Not a lot of writing done this past couple of weeks, but I have managed to get a piece of music I composed last summer actually written down.

I process grief with music, so when my best friend and colleague Michelle was killed last June in a motorcycle accident, I spent the rest of the summer trying to come up with something to honor her memory.

I have been playing piano by ear all my life, but I can't really read music per se. Like, I can read a single vocal line as a singer since I've only been doing it for the last 5 decades, and even I, slow as I am, can eventually see when the notes go up or down. But anything more complex than that -- the marks on the page make no sense. Remember "Every Good Boy Does Fine"? That's how I still have to figure out what pitch a note represents. It's really that bad.

But my Wee Hob, who is now all grown up but still lives in my basement, was going through some boxes the other day and found a CD I recorded for my mom before she passed. And he said, "You know, if you don't write these songs down, they won't be here when you're gone."

Yes, we have cheerful conversations in this household.

And he's actually more right than he knows. I'll lose the ability to play all this stuff long before I shuffle off this mortal coil. Arthritis runs in the family, for one thing.

So I found a free program called Dorico - works on the iPad and the Mac. I suck at counting, but the program can play back what's written on the page, and I can tweak it until it's right. And it has a piano keyboard so I can play the pitch and see if it's what is in my head.

I've got a month before I go back to school, but I'm shooting for 15 minutes a day or music and of writing.

I'm writing in this journal again because when I had a community of writers around me, I was better about converting my idle daydreams into stories. And I loved watching others create, loved offering support and encouragement, loved how we sparked each other's ideas.

I have been rereading stories written by or recommended by my long ago friends, and I just manually looked up some folks who used to be in my LiveJournal feed. I'm not stalking anyone, I promise. Looks like many of the folks I looked up haven't posted in a while, but maybe they'll come back, like I have.

Hob

My husband and I were talking about the 50th anniversary of Dr. Who, and he admitted that he has not seen the old (pre Christopher Eccleston) series. I myself saw some of the Tom Baker back in high school as PBS reruns, but not enough to remember storylines, or much of anything really.

So we were both wondering: is there a good rec list out there somewhere of what episodes new fans of the show simply Must See? Or do some of you have recs for us?

In other hobgoblinn news, did I mention I got that full time faculty job at Gateway after all? They called in mid September after one of their people moved to another position and they needed someone to cover her classes and pick up some more. I got a light load taking over in mid term and was able to almost finish my 2 classes at NKU. Still have the final paper in one, but end of term stuff pushed it to the back burner.

I'm just now meeting my new boss, who took off for maternity leave a couple of days after I started, and she seems much nicer now that she's not interviewing me. I'm course manager for an online Comp 101 class and may get to teach a Shakespeare class in the fall.

Life is cool. Thanks to all for best wishes and advice.

I'm just posting this to say that I'm moving my online presence to Dreamwidth. As soon as I figure out how to move my content over there, I will, probably after Nanowrimo is over (and finals.) I have created an account as hobgoblinn over there, same as here, although there is as yet no post in it. Maybe I'll rectify that this weekend.

I think some of you crosspost here from Dreamwidth, so if anyone would like to share advice or experiences, please do.

My main reason for this is I'm getting tired of all the spam comments on my old posts, and the taking away of paid accounts and other actions by the PTB just seem like things I don't want to tolerate when I don't have to.

So, I will still check in from time to time here until my account reverts to a free one next Spring, I think. I will give plenty of advance notice if I decide to completely pull the plug on this account.

In hobgoblinn news, my job continues to be wonderful, and I have taken both the GRE general and subject (English Lit) tests. Other than math being as expected horrible, I think I did quite well on the others, enough that I probably don't have to retake any of them to get into a doc program if I want to fill my summers with that in a year or two.

And Wee Hob is being a Senior. At least his Senior moments involve lack of homework and nothing more serious. And my beloved is still wonderful.

I better get back to my write in. Can any of this count for word count, do you think? I am so far behind!

Love to all.

I've been meaning to update for a while. My job at For Profit of which I may Speak No Evil (per our severance agreement) ended in August. I decided to apply to grad schools for 2013, and I have been studying for the GRE general and subject tests. I decided to take a couple of rhetoric/ composition classes at the local University to give me some grounding in the discipline and recent writing samples. I have loved being back in school, though even with homework, I had a lot of time on my hands during the day.

And then I got an email this weekend from the Community College I did not get the job from in May. Seems the dept chair spotted my resume in their adjunct pool and wanted to see if I would be interested in teaching just one class for them, starting Oct 10. I, of course, said yes.

