If you can’t snatch a picture, what can you do?

I follow a blogger who recently was sued for snagging a picture and using it. She gave full credit and thought she was within her legal limits. As soon as the person complained, she pulled the picture. That was not enough, and the owner sued her for a large sum of money. I am not certain how that has turned out but I am always in the hopes of becoming wealthy, “Ah, hope springs eternal; and delusional” so thought I should take action now and go through my blog, deleating all photos that are not mine.

I was surprised to find that there were probably under twenty photos I did not own. I did not look through my blogs, just through my pictures, so I hope I did not miss any, cause I am pretty sure poverty will soon be erased by great weath, especially if I spend my days deleating photos.

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Presenting Teachers in: BUTTS ON ICE « Braindebris\’s Weblog

Presenting Teachers in: BUTTS ON ICE « Braindebris\’s Weblog

via Presenting Teachers in: BUTTS ON ICE « Braindebris\’s Weblog. 

Today is the one year anniversary of the last post on the Braindebris Blog.  Now, I may be prejudice, since Braindebris is my brilliant daughter, but I think that her short blogging history is some of the funniest stuff you will ever read.

You just have to check out the holiday blog:  “Deer on, Deer off, the Clapper”  and  the  one about cleaning the rabbit’s cage.   They will make your day.

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Labor Day Weekend

This is one of those “off the cuff” blogs; because no one is home anyway, nor posting to their blogs.  I have never considered Labor day to be a prime holiday; but last night someone near me was shooting off major fireworks and no one is posting to their blog.  Gosh, you would think people have a life or something.

 

So, these are things I have noticed lately.

 

I love the writings and blogs of Crazy Aunt Purl and so does 88.5% of the blogsphere.  No matter what blog I check out, it seems they have a link to *Crazy Aunt Purl* on their sidebar.  I must say, it makes you feel at home.  Congrats! Crazy Aunt Purl.

 

I found out this week, that if you do a post on Viggo Mortensen, your readership will double overnight.  Mention his “girlfriend” and it will triple.  Thanks and Congratulations to Viggo!

 

That of the X# of blogs linked to on my sidebar (cannot be specific because I added blogs today), only two blogs (of those I had on this morning) have posted this weekend:

 

1.      Velvet Cerebellum The Velvet Cerebellum has posted this weekend and that was about a yarn orgy, so who could wait to post that? 

 

2.     My mother’s poetry site, which I made a commitment to post to every day for a year.  Of course, I post it, and I, obviously, have no life since I am also sitting here, posting to my blog. 

 

That a rabbit will poop in her food dish if: a wasp is in her cage, or she is lonely, or she just doesn’t like the food she is getting.  The rabbit isn’t telling, so I’m only guessing here. Perhaps she will not do it again though, as when I cleaned it all out and refilled it, she ate like a hungry pig.

 

That irritating Chihuahua cannot recognize a family member when they are walking past the house on the driveway.

 

And, that I just collated my blog links between this site and My Favorites because it will make things quicker, and I am killing time.

 

And, as JRockGuitarMan sits patiently and awaits his turn on the dial-up, I now will get offline and work on my book. 

 

Have a great weekend, everyone!

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I love WordPress

I am fairly new to blogging and started, thank goodness with WordPress. Then, I decided my WordPress blog might be a bit too “open” for my young adult writing career (after all, how many times can I mention dippers of Jose Cuervo without getting in trouble.) So, I started a “writing only” Blog on eGoogle, I think it’s also called Blogger.  They could take a number of lessons from WordPress.

I loved to mess around behind the scenes. I cannot begin to tell you how much I have learned about computers from screwing them up, by messing around behind the scenes. The first thing I do, when I get a computer, is to delete everything I don’t like. Someday, I am going to order a computer without all the extra junk. The second thing I do, when I get a new computer, is reformat it to reinstall the stuff I should not have deleted to begin with. 

So, every once in a while, I start clicking on the links in WordPress. Today, I discovered a new one. I got to read comments. I read comments I didn’t know I had. What a cool link. I may have to answer comments to the comments and, if they(the other commenters) get confused, oh well. So be it!

I also love to watch the graph chart of visitors. I respond well to rewards and that little line going up is a neat reward. I don’t know if one person has even read any of my five posts on Blogger. I haven’t figured out a way to tell. You know, it is hard to be humorous about writing. Maybe, I just write them too early in the morning. Maybe I’m just too worried about offending anyone with the “writing” blog.

