Ten-Finger Exercises

Lessons

I've learned, or re-learned, several lessons today.

The first, of course, is that you can't count on workmen to appear at your doorstep at the hour they've set. You really need to make alternate plans.

The second is, when you're all bunched up in a little room with three rooms worth of furniture so that the other two ceilings can be painted, and as long as you're going to have to wait an unlimited amount of time for the painter to appear, it's nice to be cramped into the computer room. That said, I wish I'd had a particular goal to work on, rather than anxiety about when I was going to be able to leave to see patients.

I did try this morning to set up appointments for times after I could expect the work here to be truly underway. I did get to see one patient, and tried to make two appointments for this afternoon. Both of them wanted me to call back later. So I worked on a poetry assignment, reviewed a few things, and called back. "Call back later." So I did some other diddly things, knowing I'd regret later having had perfectly good time to myself that I was wasting away.

With the help of alfred booth, wanbli ska I did finally manage to write a sestina. The idea had defeated me, despite the clear directions. Alfred's were clearer, and he gave me a prompt and some examples of ending words to use. I used all but one. So then I hopped through another easy poetry assignments and the first lesson of Short Story Pizzazz.

I switched over from the Poets Talk Shop lessons when I reached one that, at least for the moment, wasn't fun. The assignment was to write a poem in trochaic meter. So, as I went through my day, the words running through my head all sounded like: "Round and round the rugged rock the ragged rascal ran," and "Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, over many a volume of forgotten lore." The first example irritated my brain cells. The second overwhelmed them.