Material Girl

Hmm. Maybe I shouldn't have posted that jigsaw puzzle. Now the page seems to load slowly. Oh, well. It'll move to archives eventually.

Meanwhile, this morning was bright, sunny, and cold, another of those lovely autumn days. It could become a boring theme to blog about though pleasant to experience. Right now, in the afternoon, it's not quite so sunny, a little overcast.

Tonight I have class at Whatcom Community College, Real Estate Law, part of my paralegal program. Last night, in my Intro to Paralegal Studies class, we were learning about how not to do the unauthorized practice of law. Basically, when you're under a lawyer's supervision you can do a lot of legal stuff, because the lawyer you work for is responsible for whatever comes out of his or her office. But if you're not working for a lawyer, you can't do much legal stuff. I've had people say, when they hear I'm preparing for paralegal work, that after a few years' experience with a lawyer I could set up on my own and do minor legal tasks for people, to save them the expense of a lawyer. Nope. Only two people can peform legal tasks for an individual: him/herself (acting pro se) or a lawyer. Anyone who does legal work for someone else has to be licensed by the Bar to do so.

Not that I wanted to set up a practice of my own anyway. I've been self-employed, off and on, for about nine years now, and I'm sick of it. I fantasize about a regular, predictable paycheck, about benefits that someone else pays for, using office equipment that someone else bought, and regular office hours. Mmmmm. What a delightful prospect.

Although I hear that paralegals often work overtime. But they're also always hourly employees and so get overtime pay. Paychecks! Yea!

Tonight my parents come home from an out-of-state visit to one of my siblings. I'll pick them up after class, so I'll be driving their Caddy to class. A larger car than I'm used to parking at WCC, but also with a spacious interior for my folks and their luggage.

Jigsaw Puzzles

Usually once a day I do a jigsaw puzzle at jigzone.com. You pick a picture and what "cut" you want for it. I almost always pick the 154-piece classic cut, but other choices include zigzag cuts, bulbs, and "crazy."



I edited this post on November 11, changing the puzzle to a link because the puzzle just took too darn long to load every time I came to this page. JK

I'm a believer

Sounds like I'll be talking about my religion, right? But, no, I'm thinking of a Monkees song that I like. The Monkees were big when I was in about first or second grade. My best friend "liked" Davy Jones of that group. I "liked" Bobby Sherman, not of that group. For a seven-year-old, I had a pretty good eye for cute guys.

When I was in college, I was fortunate to go on an interim (three-week intensive class) called "Theatre in London." We went to London and went to plays. Nice work if you can get it. :-) It was January, 1983. One play we saw was Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing, which dealt with themes of what is real love and what is real art. The central character is a playwright who is a stickler for real art in drama, but whose taste in music is, to his embarrassment, limited to pop singles. The play ends with the curtain going down to "I'm a Believer." I loved the play and by association I realized what a cool song "I'm a Believer" is. So here's a youtube of the Monkees singing it:



Also at youtube is this version by the group Smash Mouth, which apparently was a tie-in to the movie Shrek. I've never seen Shrek, but I like this video:

Oops. The embed function is disabled, proabably because this video seems to flash a different movie ad across the bottom of the screen each time you watch it. So it's a promo for someone, most likely Universal Studios. So here's a link instead.

Another pretty day

It's another pretty fall day. Between the last post and today, we had a dark, rainy day. These photos don't quite even do justice to how beautiful the light is. But here goes.
Above is a glass globe that you can put water in and then a twig, to start some roots. I like that the copper holder has a patina now, and that the glass is cloudy.

Here is one of my hanging pots with begonia (red flowers) and lobelia (v. small blue flowers). The bright foliage in the background is our deodar cedar.

This is a maple tree my dad and I planted a few years ago. It's a variety that grows tall and column-like instead of spreading out and becoming broad. I wanted to take it from an angle with the sun more behind it, because then the leaves glinted, but the camera couldn't take that much direct sunlight. Anyway, it captures the autumnal mood.

Sunny Fall Day

My camera can only take a few seconds of video, so I took a moving picture of my fuschia just barely swaying in a gentle breeze. It's a beautiful fall day today.

Some day, when my ship comes in, or when prosperity comes around the corner (these sayings are family jokes, three generations old), I'd like to experiment with making videos. I'm inspired by youtube. Right now I have limited resources. My digital camera has only a little memory. I could increase that (when my ship comes in) by buying a little memory drive thing--referred to in my family circles (by those who have seen such a thing) as a "stick." Also, I currently have no software to edit movies, plus my computer is as slow as a snail.

Still, it's pretty to watch the flowers move. The focus isn't quite right; things look a little cubular. But, oh, well.

Charles Schultz was right

Happiness really is a warm puppy.

Hymns and such

The other day I was looking on youtube for hymns and became quite absorbed in them. I was thinking it would be nice to post videos of hymns I like, but it's hard to find exactly what I do like. I looked for "Be Thou My Vision," but didn't find any that included all the verses, usually just two or three, as well as various instrumental versions -- nice, but not what I was looking for. I looked up various others also and ended up looking for one that is simple and sentimental and short, the Gaither song, "There's something about that name." There's a part of me that is uncomfortable with the schmaltziness of Gaither-type songs, and another part of me that revels in the sentimentality. Anyway, every version I looked at had people blabbing away either before or during their singing. I tend to wish in church settings that people who assist in leading worship would talk less and let songs, scripture, benedictions, and sacraments speak for themselves.

So I didn't post the "Something about that name" song. But today I tried to think what would be an appropriate song to post. Since it's October, we're coming up on Reformation Day, October 31, the day that Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Wittenburg church and set in motion the Protestant Reformation. He wrote the hymn "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God," and it comes up often at Reformation celebrations. I found a good soloist singing all the verses. He's a little theatrical in his gestures for my very buttoned-up taste, but not over the top. And at least his gestures relate to the song's meaning and are not just showing off. And he sings it so well. His name is Steve Green:



I do hope I did that "embed video" correctly. Then I thought, Wouldn't it be nice to have one with video that showed, oh, European churches and so forth, and I found one that shows paintings and drawing and architecture from the Reformation period. In this one a choir is singing. The people in the drawings and paintings are important figures of the time. There's Martin Luther himself, of course, also various clergy. I saw Philip of Spain flash by; the Inquisition was active during his reign. I also saw Henry VIII of England, some of his churchmen, and even Lady Jane Grey, a devout Protestant and brilliant scholar of the English royal family who became a political pawn and ended up beheaded at age sixteen. (Hmm. I just looked again, and maybe that was Jane Seymour (Henry VIII's 3rd wife), not Jane Grey. Oh, well.) In this version, a choir sings and I can't follow all the words because it's not the one I grew up with. It must be a new translation, for Luther's hymn was written in German and translated into English:



I tried to locate a video with the hymn in German but couldn't find one on youtube.

Note: Post edited on 11/06/07