earlgrayjane

Quick Update

2009-11-26T03:25:12Z

Well, at the risk of jinxing myself, I think things are beginning to return to normal.

No one in my house is currently contagious. While it is still possible that Pete will come down with H1N1, the kids and I are over it and are well on the road to healing the secondary infections and asthma flare-ups we all got. The biggest problem is that my voice is still not up to much talking and I often lack enough breath to talk as much as I'd like. A few more days of steroids and I'll be calling all of you, don't worry. Maybe I should be careful who I risk talking to while I'm on steroids. Yeah, "Jane on steroids," Sounds like the start of a kinda scary story. Maybe I'll just keep in touch this way for now.

All of our major possessions are fixed or will be replaced by Friday. While I had set the goal of making 200,000 miles on my mini-van, I'm happy to have fallen only a few thousand miles short. It will be wonderful to have a larger car that can handle the miles for my trips out -of-state that can also handle the winter roads better than Pete's Cavalier. I'm not sure what color our Ford Flex is going to be, but it will have a roof-rack to provide the extra cargo space we are giving up with the mini-van. And it will have some fancy feature that lets me use my cell phone through the car's speaker system so I don't have to fight with being heard through my finicky ear-piece. Sadly, it will only have 6 seat belts. I'm already missing having the extra room for the drive down to the Thanksgiving Day Parade. BUT since Andrew measured 6 feet 3 inches at the doctor's yesterday, I had to make some concessions to leg room in the back rows.

ConVo is even moving along well. While we are a month or so behind in some areas, we had a great staff meeting on Saturday. We have some small but long awaited changes we're making to Con this year. The artshow is moving out of Siberia and as close to the action as we can make it. I even have a complete staff for the moment! I'm not saying that won't change, and for the time being, all positions are filled by someone involved enough to have attended both all-staff meetings, yahoo!

So, that's what's new in the last week in my life.

Picture Link

2009-06-10T23:41:50Z

Cool pictures from ConVocation 09 can be found here. This one's my favorite. I didn't find any of opening ritual which is what I went looking for. Will continue to search and post later.

What a weekend!

2009-06-08T07:21:07Z

I am delighted to say that I had another very full weekend. While not as busy or as full of people as being at the Gather, I mean I slept at least 10 hours over the weekend, I still had a host of powerful conversations and got some good work done, too!

Friday, was Pierce's 11th birthday and we went to a homeschooling picnic and then to a school fair to hear Cat sing. The kids played on the moonwalk and got treats. Pierce won a bunch of tickets at the games and picked out a host of obnoxious prizes. Then they had pizza and a movie and I got to go to dinner with Pete and Cindy and a couple friends. Then I got to stay up late and talk about energy and try to live up to a promise I made to a friend to teach her about magick and stuff. But i didn't stay up too late...

Then Saturday, I worked at the La Leche League garage sale and we earned a GRAND!!!!! Yes, do you know how many books on breastfeeding we can buy with a thousand dollars! Of course we've got bigger plans now than just buying more books. Andrew had 4 good innings of pitching at his baseball game before the younger kids were too cold and I took them home. Then I got to have a great talk with Gryph on his new phone and the Wings won the game. Then I had a friend come visit and we talked too late. Sometimes the sound of birds makes me cringe. Partly because it is only a short time until that is followed by the pitter-patter of little... Well, you get the idea even if they sound more like a heard of elephants.

On Sunday, I woke up and started talking again about such cool things with two great women. Then we had a MEC board meeting that lasted less than 2 hours! I got my new, improved and updated budget approved for Con 2010 and that is a whole new set of exciting possibilities. And we spent hours after the board meeting trying to figure out how to work out the bugs for this new web thing Ed is going to create to make MEC even more functional and stream-lined. Jay stopped by and added his own special brand of humor to an answer for a quick question and to give the three lovely ladies on the front porch a hug. Did I mention the hours of debate about what would be the best way to solve this problem for MEC? Yeah I love working with Cindy and Ed. Don't tell them I had so much fun thinking of all the implications that I was almost disappointed when we came to the best possible solutions. Now I need a cool title for someone because "the lesbian under Michael" won't fit as an email address. And at the end of the day, Pete and Cindy and I sat on the front porch and talked about what we'd done AND WHY!!!

Yeah, I love my life. Sometimes I think that's why I don't sleep much. I have so many interesting things to do that I don't want to waste a minute. And I am smart enough to guess that I am still just riding the energy of a powerful feeling of connection and peace sitting out on the porch as the evening grew dark. But if this joy won't survive getting up to meditate before Pete leaves for work at 7am, then all the more reason to revel in it now.

So I hope everyone else had a wonderful weekend in whatever way you define it. And I think I like this live journal thing. It does sorta feel like I'm talking to people and I don't have to even find anyone awake to do it.

6th House

2009-06-04T19:21:28Z

I got a morning meditation in today. Yesterday I gave up the second time the kids started fighting. I think some of the problem is that Saturn is transiting my natal Mars which is in my 6th house and that makes it hard to get out of bed and get stuff done. At the risk of being laughed at, I'll admit that I've been struggling with how much less energy and initiative I've had over the last 6 months. I know this angle won't last forever but it's Saturn and it will come and go for roughly two years. So I'd better learn to cope with it. I found out yesterday that the author of the book I use on how to burn-off transits died recently. Sad to think she won't be writing any more under the name Joan Negus. According to her Astro-Alchemy, I need more scheduled work and planned physical activity. Yesterday I started a Polynesian Aerobics class. I can try to get back into working out more often, and that leads me back to the problem I'm having getting motivated. One of the simplest solutions is that if I don't go to bed or stop moving, I don't have to worry about having trouble getting moving. Only works for so long but it means I can get more done in the 18 to 36 hours of intense activity and not sweat getting so little done with the next day.

Giving this a try

2009-06-03T14:02:43Z

So, I'm feeling motivated to see how this journal thing works. I like that I can keep up with what people who are far away are doing, so I'll pretend I'm talking to some of you who I wish I could see more.

Here I am again at almost 10 am and while I've been up for hours, I still haven't meditated. Got to spend time with Pete before he left for work and that was wonderful. Now I give myself a free pass when I postpone anything 'cause one of my babies wants to cuddle when they wake up. Which was Joe this morning. (Still not used to calling him Joe but when he tries to say Joseph, it comes out like "Dufus" and until he can talk better, I think I'll work at us both saying Joe.)

I need to make sure I don't get lost in the day and start dishes and plans and stuff, without getting a time for me to at least sit in stillness.

At least I got the kids started on their stuff. Thank Goodness this is the last week of schooling for the term. We've got to cover dropping the atom bomb and the close of WWII and then done! So tempting to go off into looking at another general or another story and avoid some of the ugly parts of WWII. I realize I missed the boat with Pierce when his response to concentration camps was about the Japanese being in them in the US. I really don't want to go very in depth with a 10 year old about what happened. He's seen Diary of Anne Frank and knows some of what happened but I've avoided the end of the war so I didn't have to talk about liberating the camps. Or nuclear bombs, that's a good thing to avoid. But avoiding learning isn't going avoid repeating.

So I'm off to discuss the end of WWII and then I'll see if I can meditate before I need to get kids lunch.

Thinking about Denessa Smith

2008-08-01T04:23:20Z

Wanted to see what was being posted about Denessa so I got an account.