Filler

Sooner or later, pretty much every compulsive blogger - you know, one of the ones who post every day - feels obligated to blog despite having nothing to say.  The visually-oriented photobloggers can cope with this by pulling out some photo to post, but I'm afraid the rest of us write whiny, usually boring entries about lack of inspiration.  I've done this numerous times myself, so I don't want to do it again tonight. Instead I'll fill up this entry with a few random bits that are in my head or on my desk.  None of them are blogworthy in and of themselves, but perhaps I can cobble together something worthwhile.

1. Now Appearing on Karen's Scanner

It's Sunday night, and that means it's time to update the St. Michael's website for the week, and the two church blogs.  I don't know about your church (if you have one), but St. Michael's goes into an extended lull every summer.  The day school (K-8) has graduated its eighth graders, so the courtyard is suddenly quiet, the parking lot mostly empty on weekdays.  The choir is off for the summer, and volunteers are scarce. Church activist Ila is in Guatemala, Father Harnsberger is in South Dakota, and even the church administrator, Alicia, takes her two weeks of vacation.  After all, who wants to be in Tucson when it's 109 degrees outside?

But I'm in town, doing my little bits.  This week I didn't serve at Mass at all, but last week I filled in as Crucifer, and did a cold reading from the Book of Hosea, because whoever was scheduled to do the first reading wasn't there that morning.  Tonight I just finished OCR scanning in a sermon from a week ago, and a very short church calendar and announcements page.  And I started a poem this morning for the St. Michael's Arts blog, which I may or may not finish writing tonight.  It all doesn't add up to anything that important or earth-shattering, but it's stuff I can do.  Other people can go save the world, but I'll settle for updating a blog.

And now that I've scanned in the church stuff, I'm going to scan in a few pictures for the rest of this entry.

2. The Lost Photos of the Blochers

When Iasked John the other night if he had any pictures of Buzz Aldrin at Disneyland, he came up with six packets of photos I didn't know about, most of them from Disneyland.  He also produced a great picture of Noodle and Tuffy, on which I promptly dripped sugar-free popsicle juice--darn it!  So here are a couple of pictures from John's secret cache.

Left / Above:  The Temple of the Forbidden Eye at the Indiana Jones Adventure, photographed with a panoramic disposable camera in 1998.  Photo by Karen Blocher.


Above:  my attempt to clean up an underexposed indoor shot of an animatronic Indy.  Ignore the date - it's from 1998.


Above: Tuffy and Noodle on the couch Tuffy half-destroyed as a puppy.  Photo probably by John Blocher.

3. An Announcement

For the past thirteen weeks, I've been posting a new installment of my Mall of Mâvarin serial, and then emailing an installment of my second Joshua Wander serial to a few friends.  If I haven't had the time or inspiration to get significant work done on these during the week, then writing or typing a couple of pages each of two different stories on the same night just about kills me.  Last night, I went to bed at 4 AM because of this.  There goes all the catching up I did on my sleep deficit on Saturday morning and early afternoon!  So starting next week, I'm moving the JW stuff to Friday night.  I know that only matters to two of you, if anyone, but it should result in a bit more sleep for Karen, which can only be a good thing.

That's enough for now.  Good night!

Karen