Neil Has Another Great Idea

Every once in a while Neil over at Citizen if the Month comes up with another great idea.  Last Christmas he hosted the first annual Chrismahannakwanza Celebration  (I’m pretty sure I spelled that wrong and it’s NOT coming up in spellcheck)  Along with the unspellalble event, he hosted a Virtual Art Crawl over the holidays.  The great thing about Neil and his ideas is his ability to share them and get others involved.  He’s good at building community.  That is a special talent.

His latest brainchild is a way to recognize his fellow bloggers.  The Blogger Interviews is a rolling, perpetual interview chain.  I got to  interview Jill from Glossy Veneer, and I was interviewed by Finn from A Life Less Ordinary. Here they are…

Finn interviews me….
1.  You’ve only been blogging a few months — how has it lived up to your expectations? How has it not?

I have two blogs actually.  One that chronicles the progress of a large art project, and the other is my more personal space. I decided from the get - go that blogging would be an occasional thing I wanted to do, not something that became a daily obligation.  So far, I’m enjoying exercising my atrophied writing muscles, and communicating with commentors.

How has it not?  I suppose one always wishes for more traffic, and I am surprised that my art project has yet to get any negative comments. I was prepared for them.

2.  You worked at an abortion clinic that actually got bombed. What was that day like?

Not as dramatic as it could have been.  We weren’t seeing patients that day so, it was just the clinic manager and myself staffing the phones. The Molotov cocktail had been thrown through a window the night before. My co-worker didn’t notice it when she went into the building.  I saw the damage as soon I got into the parking lot.

These were the days before cell phones, so I went to the gas station next door and called my co-worker, and told her to get out now!!  Then called the police, etc..  There was minimal damage, and clinic went on as usual that week.

If you want something a little more dramatic I could tell you about the day the protesters actually forced their way into the clinic and locked themselves to pipes and furnishings.  I was getting a pap smear at that very moment!  Doc and I were making jokes about what the commotion would be, and what do you know? We were right

The movie Citizen Ruth was loosely based on that clinic. Almost eerily so for those of us who worked there.

3.  How did you get into quilting? Do you do any other art?

I have sewn my entire life. In the early days, lots of clothes (’cause you couldn’t find blue velvet knickers on the rack.)  In college I didn’ t have time to sew fanciful wardrobes, and started experimenting with patchwork.  I’ve been quilting more seriously for the last 10 years, and have added teaching to the mix.

I have painted and prefer oils for that.  Pretty much every aspect of my life has some form of creativity in it.

4.   Tell us about the war quilt you’re making.

I am coordinating folks from all over the continent (there are some enthusiastic Canadians out there) who are helping me create a memorial for those who have died in the war.  I could go on and on here, but, you might just as well go check out that blog for all the details.  It’s called And Still Counting.

5.  In several posts you’ve mentioned wanting to positive on you blog? Why is that important to you?

I used to try and journal.  I ran across journals from different eras of my life when I moved a couple of years ago.   I was writing all the negative stuff in a hope of cleansing or accomplishing something positive. All I really would have needed was one journal. Each old journal had essentially the same old whining in it.  By recording all that negativity, I was perhaps subconsciously reinforcing that energy.

I think that words have power.   There are a lot of things that aren’t terrifically positive going on in my life right now.  It seems like writing too negatively could make things stick.  Staying  more positively focused helps me see that I actually do get things accomplished.

It all seems a little new agey, but, really  I can’t hurt anyone or thing by trying to stay positive.

Plus, the lifespan of the spoken word is only as long as it is remembered by someone.  Something you write can be read for years and years and years and years.  I don’t want to leave a legacy of bitching and moaning to the eternity that is the internet.

6.  You’ve got a day to yourself with no obligations — what do you do with it?

There will always be some sort of fabric fondling in the mix.  Hang out my nieces - we like the library;  maybe cook;  if I’m in a city with a good gallery or museum you should look for me there.

7.  What’s a man gotta do to get your attention?

Juggling always worked.  And if he takes the bite out of the orange, instead of the apple, extra points.

8.  Living in Minnesota — pros and cons?

Pros:  Family,  friends, nature - there’s lots of beautiful stuff outside, we’re willing to think outside the box and be progressive on things- politics (Jesse Ventura, Paul Wellstone,  I can’t wait to vote for AL Franken!) medicine, education etc..

Cons:  It’s been mostly below zero here all week, that gets old fast,  there’s really no excuse for the non - existence of decent public transportation.

9.  When you were 10, how did you see your life turning out?

As a child, we’re all kind of on a conveyor belt that moves us from one grade level to another, one activity to another, without us having a whole lot of say as to where we’re going to end up.   I have to say, at 10, I kind of expected the conveyor belt to keep moving.

10.  What’s your favorite thing to eat?

Old Home Plain Non fat Yogurt.  I’ll eat the regular fatted yogurt if they’re out of the nonfat, but the texture’s not the same.

