The Grass is Greener

Liz (The Cheshire Cat) of Visual Counterpoint paraphrased this maxim in connection with my previous dog-oriented entry. Here I'm invoking it again, but literally. Over at Miko's Corner Playground, Reid Park, Tucson, the grass really is greener on the other side of the fence.

Here's how Miko's Corner looked as of November 19th, shortly after the Parks & Rec folks fenced off the south half of the park and started flooding it. By November 25th, grass seed have been put down, and doves were trying to eat it all.

To keep the extra water seeping across the fence from making the open half too muddy, the groundskeepers put down dirt or sand near the fence. Inevitably, this got tracked into large areas of the enclosure, further hindering survival of the already-dying grass.

Close up, the remaining grass looks like wisps of hay. Still, the dogs don't seem to mind - except that I notice there's a lot more doggy digging going on now.

At the north end of the park, the grass is holding its ground, barely.

It's all worth it. See how much better the south end looks now? By late January the north end will look like that, too. That's the plan, anyway.

But it's not perfect. A low-lying section of ground to the southeast is collecting water instead of grass. I wonder whether they'll try again to grade or seed this before starting on the other half of the park. I suspect the decision will be that it's not worth the time and expense. Still, the dogs and their people will have a much nicer park by the time the subdividing fence is gone.

Karen

St. Nicholas in Song and Story

Way back in 2001, I wrote a short short story - I suppose you could call it flash fiction - about St. Nicholas. Then in 2004 I wrote a song about him, eventually dumping my rather derivative melody in favor of a hymn by Johann M. Haydn. I'm very proud of both of these, and haven't reposted either one since December 2005. In honor of the Feast of St. Nicholas, let's feature both efforts below, and then I'll come up with something new to say as well.

Meeting Nicholas Again for the First Time
Sung to the Johann M. Haydn melody for the hymn How Firm a Foundation.
MIDI borrowed from www.cyberhymnal.org

The Bishop of Myra has something to say
About celebrations of each Christmas Day:
"It's not about me,
But rather for He
Who preserves all our souls, and o'er Heaven holds sway.

"You know me as Santa, and sometimes St. Nick,
Father Christmas, Kris Kringle...my legends grow thick.
But in my mortal life,
I ne'er had a wife,
Nor reindeer--and those are not names I would pick.

"In Patara, in Asia in the third century*,
I was orphaned while young, and yet blessed, as you'll see.
They left me with wealth,
And my very good health,
And the chance to indulge my generosity.

"It was my great joy to look after the poor,
For Earth's treasures mean little; Heaven's treasures I store.
I gave wealth away,
And to this very day,
I've a penchant for gifts children still thank me for.

"When in Myra, Lycia, they could not decide
On a bishop, replacing the one who had died,
A dream said, 'Watch for
Morning's first through that door,
That worshiper will next in Myra abide.'

"As you may have guessed, I rose early that morn,
Ignorant of the station for which I was born.
'What's your name, lad?' they cried.
'Nicholas,' I replied.
Soon a bishop's tall miter my head would adorn.

"I've averted a famine, and calmed storms at sea,
Resurrections of children they credit to me,
I'm patron to poor,
Children, poets and more,
Professions and churches and lands like Sicily.

"At Nicea a council was held, and I went,
From all the known world, other clergy were sent.
I slapped one who denied
God in Three doth abide.
The creed called "Nicene" our group soon would invent.

"The things I did then, in my time on the Earth,
All came about because of our dear Lord's birth.
Once a baby, he grew,
And conquered death, too,
Reconciled us to God, and gave all our souls worth."

*This is an edit; I originally said fourth century, but it's problematic because his life straddles two centuries. He was born in the third century, and presumably orphaned before the fourth century began. But the period of his major activities and the beginnings of his fame were in the fourth century AD.

Snowflake
by Karen Funk Blocher

The bishop of Myra returned to his prayers with satisfaction, wonder, and guilt. Satisfaction, because the girl had awakened at the sound of the bag of gold hitting the dirt floor, and received it joyfully. The dowry meant that she would marry, and have a good life instead of one of degradation. Wonder, because only the Almighty knew the source of the gold. Guilt, because he had accidentally seen the girl partially unclothed. What if that was not what the Lord had wanted him to do?