But, the part of WordPress I miss the most, is being able to copy out of it, paste that into my Word to check it and revise it and then paste it back in. On Blogger, if I start a post in it, I cannot highlight it and copy it to Word. I can, however, write it in Word and past it in blogger. So, I have to start in Word. Why I find that difficult is another mystery; but it’s my mystery.  Oh, and why, if I start a blog in Blogger and don’t get around to finishing it for a week, is it dated the day I started it instead of the day I actually post it?

Thank you WordPress for having such a great product.

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Mom’s Cloud tags – BrainDebris, I do remember

Wuw Who!! More Cloud Tags. 

Cloud tags, in our little Blogging circle, have become the new Muse. Can’t think what to write today? Computer ate your post? Thoroughly bummed out by having a fake Viagra Site swipe your Blog without crediting you?  Look at your cloud tags. They are a wealth of inspiration. And, downright funny sometimes.

I manage my mom’s rhyming poetry blog http://padairvanvleck.wordpress.com, so had to add Cloud Tags to her page. She hasn’t complained yet, about the cloud tages,  but it isn’t really something a Compulsive Obsessive would enjoy. I mean, all those different sizes of fonts and just random looking. But, they are so funny.

I mean, where else are you going to find “baby-Book-booze-cat-cherub” linked together in one line? It has been pointed out to me that my mind can go in very strange directions, but I look at this non-sentence and picture someone sitting, filling out a baby book and needing booze because they aren’t being as neat as they should be. Their cat sits on their book and the little cherub sleeps nearby.  Maybe it’s a picture to paint. Have to think about that.

I do know that my daughter’s baby books never got done, by me anyway.  I think Gram finished them when the girls were well grown. My problem was that I just knew I couldn’t be neat enough. I had a dozen little slips of paper detailing when they did what and funny things they said and photos and memorabilia. It’s just that the blank pages of the baby books terrified me. What if I made a mistake? Would the child be scarred for life? Would my mother hate me for sloppiness? At this point in my life, I wouldn’t care. Back then, I cared too much about what others think. I believe you lose some of that with age.

The child was actually scarred because she was the only one in her class without a baby book to show. No one was impressed with all the scraps of paper. My mother was probably happy because she loved filling in blanks in books. It was a happy ending.

Then there is the Coud tag line. Humor-Joy-liquor-love.  Now this is just my idea of a perfect evening. What more could you want? Oh, I know, Viggo. Yes, that would make the evening complete. Sorry, folks, it used to be Nicholas Cage but for some reason I could never remember his name and he keeps snakes. I don’t mind snakes. I’ve even held a few in my life, but I don’t want to live with them. Then he went and got married anyway. I may even have to rethink Viggo too though. I just found out he smokes. I may forgive him for it, however. How could you ever stay mad at someone with that voice and smile?

Moving right on: mother-Music-papa-Pascagula.  If that ain’t a Country Western Song waiting to be written, what is?  Mother played music while Papa ran to Pascagula. Or Mother slept with the Musician, while papa got lost in Pascagula. Oh, I know, you have to have a train. So, Mother played the musician while papa took the train to Pascagula.

Peace-petals-picnic-poem.  Images of hippies. 

This is kind of like reading old notes to yourself.  You find these notes a month later and go, “What the heck does that mean?” There is one in my computer right now that says, and I am not making this up: “Not if it is squid day.” Now, what the heck does that mean?  Please, if anyone knows, tell me. It is actually in notes from Master’s Daughters house when we were discussing things to blog about. And, that was the visit with the dippers of Jose Cuervo. Must have made sense at the time. It sure doesn’t anymore.

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Hooked on Tag Clouds

OhMyGosh!!! Humor is as big as Indiana now, in my Tag Clouds. (see that thing on the right at the bottom of the post, if you are unfamiliar with the term.) Can the takeover of FLDS be far behind?  That was my goal just yesterday, to raise humor to the top level of my Blog.

I have been writing much too seriously, and I need humor in my life. You see, I am still recovering from open heart surgery, performed in November of 2007. Without insurance, my condition was allowed to progress for two years.

I told the P.A. that I was tired. Then, that I had heart attack symptoms. The P.A. told me I was just under stress. Of course, I was under stress. I thought I was having a heart attack. in her wisdom, she never offered to treat stress as that would make too much sense. Then, by the end of two years of this, a new doctor took over that office, in Nashville, Indiana, and called me  to come in to the office one day and told me to not return for three months; “you are just under stress” he told me. Then, he had the nerve to charge me $50 because he called me in so he could tell me not to come in.

