Stream of Conscience

One of the tidbits the blogging gurus give is to resurface old posts.  Well, I don’t have any old posts here, but I do them at the very first Stream of Conscience.  So I took a look at my first month’s posts (October 2006), and present (slightly editted) pieces from one of them.

One of the items I found at the grocery store was a “log” of mozzarella cheese (not the part-skim American stuff, the creamy mozzarella di bufala of Italy) wrapped in prosciutto. It didn’t have a price on it, but decided I’d take a chance and buy it anyway.  It was only $5.00, not a bad price for a little piece of heaven.

I thought back to my Navy tour of duty in Naples, Italy; and how a loaf of crusty bread, a “ball” of mozzarella di bufala, and a bottle of white wine made for an easy & tasty (if not well-balanced) evening meal. Good times.

Wow!  A Sea Story before I even had the category!  Here’s another one, also from Naples days:

One Christmas, four of us (two friends and a helicopter pilot from one of the ships in port) went searching for something to eat and a good time. The plan was to stop at a road-side rosticceria where-ever the afternoon took us. We even had the foresight to bring along a cork screw for the wine. Turns out we didn’t need it. All the wine bottles had screw tops.

Years later, I told this story to my friend Dave (not the same Dave from yesterday).  He owns part of a winery and has learned quite a bit about the business. (I also think he drinks most of the profits, but that’s another story. )   He told me the wine industry was finding that screw caps are just as effective as corks.  Indeed, tonight’s wine, 4 Emus shiraz, has a screw top. And it’s pretty darned good.

I just hope I can keep enough around for tomorrow when I get to play my Supernatural drinking game. (Gosh, I love that show!)

That last paragraph tickles me.  I still love Supernatural, but  I don’t think I’m as invested in it as I was back at the beginning of season 2.  Oh hell, who am I kidding?

Both my mother and father are on my list of heroes to write about this month.  They aren’t on the list because they were the best parents in the world, because they weren’t.  But they were two of the best people.

Ask anyone from the small town where I grew up.  (Just so you know I’m not being biased.)

My mother predeceased my father by a few years.  When we were planning her funeral, my father was so devastated (as was I), he was reluctant to have a visitation.  But the funeral director simply said, “Marge meant a lot to a lot of people.  This would give them a chance to say goodbye to her.”

When my dad passed away a few years later, I was hoping our church’s premiere tenor would sing at his funeral.  He and my dad had sung in the choir for many years, as had his son (and my classmate) Dave and I all throughout our high school years.  But Dave told me his father, who usually had no trouble, wouldn’t have been able to sing for Dad.  He was too close.

At the reception after the funeral, a woman came up to me and said, “Your parents were the best.  Your mother, too.”  The fact that she recognized how special they were, and mentioned my mother after the years had passed, validated my feelings.

Interestingly, I can’t remember the exact date either of them died.   Nor do I have any desire to look it up.  I prefer to celebrate the good times, their birthdays and wedding anniversary.

Yes, I did it again.  I forgot to post yesterday.  But unlike in other months, I’m not going to bail on NaBloPoMo.  (Well, I’m going to try not to bail.)

In my defense, I was here, on the blog.  But instead of posting, I was mucking around with the theme, trying to do something different with the sidebar.  Guess what.  It didn’t work.

I think I’ll just have to try making my theme from scratch.  I’ve done it before, with a theme tutorial by Urban Giraffe, although it had a couple glitches (my design, not Urban Giraffe’s, heh).  But now that I kind of know what I want, I think I’ll return to source and have a go at it again.  (And yes, I supported the guy by buying his book.)  The tutorial was written before the advent of widgets, but since it’s going to be my blog theme, I should know what I want to put in the sidebar, right?

Oh, that reminds me.  I need to add a few links in the sidebar, the Awesome Stuff.

With the unveiling of the Supernatural season 4 DVD cover, I suppose now would be as good a time as any to discuss my only #1 fictional hero, Dean Winchester.  Normally I’d say Dean’s brother Sam Winchester  is my favorite, but Sam allowed himself to be conned for two freakin’ years and the dope brought about the apocalypse.  What an idiot!

