In the Interest of Full Disclosure

. . . there's still no baby. So, I've been busying myself with preparing for the next quarter and planting trees, shrubs, and rhododendrons. I'll tell you when he's here, believe me. :D

We're also hosting my mother-in-law, so I've been a little preoccupied.

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Last season of BSG on April 4th. What the frak is up with that picture?

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I'll be reading with the poet Lorna Crozier on April 5th at 7:30 in the Lucia Douglas Gallery, 1415 13th St., Bellingham, WA, as part of the Whatcom Poetry Series, so if you're local and you're reading this, come on down.

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This weather sucks. Two minutes ago, it was sunny. Now it's snowing. C'mon now.

Weird toys

Joseph Legaspi forwarded this bizarre link:

Most Baffling Toys from Around the World

My soon-to-be-born son will not have any of these things.

The toys I had when I was a kid--clicky


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Chilling out in my office . . . *whistles*

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Mother-in-law is coming tomorrow. I have to clean the house. I may skip heading into town tomorrow to scrub scrub scrub.

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A couple of poems got accepted today. Yay!

Hmmmm

The Sylvia Plath Effect

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Students are turning in finals. Yay me! I'm glad this quarter's over, and I'm looking forward to the next one. I'll be teaching a grad course on the prose poem. Right in my wheel-house.

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Watched Elizabeth: The Golden Age last night. Not as good as the first one, of course. At times I felt like I was getting hit over the head with the romantic intrigues. Still, Cate Blanchett looked fabulous in plate mail.

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Scary Pictures

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The sun! The sun!

Nothing Yet

For those of you who are wondering whether Mere's given birth, I say to you, "Not yet."

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We're bustling around trying to get our winter quarter wrapped up. I've been inputting grades from this past quarter, and I've also been preparing the house and the yard a little bit. The house definitely needs some "Spring Cleaning" before the newest member of the house settles in.

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Saturday, planted three rhododendrons, two azaleas, and eighteen Douglas Fir saplings. There's been much rain up here lately, which is a good thing.

Anyway, my mother-in-law is arriving on Thursday, and I think I might make her garden a little while we wait for the wee-one.

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I've moved to the guest bedroom because Meredith is sleeping with Chet (her gigantic man-sized pillow). There's no room for me and all that fluffiness.

Pug Vader Revisited

pug-vader.jpg
Originally uploaded by odelapaz.

Joannie tagged me.

She explains that it's from an old Hemingway bet. Leave it to Papa.


From her blog:

Here are the rules:
1. Write your own six word memoir
2. Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you’d like
3. Link to the person that tagged you in your post and to this original post if possible so we can track it as it travels across the blogosphere
4. Tag five more blogs with links
5. And don’t forget to leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play!

My six-word autobiography:

I was wicked, but got better.

Now I tag Sandra, Cornshake, Paul, Helene, and H.A..

House A-Kilter

Chaos in the homestead. Currently, our painter friend is removing the popcorn from our ceilings and repainting our dining and living room. That means all the furniture from said rooms is in our den.

I'm generally a grumpy guy when it comes to space and space issues. I like my stuff where my stuff is supposed to be. Now, I can barely squeeze past the sofa that's blocking the door to the carport.

This too shall pass, though. The painter's going to be finishing up today.


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By the way, I've gotten really good at installing drywall. Poets, if you need me to surround you in sheet rock, I'm your guy.

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Poetry? What's that? I've gotten so good at compartmentalizing my worlds, but I've left little room/time for it. Such a shame. Part of the issue is that I've been putting out small fires in my creative writing program. I suppose that's one of the occupational hazards. And with the baby coming . . . ruh roh.

A grad student passed by my office and gave me writing advice, which is funny, but informs me about my current state. He has an infant daughter and suggested waking up really early to get some writing done. Of course, that doesn't leave much room for sleep, but from what I've been told, I won't be getting much sleep anyway.

Poet parents, though, are a wonderful bunch. I've been getting all kinds of advice from both colleagues and friends from the poetry world.

I do know this much . . . something will have to get squeezed out and it can't be poetry for much longer. I've been taking inventory of my day and it's kind of frightening how much time I waste. I'm a highly functional human being in the morning. Much of my blog is composed then. I also frequent the gym either at mid morning or a little after noon on days that I'm not teaching. My teaching block's roughly five hours. But it's that time around 6PMish that I piss away. My brain's wiped from grading, teaching, etc.. My guess is that I'll need to retrain myself . . . break free of my current schedule.

Anyway, things are going to change. They have to.

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Been listening to Post Rock stuff lately. I didn't really know that the music had a category, but . . . there you go.