exploring Internationally

Seattle's International District is a strange and wondrous place. 

They have dragons on the power poles.

They have big traditional gates standing guard over sleek modern cars.

They have the Wing Luke Museum, housed in an old hotel where wave after wave of Asian immigrants lived after they arrived while they got their feet under them.  The Wing Luke is named after the first Asian-American Seattle City Council member, who died in a plane accident at a too-young age.  Not just a museum of the immigrant experience (although it does that extremely well -- the tour of the restored hotel was a highlight of the visit), but one of all Asian-Americans, it includes art as well as history.

And they also have Uwajimaya.  I'm hard put to describe Uwajimaya.  It's sort of like Cost Plus, sort of like Target, plus a huge grocery store and a mall food court, all in one.  Except, of course, that it's all Asian, all the time [g].  The grocery store is particularly fascinating.  I love learning about what other people eat.  And if you want manga, the bookstore is your place.  Not just shelf after shelf, but wall after wall, both in English and in the original languages.  Fun stuff.

The express bus from Tacoma goes right into the heart of the International District.  A good day was had by all.

P.S.  My website has been updated again, to include sections on the freelance museum work and writing business I am starting.  Please come by and check it out. 

pictures! and references!

I have added many new reference sources and photos to my website, and would love it if anyone wants to take a gander and tell me what you think.

Also, I finally managed to take a picture of the Meeker Mansion, where I am doing my hat practicum, and here it is:

Isn't she beautiful?  The house was built in 1890, and is in the process of being fully restored (it was a hospital and a nursing home among its past lives -- much work has been done, but it still needs more).  I work in the attic, which is much better than it sounds.  It's very light and airy up there.  My workspace is just above the three window section on the first floor.

My website is no longer TK!

I just let the guys (my two elderly male cats, Morgan, who is white, and Linnet) out onto the patio so they could see for themselves that it is indeed January and therefore raining. I expect them back in momentarily.


My big news today is that my website is no longer TK! It is now live, and it is available for your perusal at http://mmjustus.com/.

The content is just a starter set. I have much more in the way of librariany research bibliography and link citations to post over the next few weeks, as well as more photos relevant to locations in my stories. The novel synopses and short excerpts are from my “pre-published” work, a term an acquaintance used that tickled me. The hullabaloo that will ensue when (not if) I do sell one of them will be more than audible here, I assure you. I also have at least one novella manuscript that I will post on the site a chapter at a time in the near future.

I tried to give my site a unified look as this was my first attempt at graphic design of any sort. The banner here and on the site is from a photo I took in September, 2006, from a point in the Upper Geyser Basin, looking back upstream towards twin eruptions of Grand Geyser on the left and Castle Geyser on the right. If you look very closely, you’ll see a building in the center distance. That is the Old Faithful Inn. It was very cold and windy that day, and it snowed that night, just as it did on Chuck in September, 1877, in Repeating History. The following year I was there at the same time, almost the same week, and it was in the upper 80s. You never know what kind of weather you’ll get in Yellowstone.

I hope you will enjoy the site and visit it again as I add more to it, and that you’ll find it useful.

Evidently it’s momentarily. The cats want back in. They’re complaining loudly, of course, because it’s January. It looks a lot like my banner out there just now. Minus the geysers, of course.

Website TK

Well. I do wish working with computers came more naturally to me. Some aspects do. I’m terrific at learning new programs easily and quickly, and I have more of a concept of how to make a computer work than I do, say, an automobile. Not that the latter is saying much – I know gas goes in one end of a car and oil in the other, and where to take it when it misbehaves.

Which, in some ways, is more than I know when the software refuses to cooperate on my computer, after all. Hardware, yes. I know where to go when the hardware goes belly-up. A small local company called Angel Computers (a wonderfully apt name) has been taking care of my hardware needs ever since I quit relying on my 1000-mile distant brother-in-law for the purpose a number of years ago.

It’s the software everything-but-using-it that’s the battle. From my point of view, a car doesn’t have software (although I know it has a computer). Maybe that’s the real issue.

All this to say that I’ve spent most of the last three days emailing back and forth with my ISP getting the trial run of my website to actually publish. And, at last, it does. Now I just need to design and build the actual page and put the content on it. Why do I feel like that’ll be a piece of cake compared to just getting out onto the web? And why do I feel like a rock climber who needs to keep three of my hands and feet on the cliff at all times?

Website address TK as soon as there’s something to read there. TK? I was a newspaper proofreader in a former life, and read display ads for a living for about three years. TK was what we put in the blank spots while waiting patiently for the sales staff to provide graphics for the finished ad. No, I don’t know why it’s TK and not TC that means to come, but it does.

So. Website TK. Soon, darnit. And next time we’ll have some real content here, too. I promise.