Happy Birthday! - belated!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY GERI!!!

Okay, so I'm a couple days late - so I suck - but happy birthday anyway! If only I weren't so disorganized, I could call you, but alas, your phone number is no where about me and I am a clueless wonder.

Love you!!!

I hope your birthday was excellent!!!

Edit (5PM): *shuffles in from the curtain* Ahem. We at the management regret to inform you that our manager was smoking crack when she inputted Geri's birthday into her calendar program, and so we, the management, are one month and four days late instead of two days late. We appologize for any guilt we have inadvertantly induced.

Gremlins are within us all.

The .html cheatsheet is your friend.

The Pagan Heirarchy. This needs to be printed out and go on my wall.

In other news, I have speakers that I can plug my headphones into, so the mp3 player is coming home with me. At home, I have little to do with it, but perhaps I can get a cable and plug it into the car stereo or something. Dunno. It will remain a travel luxury, at least. Now all I need to do is get a single ear headphone, and I'm set! I just have to get past the gatekeepers at Radio Shack who seemed to think I was insane for wanting a cell-phone to standard jack converter; honestly, I don't care if it's stereo; currently I have one earbud down my shirt! I'm not getting stereo anyway!

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I went to a new age conference this weekend, and much fun was had by all. This is a program I attend yearly because I happen to have accidentally fallen into the inner circle; I'm good friends with the gentleman who runs Pathways Magazine (and, by extension, the Expo I was at) and so my mother and I always help out at the registration desk. We were slammed this year; only two of us handled the front registration desk for over two hours right at the beginning; you'd be amazed how rude people can be (well, if you read customers_suck you won't be). Every year I go to see Paul Silvert, an Incan trained shaman, and go on a journey to either the upper or lower worlds while he drums (I have the drumming on tape, too; it's lovely). I'm an extremely bad pathwalker, especially lately, so it was nice to have the drum right near by pounding into my brain. He's going down to Peru regularly, now, which has to be extremely neat. According to one of the teachers he works with (a real teacher, not a spirit guide or enlightened master) went to New York City once and compared it to the spare place he lived at high in the mountains of Peru; interestingly, the teacher said that the conditions were equally harsh. I can actually believe that; cities are spare and harsh places to live.

One of the things I love about going to new age conferences is that they fill up my crackpot quotient for the year. This year, my cup brimith over: someone was advertising for paid sessions where you could meditate with Max, the Authentic Crystal Skull. Meditating with Max, the Authentic Crystal Skull, would bring you visions of the apocalypse and the end times for a nominal fee. I'm tempted to go next year with one of those cheap, plastic, glowing halloween skulls and offer people the opportunity to meditate with Simon, the in-Authentic Crystal Skull. I represent the management, though, so I must curb my more ruthless mocking instincts.

This year, I also managed to extract myself from the registration desk long enough to go to a talk about gremlins. Gremlins, close cousins of the dragons that seem to haunt many people's lives, are the manifestation or personification of all of the things that get in one's way and trips one up when one is trying to accomplish things. They're distinct from reality, but easily confused for it. 'I'm overweight, so I can't run in a marathon," is acknowledging reality. 'I'm fat and I'll never be able to run in a marathon' is a 'you're too fat' gremlin. The lady recommended that we draw and name our gremlins, recognize them when they visit, treat them with good humor, and learn to manage and control them. This is so right up my alley I can't believe it. I may even dust off Professor Diggin's Dragons and recognize a few dragons in there as well; dragons are more hostile, I think. I already have one recognizable gremlin, and he's a wonderful critter - about three foot five inches, wearing a lot of grey with a huge pack on his back. He steals the pieces of different things I want to accomplish and puts them in his backpack 'for safe keeping.' I call him The Procras-tin-a-tor (pronounced in a bad Ah-nold Schwarzenegger accent like 'Terminator'). I'm thinking of taking some of the clay I picked up and carving a relief of him, with pretty bright colors for all of the pieces. I may start gremlin updates; it's such a lovely idea, and so much more lighthearted than anything else I've tried; much more up my alley. I may start making a few 'gremlin traps' too. Wouldn't it be fun to trap them every now and then so you can have some gremlin-free hours?

What sort if gremlins or dragons do other people have?

Poetry: 'Gallows Load' & 'One Vitki's Troth'

I thought I would share a couple semi-religious poems that I posted in the Asatru community as well. I spent today looking through my old poetry, and some of it is actually good! I tend to stick mostly with sonnets and villanelles because what I produce seems more honest when I'm forced to do it within a cage of rules. I have made on attempt at a traditional-ish poem with an emphasis on assonance and rhythm instead of rhythm and rhyming, but the lack of structure hampers me at my current level of skill, I think.

( Cut for length of poems )