Nicholas prayed for an hour or more, and went back to bed. Dawn would come soon, and with it morning vespers. In his dreams he was no longer a clergyman, but a toymaker. He had a wife, but no children except the world's children. He wore strange red and white garments to keep out the cold, for he lived in a place of snow and ice. He drove a chariot without wheels, pulled by strange deer never seen in Asia, and gave toys, not gold, to children who called him by dozens of names.

When he awoke, he wondered: was this a prophetic dream, a nightmare, or both? He got up, pulled on his cassock and slippers, and stepped outside for the short walk to the church. The dawn air was still and warm, and the stars were fading into the growing daylight. Nicholas heard a jingling bell that was not a church bell. A single snowflake fell from heaven into the bishop's hand.

More info: St. Nicholas: Discovering the Truth About Santa Claus

***

Heh. I still like those.

The history of Nicholas' transformation of a fourth century bishop from Asia Minor into the jolly North Pole toymaker is a long and fascinating one. I developed more than a passing interest in it circa 1988, when A&E ran a 1982 British show called The Curious Case of Santa Claus. In it, Jon Pertwee, who previously played the Third Doctor for five years on Doctor Who, played a psychiatrist, Dr. Merryweather, whose emergency patient on Christmas Eve is a man in a Santa Claus outfit, played by James Coco. Over the next 52 minutes the man, who claims to be the real Santa Claus, explains the nature of his identity crisis by recounting his long history, from ancient Myra through the early celebrations of his sainthood, and on through the conflation of his own legend with that of other legendary gift-givers. Poet Clement Moore, cartoonist Thomas Nast and Coca-Cola ad illustrator Haddon Sunblom between them recast him as the chubby, bearded man with the non-ecclesiastic red suit, reindeer and sleigh. Merryweather, of course, doesn't believe his patient is Santa, but apparently the long talk is all the saint needs to feel better, as he dashes off to make his deliveries. It was a touching and memorable story. I always wanted to see it again, and even interviewed Pertwee briefly about it in 1990, as part of a longer interview that eventually appeared in Starlog. John finally tracked it down for me on VHS last year. Inevitably, it wasn't quite as good as I remembered it being. A&E's own Biography series did a better job on the history, albeit without the pathos of Coco's performance.

I love most of the modern depictions of Santa about as well as any Christmas-loving child of my generation, but I think it's also a good idea to remember that the character stands for more than (as is sometimes claimed) holiday commercialism. Some modern songs, films and tv shows recognize this, while others do not. What the bishop of Myra and the magical Macy's employee of (the original) book and film Miracle on 34th Street have in common is a combination of faith, compassion and generosity we would do well to emulate. The song Here Comes Santa Claus (the Gene Autry version) gets this right. The cynical, postmodern Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer manifestly does not. (For the record, I also dislike I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus, in which we're given to understand that the child narrator find his mother's infidelity with Santa amusing.) Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is problematic; Father Joel Ireland at St. Michael's grumbles every year that Santa allows the other reindeer to pick on Rudolph unchecked until the opportunity arises to exploit him. One very recent addition to Santa lore is the Autobiography of Santa Claus series of books by Jeff Guinn. Guinn does a great job of fitting the long, complex history of the saint-turned-toymaker into one consistent story, told from Nicholas/Santa's point of view. Guinn gets a little silly from time to time, enlisting such people as Teddy Roosevelt, Attilla the Hun and Leonardo Da Vinci as his friends and immortal helpers, but the essence of the story and the central figure's altruism remains intact.

Happy St. Nicholas Day!

Karen

Weekend Assignment #245: Holiday Traditions

I'm still trying to wrap my head around the idea that despite everything, Christmas is coming, along with Hanukkah, Solstice etc. Help me jumpstart the spirit of the season by responding to this week's Weekend Assignment:

Weekend Assignment #245: Some holiday traditions continue from generation to generation, some fall by the wayside, and some new ones arise as we strike out on our own, form new families and adapt to changes in culture and technology. How traditional are your holiday traditions, compared to decades past?

