tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-41470572024-03-07T01:58:09.502-08:00Idiotgirl Seattle"'The cocks did crow to-whoo, to-whoo,
And the sun did shine so cold!'
--Thus answered Johnny in his glory,
And that was all his travel's story."
From William Wordsworth's Idiot Boy, 1798SusanShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13965733461636067163noreply@blogger.comBlogger109125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4147057.post-30054701374026128252016-03-08T13:18:00.001-08:002016-03-08T13:18:37.924-08:00My new digsI've started a new blog. Hope to start blogging again. Come visit:
Island Idiotgirl
SusanShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13965733461636067163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4147057.post-59039350964130859452014-03-19T19:44:00.000-07:002014-03-19T19:46:57.478-07:00England and Wales tripDon, Clara, and I are going to take a trip to Wales and England in the first half of April. Thinking that we'll probably use this blog.
http://claradonsusie.blogspot.com/
SusanShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13965733461636067163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4147057.post-55578811937353908422013-05-15T19:03:00.002-07:002013-05-15T19:03:50.595-07:00HummingbirdsChoose this design because of all the hummingbirds on my island. Hoping to write more. Have retired from Adobe. Working on my Joseph book. Hoping to write more. Writing is hard.SusanShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13965733461636067163noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4147057.post-82379201826710690372012-01-06T18:33:00.000-08:002012-01-16T19:43:38.528-08:00PuppyI guess puppy is one of my most important new years resolutions. Some basic facts:Bought her from Erin. Not cheap. I had been thinking about Cavalier spaniel for a while. Having Erin get the advantage and knowing about her puppyhood helped me to loosen the bankbook. But obviously just the cost is a commitment. (Plus it’s a little life.)She is cute but strong willed. I’ve been reading and SusanShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13965733461636067163noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4147057.post-79057295109611442052011-08-11T19:04:00.000-07:002011-08-11T19:09:22.616-07:00Almost a yearSince I posted on my blog. How pathetic is that. Here is a link to my recent note on Facebook about my glorious neighborhood:http://www.facebook.com/notes/susan-staker/today-in-the-neighborhood/10150268209027955SusanShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13965733461636067163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4147057.post-58367601702077339752010-08-23T18:33:00.000-07:002010-08-25T19:05:26.135-07:00Why Whidbey? Why now?Looks like I’m buying a house on Whidbey Island (located about 20 miles north of Seattle in the Puget Sound)! To tell the truth I’m as surprised as my friends and family: “You’re what? What about your garden? What about your cute bungalow? What about Seattle? What about Greenlake?”It all started the week of July 4. I rented a house on Whidbey Island for my SusanShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13965733461636067163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4147057.post-91123438244403276972009-09-09T18:00:00.000-07:002009-09-09T18:26:37.820-07:00SabbaticalI spent at least a decade in academia. So I’m well aware that a tech “sabbatical” is a pretty pathetic thing. Three weeks, every five years.I start mine on my birthday a little over a week from now. I’m attaching my extra three weeks to a “shutdown” (Adobe has 4 weeks of enforced vacation this year, one for each quarter, taking vacation as it turns out SusanShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13965733461636067163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4147057.post-8776404150435705502009-08-07T18:42:00.000-07:002009-08-07T19:13:52.818-07:00My adventureHere are some pictures that Sarah took the day of my excellent adventure with TGA. I really am pretty vague in remembering anything until the very end--vaguely remember the picture with nurse and doctor. I do remember the lake. We were waiting for Don’s plane.Update. I’ve had a further test (EEG). And the results were good. Doctor agrees I had an episode of Transient Global SusanShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13965733461636067163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4147057.post-81139181840215567012009-07-28T08:35:00.000-07:002009-07-31T13:55:41.739-07:00A weird tripLast week I took a very weird trip. The first thing I remember is sitting in a hospital room, my daughter Sarah telling me to read the papers in my hand and at the same time plying me with food--a burrito, chips, a soda. I kept reading and rereading the story my daughter handed me, trying to make sense of the words on the page:“Mom you woke up this morning feeling disoriented (about 6:SusanShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13965733461636067163noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4147057.post-86468460500188807542009-07-07T22:08:00.000-07:002009-07-07T22:17:58.511-07:00What I did on my summer vacationHere are photo’s of last week. Spent on the Olympic Peninsula. Rialto Beach, the river, Hoh Rain Forest, La Push. Washington is a wonderful place. Played backwards I believe. A little narrative chaos for good measure. SusanShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13965733461636067163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4147057.post-36348932301006202292009-06-25T19:32:00.000-07:002009-06-25T21:27:14.205-07:00Daddy's Toupe(e)These are pictures of my dad.Notice the hair. By the time all of these pictures were taken, my dad was completely bald (a little fringe around the nether edges). He lost his hair on his mission. This means that by his early twenties he had no hair to speak of. Legend has it that as a young man he had an amazing head of hair--auburn hair. This was important to me because I was known as a young SusanShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13965733461636067163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4147057.post-82112098852235337342009-05-18T09:24:00.000-07:002009-05-18T09:25:05.758-07:00Before and afterSusanShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13965733461636067163noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4147057.post-8262512747209157582009-05-13T18:22:00.000-07:002009-05-13T18:35:44.879-07:00Books galoreI do have a problem. A garage in California full of books. A house in California full of books. All the brand new shelves I had in the house in Seattle--filling up with books.How to manage what I know defines me in very real ways. But can get out of hand. Options I’ve discovered:Libraries. Take too much planning. Never did these that successfully. At one point in time returned a car fullSusanShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13965733461636067163noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4147057.post-67862804620714836422009-05-10T20:19:00.000-07:002009-05-10T20:21:10.494-07:00Holy BasilLast summer when I was in India, I was talking with my co-workers about cooking and recipes. I asked, “Do you use basil in your cooking?”Preran, one of