Friendlies Help Celebrate

A few photos from the other weekend at Mark and Melissa's...The weater was beautiful so a bunch of us got together to celebrate spring, birthdays, and my upcoming last class!

(Above) Pax & Dan chillin' with their monkeys

(Above) Dan, Mel, & Ali showing off Mel's hat collection

Claire and Kristi duking it out in a mean game of Operation

Announcing the NEF:

The Afterglow

Memorial Penny Jar

We haven't been able to do much posting lately because the magical elves inside our computer have not only tampered with our internet connection, they've gone ahead and glitched up the whole damn thing, sending us to the Apple genius bar several times over the weekend for technical support. At this point, it appears to be congestive heart failure, and we have an unknown amount of time left...

Our dear, little laptop, (pictured above) is considered vintage at the ripe age of six, and Apple no longer makes the parts that we would need to perform a transplant (as if we could afford such a procedure.) I truly believe that the little guy is holding onto his last breath to see me through to my undergraduate degree, but it could really be any day now. Dan performed an emergency blood transfusion, saving all of my writing, our photos, and music to an external hard drive--but sadly, we've lost access to multiple programs, including (oh the devastation!)...freecell.

We have only short bits of time with him each night as he moves in and out of consciousness, and we can only hope that we have made his life full of happiness as he has served us so graciously. A penny jar will be set up as a memorial fund; please give freely. Proceeds will go to acquiring a donor--most likely a mismatched monitor, tower, and keyboard from the antique technological vaults of Dan's company. Then, when I sell my script or Dan buys a winning lotto ticket, we'll get ourselves a fancy new iMac, and name her Jezebel, because we love that name and we figure we can't name an actual child that anyway.

The Light at the End of the Tunnel

I didn't make it to the library today until, um, 4? Because I slept in until, um, 2? I have such a generous husband. Because the library closes at 6 on Saturdays, I had to move to Starbucks, which enabled me to get in a mere four hours of writing for my rough draft on my senior thesis ("The Craft of Sound and Image in Denise Levertov's Poetry.") A whole other mistake was the consumption of two mocha lattes. This explains why I am awake at 2:30 a.m. Here I sit, at the laptop in the living room, with Hobbes asleep in my lap and the sound of Dan's snoring drifting down the hallway. The thump of the music at the neighbor's apartment has subsided and instead of working on my papers, I decided to redesign this blog. While I was digging through our image library for a new ::kiss:: photo, I found this shot taken during my first year at Marylhurst. It must have been spring, so that would have been just about three years ago. Wow. And now I am two weeks away from finishing. I can't help but feel nostalgic in addition to my excitement. How I have adored that campus! It's so beautiful and quiet. How I have learned so much and met wonderful people! I'm glad that I will be around next semester while I help with the literary journal, M Review. (No class or credits, just the experience of being student editor!) So far, it has only occupied me with busy work--organizing the hundreds of submissions and passing them onto staff members to review. In a few weeks I will begin reading and assessing what student work I would like to accept. In the meantime, I'm also working on a submission myself, for a Writer's Institute in New York. The English faculty at MU nominated me for a full scholarship to their 2-4 week summer program, so I'm giving it a go and applying. Dan has been helping me select material to submit, and I can't help but hope that I will get accepted! I guess this is what I have to get used to now that I'm graduating...The post-collegiate life of craft / submit / get denied / try again / craft / submit / etc. Of course, I already have my mind on many other projects that I am eager to get started on once I have more free time. FMS Nest has been progressing ever-so-slowly, and I'd like to devote more time to that this spring. What I have noticed as I began writing the blog is that at this point, it is limited to my experience with fibromyalgia. There is so much more I want write about in terms of my health, but what do I do? Start a blog for each of my conditions? Is there a way to combine writing about fibromyalgia, depression, pcos, et al., on this site? Or should I change the name of FMS Nest and incorporate all of my health issues, thoughts, and experiences on that? Does anyone have any ideas? Help! Well, I just heard the paper boy. I guess I better sign off and try to go to sleep before I get started on this project and stay up the rest of the night. Hope you enjoy the new design and features. There'll be more to come...! xoxo