My son David - the rocket scientist

David is my oldest son and he is a rocket scientist. When he was 3 and my mom asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, his response was a paleontologist. I'm not even sure I can spell it correctly! So here's the short version of David's life. He went off to study aerospace engineering at NC State after high school and discovered partying was more fun than studying. He left the program and went to App State, yup the party school. LOL After kicking around Boone for awhile, he came back to Charlotte and worked at Best Buy selling computers and then fixing them. But he realized his life was heading nowhere and went to CPCC and corrected his grades from State. He crawled back to the dean of the aerospace eng. dept. at State and begged to get back in the program. The dean gave him a semester's probation to prove himself. And he did - he graduated summa cum laude! Then he went to U of Maryland and got his Masters degree in aerospace engineering. But when he really decided to get serious (hahah), he enrolled at Univ of Arizona in planetary science. His thesis is about the late heavy bombardment. He had a research paper published yesterday in the scientific journal Nature. He is brilliant! And I say that fully aware he's my son and I am biased, but hey! A mom is permitted to gloat. This is a write-up of his research paper in case any of you are interested in reading about the asteroid belt. http://uanews.org/node/24237

my angst

My goal since I came to Queens in 2006 has been to finish up my undergrad work and enroll in the MFA program for creative writing. This class is making me question whether I'm a good enough writer to even consider that path. All my life teachers and friends have told me I should write and I have filled notebooks and scratched ideas on post-it notes all throughout my house. But in this class I feel a glaring gap in my writing skills. Maybe I'm just getting exposure to writers I've never read before. I am awed by their talent and feel that their craft supercedes anything I could write. Slowly taking this journey for the past three years, taking two classes per semester, I am almost at the end of the first half of my goal and suddenly I feel a lot of angst in my spirit. Have I chosen the right path? I feel so unworthy, so frustrated. Perhaps creative writing is not for me. I wonder if every writer has to go through a period of angst when they feel they just aren't up to par. Maybe these feelings drive a writer to push though the frustration and find their voice. Maybe I'm just tired and need a break from writing every day for the purpose of a grade.

Andrew won't beat me

Not to be outdone my our friend Andrew the blogger, I am going to post something new today too.

I have spent the last several hours not lifting weights or running, but rewriting my paper. Now I have to go to the store and get some ink for my printer and produce ten copies. Ten copies or nine? Anyway my printer is printing lighter and lighter words and now the last page I pulled off is barely legible. Cancel! Ah, why now. I have spent so much time editing and reprinting pages to edit that I now have to go read the articles to discuss in class tonight. Good thing it's a light load at work this morning so I can get everything accomplished.

Anyway my paper is now much more focused - just the first decade and mostly focused on my family and my dad and brother especially. I think the workshop really helped to zero in on what to write about. My first draft was much too expansive. This one I'm calling "My Two Freds" and I hope it reads better.

Thank you all for your feedback - very helpful with my rewrite!!

Live, Love, Laugh

It's a little cliche and overused but I see a lot of plaques and framed posters with this saying. Mostly they pop up at Kirklands, which is one of those stores I frequent more than others. I am not a shopper by any stretch. Shopping and I have never gotten along. But I actually bought a framed piece of art with that saying and it hangs in my bathroom - I like art in the bathroom. There's something about hanging a pretty picture there that takes the clinical feeling out of the place. And there's something about that phrase that I like. It is so positive. It feels warm. It makes me smile. I think about how much life I've seen and think I'm only half way along and certainly haven't seen as much as I'd like. I think about the people I've loved throughout my life. There are many. Some I remember and some I don't. And the people in my life that I've loved are they type who make me laugh. We need humor in our lives as much as we need art in the bathroom.

Revising

I have assessed everyone's input and taken a fresh look at my story. I figured the best thing for me to do in my essay is to keep it to a shorter timeframe - maybe just the first decade and find the stories and memories that formed who I am now. It seems like a completely different story now and I'm liking it better. Although like others have commented, it's just really tough to write about oneself..

American travel

Carissa's post made me recall a former job when I used to travel three weeks out of the month for seven years. I was a trainer for a software company and the owners were really cheap. So after a full day of work on Monday, I would fly out that night. Usually, on a recycled ticket so rarely was I flying as myself. This was long before the days of 9/11 and tight security. With a ticket in someone else’s name, I was a little nervous that the plane would crash and no one would be able to identify me. What's worse is I'd invariably arrive in an unfamiliar city, have to rent a car in the dead of night and drive to a distant place beyond the arriving airport.

