Still up to my ears in essays I need to grade, but managed to sneak some fun into this weekend anyway (in between worrying about finances and spending time on the phone with our families in Cincinnati and Knoxville.) Yesterday we went driving down the 101 looking at the coastlines of neighborhoods – Del Mar, Solana Beach. We stopped in at a “health food” restaurant and had wonderful mahimahi with avocado, black beans, rice, and handmade corn tortillas. Besides the lack of salt, it was all very tasty. Then we went to a park that overlooked the ocean. While we were strolling around, it was very unnerving to think that it was close to December, but we were outside, there were palm trees, and the blue ocean curling away in the distance. Incongruous with my more familiar Christmas-type landscapes, despite the fact that they were offering horse-drawn carraige rides decked with lights last night around the outdoor mall by my house and lighting a huge Christmas tree up (I assume to encourage holiday-type spending 🙂
In fact I really enjoyed being outside yesterday because it was finally down to around 65 degrees, much more comfortable to me than all those eighty-degree days we’ve been having.
Don’t throw snowballs at me, friends in the rest of the country!
I’m worried that I’ve fallen behind in writing and submitting my own poetry, as well as my book reviewing. I don’t know how people who teach four classes do it! Once I’m done grading, I have two freelance articles to finish and a new class to design!
- At November 24, 2008
- By Jeannine Gailey
- In Thanksgiving
3
Sure, I have a bunch of 1000-word essays to grade, poems to comment on, and two articles waiting to be finished. But I wanted to check in again…
Yesterday we had a pre-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving dinner, because my little brother was in town this weekend, and Thanksgiving dinner is much better with at least one family member. Glenn did all of the cooking – brussel sprouts sauteed in orange juice with pine nuts, delicata squash stuffed with cranberries and pine nuts, cornbread stuffing with dried cranberries, onions, and pinenuts (There was a theme!) and a turkey leg and turkey breast. Oh, and store-bought sweet potato pie, which was pretty good. I felt thankful for Glenn and his excellent cooking, my little brother, who, besides having a bad cold, seemed to be experiencing good things in his life, and for little seals in La Jolla that we visited beforehand, even though it was a bit chilly (in the sixties!) After dinner, we went for a walk at the outdoor mall which had palm trees with Christmas lights beside the koi pond and topiary surfing reindeer. How seasonal can you get? I spent the night singing “Feliz Navidad.”
Now we can relax on real Thanksgiving! Enjoy it, all!
- At November 20, 2008
- By Jeannine Gailey
- In Blog
- 0
- At November 18, 2008
- By Jeannine Gailey
- In Blog
- 0
Sorry for my lack of posts – I had a surprise visit from my little brother and his wife (and he’s coming back next weekend, after his LA-based training) and I’ve been spending a lot of time in doctor’s offices. Plus I’m wrapping up my class at National U for the quarter.
It seems my (auto)immune system is on the fritz again. I went to a very smart UCSD doctor yesterday who was recommended by my Seattle hematologist who called the head of medicine at UCSD for me (thank you Dr. G! You are so getting a fruit basket!) and I was very impressed with her. Not only was she intuitive to the point of being psychic, she asked good questions and was actually interested in my records (which I usually shuffle in with, embarrassed, since I’ve had sooo many tests and screenings over the years that might or might not be helpful for a new doctor I feel like a bit of a freak.) So I feel like I am in good hands in my new city.
Also, if you’re someone who may or may not have lupus, you might want to avoid a lot of sunlight. Such as that found in Southern California.
Note to self: Southern California: good for Reynaud’s syndrome and asthma. Bad for lupus-like autoimmune problems.
Also for my notes on SoCal:
Good: lack of rain.
Bad: plenty of fire.
I also had time to sneak out to a reading and dinner with K. Lorraine Graham who invited me to a very interesting feminist/experimental fiction reading. (One of the readers was Seattle-ite Laynie Brown, a prose poet who also apparently dabbles in prose prose.) What was expecially interesting was how the “experimental” methods in fiction – split and layered narratives, for instance, something Old TS Eliot was doing years ago – seem hardly “experimental” at all – even old-fashioned – in poetry. I’m not up with the usual “experimental fiction” suspects, but if any of you all out there know more about this, I’d be interested in more of a discussion…
Jeannine Hall Gailey served as the second Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington and the author of Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, Unexplained Fevers, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, and winner of the Moon City Press Book Prize and SFPA’s Elgin Award, Field Guide to the End of the World. Her latest, Flare, Corona from BOA Editions, was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. She’s also the author of PR for Poets, a Guidebook to Publicity and Marketing. Her work has been featured on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Poetry, and JAMA.
