UD has outdone itself. There are always Christmas lights on Braniff; this year they are floating 3 feet above the roof. The effect is not the most aesthetically pleasing one they could possibly achieve.

Anne Taylor Loft is an excellent place to find pretty dresses, if you're willing to wait half your lifetime for them to get down to a reasonable price. I just got one for $15 and I plan to wear it for the family Christmas party, and let them all just THINK I paid full price for it. Haha.

In other news, it's November and I'm glad the weather round here has finally taken notice. I can't. wait. to live somewhere where the weather patterns behave in a rational manner.

The other day I thought about the sound of hummingbird wings when they come up right behind you to get to the feeders. The first time I heard it I thought it was a killer wasp about to attack me, but now I can tell a difference between the sounds of wasp wings and hummingbird wings. Six days until I'm in my favorite place in the world! Though I'm sure it's too late in the year for hummingbirds, so I won't be able to sit outside and listen to them.

*sigh*

I am SO glad to know that Jesus was a socialist and stood up to the biggest empire in the world, that Saddam Hussein might have been a bad man but George Bush is a bad man too, and that it's acceptable for a Catholic to have her own Just War theory at odds with the Church's teaching on it. Thank you Cindy Sheehan for enlightening the poor benighted students of the University of Dallas.

Happiness is...

...making chicken broth out of the bones from the chicken your parents sent you from their neighbors out in the Middle Of Nowhere, OK (I told my voice teacher I had something really funny and country to tell her, and she said, "did your parents send you a chicken?" and then she didn't believe me when I said that was exactly it. But the chicken was delicious and I'm very proud of my first attempt at broth.

Miniature pet pigs!

This is really funny.
Piggy pictures here

According to the folks, the leaves are changing color in Clear Creek. Here, everything is still green; the only difference between now and the usual Texas summer is about 15 degrees, while they only difference between now and this past summer is ... nothing.

The thunderstorm today gives me hope, though, that maybe when I wake up I'm going to need a heavy sweater to walk to Mass. Bringing in a cold front is the least it can do for me, since it got my music books all wet. Imagine: you're sitting outside the Capp Bar reading Herodotus (in English) and drinking your latte (with skim milk and honey, to make up for all the High Fructose Corn Syrup in the sundae you just had) and you hear a rolling crash of thunder. You think to yourself, "I should put my piano books back in my apartment now, so when the thunderstorm hits I don't have to walk back in the rain later and get them all wet." Reasonable, no? Apparently, I don't yet know Texas. Halfway through the three minute walk back, the rain hits with all its force, and a minute and a half later I'm about as dry as I would have been if I had jumped in the swimming pool outside my apartment. I get in the door, mop myself off a bit, and would you believe it, the rain stops. Just like that. I love you too, Texas.

And now for a list of things I'm not going to miss about Dallas after December:
airplane noise.
car noise.
the greenish light from the pool that shines in my bedroom window and keeps me awake at night.

Also a list of things I miss about Clear Creek right now:
monks with military haircuts
gigantical squashes for sale after Sunday Mass
ditto with the gigantical cheeses
the crunching sound car tires make on dirt roads
the way you can tell how long it's been since it's rained by how much dust is on the leaves on the sides of the roads
the sound of the rain on leaves and dirt (and no asphalt anywhere!)

In which our heroine is excited about fall

Fall might finally be coming to Dallas, by which I mean today was 85 degrees instead of a hundred. The insufficiency of the season here aside, I still think some Keats is in order. (I'm not poetical enough to post my own po'try anymore, I know now, but that ain't going to stop me from posting other people's)






To Autumn

1
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a seet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o'er-brimmed their clammy cells.

2
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou doest keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

3
Where are the songs of Spring? Aye, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too--
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the riversallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

The revival of the weblog

It's a strange experience, finding a blog one apparently made once upon a time, and only ever used (once) to demonstrate the opinion one once had that meter is not necessary to poetry. Please don't scan that poem below, it's not worth it, unless you're a high school teacher trying to demonstrate what iambic pentameter isn't.

I now believe meter is necessary to poetry, but I no longer think it's appropriate to inflict my poetry on others.

So, why am I reviving the long-defunct blogger? Why not just let it die the natural death it so obviously wants to? Here's why: so I can friend Michaela (does blogger let you add friends? Is it cool enough?) and post comments all over her blog. Hi Michaela! I can't bug you in real life yet, but that's not going to stop me from cyber-bugging you!