Dawn’s Thoughts

Last weekend (4/18-4/19), I went to the Tulare Tractor Show with Mom and Dad. Pushed Mom around the dust in the wheelchair, which was difficult to get rolled but not bad at all after that, except for the metal-wheeled tractors, who drove about in the dirt making crop circles and causing the wheelchair no end of trouble. Of course, I explored the swap meet, and went to the tractor parade first off, when we got there. This was as usual a wonderful event, minus the balky donkeys and blaring national anthem of our first visit. This was entertaining because it drove the police horse absolutely nuts, and the donkeys went crazy entirely. So they didn’t do that this year. They did, however, have the same announcer, who, because of the size of the parade route is forever describing something just around or behind of what you are currently seeing. Makes things interesting.

At the swap meet, Mom missed a Singer Featherweight Firearm, and I missed out ofn a book of shop notes, including blacksmithing drawings, but as I inquired about the price, and then laid the item down waiting for the price, as the person I asked didn’t know it, despite best efforts, I can’t complain too much. The price was probably out of my range anyway. Mom found a small, excellent, aluminum fruit press for me for an wonderful price, though I had to poke about it until its owner explained that the plate was put on upside down. Right side up, it works very well, although different from the press I currently have, in that the handle detaches from the plate and is driven down by having a full press of fruit instead. Mom says maybe we can press cheese in it, which would be great, as our last actual cheese press, although reputable, was a Rube Goldberg contraption of wood and bricks for the weight, which was sooner of later going to land on someone’s foot. This press might work better. When I read about modern alumninum presses, one web page says that the small holes in the press means you don’t need to line the press with a pillow case in cheese cloth

In the tractor parade, the finish this time was long lines of older semi trucks, most painted robin blue and most from the Hays Truck Musuem (truckmuseum.org) which we have visited in the past. It was fascinating to see how stylish some of the older truck hoods were and how comparitively short their trailers were to modern semis.
On Sunday, the fair was much less — many vendors had left. We finished the last of the swap meet and saw the engines and as much of the tractors as possible. The man from Quartzite was there with his hit and miss pipe cutter, and I got into a few conversations with some folks about where their engines

Now keeping in mind that I still need to play catch up with this blog and should right now be searching for jobs (which I will do when I finish this blog), a hodgepodge of medical theories has been wandering about in my head for the past few days, so I thought I would write about them here.

I watched the movie Mockingbird Don’t Sing the other day, based on the story of Genie, a 13 year old girl isolated from most human contact in a back bedroom, and who did not have exposure to language. I knew of the case before, but have obviously missed some details, as I wasn’t aware there was another child, then nearly an adult in the house, or that there were twists and turns in the story such as scheming scientists. Some years ago I looked up the Wild Boy of Averyon (probably spelled wrong, I’ll have to look it up), and that book stated that the boy was insensitive to heat or cold, did not relate to people, and was in most respects comparable to an autistic person today.

That still interests me. But, in this case, this was a child found in the woods, who behaved like an animal as far as crouching places, eating raw meat with his hands, but significantly, I believe he was found in the 1700-early 1800’s, if I remember correctly. Science wasn’t as advanced. The crouching is interesting because a number of special ed children also perch on things, such as chairs.

But the child was also found in the woods…so was the insensitivity to temperature a result of more fat cells in the blood, or whatever happens to people who are exposed more often to extreme weather, or was this is an internal sensory processing difficulty, like a brain which scrambles pain messages?

I watched a program on modern feral children recently…would have loved to tape it, but anyway a boy in it as old as 4 was abandoned by his parents in the city and began to run about with the town’s dog population. Even at that age, he still reverted to dog habits on occasion with a foster family (growling etc). Now I’m assuming, because the program didn’t go into details, but this was a child with an apartment-dwelling life, and early exposure to social skills, language, affection, who did not begin to display these characteristics until later, hanging around dogs. Now the neighbors knew he was doing this.

This is not to advocate the “refrigator mother” theory about autistics, or to state that they were deprived as Genie was. The theory about rhesus monkeys and touch is interesting here as well…it was supposed that monkeys were attached to their mothers because of feeding and milk, but it was discovered that baby monkeys gravited toward soft towel-covered fake mothers more than the ones who only fed them. They wanted touch. This is why children in orphanages had high mortality rates early in the century, because they were fed but not touched, and they wasted away. (Which was, at least according to Popenoe, a “scientist” writing about eugenics, a good thing…less people with bad genes).

Of course, remember that eugenics was considered a science during a very particular time period, at least until after Nazi concentration camps, where it became a source of embarrassment and its name was quickly changed. Popenoe also does not consider in his book Applied Eugenics that factors such as high tubercolis rates and lack of seperation of sick people…oh, let’s see, might actually have contributed to the high mortality rates.

When I watched The Boy in the Bubble documentary, I wondered whether touching him through thick gloves would qualify as touching a la rhesus monkeys. Of course, he grew but the bubble provided another kind of isolation, despite doctors, parents and nurses giving interaction and affection. I suppose because he couldn’t interact directly or leave the bubble except in a space suit.

In the movie about Genie, if she actually did some of the things portrayed, it’s very interesting. For example, a foster sister complains in the film that Genie has taken her brush. Now what does Genie do with it? She strokes her face. That’s tactile stimulation. If an MRI had existed at the time, a particular part of her brain probably would have lit up. I wonder if particular brain waves can tell your brain to wake up or go to sleep (neurofeedback) and particular sounds such as shaman drumming, digeridoos, humming, rocking, etc. can take away pain, do they all stimulate the same portion of the brain? In Anthropology I found it fascinating that the drumming, digeridoo etc made the same noise as the humming Mom does when her hand hurts.

People stimulate by fidgeting, tapping pens, during meetings. Which part of the brain does this stimulate? Also, figure that Genie in this case, was tied to a chair without proper motion of her hands and feet and without much verbal interaction. So, if you look at the cases of isolated prisoners or people that have been suspended in water, with gloves over their hands and feet, it takes a few days and then their brain starts finding things to stimulate itself. It goes haywire with hallunications etc. And in the case of people who have…a highly medical term will follow… scrambled wiring in their brain, or poor processing of stimulation such as touch, sounds, etc., they can over- or under- reaction to stimulation. Screaming at car backfires, or knocking people aside when tapped on the shoulder. Think about autistic people here, but also folks who might have it to a lesser degree such as from a head injury. (I read the book Too Tight, Too Fast, Too Bright by …INSERT CITATION)
In this sense, scientists said Genie walked and moved as though blind, as though her brain didn’t trust her eyes. Now that’s fascinating for me. Were her senses damaged from isolation? If people couldn’t take complete sensory deprivation for a few days, similar deprivation for years must do awful things. The kid must have been bright to be able to maintain a ability to learn. Did the Wild Boy have insentivity to temperature like Genie because of exposure to these extremes, or because lack of stimulation scrambled the ability to feel them? Did Genie’s stimming with the brush “correct” her body’s need for some brain waves? In the book Too Loud, Too Bright…by …… a sensory diet is recommended that claims to stimulate particular regions of the brain and help with sensitivities to sounds, etc.