I had emergency open heart surgery, seven days later, under the care of the wonderful people at St. Francis Hospital in Greenwood/Indianapolis.

The extremely patient friendly state of Indiana does not seem to feel that my damaged heart, due to the length of time I was not cared for properly, constitutes a lawsuit. So, I sit here, still without insurance, doing my own rehab with a 20% functioning of my lower heart. The doctor says I should be able to get it up to a low normal function, with exercise and I am much better now.

The surgeon told me it would take a good year. It was a frustratingly, depressing fifteen or so months actually. I would start exercise, I would rest for a week.  Now, I do the stairs four to five times a day. I do 20 minutes on my treadmill everyday. Then, I slip in crunches and weights. I love the Body for Life program and had done it for nine months before I got sick, so I’m slowly working my way back into it. My biggest problem is to remind myself to do it slowly, or I pay for it with a week of rest.

I’m exercising and eating MUCH MUCH better, so I want humor and I want to focus on humor. I’m excited to have humor overtake the news on the Indiana floods, in my tag clouds.

Aren’t you glad you know that now?????

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Masters Daughter, Crazy Aunt Purl and Knitting

When I visited Master Daughter for her Master’s graduation, she gave me a present. She always gives the best presents and rarely at the correct holiday so I have forgotten whether these were for my birthday or Mother’s day or both. It doesn’t matter as it is actually better to get a gift “just because” than an expected, “oh, it’s her birthday, I’ve got to get something.”

I have knitted for years. I’m not the perfect knitter. I do not knit to kill. I knit because I like to and if I dropped a stitch and it’s far back and, I don’t think it will show, then so be it. I always told my pottery students, if you want perfect, go to Walmart and buy some mass produced dish. Hand made is special because of the imperfections, and boy do I give you special.

So, I was getting “pings” back, I think that may be the term but since I am really new at this, bare with me. Not sure that’s spelled right, so don’t take your clothes off, just be patient here. I decided to trail the pings back and see what was going on and there was Crazy Aunt Purl. Crazy Aunt Purl I have now spent the morning with Crazy Aunt Purl and feel like my lost half is living with four cats in some place that does not want to be part of LA, as I sit in Brown County, Indiana with a crazy chihuahua and five adults in a 1,000 square foot house. So, maybe it’s just wishful thinking that I was anywhere else.

Aunt Purl had this neat picture of her gorgeous, Duberry Heather, Paton’s Rumor Yarn and her socks, that she finished. I am so jealous. The gift Master’s daughter gave me was two skeins of a gorgeous variegated Noro yarn, two circular needles a cute little Knit Knack Sack (She knows my penchant for bags) and the book Knitting Circles Around Socks. 

She has been working on making socks for some time now and just had to share. I am a sweater person and love to knit sweaters. I knit both arms at once, as I get bored easily and you can only have so many sweaters with just one arm, so with this book, you can knit both socks at once, thus avoiding the necessity of knitting one and then having to knit an identical pattern again, at least if you have two feet and want to wear identical socks.

I started the socks right before the next visit, which was a month later for grandson’s graduation. I knitted to THE CUFFS, which is about the fourth row, right after cast on stuff and while my picture looked almost identical to the picture in the directions, something wasn’t right. So, I took the socks with, thinking my daughter could help me out. Wrong. She has never tried this method and, being brand new to knitting, she was lost too.

Masters Daughter is a smart kid. I believe she started her knitting career with a square and moved on to doll clothing. She wanted to make Grandma a sweater, booties and cap for the miniature baby doll she bought her for Christmas. Grandma is a doll nut. So, she is knitting on these during her break from teaching one day, and her team partner comes in and says, “Oh, I have nothing to do during my break, let me work on them.” At the end of the day, she hands Masters Daughter a completed layette. She is also one of those who tears out fifty rows due to a mistake. GAG here! 

So, Master’s Daughter, now sits with four tiny needles making a sock. I sit with two circular needles trying to figure out why one sock is facing the wrong way. Four rows is doable, so I ripped it out and started over.  When I got to row four, I again have one sock facing the wrong way on the needle. I think the dippers of Margarita Mix may have influenced me a bit so I decided to ponder the dilemma at home, where I ripped it out again. This is so, NOT like me. (The ripping out part, not the mistake part.)

So, this morning, when I found Crazy Aunt Purl’s blog and her photo of lusious yarn and her mitten, I had to show off the point I am at with my sock. See the picture in the book? See my empty circular needles?

