This Turned Into an Invitation of Sorts...

I’m in another of those phases where I want to come here and write something, but when I turn on the computer, all I can do is sit and stare at the screen. I think all my creative juices are being sucked up by the café these days. What with Easter coming hard on the heels of Valentine’s Day, and Mother’s Day waiting in the wings, I’ve had to swing my creative focus away from writing for pleasure (or therapy…) The movie meme was fun, though, even if only a few people played. I enjoy the interaction of that kind of thing.

Speaking of interaction, I’ve had an idea bouncing around in my head for about a month. Now that AOL has caught up with the 21st century blogging world and allowed for blogs with multiple writers, I was thinking about starting an ensemble blog. A place where several writers could contribute essays, pictures, whatever. I haven’t hit on a theme yet…but I kind of want to keep it as open as possible. Just nothing silly or cutesy…sorry, I hate those blogs with all the little pictures and tags and…fluff. I guess I’m just not the fluffy type.

I’d like this blog to be somewhat serious…a place where we can write, vent, expound upon things that really matter to us; things that might be of interest to others. My thought is that they would not just be little stand-alone pieces, but that the posts would relate to one another in some way. Like, I write something, then someone else writes a rebuttal, or continues on the theme, or something like that. Or we could have a "Topic of the Week" that everyone writes about. I just think this would be a fun way to build a little neighborhood of our own inside the j-land community. Is anybody interested? If you are, just email me, or leave a comment, and we’ll see about getting something together. It shouldn’t be too hard to get it rolling once we get a few people together…

And now to the business I started out wanting to cover when I sat down at the ‘puter this morning…

I just wanted to whine that we have had exactly one day of spring so far this year in the Pacific Northwest. It was last Saturday. Temperatures soared to the 80-degree mark in some parts of Orygun, the sun put in a rare appearance, and shorts, sandals, fake-and-bake tans and jet-skis were all dug out of their winter cubbies and brandished with wild abandon. Unfortunately, by Sunday afternoon, the sky clouded up, the wind started to whip, and temperatures headed south in a hurry. By Monday night, the forecast was calling for "showers possibly mixed with snow." Augh! WAY too schizophrenic for me.

But here’s a picture I took yesterday. He’s not exactly a harbinger of spring (these little guys stick around all year.) But they are one of my absolute favorite birds. In this pic, he’s in the top of my apple tree, having just finished enjoying a seed carefully selected from the feeder below…

Tags: ensemble blog