Category: Just Shelley

The best part of getting up early is watching the sun rise.

Today is for working, it is. Today is for nose down and finishing tasks and making milestones. I’ve marked out in my mind tasks to accomplish with each new position of the sun. The sun’s “here”, this is done. The sun’s “there”, that is done. The sun sets, and finished tasks will lay all about me, littering my desk but not my mind.

No time for play or foolishness today. Politics must wait, and beauty must sit on hold. Because today is for working, it is.

I am playing on the server today, which means if you can read this now, you’re lucky. Expect slow access times and strange pages. Broken Things.

In the meantime, Jonathon finally introduces us to his new friend, Reimi, a beautiful gray haired, green eyed lady. In fact, she looks a bit like my own lovely lady, Zoe.

Dorothea is burning … bread. I hear you Dorothea: my alarm goes off every time I make toast. I personally like burnt toast, almost black in color. I think there’s nothing like a little carbon to get you going in the morning.

BTW, Dorothea and I have the same taglines on a dare, but I kind of like “An unnatural manifestation of androgynous weblogging” for my weblog. I’m thinking of keeping it. A poll to my weblog readers, which do you prefer:

An unnatural manifestation of androgynous weblogging

-or-

A node at the edge

Today is an extremely good RDF day, and I am zooming along at the speed of light. Productivity, thou art my middle name. (Well, actually, it’s Rae, but who’s picking nits?) When I get to a good breaking point in the writing, I have two book reviews to post (on “The Sportswriter” and “The Rings of Saturn”), and the weblog to create for my book-on-the-hoof Coming of Age in John Birch Country.

(Hint. And you all should have have an application or two to play with this coming week. Hint.)

That’s all. Go about your lives.

Seventeen straight hours of working with RDF in PHP, Java, Python, and Perl, including working with half a dozen APIs. Writing about same. Reviewing 200 pages of Unix book. Only 800 pages more to go.

The more I work, the farther I get behind. Light at the end of the tunnel? What light? Who took the tunnel?

Got much accomplished, really, and this is a goodness. But my stress level is exceptionally high at this point. Much more so than normal. However, rather than wander about the weblogging world, looking for things to react to (otherwise known as trolling for a fight), I thought I would try something new:

Turn the computer off.

Damn, I am tired. But I’m finally learning, aren’t I?

I want to play. Really play, without deadlines hanging over my head. Without holding up long suffering editors. Free. Clear. Really play.

For instance, lots of talk about Jaguar and I want to install this on my PowerBook. And I want to wipe my Dell laptop clean and re-install Red Hat sans the dual boot with Windows 2000. I want to finally make the move to non-Windows (though I’ll most likely install Virtual PC and Windows 2k on the Mac).

And I want to finish up ThreadNeedle and the new Here’s My List application. Why? Because I want you to play, and me to be finished. Boy, you don’t know how much I want to be finished. The code doesn’t flow from my fingers; it drips out, line by line.

I want to read the books you’ve recommended to me, and I also want to read or re-read every book (well, almost every book) on the ALA banned book list, and contribute my part to the Banned Books Project. After all, considering my upbringing, I have a moral obligation to get involved.

And I want to write about my hometown. There’s stories in that little town, more than you can see in the New York Times article, though this might give you an glimmer of what one can expect.

I want to write about the bride buried on her wedding day and the gold mine abandoned so quickly, rusted tools are still stuck in the wall. And I want to tell you the tale of the crazy old man who killed my Dad’s partner with a shotgun when they went to the shooter’s cabin. Or about the fences with signs saying “Trespassers will be shot”, posted by people who mean every word.

I want to describe nights filled with the cry of cougars, and the scream of prey. And to tell you about the ghost cat who lived on an island in the lake.

To share with you moments such as walking through fruit trees with my gentle Welsh grandfather, him picking a peach from a tree and cutting slices with his pocket knife to give to me. Biting into sun warmed fruit, juices flowing down my chin as I meet the smile in his eyes.

Perhaps I’ll write it as an online book, as others have considered or started. Doesn’t this sound like fun?

Okay. Shelley’s reached a book burnout moment. Yup, all the symptoms are there.

I’ll be good tomorrow, but for tonight, I’m going to bed early and cozy up with the Sportswriter. Oh, and a book, too. To read.