Oh, well!  I am four pages from being 1/3 through my Edgy Middle Grade/Young Adult Fantasy Novel’s Final Edit. Irritating Chihuahua sleeps next to me. No wonder their years are seven of ours, every time they wake up they think it is a new day.

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Jose Cuervo, job qualifications and blogging

We spent Indiana’s flood weekend at the “Master’s graduate” daughter’s house. I have two daughters and it sounds rather mean to say the “good” daughter and the “bad” daughter. I could say the “educated” daughter and the “brainwashed” daughter, which would be a very appropriate description, but then I would have to refer everyone to my FLDS blogs and who wants to go there again?

  

 

That would also lead to using the terms, the “happy” daughter and the “daughter in the long dress and head covering, who is not allowed to talk to me without her husband present and who rarely smiles”, but that just makes for an awkward sentence structure and I’m trying to impress editors with this blog. So, we’ll stick with “Master’s daughter”, at least for now.

 

The excuse for this visit was grandson’s high school graduation. His gift request was for us to come and play a ton of board and card games. The kid is a cheap date, if you don’t count the price of gas. Actually, he wanted me to bring the people who will play games, as I don’t usually play.

 

Our oldest boy was missing at Christmas time last year when we visited. We hadn’t actually lost him. He lives in Santa Fe, NM now. Graduate grandson, really missed the usual noisy game fest. The daughter and I noticed that it was much quieter than normal at her house last Christmas, without oldest boy. But, it was not something you want to bring up in front of her super-sized husband.

 

Super-sized husband is tall. I look way up at him and my arms do not go around super-sized son-in-law for a goodbye hug. His personality is super-sized also. He has been known to wear a tutu into Walmart. Not on a regular basis, thank goodness, but after he found it necessary to wear one for a play. Things like that do not bother super-sized son-in-law. If you brought the incredibly delicious “quiet” issue up in front of him, he would create an end of the world vortex that would swallow all silence in its mass.

 

So Master’s daughter and I sat and enjoyed the quiet and the high-speed access she has. It is a huge treat, for me, almost greater than South Bend Dark Chocolate Truffles. I need to add that we had been dipping into a bucket of Strawberry Margaritas with Jose Cuervo. It was a large dipper. The graduate daughter does not need Jose Cuervo to find humor in the world. But, it sure makes things interesting.

 

It was right after Master’s daughter realization that the dining/game room was again a hub of noise and that the only difference was our oldest boy being there and not in Santa Fe. Hence he must be the source of all noise. Then Master’s daughter, turns from her laptop to me and says that she has a burning question that has been puzzling her. 

 

I had been showing my “Master’s graduate” daughter about blogging. I, with a mere Bachelor’s degree, am excited to be able to show her about blogging. Especially since a month ago, I had to have the blogger, Nathan Bransford, Literary agent, post my first ever response to a blog, as I could not figure out how to do it. So, I say, “Yes, daughter, I have shown you blogging, now may I explain what a Black Hole is to you, perhaps how to multiply fractions? What is your burning question?”

 

Daughter, looks up from her computer and states, “I have been wondering, just exactly what are the job qualifications for a bust measurer for Victoria’s Secret?”

 

It is no longer quiet in the front room, as I wipe tears from my eyes and am laughing so hard I almost spill a precious drop of my strawberry daiquiri into my keyboard. At this point, the men in the dining/game room tell us to keep the noise down.

 

Having never been in a Victoria’s Secret store, it takes some time for me to figure out what the heck she is talking about. I know about the catalogue. So, I have visions of placing an order and having them sending people out to your house to measure you. This brings visions to my mind of someone sending Viggo Mortensen out to measure me and where that might lead. I am often distracted by those visions or Viggo (His name is even perfect), but my visions of him do not usually involve a tape measure.

 

She bursts my bubble and explains that, at the store, they greet you at the door with a tape measure around their neck and a bag. I am confused. A bag? For your breasts? Perhaps I should not have had the last dipper full. She says that the bag is for all the goodies you want to buy. Then they immediately ask you if you want them to measure your breasts.

 

She continues, “I mean, what is the job title? Would you be a Bust Calibrator?  I am sure experience is preferred. Are warm hands a requirement? Do you have to know metrics for the European office? And, what educational level is needed. Is a Master’s degree a plus?”

 

I ask if she is looking for a new job. “No, but what if a person with one arm applies for the job? Does the ACLU get upset if you don’t hire that person? Is a Bust Calibrator covered by the disability act? Does he use double sided tape to hold the end of the tape measure or does he get to hold it in his teeth? And, how many tape measures does Dolly Parton need?

