7/21: talking

...with my brother in a long, fun, and wide-ranging phone conversation.

7/20: morning, afternoon, evening

 Morning:  My annual eye appointment.  No change in my prescription.

Afternoon:  Chris and I worked on organizing (and clearing) counter spaces in the kitchen.

Evening:  I made a prototype of a new pamphlet for some collaborative work a friend and I had done 5 summers ago.  I texted him photos of it, and he seemed to like the format I had come up with.

7/19: doing

...a new exercising video.

7/18: serendipity

I put a notecard in the mail to a friend today, and the notecard had Beatrix Potter bunnies on it.  As I was walking down the hill to the mailbox, a bunny jumped across the driveway.

7/17: listening

...to Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians.

7/16: arranging

...circles with Chris for a collaborative collage.

7/15: taking pictures

...in which the raindrops appeared as streaks or lines / / / /.

7/14: paper clips

...celebrated in a fantastic mini-zine sent to me by a postal friend!

7/13: undented!

I dented my back bumper, and having it fixed by a collision repair business was going to cost about a thousand dollars (new bumper, paint, labor).  This morning Chris used the embossing heat gun and pushed out the dent.  It looks just fine, and I am very grateful.

7/12: writing

...for a mail exchange.  I used to participate in a lot of swaps, but I've fallen out of the habit.  And it's hard for me to write at length about myself to anyone.  But I wanted to shake myself up a bit, so I signed up for a quick turn-around notecard exchange where people needed to write about their weekend.  I was able to bracket my self-consciousness enough to do it, and that's a good thing.

7/11: shifting gears

...when I learned 5 minutes before it was set to start that an evening Zoom workshop was cancelled.  I formatted, printed, and folded pamphlets instead.

7/10: two pick-me-ups

...this afternoon.  I got mail from a wonderful pen-friend.  And I came across Crayola's Colors of Kindness (who knew?) while grocering so bought myself a box.

7/9: coming across

...one of my favorite sentences today.  I was in the library to proctor a make-up exam, and I was paging through A Room with a View, looking for words that I might want to use in a found-poetry pamphlet project.  I landed on the page with this sentence:  "Choose a place where you won't do harm--yes, choose a place where you won't do very much harm, and stand in it for all you are worth, facing the sun."  I wasn't looking for the sentence, and when I got the book off the shelf I wasn't even remembering that it contained this wonderful sentence (though I had prized it when I had come across it years ago)--so it felt like a gift to come across it again, while my spirits were low, and think, "Ah, yes."

7/8: trying to understand

...myself.  A lifelong project!  It may never be complete, but it's good to chart some of the workings of that inner weather.

7/7: feeling relief

...from some bodily pains that had been getting me down for the past few days.  Having a break from the pains made it easier to be motivated today.

7/6: exercising

...with a YouTube video.  Usually I walk while listening to an audiobook, but I wanted to try something new, so I found a walking/light dancing video online (to K-Pop music) and gave it a go.

7/5: reading

...about Frederico Mompou's Music of Silence then listening to his compositions while tinkering with typography this morning.

7/4: appreciating

...the shadows cast by the ginkgo trees.

7/3: formatting

...some visual poems a friend and I have been working on.

7/2: having

...Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry come to mind twice in less than 12 hours.  The first time, I was thinking about whether or not to use it in a Latin class in the coming semester, and I remembered that a friend and I spent an evening paging through a facsimile edition of it back in the spring of 1990.  The second time, I was looking through Artforum and saw that someone had listed an exhibit on Les Très Riches Heures as one of their favorites of the past year.

7/1: finishing

...one graphic-novel biography of Jane Austen and starting another.  A little project of compare-and-contrast.