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Monday Already?
Here we are, and it’s Monday morning already. How does that happen so quickly? Seems like just yesterday it was Friday morning…sigh. We had a lovely weekend, though. Ted got off of work early on Friday, though I was too busy with work stuff to clock out early with him, so he went to see a movie in Berkeley, about his new girlfriends, The Dixie Chicks. Maya went straight from school to her Girlscout troop leader’s house, where they made fleece scarfs, which they then delivered to the Bay Area Crisis Nursery, a local shelter that the troop seems to have adopted. In addition to delivering scarfs for the children…
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Happy Birthday Julie!
This is a picture of Maya and my step mom, Julie. Today is Julie’s birthday, and I wish we could be there to share a piece of cake with her to celebrate. Julie and my dad live in Portland, and have a beautiful house and a pretty good life there. Julie owns a yoga studio, and has been teaching yoga for about 35 years. She’s without question the best yoga instructor in the Pacific Northwest, so if you’re ever in the market for a really good yoga class in Portland, check her studio out. In addition to being a wonderful yoga instructor, and a pretty savvy businesswoman, Julie is a…
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Holiday Depression…
I’ve been hearing lately about how the holidays are a hard time for so many people…how they depress people and stress the hell out of people, and I’ve been wondering, what is it about Christmas (and Hannukah…do any of my Jewish friends get depressed around this time of year?) that brings folks down? Isn’t this supposed to be a happy time? So I thought, what is it that we do to ourselves around the holidays? 1. Maybe too much pressure put on shopping and gifts, you think? In a culture where the majority of retailers go into the black finally in the last month of the year, and our whole…
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Where Were You When…
It seems that there are these moments that define a generation…where were you when you heard about Pearl Harbor, where were you when you found out Kennedy had been shot, and then RFK, and then MLK…. For my generation, the first of those sad moments was when John Lennon was killed, on December 8th, 1980. I was a geeky kid then, sort of into the Beatles, but not really yet. I got into them much more in High School. I was watching “Little House on the Prarie” on TV, and the announcer came on and gave us the sad news. I was shocked. I thought people were finished with that kind…
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Wish They All Could Be…
What American accent do you have?    Your Result: The West Your accent is the lowest common denominator of American speech. Unless you’re a SoCal surfer, no one thinks you have an accent. And really, you may not even be from the West at all, you could easily be from Florida or one of those big Southern cities like Dallas or Atlanta. The Midland Boston North Central The Inland North Philadelphia The South The Northeast What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz I tried to make the text more readable, and only made it smaller…so here we go, I’ll paste it here, in case you’re wondering what the…
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Giving Money…
I remember several years ago, reading an article about kids and money. The author suggested giving your child money, and dividing it three ways. One part goes to spending on whatever they want, one part goes to saving for bigger items or college or whatever your particular values are in that area, and one part goes to charity. Ted and I liked this idea, so when she was old enough, we started giving her an allowance of $5 a week….$3 she can spend on whatever she wants, $1 she saves (right now for Christmas gifts), $1 is for charity. Sometimes her ‘giving money’, as we call it, goes to organizations…
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Happy Birthday Richard!
