NoraSawyer.com

I don’t know why, but I’ve been having trouble writing lately. It doesn’t matter if it’s for my own private paper diary, this here blog, paid web-work or just a grocery list. I’m just blocked.
When I was a kid, I loved drawing. “It makes my brain feel good,” I’d tell my mother. And it did [...]

I’m tired of talking about myself. That’s the hazard of freelancing: I sit around all day in my own company, then go out into the world armed with nothing but anecdotes about myself and my own little adventures. I am my own crazy co-worker, my own flaky boss. I find myself wondering: could I give [...]

Two days ago, I bought a hat. It was kind of a frivolous purchase, but I’d just been paid a few bucks for watching a neighbor’s cat over Easter weekend, and I’d wanted this hat since I first saw it in the shop window last September. So when I walked by the store and noticed [...]

The cat’s still missing, and I really just don’t feel like doing anything today, except sitting in the backyard, mournfully waiting. But time and tide, blah blah blah. Plus the whole NaBloPoMo thing. So, here goes:
1. Blog: I really don’t like blogging just for the sake of blogging. And yet I sign up for every [...]

So. This past Tuesday, the Western Association of Schools and Colleges announced that it was terminating New College of California’s accreditation. As most (if not all) of you are aware, New College is where I earned both my masters degrees, where I finished my bachelors, and where I taught as an adjunct from the fall [...]

What do you do when the cat manages to make himself bleed despite an ecollar, narcotics and constant supervision?
Join the Catster community
You join Catster, of course! And then you sit in the bedroom, frown at the cat, and gloom.
[Edited to add: Don't worry about Herr Katzendumbkopf-- it was just a little blood, and he seems [...]

I spent the morning running around like crazy, finding some lost files and not finding others, dreadging information from long-forgotten data systems and generally behaving like a headless chicken unleashed on an unforgiving, flickering florescent-lit world.
Finally, at 3:00, I took lunch. I ordered some mushroom soup from a nearby deli, ran a series of errands, [...]

As I assured my mother this morning, I am really not all that sick, despite my ongoing blog-winge. That’s a hazard of NaBloPoMo — previously unbloggable events (i.e., “I lay on the couch all day and did nothing”) become newsworthy. Moods that would normally keep one far away from the computer for fear of alarming [...]

Is everyone sick? I slept the better part of the afternoon, but my legs ache like I’ve been doing deep knee bends.

My phone gently expired at some point in the midst of Beowulf’s gut blasting shenanagins the other day. I’d been getting this blue screen of death-type thing intermittently when the thing was low on batteries, but this time, it lasted a whole day, and no amount of plugging it in or turning it on and [...]