Kate McKinnon

Andrew Thornton and I are planning a party; each of us in our own minds. My house is in the mood for one, too. Here is a view out of the dining room, right now. My house is so funked out- the neighbors call it the Wayback House because it has really never been updated in any way, much to my delight. Most systems are starting to ask for attention. I’m holding out for Barack, and the hoped-for tax incentives to go solar, and personally get my house off of the nuclear power and wastewater grids. I’m looking forward to it.

I love Tucson.

I have a gift of another whole TWO DAYS before I leave. Wow. You don’t get that often.

I’m celebrating the new year with a sensible backup program. I am now the proud owner of another external hard drive, a big juicy one (actually it’s small and black, but big and juicy inside) that can hold bootable mirror backups of my entire Scene on my laptop, and my recently phased out desktop computer. And I have a redundant backup of my laptop on a second external, bootable, drive. This is a massive improvement in my situation. And what a relief to be down to one laptop for my computer needs. Another huge move was to move my email home base permanently to my laptop and archive all of my past stuff. I deserve to lie in the hammock for two days as a reward. 

Facebook Flair- Robert Plant, 1970s.

This whole Facebook thing… I can see that there are many pitfalls. One of them is that each Friend that you accept instantly adds a notification stream to your life. I am completely informed on every move made by every Friend. I’m glad this became clear early on, and I now know not to have 200 or 20,000 friends. Of course you also can’t see anything about a person if you aren’t linked, it seems to be all or nothing, so I have to think this all through.

One of the most hilarious and pointless things I’ve found so far is the Flair function. It’s so Office Space… above is a piece of Robert Plant flair, sent to me by Suzanne. What a concept, to spend time on Flair accumulation. Yet it’s fun. We just noticed, via this Plant Flair, that the promo shot of Kate Hudson for Almost Famous (a kick-ass movie) is a riff on this favorite and iconic photo of Plant. 

I wish we could be more tolerant of each other’s mythology.

If I want to focus on alien angels and golden tablets, or virgin births and reanimations, or spaceships and Xenu, or Russian Orthodoxy, or Buddha, or cover myself in biscuits, or give up my possessions and wander the land begging barefoot in an orange robe, or if I want to believe in nothing, I should be able to do so without shooting people, starting wars, bombing refugee populations to death, killing my co-workers, infidels, fatted calves, or random people in Burger Kings, and I don’t think I need to pay fatted pastors to drive around in Lincoln Navigators or ostracize my children, either.

If people could just be kind, you know, I think everything would be all right.

I’m not sure why- it seems like a good way to be found, perhaps, and in general I don’t mind being found. You can do things like put in your high school, university, workplace or other affiliation and search for compadres.

When I plugged in my high school, I didn’t recognize anyone from my graduating class except the girl who was my best friend in Jr. High. She had this stupid little talk with me on the last day of 8th grade, explaining that as we were going into high school, and as I was socially odd, I would pull down her chances of making it with the Populars. So she had decided to dump me, and she thought she’d let me know before summer started, because she was beginning her campaign to improve her social standing immediately. It was fairly devastating at the time…

And that’s who I find on Facebook. Meh. I don’t think it really did her any good, dumping me, but I guess she did me a favor. With friends like that…a person needs to re-tune their evaluation skills.

I won’t be messaging you on Facebook, Cheri Troxel.

2008, along with 8 YEARS of George Bush, is ending. What a relief. We have a new President in 21 days- and I know that we are all hoping that we will see some immediate improvement in our situation. I’m pretty sure this is how I will end up no matter who is in charge. It doesn’t look so bad. I might like to be a little closer to town, though, I’m a very urban hermit.

I feel just a little bit lost today, as I always do before I take off on a trip like this. It’s one thing to get on a plane to go somewhere to just…be. It’s a different thing entirely to get on a plane to go somewhere to structure an experience for others.  More pressure, a deeper concern about possibly forgetting something. I make lists and check them four times. Passport, flush cutters, phone charger, cameras, tripod.

Prince Harry (or Prince Hot Ginge as MichaelK calls him) is for sure all grown up. 

I need to just focus on Harry for a moment because my kitten has disgraced herself on the bed, the rug, and the other rug. Christ! I guess she ate too much grass on the stoop. Damned cat. And now she’s hiding, probably throwing up just a little bit more under each of our beds.

Stripped down and real as the night is long. And check out this amazing version of Don’t Let It Bring You Down, from 1971. YouTube is truly a beautiful thing.

