INTERACTION
Unfortunately I have been slacking off on posting on classmates' blogs during this last leg, and when I've tried in last-ditch attempts to pump up my portfolio, I run into problems. I did make a point, as always, to respond to comments on my blog.

DEPTH
I tweet about my blog updates and reference my outside material for those who are too busy or would rather just get straight to that.

DISCUSSION
For my creative writing entries, I provide microblog updates/brief descriptions about where my idea came from.

OUTSIDE MATERIAL
In entries regarding my website, I always include a link to the the stage of the site being referenced.

ETHOS
In regards to my ethos, I feel this very blog portfolio is the essence of it. There is some more writing that reflects it, though, as well as tweets.

and CONVENTION
I provided a detailed and successful site map and uploaded my simple site without too much pain, linking it to Twitter.

I don't know why I could access my RSS feed for my Tweets for the first two portfolios in order to highlight individual tweets, but cannont find where to do that for the most recent portfolios. I am aggravated and sorry. :( In essence I learned quite a lot during this short fifteen weeks.

Here is a look at what I have been up to. There's a navigation bar and everything now. Yes, I realize there are not links to pages yet for "My Favorite Things" and "Creative Spaces," but be patient. It will happen. Check out the site and also feel free to offer up any advice for editing, improvements, revisions, whatever you want to call it. Thanks!

First there's going be a homepage.
On the homepage there will be links to my poetry, my blog, my twitter profile, and my sister's tumblr page.

Clicking on my poetry will take you to a page where all the titles of my poems are listed.
Clicking on one of the titles will take you to that poem. Each poem will have it's own page.

Clicking on the blog will take you my Seton Hill Blog.
Clicking Twitter will take you to Twitter.
And clicking on the link that says favorite links, will bring you to a page of links to my sister's blog and a few of my favorite authors' sites.

That's the basic layout for now. It shouldn't change that much, but we'll see.

Ronald Stevens, a young, but accomplished surgeon, had never had to do a full-scale brain surgery before. He wasn't nervous, though. He wasn't even shaking, though the pleasant female voice paged him again. It was time to get down to the O.R. He wasn't late, but he should go. He still had fifteen minutes to prep. He wasn't late. He wasn't nervous. He smiled at a couple of interns as he picked up his pace, and suddenly, almost too soon, he was faced with the swinging double doors to the surgical wing, looming before him like two stern deans just itching to fail him. But he wasn't nervous.

"Dr. Ronald Stevens to the O.R. Dr. Ronald Stevens to the O.R."

It was the voice again, the voice telling him to proceed, with caution of course. He heaved a sigh, gathered his bearings, pushed through the stainless steel doors, bore a right, and there he was. The patient was already there and had been prepped for surgery, anesthetized and everything. The lab technicians were all stationed around the operating table along with an assisting surgeon, Dr. Masters, and two nurses. He wasn't late.

He took a deep breath, washed his hands, tied a mask around the lower half of his face, put on the latex gloves. Good thing he had put on his scrubs for surgery that morning; he wouldn't have remembered now if his life depended on it, let alone the patient's life. He wasn't late. He wasn't nervous. He had this. This was just a simple lobotomy; it happened every day. There was nothing to worry about.

The lab techie shaved the patient's scalp, and the nurse sterilized the area where the incision was to be made. Now it was his turn. He picked up the scalpel and slieced ever so carefully, making a clean, even cut a little left of center. He set down the scalpel for a moment and his breathing became more rapid. He was not hyperventilating. He was not nervous.

When the part of the skull was removed, and the mass of brain was visible, Dr. Stevens felt as though he was havinga stare down with his worst enemy. There it was, so pink and fleshy. It was hard to fathom, all th etiny rivets and maze-like columns wound among columns, they were all in his hands. He imagined the pink, bloody mass pulsating, almost at him, as if daring him to make a mistake. Oh, the pink, and the blood; suddenly he was aware of the blood. But he had seen blood before. He was not going to vomit. He was not nervous.

"Dr. Stevens?" Dr. Masters raised a quizzical eyebrow towards him. "Are you alright?"

Dr. Stevens took one look at Dr. Masters and handed him the scalpel before dashing from the room wiht his hand over his mouth.

