2: September 2003 Archives

Prologue: Humor me, will you? For the sake of averting Google searches, let's say, henceforth, that I work for ReallyBig U, and that my primary responsibility is maintaining a ReallyBig System. Got that straight? Very good.

Can I just say that there's nothing like the sinking feeling of hearing the words, "There've been people looking for you. I think there's something wrong with RB System," when sliding into work at 8:25.

The good news is, it wasn't my fault that the system was broken, not that it helped matters. The bad news is that it wasn't actually my system that was broken, so I couldn't do anything about it. Thank goodness for quick system staff.

The better news is that the system was back up and running smoothly by 8:55 or so, and I got a couple of thankful e-mail responses for my quick work in fixing the system. Err, yeah.

Good lord. Webpage? What webpage? I don't have a webpage.

Okay, yeah, I do. I forget about it sometimes, though. So what've I been up to? Here's a quick recap.

I went to a hummingbird festival in Rockport about two weeks ago. It was lovely. I took a great sunrise picture on the way. We spent a lot of time watching hummingbird banding, and we got to see a rufous hummingbird, which is very unusual for Texas. They normally live up in Oregon. I've got pictures of that stuff, and I'll post them sometime. Maybe.

More interesting to me than the hummingbirds themselves was a book of photographs that I saw in the arts and crafts area of the show. These photos were taken during a wildlife photography contest sponsored by the Coastal Bend Land Trust, which is part of an effort to encourage land owners in South Texas to balance environmental and economic interests. Those details aside, the idea is for a photographer to team up with a land owner, and then to take glorious pictures on the land owner's ranch over the course of a few months. The thought is incredibly appealing to me. The fact that my friends and family haven't physically restrained me when I've mentioned buying snakeproof boots strikes me as odd, to say the least. Then again, so is the fact that I'm talking about buying snakeproof boots.

There's more to it than that. I'm thinking perhaps I'm having an early-to-midlife-crisis. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

I wasn't particularly shocked by the death of Johnny Cash a week and a half ago. He's been in poor health for years, and I never listened to his music much anyway. But I have to say, I found the video for his cover of NIN's Hurt to be stunning. Simply stunning -- simple and poignant. I've watched the RealMedia version of it fifteen or twenty times. If you haven't seen it, go watch it. And then watch it again.

[Insert obligatory apology for not updating in freaking forever here.]

Suffice it to say, someone has apparently found me worthy of responsibility, and I have hence been buried beneath it. It's all job stuff, and you don't really want to hear about it any more than I want to write about it. Instead, I'll annotate some brief points, then direct you to my photolog.

• Claudia's been back in Texas for a couple of weeks now. I'm still readjusting to being something other than a hermit. I may be readjusting until May, but I'll keep you posted.
• My friend Feithy and her Kidlet moved back to Canada last week. It's all very sad. Kidlet entrusted me with a silver music box, which I'm to send to him sometime soon. There's a short story waiting to be written there about the treasures of ten-year-old boys, but I'm not ready to write it yet.
• The Texas summer is finally starting to cool off a bit. I survived it fairly well this year. Granted, we didn't have three weeks of weather over 100F, but it was hotter than last summer. I went swimming in my Dad's pool the weekend I picked Claudia up from the airport and realized how much I missed it. There's still time for swimming before the weather gets cold, but I don't know yet whether I'll be able to make the time myself.
• JournalCon Austin is coming up in just over a month. I've got a bunch of things to do, partly in preparation for being a panelist at the conference. JournalCon panelists are supposed to update their journals or weblogs more than once a month, aren't they?
• I don't mention her very often, but my friend Paige is too cool. She even updates almost daily. She's articulate and witty and funny, and I host her right here on waterlilies.org. So go read her.
• I posted several pictures today. Some of them are so woefully old that I am ashamed of myself, and you should be, too. Austin Elvis, for instance, was taken back in June, right after I bought my new Nikon digital camera, before I went to Europe. I posted Backlit several days ago, but it and Austin Sunset were taken at the end of July, on an outing with my photography class. For the record, though, Night-blooming and Moon Shot were taken today.
• Looks like I'll be going to a hummingbird festival this weekend. If the weather is nice and the hummingbirds are beautiful, I'm sure I'll wish that I owned a tripod. No idea what happened to my video camera tripod over the past six years and four moves.