The Garage…Man World!

After my morning walk with my dogs, Watson and Willie, I immediately went to work on my garage.  Well, not immediately. First, I had to install my aero bars on the bike.  Did I mention I changed the brake levers and the handlebars?  Yup, installed drop bars with road levers and made a custom mount for the 8-speed shifter.  Riding with the drops is so much better than riding with the straight handlebar with attachments for a variety of handholds.  I should’ve bought a road bike, but I couldn’t find one with 8-speed internal gearing.  In south Texas, the speed bumps are about the only hills to challenge us, making a wide range of gears absolutely unnecessary.  I am sick of adjusting derailers.  I’m sure in my entire bike riding history, I’ve spent about as much time fixing, adjusting, replacing, and fiddling with derailers as I have riding the bikes.

Enough of that.  The garage.  I’ve promised myself to clean and organize the garage and attic this summer.  With the new bikes and painting the shutters, I’ve managed to mess up and disorganize the garage, taking my pledge further from realization. Tools, parts, used tape, gizmo wrappers and other bicycle detritus filled my work table. The same side of the garage was cluttered with boxes from the attic, mostly boxes with pictures from the Turner family’s storied past, many pulled and reframed for the family visit BEFORE CHRISTMAS.

Keeping with my pledge to do a small part of many jobs each day instead of trying to complete big jobs all at once, I decided to clear the table, sorting, stowing, tossing, and otherwise disposing of its clutter.  The choice making took hours! Well…it seemed like hours. But the table got cleared and I was feeling as self-righteous as a preacher who has not slept with any of his adoring female congregants.

I couldn’t stop myself, as I should have, and continued, turning this step of the garage/attic project into a BIG job. Too bad. The cleaning god had taken my soul and the picture boxes were next.  I sorted through the pictures (rather quickly…I’ll pay later for that) so I could redistribute all the large boxes to the back wall or beam them up to the attic.  That done, I surveyed the damage to the attic and decided to postpone (according to my protocol) any work in the 120 degree heat to another day.  In December.

I picked up the rest of the trash and swept the floor.  I did so much work improving the space that my wife, returning from work and pulling into the garage almost noticed the difference.

My Monster

What or who is my Grendel? What monster, slayer of men, destroyer of civilization, is it my job to kill? I must have some reason to read and reread Beowulf; it’s as if it is a calling. Or perhaps the universe is telling me something…if I could believe such rubbish. But I do have a monster to slay: all heroes do. If I am to be the hero of my own epic life, I know my next step. Find my monster. The usual candidates: a social cause, a personal obstacle, someone to rescue don’t feel like manifestations of my monster.

How does one find a monster in his life or the life of the world around him?  Watch the news?  Talk to family and friends?  Increase his attention level?  I don’t have a clue how to do this.  My normal reaction would be to let the idea drift until I forgot it or just moved on to another quest.  Part of a quest…yes…part of my quest to write something worth writing.  There might be something in this.  Hell, I don’t have much else to write about yet.  Why not vanquish the demon, yet unknown, by writing it to death.

Yeatsiana – Poem #57

It’s a hut mainly, a solitary, cluttered hut, not of clay and wattles made,
just a hut.
I will arise and go now, and go to my hut, no innisfree this; melancholy this
hut is, but I go there alone, free, but that’s not the point.

No lake water lapping with low sounds, I am alone here, in my free hut,
my cluttered hut,
I ought to have brought a lover here, they say,
but in my lonely hut I am alive, I live.
Not in the bee-loud glade, my hut, but I can breathe here in my melancholy hut.

Serial A, Part 1

Not a lot of extra words, but enough to tell the story, enough to make it a vivid, continuous dream (thank you John Gardner) with enough detail to be real and no detail that does not belong. Sort of like Michaelangelo sculpting, taking away all the parts that shouldn’t be there. Starting is the easiest part, followed by ending, both parts being mile-high pillars dominating the landscape of the pregnant hill, which is probably a redundancy that I should find an alternative for. I hate that last phrase, but I don’t have a another solution to the “pregnant hill” problem.

So I leave it there – pregnant hill. Both potential and obstacle, the story is inside that hill, the start and the end dominating the west and east approaches. The pillar on the west – young man leaves home. The pillar on the east – young man returns home. Or young woman, genders being fungible now, before the beginning, in the planning part of the writing it. So start. The young man (there, not fungible now) arises, walks to the familiar door, turns the knob for the 5,000th time, and steps outside. It is raining, but Caller (the young man) walks briskly away.

Old Fence – Poem #23

Outside my window is a fence, a cedar fence,
with vertical six-inch boards
supported by two-by-four horizontal railings,
railings attached at each end
to vertical four-by-four posts.

The four-by-fours are planted in concrete.
The fence sags, three inches in the middle of each rail.

The fence yields to years of its own weight.
The four-by-fours delay the collapse.

Links to Useful Sites – WRIT124

Automatic Citation Machine

Just like the title says: Plug in your source information; out pops your intext citation and your Works Cited item.

Organization/Structure1

Basic principles of organization.

Organization/Structure2

Getting from organizing principles to practical use in your work.

Organization/Structure3

Outlining – your organizational action plan

APAGuidelines1

Links to all sections of this familiar site are at the bottom of the page.

APAGuidelines2

See detailed links at the bottom of this page.

APAGuidelines3

Features a handy, short downloadable APA booklet

Persuasion1

You will need these sites when you write your report.

Persuasion2

What can you use to build your argument? A step-by-step guide

Persuasion3

Five simple elements – Write them well and your argument is ready to go.

Persuasion4

Great on development of entire persuasive document. Covers all you will need.

Transitions1

Wonderful list of transition words and how to use them effectively.

Transitions2

Another list and good analysis of how transitions create meaning

Transitions3

More detailed; another list of words and transition elements organized by functional meaning

GoodSentences1

With a fabulous new handout you can keep next to your keyboard

GoodSentences2

Easy to use and could improve your papers 100%

GoodSentences3

This is the Lanham method for refining sentences. Easy to use method; mountains of improvement possible

Letters/Memos1

Memos from our friends at Purdue.

Letters/Memos2

Letters from the Boilermakers.

Letters/Memos3

More about letters…from…well…you know.

Letters/Memos4

Help with letters of inquiry.

Parallelism1

This is the most useful site to help with this essential element of your writing.

Parallelism2

Many crystal clear examples of parallelism.

Parallelism3

This one is deeper, a bit more complex.

Tone1

Trouble finding the right tone? You are not alone. Look here.

WritingCenter1

Colorado State University.

WritingCenter2

Paradigm Online Writing Assistant – POWA.

WritingCenter3

University of Wisconsin.

Capitalization1

Tired Of <-No caps here? Then…click here.

PlainEnglish1

From the UK. It is their language, after all.

PlainEnglish2

This one is from the Feds. Really.

MS Word Tables Tutorial

Look here for table help.

Links to Research Sources

Try The LCC Library Databases First!

http://www.lcc.edu/library/find-articles.htm