revisiting Japan, rethinking my appearance...

[bronze_ribbons]

Earlier this month, I finally got around to badgering my husband for the photos he'd taken when we were in Japan last fall. Today, I finally got around to uploading them. Here are two of the better ones...

	Peg at Ookawaso This was taken at a mountain inn in the Fukushima-ken prefecture.
	Piet and Peg near Ameyoko Piet attended grade school with my husband, and they've remained close friends all these years. He moved to Toyama three or four years ago to work for Nova.

Earlier photos from that trip: here and here.



The poke that got me to go through the photos was a PR request for the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Cookeville, where I'll be speaking this Sunday on UU efforts to study and act on the issue of global warming (and on other campaigns to preserve the earth, time permitting -- we'll see what happens once I actually start writing the homily). In the process, I realized that

(1) my repaired laptop does not have iPhoto. Apparently I will need to reinstall it from a backup, assuming I actually have the app saved anywhere. Alternatively, I could get off my duff and get around to acquiring the proper graphics software and skills I keep saying I'm a-gonna...

(2) the photo I've been using as my official headshot dates from two Octobers ago. It's probably time to chivvy the BYM into taking a new roll (he's a dear, but he's also honest about not finding me as fun (or cooperative) photography-wise as cars. *grin*) -- especially since the most professional-looking closeup in the Japan batch also features major-league bags under my eyes. (I had a major project I wasn't able to wrap up before we left, so I ended up attending conference events during the day and staying up most of the night during our first week in there. It was a very good thing the BYM had packed his USB booklight...)

And, since I don't want to have to stay up all of tonight, I'd better get back to the manuscript I'm currently tidying up. My morning was devoted primarily to accounting and distribution issues for a company that's about to release a new product, and it was both sort of fun and sort of odd: I did a fair amount of inventory and business office work back in my twenties, and as I drafted procedures and ordered shipping supplies and tried to herd the rest of the logistical ducks into some semblance of a row, I was reminded of a compliment I've received more than once -- "you come up with the things the rest of us don't even realize need to be taken care of." (The other side of that, of course, is being taken for granted because people don't grok how much work and/or coordination is required behind the scenes.) At any rate, I'm amused at how various aspects of my irregular career (and inconsistent devotion to assorted hobbies) keep proving to be useful ... and being worshipped as a details goddess does soften the edge I sometimes feel from not having been as focused (and consequently not as far along) on my writing/lettering/singing/etc. as others my age and younger.

It'll be interesting (but not too interesting, I hope) to see what I didn't know to anticipate this time.

Comments

[ellid.livejournal.com]

I think my favorite of all the pictures is the one of you trying to ring the bill. That's great! And I like the ones of you smiling....

[mechaieh.livejournal.com]

...The funny thing is, I am smiling in all of them, but you're far from alone in not seeing that. I'm the most physically expressive member of my immediate family, but when the default setting is "emotional range of a frozen halibut," that doesn't take much.

It's great for poker, but less so for interpersonal relations (people often worry I'm not having fun when I'm just being quiet), and one of the many reasons I don't desire to become a minister.

[ellid.livejournal.com]

And I am *such* a dork...I only now got around to checking out your web site. You wrote the bio on Anne Carroll Moore for the anthology???

Gad. I am *impressed*.

[mechaieh.livejournal.com]

You're not a dork. Dorkiness is failing to keep the site updated for the people who stop by... *rueful*

I am intrigued -- do you have a particular connection or interest in Moore? In all honesty, I first heard of her only a few years ago, when I got my mitts on a galley of Ursula Nordstrom's letters.

The most intimidating entries to write for that book were the ones on "historical fiction" and "Laura Ingalls Wilder," and the subject that stymied me the most research-wise was Tom Seidmann-Freud (Sigmund's cross-dressing niece, who also happened to be clever at devising books with moving parts. If I were a German-fluent women's studies specialist, I would be champing at the bit to write a thesis or novel about her ... but that not being the case, I need to get back on track with my Frederick Melcher essay...)

[ellid.livejournal.com]

I remember Anne Carroll Moore being mentioned in the school library when I was a kid. She also had a notable dust-up with E.B. White and Katherine S. White over Stuart Little and Charlotte's Web; she hated both books, and actually a letter to Katherine White urging her to persuade her husband to withdraw the book from publication! She also believed that the real center of Charlotte's Web was Fern, not Wilbur, and slammed the book in a review.

It's all in E.B. White's letters, which are beautifully lucid and a great deal of fun. The man was a natural writer regardless of the medium, and his descriptions of ordinary life with his family are a delight.

[mechaieh.livejournal.com]

Indeed. "Natural History" (http://www.brothersjudd.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/reviews.detail/book_id/452/Charlotte's%20.htm) (which he wrote for K.) is a favorite amongst my favorites.

[ellid.livejournal.com]

His love for Kay comes through for decades. I think he once called it "the most beautiful decision" he'd ever made.

[xanthophyllippa.livejournal.com]

The photo I've been using as my official headshot dates from two Octobers ago.

You = adorable. And definitely not my friend Fae.

[mechaieh.livejournal.com]

*smirk* You sure? Because there's always possession... ;-)

[xanthophyllippa.livejournal.com]

Oh, joy! Way to feed the paranoia, there... :^)

[busaikko]

The Oxford Enclcylopedia of Children's Literature?

... aww man, I've got to get my hands on that....

I love the picture of all the fish LOOKING at you. Like, 'You're a vegetarian--we HOPE!' And your pose says, 'Ha--in your dreams, sushi!'

[mechaieh.livejournal.com]

Mmm, sushi.... although I think we actually had yakinebu that night (and so yummy it was, too!).

[aunty_marion]

Hey, thanks for the links! Now I can put a face to the on-screen 'voice'!