the writers I work with, answered. “No we don’t use it for cooking. We worship it.” He went on to tell me that women have basil shrines as part of the household. Basil is apparently very good.Anyway, later in theSusanShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13965733461636067163noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4147057.post-63304033562269441602009-05-01T20:08:00.000-07:002009-05-01T20:31:11.502-07:00GardensIn Teton City, Idaho, where I grew up, everyone had a garden. The sign at the outskirts of town when I was a girl said: Population 350. The congregation of our church was larger than the population of the town. The standard lot in Teton was an acre. That gave you room for a house, a large lawn with flowers, a very big vegetable garden, and a pasture with barn for cows, chicken coop, pig pen, SusanShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13965733461636067163noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4147057.post-83107556423961724152009-03-24T20:10:00.000-07:002009-03-24T20:23:26.429-07:00How I learned to love DostoyevskyI was even younger. Oh so far away. Southeastern Idaho. I went shopping at a bookstore in Rexburg, Idaho--near Ricks college. I found a book describing books. Brief descriptions and then a set of categories, each complete with an icon. One icon meant a “classic.” The other icon meant something like “mature, challenging.” I was 14 years old, about to be a sophomore at South Fremont High School.ISusanShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13965733461636067163noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4147057.post-85812512921779043182009-03-24T19:33:00.000-07:002009-03-24T19:46:09.761-07:00How I learned to love DickensIt was long ago and far away. I was a young, thirty-something (oh so long ago and far away). I was on a trip to Seattle with a friend. I succeeded in getting him to move to Seattle, become a tech writer, and eventually get me into the great tech world in the sky. But that is another story.This story is about Dickens. We got on the train in Salt Lake City, waited for a very long time before the SusanShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13965733461636067163noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4147057.post-24133735864091313852009-03-19T17:26:00.000-07:002009-03-19T18:02:38.797-07:00AgingMy ex retired this past month. My son posted an appreciation of his dad. And he “tagged” me in Facebook on a couple of old photos with his dad and his dad’s family that I've included here.I’ve been thinking a lot lately about growing older. I envy Richard. I too would like to retire. I have all kinds of projects I’d like to address while I still have thought and memory. It’s hard to keep at the SusanShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13965733461636067163noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4147057.post-55359894243843724782009-02-27T18:59:00.000-08:002009-02-27T19:27:50.881-08:00The poetry of codeFor my job I am more and more involved with the developer side of the house. For most of my career at Adobe, I’ve focused on IA (info architecture), style for end user stuff. Now I’m broadening my view, my touch, for better or worse.So tonight I was reading a tutorial on ActionScript (trust me this is important to Adobe). What struck me is how concise and charming this language SusanShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13965733461636067163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4147057.post-36356899514903301082009-02-19T20:47:00.000-08:002009-02-19T20:57:19.001-08:00Random thoughtsA week agoOrganizing content from the ground up, using my editing software to get content ready for a machine to translate, order in US and India, how this impacts my (work) life, emotions--especially sadness, anger, fear, happiness; agon & politics still; charisma, what is a messiah complex--who has to have one?; search, walking, a garden, retirement, on the risks of assuming continuity, is SusanShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13965733461636067163noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4147057.post-53454319028583328042009-02-03T18:21:00.000-08:002009-02-04T13:20:05.970-08:00Miss Bevin goes to Washington--Olympia, Washington Today Sarah, Bevin, and I went to Olympia to lobby our legislators. (My two daughters and me.) Washington state is facing at least 8 billion dollars in debt over the next couple of years. In response, Governor Gregoire, recently re-elected Democratic governor, published a budget proposal for the next 2 years. Not pretty. Cut that go deep into the bone. The state constitution mandates a SusanShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13965733461636067163noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4147057.post-90664842841836527392009-01-28T10:41:00.000-08:002009-01-28T10:51:06.213-08:00Obama as ReaganI thought that this opinion piece from the New York Times today provided an interesting perspective on the way that Obama might take some lessons from Ronald Reagan. I was never a fan of Ronald Reagan at the time he was president. And I still have serious disagreements with pretty much most of his ideas. But over time I have come to respect more things about Reagan. One thing I did learn is SusanShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13965733461636067163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4147057.post-63714365497267203652009-01-27T18:43:00.000-08:002009-01-27T19:22:24.975-08:00What's the point? Why not phone?That was the question from my sister JoAnn, older than me and in her seventies, when I engaged her in her first “chat” on Facebook. We had chatted back and forth about how she came to be on Facebook: her daughter made her join. But then she to to her point : What’s the point of this chat thing? Why not just phone?That’s not a bad question. I’m new to Facebook SusanShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13965733461636067163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4147057.post-10463266173064866802009-01-23T18:53:00.000-08:002009-01-23T19:41:03.766-08:00Serial Killer ReduxMuch to my surprise (really), the audiobook I listened to post Heartsick turned out to be another:Book by a first time authorBook with a sequelBook about a serial killerThe details of this book were unknown to me as I began my listen. I purchased the book because of the number of times it appeared on the best of 2008 lists. But I remembered no details. And this somewhat accidental book has SusanShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13965733461636067163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4147057.post-59769906696577070782009-01-16T18:45:00.000-08:002009-01-18T17:32:39.001-08:00Reader as goat: A minor crisisI recently noted on my blog (Read and Drive) that my reading tastes are a tad eclectic--that I’m something of an omnivore. My son replied no, Mom, you’re a goat.He has some evidence for this view. I have licensed his computer to access my Audible account--my secret audiobook list. He knows the full scope of my reading (listening) shame. I’m sure that it seems, looking at that list, that I might SusanShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13965733461636067163noreply@blogger.com1