Tumble outta bed and I stumble to the kitchen...

Lately, I've been working on several dozen projects at once, as usual. But none of them are particularly photogenic, so I find myself stumped with what to blog about. And then I remember there is no photograph requirement for blogging, except the ones I've developed for myself, so here I am thinking out loud again.

1. V's into telling stories. Constantly. She wants me to tell them to her, with her parameters: it usually involves Toy Story+Star Wars Garbage Chute Scene+Princesses+Will and V. This sounds cute and all but it really gets tiring to constantly think of new variations on this story. Recently I had everyone get trapped in ToysRUs, which was very popular, but has led to demands of trips to ToysRUs. I must remember to be careful where those characters end up.

2. My job: As usual, it takes up great heaps of time and energy, which is fine. But I am teaching a new course in the spring (Environmental Literature) and another next fall (Humanities of World Cinema) that I've never taught or taken before, which is much harder than re-teaching courses I'm already familiar with. I'm in the process of gathering input from colleagues, but I'm also trying to ask friends and family, too. So I pose this question to the blog: What non-English movies have you seen that impressed you, and why? And what elements (books, movies, youtube clips, etc) should I include in Environmental Literature? I'm interpreting the course to be about both the world environment of weather, tsunamis, floods, and global warming, and the environments we're raised in, and the environments we create for ourselves. I've chosen a book of essays by Leslie Marmon Silko, a book of writings (poems, essays, fiction) about the midwest called Inheriting the Land, and The Road by Cormac McCarthy, because I'm an optimist. But I'd still like at least 2 more books, maybe as many as 5 more. Again, because I'm an optimist.

3. My hoarding hairball. I'm trying to figure out why I am more comfortable in a home packed to the gills with stuff, why I love acquiring things as much as if not more than using them. And how to translate this into a living situation that doesn't drive my partner and daughter and me completely crazy.

4. The new V television series, and Flash Forward, both of which are breaking my brain a little and making me happy at the same time.

5. Putting the blog into a book form, for my own records, for when the apocalypse comes and devours the internet. I'm working with BLURB, and am on page 83 of 290. It's tedious, mostly because I have so many photos that the software can't really handle it. So I'm going a page at a time, adding in the photos as I go.

6. Putting the zine into book form. This is an ongoing project, one I've been working on for over 2 years. Languishing the Zine started publishing in 1996 or 1997, and technically hasn't stopped yet. The book form has over 120 pages of very small type. Several months ago, I said to Tenessa (who is 34 today!) that I didn't know where to start editing 120 pages. She laughed at me, since she's a book editor, but I noticed she didn't offer to take it over for me. Unlike the blog book, this book will be available for purchase. Eventually. The other thing slowing me down is I'm missing some issues from 2002-2003, and I can't hardly print a comprehensive book missing two whole years.

As you can see, I'm busy with non-photographable pursuits right now. I welcome your advice, mocking, and open scorn. Sharing these things with the blog world makes them more real, so now I better go get to work.