Snow and a Boring afternoon

It's a beautiful swirling snow outside, and I suspect tomorrow may be a call off if this continues. Good news, since a call off means I may not have to go to a meeting with my boss(es).
Where I smoke at work is behind the building facing an empty dry pond bed. There is a green house and three other buildings, but across the road and up a small hill I can see a herd of horses grazing on the tall, gold grass. They are shaggy in their winter coats, probably about 15 horses in all, one a small dappled grey Indian pony and the rest red-brown quarter horses or pintos. There isn't much food out there for them.
One day I saw one of the quarter horses pick up a sheet of fabric off the ground and try to eat it. When he realized it wasn't food, he held it in his mouth like a flag of surrender and let it flap in the wind. I thought it would spook the other horses, but they just continued to chomp the dry grass.
I like when the snowflakes coalesce to form huge flakes, piling up faster on the ground because they melt less quickly when they're grouped like that. It's near Christmas and I'm thinking of knitting. I just ordered a new skein of Malabrigo yarn in "Archangel" to make into fingerless gloves using this pattern. I found the website where I ordered it through the Yarn Harlot. Currently my "gloves" are a single side of fingerless gloves I made last year with Noro yarn. The other side is almost finished, but I ran out of yarn and the specific yarn is no longer available. I'll probably substitute something else for it when I can find something that's the same weight and close match.
And that's my boring afternoon. Still reading "Twilight" on Kindle for PC because it passes time at work. All my grading is done up to next week (when I'll be swamped with portfolios to read), and it's too early to plan my next semester's classes until I know for sure they're going to hire me on a full-time contract. Trying to plan something for dinner. Probably Hasta La Pasta, the kids' favorite, with a side of Tater Tot Casserole (my favorite).

Frustration

It was a very frustrating morning. I have Thursday mornings off from work. It's the same time Alan is at dialysis. I usually play WoW on Thursday mornings because there are no children to bother me, no husband to follow me around competing with me (he's so fricking competitive, and has to always do everything I do, including log onto whichever server I'm on and show me what a superior WoW player he is perhaps in some grasping, needy way to prove he's loveable, I don't know why), and usually no mother to nag me because I'm doing something I enjoy (rather than something that I loathe but do because nobody else will do it, like laundry). But today one kid refused to go to school and I was too tired to make her go; my mother skipped out of work (after getting into a huge fight with the one who refused to go to school, resulting in making my kid cry, which made me feel sorry for her, so I let her stay home); and so all the time I was playing WoW my mother was nagging me because I wasn't doing something else that she thought I should be doing (housework, cooking, shoveling snow, finding her Christmas ornaments in the fricking cold garage, etc.) By the time I got to work I didn't even want to be on the same planet as my mother. Merry fucking Christmas.

The Death of Second Life?

Partly based on this thread at Second Citizen, wherein Vivianne Draper asked if Second Life is on its deathbed, and partly based on my own Second Life-style the past several months, I wanted to bring up this issue here at my blog because my blog started because of Second Life (even though it has morphed into more of a first life blog than the former in the past few years). All of this, of course, is my own opinion, but thinking about the responses in Vivi's thread, I wanted to bring up the issue of immersion. (For reasons why I'm bringing it up here rather than there, I'll talk about that later).

Some are making the argument that people who might possibly use Second Life for business reasons, education, etc. have passed it over because it's hard to use, the learning curve is too high, the technology requirements are steep, or that it's inaccessible from multiple places. However, I tend to think that people who don't use Second Life for those applications (business and education), are one of two things. Either they haven't tried Second Life for longer than twenty minutes, or they feel embarrassed about how much fun they had in Second Life so the idea of bringing it to work and making others (co-workers, remember) log on kind of takes the thrill out of it for them. (How to be anonymous in a SL sex club when your co-workers know you use SL?)