Extra Credit: What is your most unusual holiday tradition?

The picture at right (which is old and crummy - I should rephotograph the thing) is of a CD John made from a long out of print Christmas record, known in the family as "the green record." The original was on green vinyl, one of the few colored vinyl records I saw until the seventies. If that didn't make it magical enough, We Wish You A Merry Christmas by the Robert Rheims Choraliers had more to offer. It was an excellent collection of traditional arrangements of pretty much every traditional Christmas carol, accompanied by organ and chimes. There were only two verses each on most of them, but that helped to cram more songs on the circa 1960 LP. To me, it's hard to feel that it's really Christmas without hearing these arrangements of these songs. I've been listening to them at Christmas all my life. And by the way, John feels much the same about Christmas songs by the Chipmunks - but only the Ross Bagdasarian originals, not the recent stuff.

A mix of old and new traditions

I don't suppose it's that unusual to have a favorite recording of Christmas music, although I grant you, my choice of same is a little obscure. Other customs around here are a mixture of old and new, sometimes in the very same tradition! Take, for example, our Christmas tree. As I was growing up, the Funk family always, always had a real tree. Anything else was anathema to me. But John likes artificial ones, and I have to admit that our vintage aluminum tree is fun and stylish. It's not historically my tradition, but it is sort of John's, and the tree itself has an unknown history reaching back decades. Similarly, the ornaments on it are a an assortment of genuine vintage ones and modern reproductions of vintage ones, and a few in-the-old-style shapes that may not have vintage counterparts. I don't think a single one of our aluminum tree-friendly ornaments was on one of the old Funk trees, but most of the designs were.

But I still buy a real tree most years. A small one. 'Cause it's another tradition that's hard to give up.

The most worn-out, most decorated stocking in town

Our most unusual tradition is one I tried to describe to John Scalzi back in 2004, in the aftermath of some long ago Weekend Assignment. Very early in our marriage, perhaps as early as Christmas 1979, John and I bought plain red Christmas stockings, and used gold glitter and stick on lettering to label them with each other's names and initials. Every year, we're supposed to add some little decoration or bauble, with the result you see above. Then of course we fill them, with toys and candy and writing implements and batteries and gadgets and a tangerine in the toe. It's great, but the problem is, the stockings keep coming apart due to age and the cumulative weight of the baubles and stuffers. It used to be that just the strap to hang them from the fireplace would come off, but in recent years the whole stockings have started coming apart at the seams. Maybe this year I'll take them to Mendel's Wife the Tailor to be resewn.

Your turn! Tell us about your holiday traditions, preferably for one of the December holidays. Write about this in your blog along with a link back here, and leave a link to your entry in the comments below. I'll be back in a week with a roundup of your responses. Here are the ones from last week:

For Weekend Assignment #244: Black Friday, I asked about your Black Friday shopping habits, and any 2008 variations thereon. It's nice to know not everyone was in shop 'til you drop mode:


Martha said...

I started to post early today to complain about my daughter making her reservations to return to college on Black Friday. I knew she had to get back, but I dreaded the drive to get her to the station, I usually vow to never leave the house on Black Friday, the whole weekend for that matter. It's not the crowds in the stores (well, it is, but it's the idiots on the road that really seal the deal).

[So begins Martha's rather harrowing post....]

Julie said...

Even if we're home, I don't go out. I hate dealing with the crowds, and past experience shows the odds of actually acquiring the bargain I want in the store are almost exactly nil. Why bother, especially when I know I can find bargains over the next four weeks?

Carly said...

Ahhhh... Black Friday! That unofficial, in fact no where near a real holiday, holiday, that we look forward to every year! Alan and I have been getting up early to go out on Black Friday and watch people for years, in fact we weren't even a couple the first time we decided to do it. We were just two good friends who enjoyed watching people go crazy at the malls. We have seen a lot of strange things over the years, and even participated a little ourselves, but mostly we watch others in their quests for the perfect bargain gifts.

Mike said...

Anyway, no, I don't go shopping on Black Friday. I don't like shopping on a normal day; there is no way I'm going when the stores are bursting with people. I don't like crowds, have I mentioned that before?

