Sunday, January 27, 2013

I'm still here

A few quiet hours on a Sunday morning in Yardley, PA, while other goes about their Sunday committments. Weekend with Jannah. Slept beautifully on Friday night but had screaming insomnia last night. It's my second weekend away in a month - I was in the Poconos visiting Joyce two weekends ago, and will get some of those pictures up as soon as I can. Some are in my phone, and on my home computer. I think I need cloud storage at some point.

All of this time away makes me feel hopelessly behind on everything at home, things like jewelry and catching up with my various online pursuits (like this one). Still, it's nice to get away. Very peaceful at Joyce's; Jannah's is the usual whirlwind of visits and activities.

At home, I'm mesmerized by the TV, which is now hooked up to play from my computer and to access Netflix by wi-fi. And loving my new phone, which is fast enough to play streaming videos ad music. I like all of the intake, sucking in information.

Work is getting busy again - classes start tomorrow, as does the first of my two new interns. I hope thay adapt and stick. My winter term intern quit after a day. I hope I didn't overwhelm her...although this is the first time it's happened. Lots going on at work: big plans to reclaim the money from candidates who don't see Treatment Service patients. Could turn the financials around in a big way. I'm definitely more involved in fundraising and in the economic health of the institute. Coming up on my second year there (it'll be two years in April), I feel very locked in and live and die for the institute.

Mostly I used feel overwhelmed by too many projects: jewelry repair and commissions, trying to get enough new jewelry made to start on Etsy, and the urge (again) to start (finally) writing a novel. I'd like to take an online course. A lot to juggle. Here in Yardley, I see Jannah also juggling a lot, but totally different things. Homeowner life is very different.

Even with the huge media input, I'm still reading as usual. I finally decided to read Ringworld and found it too confusing.

So now that I have time and a computer at hand, everything has gone out of my head. Isn't it always like that?

So now tht

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

still somewhat short on time

The TV is now 100% hooked up. We get the best possible quality from our Verizon box (and can watch 3D movies on demand), we're connected to the internet by wi-fi so we can watch Netflix, and we're wired into the computer so we can watch DVDs from the computer's player, movies from my hard drive, and pretty much anything else you can put on the computer. Saturday we watched "A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas" (pretty funny) and "Django Unchained" (excellent). Please don't ask me how I managed to watch "Django" at home. Suffice it to say that a lot of awards screeners are floating around the internet, and one floated onto my computer.

Other than that, I've been eating up back episodes of Nip/Tuck on Netflix. Such a great soap opera with nifty guest stars. Now I dream about handsome plastic surgeons instead of "Dexter."

As I walk around with my great new phone, I'm figuring out what's most useful to me and what I like best. I text with a few people, though I'm still one-fingering the keyboard. What I'm really loving right now, apart from being able to take and send pictures, is bringing the phone with me at bedtime and listening to Pandora. Pandora is a music-streaming service that will create a channel around an artist you suggest (in addition to having standard category channels like Delta Blues, 50's Blues, 50's Oldies, 80's Oldies, Bollywood Oldies, etc). So I have Roy Orbison Radio and Lyle Lovett Radio and Adnan Sami Radio. But my current favorite at bedtime is Django Reinhardt Radio. (It remains to be seen if Barry will tolerate that one, since he's a real jazz-hater.)

I'm going away this weekend to visit my aunt Joyce (my uncle Howard's first wife) in the Poconos. I haven't seen her since my wedding, 12 years ago. She's only about seven years older than I am, around Barry's age, so we've always been pals. (I also adore my uncle's second wife, who recently brought me a mess of Venetian glass beads from...well, from Venice.) I'm somehow not as anxious as I usually am when traveling, which seems like a good thing. I'm looking forward to getting caught up with her, to being out of the city, and to being in the Poconos - I was last there about 15 years ago, just a couple of months before I met Barry.

I'm into bracelets lately, knotted on silk. The top one is white keshi pearls, which I'm keeping for myself and wearing right now. The 4th, 5th and 6th down from the top were given away as holiday gifts (they are grey "dot" pearls, tan pearls with vintage Swarovski crystal, and Peruvian pink opal). The amber (bottom) is going to be remade as a double strand, to order. I'm still hoping to start on Etsy around the end of the month.