In the Extras of Mockingbird Don’t Sing, Susan Curiss says that Genie would take Curtiss’ hand and point to what she wanted to know. That she lacked confidence in her own hand. That seems like a form of faciltacted communication that would become popular a few years later. In faciltated communication, a teacher holds the arm while the student points to objects. This is not to start a disruption about whether or not faciltated communication works or doesn’t, I’m only stating what I’m thinking. At the time, word boards would have been in existance, but word boards would have been much slower than signing, which is what the Genie Team introduced her to. But in today’s technological world, computers are used instead of word boards for communication like this, and some autistic people have shown that while their verbal speech is not at age level, their written ability is much better.

A boy from India writes every day and a girl with a small verbal vocabulary can attend college course with a computer to speak for her. (Sorry, I saw them on TV but will have to look up the names). This raises the questions would Genie’s inability to construct grammatical sentences, even though she could communicate what she wanted, have improved if the technology of computers had been as advanced as it is today? It’s an interesting idea for me. Now people can also have difficulty processing verbal language but be able to use ASL, so an appropriate technology was used for the time period, but it intrigues me that langauge can be entirely different written than it is coming out your mouth

Also interesting that Genie collected pails, plastic being one of the things she was exposed to as toys during isolation and abuse. She didn’t play with them but just had them. They would provide the same tactile stimulation. Autistic children are also known for collecting groups of objects, whatever connection that might be.
Anyway, that’s  my hodgepodge of scientic theories for the day. Might be an entertaining paper, if I could communicate it well enough in future.

[The part about rhesus monkeys, cloth mothers, and touch came from reading Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers [An Updated Guide…]  by Robert M. Sapolsky, pg. 90, 98-100.
For the sensory deprivation study, see Human Motivation, 5th edition, by Bernard Weiner.

For sensory overload, see Too Loud, Too Bright, Too Fast, Too Tight: What to Do If You Are Sensory Defensive in an Overstimulating World by Sharon Heller

The documentary about modern wild children is a TLC film called “Wild Child: The Story of Feral Children.”

Information about Genie is in Russ Rhymer’s book Genie: A Scientific Tragedy, NOVA’s documentary “Secret of the Wild Child,” and Susan Curtiss’ thesis, as well as Mockingbird Don’t Sing (2001) film.

Information about David Vetter is from the NOVA documentary The Boy in the Bubble. It’s an excellent film.

Yesterday, Tuesday (4/7), I spent a large portion of my day at job club. First off I set out at 8 AM, as usual, took the train, got there a little early and read the paper, which is always there on the table. I used the computers a bit to look for jobs as well. I had cover letters to work on, but didn’t want to put the wrong flash drive into the computer, as one of them can only be used at the SJSU career center and home.

As it was, I succeeded in accidently saving a blank document to their computer rather than my flash drive.

What can I do? Even if I know where it went, and I had a pretty good idea of where and the name of the document, they have rules posted, and I’m pretty sure roaming about the innards of their computers and deleting documents is not something they’d be pleased about.
Went to job club itself, which was very good, about cover letters and resumes and things not to do in an interview, then used the resource center for 2 hours looking at jobs in the Bay Area. More specifically, I spent some time looking for freelance local columnist jobs, as a friend suggested the other day.

“A intermittant column,” she said. “Disabled people finding jobs. It’d be funny. You could write it.”

So, what the hell. I browsed jobs for that. Sounds good to me, if I can get back in the habit of having writing ideas every day. That’s getting better.

With the rain, it was a full house for orientation…me and another lady and the instructor.

I’m pleased with their new changes in the job programs…training in computers in the office itself, phone calls to see how job searches are going, etc. Very good. Happy to hear it.

Anyway, I’m still blessed by the rain gods, who still send down rain only when I’m somewhere inside, apparently, as I come out to find signs of rain all over, but never have any when I’m going from one place to another.

A fact that is sincerely appreciated and which I don’t want to jinx. Pulling a cart and swinging a cane in the rain is always a pleasure, as I get to decide who gets the umbrella…the cart or me?

Guess who wins?

The cart. There’s stuff in there that can’t get wet.

Then, too, I can’t very well hold an umbrella, swing a cane, and wrangle the cart at the same time

Believe me, I’ve tried it. It’s a hazard for everyone involved. Not only do I swerve while hauling the cart and shifting umbrella, but people duck and run as if it’s a war zone. You know it’s the umbrella’s fault. The little things that hold the umbrella together have come loose so I swerve about manhandling a cart and periodically making what must only appear to be homicidal lunges toward folks, with spears sticking out in all directions.
If I could attach the umbrella to the cart, that might be something.

I actually have an umbrella hat, the kind with a vise that clamps to your head, is too small to cover the rest of you, and looks as though it’s meant to channel television directly into your head.

I tried a poncho before, but found if you shove it into a backpack without letting it dry, it has a marvelous ability to breed mold like a petri dish. Instead of pencillin, you get a stink that can clear a hallway of all inhabitants in 5 seconds.

Ask me how I know. At least, all four of my classmates were standing by exit doors at the time.

Today Wednesday (4/8), I went early to internship, sat outside under storm clouds with a notebook and wrote the beginning of a story. I went in when the rain made my pen bleed.

My supervisor was in the lunch room, I was told, but I hated to interuppt, so I went past and continued writing until internship actually started at 1 PM. My supervisor poked her head around the cubicle when she returned and I told her what I was doing.

Well, on last Sunday (4/5), I’ll assume I worked on an application for a San Francisco job, because what was I doing on Monday (4/6), around 2 PM, but hauling myself and my cane to 4 Post Offices.

I would have said I was hauling something else but you get the idea.

The documents were due as an application the next day.
I finished up getting documents ready at home by 2 PM, took them to FedEx, where there was a lot of paying going on. I paid to copy portfolio documents, paid to use the computer, and paid to print from the computer, which is somewhat of a contradiction if you ask me.

