It looks like someone who doesn’t want to be identified is checking out my blogs. I wrote about it today over at coit avenue.
Monthly Archive for February, 2006
Pairadocs pointed to this. Just type something and the program pulls corresponding letter and number photos from Flickr . Fun!
The 19-year-old young man found dead beside his SUV by his father early this morning was a friend of my son’s.
Mike and his family lived a few houses away from us on Hollywood Street in Grand Rapids when the boys were just little kids. They moved out to Northview several years after we did. The boys lost touch for awhile, but near the end of high school they had become reacquainted. As Drew said today, "I’ve known Mike longer than anybody in the world, except my family."
I can see that curly headed little kid in my mind, tromping determinedly down the street to our house. "Is Andrew here?" he’d demand. Little tough guy he was. But always smiling. And afraid of nothing, especially disapproving adults. Though nearly two years younger, he always seemed to have more freedom than our son did and I remember being always a little wary about what he was up to. Or what the two of them might be into when they were together.
This is the second among my son’s friends to die, young, tragically. And like before, a crowd of young people spent the day at the house of a close friend, crying, remembering, consoling one another, looking for explanations. I’m sure in times like these they feel there’s none. And that all they can do is cling to one another and the life they all still have. Railing against the unfairness. Powerless to understand. Yet powerful in their support for Mike’s family and for each other.
If you’re a regular here you know that back in early November I was jettisoned — green and intrepid — into the world of freelance writing. Thought you might like an update of what’s been happening.
I spent November and December "finding myself," that is, looking for the right words to put on a resume and in cover letters to potential clients. I contacted virtually everyone in my network (which by the way was much bigger than I’d thought), and was surprised and gratified at the support I’ve received from friends, former bosses and one-time coworkers in this business. Got a few leads. No work, but hey, it was the holidays.
January heated up right away, and I billed a nice chunk of hours to a couple of clients. February started out slow, but I’ve done a handful of jobs for one client and picked up some proofreading for another’s new website. I’m now in the process of writing a proposal for a fairly large user testing project for another new client. And I’m spending two days this week in a new employee orientation for yet another, where I’ve been hired to do writing on a project basis.
To date, I have five (5!) clients, with a couple of pretty big projects simmering for two of them (three if you count the one that’s been on hold for-ev-er). Oh, and I can’t forget my one "labor of love," for which I’ve written three installments and plan to continue as long as I’m wanted/needed.
Guess I’m doing OK, since I’ve really only been at this for eight weeks or so. And other good things have come from this new life situation, too, like:
- I’ve had leisurely lunches with a string of people — some of whom I haven’t seen in ages.
- At a lunch with a few of my recent former teammates I heard, "You look so good! So rested! So healthy!"
- I was able to sing at the midafternoon funeral of a pastor from our church.
- Midday naps!
- I was reintroduced to the cult of Mac by a friend who donated to my cause a (slightly used) PowerBook G4, which I absolutely love.
- I have time to listen to all the podcasts I want to.
- I get to wear comfy clothes (almost) all the time.
- I am able to run up to either high school at any time to drop off forgotten books, lunch money, reports … argh!
- I can spend more time than EVER reading and researching on the web.
- Did I mention naps?
From my site stats as of today. It’s not surprising to see that 78% of my traffic is from the U.S. But 5% from France? I wonder what’s up with that?
I’ve added a few since my last listing of what’s on my iPod.
Democracy Now! The War and Peace Report. Podcast version of Pacifica’s progressive radio/TV show hosted by Amy Goodman. Daily
Meet the Press Yep, the same one you see on TV from NBC News. Suffers little from not being able to see what Russert is referring to when he says, "Let’s watch this clip," which isn’t all that often. Weekly.
Open Source PRI’s Christopher Lydon moderates a roundtable discussion while the blogmaster checks in to report on comments coming to the show’s blog. Listeners are encouraged to comment, during the live show and after the fact. You also can suggest future topics for the show. Daily.
Open Source Sex Erotica and more from sex educator Violet Blue. Weekly or whenever. Explicit.