Florinda said...

For years, I have said that the only store I want to go to on the day after Thanksgiving is the grocery store - which, for the record, I will avoid like the plague on the day before Thanksgiving. Sometimes I do end up at a big-box or discount store on Black Friday - I'll usually still need to make my normal weekly Target run - but I keep my distance from shopping malls. Ever since the year I went to Lenscrafters to pick up a pair of glasses without even thinking about what day it was - and it took me over half an hour to get out of the parking lot - I stay away from malls as much as possible for the entire weekend after Thanksgiving.

That's it for now! Busy as I'm sure you are, I hope you'll take the time to participate this week. Write about up the assignment in your blog or journal, and include a link back here. Then leave a link to your entry in the comments below. Please don't forget your links! I'll be back in a week to highlight the results.

A reminder: I'm still running low on ideas here, so I need your input. What would you like to see as a Weekend Assignment topic? Email me your suggestions (mavarin at aol.com). If I use your topic you'll get full credit and my undying thanks.

Karen

The Bone Supremacy

For Feline and Furball Friday:

Cayenne


and Pepper

star in...The Bone Supremacy!

The dogs ponder their next moves.

Be sure to check (sometimes)photoblog each week for the cutest cats, dogs, and occasionally even birds!

Karen

A Few Words About Depression

I had an email today from a Tucson Citizen reporter - not the one who interviewed me for an article on unemployment in Tucson, a different one. Having been interviewed on my jobless state, was I now willing to be interviewed about seeking therapy for unemployment-related depression? Ummm....

There are two problems with my agreeing to the request. The first, I'm sure you understand, is that the role of Tucson's Famously Depressed Deadbeat, er, Unemployed Person isn't exactly a flattering one. Who knows how being Famously Unemployed in the local paper, picture and all, coincidentally on the same day as my second job interview in three months, may have affected my prospects? Did someone in HR give me a thumbs down for grandstanding? Probably not, but I'll never know. The second problem is, I'm not someone who has sought therapy for depression. Well, maybe a little. Back when my parents were first divorced in 1976, I met with a completely useless, Rogerian student therapist once or twice at Syracuse University, and visited Father Ed at St. Patrick's Church for tea and sympathy. But recently? I think I entertained the notion for two minutes once as an option for the future, when I happened to be in the same building as my mom's old therapist. But other than that, no.

But being obsessively confessional and overly fond of pontificating (not to mention humorously self-deprecating!), I answered the email anyway, with written answers to the reporter's questions. I said that my depression is very minor, more situational than clinical, and that I couldn't afford therapy even were I so inclined.

The reason I'm mentioning all this here, aside from the aforementioned confessional tendencies, is that the reporter's other questions got me thinking about coping mechanisms and the extent to which they help me. That subject seems sufficiently interesting, and possibly helpful, to sustain a blog entry, so here we are.

Things that seem to help:

1. Distraction. In a way, this sounds like a bad idea. We're supposed to confront our problems head on, not turn our backs and pretend they don't exist. That's denial, not coping. Yes, but. One thing I've noticed many times over the years is that it's even more harmful to spend all your time thinking about how miserable you are. Of course you're going to think about that sometimes, if you're acutely or chronically depressed. How can you not? But don't indulge it. If you're having a bad day, then it can be very therapeutic to compile a fixed assets depreciation entry, read a book, prepare for a class, watch a favorite tv show, listen to the Beatles, or do almost anything else that takes your mind away from feelings of helplessness or hopelessness or worthlessness. Six years later, I'm almost grateful that the University of Phoenix made no provision for missing class due to bereavement, and that I consequently had to make a PowerPoint presentation nine hours after my mother died. I probably didn't do a great job of revising my final paper for that class; my concentration wasn't that good. But having something annoyingly irrelevant to do that night probably helped me get through that day.

