• Go check out Kathleen Fitzpatrick’s “Introducing MediaCommons,” which is “a wide-ranging network with a relatively static point of entry that brings…[participants] into the MediaCommons community and makes apparent the wealth of different resources” available.
• I spent last week in Cape San Blas, Florida on the Gulf of Mexico with my sister’s family. It was lovely. The water was very warm, in part because the sun was so intense, which made sunbathing problematic. In fact, I got sunburned on Tuesday, and so I spent the rest of the week doing my best imitation of a lobster in the shade.
• While in Florida, I made what I think was my best batch of shrimp gumbo ever. If you want good gumbo, you need to simmer the empty shrimp shells in about 3 cups of water, then strain them out and add the stock to your gumbo. Hmm, perhaps I should post the entire recipe.
• I don’t have kids, but after spending a week around my nieces and nephew, I suspect that I would have a lot more insight into my own upbringing if I did.
• I finally got some decent hair care products, which smell great and make my hair and scalp feel good. I haven’t had a haircut in about two months, and I’m currently trying to figure out whether to continue to let it grow or to get it cut short again.
• Post-divorce, I have no television, which is fine by me. Nor do I have Internet access, which is a decision I made for the summer in order to encourage me to get out and meet people. I’m spending a lot more time reading than usual, too. However, now it looks like it might be impossible for me to get any high-speed Internet access. Comcast says they don’t provide service to my building, and now BellSouth is saying they can’t get DSL into my building, either. This doesn’t make sense to me, but I guess I can live with it if it means I’ll be reading more and mindlessly surfing less. Plus that frees up about $50 a month for me to spend on other things.
• I recently attended the opening of an exhibition featuring the work of four artists-in-residence at Hub-Bub, a Sparkle City arts center. I was particularly taken with the work of painter Brian Hitselberger (blog) and poet Emily Louise Smith (blog), so I made a point of chatting with each of them a bit. During the year, Hub Bub says they will have events going on up to four nights out of the week: films, music, lectures. If so, I plan to spend a lot of time there. I like being around interesting, creative people.
• Last semester, I was pretty good about getting to the gym regularly, mostly because I had a very good workout partner. Since then, however, the best I have done is pay a membership fee at the gym that is, quite literally, a two-minute walk from my apartment. I have not, alas, actually made it inside to use any of their weight machines or cardio equipment. Any suggestions for helping me break this inertia? And does anyone have any advice about buying a bike for riding some of the trails around Sparkle City?

It’s both/and! I don’t know what your high school experience was like, dear reader, but mine felt a lot like this. Of course, I went to three different high schools in three different countries, but everywhere I landed I had the grades, Atari, and D&D paraphernalia to qualify me for one camp and the slouchy army jacket, bad attitude, and record collection to qualify me for the other. Somehow I still managed to be elected prom king. (I know. I know.) I guess a bleached hair androgyne with unusual fashion sense–I was voted “most unusual dresser.” Seriously.–was more appealing to my classmates than the two jocks who were also nominated.

And I’m still trying to learn that your experience of the world in which you live and the nature of that world can be two very different things.