Oh, and the copier decided it was going to mess with me by printing alternately legal sized or yellow paper, despite what I told it to do. After concluding it was a possible victim of mechanical possesion, I consulted the local FedEx person, who showed me that the copier automatically saw the clear covering over my documents and that some fool had left yellow paper in the white 8 1/2 by 11 bin. I might have figured this out for myself, except that various copy places, except those that know me, and schools, tend to become wildly agitated if they spot filling paper trays etc. So I fetched the FedEx people themselves who were kind enough to have a look and explain things.

This meant that I took quite a lot of portfolio documents out of their covers, until I gave up somewhere near the end and just flipped the document upside down, as I do at home, so that I can hide the holes in the cover.
Then I took a seat and began sorting documents, at which point I realized that half of them do not have my name printed on them.

This means I had to sign my name — neatly — about 20 or 30 times in the left hand upper corner, which Dad suggested, but which requires a great deal of patience for me. The more I concentrate on it, the more it looks like a drunk five year old stole my paperwork.

Once I got done with that, I ignored the several cents I might have gotten back in reject copy money and fled to SJSU’s post office. I learned at FedEx that they really do only send FedEX, had no idea what postage I needed. At SJSU, I learned that I should have been there at 1 PM to get the overnight postage, as the woman who takes their mail had already been in. They sealed and gave my package certified mail postage, which I paid for, and gave me instructions to the St. James post office, which stayed open later and might still have overnight.

Hearing this, I snatched my package back from them, leaving them rather confused, as I had only just finished paying the certified mail, typed post office in the GPS and found the only ones it recognized were 3-6 miles away. I called Mom, who reminded me of the Post Office in Paseo de San Antonio.

They were still open, just not manned. They had closed at 5:00 PM. It was now around 5:30, and their sign gave better directions to the St. James post office, but cautioned that it closed at 6 PM.

I’m lucky to get across campus in 30 minutes. Holding GPS in one hand and my cane in the other, I hauled myself, literally, along the street toward 1st street.

Here’s a tip. If you want people to part before you, haul one leg, swing the other arm in contortions, pant, look at GPS, and swing a rather large stick.

Needless to say, people kept out of my way almost entirely.

Meanwhile, along with almost running as fast as most people can in a good stroll, I was hoping that I would not catch hold of a crack in the sidewalk with my cane.

Imagine Goofy in the 1940’s being slung into the horizon by a tree, and you get a better good idea of what a fast moving cane will do to you.
I made it to St. James almost with 10 minutes to spare before closing, hurried myself up the steps, and damn near committed hari-kari with my cane.

Actually, I think I must have stepped on the cane, which I’ve never actually done before, and which did a spendid job of accordianing my big toe on the right foot. I hopped up the steps and went in.

I don’t remember being in the St. James Post Office before, but it’s a wonderful building. It’s kept the floors and round ceilings and even the teller windows from an earlier time period. Rather like entering a proper movie theater. Luckily, there were only 2 people in line, which has never happened to me at the post office, and I soon found myself explaining that I wanted to send a package certified mail, return reciept, overnight.

Turns out there is no such thing. They are two separate styles of mail. So I chose overnight.

I’ve also come to the conclusion that if I have to write my address and someone else’s in the tiny boxes on those little forms the post office provides, I will gladly sling them at somebody’s head.

That would make me better. Maybe I can get a mail stamp for it instead.

As it was, I wrote the more important parts of the very long address and stated that my handwriting could not fit in their small boxes.

Well, that’s what we use.

Now, granted, the post office man was nice to point out the various other places on the sticker I could write things such as Attn: Human Resources and the room number, but I’ll be lucky if the package gets there. The only good thing was that this sticker covered my previous address, done in a hurry in pencil. Now the package was covered with so many stamps and stickers from 2 post offices, that I would’ve assumed I was sending it to a foriegn country instead of 40 miles.

I might have said I was disabled and needed assistance, but I felt lucky enough to get out of the place five or so minutes before closing.

I called Mom and told her I was having either ice cream or a beer when I got home.

“Have both,” she suggested, “a beer float.”

So I did. I went to Ben & Jerry’s, which I hardly do, got a very nice coconut chocolate chip ice cream, then went home and had a beer. Since I drank the whole thing, there wasn’t much sense in trying to do work, or getting up after that, so I sat and watched comedy and enjoyed myself for the evening instead.

On Saturday (4/4), I went with the history club to the Steinbeck Center in Salinas.

Very good. We were there briefly earlier this year, on a mistaken assumption that the Steinbeck library is the same building. Although I did want to explore it, and had for some time, we only dashed in and out for a pit stop. Turns out they do have a place to eat at a restaurant a few buildings away.

I wanted the biscuits and gravy, but got a salmon sandwich instead. Definitely a place to go to again. I’m glad I didn’t get the biscuits, because they’d probably have been as large as the ones at Milt’s. Rather like a tuna fish sandwich, except in a large roll and seasoned well.
Onion rings came with it — ate half those, then of course, everyone else couldn’t handle that I left them, and had to try some.
Very good museum displays. Not much historical information behind the books that I saw though. That was a bit of a shame…I was curious for example about what it would have been like to be a bindle stiff in Mice and Men, or the fact that disabled and respite did not exist as we know them in the 1920-1930’s. It was well lit. There were various objects like hats and coats to lift, Steinbeck’s car with a camper stove, which was very interesting because it resembled closely the round handmade early RVs I’ve seen at shows. Very brown inside from the wood. I assume the table made down into a bed, a technology I didn’t think existed until modern RVs. Our VW, for example, had a bed that made into a couch, but the table was seperate.

You couldn’t get lost in the museum due to how it was set up, with each book being a section that wound around each other. A Model T Ford and a Okie shack mockup were also part of the props. The Okie shack was a mockup to cover a wall — there was nothing to go into and no metal beds, as there are in the Dust Bowl Festival. The outside of the “building” was rather neat for a shack. You pull back a curtain and there’s a drawing of Okies and a recording from the book.

A lot of different methods were in this museum. Printed sections of books, old pictures of time periods and a little historical information about the Dust Bowl, tape recordings from books and video readings as well. We sat in a video about Steinbeck himself. A touchy feely corner also exists.