2. Change the Script. Have you ever seen the film Agnes of God? Meg Tilly plays an innocent, deeply disturbed young nun who gets pregnant and dumps her baby, and yet is a holy, naive, virginal figure who fasts and abases herself and (if I recall correctly) even gets stigmata. Jane Fonda plays the cynical, chain-smoking, ex-Catholic therapist who tries to get to the bottom of what happened and grows to care deeply about her patient. In one key scene, Fonda's Dr. Livingston tries to teach Sister Agnes to fight back against the belief in her own worthlessness that her mother instilled in her. Playing the role of Agnes's mother, Livingston calls her "ugly" and "stupid" and "a mistake," and encourages her to refute these descriptions. (Against the "mistake" charge, Sister Agnes cries out, "I'm not a mistake! God doesn't make mistakes!") I think of this scene often when talking to a depressed friend, or when my own Inner Weasel is trying to tell me nasty things about myself. Nobody is perfect, but telling yourself that you're stupid or ugly, useless or wicked or worthless is not the way to make yourself a better or happier person. Still, we often do what psychologists sometimes call playing tapes, letting negative thoughts replay themselves endlessly in our heads, tearing ourselves down even further. It's important to recognize this behavior and correct it, refuting exaggeratedly negative descriptions of ourselves and replacing thoughts of "I can't" with the knowledge that "I can." Which leads us to the next coping mechanism:

3. Move forward. The essence of depression is a feeling that things won't get better, that you're stuck in the morass of a bad situation and can't get out, and perhaps don't even deserve to get out. If you're feeling hopeless and helpless, a good way to pull free of the mire is to prove to yourself that there are things you can do after all. Maybe I can't magically order up a new job right now, but I can apply for the ones for which I'm qualified and hope. And more important, I can work to make myself more employable. That's what the courses for professional certification that I wrote about last night represent to me: a way forward, to exert some control over my situation and improve my chances of a better outcome in the long run. It should also make me feel better about myself in the meantime, knowing I'm not just shlumphing around waited to be rescued from my fate.

That all seems to help me, but it's not a panacea. Sometimes I'm still fairly miserable, and it's all too easy to reach for food, a coping mechanism that's a short-term mood-lifter but detrimental in the long run. Nor am I suggesting that someone who suffers from chronic or severe clinical depression can solve everything with Sgt. Pepper and being productive. I am, after all, only mildly depressed, and it's not really a chronic condition for me. There are certainly people for whom psychotherapy, with or without appropriate medication or supplements (look into TMG!), is a necessary part of the solution. But these three strategies are worth a try, I think, for just about anyone who suffers from depression.

Do I hope that the Tucson Citizen writer will use me in the article? Not really. I'd just as soon not be Tucson's Designated Unemployed Person. But if I am mentioned, I hope I'm the minor figure in the last paragraph, the wise soul who gets the last word.

Karen

Update: John expressed a preference that I not be in a newspaper article on depression, so I just begged off in an email. Ah, well!

Disappointment, Depression, Recession and a Plan

If you've read my Twitter feed from earlier today, you know the gist of my news. There is, of course, more to be said. The Twitter version goes like this:

• I didn't get the job. Looking into internal auditing certification vs. CPA review courses - costs, timing and employment prospects.
• Being nearly four years out from last formal accounting class, I'm rusty on academic side of accounting, albeit a whiz at Excel & such.
• Local job market is all medical billing (they want experience in medical field), CPAs and internal auditors. Latter make >2x my recent wage.
• Auditing was fascinating to me in school, although some aspects are a little opaque to me without further study. That's where I'm leaning.
• Getting $240 a week unemployment, debts are rising, already $20K in the hole on student loans, no Xmas money; yeah, let's invest in a class!
• One thing I can't claim is that I'm no time to study! End of rant. Thanks for reading.
• Going to curl up with Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell until sleep seems possible. Haven't slept much the last few days.

Here's what happened. Over the weekend I got a form letter from the HR department of the organization (being deliberately vague here) to which I had applied. Uh-oh. I don't know about your experience, but here at Casa Blocher, job news by snail mail is seldom positive. The letter said that my resume would be kept on file for six months, and they'd contact me if HR decided an interview was warranted. Double uh-oh. I'd already interviewed with the accounting department. Maybe it was just boilerplate text, but it certainly didn't look promising.