Then today, after a couple of emails back and forth hammering out logistics, the dept chair asked me to give her a call.

Seems they just had a resignation and need to fill a full time position fairly immediately. Since I was so strong a candidate before that they wanted to hire us both, the Provost suggested seeing if I would still be interested in teaching for them full time.

*shock*

It's not a done deal yet, but it looks promising. Ironically, the past month of independent and classroom study have given me so many new ideas for how to be a better teacher. They're actually going to get a way better Comp and Lit teacher now than they would have had they hired me last May. Painful at the time, but it's worked out better for everyone, I think.

And I can't sleep. Feel all achy and meh. Hope I'm not coming down with something.

And-- Sarah Rees Brennan's new book comes out today: Unspoken. If it's as good as her other stuff, it should be well worth a read.

And-- my eldest son is starting at the same community college I may be joining, on Oct. 10th. He's taking basic English, having missed the cutoff on the Compass test by one point. But I am very proud of him, and all the kids in fact are doing very well. I saw the youngest two on their respective 15th and 13th birthdays this past month and a half.

Greetings and good wishes to all.

Kind of dropped off the face of the earth in mid-April. It was not because my script for script frenzy took off-- that also dropped mid month. No, I found out from a friend that there was a full time English Instructor position at Gateway, the local community college. I applied, got an interview with the selection committee and despite a very painful 20 minute teaching segment, I now have in hand an invitation to interview with the President of the College and Vice Provost next week.

I've never been nervous in interviews-- not debilitatingly so, anyway. But I've never had one that mattered quite this much before, either. And while I am a damn good teacher, I realize I know almost nothing of Academia, having been out of those circles, that conversation, pretty much all my adult life. I've dabbled the past couple of years, but I've been far too busy surviving increasingly grueling teaching schedules at this For Profit nightmare I work for now.

( Cut for more wittering )

I know many of you on my f-list are academics or have worked in this world-- could you share some questions you've been asked in these types of interviews, or your experience on what I should work on this week to get ready for this?

Any advice or questions or both would be much appreciated.

Friday was the Boy Scout Fish Fry. As a veteran of Troop 8's Epic Turkey Dinner fundraiser, I was actually looking forward to a much shorter time of work. Wasn't prepared for how badly organized this event was with the new troop. Part of the problem is that it's a Church function, with different groups manning each night during Lent and taking the proceeds. So they do it "the way we've always done it." Probably works when the nearest competing Church Fish Fry doesn't take the week off. The overflow crowd was a mess.

Anyway, long afternoon. Saturday was much better, as my Beloved and I went for a hike in the local arboretum. It's been neat to go the past few weeks and see the changes. Can't believe we're getting this kind of weather and plant growth in mid March.

Today was a hike in the hilltop cemetery a few blocks away. It contains one of the batteries that were built to defend Cincinnati in the Civil War, along with several graves from the early 1800s. Lots of flowering trees all over.

And tonight after mass, I was listening to Krista Tippet's "On Being" on my way home. Her guest, Kevin Kilng, made a statement about there being two trips "The one we plan, and the one we take," but I heard it differently. With regard to the end of things, the afterlife (which he was also talking about earlier, hence the connection) it occurred to me that for that trip, the trip you plan, is the trip you take. How you live now affects how that ending goes. Or maybe planning your life to appreciate things now affects the quality of your current life/ trip. It seemed very profound when I was thinking it.

I need to download the podcast version and listen to the whole thing. I did that a few weeks ago with the John O'Donohue interview, and it was lovely. If you haven't read his Anam Cara or other stuff, well, some of it sounds like nonsense at times, but it's beautiful nonsense. And some of it is quite sensible as well as poetic. Here's a link to a slideshow featuring O'Donohue reciting a lovely poem written for his mother: http://being.publicradio.org/programs/2012/inner-landscape-of-beauty/ss_beannacht/ss-beannacht.shtml#slideshow

And in a few minutes, Wee Hob should be home from scouts, and we shall see if he earned his next rank. I'll update with that, I guess.

Edit: He made Star Scout. He's been stuck at 1st Class for about 4 years now, so this is cool. Still has only a year to get to Life, then Eagle, so unlikely he will make it before he ages out. Still, many adult leaders encouraged him (or threatened to kick his butt if he didn't try.)