There’s much that has been written about Dean Winchester already.  I chalk that up to the character being played by Jensen Ackles.  The actor has many rabid enthusiastic fans, mainly because he’s ridiculously handsome.  Plus, it doesn’t hurt that Jensen is a terrific actor.  I won’t go so far as to say he never misses, but he is probably the most underrated actor in Hollywood right now.  (Personally, I think one day he will be as big as George Clooney.  Gosh, I hope I didn’t just jinx Jensen’s success.)

Dean Winchester is one of those guys you love to hate and hate to love.  He’s tough as nails, hard to get to know in any but the most superficial ways (which for women usually means taking off their clothes).  Yet he’s deeply passionate about his family, and saving people from things that go bump in the night.   But underneath his bravado and considerable swagger, the guy is massively damaged.   Even though he was the “good Marine” who (almost) always followed his dad’s orders, he never received his father’s gratitude, until the very end.  But even now, every once in awhile John Winchester reaches out from the grave to screw with his elder son’s head.  It adds wonderful complexity to the character.

Truthfully, in the beginning I think Dean Winchester was meant to be the hero’s “sidekick,” like Han Solo to Luke Skywalker.  (In fact, series creator Eric Kripke has used the Star Wars analogy to his show many times.)  But Jensen Ackles has brought so much depth and humor and passion to the role, Dean Winchester has become one of the most fascinating characters on television.

And if you’re not watching Supernatural, get off your ass and start!

Last night I finally did something I’d been planning to do for a year and a half.  And in the middle of a severe thunderstorm, no less.  I went to a chorus rehearsal.

It’s been quite a saga.  I was all set to go at the beginning of 2008 when I broke my foot.  By the time it had healed, I’d forgotten about it.  Then last summer I tried again.  But I got lost trying to find the rehearsal site.  Over the course of the past year, I’ve managed to come up with a ton of excuses; because getting out and meeting new people is hard.

It was a good time to join.  The chorus, a Sweet Adeline’s chorus, had finished its competition (they came in second) and was starting new material.  And while I thought about using the weather as an excuse, but to paraphrase Nike, I just didn’t.

It wasn’t as joyous as I’d hoped.  In my “try out” the director told me I should sing bass (2nd alto).  For someone who’s always sung 2nd soprano (and 2nd soprano is the “lead” in Barbershop/Sweet Adelines), I was disappointed.   But her reasoning wasn’t so much that my voice is low, as I have a wide range and could actually hit notes that some of the basses can’t.

I did try the bass, but it doesn’t feel comfortable for most songs.  The two gals I stood next to told me I had a great voice and seemed to be doing very well.  But when I mentioned I wasn’t comfortable and might change, they told me (quite enthusiastically) that bass is the best part.  They said a lot of singers start out as leads, but eventually move to the bass section.

The good news is people move around all the time.  And I did better than I expected.  (And I got a few complements, which is always nice.)  For now, I’ll stay with the bass.  It’s probably a good place for me since it’s been over 20 years since I’ve sung “formally.”  It’ll allow me to get my vocal folds chords back in shape.

And who knows.  Maybe I’ll ask if I can redo their website. 

I made a list of heroes to discuss throughout the month as part of NaBloPoMo, but I don’t feel I’m ready to write about them yet.  Apparently I think posts about them need a lot of time and thought to do them justice.  I mean, they are my heroes, after all.  If I don’t write glowing words about them,  how will people know how special they are?  But that begs the question, is it necessary to  convince other people they’re wonderful?  Isn’t it enough to know they’ve made an impact on my life and for that I cherish them?  (Well, the real people at least.  The fictional characters, I don’t “cherish” so much, but they do make my life more enjoyable.)

So, let me babble a bit.  Take a look at the NaBloPoMo icon.  Do you know who it is?  If you do, you’re either 1) a baby boomer or older, or 2) a fan of retro-tv.  For me, McHale’s Navy was part of my formative years.  It was one of the television shows my family watched religiously.  My dad had been a Navy officer during World War II, and while he’d long been out of the military by the time I was born,  his service is one of my earliest memories of him.  And I remember him laughing hysterically at the show.