 

At this point graduating grandson comes in to see if we have finally gone around the bend permanently.

 

“And, what happens when there is a one boob woman. Do you compensate by doubling the measurement?”

 

Graduating grandson leaves the front room, shaking his head.

 

“What happens if they have not shaved. The Breast Calibrator says, ‘Lift your arms please.’ And, euw! Wouldn’t you be distracted by the hair, if they haven’t shaved?  Do you have to tell them to remove their nipple rings, please.”

 

I don’t remember much of the rest of Friday evening. I think I had another dipper full. I am sure that we will both be banned from Victoria Secret’s stores; especially because we will never be able to enter one without falling on the floor laughing when they ask to measure our breasts.

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Who I am: blogging and art.

I am someone who has had incredible problems just responding to a blog. I am currently banging my head on a brick wall in figuring out how to “blog.” I’m sure there is a Blogging for Dummies book out there, but I refuse to buy it. I’ve been like that since I bought a KAYPRO, way back when, and for those who do not know what a Kaypro is: It is a computer in a metal suitcase with no memory. The memory was all on a 5 1/2″ floppy, but it had a great game called Wumpus. There were no visuals, all in your head and memory, Do you want to turn right, left or go center, then it tells you what happens, like it “smells a Wumpus” and you run into … kind of thing, and you make a decision. No fast action, just good for the memory.

As I get older, however, I find that I need to ask for help more often. and, I don’t like it. Thank goodness for Ben, the tech at Gold Rush Web Hosting, or my web page would never be up. I sit here putting things on my Blog page and taking them off that column on the right; scrolling other Blogs and wondering how they did this or that, and then going shoot, she has the same banner as I do. Like I thought no one else did????

 So, add to the list, of things to do, to replace this generic banner, which I like, with my own artwork, which is much more descriptive of who I am.  I hope I will get to that a bit quicker than I have gotten to redoing my web page. It was last updated so long ago that I don’t even remember when anymore.

 There is a reason for that. I can’t find just the right background.  Stop laughing. I’m serious. I love textures, I want certain textures in this 2D environment and I haven’t gotten it right. So, one day I finally say to myself, That’s enough you idiot. Just do it, you can always change it later. But there is a catch-22 in that sentence: “change it later.” That changing it is what I have been trying to do for over three years now. It will happen right after I have gone back and relearned how to punctuate.

 Is it my imagination or have the punctuation rules changed in the last decade or so?

 So, here I sit, conquering a new medium, blogging. Why? 1. It looks like fun. 2. I enjoy writing. 3. I’m told a writer needs a blog. 

I have been a writer most of my life. I have been an artist all my life. I have been an artist since I found it was much more interesting to draw parishioner’s portraits on the church bulletin, than to listen to the sermon.  Gosh mom, there’s where I went wrong.

I received my BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, in 1990.  I had painted commission portraits for about six years and wanted to become a better painter. By that I mean, I had the realism thing down, I wanted to grow. I was in a class with Gustin. He’s a wonderful teacher and he made me do an exercise where you have continually trade drawings around the room with other students. I was getting so darn mad, because I would just get into it and then he would switch (like musical chairs) that I started really painting; as in: putting my emotion into the work. It was good. Probably the best I have done. I was furious but happy.

By the end of the semester he tells me that he is putting me in an advanced class. I will be painting under the direction of two teachers; he is one and a woman, who goes by initials I choose not to remember, is the other. That was the worse semester of my life, with her as a teacher. She would harrangue me in class, ask to see my slides and then throw them down, do things like send me to the museum to study the color, which was the best time I had in her class. I had students ask me what was her problem with me.  She would dramatically flop herself down in a chair and say, “What am I going to do with you?” Her drama and her own paintings reminded me of the little crying woman on the tombstones of PBS’s Mystery tv program. I could see her laying over those tombstones, hand on brow, crying ”ohhh” “ooohh.”

I ended up going from being a painter to a potter. I was so frustrated I went down in the basement to throw clay around. One look into the kiln room and I found out that I was a closet pyromaniac. I got a job cleaning the pottery lab, so that I could go in and breathe clay dust at 7am. I caught the 11pm South Shore back to Indiana every night.  I lived pottery. I now have a pottery studio in Brown County, Indiana where I can also paint whenever I want.

How long should a blog be? I think I may have reached the limit and my life will still be here tomorrow.

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