In the Mice and Men section there was a nice looking wooden bunk bed. A common idea in this museum was to print quotes on things such as pillows, jackets and quilts. Something I haven’t seen before and interesting to look at.
Good gift shop. I saw a Grapes of Wrath Viking Critical edition with historical info in the back — Bakersfield’s Hooverville and flood — but no addresses again, darn it.I’d like the Hooverville address or section to see how it compares with the modern area — particularly some similar housing on the outskirts of town. For instance, does ditch bank camping usually occur by rivers? Probably so, as it is a source of water. But has modernism made that different? Anyway, if it is the same region, it’s highly unlikely that Okies, farm workers, or their descendents would be in the same place. That said, it would be something extremely interesting to research.
I got the books I saw at the Okie Festival on sale. They are Ron Hughart’s books The Place Beyond the Dust Bowl and its sequel, which I’ve been wanting to read. About Dust Bowl migrants and their children following crops in the 1950’s and 1960’s much the same as in the Dust Bowl.

Then we went to the Presidio in Monterey which I haven’t been to. It had some displays. First off we got instructed on where in the base you can’t go because of unexploded things and what-all will happen if you do. (And I got a military map of the area for free). Rather odd, since all we came for was the museum itself. We also learned of military strategy with tanks and how the horses were Morgan horses and something else, so that they were very strong and capable. They were trained to not react to noise, which was done by firing guns by their ears. I asked why they didn’t end up with a lot of deaf horses, but the docent said that they were in fact quite well cared for. Your butt would be a sling if your horse got hurt, because then you’d have no calvary. I believe he said that horses were trained for war right up through WWII. When I asked when the last actual calavery was, he said the Spanish American War. I can understand the point though, about tanks. Horses you have to feed and water, but tanks have to be maintained to operate. The docent said that the tanks had be chased constantly by supply trucks with gasoline, water, food, etc. If this was the case, it seems somewhat counterproductive. For one thing, the supply truck are also using gasoline, and what’s to keep the enemy from cutting supply lines by taking out the supply source? I’m sure this was done in WWII — it would be like the old “starve them out” policy for warfare in the middle ages, but it’s interesting to learn about it.
We walked up the hill, avoiding the cement gully to water horses that used to live there and walked up to the monument. We looked out over the valley, which had a wonderful clear view that allowed you to see ocean and hills at the same time. I speculated as to how theyshot cannons off from the mountain and how far the cannon balls went. To reach the ocean, you’d have to shoot over the Presidio’s own horse stables and what’s now the Visitor’s Center. It seems to me like you’d have a bunch of scared-shitless horses all the time, or holes in the roof.

Except, of course, that those were apparently horses incapable of being scared shitless in the first place.
Another club member said that well, of course, it got cold up there on the hill nights, and maybe you’d get to drinking and friendly fire the stables, but no one really how far the cannons could reach.

Then we went to the Monterey jail and looked at that.Over at the courthouse [?}, up a high staircase, was a bunch of chairs in one room that were displays with copies of writing from I believe the Consitution of California, if I remember right. On the other was chairs for actually sitting in, and we were told the difference between them. At one point the building was a normal school and among the older books under glass, there was a wooden pencil box. It intrigued me because besides having marbles in it, it had chalk and small metal tools. I asked about the tools and was told they were files for sharpening the chalk.

Now isn’t that clever? Never seen such a thing. I take they weren’t original to the building but examples, but I commented on how neat it was to store marbles in your pencil box.

“I had a pencil box when I went to school,” said the woman in charge.

I wanted to tell her I had my grandfather’s marble collection, but I didn’t.
After this we went to the jail itself. For all the talk about it in the group, I expected a hole in the ground place, but the cells were roughly the size of those in Alcatraz. The deal being that on one side they were lit so you could see them, and on the other they were naturally lit from the small holes in the metal windows. This meant that anyone in them got hardly any sun and spent days in the dark. It’s a wonder anyone got out with their wits about them at all.
and came home. I got dropped off at home. Less people than usual today.
I practiced my conversation skills a bit. Mostly didn’t work as people were talking about current concerts, music, etc. They talked a little about jobs. Mostly I interuppted, sat there, read, or was talked over. A few times I had good conversations such as about rites of passage.

I asked questions about written Norcal instructions again, at lunch, and there aren’t any, but did get some ideas.
I got done with dinner at 6:45, hardly time to start work, so I’ll work tomorrow. Sadly, no oatmeal on weekends…I’ll be forced to eat at the Garage tomorrow if they’re open. What a shame!

On Thursday (4/2) I returned to Palo Alto. I talked with the parrot on Castro street, and with his owner. Sounds like it’s good I have conversations with him as she says he’s lonely and doesn’t have a mate. I learned his name is Skipper.

Still, rather odd that I can have a better time in conversation with an animal than I can with members of my own species. Skipper’s owner says he can say a lot of words but doesn’t have them in order. I said Goodbye last week, but when I said Bye this time, he did repeat it.

Good Lord. Speech therapy training for parrots.

I swear, it’s like the cat lady in The Simpsons.

I got in around 6 PM and decided I wanted to make the pumpkin date pie in my pie book. Because of what we had it ended up being a fig-squash-honey-ginger pie. Very good. Had that for dinner.
For some reason, even though I checked the doors, stove, oven etc. last night before going to bed, I didn’t actually notice the milk on the counter until this morning when I went and said crap, the milk. Never noticed it when I checked last night.
I think I’m going to stop cooking for awhile until I stop forgetting stuff like that.
I emailed a number of professors and job counselors about the best way to include Anthropology in a resume.
I also emailed one of the museum job sites with a job agent, but unfortunately you have to be currently associated with a museum to get a job agent.
Hmm…if you were currently associated, would you need to have a job agent?
I have Thursday and Friday to work and then Friday I have to go down to SJ so I can be at SJSU on Saturday morning for the Salinas trip with the history club.
I went down to the Common Ground today after GPS stopped running me in circles.The Common Ground is a wonderful local seed supply place, with seeds in Mason jars, and plants alongside.
I bought a tomato hanger thing at Fry’s.

However, I still need to find something to hang it from.Details, details…
I got some bird mesh to keep the squirrels off the garden (hopefully). Either my tomato plants have gone into hibernation over the weekend or they’ve been plowed under by squirrels. I’d have thought squirrels wouldn’t eat the tomato foliage, as human can’t because of the poison in it, but then, squirrels crack walnuts with their teeth. When was the last time you saw a human doing that?
I got 1 tomato plant which is in the back room at the moment. I can plant it outside later, hopefully in the new hanger, but if not in with the beans in the garden. I browsed at the garden section and books. They have a huge seed index book — very interesting. One for vegetables and one for fruit from the Seed Savers Exchange. It has a price on it, so maybe I should get one sometime. I should go back and have a look at seeds.

Came home around 3 PM and went over to the Russian market. They have something that looks like tongue in their freezer, and I need to ask about it. I got some grain and 1 pound of ham.They had some rugalach’s — those cookies with cream cheese, but theirs doesn’t have cream cheese in it. Still good though. I made a garlic ham sandwich for dinner, then threw out the bread as it’s about 2 weeks old. (I would have kept it, but it’s rye. The rest is frozen).