Happy Birthday, to my big brother, Richard! Always there to help me buy big item electronics, or give me advice on video games…even though he lives far far away. Thanks for letting me practice dating on your friends (not that you really had much say in the matter), and for selling me your half of the dog when we were little. Even though that meant I was responsible for picking up the dog poop, still the best purchase I ever made. Thanks for bringing Kathy home, and for being smart enough to marry her, giving me a wonderful sister-in-law. Thanks for being a generous, wonderful, snide, snarky older brother. Happy…
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A to Z Meme
I have a lot of year end type work today, and Maya’s going to school, and I’m still coughing (when do you decide it’s time to go to the doctor, I wonder?), so it’s handy to have a meme or two lying around, which, as a matter of fact, I do. I’ve been tagged by Curiosity Killer, she who lives in Hong Kong and comes to read my posts sometimes. 🙂 This meme is alphabetical…one question for each letter. Here goes. A – Available/single? No. Been together 19 years on December 12th. 🙂 B – Best Friend? Ted. C – Cake or Pie? Pie. Apple, ala mode. Or Marionberry, ala…
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Pickney Sick
Ted and I have been fighting a cold for over a week now…Ted started getting it the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, and almost lost his voice. I started getting it on Thanksgiving day, and it was mostly in my head (meaning sinus and runny nose, not that I had imagined it), but now it’s turned into a yucky cough that tortures me. Never is it the kind of cold that lays you out and keeps you home, just enough to annoy you and make you feel kind of tired and wish you weren’t sick. Until now. Yesterday, it finally caught up with Maya. She woke up feeling queasy, and didn’t want…
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The Jump-Off Creek
Sunday night, after Ted and Maya had gone to bed, I was considering watching a DVD, perhaps Out of Africa. But then I decided that I didn’t want to stay up that long (it’s a long movie, and it was already 9:00), and that I was enjoying my book, so I would read instead. I made the right choice. 🙂 I read the concluding chapters to book three in the Winter Stacks Reading Challenge, The Jump-Off Creek, by Molly Gloss. This is a book by a local Portland author, which I picked up while we were in Oregon this summer. I read maybe a chapter of it then, and then…
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Heartbreaker
When I was 9 1/2, and in 3rd grade (my mom held my brother and I back in school a year, for reasons that I shall not go into in this post), we moved from Fairbanks, Alaska, to Stockton, California. I know, you feel sorry for me. Rightfully so. Stockton had no snow, which sucked, but on the other hand it had my grandparents, and the sun peeked well above the horizon even in the dead of winter, so it wasn’t all bad. Anyway, when we first moved to Stockton, we stayed with my grandparents in their mobile home, until we could find a place to live. That wasn’t as…
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Turkey Chili
I’m thinking one post on Saturday afternoon is enough, and I’ll take tomorrow off. 🙂 I posted every day in November, and I’m ready for a break. So, here we go…a recipe. Do you like Chili? I do, with lots of beans, and some cornbread on the side, which I then crumble into the chili. Mmmm. This recipe is for Turkey Chili, but we made it this week with Smart Ground, which is some kind of soy substance, and it was good. So either way is good. By the way, this is a pretty quick recipe, too. Maybe 45 minutes from start to finish. Turkey Chili 2 cloves garlic, minced…
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What’s in a name?
When Ted and I got married, lo those many many years ago (13 1/2), I had the decision to make…to change my name, and take his last name? Or to keep my maiden name? If I kept my maiden name, then what last name would our child have? Hyphen? My name? His name? I wasn’t sure. What I was sure about was that I knew that changing your name doesn’t change who you are, it doesn’t change your identity. At least, that’s true for me. When I was 10 years old, my mother decided to leave her married name behind, and go back to her maiden name. She had been…
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Thirteen Thoughts
 1. Today is the last day of NaBloPoMo. It’s been fun reading daily entries from some of the less frequent posters who took the challange. I’m glad so many folks participated! 2. I got my hair done yesterday….gotta say, I love it! Something about loving a haircut that makes things good all around, huh? And being all blonde again doesn’t hurt, either. 3. Stupid cold. Ted and I both came down with colds last week, and they’re slowly going away. Mine was never horrid, but I gotta say, I’ll be glad when it’s completely gone. I feel all post-nasaly, blech. 4. I’m glad it’s getting cold. I like the cold…
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Mean Girl
I read on Kvetch the other day, about the pain involved in realizing that she didn’t fit in with her friends anymore when she was in Jr. High School, until she discovered that there were other kids that felt that way as well, and she could move on. When she did so, she very bravely mustered the courage to call her old friends, and tell them that she couldn’t be friends with them anymore. I wish I had been so brave. When I was in 8th grade, I made friends with a girl who had just moved in across the street from me, M. We both loved horses, we were…