What I found was how much McDonald's has created a homogenous American culture where "everywhere is the same.” My mom tells me about traveling in the 40s pre-Interstate and how it was so special back then. Every town seemed to have its own personality. Now we can go from Miami to Massachusetts and rarely see a unique spot along the way. Everywhere we go we can find fast food restaurants and nondescript strip malls along the Interstates.

But I’ve also found that when you find yourself lost in the dark of a small town, just look for the golden arches and you’ll find someone who can guide you back where you need to be. Unless you are in downtown Mobile, Alabama at two in the morning; then even McDonald’s is shut up tight. Streets are dark and you have to park across the street from the hotel because the hotel’s under construction. And the guy in the lobby has no security guard to walk with you from your car back to your room with your luggage. You find yourself walking through a dark parking deck worried for your physical safety and wonder if your job is worth this and you make a conscious decision to find another job.

At least that’s what I did that night in 1993 and began a new career where I wouldn’t have to travel so much. I love to travel now but on my terms, under my own identity and when I’m rested. After all, nowadays traveling is a job in and of itself passing through security, delayed flights and the edge that everyone seems to feel about flying.

Quicker way to read everyone's blog posts

Hey I wanted to tell ya'll about a place you can go to read everyone's posts and keep up with what's newly posted. http://www.google.com/reader

It's neat - all the blogs you are following show up (you might need a google id to get on and see it) but one page comes up showing all the blogs you're following. Then you can scroll through and read everyone's posts that you haven't read.

Saves time, it's efficient and you can keep up with who you want to comment on. I haven't figured out how to get in and make comments from the Reader. But then it might just be a "reader" and not a place to make comments.

Thought I'd share that little tidbit :) Happy blogging

My Rant about Sex Drugs and Cocoa Puffs

I'm not sure what to say about this book and I have to do a presentation on it! For me, it seems like Klosterman is really young and goes on tangents about topics that really aren't of interest to me personally. It's hard to get excited about things that I don't like - like television shows. I have two shows I like to watch. That's it. I'm not a big TV fan. Anyway, he goes on and on about this MTV show (which I'd never heard of - sorry I'm aging myself with this post!!) and he knows all the characters from every season and what gets me the most about him? He uses these on-screen personalities to typecast his own friends and acquaintances he meets. As though they aren't written lines to say and things to do that create reality drama....for pete's sake is the viewing public so dense they think this stuff is "reality" - puhleeez!!! Reality is dull and boring. If you had a web cam on me all day, you'd die of boredom. I think that's the case for most people because our lives just aren't that dramatic. It is when the drama occurs that we get stressed out and wish to go back to being dull again. Am I wrong?

And I suppose it's just difficult reading him after a spending a semester with 19th century writers. I love Dickens and the Bronte sisters and Austin and all of those writers who really told a story well. I mean Klosterman isn't on par with any of my fave authors of that century nor the last. And I'm reading some good authors right now for my memoirs class that just blow me away - Russell Baker is a wonderful writer and so is James McBride and they are current century authors!

I have to finish this book over the weekend and come up with something for a presentation. Ah me!! Ok, so I shall get off my pity pot and try to find something of value. I think I'll read Lee Gutkind's book "The Art of Creative Nonfiction" and perhaps find some art in what Klosterman is doing. I just need to figure out what I'm going to say when I get in front of ya'll next week!! YIKES!!!

Laughing

Some of your posts are hilarious and make me laugh out loud. Very healthy in this day of dire news being doled out across the airwaves. I love to laugh. I hate how I look when I laugh but c'est la vie! I haven't laughed very much this week. My job is on the line. Literally I could be out of work by the end of this week. It wouldn't be the end of the world but it would be pretty stressful getting out there and finding something else. I've been with my company for eight years and have had some really good experiences and gotten sorta comfy in what I do. So this week has been tough. My manager of four years was layed off, then my good buddy who has been my source of technical knowledge for the last six years was also layed off, and then my husband comes home saying his job isn't safe either...aaaack! I just want to scream: WHAT IS GOING ON WITH OUR COUNTRY!! Is is the bad news feeding the bad news? Has the 24-hour cable news networks finally spun us into this downward spiral of negative information? Who knows? I'm just tired of the negativity! I think it's time to skip the news and just watch American Idol. Oh - it's on now! Bye

Slim Pickins'

My mom is pulling together a bunch of stories about dating after 70. She is 86 now and has a lot of funny moments to write about. Like the guy Walter who picked her up for her date wearing a U-Haul uniform. Now to understand the humor in that, you'd have to know my mother. She grew up during the depression. In the midst of it, she was snatched up by her aunt and brought to Boston to live the rest of her young life. She took private voice lessons, attended the New England Conservatory of Music, went to poetry readings, went to college, and essentially lived a life of refinement from 14 onward.