The second hand makes it's way meticulously, mechanically, around the face of the clock, looming before the classroom like a beacon of presistence and urgency. Time's almost up. If one looks closely, one can almost hear each tick...tick...tick...as though it were being impounded into one's very mind, in their brain, in their ears, though of course, in reality, there is no sound at all. Still the clock grows bigger, magnified times a hundred, so large to a prson in that last row that it could in fact occupy th entire capacity of the room and grow, reaching back further and further, until it was just touching the tip of the nose of that person. But that would be letting one's imagination run wild with the wind.

The wind outside. The wind. The windows. The windows to the right that run all the length of that far wall, a faded peach color, and smooth like a peach, too, though not fuzzy, thankfully. Through the spotless sheen of glass, behind the window frames, lies the world outside the classroom, outside the building. There are trees and people, birds, and the wind. Gleaming through the paned and shuttered windows, rays of sunlight poke their way into the gloom and mechanical air of the classroom, like a long lost, but not so easily forgotten friend. They dance their way across the floor and the desks, through an dpast the students. They reach, reach, reach their never-ending light into the room with an air of promise. They promise joy and freedom and fancy. They stretch all the way to the door.

The big wooden door looms over the room like a guardian of time. No one enters, and no one leaves but by specific leave. It is both the captor and the savior. Through this door is the way to freedom, to outside, to sun, to wind.

INTERACTION
I commented on classmates' blogs and responded to comments on my own blog.

DEPTH
I posted lengthy and sometimes slightly risque creative pieces, and provided commentary on how I got my ideas for those pieces in either comments or separate entries.

DISCUSSION
Along with leaving commentary on my own blogs to enhance my readers' experiences, I also make brief reference to my ideas accompanying links to my blog entries on Twitter.

OUTSIDE MATERIAL
On my entry about my multimedia project, I included a link to the Facebook page I created for Seton Hill's Creativity Center.

ETHOS
I express myself as a writer and a professional not only in my blog, but also in my microblog.

and

CONVENTION
I successfully put together a smoothly edited video, uploaded it to a web page, and incorporated the link to the page in my entry about my multimedia project.

Don't be afraid to ask for help, and do it sooner rather than later.

I pitched my project to current and potential students of Seton Hill about the values of the Creativity Center, which I don't think a lot of people really know about, and extended it to the Facebook community by doing the writing portion on a the page I created for it, as well as uploading my video on there, so that everything was in the same spot. Without further adieu, check out the page!

Dr. Arnzen provided us with a bit of dialogue and told us to "stage the scene" by writing out a short piece, filling in the action around the dialogue, and using only that dialogue. It was really fun to see how different everyone's turned out. You couldn't even notice they all had the same dialogue.

This technique is something I still use in my writing today. Whenever I'm stuck, it usually helps me to start off with some dialogue first, and then to write around it, to stage the scene. Of course, it depends on what you're working on, so it might not always work. I find it usually works best when you're starting fresh on something, but don't really know where you want to go with it just yet.

You could also combine this trick with the overheard conversation exercise, I discussed in a previous entry. Use someone else's conversation, but write your own scene to it.

Well, she thought to herself. Now is as good a time as any to end it. I mean, he has to know. It's been over for a while. If he didn't know, then he was just plain stupid, or in some major denial. It was now or never. She gathered her bearings, and, with a deep breath, brought herself into his range of vision.

Upon seeing her, Oliver immediately got down on one knee, presenting her with the bouquet of roses she hadn't noticed in her pre-meeting observation with one hand, while with the other hand he dug in the lapel of the ridiculous suit he was wearing. The sight of him down there on the ground would have been almost comical, though he had surprisingly good balance. And then it hit her, what was going on here. Oh, Jesus, she thought.

"What are you doing here?"

It was the only thing she could think of to say without acknowledging what was about to happen.

"Isn't it obvious?"

He gestured to the box she presumed was holding a ring with a jerk of his head, and tried with further effort to hand the roses off to her.

"I suppose that's what you want people to think," she responded, placing one hand her hip and waving her free hand towards the only two people in sight, an elderly couple on a nearby bench, who, with one look at each other, rose in silence and vacated the lane.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Oliver pleaded with her. He was starting to sweat. His glasses were askew and his cowlick was starting to stick up, despite the massive amounts of hair gel he had applied in order to get his hair to stick to his skull earlier that day.

