Virginia Breeze

My good friend Robin at Naked In Eden : Ancient Memories in the Australian Rainforest wrote this about Virginia Breeze and its disorganized captain:

VIRGINIA BREEZE: http://davidnotes.com David’s blog has some of the most beautiful and cherished poetry I’ve read in a long time. It has moved me to tears on more than one occasion. If you enjoy heartfelt honest sentiments that speak of the core issues of our lives then grab a cup of tea, slow down and read some of David’s poems. They are written by someone who feels deeply and has an open heart. You will go away feeling like you know him. They are easy to understand and are mated with beautiful photos. My post this month was inspired by David’s poetry. His writing sets me free and encourages me to be authentic. He also writes about a variety of topics I find interesting, warm, real (and sometimes funny).

You can’t ask for anything better than this in the way of endorsements or morale building moments can you?

Robin is a treasure. Every once in a long while you meet somebody who you feel close to immediately and Robin is one of those people. There is a long list of readers who have fallen under her spell and I am one of them. Her writing is irresistible and she is funny, entertaining and brave.

That last quality I find very admirable. This fine lady lived in a rain forest and wrote a book about her life. Doing those kind of things requires courage.

If we are all unique then Robin is not afraid to share that uniqueness with the world. Why write a personal blog if you are not going to share something that your reader will not be able to read anywhere else? That’s my opinion about blogging and I find that Robin is the perfect example of somebody who does this extremely well.

I hope and pray she will always have time to stop by here for a few moments because I have grown very attached to her in a very short time. She motivates me to continue trying to become a better writer.

I hope you will take time to get to know her too. You won’t be sorry. I promise.

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Have you met someone while blogging you made you feel this way?

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It’s time for a contest here at Virginia Breeze.

And this one will challenge your eye and not your brain. I hope.

Here are five photos containing images from this blog. They are each a part of a different photo and some of you who have been following along since we started here last summer should not find this too difficult.

So this contest starts now and it will end Sunday noon est.

The prize is a 25 dollar gift certificate from Amazon.com.

And all you have to do is be the first person to identify the five posts that contain these images. Then email me the answers (url’s) using the contact page under the header here at Virginia Breeze. Don’t give away the answers or anything else by putting any information here or in another post. We will have a consolation prize and we so don’t want to give the answers away before the contest ends and be disqualified. Here are the five images. . .

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Well it doesn’t seem like very many readers have taken this contest seriously. So starting next week (Sunday) we are going to increase the first prize to fifty dollars. That’s a fifty dollar gift certificate to Amazon. com.

And each week that goes by we will just increase the prize money until I get someone’s attention. It will probably end up being my wife. But hey! She’s a reader too. She just gets to stick her pretty little fist in between my ribs when I am sleeping if she doesn’t like something I have written.

Update://  We have a winner!  It’s Jendrick Hosellmyer from somewhere out there in the tundras of northern Europe.  Thanks Jendrick!  And thank you everyone for playing.  It took quite awhile to get a winner but I’m sure Jendrick will agree that it was worth the wait as he drives his new Toyota Prius around the cracks in the ice while he’s looking for a place to recharge the battery!!

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I rewrote an older poem today and posted it earlier. I had actually been working on another poem but it wasn’t going anywhere fast so I took a look at this one again.

The one that won’t allow itself to be written quickly is about a more serious subject. It’s about why we allow ourselves to be born. Because I think we do. I think we have a choice and we decide to come here for various reasons. The poem goes into some of those reasons.

It’s really about reincarnation.

I happen to believe in this cycle of births and deaths. But the poem is going to take some real work. Maybe this weekend i can clear the desk and do it.

Today I was distracted by this other poem that I hid in my first blog Shooting The Virginia Breeze (a Wordpress dot com blog I don’t really know what to do with it so I hide things in it.)

I rewrote a bunch of lines in this poem and posted it here.

It’s an orphan poem. It never has received any comments. But I like some of the imagery. And we like to go out on a limb here at VB every once in awhile.

This poem originally came about because we often have dinner with the television on. We like to watch The Andy Griffith Show. I had never seen any of the episodes before and they are actually pretty good. There’s a reason this show is still on the air after forty years.

At some point during dinner a commercial comes on about Cialis and impotence. I am sitting there with my wife and often her parents when this thing comes on and they start talking about erectile dysfunction. I find it very strange to be listening to this over dinner with my mother-in-law.

But everybody seems to think it’s pretty funny. There’s a couple in the kitchen and all of a sudden the faucet explodes and water starts geysering towards the ceiling. What’s that all about?

That doesn’t sound like impotence to me. Maybe something else but not that. And then the couple start laughing.

I can just see my wife and i sharing a laugh if our kitchen sink exploded. “HAHAHAH look at that honey! The faucet is sticking in the ceiling and the water’s a foot deep on the floor. I bet there’s a waterfall over by the stairs there. HAHAHAHA.”

What do they put in this medicine. . . . some sort of hallucinogenic? But then I realized that I liked this couple. Because they were happy together and they wanted to work out all their problems together. It wasn’t just about sex. It was about home maintenance and probably a lot of other stuff.

They were not going off looking for thrills with other partners. They were not trying to escape the challenges they faced. They were going to work things out and get old together. And they were going to do it with a sense of humor.

I liked that a lot. So I wrote this poem.

I am also hoping the Cialis people will see it one day and decide they need it for one of their ads.

That way I won’t ever have to worry about home maintenance again. I will have my own live in maintenance guy plus a cook and a cleaning staff.

I really do have this whole thing worked out. And I am a very patient guy sometimes.

You can ask my wife.

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Do you believe in reincarnation?  Have you ever felt like you knew someone from a past life or were in a place that maybe you knew from a past life?

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I received an email from HostGator this morning and it stated that my post on NewsLinkBriefs.com about John McCain caused my CPU usage to grossly exceed the limits set for it.

Here is the post at my old Wordpress.com blog Shoot The Virginia Breeze

http://davidlind.wordpress.com/2008/05/26/senator-mccain-in-good-health-this-week/

So if a post every does become truly popular around here it will never be seen because the host will shut it down. Unless, of course, you rent your own server in anticipation of that day.

It all seems like a catch-22 proposition at this point. I am hoping someone can explain it a bit better.

Update: Once again plugins are in the news. I went to my lovely friends at the Aussie Bloggers Forum

and they were quick to come up with some suggestions. They pointed me to the PluginHogDetector

and by loading it and picking out a few plugins I substantially decreased the loading time of VB. Probably it is loading at least one half to a second faster. All of that time eats up CPU.

But in their message HostGator noted that this problem has been going on for awhile now and they didn’t cut off service until now. Why not drop a note and some advice to the blissfully unaware customer?

“Say there, guy! You are using a lot of CPU! We may have to cut you off if you don’t do something. Why not take a look and see if you have some plugin hogs!”

They could clean it up a bit. But the message would be appreciated. Instead we wake up one day to find we have been disconnected from the Blogosphere! That’s like disconnecting a patient from his life support.

And I am a patient! As well as impatient! The Gator wants business and he doesn’t care if neophytes apply. The more the merrier! Why not give them a helping hand and set an example for all the others out there?

It could mean more business and bigger profits!