blog.artwells.com

April 17, 2009

Pruning and Weaving

Filed under: family, professional, programming, technology — artwells @ 4:00 am

willow-wovenMy son and I worked on the willow hut yesterday. Today I worked on some inherited spaghetti code.

The winter die-off was woven in with new growth. It was difficult to find which part should be snapped off, which brought to the light, which woven back to hold the thing together. I snipped and pulled and made a mess of it. For a while it even lost much of its shape.

Now the ceiling is higher, though the walls are thinner. The door is a bit too tall and the back wall is still too thin, but this summer promises strong growth.

April 3, 2009

A Measure of Success

Filed under: family, personal, professional — artwells @ 4:53 pm

measurementFlora put this above the door down to the basement, where my office is. This pretty much says it all.

We broke even in March financially, and in its first week, April looks good. I’ve got a part-time job with customerforce along with a few new gigs, and some huge possibilities.

After being in such an ill place professionally, I wish it didn’t take global financial strife to get me to a better place, but it seems that it did. Yay!

Added “Create A Decent WordPress them for your own blog” to the todo list.

November 25, 2008

I Now Know Five Things

Filed under: faith, family, personal — artwells @ 5:53 am

I used to know four things.

I mean really, really, know, for certain, in a shut-up-you-can’t-tell-me-otherwise. Because it’s important to feel this way about something, and dangerous to feel this way about the wrong things, I revisit the List of Things I Believe often. This time, I made a dramatic addition to the list while my son fell asleep on me. I’d like to make this into a “you know, my son taught me something today” type of tear-jerker, but it can’t be. My son was falling asleep on me, in the same rocking chair in which my mother rocked me to sleep, and I was thinking about cold certainty.

The list used to be:

  1. I am.
  2. I sense.
  3. I want.
  4. I don’t always sense what I want.

I’ve always been uneasy about that last one. It assumes something, and perhaps a great deal, about time. The last bit doesn’t count at all when I’m completely satisfied. But HA!, I don’t care about the list when I’m completely satisfied anyway, so it doesn’t matter. I’ve come up with other cheap tricks to get around that uneasiness, but nothing’s stuck for long. Here’s the next trick.

  1. I am.
  2. I sense.
  3. I want.
  4. Now is a moment different from others I can remember or imagine.
  5. At different moments my sensations correlate with my desires to different degrees.
  6. I need to work on the wording quite a bit, but that’s the list for now. In the end, this list gets me to a point where I can guess that other things exist. Why I would bother with this while a warm bundle is spreading a drool spot on my shoulder is another issue entirely.

November 3, 2008

Going To Have To

Filed under: family, glove, personal — artwells @ 8:53 pm

Me: Hold on. Glove.
Flora: Daddy, you don’t have to take a picture.
Me: No, I don’t have to. I’m going to.
Flora: Same thing.