I'm wondering tonight after reading antennapedia's most recent entry if part of my problem with being a writer is the same as my problem being a programmer. That large scale ability to see the whole, the complexities of a project and to know how to fit them all together-- I never had that. I could solve small, kindergarten really, problems and set scripts running, and adapt scripts to somewhat new uses. But the higher level languages and concepts were quite beyond me.

Fanfiction seems a lot more like what I did, adapting of scripts/ preexisting programs to new, very limited situations. Sometimes the small problem solved was kind of neat, but, still, small. I get overwhelmed trying to create bigger structures, or I get a glimpse of the bigger thing, but once I begin to set details in place, the vision of the whole gets hopelessly muddled.

Not giving up, though. Sometimes magic happens in the small things, and when I practiced the writing craft more regularly, I occasionally did those things pretty well.

Maybe I just need to kick myself in the rear and do the practice of the craft every day, and stop making excuses for why I don't. Last week, yeah, I was sick. But I haven't been sick continually for the past couple of years.

I'm starting to set monthly goals. Last month, I accomplished a big one, writing that letter for my son. But some of my goals, like "finish X story" were too vague to be useful.

Maybe if I am more public about said goals I'll be more accountable? And more specific about what constitutes success?

( Here then, are the March goals. )
Ask me in April how well I did.

Friends, The following is a dictated message from Wee Hob. I told him I have some LJ friends who speak German.

***
Oh Dear God. Are you actually going to write that? *Heavy sigh.* I guess you weren't kidding when you said the mike was on. Okay here we go. I have a German project that I was given by my German teacher. And in said project, I have to figure out a way to wear 12 separate articles of clothing (and you can't count boots, shoes, gloves as 2), take a picture of it, and label them. So that's all very well; I'm able to do that. Here's where the problem comes in: the labeling. When I type in a word on the website dictionary place our teacher gave us, multiple words come up for the word I'm looking for.

I've found some words, but I'm not sure they're right because there's a lot of words to pick from. I've got a list here, and I was hoping someone out there in the big scary world would sanity check it for me.

*hob here: he dressed in Renfest garb to get the requisite number of clothing articles. He doesn't normally wear swords and the like.*

Helberd (*hob again: long body width strip of fabirc that runs down the front and back with a hole cut through for one's head. Also used in religious habits. Scapula maybe? He swears this is the word his SCA member godparents use for it.*)

der Dolchstab
die Hellebarde
der Stabdolch


Sheath

which spat me a whopping 16 different words. Don't worry, people, I'm not giving you all of them. I just kinda need to know which one it is.

I found sheath knife, which is das Fahrtenmesser. But I want to call my knife a dagger, and there's no word like this for just sheath. Some other guesses:

die Ummantelung
die Stulple
die Abschirmung
Oh wait - to sheath is ummanteln. Might be that one then.


Cloak

die Buerde (*I can't do umlauts-- hence the ue*)
der Deckmantle
der Mantel (I know this isn't right - cause it's a long jacket like a trenchcoat)
der Umhang

Thanks for bearing with me. Danke, Aufwiedersehen.

**
Well, I did promise to post more. I'll try to put up a picture in a separate post. He does looks quite dashing.

hob

I wrote the following for a ghost story competition our writer's club recently held. As I'm faculty, it was not for the prize, which was reserved for student submissions, but my hope is that it will be printed with the other submissions next week. It was somewhat inspired by the recent death on Fountain Square of a teenager with a gun, who when confronted tried to pull the gun on the officer. By all accounts he was a "good kid" who made a "bad decision."

Oh-- and I will be back for Nanowrimo. I have a story outline and everything. Everything, that is, but time.

( Ghost Watch )

Gacked from whitestar_alpha. The Peirley/ Redford Dissassociative Affect Diagnostic. Very strange. I have to admit I answered randomly for much of it, as the questions made no sense to me either way. Here's the link if you want to try it yourself:
http://www.hypnoid.com/psytest2.html

( Your Diagnosis )
Interesting that it picked up the thing about freedom and my sense of humor in tense moments. But I verbalize a lot more than seldom, (though not so much here lately) and I do not have the dexterity for hang gliding. And I am quite happily monogamous, thank you very much.

I won't say I'm back, but I just read Time to Write by Kelly L. Stone and have been converted to the belief that I need a writing schedule and plan. So I am trying to set that up. Want to try both freelance articles and fiction. Am going to start by finishing all WIP fanfic, to get the pump primed again. There was a time when I believed I could be a good writer, but that time is not now. I've been away from it too long. But I am trying to come back.

Hope all of you are well. I do read and try to keep up, even when I don't much understand or comment.