While I tend to agree the technology requirements are steep, I can't imagine that any company that is updating their technology on a regular basis isn't buying computers with the right graphics cards and memory available to run Second Life. Yeah, it gets a bit touchy when it comes to broadband space (the main reason I wasn't able to use SL to teach my students), but other than that I can't think why a teacher wouldn't jump at the chance to have hands-on activities for their students that don't involve leaving the classroom (except virtually), spending lots of money, traveling with liability insurance in effect. Imagine using Second Life to demonstrate photosynthesis with scripted plants and trees. Imagine using SL to allow students to build a 3-D model of the universe. SL is perfect for almost all the standards teachers have to meet under NCLB, including math, sciences, social studies, languages, writing, English (build a simulation Chaucer's world, etc.), history, and government (mock elections in SL, students running for office, hosting campaign parties or creating a setting for Dr. King's speech, , exchange programs where students in Japan interact with US students within SL). The educational possibilities and opportunities are pretty endless here and don't require doing a bunch of longer, more involved steps to accomplish them (signing up for facebook, getting parents' permission, finding a way to take pictures and post them, getting permission to post pictures often from two or three different authorities, etc.)

As for business, the interaction between avatars cannot be discounted. Immersion is incredibly valuable, which pepole who use SL know almost like a secret they keep, but let's face it, immersion is what makes people continue logging in to SL. They like their avatars, love them, buy them things to use, spend time perfecting them before they visit friends or go to events. Socially, Second Life is far better than other venues such as MySpace of Facebook. It's immediate. You can chat with people in real time (though this is apparently true of facebook and myspace), see their (virtual) faces, interact with them at a much deeper level than you can at one of the other SNS's*. (*social networking sites)

So why aren't people using SL more? Vivi brings up several good points. Grid stability, griefers/griefing, inability to log in from anywhere via iPhone or similar mobile device. All these reasons lead me to believe that Vivianne isn't the only one who is interested in this topic. Could this be the mysterious project being developed by Philip Rosedale, Siggy Romulous and Taco Rubio--and iPhone App that allows SLers to log in anywhere, anytime? We'll have to see.

Birthday Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=af-WyGIGNRk

My Birthday

Birthdays after 25 are a mixed bag, really. One, you're getting older and can't stop it; and two, people have mostly stopped a) remembering your birthday or b) giving presents or parties.
At 40, things start to get interesting again. For instance: left boob is drooping a bit more than right boob. Not good. Hope it's not a continuing trend. However, this year everyone remembered my birthday, which is a switch. There have been years when I'm embarrassed to admit MY OWN MOTHER didn't remember or acknowledge my birthday. (and don't give me that stuff about people being busy, and she has a lot of kids to think about. She's got three of us and I'm the effin' oldest one. I'm the reason she's BEEN a mother for the past 41 years, goddammit!) But anyway, the past is past (sort of, heh).
For tonight I'm planning a small family party, just dinner, cake and maybe a beer. Mom made a dinner last night and bought pie, so it's like a 2nd birthday party. I had already planned chicken fettuccine, garlic bread and cheesecake (favorite meal) for tonight. Also, I took Phoe to a movie yesterday. We hoped to see 2012, but it wasn't in the theater (only two screens in the closest movie theater, one showing Paranormal Activity and the other showing A Christmas Carole) We saw A Christmas Carole in 3D. I was, once again and as per usual, the only person in the whole movie theater helplessly laughing. Some people chuckled to be polite but many of the funniest parts went right over their heads or were just Jr. High humor of the sort only I am likely to enjoy. Anyway, funny movie, good but not great CGI, Jim Carey amazing as always.
Gifts: nada. Doesn't matter at all. I'll buy my own gift, tyvm. (and they will include yarn. Lots of it) ;)