I had the ham and garlic instead. I had blintzes for lunch. Very good.
I watched some TV and am fiddling around with relevant coursework phrasing. I was listening to the internet radio, but thankfully it’s gone off. It had a “skipped record” on the Oldies station. Made it sound as though the Chipmunks were singing. That was kind of funny.

I watered the garden and berries today and poured water back in the little fountain. It was off again yesterday so I just unplugged it. I plugged it back in today. I think it’s water level gets too low, but unless I’m just filling it to working level and its evaporating, I’m not sure what’s going on with it.
So far the only thing surviving in the garden seems to be either cucumber or squash. Probably squash, because of the round green leaves.

Well, last Monday (3/16), I went to my appointment at Career Center, and then I suppose I looked for jobs. I can’t remember very well what I did.

Tuesday (3/17), I was supposed to go to internship, but didn’t as my supervisor is off on jury duty. I debated going to Job Club, but as I haven’t yet detremined just how long of an orientation I need to repeat due to funding changes, and as no one there seems to have gotten my messages, I haven’t been in. If orientation is one day I might not mind repeating it for no reason — if it’s the original month and a half, I probably will, especially as job counselors in these organizations have mainly been laid off themselves. This means even if I did repeat orientation, I’d only end up going to job club just as I always have, because there are apparently only volunteers to help with job seeking. It’s rather funny really. So basically I’d be repeating orientation to prove I can do it, then continuing on with what I’ve been doing. Even the people who are supposed to help me with jobs are so out of funding that they don’t have work.

Wednesday (3/18), I went to my appointment at Career Center, to get some help with job keywords. Discussed what I wanted to do with the counselor, and have my homework, which is to pick the person’s brain who thinks I’d make a good vision teacher. I explained that many people have mentioned teaching, but as I would have difficulty writing notes, etc. I’m not sure what I could adapt to be an aide, etc. Because to my knowledge I would be doing the very things I had trouble with in school.

Then I went to PA, seething because of the Traveling Garbage Show.

Imagine whatever you like for that image.

Fun, isn’t it?

So I got home and told Mom on the way, that I was drinking, yes, drinking, even if it was 2 PM. Who cares? It was that kind of day. I had my glass of wine and felt much better. Then I took it easy because I knew getting that pissed (as in mad, not as in British royally drunk) makes me feel awful eventually.

Thursday morning as I was sitting about writing this blog, my friend emailed and told I must apply for this job with folklore she found. Much of my time (except for where I’ve done old-fashioned procrastinating), has been taking up with getting references set up, uploaded, cover letters etc. Exciting job.

March 24 and 25th, Tuesday and Wednesday, I went to job club — all about how to an advocate for yourself — and to internship. Thursday I went to the career center, and worked on my resume. Somehow the counselor and I managed to edit the thing down from 2 pages to 1 page, with suggestions on how to edit further. I’m supposed to put keywords in, but whenever I look at the job description and resume together it gets confusing.

Then I went home, stopping to tour BookBuyers of course and get a rum ball.

They don’t sell them there. It’’s across the street. Boy, that would be cool. Nice but sticky for the books.

I went to PA, propped a box in front of the freezer, which seems to conspire with various other items in the house to be in some kind of disrepair every time I come home. What I had placed in the freezer in a nice small bag had practiced contortionism and catapulted just enough to pop open the door and make winter all over the linoleum.

Now, granted, the freezer is currently stuffed…

…with what, exactly, I’m not entirely sure…

…but any self-respected food should stay where I put it in the freezer, where the sub temperatures should be to its liking. I wanted to go the store and make soup, but didn’t get a chance. I checked the fountains, filled the smaller one with water again so the mosquitoes won’t set up water skiing camps in it, and took care of the garden.

The garden is (finally!) sprouting something!

About 4 Armenian cucumber plants and 2 delicata squash plants have appeared. That’s not counting the tomatoes indoors and the wheatgrass. (I’m trying to keep the wheatgrass inside for fear it’ll cross-pollinate itself and I’ll end up munching the lawn like a cow).

And that’s not counting the strange plant which I thought was a cabbage, which sprouted inside the worm bin. I dragged it out and labeled it cabbage, but it might not be. Anyway, I was just reading about dysentry bacteria growing in crops raised in dung, so possibly eating things from the bin is not a good idea…

I’ve been yanking out and replanting wandering garlics from there, right along. They wind up thick, long, and bigger in the worm bin, but strangely anemic looking from lack of unlight. They pure white and pale yellow when I pull them out, but turn green once they’re with other garlics.

I transplanted the tomatoes outdoors, where immediately they stopped looking cheerful and alive and proceeded to look squashed and dead. Doing that, I unearthed 2 of the soybeans I planted, out of the whole packet. I hope they sprout even if I did disturb them. I planted a few more tricolored garden string beans around the tomatoes and soybeans.

Friday (3/27) I went to a doctor’s appointment at noon. I started out around 7:30 0r 8 Am to get there. Before I got to the train station, I stopped to talk to the green parrot again. This time instead of just listening,  he crouched down and wriggled and poked his beak through the cage while I talked. He said hello right away.

I figured either he wanted food or was doing a mating ritual.

Of course, I was the only one on the street actually having a conversation with the bird, so maybe he’s not used to people talking quite so much. The owners must, though. And no, I don’t know what gender the animal is, really wasn’t paying that much attention, thank you.

Peacockes do mating dances for me too.

But then, they sound like car horns when they get excited. I suppose there’s good reasons why people teach parrots to talk rather than make other sounds.

Went back to PA, hopped over to the nieghbors across the street for the loan of their digital camera, as I figured mine was either in the motor home or the stuff I haven’t unpacked. As it turns out, Dad found it in the motor home, so I don’t have to rummage.

Several kids were over there, and of course chaos reigned, naturally, with small children dashing about with potentionally lethal objects about their heads, and god only knows what was going on in the backyard.

Probably why the adults in SJ used to have wine coolers while supervising.

I was invited to lunch, and later, for dinner. Anyway, it was assumed that I would get the bug book or the science book to be a child wrangler in the backyard, but I said I had too much homework to do and went back across the road. I wasn’t sure when dinner was, and no one came to fetch me, which was just as well, as I was still doing homewrok. By 8 PM I was watching Of Mice and Men (the new version). I still need to see the old one with Lon Chaney, Jr. in it, if nothing else just to see where the “Which way did he go, George? Which way did he go?” came from in Warner Brothers cartoons. Saw some new things in it this time. Tried to tape it — got halfway through and the disc quit.