So I called my recruiter this morning, right after the Obama press conference in which my wonderful governor was named the next Secretary of Homeland Security, leaving Arizona even more firmly in the hands of Republicans. Okay, slight digression there, but the point is that after being up from 12:45 am on, I waited past 9 AM for the opportunity to find out what was going on. I asked for A. and was promptly put through to K. instead. K. had not known about the letter I got, and did not know yet of a determination on whether I had the job. But he told there were interdepartmental and regulatory issues snagging things up, with legal department vetting of who could be hired by what means and when. K. and I discussed all that, and we were on the verge of hanging up when A. told K. that as of Friday, I wasn't getting the job. Way to let me know, folks. Gloom, despair and agony on me.

K. and I talked about the lack of other openings in my field in the Tucson job market right now, something I already know all too well. We agreed that most of what is turning up pertains to medical billing, for which the hospitals and medical consortia all want people with experience in, wait for it, medical billing.

From there we got involved in a discussion of jobs I'm not qualified for now, but could be. K. mentioned in passing that someone was looking for a supervising internal auditor, but I have neither the training nor the direct experience for that. Even my "book larnin'" in the accounting field itself is a mite rusty, since my last class at the University of Arizona (which wasn't an accounting course anyway) started four years ago this month. But I could still go after my CPA ("they're gearing up to hire lots of CPAs soon", K. said, or certification as an auditor. "If you were an internal auditor I could place you tomorrow," K. said. "They're in short supply, and they're making $80,000 now."

So how did I get here, an accountant without letters after my name, highly employable in good times but not employable enough in a recession? Back when I graduated in April 2005 (after a delay due to the limited number of graduation ceremonies a year), I was only a month out from getting a good accounting job at First Magnus, after which I had never the drive nor, it seemed then, the incentive to pursue CPA certification. Conventional wisdom was that very few people pass the CPA exam on the first try without first spending thousands of dollars on an exam prep review course. Being already employed on the basis of my very expensive, shiny new accounting degree, I passed. Now, after four years of making journal entries and calculating depreciation and preparing reports, I'm experienced in lots of stuff an accountant is needed to do, but weak in the numerous fiddly bits of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. Most of that stuff just doesn't come up when you're working on payroll and fixed assets month after month, or applying arbitrary costing formulae to motor homes and travel trailers. So here I am, almost 52 years old, without the edge I could get by spending still more money we don't have for the opportunity to study the fine points of GAAP and auditing, which in theory would double my best income to date. Maybe.

After the phone call I looked into the CPA review pricing and Internal Auditor certification. Ever since school ended I've been getting email about twice a month from CPAExcel, which sells a variety of CPA review courses, computer-based instruction and testing with and without video, books, or personal instruction. The subject line of my current email says, "84% Pass Rate and Best Offer of the Year!" Yes, if I order by December 16th, I could get all four parts of the Video Gold Medal Course for $1,690, all four parts of the regular Gold Medal Course for $1,195, all four parts of the Classic Self-Study Course for $930, or all four parts of the regular Self-Study Course for $795. For comparison: as of four years ago, the competing review course instructors at the University of Phoenix strongly recommended as essential to pass the four part CPA exam was running about $3,500. A further bit of comparison: my current income from unemployment is $240 a week, which basically covers groceries and gas with very little left over to pay toward my $300+ monthly student loan principal and interest. I'd probably have to run up a credit card (currently set aside for possible medical expenses) to pay for at least the $930 version of the CPA course, and preferably the $1,195 version.

The "CIA Learning System" course to prepare for the four-part Certified Internal Auditor exam is offered by the Institute of Internal Auditors, the professional organization for auditors. The optional in-person component is only offered in certain states, and AZ isn't one of them, but that's okay. The Self-Directed Training version is about the same price as the low-end CPA prep. Pros: if K. is right, internal auditors might be more in demand than CPAs, the pay is excellent, and aside from business law, auditing was the area of accounting that most interested me in school. Cons: it's a specialized field that requires three months of study for over 8 hours a week, preparation for it probably wouldn't help me much in the job market between now and March, and there's no guarantee that people looking to hire an internal auditor would want a 52-year-old non-CPA accountant with a CIA but no direct auditing experience.