At that time (and for many years afterwards), I never thought I’d follow in his footsteps.  I don’t think his service was a big factor in my choosing the Navy over the other services.  In fact, when I’d thought about joining the military, he’d actually recommended the Air Force.  He thought it was a more modern service.  But all I could remember of the Air Force was my brother having been stationed at Forbes Air Force Base in Topeka, Kansas.  That wasn’t for me.  I’d much rather have been stationed near the water.  The other deciding factor was that, as an audiologist, I’d have gone into the Air Forces’s equivalent of the Medical Service Corps.  At least the Navy gave me the option of going MSC or as a Line Officer.  I chose the more difficult one.  And I’ve never regretted it.

That would be yesterday.  As I was driving home last evening, I realized how depressed I was.   The problem is, so much of how I feel about myself stems from outside sources.

The day started with the discovery that my instincts about two guys on Twitter were wrong.  I don’t remember if I was in a good mood before that, but the news just deflated my balloon.  For once, I’d just like to be right, ya know?

Work always sucks.  Nothing I ever say is right.  So I shut up.  But the last couple days I thought I could actually provide some help.  Nope.  It wasn’t good enough. I don’t want to dwell too much on work because it’ll only depress and frustrate me more.  I wish I could find something I liked, that gave me a sense of purpose and pride, but I’m at an age where I’m not hire-able.

On top of everything else, I got a nice big car door ding on the pristine side of my car.  It’s not the first scratch it’s received.  I also got one (not a car door ding, more like a shopping cart scrape) the day I had my purse stolen.  Geez, kick a girl when she’s down, will ya?

I did slug through the funk and managed to do 10 minutes (plus) of housework.  The good news?  I found a check for over $2500.00 I’d been missing.  (It’s in the purse, ready to be deposited at lunchtime.)

Perhaps I’m  in a trough in my biorhythm.  I just need to push through it until I’m on the upswing.

On second thought, I don’t want a do-over yesterday.  I’d rather leave it behind me and move on.

June has  arrived.  That means it’s time to get into the blogging (regularly) habit.  NaBloPoMo’s theme for this month is “Heroes” and I’ve identified a few to write about throughout the month.

I decided to start with the Sadish Balasubramanian, the creator of this theme, along with many other very popular themes.  This is not one of his better known themes (in fact, it’s not even featured with his other free themes).  It’s called Senorita, and it’s the first theme I used consistently when I started blogging.  I still love its simplicity and beauty, even if it doesn’t match my blog’s title.

But it’s a very old theme.  I believe it was created in the dark ages prior to WordPress 2.0.  It doesn’t have any of the fancy new gadgets like widgets, tags support, threaded comments, or integrated image alignment.  (In fact, I had to go into the HTML editor to get the NaBloPoMo badge to align properly.)

But why should the age of the theme deter me?  After all, I do want to become more proficient with WordPress themes.  So, why not use this as an opportunity to delve into the WordPress codex and try tweaking the theme to bring it up do date?

Yeah!  That’s what I’m going to attempt do.

Those of you who know/follow me, know I am a fickle beast.  I started blogging 3-4 years ago.  Or maybe it was like 5 years ago.  I don’t really know when I started because I’d write for awhile, decide it wasn’t perfect, delete it and start again.  Along the way I lost some really good posts.  Finally in October 2006, I began again and stayed with it.  Stayed with it in that I didn’t delete the blog.  I just haven’t blogged consistently.

Then, just when it looked like I was getting some readers, I moved over to WordPress.com.  I don’t really remember why.  Perhaps it was just to have the experience.  Although I do like it because it has a bit of a community.  I mean, the stats showed I actually had visitors—one day up to 100!  But there’s some flexibility that’s lacking.  And besides, part of the reason I’m blogging is to find (or perhaps create) the ultimate theme.  (Strong words for someone who doesn’t know PHP and has trouble with CSS.)  WordPress.com doesn’t give me that opportunity.  So here I am, back on a stand-alone WordPress blog, but now with a shiny new domain name!

I decided now is as good a time as any to start anew.  NaBloPoMo for June is coming up, and I’m going to try once again to participate.  [I was also going to talk a little bit about the theme I'm using, but I think I'll save that for tomorrow.]  Wish me luck I don’t forget to blog every day!