On Sunday (3/29) I took Outreach to SJ.

Monday I went in the career center during their open career drop ins, which turned out not to be open due to inservice or something. They were kind enough to help me anyway. We edited most of my cover letter and browsed through what I wrote for upload captions. The floor started shaking and that was a 4.3 earthquake, which we were told immediately from someone in the back rooms. I went and stood by the door in case of aftershocks, then went back to work.

After that, I went to the Mexican market and got vegetables and a pound of untwisted chorizo for soup. I made the soup and had it for dinner.

Tuesday (3/31) I went to job club — this time about time management. Got into a discussion about various organizations with one of the clients. Asked about orientation and was told it was 2 pm today. I said I couldn’t do that as I hadn’t told my supervisor I wasn’t coming in. Then after job club I asked about a volunteer helping me next Monday, but I can’t make an appointment until I complete orientation again.

Came back to internship, had a very good lunch at El Sombroso restaurat. Thank God they have free refills. I got a burrito with red chile sauce on top and probably jalapenos in the center. It was good, but I didn’t know there were going to be chiles, and so I had half the burrito, most of the chips, and 3 FULL glasses of horchata.
sat down near the steps to read and found myself quite the center of attention there: taking pictures for tourists, giving directions to City Ha;;’s doorways and having skateboarders zip around me and fall off steps, stunt jumping. When it was time for internship, I went only to find them closed for Cesar Chavez day.

That means, of course, that I didn’t need to dress up today and could have stuck around for the new orientation. Darn it.

I went by school to find them also locked for the holiday, so I couldn’t see what time would be good to drop in or make appointments with professors. I came home and began work on this blog. I suppose if I don’t have to stay Thursday for professor appointments, I coould possibly go home tomorrow. But then, of course, I have to be back on Saturday for the history club field trip to the Steinbeck museum in Salinas, and the Presidio.

That’s what I need to sign up for tomorrow.

On Friday, March 13, I spent the day working looking for jobs. Bookbuyers called and canceled our appointment, explaining that they could not hire anyone because of financial reasons which makes sense. They said nothing personal, that they enjoyed my resume and cover letter and would consider me in future if any jobs came up. Of course, I told them please do. This made me somewhat happy because I got such a quick call back and because my cover letter and resume were useful, even though I am disappointed they couldn’t use me.

Saturday I went to the booksale and bought some things. One book tells how to cook jicama, which I’ve tried unsuccessful in the past. But that book has microwave instructions and I haven’t tried that, only in stews.

Somewhere in this week, possibly Saturday, because I know I was coming back from somewhere at it was likely the booksale, I met the neighbors who asked me to dinner Of course the scientist wanted to do science experiments, but as it was shabbat, we couldn’t. We settled at last on making a paper plate water wheel, which I could do and not break shabbat for them, and I made an extremely uneven water wheel with a pencil. I didn’t measure the cuts, so naturally between the friction from the uneven hole and the uneven slats, the wheel would only turn about halfway under the kitchen faucet. All the children and their mother gathered to see it turn.

Afterwards, when it was 9 PM and time for me to be home vegging, the scientist ran about the house with a carefully cut off section of double-sided suction cup and a soda can. He cut the sides off so that it would stick in odd places where a normal suction cup wouldn;t, which was a good idea. I was worried that the suction cup wouldn’t have enough suction this way. I duct taped it to the soda can, and the scientist ran around attaching it to glass in picture frames, windows, and cabinets in general, while his father watched looking rather bewhildered. The soda can bounced off several times. I noticed that the scientist has now somewhat understands that the suction cup can only be attached firmly to things like windows, which is different from earlier. (Although he still wanted to attach to textured walls). At last I said I needed to go home and explained that I would do science another day when it wasn’t shabbat.

On Sunday around 8 PM, after I had stopped my job searching for the day, here was the scientist and his mother, wanting me to come over for science education. We had decided on several exhibits on shabbat, and found the one about pendulums, which I copied. Meanwhile the scientist wanted to know if I had made my cookie tin banjo and how, and whether I could get the singing toy pig dancing on the piano.

I took the banjo over, returning with it soon after, as everyone wanted to play with it and tune the strings, which meant that it was rapidly getting to a state where I would have to retune, such as it was, so I took it home. I had collected the awful, wonderfully looking knitting string from our house, which turned out to stretch and break. I neglected to follow instructions, though the scientist reminded me several times. Of course, the instructions called for stabbing a ball with a knitting needle, something I can’t safely attempt without injuring me, someone else or throwing the needle.

Instead, I bound the 4 pens together with duct tape. We debated suspending them from the ceiling as instructed by the project, but give this up as the tape would pull all the paint off the ceiling.

Instead, I tied it to the chandeliar. The scientist had the job of cutting any duct tape, finding a large ball to try and weight the pendulum. We taped this to the top, which prompted sent the microphone shaped pendulum into sideways spins.

In between attempts to fix the pendulum, the scientist practiced singing into the microphone.

I found something interesting awhile back with the baking soda experiment. The scientist’s speculation of why couldn’t you just leave the shell in plain water, is, in fact, technically correct. If you left one shell in water and the other in vinegar, you would have a control and an experimental shell. Now I doubt the scientist thought of the two together like that, other than wondering why you get the same effect with water, but those are the right questions to be asking. It’s good to have questions like this, I said then. It’s interesting to watch a 6 or 7 year old thinking about how stuff works.

The pendulum eventually swayed erratically back and forth, propelled only by frequent shoves from the scientist, and only drew when pressed down quite hard.

“Look,” the scientist said, pointing to stock market lines, “we drew on the paper.”

Well, the pendulum was somewhat successful. It did swing, held upright by two strings (to stabilize it from going sideways) and duct taped at odd angles. It didn’t draw nice circles as I wanted, and it didn’t complete any circle under its own power, but it did provide entertainment.

The scientist said he would like to do science all the time.

I’d been cooking quinces on the stove because al the pans were dirty and I found apparently that high boiling the stuff for 3 hours is not the same as in the rock pot for 3 hours, or the oven for 8 hours. Finally, I ate a small piece, although it wasn’t red and done yet. Then of course I thought of all the awful things that could happen to you if you swallowed one raw, though I suppose unripe persimmons are the same way, inedible

Then of course I left them and didn’t notice them again until they burnt spectacularly all over the pan.
Today (March 15), I basically did the dishes, watered the sprouting crops in the back room (tomatoes) and watered the outside garden. I figured out the other day how to tap the worm tea in the worm bin, so I’ve been watering with that and the leftover rain water that completely filled one of the large containers by the garden. That way it won’t become home to mosquitoes and I won’t have to fight with the hose for awhile.

