January 2006 Archives

Writing by candle flame, in my comfy clothes. A glass of Merlot. Socks on my feet. Guess I'm squeezing out the last few drops of the weekend, here in these deep hours. It won't be long until I am snoozing but, for now...

I'll drift around here, solitary. Remembering.

All clean, in the early evening. Candles perfuming the air. It was a vanishing week, bluring by quick. Friday, now. The last in January. How did that happen?

Think I'll spin out into a different groove.

Somebody I know already is:

Have a good weekend!

If today were December, it would be Christmas. Funny how the past holiday seems so much more distant than it actually is...

I was out this afternoon, as the area slipped more snugly back into Winter-mode. It looked like a shaken slow globe at times. In the night, now, the ground glows white.

Yesterday, a kind of dumbfounded surprise bloomed in me when I realized that I should honestly try to lose about twenty pounds. Sheesh! It's either that or start brushing up on my Cartman line about not being fat, just big boned...

No more snacky-snacky for John-John.

It's bright, but not especially sunny. Still: Sunday. Coffee, the gadget ads in the "weekend-hefty" version of the Post-Gazette, and a sort of slow-motion groove that I always enjoy.

Ah, and now it's getting sunny, too. Nice.

Go Steelers! :-)

Earlier, big winds swirled and poured. Now it's quiet. Some sun-slant, under expansive gray. Things are clearing, though. To blue. I have some older cds playing in my background. At the moment it's, Vertical Horizon (Everything You Want). That seems kind of fitting to me.

I saw a little red Mini Cooper convertible a bit ago (which I always tell myself is good luck) followed directly by a hulking red Hummer. The visual irony made me grin. Just after both, sunshine broke through and flooded the landscape.

Things are calm and peaceful, this Saturday afternoon. Coffee, music and a bit of writing.

I'm feeling bright and I like it.

The snow globe on my desk seems like an anachronism, today. That tiny spherical Winterland out-of-place when held up against the sunshine, blue skies and bird song revealed by my window. If I give it a shake and look through it, I could be seeing through Winter...to Spring.

Better to be in it, though -- instead of just peering through.

So I stepped out...

Now. Madeleine is singing smoothly (Careless Love) and I'm cleaning up old bookmarks; letting things go. Giving my accumulations a little shake.

Seeing through.

The misplaced wave of Spring has passed, gone to vapor...then to frost. Night skies this weekend were deep and clear. They drew the heat up into them. Made it vanish, like a magician stuffing a handkerchief into his hand, and opening it to...nothing. An icy full moon watched the show.

The cold tightens in now. Again.

I'm kind of adrift. Feeling a bit like a breath gone ghostly -- thinning into the chill air. Floating in the deep hours.

I don't know if it is the strangeness of the weather, or my own circumstances...but I feel somewhat out-of-place.

Still suspended in a moment, like in a dream: Spring as a veil, shading the pale face of Winter. At least for these hours. It was 60 degrees out, today. Coat-free weather.

And this little sweetie, blooming in the yard:

I'm sure it will get cold again but, for now...

It's like a jump-cut or a continuity error out there today. Still wrapped around a January hearth -- but, suddenly, it is April in the landscape.

I wore a coat. But there is only Spring cool to guard against. Gusty, like it is at that time of year. Bare...but moist, as if crocuses might start peeping out of the mud any minute now.

It is nice to be cut loose from the normal flow of things, if only for a bit. Reminds you about those other degrees of freedom...

So I repeated, "Puddy-Good, Puddy-Good" to the infamous "Scuzzy Cat" until she sqwinched up her face and started a rusty rattle that became recognizable as a purr. Then she conned me into giving her some more of her especially stinky food.

She's been my buddy all day since then...

Got some cleaning done amid the gray of the day. Despite the relative gloom, I've been feeling rather groovy. Thumbs up to that.

I'm about halfway through the most excellent PS2 Shadow of the Colossus game. It really is quite beautiful and engaging, and I love the subtle moral questions it raises with its minimal (but richly effective) narrative. I can see why many have rated it highly on "Game of the Year" lists.

Nursing an extended coffee buzz, as the day dials down the illumination, I'm about ready to feed Pal and maybe get some dinner started.

Just a Monday...but kinda nice.

Amazingly enough, The Allurium has now been online for five years. Tempus fugit, baby.

I registered the domain name and uploaded the first html files to Dreamhost in January of 2001. I wasn't exactly sure of what I was going to do with The Allurium -- just that I wanted to have a space online that was fully mine. It has mutated quite a bit, over time.

This is what the site looked like when it was first unveiled:

(You can use the Wayback Machine to check it out if you'd like.)

I had other wesites before that. Water (on GEnie - in 1994, I believe) and Indigo (first on CompuServe and then on Concentric.net). Indigo held my initial attempts at an online journal (there were no such things as "blogs", then). The journal was called, "I Have Nothing to Say" and later grew into, "Tangerine: A Book of Hours".

At this point, however, The Allurium has become my "home on the web". I have a couple of other sites sprinkled about ("Slant" on LiveJournal, my Flickr photo site, and a sorely neglected "Locus Solus" on MySpace [cancelled: 01/13/06 - always felt I was too old for that place]) but most of me is here. :-)

I still can't believe it's been here for five years, though.

Time definitely does flutter by...

The sky, lifting toward daylight, is the color of steam. A drizzly rain is casting glimmers on the snow-free ground. Birds are twittering.

2006, and I'm up early, trying for that new year renewal.

First up (after this) some brief exercising, coffee, and something wholesome for breakfast. Then, on to the rest of a day that will (hopefully) include some new writing on my part...

*crosses fingers*

Here's to a very happy New Year, filled with good health, safety, prosperity and joy. 2005 was hard, in many ways. I hope that this new year holds better times and brighter moments.

To life, love, happiness and health.

Hello 2006!