutt. My father has 100% German (immigrant) genes, and my mother was adopted. My sister has blazing red hair, which suggests Irish or Scottish
genes. Since the Irish originally settled from Scotland, and since I really love Scotland, it's easiest to just say "Scottish". All other possible genes are a mystery and I love
being a mutt--hybrid vigor!
I once met Ray Bradbury at a book signing in Santa Barbara. I left all my books at home (on purpose) and waited in line for ages to just thank him for his stories and tell him how much
they meant to me. He stood up and clasped my hand and thanked me. What a sweet, beautiful man. I'll always really cherish that day.
The first thing I ever wanted to be when I grew up was an astronaut. I still do but recognize my physical limitations. I have terrible eyesight, for one thing. I also dreamed of working
on Space Lab when it was built when I first read about them planning to build it. *sigh*
I have really big, narrow feet and wear a size 10 shoe. My big toes are longer than my other toes. My aunt Avalon tells me this is a sign of royalty (from inbreeding).
I'm one of the zillions of people descended from royalty. I'm extremely distantly related to Kaiser Wilhelm (or Kaiser Bill, as my aunt refers to him) on one side and there is a castle in what
used to be East Germany which used to belong to the family (lost to taxes in one of the World Wars--forget which one)--it has the same name as my last name. And my great-grandfather was a mercenary and
fought in the Civil War on the side of the North. On the other side of the family, I'm sort of distantly related (sort of because my mom is adopted) to Catherine the Great. In Germany, I have some kind
of an uncle who is a retired brigadier general. Weird family, huh?
I dunno--this list isn't very good, but that's all I can really think of to say right now. It doesn't say much about my flaws and faults, but those tend to be pretty boring. They are numerous, but uninteresting.
They would also be invitations to my mother to lecture me more, were I to start cataloging them, heh.
new stuff
I thought it would be fun sometimes to also include featured artists or artwork, a sort of virtual museum. Also want to sometimes include daily waterplants, images and info about some of my favorite waterlilies and such.
Hopefully the links will remain stable, I'll provide them when I can.
watergarden dreams...
Helvola waterlily
I don't have any scanned pictures of my own right now, but these pictures give a general idea of what this looks like. I had one a couple years ago in Indiana, and currently have one overwintering in the basement.
This is a pygmy waterlily (a true miniature) and the blossoms are really tiny, about two inches in diameter or less, making it perfect for small tub gardens. The leaves have a really beautiful, traditional round shape and have really neat mottling on them. The Helvola waterlily
is also very free flowering. I love it--it's exquisite, really.
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slice of life
Speed crutches, fascinated children, and frightened parents...hehe! Check out firedrake's entry for 1/31/98, it's very cool
and she uses a really neat color combination--we seem to have really similar tastes in color. I've been thinking along the same lines lately, dreaming of plums, cherries, tangerines, ripe melons--all
kinds of delicious summer fruits.
virtual museum
Hazy Moonlight
© 1995 Zhan Hongjun
quote
"Perhaps no person can ever be a poet, or can even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind."
--T. B. Macaulay
poem
Written on my summer fan
torn in half
in autumn
--Basho
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