Death of a corgi.

I arrived nearly without incident in Chicago and I am making Geneva, Illinois my home for the next two weeks. Well, there are a lot of American flags around here. There are holes in the road. The “Chicago Welcomes You” signs at the airport include the name of the current mayor. There are tolls with sullen attendants that charge 40 cents. White men here are really into Asian women (rather passe now in Vancouver). People string giant festoons of pine branches across their houses. Apartment rent is astronomical. Heck! Everything is expensive here. People don’t smile much here (the media fear described in Bowling for Columbine?). Not many Asian people here in Geneva. Some stores I’ve never seen before, like White Hen Pantry.

And, on top of it all, I am back in front of a damned Japanese keyboard.

Today’s morbid word of the day: cruentation. Blood that seeps out from cuts in a corpse.

A friend who asked to remain nameless decided to explore her new town. Driving along a lonely country road one night she got peeved that the car in front of her was moving so slowly. Then she noticed the ladies at the side of the road beckoning to that male driver in front of her.

She decided to follow him and find out what kind of person he was.

Unfortunately she can’t tell me what this guy was like, nor what woman he picked. Her boyfriend phoned her while she was trailing this other car and she could no longer concentrate on the john.

Ben really slaughtered the spelling of Ceausescu: Tchiechesku.

Sarah says Georgia, Alabama, the Carolinas, Tennessee and parts of Florida have gentlemen. Sometimes good are the fellows in Minnesota, Indiana, Wisconsin, the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Ohio and parts of Illinois. Horrid people come from New York, New Jersey, Maryland and Chicago.

What great surnames: Stoneburner and Clinkingbeard! Though affixing Mrs. at the front of these might not be so elegant.

I am in love!

Here is another handsome fellow!

And my dream gal!

I made about ten ATCs of the twenty I needed for my trades. It took me about an hour - sometimes two - per card. For the last ten I discovered that colour photocopies are reasonably good (Kate even asked me if one of my copies was an original) and cheap.

Yet, even the photocopied ones took me a long time to mount on card paper, as well as attaching the required information on the backs of the cards and writing addresses on the envelopes. I developed a nice font for the addresses and my flourishes are getting quite elaborate.

The problem with ATCs is that I spend a lot of time on something I will never see again. For my twenty this time I spent over ten hours. Plus, with my best ATCs, I am reluctant to give away the original.

I’ve decided to continue my ATC hobby, but to quit trading ATCs online. This is too time-consuming as I’ve got definite deadlines under which I have to mail them. ATC traders seem to reply very quickly asking when I’ll live up to my end of the bargain. I will make pieces for the monthly trade on Main and limit myself to that. Even there most of my cards will be photocopied ones.

I love getting mail and especially decorated mail…but I will have to encourage my own distant friends to doodle more than to rely on artsy strangers to entertain me.

*****

My address font proved to be immediately useful in my day job. Gwen the account executive wanted handwritten notes in each card. She gave me a short script: “To X, Best wishes from the Service Delivery Team and staff at Y Ltd.” For two glorious days I transformed these simple words into a stack of curlicues and plumes for management in my company.

No one had any idea I have artistic pretensions so my wild flourishes stunned everyone in the company. Meaghan said she wanted my font on her computer. Lisa joked that I should write her Christmas cards. Hopefully this will translate into yearly commissions of Christmas card writing.

My goal by then is to master Queen Elizabeth I’s signature.

Mark Abley writes that children typically take a pidgin and turn it into a true language, changing the pidgin into the creole. And the newest language developed by children is the Juba Arabic of Sudan.