"Oh, sure, play dumb. That's your response to everything, isn't it?" She was thinking again of Charlie and wondering if it was possible that he really didn't know. It was pretty obvious to everyone else.

"No, I have another one."

"What's that?"

He searched for the words and, after a long pause, retaliated with, "I often tell people to...shut the hell up."

With his rise in temperament, he had finally fallen over, though with a vain struggle to keep upright. It had all happened so fast. The ring box had gone flying, and the roses, which had managed to come undone from the arrangement, despite Oliver's clutching at them, were now strewn in all their beauty, sporadically along the base of William Shakespeare. It was as though his body had succumbed to a state of defeat and rejection, long before he had even considered it.

Emily rolled her eyes impatiently. She didn't have time for these games, and she rather annoyed at Oliver's feeble attempts at winning her over, to say the least.

"I see how it is." If this turned into a fight, if she made it his fault, maybe she could avoid telling him outright.

Oliver had managed to regain his composure somewhat, and had placed the ring back in his inside pocket for safekeeping. Now wasn't the time, obviously. He began trying to reassemble the roses into some kind of order, and looked towards Emily.

"So are you going to help or are you just here to distract me?" He said this gently, almost teasingly.

He was trying to make jokes now. Well, Emily wasn't going to stand around for that. She looked at her watch. I'm just going to have to tell him and get it over with.

"No, I have to go. Charlie is waiting for me."

"Charlie?"

"Yes Charlie," she snapped. "And he's waiting."

"Who's Charlie?" this quietly, truly defeated. He knew. Somehow, inside, he must have known it all along. It was really over, after all these years.

She couldn't do this any more.

"I have to run. See you."

She turned to go, and he called after her with false hope.

"Maybe you will."

"Maybe I won't. And, oh, one last thing."

She searched for something to say that wouldn't sound too harsh, and as she struggled to find the right words, her eyes began to well up.

"What is it?" Oliver prompted, half with worry, half with hope.

Maybe she would change her mind, and with his pent up eagerness at this thought, he squeezed the handful of roses around the stems, no longer in their packaging. He winced as he felt the thorns pricking his fingers. He had forgotten about the thorns.

She reached for his wounded hand and placed in it a few tissues from her coat pocket, for the blood that was now oozing from his fingers.

"Be careful with that."

Maybe she's an angel, or a seraph, I thought to myself. She is too exquisitely beautifu to be of this world.

As I continued to watch her, mesmerized by her every movement, every shif in her seat, every wrinkle of her nose, every flit of an eyelash, I became aware of her presence not three feet from where I was sitting and felt sure, just from continuing my detailed survery of this captivating creature that she was the very embodiment of perfection. With my mind, I willed her to look up and see me, too. I wondered how long it had taken me to disengage from my musings and notice her attention shift to me. I hoped she hadn't seen the drool.

"Hey there, fella," she said. "Your coffee's getting cold."

Her voice. Her voice! Her magnificent voice was Mendelssohn's "Hallelujah Chorus;" it was birdsong on a summer day. I had to pull myself together; I mentally shook myself and then dabbed at my chin with a napkin.

"Oh, yes," I replied. "I suppose it is...I'm sorry, if I was staring...I didn't mean to stare, it's just...you're so...and...sorry."

Why couldn't I form words in front of this miraculous woman?

I glanced at her nervously to see how she would respond dto my prattle, hoping I hadn't blown it. She feigned indifference. Oh, the mystery! Why couldn't I be coy and cool? I tried again.

"It's just...you're very beautiful is all...I suppose you're used to people st-...but still, I shouldn't have been...I'm Dave."

She calmly laughed it off, and I noticed her voice had a deep ahd husky quality to it, not like those of other women I had dated. Then again, it was sexy, but stil la little off-putting. I just wished I knew how to read her, so I would know if I was wasting my time; however, she hadn't left yet, so that was a good sign.

"Let's say you and I get out of here and go somewhere," she said suggestively.

Not knowing how to take her, I quickly agreed, and picked up her check and mine.

"I didn't get your name," I reminded her, by way of asking what it was.

"You can call me Dannie," she replied.