Then I went and caught the train. Several people were grabbing hold of the poles and turning gymnast somersaults with them, which I’ve never seen anyone try to do on the train. They were apparently quite practiced at it.

This kind of thing drives me nuts. In between, naturally, they were shrieking, which is another thing that drives me nuts. I brought Temple Grandin’s book Animals in Translation and I tried very hard to concentrate on that.

The part about visualization and your brain is extremely interesting, mainly because I’ve been thinking about this lately. I have difficulty with proprioperception, where your body is in space. In fact, I’ve been knocking knees, elbows and in general walking into doors quite regularly lately.

So it doesn’t surprise me that I also have problems seeing myself in dreams, or imagining my lungs in my head. I’ve seen drawings of lungs and actual lungs, so picturing a lung in my head should be absolutely no problem. But it is. The odd thing is that I can imagine detailed fictional environments for stories with no difficulty. It makes me wonder if visualizing yourself and visualization in general are located in the same area of the brain. Interesting concept. I’ll have to look it up. Then, again, maybe it’s linked to proprioperception or faulty nerve connections or something.

I worked on job searching a little after I got to the apartment, then worked on this blog. However, due to the wrong time on the clock I missed the TV show I wanted to watch. I discovered the stoves had been on trying to hard boil eggs since at least Tuesday, so I turned that off and threw out the eggs. I’ve also forgotten hot water in the microwave twice now. Only good thing is at least I only have hot plates. I made a pizza for dinner, remembering the first 10 minutes to find it hadn’t defrosted, then popping it back in the oven to burn to a crisp. The timer on the oven doesn’t beep when it’s through, and apparently if I’m not paying attention I don’t notice burning until it’s very burnt. Means I’ll have to pay a lot more attention to what I’m cooking.

Anyway, back to the Holocaust movies I’ve been watching. The intriguing thing about all of them is perspective. The first two, Island on Bird Street and Look to the Sky are somewhat autobiographical. The last, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is fiction. All of them involve narrators aged 3 or 4, or at most 11, all are set in the Holocaust and in most of them the audience knows more about the Holocaust situation than the narrators, who are trying to adapt.

In Island on Bird Street, a boy reads Robinson Crusoe and sees his hiding place in a ghetto as an adventure. (How do I get food, shelter, etc?). He doesn’t know where his father went.

In Look to the Sky, a boy travels with his mother to a concentration camp. When they’re first taken away from home, he refuses to leave without his tricycle and rushes back to get it. He doesn’t see this move as dangerous because he’s something like 3 or 4 at the time. When he’s 8 or so, friends at the concentration camp dare him to make gestures at guards and visit the “monastry” where the dead are kept. [All dares I would never expect to see in a camp because I didn’t know there was enough free time for children to act like children]. His mother’s perspective is that he could be killed, or pick up typhoid or other disease from the “monastry,” but although he’s panic stricken about being locked in the monastry itself, he relates what he did matter-of-factly (I completed the dare. The people were dead and this is normal]. This is a book I’ll have to look up.
In The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, the perspective is really there in front of the audience. In the movie, you see only what the boy sees and hear only what he hears. His dad is a soldier. And there are these funny people next to the house that wear striped pajamas all day and work on a farm. [It’s interesting to look at the time differences in this movie. The boy and his friends run around in the middle of town pretending to be airplanes. If you were nine years old today and tried that, people would stare at you. It’s like when I watched I know my First Name is Steven on TV. The first thought in my head was what is a seven year old doing walking home alone. It wouldn’t happen today. When I’ve read comments about the movie Changeling, someone said well, the mother left her kid home alone for the day and he’s nine, so naturally he got kidnapped. By nine today you might be able to stay by yourself but I don’t think people in the 1930’s saw this the same way we do today. Folks in factories were leaving their 6 year olds in charge during the same time period. And also if people wore striped pajamas like in Goodnight Mister Tom regualrly in the 1940’s, you could interpret clothing this way. But today pajamas aren’t traditionaly striped like this and a modern interpretation would be different]. Anyway, some parts of this movie would only be possible if you didn’t notice current events (and it seems like if you were playing airplanes, you probably wouldn’t care much what was going on in town), and also if your parents never brought their work home with them. Since you don’t hear the parents in the movie saying “no way will that kid join the Hitler Youth or salute, etc.” it makes you wonder. However, things like this seem to be delibrately missing, so that the perspective is kept (of course Dad always does the right thing since he’s dad). The ending was surprising, but exactly opposite of what you would expect. The only problem is, the parents wouldn’t feel guilty for the reasons a person today would expect. You might say “Why, didn’t I watch him more closely?” but I don’t think you would say, “My child is a child like these folks over here, and therefore we shouldn’t have…”

I got the book at the library and it’s as if Dr. Seuss and A.A. Milne got togehter to write a book about the Holocaust. I mean that respectfully. The book is labeled a fable, and it’s written like one. It does a lot of the same things the Winnie the Pooh books do (misunderstanding words, repetition of phrases, capitalizing Very Important Words). For that, it’s an enjoyable book to read.

In contrast, the last History Club movie we watched was also about the Holocaust, this time with teenagers who liked big band music and passively disobeyed the Nazis by playing it. The part that supposed to shock the viewer didn’t work for me. What did is the scene where one of the characters says something like, all right, I’ll go and join the retards and the cripples that’s where I belong.

That struck me.

Why?

Because if the film is set in the 1930’s-1940’s, I would bet that unless it was long before the concentration camps opened, there really weren’t all that many “cripples and retards” left. They were the test subjects for the first gas chambers, from different institutions, if I remember correctly. I don’t know how many there were, but the T-4 program was what allowed the death camps to exist in the first place. That character’s quote is a chilling statement, and one that doesn’t seem to be quoted anywhere that I can find. What stands out for me is the film has good music, seems a little lopsided somehow, and has this remarkable statement that’s been overlooked.

Anyway, there’s my movie reviews for the day.

Today (March 12) I took for my free day because I had to get off the couch and not fiddle about with the computer for awhile. Only probably was, I couldn’t think of anything spectacularly fun to do, that I don’t do anyway, so I sold some stuff at Rasputin’s and took my cart so I could go to the Milk Pail after. My trip at Rasputin’s was somewhat hurried as I got a call from BookBuyers, where I dropped off my resume only last Monday.

They want to talk to me about their database position! Yaaaay!