And, I interview Jill …..

You’ve been blogging longer that anyone else I’ve encountered. How did decide to get started?

It’s so dorky, back in 2001 I was reading in a tech magazine about a new technologies emerging to make self-publishing on the internet very simple and mainstream. I started the blog by testing some of the companies mentioned in the article. I deleted most of those blogs and then stuck with Blogger because it was the most straightforward platform of all the ones I tested. This was before commenting emerged and mainly people used blogs for personal journals. My early posts were such garbage.

When you first started blogging, the name of your blog was Brain Dump. You now blog under the title Glossy Veneer. Tell me about the 2 names, and what made you want to switch.

Like I said, my early posts were awful. They literally were “brain dumps”, I had a thought or received a joke and I dumped it there so it wouldn’t be cluttering my mind. But after a while I decided that I wanted to buy my own domain exclusively for the blog and Brain Dump wasn’t creative enough to still be available. I just played around with lots of names, running them past my husband. GlossyVeneer got the thumbs up. I never imagined that people would start calling me “Glossy” from that, but I kind of like it now.

Congratulations on recently running your first marathon! How did you get started running? What do you do to stay motivated in your training?

I’ve always wanted to be an athlete. It eluded me for a while because I had a bad attitude. I didn’t want to get sweaty, I was too busy, I was tired, I have bad knees; just making excuses. But about 2003, after several health scares in the family, I decided that I wanted to take better control of my personal health. I started exercising more and eating cleaner. Then my mom and I made a commitment to each other that we would do something really “big” when she was all healthy. This was our something “big”. I don’t know how I stay motivated, I just do. It’s gotten to a point where I feel very antsy if I haven’t done a workout.

You telecommute for your job. Are there any unanticipated outcomes in transitioning from a traditional work environment?

At first I felt like I was the luckiest girl in the world, for having employers that valued me so much that they would give me the opportunity to telecommute. But I’ve found that it is very, very, very lonely being by yourself all day; especially when you’ve moved to a new city and started telecommuting. When I first started and I would go back to the office for a week, I got annoyed because it felt like I was interrupted by people who were telling jokes and stories and goofing off. There’s a lot of that in a traditional work environment. But now I feel that interaction and camaraderie are essential to being a healthy employee. I’m trying to figure out how to reinvigorate my life while still doing my job, because I can’t really invite the neighborhood over for a party during the day and call it “work”.

You have Twitter on your side bar. Can you tell a skeptic like me why anyone would willingly play into the hands of “Big Brother?” This is one of those things I just don’t get.

I don’t know. The Twitter thing came about kind of like blogging, just testing new technologies. I’m finding it doesn’t really jive for me though and I may quit. You would think it would fall right into my previous themes of “BrainDump”, but I know more people are reading the Twits than early blog posts, so I’m a little more self-conscious of posting something like, “I feel gassy today.”

Movies. You review them from time to time. Do have an all time favorite?

No one all-time favorite. I love movies though, even the bad ones. We used to see them in the theatres all the time but it’s kind of pain to get to the theatre now since it’s in a casino and my husband works such long hours. But I do have a few that are definitely at the top of my list: Terminator 2, The Last Unicorn, A Christmas Story and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Random, huh?

Breast cancer has tread harshly on your family. How are your mom and grandma doing? What concerns do you have for your own health?

My grandma just finished radiation for her second breast cancer diagnosis and everything is looking really good. My mom has had breast cancer twice now, the latest bout was a couple years ago and she is doing phenomenally well right now too. Truthfully, I am terrified for my future. I always talk about “when” I get cancer, not “if” I get cancer. And it’s not really a guarantee that I will get it either. I just do my best to exercise and eat right so that hopefully I’ll be healthy. I’m trying to refocus my life to eliminate a lot of the stressors so that I don’t have that affecting my health as much either.

You mentioned some food allergy issues. I have some myself, and feel like my world is sometimes revolving around what I can and can’t eat. Have you found any special coping skills around that issue?

Basically I’m very aware of different names for items that may trigger allergies. I read menus, ingredient lists very carefully and if a restaurant is a chain I look through their site before visiting to narrow down my choices before I even get there.

Finally, How’s your butt? I too, took a tumble down some stairs, landing on my butt, and could not believe how much my ass could not only hurt, but how anything could bruise like that!! I didn’t break my tail bone like you did, so, I’m hoping that didn’t cause you any lingering effects.

HA HA! That’s awesome, the Butt Incident! You know the people that say they can predict the changing weather by a feeling in their joints after an injury? Well, I can’t honestly say that I feel oncoming rain in my butt, it just sounds funny to say that. But then, I live in the desert and we rarely have rain so maybe I can predict precipitation! My butt is doing much better these days, although the bruise lingered for nearly 6 months after that incident. The biggest issue that I’ve had as an outcome of that is that I have lingering fear of walking down stairs at movie theatres, since that’s where the injury occurred. I walk like a little old granny down the steps, one at a time.

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