"Um, should I...?" I started.

She cut me off. "I'll drive."

And that is how we ended up back at my apartment. We didn't even make it all the way back to the bedroom, and it hadn't been five minutes, but she already had my shirt off and her blouse unbuttoned halfway down. Her kisses started out slowly, long and languourous; they were sex on the beach. After a minute though, they became rough and rushed, but I culd still sense the passion in them. Her hands were large, and I noticed the skin on her arms was tough and coarse, like someone who had spent a lot of time in the sun or working outdoors in the elements. And they were hairy; her arms were really hairy. I don't think I can remember any woman in my life being so hairy, unless my grandma, but before I could make comment on it, her tongue was in my mouth.

It took a while, but I finally removed first her shirt, and then her bra. Her breasts were full and perfectly symmetrical, almost too perfect to be real. She moved with animal instinct and lunged for my belt buckle with her hands without stopping the kisses. I tried to feel up her leg which also harbored the same toughness to its skin, but just as I was nearing the bottom of her skirt and going for the kill she pushed me away, spun me around and threw me down on the sofa.

Now I was getting pissed off. Who did this girl think she was? I was the man there; I couldn't remember ever being so bullied by a woman before. It was time for me to take action. I was not going to be pushed around by this beautifully demonic temptress any longer. Just as she made to mount me, I pulled myself out from under her weight, grabbed her by the shoulders, and rammed her against the wall adjacent to the sofa. I held her arms against the wall, pinned her by the wrists and pushed my weight against hers, using the entire length of my body and all the strength tha was in. That's when I noticed a hardening beneath the fabric between us, not mine, "hers."

Let's just say I won't be calling "her" again.

It is bad enough to vacate the protective shell of warmth and comfort created by the soft linen sheets and cushiony silk down that are my bed covers; but then to have to peel off the pajamas that are like a second layer of skin to me is total and complete agony in surrender. I remove the pants first, to get the worst of it over with. Along with the removal of the long, soft, fleece-lined sweat pants that just barely graze the skin comes the feeling of cold and vulnerable nakedness. I quickly try to block these thoughts from my mind as I grab a pair of jeans and pull them on, one leg at a time. I wince at the feeling of the cool, restrictive feeling of the denim material, clenching itself around my legs and binding me within the coarse, rough walls of its inflexible imprisonment. I button the hard, cold, brass button at the top, and zip up the jagged teeth that make up the sides of zipper, lacing myself in to this blue jean cage indefinitely.

I breathe in deeply, as the most difficult and excrutiating part of the dressing process comes to a conclusion, the first steps in becoming a functional human being for the day complete, and move on to strappping on a bra, which surprisingly doesn't bother me as much as putting on a pair of jeans does. It is comforting, the feeling of lift an dsupport a bra provides me; it's like waking up for the day, knowing that life is hard, but you have friends. I feel the chill in the air of my room and quickly try to correct it by slipping a gray camisole over my head. The feeling of the light cotton material against the skin of my torso is like Heaven is holding me in the palms of its hands. I pull on a flowy, blue, spaghetti-strap tank top over the camisole, and think of how at least the top part of my self can feel the freedom of movement today, as the dreaded jeans come into my mind again, with their pulling, pinching tension. I love this shirt, I think to myself, trying to keep the start of my day on a positive note. Wearing this shirt is like being held in the arms of someone you love and danced around a field of flowers on a sunny day. It is like being cradled in a cloud of security and knowing I am safe and free, fearless and beautiful.

And as I think these things, I notice the denim of the jeans beginning to loosen its grip around my legs. The tightness is not as much as earlier. They are a reassuring hand on my knee, a strong arm around my waist. Knowing I can breathe now, I walk out the door and face the world wondering how soon it will be before I will want to put my sweats back on.

Now, as the semester has progressed, so have the entries in my blog, becoming more defined in ethos and discussion, and including some of my own work, as promised.

INTERACTION

I respond to the opinions of my readers by giving them what they want to see more of in my blog, as well as commenting back to their comments they leave. I also comment on my classmates' blogs.

DEPTH

I provide links in my microblog to new blog entries, so that all my readers can be alerted if they want to stay caught up. I also have entries detailing brainstorming ideas for writing that are extremely specific.