I don't know what I'm going to do, but at this point I suspect I need to study for the CPA exam, the CIA exam or both, which means spending money we don't have. John is worried about the expense, but not dead set against it. It's remarkably like the McCain vs. Obama approach to the economy as a whole: do you tighten your belt and cut spending hoping that will be enough for the problem will magically fix itself, or go into further debt investing in a better future? Like the President Elect, I think I have to do the latter. I'm going to talk to at least one other recruiter, and maybe sound out a former instructor of mine, about how good the prospects are if I get certification, and whether a review course qualifies for a student loan (I suspect not). Right now I've got time to study, if I organize myself properly, and positive motion toward becoming a CPA or CIA will impress potential employers more than sitting around blogging in between trips to the dog park.

From Trouble Dogs

Just to make the day a little more miserable, Cayenne managed to get hold of another one of my vintage Wishnik trolls and tear the hair out of it. I thought I'd gotten them all safely out of reach, but she managed to grab it anyway. I'm just lucky she didn't find Twist 'N' Turn Barbie or Talking Stacy an equally tempting toy. I got John to donate one of "his" shelves on the vintage wall unit so that I could move the remaining trolls and Little Kiddles and Breyer horses onto a higher shelf, and I crowded the mod era Barbie and friends onto another higher shelf with their early 1960s counterparts. Darn dog! Between that minor annoyance and my more significant bad news, John is as bummed out as I am right now.

Pepper is in a state of alert readiness.

But on the good side, my delayed order from Amazon, A Writer's Tale by Russell T. Davies and Benjamin Cook, was by the door as we left for the dog park this afternoon. I now have two thick books with which to distract myself in between job hunting, blogging, dog parking and sleeping. I've had two naps, and hope to get more sleep between now and noon. Sleeping at night! What a concept! And there's always work on the novels to be done. As a friend points out, I'll feel better about myself if I can reassert the discipline that helped me write 1,200 pages in about two years, back before I was sidetracked by returning to school for my accounting degree. There's no reason that during this down time I can't work on both the fiction writing and further accounting study.

Karen

EMPS #14: Autumn Sunsets at the Dog Park

From Tucson Sunsets

For this week's Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot, Carly wants to see an autumn sunset. I'll try to get you a fresh one Monday evening, but for tonight let's pull out a few existing photos from October and November of this year. These were all taken at or near Miko's Corner Playground, the dog park inside Reid Park in midtown Tucson, AZ. It presents a very different vista and different challenges from my other favorite location for sunsets, the parking lot of the Safeway at Golf Links and Wilmot. The best Tucson sunset vistas of all are probably up Mount Lemmon or along Gates Pass, but they are neither close nor convenient, and timing my arrival can be a problem. Besides, the dogs count on visiting Miko's Corner every late afternoon!

In this picture, taken October 20th, the sun had just set and the sky was still mostly blue. I was more interested on the line of power poles between the trees than in dramatic sunset color.

This shot is from November 11th. It's very similar to the one at the top of this entry, which was taken the next day. Both are reruns for this blog, but since they're my favorite two recent sunset shots I'm including them here anyway. I've done nothing to the one from the 11th except resize and sharpen. For the one with the dogs I lightened the picture a bit, and cloned out some but not all of the "orbs" that plague many of my low-light images on this camera. I probably should not use flash outdoors, but sometimes I need to do so for richer color, or to light something in the foreground.

This one I took on November 12th on 22nd St. westbound, on the way to the dog park. As the sun sets earlier and earlier, I sometimes start out a little later than I should, and darkness cuts short our visit to Miko's Corner Playground.

This shot from November 12th was taken a few seconds before the one with the dogs in it at the top of this entry. A third shot in the series from that day was my "final evidence that Cayenne is an alien" picture in which Cayenne has laser beam eyes. I love the dog shots, but this other one ain't bad. I did lighten it up a bit and boost the saturation.

Be sure to check Ellipsis every Monday for the week's topic, and for links to the previous week's participants.

Karen

Update: Monday's sunset was kind of a dud - the colors weren't dramatic at all - but the banding of blues/purples and yellows/oranges was interesting, especially when I boosted the saturation in the resulting photos: