Oh my!

Has it really been that long?
Well, not much happening here that is bloggable. Although I will add my own joy to the internets on a good overall election result. And also my regrets for the propensity of my fellow citizens to vote to limit other citizens' access to equal marriage and adoption rights.

Most of what's going on in the Minor household here is unbloggable. We are doing okay, but there is some stress, mostly work related, and not much sense of when the light at the end of the tunnel might be seen to actually be there. We are healthy, and well, otherwise, though, and I am thankful for these blessings. Tiny cat is doing well, too. Much less stressed than earlier in the fall, so: healthy and fine and furry.

My mother's kitty passed on recently, at 17. He was a real sweetie, and she misses him dearly. I know we do, though it's been a long time since he has been part of my daily life, other than via phone calls. I think her lap must feel very empty in the evening. And although she often complained about his being a bed hog at night, I think that must be a strange transition as well. He was a very good boy, and one of the first kitties we ever met with such a fine, gentle and open personality. He loved us all very well, and took good care of his humans for many years.
In other news, I have been tasked with coming up with 'fun' packaging for a paper gift to some of the family children at Christmas. (Think gift card in an envelope.) We want to make it more interesting to open than just an envelope. I have been looking at various papercraft objects online, and of course thinking of creating some bigger box to open, and perhaps smaller related items which might be packaged with said paper gift, and which might make a sound when shaken. Do any of you have good ideas for this? The kids opening the present (together?) will range in age from about 6-teen.

Pretty

Not up to much. Trying to get into the fall/winter swing of things. We've turned on the heat. Looking into better winter driving tires and hesitating between snow tires and just better all-seasons. Hate this kind of shopping. (Hate most kinds.) We have had our first snow already, so the tire places have already had lines around the block.

Here's a pretty piece of ceramic art I came across online recently:


Lisa Larsson: Katt
found at Modcats.

Keeping fingers crossed for Tuesday. Please vote!

My Little .....Cthulhu?

Hat tip to Cute Overload.
\
@


My Little Cthulhu by ~Spippo on deviantART

Ahahahaaah!

I always knew those Little Ponies were really very scary!

Pleasant Valley Sunday

I need a change of sceeee-ner-reeee--eeeee--eee.

So I've been watching some movies, reading a bit more. Some of it is good.

I've recently re-re-read some Jane Austen. Good for getting away from the real world. One of the few authors I voluntarily reread. Then I checked out the film from the library. Plugged it into the DVD player, and realized I had only checked out Volume 2. Drat.

Back to the library today, and some other poor sucker had checked out Volume 1. hah.

Found a VHS BBC version, and checked out part of that series. At least it's the first part! And, I've been trying to get the next episode I need for BSG season 1 for the past 2 weeks. Damn geeks keep checking it out. hmph.

Recently saw Brokeback Mountain, Pan's Labyrinth, a neat little Sundance prize-winner called The Station Agent (recommend it), and an old Cary Grant film (swoon).

Have also been cooking more (yay for comfort food), and finishing reading Kurlansky's Salt. It's an ok read. I had to order Chinese food a couple of nights ago after reading one of the passages on salt in China and the theories of what tastes make a real meal (particularly descriptions of the combos of ma-la and xian-la) I wish he would write more fiction again though.

Have you ever moved to a new region in the states and discovered a dish new to you that all the locals think is a world-known comfort food? I was talking with somebody the other day about having discovered shepherd's pie like that, years ago. I still don't really 'get' it, but I guess I have stuff like that I crave too, that they think well, not gross, but totally not distinctive or worth their while.

Fall is here. Cold has snapped, and I'm sitting around the house this weekend wearing LONG UNDERWEAR!!!! And we pulled out the winter duvet two nights ago. And there is no more summer fruit at the store, just apples and pears, now, so I guess that's official, even though I haven't turned on the heat yet.

Catching up

Some updates:

Been to the beach and back. It was _great_. Beautiful sand and water, and super weather, and no crowds. I'm going to go again next year, I think/hope. Wish I could've stayed a month.

Also visited with some of our favorite people on the way home.

Got back and the cat had behaved badly again. This time? A cat-diarrhea covered bed and bedroom. augh! So I did what anyone would do, took everything washable outside, hosed it off, and then washed, several times, with lots of soap and some bleach too. Well, the wool blanket (originally a full/queen size) is now a throw, rather than a blanket. I guess I should be grateful we didn't have the winter duvet on yet...

She has been super snuggly since return: Probably some guilt and the cooler weather.

Had a really bad acupuncture session earlier in the week, and then a better one yesterday. I think it's helping my energy level, but that's not what I went in for. So sad.

Talked like a pirate on Friday, paid bills yesterday, did laundry and kitchen clean-up today. Am currently snuggling w/kitty, and cooking some kidney beans for chili later. We have again had a bounty of farm fare bestowed upon us, and I have tried to redistribute as much as I can't use for us, but we are sorely behind on the stack of potatoes. We never made it entirely through the last batch, and had another huge box show up this weekend. Still, we are making headway on the beans and beets.

Best easy way to cook beets that I've found? Wash and remove tips, leaving skin. Leave whole or cut so that the various beets are roughly same size and spread on aluminum foil on a cookie sheet. Cover with foil and fold the edges together. Put in oven at 350-400, and let them cook. For smaller pieces 45 minutes is fine, but I left them in for 2 hours yesterday because I fell asleep (kitty hypnotized me- wasn't my fault) and they were fine. Peel (the skin should slip off easily), cut smaller, and throw still warm into a large storage container and toss with red vinegar, salt, pepper. Yum.

Here we go again

Well, I haven't been very productive today. I've gotten some laundry done, and a couple of boxes flattened (and we did get rid of the sofa yesterday). But mostly, I've just been glued to the computer watching the train wreck in slow motion that is Gustav. We still haven't heard from friends, but I am assuming that none of the folks we're close to are stubborn enough to stay. Folks, remember to post somewhere online that you made it out okay! And remind your friends. I can't even begin to wonder what the world will look like down in LA tomorrow and this next week. I see some colleges are currently stating they'll be open for business next week. I don't think so.

Ewww!

Ok, that's one job just got a lot easier and more expensive.
Here's what is apparently in most of the sofa cushions, and therefore unscrubbable/ unwashable even if I could get the smell out out the cushion fabric:
So the stuffing can't be kept, and the cushion fabric isn't really worth keeping, and likely won't wash well. So now I guess my choices are: keep the couch frame, find or make new cushions/ pillows; ditch the sofa, do not replace; ditch the sofa, replace with new sofa. Anyone want to make an argument for any of these options or another I have not yet considered?

You need to know that:
1) I got this sofa for free about 8 years ago and moved it once.
2) I am exceedingly cheap and like to use things until they are all used up.
3) We might change living quarters sometime in the next 2 or 3 years.
4) I have not yet ascertained if the cat stank is isolated to the pillows/cushions.
5) Despite being cheap, I like to window shop for furniture.
6) Every piece of furniture in our house is hand-me-downs, except for our bed and the futon in the guest room, which has seen better days, too, frankly.
7) Having learned more about the wonderful world of bed bugs since we acquired said furniture (all second hand knowledge, knock on wood!), I am now not too into the idea of second-hand upholstered furniture.

That is all.

Long Weekend- yay!

Woohoo. A long weekend. And I've started an ambitious to-do list. Mostly involving cleaning and de-cluttering. Which have been on my mind for months. So that will be really good. Today, I have an outing with a friend I have neglected too much (that could be just about anyone, but oh well, I can only get to one of you at a time, sorry, if you know me, you know I suck like that, and it's really nothing personal.) I am going to bike over to a nearby museum, then we will tour whatever part we feel like seeing, and then we will have lunch. Very civilized. Then I will hopefully be full of energy and get started chipping away at said list.

Mostly, I am determined to redeem myself in the eyes of relatives coming to visit next weekend, who have seen the Mess of Summer. And also, deal with the cat smell coming from strange places the cat decided to mark/pee on post-visit from another cat earlier in the summer, in hopes that the next cat visit will not see an escalation of the turf wars. Not that this will dispel our reputation as the family slobs, but it will make the place nicer for us all, in any case. Here's to beating back the squalor, and happy, cozy, somewhat clean living!

Projects include basic cleaning, clearing and wiping of hard surfaces, laundry, vacuuming, detoxing of the fridge, and also dismantling of an old sofa, with an attempt to wash any removable parts, and figuring out what to do with the rest, then reassembling of the washed parts, if they haven't shrunk past that point. It will take a while. And then I may need to figure out what to do with the sofa if it isn't salvageable. So it will certainly be a big project, one way or the other. Wish me luck!

I've also started acupuncture, to deal with a number of things, mainly neck and back pain, and migraines, and will continue with that this weekend. And I can say to any of you contemplating it: really NOT scary! Which surprised me. People aren't joshing when they say you really can't feel much at all when those needles go in. But also? Damn. Pretty expensive. And no help from the insurance. So part of today's list is to figure out if at least I can put this on the FSA card, and thus pay in pre-tax dollars. Because the treatment for chronic type things apparently takes a while, and quite a few sessions.

In other fascinating news, I will also be tackling our budget to get us back on track with new savings goals, clearing out some boxes left from materials we received months ago, which are sitting stacked in the LR corner, right where we opened them, and finding a couple of piddly little bills that are certainly lying around somewhere close by, under a stack of Very Important Papers Which Must Not Be Thrown Out. And pay them.

I've been reading folks lists of 101 things to do in 1001 days. I really like lists. But I don't think this kind of set-up would work for me. And I wonder how the publication of such a list might skew people's choice of items for it. And I wonder how the hell people who have put "learn X language, learn Y language, learn to knit, etc. times 4" think they are going to do that in a couple of years, if they have to also check off all the little chore-like repetitive stuff that is on some of those lists, and also go to the gym 5 times a week for 5 months.

It cracks me up that things as small as "eat a vegetarian meal" take up as much space as "learn X language" on a list like this. I have seen people break up their fitness goals into somewhat smaller chunks, but nobody seems to break up some of the other HUGE learning projects into smaller, spread over time, do-able chunks. It's not going to happen by osmosis, folks.

Also, who puts "buy X number of fancy panties" on a public list? Really? I don't need to know that. And what kind of goal is that, anyway? Do you really need to plan ahead to work that into your schedule? Are you worried that you might actually forget to buy panties sometime in the next two years? Or that you might forget, once you are in the store, and buy plain white granny panties by mistake, when you really wanted something sexier? Oh well, list away, if it makes you feel good. I know I like my lists, too, so whatever works for ya. Cheers.

Hey!

What happened to my Google Analytics? I really like to see the one or two of you who stop by. Now I feel like I'm out here all alone!

Hopefully I will have more to post soon. Right now I thought I'd test to see if I made it go away by not posting enough.

Work is getting progressively smoother, and I will even have some time off next month. I'm going to a beach! I've been really hankering after some ocean air, so I'm looking forward to it. I hope the weather will be ok, but if it's cold, I'll bring some good books and enjoy the air anyway.

Stuff I'm looking at online

Not so much news. Work is still super crazy, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. At least for now.

I've been looking at some things online that please me. No real reason, and I'm not a big spender, so no purchases in sight, but I thought you might like to surf vicariously.

Tiles. I love certain tiles. Isn't this beautiful?And how about this?


And then, pedicabs and peditrucks with (and some without) electrical assist have me wishing for one, too!
Here is my current favorite design. I would totally drive this to work and the store.
And New Balance is putting out some less sporty looking shoes that promise to be comfy, too, This is good, and more companies need to pursue this 'niche'.

And really randomly and not at all commercial: here's a blog that is neat for its reflection on spirituality and ritual, within the framework of Judaism.

What are you finding that's good online?

Awesome

Hat tip to LuckyBuzz, and to The Lazy Bloggers Post Generator.

"OMG! I just climbed out from under my rock and realised I have not updated this since people stopped clapping and Tinkerbell died... You would not believe how heavy that rock really is. Apologies to my regular readers! Even the little blue ones!

I am totally and utterly flat out with an awfully big adventure, waiting for the onshore winds, just generally being a pain to anyone unfortunate to cross my path. My day is a magical flight from crawling out of bed at 6.30 to way past dusk. I am wondering if I paid my electricity bill, but who cares?

I will try to remember I promised you I will write something that makes sense soon. No, really! What do you mean you don't believe me?"

Mmmm, summer

I love this point of summer, when friends' gardens get out of hand and the zucchini start to take over the world. Then, sometimes, I get a call: " Would you like to come help pick X?" Um, yeah! So after work today, I got to pick fresh peas, and also got some zukes and salad, too. I had such a yummy dinner! Plus it got me outside a bit after a pretty hectic day. Life is alright.

Going nuts

So, work has been pretty killer of late: distressed customers, things going wrong (or sometimes just not perfectly), days 'off' that turn into days 'on.' Yesterday I got to leave work early (one of those days 'off'), and got to go to the mall for emergency supplies... one of my least favorite places.

I get home at 8, and try to unwind a bit. At 2am this morning, as I am (still) lying awake, I flash on an email I had sent. (Backstory: one of the upset customers this week had gotten hold of a colleague's personal cell number, and we had met earlier in the day and were wondering where hu had gotten it from. And, I had exclaimed: certainly NOT this office! We would NEVER do that!) So, anyway, this email flashes into my mind, and I realize that *I* was the leak. I feel horrible, as I realize that I can clearly remember typing a 7 digit contact number for this customer to reach the colleague (instead of just an extension).

So, I spend the night tossing and turning and trying to figure out the best way to mitigate the damage, and make it up to the colleague. And I wake up this morning with it still on my mind. (Two nights ago, I had actually dreamt about the situation, and we were all stuck in an endless meeting where we tried six ways to Sunday to explain to the client why things could just not happen the way *hu* wanted....) So this is two nights' sleep lost to this client. Not that I am counting. Because I am not like that. So... I _just_ now logged on to email to look at the offending email and compose an apology to the colleague.....

Folks, here's the punchline: I did *not* leak the phone number.

By this morning, I was absolutely sure that I had. I am going nuts. I really wish I had gotten up at 2am to check, but I was so. sure. that I figured booting up the computer wasn't worth it, since I knew I wouldn't be able to try to 'fix' the error until today. Gack!

Today, I am really 'off.' This is good.

Yay

I am very pleased that this has been turned around.

And, now,
"New Solar Energy Applications Will Continue to Be Accepted by BLM"

Because that? was just the stupidest thing I had heard in a long, long time.

Anti-Schlock Steering

So to make up for that last post, I offer you my all-time favorite Robert Frost poem. I do not remember the title.

Where my imaginary line
Bends square in woods an iron spine
And pile of real rocks have been founded.
And off this corner in the wild,
Where these are driven in and piled,
One tree, by being deeply wounded,
Has been impressed as Witness Tree
And made commit to memory
My proof of being not unbounded.
Thus truth's established and borne out,
Though circumstanced with dark and doubt
Though by a world of doubt surrounded.

Subconcious schlock

So I guess I've been dreaming a lot lately. I don't remember any of the dreams to tell you. But, I've woken up two days this week with something running through my head.

Exhibit A:


Which I (of course) had to sing pedaling to work that day, and hum under my breath for the next 36 hours.

Exhibit B:
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Robert Frost
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day
Nothing gold can stay.

And this? This is inextricably tied in my head to Ponyboy, and the young Matt Dillon and Emilio Estevez, and all the budding ESL students I ever taught "The Outsiders".... What a crowd to wake up to! Sheesh.

Conclusion?
My word, is my head really that full of schlock?

I want!

A solar/gas hybrid with pedals!!!

I can name that bird in 0 flaps

It's a Cedar Waxwing. Here's a picture from wikipedia.I especially love the little sunglasses. And the yellow ruffle on the tail. I'm happy to meet you, Cedar Waxwing!

Ahhhhhh!

A day off! Here it is! yay.

I've already gotten... well, not ahead on housework, but a bit less behind. Just knowing I had today off gave me a burst of energy yesterday after coming home from work. Toilet: scrubbed! Sink: clean! First load of dishwasher: washed and put away! We still live in what most of you would consider an absolute sty, but I feel good about the progress. And I have energy today, too. So, I am feeling pretty good.

I will have clean clothes to wear to work again on Friday. And it looks like there will be at least some sunshine today. And, the terrible humidity and heat of last week now feel like a distant memory.

OMG

What freakishly long, effed up day. ugh. I need a day off so badly! One that's really a day off, not a day where I go in to work for half or more of the day because there is just too much damn work to be done. Today, so many little things went wrong for so many people I answer to. I just put out fires all day long. And then, an hour after the work day should have ended, I biked home, had a shower, and got in the car and drove back to work for more of the same.

I just had dinner (at work) at 7:45, and that's pretty darn late for me, and then I did a couple more things, and now I am home, hallelujah. Still, my colleagues and crew are doing really great work and working as hard as I am. So, in that sense, I can't (and won't) complain. But I am really yearning both for time off and for a sense that I am finally a bit more ahead of schedule/less on the spot. And those may be contradictory wishes, at least in some senses.

And yes, you heard right, I biked to work (at least for the first stretch of it!) today, and that's the 3rd time in the last week. So, yay for that. And yay for my sweet LP who saved dinner for me at home, just in case, and for my sweet little kitty who is singing to me and giving me kitty hugs.

Melting...

In which I am an eco-weenie.

I had hopes of not putting in the AC window unit until, say, late July. But it's ho-ot. We sweltered yesterday, and gave in this morning. We both have too much work on our desks to lose another day to fanning ourselves lethargically on the porch. And fitful sleep.

The cat is hiding under the bed. I think I freaked her out with the cleaning of the air-conditioner, which involved her arch-nemesis, the vacuum cleaner. But, I also think she is pouting about the windows all being closed again, so soon. She was actually sitting in the sunniest window yesterday, in between the curtain we had pulled and the glass. Sorry, little one!

And, I'll probably drive to work again, most of the week. I *have* biked a few times without reporting it here, but not enough to merit any good eco-karma, really.

Do you think I can get some points for not flying anywhere this summer?

Ugh.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!

To my other very dear friend from way, way back. You are our rock, and I love you very much!

Week of good news

Well, LuckyBuzz had a bay-bee!

And the group I am training this week is absolutely teh awesome. They are so good to each other, and attentive, and hard-working!

And one of my best friends ever going many, many years back, who has been looking for work, landed a real live teaching job, right in the very school hu wanted most to work in!!!! I am so, so very proud of hum!

Go Universe!

Why don't you write me?

Here.
Couldn't find a video, but here's a link to listen, if you can identify!

Gearing up for a busy season. Looking forward to running around like a crazy next week, and already had a taste of that last week. I love that my current work is very seasonal. I like the gearing up and gearing down: I always have one or the other to look forward to!

I've been craving a bit more human contact, so this is good timing. Next week should be entirely people-tastic.

Some of the plants I put in last week are ok, but the saddest ones are still pretty beat, and I think that a couple of them are true 'goners'. So now I'm dithering about whether to pull them out and plant something new to work out the whole 'live plants are better than dying ones' feng shui issue, or letting them give it their best shot. I feel like I owe them a chance...

A friend of mine mentioned to me that one of the local women's shelters is in great need of money to keep functioning. I also know the food banks have been really low all year. I've been reading much about saving money and being frugal on the innernets lately, and I imagine we are all scrabbling a bit to cover fuel costs, etc., but I'll just take this opportunity to remind you: sharing what you've got feels really good. And, it's the right thing to do. Please remember all the folks who need your time and dollars, and give what you can!

Sad little garden

Please grow!

I jumped the gun a few weeks ago and bought a bunch of plants and herbs for the balcony. And then all my neighbors talked sense into me and I held off on planting many of them. Now they are a sad set of root-bound, dried-out planties.

I will plant you and water you today: pretty please don't die!

Books, unread (a meme)

From LuckyBuzz:
"The top 100 or so books most often marked as “unread” by LibraryThing’s users. Bold the books you have read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish."
I also put asterisks next to the ones I really liked. And I put a hyphen in front of the bolded titles (read) since my font doesn't currently bold very well.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
-Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
-One hundred years of solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez *
-_Crime and punishment_ by Fyodor Dostoyevsky *
-Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte *
-_Catch-22_ a novel by Joseph Heller *
The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien
Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra
The Odyssey by Homer
-_The brothers Karamazov_ by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Ulysses by James Joyce
War and peace by Leo Tolstoy
-Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
A tale of two cities by Charles Dickens
-Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte *
-The name of the rose by Umberto Eco
-_Moby Dick_ by Herman Melville
-Emma by Jane Austen
The Iliad by Homer
-Vanity fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
-Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez *
-The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood *
-Pride and prejudice by Jane Austen *
The historian : a novel by Elizabeth Kostova
-The Canterbury tales by Geoffrey Chaucer *
The kite runner by Khaled Hosseini
-Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
-Life of Pi : a novel by Yann Martel *
The time traveler's wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies by Jared Diamond
-Atlas shrugged by Ayn Rand
-Foucault's pendulum by Umberto Eco
Dracula by Bram Stoker
-_The grapes of wrath_ by John Steinbeck
Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
A heartbreaking work of staggering genius by Dave Eggers
-Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
-Sense and sensibility by Jane Austen *
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books by Azar Nafisi
-The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas *
The sound and the fury by William Faulkner
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
-Brave New World by Aldous Huxley *
Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson
American gods : a novel by Neil Gaiman
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
-The poisonwood Bible : a novel by Barbara Kingsolver *
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West… by Gregory Maguire
-_The picture of Dorian Gray_ by Oscar Wilde *
Dune by Frank Herbert
-A portrait of the artist as a young man by James Joyce
The satanic verses by Salman Rushdie
-Mansfield Park by Jane Austen *
-_Gulliver's travels_ by Jonathan Swift
-The three musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
The inferno by Dante Alighieri
The corrections by Jonathan Franzen
The amazing adventures of Kavalier and Clay : a novel by Michael Chabon
-The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
-Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
To the lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
A clockwork orange by Anthony Burgess
-Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
-Persuasion by Jane Austen *
-_The scarlet letter_ by Nathaniel Hawthorne
One flew over the cuckoo's nest by Ken Kesey
-The once and future king by T. H. White *
Anansi boys : a novel by Neil Gaiman
Atonement: A Novel by Ian McEwan
The god of small things by Arundhati Roy
A short history of nearly everything by Bill Bryson
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
Dubliners by James Joyce
-Oryx and Crake : a novel by Margaret Atwood
-Angela's ashes : a memoir by Frank McCourt
-Beloved : a novel by Toni Morrison
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed by Jared Diamond
The hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
In cold blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its… by Truman Capote
-Lady Chatterley's lover by D.H. Lawrence
A confederacy of dunces by John Kennedy Toole
Les misérables by Victor Hugo
-The amber spyglass by Philip Pullman *
_The prince_ by Niccolo Machiavelli
Watership Down by Richard Adams (started it as a young child and it was too violent for me.)
Beowulf : a new verse translation by Anonymous
The Aeneid by Virgil
A farewell to arms by Ernest Hemingway
Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance : an inquiry into… by Robert M. Pirsig
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
The personal history of David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
Sons and lovers by D.H. Lawrence
-Possession : a romance by A.S. Byatt
The book thief by Markus Zusak
The history of Tom Jones, a foundling by Henry Fielding
The road by Cormac McCarthy
Tender is the night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
-The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells

So, if that gives you any indication of my taste in reading, please feel free to recommend a book!

A puzzle for you

Shh, don't tell anyone, but...

... I think Spring is here!
Taxes due, new birds in the yard, no snow currently on the ground or even predicted for any time in the next ten days, tree pollen, ants, people starting to bike to work, and glorious, glorious SUNSHINE!!!!

Yep, I'm pretty sure. Least until the next snow storm!
Houston, we have spring!

Blood Diamonds, redux

So, you think dying for mining coal is outrageous? Here's yet another reason not to buy gemstones:
75 Miners presumed dead in Tanzanian Gem Mine.

Seriously, people.

Come, labor on!

I went back to work today after a few really well-needed days off.... and it felt great. I really like my job, I like the folks I work with, much got done, and laughing happened. Amazing what a little holiday can do!

Tonight I found myself humming a tune: at first I didn't recognize it until I had hummed it through enough times to have a google-able phrase, and even then I googled "Come linger on." Which it is not, of course. It is "Come, labor on!"

"Come, labor on!
Who dares stand idle, on the harvest plain
While all around him waves the golden grain?
And to each servant does the Master say,
“Go work today.”

Come, labor on!
Claim the high calling angels cannot share—" etc.

Wow, guess that counts as a good day at work, huh?

Flipper

Okay, so that was kind of conversation killer. Sorry! If you have ideas, you can always bring it up later, or, hey, maybe I will.

To make it up to you, here's a feel-good story about a dolphin who saved a couple of whales from beaching in New Zealand. He just came right up, and helped them find their way back out to sea! It made me shiver to read it. Very cool.

Stranger in a Known Land, or Frontier Living

I've been thinking a lot lately about liminal space and construction of identity. Mine and LPs, mostly. It seems pretty complicated to me, and I'm not sure I've fully formed my ideas about it, but it's a theme I seem to cycle around to from time to time, so I figured I'd share the short version, and maybe cycle back here to expand next time I'm thinking about it.

Most of you know LP and I are an international, bilingual couple. That's one/ two? borders. We have each lived in each other's country of origin for significant periods of time. What we have noticed, and have confirmed as a pretty common experience with other bicultural folks, is that once you have truly crossed a border and lived in that other culture to the point of comfortably accepting many of the societal constructions of that place, you can't really ever completely come back home. That is, when you come back to the place you originally called home, it doesn't feel completely natural either. You have done irreparable 'damage' to your default world view. You can see why certain 'givens' in your culture seem silly/shocking/obscene to foreigners, because they now seem silly, etc. to you, too.

This can be a good thing, of course, but right now I am trying to get a feel for the size of the impact on a human psyche over a lifetime of not being able to go 'home'. Or maybe trying to figure out what two people can do in such a frontierland to create their own home(land?). But also, right now we are living in a few other significant liminal spaces as well, so it is perhaps more on my mind than usual. And I don't mean to say that it's horrible: it's just different, I think, from what I perceive most other peoples' experience to be.

So, if you feel like it, please tell me about your experience of being 'other' or of being caught between two worlds. Can people who share a similar experience meet up and be citizens of some combined no-man's land, even if their original border crossing happened on a different kind of threshold? What do you think? I have a practical/objective hunch that our situation is not as exceptional as I subjectively feel it to be, yet that assumption doesn't make it feel less real to me. Why should that be?

Open Letter to the Sun

Dear Sun.
Please come back. I hear from my friends in other places that you are doing well. I miss you very much and hope you will visit me again sometime soon.
Very sincerely yours,
Ursa

Learning to Lie

Neat article in NY magazine about how kids learn to lie. Interesting tidbit: the GW/cherry tree story works better for dissuading lying than the Peter and the Wolf story! huh.

A good read for all of you who are waiting to babies to get here. And just plain interesting for the rest of us.

Say something.

oh. /waves/ Hi. I've hit the deep winter phase of my hibernation, I guess. Although I *am* indeed noticing and pleased about the extra minute.some of sunlight each day.
(Yay.)

Let's see.... man, where are the bullets?

- needless snafus costing time and money during holiday trip? Check.
- utterly confused body clock, requesting more sleep please? Check.
- squicky icky winter cold, run out of Kleenex, nose rubbed raw? Ub,Cheg.
- icky picky work project-to-make-one-ready-to-spork-out-own-eyeballs? Check.
- stress dream about election fraud? Check.

Seriously. I think I had a dream about election fraud. Or you tell me. Maybe it was about sex. Hard to say.

The premise (but not the majority of the action) in the dream was that the government had decided that 10 states were no longer worth keeping. So, they were going to be burned up. Completely. Like, on a map there would just be a hole. And the earth would fall away of you crossed the wrong state line. But, my mom and I found out ahead of time. (They weren't going to tell anyone ahead of time to avoid the riots and mass exodus...) Anyway, most of the dream consisted of unpacking gewgaws and tchotchkes we don't have from a kitchen storage wall we also don't have, and trying to decide what should be brought along even though in this dream we had apparently also ceded the entire back seat of the hatchback (we don't have!) to a couple of friends, and maybe their baby? dog? stuff? we were going to help escape.

Friends, *everything* was tchotchkes. And every tchotchke had a story, of personal significance or historical/cultural worth. And so we, LP and I (where did my mother go?) and occasionally a neighbor, or really polite looter-- there were 3 or 4, passing through the kitchen had to consider the importance of bringing or leaving behind each item. Was it too big? too heavy? could it be used for something practical as well? was worth bringing anyway? What other items would it prevent us from bringing? And where oh where were the ziploc bags?

I can't even begin to unpack most of this dream. But, I am pretty sure that the background situation in it relates to the primaries going on RIGHT NOW! And, the fact that we still have not figured out the electronic voting/reliable system thing yet, and hey, elections are only NINE MONTHS AWAY! Are you concerned? I am.

If you are, and if you don't get email from MoveOn, go to Moveon.org to sign the current petition to light a fire under your representatives, so that maybe, maybe, we can trust the voting outcome this time around.

The right foot?

Ok, I think that the fact that I am doing this at early in the morning on New Years Day pretty much supports the geekitude theory. I hope this doesn't mean I'll spend the year doing stupid bloggy quizzes, but I couldn't resist.





Big surprise, right?