White Christmas!

I made it to work today but no thanks to my little bug which couldn't make it through the slurpy slush. Eugene next door helped me get the stuck little car to the side of the road. Then his friend Marvin gave me a ride to work. Marvin is a teacher's aide working with special needs kids in public schools. I couldn't get home after my work was done. None of the cabs were answering the phone, for real. I called my friend Mason to see if he could help me. He dropped everything and gave me a ride.

I've been very lucky.

Eyes are very itchy. I made a patient cry when she saw the bruises. I told her it was ok, I just had surgery. She cried and said it still made her sad.

Still Snowed In

I'm still snowed in here. I also had minor eye surgery yesterday to correct my overly droopy eyes. I was told not to strain my face. I've never heard of face straining but it doesn't sound good. Or does it? Does a smile or frown strain the face?

I've spent most of the day resting, setting up the new blog and icing my face which Eleni tells me looks like I was beaten. I was not! We couldn't get a cab to the surgery center due to the snow, so I called my new friend Mason to give us a ride.

I've been looking for poems again. I was looking for a youtube of Gwendolyn Brooks and found a 12 year old poet named Autumn Ashante' who knocked my socks off. I couldn't find a video that was of good enough quality so I'm sharing a reading by Elizabeth Alexander instead. Her claim to fame is that she has been selected to read a poem for the inauguration.

Xmas Eve Poetry-- Elizabeth Alexander

template tweaks

I've used a minibox 3 column template from James William at 2600.

I've created a header image using wordle and the draft/chapbook of poems I submitted to Centrum. My blogging seems to be weighted toward poetry. I'm not sure if the header is attractive or annoying! But it's a good symbol for how I remember my poem thoughts coming to me--words followed by rhythms, glued together with the emotion of whatever story was pressing at the time.

I've added a label cloud from phydeaux3. Changed center align to justify for now.

I've added a creative commons license, feeds for articles on Sherman Alexie and Walter Mosley, and a widget to let me share stuff from my google reader. I left behind my "fish tank" on the original triggXR but am looking for another pet.

hello world the new triggXR

This is a test post for a new blogger template I've been testing. I have been considering closing the cover on triggXR as I would a journal. When I used the paper journals they lasted about 3 months. I don't see any reason to start new blogs every 3 months but perhaps when I start new life episodes, such as in light of my recent graduation from doctoral studies.

I was devout about my journaling for many years until the dramatic and traumatic death of 3 close friends. I couldn't write without unbearable sadness so I put the journals away. In the meantime I went to graduate school where the internet and computer use exploded into my life. When I began to want to write in my journal again I was out of the habit of carrying the journal everywhere and had moved into my computer. I haven't been able to quite duplicate the free form journaling on my computer yet. The hardest thing to replace is the doodling that I did between ideas or while cogitating.

Anyway, I think I can work within this template with a few tweaks. It feels like a nice fresh pallette or new journal full of clean empty pages.