They seem like nice patient folks, but they now know, of course, that I don’t carry a pen with me and that I have difficulty remembering what date it is. In my defense, I was scrambling to look through my daily planner, where the dates I needed were covered up. Also I’ve been filling out government paperwork for the past two or three days, which always makes me want to jump up and down, which is of course why I was out in the first place.

Yes, yes, sitting on the couch filling out paperwork is all well and good, but there are times when I get tired of the radio saying “Folks, it’s a beautiful day! If you’re not outside, you should be!” They were actually saying that the other day. Annoying as I had to stay in.
At last, I told BookBuyers that I was out shopping and could I call them back. Then I dashed over to Whole Foods for lunch and then the Milk Pail. Naturally, I went to get stuff for fried cabbage and vegetable soup. Forgot most of the vegetable but did get some strange fruits as usual. I got a sweet lemon, sugar prunes, and more quince which I’m cooking currently to become a custard. I think they’re on the last run of the season there, as there was only one box. However, I had no luck finding the ugly fruit section, which is a shame as more ugly fruit is always welcome at home.

Then I went to Long’s, got pen and notebook, called BookBuyers, wrote down their information, and discussed ways to get there. As I didn’t have their location figured out yet, we eventually compromised so that I will meet them at their store that I am quite familiar with, rather than where I will actually be working. That’s a shame, because I do want to see the place, and I plan to, especially since I’ve mapped it out bow on VTA’s website. I haven’t been exactly where it is before, but at least I have a better idea of its location. That said, it was kind of them to compromise for our meeting.

Also found out that Whole Foods is now selling herbs and crops outside. I wanted the aspargus plant, as it was the one mentioned in Barbara Kingsolver’s book Animal Vegetable Miracle, along with how to grow it, but it would have been squashed by the time I got home. Maybe I can ask the neighbors when they’re going shopping and pick it up then.
I’ve been thinking about the Academy of Sciences lately, since the neighbors are going. My last assesment went wrong because of the crowds and a confusing building. However, it was a very cool building, and I kept debating the small solar panels that formed canopies because I though they were cool. For one thing, they weren’t solid blue, and weren’t connected together, as our leader pointed out. But they were solar panels.

On the lighter side of things, the other day I went back over to the neighbors for dinner and brought suction cup figures and bead figures with me from the Klutz books. Everyone quieted down and soon we had the floor a royal mess with everthing spread out. Worked out very well. Around bedtime, with the scientist in the lead, we trooped to the bedrrom to attempt to suction cup other objects to the wall. From this, the scientist discovered that you can’t suction things that don’t have a good surface (stuffed animals) or put them on a textured wall successfully.

What we did discover, after exploring the room, was that the small suction cup was capable of holding much larger things than I thought possible. Naturally, I took pictures The double-sided suction cup held:

a small board Winnie the Pooh book

a larger flat ex-library book

a soccer ball (which appeared to be levitating)
a plastic sword, sheath and helmet (again, levitating. Extremely cool).

a small plastic red truck

one of the small headband miner’s lamps

a battery operating large flat plastic lit scrolling “fish tank”
the large round hinged trash can

ALL of these got pinned to the sliding glass doors. It was excellent. Of course, the scientist’s mother may have not been as pleased when I dashed out to explain that we had just fixed the trash can to the wall.

“The one with dirty diapers?”

“That’s the one,” I said, and dashed back in to see what could be suspended next.

The next time I came over I brought modeling clay but it turned out to be the strangest clay. It was springy and spongy, rather than stiff and greasy, if it was too old, so it must be made of different chemicals. I’m thinking about bringing over a play dough recipe next.

The Stanford career fair went quite well. Sorted through several internships and put them in piles according to which ones paid and which didn’t, the other night.

Then I went to my career center appointment this last Monday, pulled most of them out of the bag, and pinched off their paperclips by accident. Silly me. SHould’ve put them in manila envelopes. Anyway, made an appt for help with government paperwork, then throughly confused them down there, by canceling the next day.

I explained that I knew the appt was to help with the paperwork and I did need the help, but I couldn’t look for the jobs they wanted and do the paperwork at the same time. It was all under a time limit and with an hour appt, we’d hardly get through the instructions. It all worked out well, though, and to avoid a misunderstanding like it in future, I should call my career counselor there before I cancel. Makes sense.

So that was this week, roughly. I successfully completed the government paperwork last night for SSA, ahead of time in case there was a problem with it uploading. There wasn’t, and I celebrated as I’ve spent several days on the thing. ANd today I decided I wouldn’t spend time on the computer, yet here I am typing away.

Well, that’s probably a good thing. I have a story idea for what if the devil came to your house, a la folktales, but you were having a seizure. Now that’s been done in Running from the Devil  by            and the Book of Lost Things by                  , memior, and mythic fiction, respectively, but I was trying to think of how to do it differently. I have a picture in my head of this kid trying to translate at the doctor’s, for her mother, for example bulging eyes for dilation. Something to play with, anyway.

Lately, I’ve been watching Holocaust movies from Netflix. Not all together, but while we were traveling I found Look to the Sky, and while I was looking up reviews for that, I found The Island on Bird Street, and then

Well, today, as I’ve been battling computers in one shape or form for two weeks, I curse the computer gods. Among other setbacks, I am now going to a nonprofit career fair, to inquire about jobs I might do that do not to my knowledge actually exist, with absolutely no resumes whatsover, unless I’d like to take earlier drafts with punch holes.

Somehow, I don’t think that will do.

I have to fill out a master mock application for tomorrow’s job class, which means either I stay home and fill it out, or fill it out at 8 PM tonight, when I’m legally brain dead, and can’t knock on the neighbor’s door for assistance with the thing. Writing legibly in it is going to be a major issue.

It would be better if all the good things like career fairs and mock interviews had shaped themselves out a bit, but this week is apparently the season for them.

I’ve spent such a time setting up transportation, I’m not not going, just because I have no resumes. At the very least, I can talk to the employers.

In other news, the other day from the rain there was a beautiful rainbow that stretched across our backyard. Today after class it actually hailed! I stuck my hand out the door so I could feel it.

Of course, in Palo Alto, no hail…bright blue skies.

If I’ve pissed off the computer gods, the weather gods have been quite good to me. Everytime I need to travel, it stops raining just long enough for me to get there. Knock on wood for that, anyway.

It’s hard to believe there will be a drought, with the drains spouting water here in the mornings. I can sit on the porch and watch them shoot up like malfunctioning sprinklers.

It’s time to go see the neighbors and go to the career fair at Stanfor.d I plan to have dinner there first.

More about all this later.