DISCUSSION

On the entry, Harvey Frick is Reborn, I left a comment at the end of the entry explaining where my idea came from for it for those readers who are interested or want to try a similar technique.

OUTSIDE MATERIAL

In my remix project entry, I provided the links to the original sources for the material.

ETHOS

The tone my writing sometimes takes on is reflected in the short piece, Complications and in the Tweet linking to that entry.

CONVENTION

This portfolio showcases how I learned to include a creative commons license in my entries, and also how to link a picture in a microblog post.

He smiled just to think of Amanda, yet, at the same time, it was oh-so-thrilling to be the object of Babycakes's online pursuit. Enough, that's enough for today. He closed the laptop with the idea of a quick romp in the sack in mind, and hoped Amanda was up for it. As he made his way down the hall, his stomach rumbled, and, with a sigh, he made a detour towards the fridge.

"What time is it?" Amanda called down the stairs. She had an interview at three, and would just be getting out of the shower.

"It's one-fifteen!" Scott yelled back to her, imagining her in a little pink lacy bra and pantie set from Victoria's Secret, or, better yet, still in her towel.

"Thanks!" she responded, sounding rushed.

He opened the fridge, hoping to find some pudding. He stared at its contents blankly, momentarily distracted as he fervently recalled Babycakes's last words to him only moments before: "Go rev up your engine, big boy; I'm gonna wax down my car."

Was it creepy, these little online sexcapades? No, he shook that thought out of his mind almost as it came to him. It was just normal male instinct taking over, it's not like it was hurting anyone. But it would hurt Amanda, if she knew...But she doesn't know.

Scott was called out of his reverie by the cold air coming from the fridge and monotonous hum of the machine, and only then remembered he was still standing there with the door open.

"What the hell was I looking for anyway?"

He couldn't remember. He shrugged it off and grabbed the can of whipped cream and jar of maraschino cherries instead. He grinned as he imagined Amanda, perfumed and primped, waiting for him. He shut the door, and as an afterthough, grabbed the cowboy hat sitting on the top of the fridge and made his ascent up the stairs.

"Hey babe!" he called.

"If you want to further your education, and if you expect us to help you pay for it, you're going to have a pick a major that will pay the bills," his father had sternly told him.

"Yes, hone, and I just don't see Creative Writing as something that would help you do that. Why not go Pre-Med?" his mother suggested.

That was how Harvey had become an accountant. Now he was forty-three years old, and he felt he had accomplished nothing he set out for himself to do all those many years ago, when he was a young man of eighteen and the world had been wide open to the possibilities.

Sure, he appeared to be the perfect employee, but Harvey, in fact was not. He never called in sick or came in late. He even came in to work for others who called off. He showed up to work every day, Monday through Saturday, at eigh o'clock on the dot and always stayed at least an hour later than closing time at five to finish up paperwork or anything else he might want to work on. And though he had earned the right to two weeks' paid vacation every year since his third consecutive year ov employment and the Richardson Accounting Agency, having no wife or living family to spend it with and very few friends, he never felt the need to take advantage of it. He was the perfect employee on the outside, but on the inside, he didn't even want to be there. And isn't that really the key to any successful career? That the very essence of being a good employee was rooted in the depth of one's core, programmed into their DNA or something, is love for their job, love for what they do? In Harvey's opinion, it was.

Then, one day, a not so extraordinary day, Harvey did something completely out of the ordinary. He called his boss and told him he would not be in for three months and to hire a temp in his place until then. He was taking his vacation.

I've lived my whole life without really living it," Harvey told himself, in a brilliant moment of revelation. He wanted to be the man he was when he was seventeen. A man who still knew how to dream, who saw things with many pairs of eyes and from many different perspectives, not just his own, someone who didn't go through the motions everyday, but lived in the moment; and then it came to him. He was going to write a book.

The purpose of these "Overheard Conversations" assignment was to show how someone's naturally spoken dialogue and action could be staged into a truthful and naturally depicted production. More importantly, I learned from it that stories can be found everywhere, including in the conversations of every day people. Especially in the conversations of every day people.

Why am I telling you this? For all you writers out there who have hit a creative roadblock, or are just plain stumped, try eavesdropping on some unsuspecting people and see what you can make out of their words.