What a trip to be making a snowman yesterday, and then cutting back the lantana (cursed shrub!) in the front yard in sparkling warm sunshine today. It’s like a summer day today, most odd, most excellent. Wouldn’t it be great if the weather was like this for the gem shows?

Lantana (or lanf*ckingtana, as I usually call it) is like bougenvillea without the excitement, and majesty. It can provide a carpet of pretty, colorful, low water flowers, and the hummingbirds drink from it, but God help you when you have to cut it back for winter, or work around it, or prune it. It is covered in tiny, irritating hairs that act like micro-stickers of doom. I am blessed/cursed with rashes of it, swaths of it, at the Retro Ranch, as I call the Cooper house. Or “Casa Señor Creosote,” as Bill mysteriously named it on our historic tax form.  He was making an obscure Monty Python joke and didn’t think it would “take,” but sure enough, there it is on the tax roll, “Casa Señor Creosote.”

I can tell that everyone is having to get back to their work routines today. I’m grateful that my slide is a little more gradual this year. I’m sorry for you, if you are all of a sudden thrust back into an office, with papers, and a ringing phone, and you weren’t quite ready.

Thank you for doing your part to keep the world moving.

I think I’m going to start a permanent “What I Need and What I’ve Got” page on my web site, where I can post delights I am harboring, and needs that I have. Barter is what will carry us all though.

As it turns out I’ll have a houseful of guests, which I am really looking forward to. A dinner party could even be in the works… exciting. I could use some of my owl salt and pepper shakers.

This year, for the first time, I’ll be exhibiting at the Best Bead Show.  I congratulate myself (and thank Green Girl) for finally getting my act together and making the most of the fact that my entire field shows up on my doorstep for two weeks!

I wish I had room to have everyone I love stay with me. In the past few years, my living situation has been so crazy, moving hither and yon, and not really knowing how it would all work out.  It was hard to say “Hey, stay with me a year from now,” not knowing exactly where I would be. I’m happy to be settled now. I still miss the Mansion, but I’ve accepted losing it. It has most excellent owners now, two guys who ended up getting it for a song in a short sale from the bank (if you’ve been following the saga you know it was owned by very unusual people who were going into foreclosure when I was trying to buy it.) The boys who won it have the cash to fix all of the things it needed, which I did not.

One of the things that has become abundantly clear in this recession, and which consoles me over the loss of the Mansion, is that it is not the best right now to appear to be a member of the wealthy class. I was frequently mistaken for such when I had it, or the house in Pacific Grove.  We are all feeling very “eat the rich” right now and I belong with the proletariat, not on the other side of Victorian iron bars.

And, apropos of nothing, I miss Chuck.

Bill and Chuck, Frequent Espresso Drinkers, Barcelona, Day 1

I look forward to seeing thousands of people in a month, and of being able to extend more invitations to people to stay. I have this really beautiful cottage adjacent to my studio that I can rent (that I have to rent, really- it’s the best way to pay the studio tab in an economic crash) and a rambing 50’s ranch house that we live in.  The cottage is spoken for for Gem Shows into the future but I’ll need to focus on making sure it’s rented out all year long. Being right next to the UofA is very helpful- they bring in speakers and visiting professors year-round, and it’s nice for people to find an unusual place to stay. Loading it up with books and colour gives it a special appeal to the artists and writers in the bunch, who have the benefit of also being interesting guests. There is a lot of room to develop this potential and I’ll be spending some time on it this spring. 

The front garden at the studio cottage.

This week, I’m just finishing my packing for the Mexico trip, gathering up beads and baubles and seed bead instructions, trying to think of things I’ve forgotten, mailing out the last few orders from the holiday, contemplating my life and my jobs for 2009. An orderly approach is called for to be certain, with the year as scripted as it is. My trip to Mexico will be multi-purpose; the class will be as much for me as for those taking it, a chance to evaluate everything I know about making jewelry, and to question once again the basic assumptions, processes, and ways I do things. New things WILL be made.

A better sense of community is coming out of the poverty of the past year, and the reality of the economy for this year. It is the bright spot in all of this. We are learning to work together again in ways we might have forgotten, learning to ask for help when we need it, to offer what we have to give to others, to be more careful with our resources. I don’t “lose” food in the frig anymore, that’s for sure, do you?

that I love Neil Young. I mean I really love him. Not only is he a one of a kind musician but his heart is huge, he is a beautiful person.

And I love vintage lamps.

LOOK at that little ceramic sofa. Can you stand it?  When we bought our old 50’s house, it came with some really nice 50’s ceiling fixtures, nothing quite like this, but still primo. Ours are more… space age. I’ll try to remember to photograph them.