The Ricky Gervais Show It’s been number 1 in iTunes for weeks. Funny stuff from the writer/director team of BBC’s The Office. Weekly. Explicit.
To paraphrase an old saw, "Treat it like an A-List blog and it will become an A-List blog." (Uh huh. That’s what I said, too.)
Anyway, if big guys like Kottke participate in the Four Things meme, the least I can do to achieve my goal is to copy them (and then you follow suit and copy me, see? Especially the four bloggers I "tag" at the end of the post).
Ready? Here goes:
Four jobs I’ve had
Cafeteria worker
Teacher
Day care provider
Church secretary
Four movies I can watch over and over (Have I even seen four movies that I like?)
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
Monsters Inc
Scrooge (the George C. Scott version)
Disney’s Beauty and the Beast
Four places I’ve lived
Great Lakes, Ill
Muskegon, Mich.
Kalamazoo, Mich.
East Lansing, Mich.
Four TV shows I love like
Desperate Housewives
The Simpsons
King of the Hill
Big Ten Basketball (I don’t know!)
Four places I’ve vacationed
Orlando
Gatlinburg
Paris
San Diego
Four of my favorite dishes
Garlic smashed potatoes
Sushi (whatever you order for me)
Guacamole
Ice cream (any kind)
Four sites I visit read from daily
Newsvine
bOING bOING
BuzzMachine
fresh perspective
Four places I’d rather be right now
Kauai
Napping
Sunning on the beach at Lake Michigan
Biking the circumference of Mackinaw Island
Four bloggers I’m tagging
Lori
pairadocs
artinlife
g’s spot
Monday night our son received a frantic phone call from his sister saying she and four other girls had just been in a car accident (predictably, I suppose, the 16-year-old was afraid to call Mom or Dad).
Needless to say, our week here has been pretty much consumed with what could have been an unspeakably tragic event. So rather than labor over a blog post about it, here’s the text of the email I sent to family:
Hi Everyone
Sorry to be late with this and sorry if you’ve already heard …Susan was in a car accident Monday night. She is at home and fine — real banged up but nothing’s broken.
She was out with four other girls (including Amberly) near Rockford … the girl driving had just picked up her car from the dealership a few hours before that. Unfamiliar country road, dark, a little slippery from rain/snow. A car came toward them over a hill and the lights blinded the driver. She drove off the side of the road and into the trees. They took out two trees; one fell on the car and started it on fire. Passersby stopped right away and got all the girls out of the car. The driver had passed out and was trapped behind the wheel. Susan says the car was filling with smoke and they couldn’t get out at first, so it’s a good thing people stopped.
The ambulance got Susan and the driver out of there first since they seemed the worst hurt (Susan was riding behind the driver’s seat with NO seatbelt on). We got calls from Susan and from a woman on the scene who told us to meet the ambulances at Butterworth.
When they brought her in she was strapped to a backboard, completely restrained in a neck brace and pads around her head. She had a lot of pain in her neck, upper back and left ribs, plus some nasty abrasions on one cheek and above her eye and they would not let her move until they got a cat scan of her head and neck. Nothing broken there and her brain was OK. Later XRays showed no fractures in her back or ribs.
After about 5 hours we got to take her home. She is set up on a mattress on the living room floor and taking powerful ibuprofen plus vicodin. She is really stiff and sore but the biggest thing she has to take care of is her face. She has 7 abrasions on her face and neck that she has to be careful of — no makeup, NO SUN, regular smearing of antibiotic ointment. Hopefully these things will prevent scarring.
She got a lecture from the emergency room doc (plus any other attendants who came into her room) about not wearing a seatbelt (she always wears a seatbelt, so I don’t know what was up with that). The doc said just a few more pounds of pressure in the way she hit and she’d have been having cheekbone and eye socket rebuilt instead of just going home with painkillers and antibiotic ointments…
A big scare, but as I said, everything’s OK. Sorry I didn’t let you all know earlier.
Hope all’s OK with all ya’ll. Talk to youse soon!
Love,
kath