When she decided to write these short stories, she had a hard time coming up with the title. I told her to call them Slim Pickins' because there were few guys in her age group from which to choose. She's decided to accept that fact and simply be happy alone. I think she still wants to have a 'significant other' but she is pragmatic. She can't take care of another man. She's done enough of that, first my dad when he was dying and then her third husband Don who slowly died from emphysema. She has done her share of care taking and is ready for someone to take care of her.

But her stories are funny and I hope we can get them published for a large audience to enjoy them. After all, with our population aging, they could be quite the hit!

Random ramblings about leaving winter behind

I am ready for winter to go and not just because I hate all the dead leaves that pile up in front of my front door, crusty, brown and congregating in the corner. My front entrance is covered in them. I get out the blower and watch them dance upwards and fly out to the yard. Then my husband comes home and asks why are all the leaves in the yard. Well, because. They look ugly on the front porch. I need to freshen up the front, it's a Fung Shui thing maybe. I want my little water feature and my wind chimes to have top billing, not those old brown ugly leaves. Plus, they just look messy.

Winter isn't bad here in Charlotte, but it's bad enough. We don't have snow piled up in front of the house in drifts of glistening white. I guess if we did, the snow would hide the dead leaves. But I grew up in New England where seven feet of snow on either side of the driveway seemed to be the norm. Growing up, I had enough shoveling to last me a lifetime and more. Here is how it would work. Our driveway was on an incline so the base was lower than the top near the garage. We would get out the shovels and push the snow downhill to the bottom of the driveway into the street. Some snows were light, fluffy and we actually had fun shoveling. But in New England we had a lot of heavy snows - those "noreasters" carry a lot of moisture. A noreaster blows in from the north Atlantic Ocean mixing with the cold from Canada creating heavy, wet snow that blankets the landscape and makes shoveling very difficult. Invariably as we would clear the driveway, the town's plows would come through and create small mountains blocking the driveway's entrance. Pushing that snow away to make a gateway into the driveway could prove more than difficult for a child's strength. I would get mad and curse at the snow plow - although never out loud. That language was not abided in our household. Many times I wanted to give the snow plow driver the finger but in a small town that would have gotten out quickly. So I'd push and grunt to get the heavy blocks off the driveway and turn around - no! The snow would still be falling and it would be time to shovel it all over again.

Yes, I'm ready to leave winter behind. But what is about the second of February that makes Americans faithfully look for a rodent's shadow. Each year I wonder why is it that we believe if a quirky little marmot sees its shadow in February in a little town in Pennsylvania, we will have more or less winter ahead of us? How does something like that get into our national psyche? What does it say about us as a people? Are we duped into believing something as silly as a rodent can predict the future? When did rodents become cute in our country that we create an annual holiday featuring them as the main star? I did some reading and discovered groundhog day started as a totally humorous folklore. I think someone was pulling someone's leg and it grabbed on like an urban myth. It is exactly six weeks until the first day of spring. "Therefore, if the groundhog saw his shadow on Groundhog Day there would be six more weeks of winter. If he didn't, there would be 42 more days of winter. In other words, the Groundhog Day tradition may have begun as a bit of folk humor," according to Don Yoder who wrote a book in 2003 called [well, what else?] Groundhog Day.

All silliness aside, I like to hope winter is behind us. On my way to class last night I noticed the plum blossoms are itching to burst forth. If the temperatures dip below freezing this week, spring will be short-lived. I like spring the best in Charlotte. Longer days, warmer temps and I can actually walk around without a coat. Maybe that is a big reason why I have such a disdain for winter. I hate wearing a lot of clothes. I like my uniform of tank tops and shorts that I normally wear from spring through fall instead of all these layers.

So we are another day closer to the first day of spring. I like it. Even if we celebrate with a goofy animal from a funny-sounding name in a northern state. Spring is on its way. Hurrah!