batteries - what to do with them

So after a bit of digging on the internet, I found out that you can drop of ordinary household batteries at many Jiffy Lubes in Los Angeles. Here is the info:

www.lacitysan.org/solid_resources/pdfs/Whats_New_Batteries.pdf

music, creativity

I threw out a bunch of stuff - mostly magazines, paper things....And I started writing a new song. All in the same week. Interesting how creativity is connected to your physical environment and your "stuff." Clearly it is time to let go of a few things and let some new things in.

All about the context

"In teaching writing, being mindful of potential violence is not as much about watching for signs of violence in student writing as it is about observing student behavior." It's all about the context.

View from the back

I'm in the back of the room, blogging quietly, but the poets and writers on this panel are intriguing.

"Being. Being. Being. It's burden and it's bliss."

More from AWP

"Learn every art form you can in this lifetime."

"The difference between poets and other people? Poets think about death ALL the time."

Time and Poetry

"We are in the time of the seer, instead of the agent."

"Poetry is like the movement of consciousness of the mind."

You can lead a horse to water, but can you make the horse believe he is thirsty?

AWP in NYC

Here at the annual AWP (The Association of Writers & Writing Programs) I'm surrounded by poets, novelists, humorists and teachers - 7,000 of them. If AWP ever comes to Los Angeles, WriteGirl will have to have a booth. But for now, I'll just roam around and meet as many people as I can.

Today's soundbite:

"One way to kill your writing is to think about publishing and the marketplace."

October is here

Hard to believe it's already October. I'm heading to 29 Palms in the desert this weekend to rest and meditate, make art and re-energize.

Night Surfing

I don't know what I did with downtime before the internet. I just downloaded a few new mac widgets, googled a few friends, checked my myspace new friends, looked at the earth from a satellite orbiting over us right now, and updated this blog.

Blade conspiracy

I like my legs hair-free but getting a good clean shave is getting more and more difficult, and more expensive, too! It seems that these days all of the female razors (and mens' razors, too) include a "moisture strip" or an "aloe strip". They claim that this allows the razor to "glide" more easily and supposedly moisturize your skin as well. But here's the deal: the razor works great when you first use it, but then as the "moisture strip" gets wet, it expands, lifting the blades away from your skin, making it impossible to get a close shave.

So basically, after you've used a blade once, every time after that is dramatically less and less effective. Man, that's an expensive disposable shaver! It's around 20 bucks for 8 cartridges.

I can't find any blades without this "moisture strip", except the bargain-basement kind with 500 to a bag for 99cents, and I can't seem to ever use those without nicking my ankles. I hate those little sharp snags.

The razor companies know about all this, I'm sure. They're laughing at how something so obvious is just accepted. We just keep paying for those new blades, since we keep needing to shave!

I've looked at the other choices to shaving. There's waxing....ouch! And there's that stinky-smelling Nair stuff we all tried as teenagers. But give me suds and a fresh blade and I'm smooth as silk.

So that's that. I'm stuck buying the pricey cartridges and growling as I'm shaving and showering!