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Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Discipline

Hmmmm....suddenly I've got three creative projects going that each require daily (or near daily) engagement: the Month of Letters, I started a knitting project that requires a lot of practice between classes, and tomorrow I'll be adding in a movement-based challenge created by a friend from college. The first two are doable enough so far, we'll see what happens when I try flexing my rusty choreographic muscles as well. I suspect it'll take me a lot longer than the suggested 2 minutes a day. I'm not sure why February is such a project hotspot, but at the very least I hope to gain some valuable time management skills.

Back to this project....mailed Feb 5:


I had this problem last year as well - I come up with the perfect postcard, at the wrong time. At least I only missed the Superbowl by a day. I notice there is no signal for what to do if the lights go out for no apparent reason. Nor is there a "Bootylicious" signal. Pity.

 Mailed Feb 6:

Last year I sent out a lot of the postcards I'd been holding onto for decades, but I kept a few. This one was attached to a present sent to me by my Uncle John, probably while I was in college - you can see he wrote on the border, but the other side was blank.

My Uncle John was an infamous gift giver - you never knew what you were going to get, but it was probably going to be memorable. Some of my favorite gifts were from him - a cool Magic Window-like toy with oil instead of sand that I got when I was very young, and the AWESOME book The Cosmo Girl's Guide to the New Etiquette, given in the early '90s with no irony whatsoever, sparking my nascent feminist outrage and fueling a very angsty performance piece in college. It occurred to me out of the blue a couple of years ago that the book is completely written tongue-in-cheek. Oh.

My Uncle John passed away last year, and I can only hope I honor his legacy by giving gifts that are as interesting and memorable as his, even if occasionally they fail fantastically (such as the black satin Hard Rock Cafe jacket I received in 1986, which my rotten brother made worse by crowing to everyone about
what a status symbol that was and how cool I'd look at school. I wanted to curl up and die, I'm so sure!). My nieces could weigh in on that one....but this postcard could only go to the excellent Dang Ramona, who enjoyed packages from Uncle John during college almost as much as I did.

1 comment:

  1. I really like this entry, and John would too. What does the border say?
    He was an amazing (and sometimes weird) gift-giver. Things came wrapped in newspapers, tied with string and yarn. He sent me yards of pink fabric - kind of sludgy, so though I am sure he believed it was silk, the Vietnamese vendor was getting even in a small way with the US Army soldier. That Christmas he was in Hanoi, and I sent him a 500 piece puzzle, every piece same color red, titled "Red Riding Hood's Hood." He told me that he and his buddies had given it to the Vietcong, and planned to win the war because of it.
    He had a wonderful sense of humour, and I miss him.
    I had forgotten about your jacket!

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