Writing Rituals

Every semester that I teach, I ask my students to read a piece from the National Writing Project on Writing Rituals, and then I have them do a research study on their own writing rituals. I didn't get to do that this year because I didn't get the job of teaching them until they'd already been in class for five weeks, so they had already done an assignment on "my favorite place to write" (which is not the same as my Writing Rituals assignment, but close enough to not assign it).
I have in the past joined them in writing about my own writing rituals. So, not writing about my own writing rituals this year has thrown me off as well. So, let's get going.
I do know that when I write I need to feel like I have some privacy. I hate when people can read over my shoulder while I'm trying to write. I also hate when people attempt to talk to me while I'm writing. I can't concentrate on what they're saying, my mind is completely involved in what I'm writing, so I tend to look at them while finishing typing what I'm thinking, without hearing a word they are saying to me.
This is a huge problem for me because my computer and monitor are located right next to my husband's, all on the same table. He can lean slightly to his left and read what I'm writing, glance to see what I'm looking at online, and he talks to me constantly when I am online. I am the kind of person who has great focus. I can get so focused on one thing I don't notice anyone else or anything else going on around me. I don't even listen to music when I'm online, or listen to WoW when I'm playing WoW, I just have a good ability to focus on one thing at a time to the exclusion of all else. This annoys my husband and my kids because I'll often answer whatever it is they've asked me without having heard anything they said. I can be looking them straight in the face, but my mind is still focused on the screen and I see their lips moving, I just don't know what they're on about. So, while it's impossible for me to write because Phoe's computer is right next to mine, it's also impossible for me to stop concentrating intently on other things.
I also need to be able to smoke when I'm writing. I don't know why. That's just the way it is. I can see where my writing is very scattered and sometimes makes no sense at times when I wasn't able to smoke (now being one of those times, because I am in my office, which is really a computer lab on campus where smoking is a no-no). I can't concentrate and I've had to stop myself lighting a cigarette about four times. I'm compensating with chocolate, btw.
I tend to write more during or after great emotional upheaval. It's my way of processing whatever it is that's happened. Without someone to discuss the issue, I need to write about it, and I need reasonable immediate feedback. This may also explain why I like Plurk so much, but contribute to Plurk so little. I haven't had much trauma in my life in the past few weeks, so my Plurkarma is down below 40, but I still obsessively read certain peoples' Plurk lines to see how they are coming along. I appreciate the immediate feedback of Plurking.
I have a friend who can only write at 3 AM sitting at her kitchen table with a small 5.5" x 8.5" spiral-bound journal. She also must have a candle burning while the rest of the house is completely dark. She must have a cup of coffee (or iced tea, depending on season), a cigarette, and music playing (usually Bob Seger). Don't ask me how she nailed down her perfect writing ritual/environment, but there you go.
I'm not that specific. I need a good block of time, a computer (I can't write longhand and hold onto a thought long enough to get it on paper), a cigarette, and nobody around for me to talk with. That's really all I require. I can write in an office, a library, my bedroom, anywhere really, as long as the other criteria are met. And even then, I can always run outside to have a quick smoke in between writing (though I tend to lose focus this way).
I don't really have any "rituals" about my writing. Candles creep me out a bit because I'm naturally scatterbrained and just know I'll forget to blow them out when I'm done. It doesn't really matter if I have anything to eat or drink (though chocolate and coffee are helpful).
My ideal writing situation: sitting in my quiet office facing a huge picture window or similar with a fabulous view of the Black Hills, with a lovely antique desk, a really comfortable desk chair, a brand new gaming laptop (who can just write constantly, 24/7? Not I) and a box of Russell Stovers' French Chocolate Mints nearby. I'd probably also have a coffee maker that makes coffee by the cup (Keurig), an ashtray and full pack of cigarettes (never mind that cigarette smoke is bad for both antiques and computers). An internet connection is also certainly helpful, for quick research, as is a television nearby, for something to ignore (which I can't explain, except it's helpful if I have something to ignore while I am attempting to write because it's just enough pressure to make me actually write, not dither).

Writing nirvana has been achieved (if only in my dreams). Now the bigger problem: what to write?

Writing

It's been pointed out to me (in a totally non-confrontational, not-a-comment-even-meant-for-me-personally, way) that for a writing teacher I sure don't write much.(!) So I'm going to go about fixing that by writing here, in my comfortable old blog (4 years, and possibly this is the first time I've written here all THIS year), hopefully on a daily basis.
My husband is participating in NaNoWriMo this year. He has been rather smugly emphasizing the total number of words he's accomplished daily since Sunday. He won't let me read any of it, but I haven't really got the time between student papers, keeping up with WoW, and my current protest of Second Life (long story, I'm just sick of people in Second Life, pretty much the same way I grew sick of people in real life 5 years ago and joined SL), plus just regular life (kids, work, teaching, preparing for teaching, taking care of house, cooking, cleaning, laundry, driving people around, worrying about money and lack of vehicle, plus whatever else I decide to put on my plate). So, in between sullenly resenting my husband for his ability to write 2,000 words a day and not writing myself, I figured I could compromise and write a little every day, whether it's November or not.
It's not going to be fiction.

Plurkiness

I'm mostly on Plurk these days. Here's my link. :)

Sans' Plurk

Stand By Me

Hit the link, go to the website, don't be a cold-hearted bastard. :)