• Happy HNT

    When I was a little girl, my mom was a Montessori teacher. She has told me about how they taught the preschool kids their left from their right. They would paint an “L” on their left shoe (maybe it was an “R” on the right shoe? Maybe it was the back of their hand? I was 5, cut me some slack!) Anyway, any time a child wanted to know whether that was their right foot or their left, all they had to do is look for that “L”, and then they knew that was the left, and the other one was the right. Nice, huh? Well, the CEO at my…

  • Regrets, I have a few…

    I was thinking about all of the MEMEs that we see on blogs, and funny lists of music, etc. Which started me thinking of the songs that I HATE. That make me sick to my stomach. That I wish I could extinguish from the earth. So, I put together a MEME about things I regret having in existance… Songs I wish I Had Never Heard (because they suck) 1. Superman (It’s not easy) – Five for Fighting (can be switched with 100 years, same group, if you hate that one even more.) 2. You’re Beautiful – James Blunt (I know it’s popular…but please, kill me now…he just sounds like a…

  • You Can’t Go Home Again….Well, not completely…

    Yesterday I went to San Francisco with my friend Neva for the day. We both took the day off of work, and went in to play hooky. What fun! First stop was Macy’s, because I wanted to bask in the glory of the Union Square Macy’s, which has at least 10 times the offerings of my local suburban Macy’s. Breathed it in. Loved it. It reminded me of being a teenager and coming in to the City to shop there, and also how I used to go there on my lunch break when I worked at a nearby hotel. We had an early-ish lunch at The Cheesecake Factory, which was…

  • The weekend so far…

    This is a four day weekend for me. 🙂 Friday, Ted and I both went on a fieldtrip to Sacramento. Why both of us? Because it’s better than working, that’s why. So we drove 3 kids to Sacramento. First the class stopped at the old Governor’s Mansion, which was pretty interesting. It’s an old Victorian house, with 23 rooms, and they have it done up like it would have been in the early 1900s. Our tour guide was full of misinformation, which made us wonder, does he know what he’s talking about with this place at all? He told our class that MLK was shot in ’66 or ’67, that…

  • My Life in Music

    I saw this on Wendy’s website, and I thought, No, I could never think of enough songs…but then I decided to take a walk at lunchtime, and listen to my beloved iPod, and lo and behold, I came up with a bunch of songs to fill it in. Kind of fun to search around and think about what song is perfect for what situation, that kind of thing. I’ve changed some of the categories, and made it a bit more personal. 🙂 My Life in Music Opening Credits: Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto Waking Up: Good Day Sunshine by the Beatles Childhood: Ob La Di, Ob La Da also by the Beatles…

  • The place where you’re from…

    I’m reading a short story called “Post and Beam“, by Alice Munro. The main character has moved away from her small town and her small town family, and is now living in the city. Her cousin hops on a bus and travels across Canada to come for a visit. One of the themes of the story is how we leave part of who we are at home when we leave. So here is Polly, the country cousin, who has come to visit Lorna, and is a bit put off by Lorna’s ‘post and beam’ house (reminds me of the Eichler homes that are popular around here…the picture above is of…

  • Your Epidermis is Showing…

    My friend NYJ (That’s New York J, as opposed to me, CAJ, for California J) is addicted to this procedure called Microdermabrasion. She says they basically sand blast your face to get the dead skin and stuff off, and your skin is SO much softer and absorbs moisturizer much better. The process is performed at a spa, and supposedly makes a world of difference, which is why the full series is worth the approx. $1,000 you pay. I’ve seen pictures on the web, before and after type photos, and yeah, it looks amazing. But I saw NYJ recently, and she looks the same as she did the last time I…

  • How is this NOT Los Angeles?

    There’s an article in today’s Contra Costa Times about ‘pet hotels’ that bugged me. I know I’ve written before about people with too much money, but suddenly $400 cashmere baby hoodies seem more reasonable than they once did. (OK, no, they still don’t). The pet hotel in the picture is in Philadelphia. The dog is being fed Filet Mignon. Artfully prepared and presented on a gold platter. WTF?!?! I mean, our dog Genevieve is spoiled. She gets ‘premium’ dog food that you can’t get at PetsMart and those places. She gets two walks a day. She has a dog bed in the living room. But come on. $125 dollar a…

  • The Idiot Box

    This was a weekend made up largely of watching TV. My plans with my friend had changed, my back was tentative, and for once, no birthdays or dinners to attend. I suppose we could have started getting my ‘home office’ ready for when I start working from home, but I wasn’t so interested in that. I think I’d prefer to do that on ‘work time’ rather than ‘my time’, if you know what I mean. So, on Saturday I watched Battlestar Galactica on the computer (downloaded from iTunes, since Comcast doesn’t give us Sci Fi channel unless we pay more $$$). Like I said on Saturday, that’s a darned good…

  • Back woes…

    I have been suffering from some upper back pain lately, which has been travelling down my arm and into my thumb. Not fun. So, as I mentioned in an earlier post, I have begun seeing a chiropractor. It’s helping, but not as much or as fast as I had hoped. I switched from cute high heels to almost flat comfy shoes. It has been suggested to me by both my husband and a loyal reader, that perhaps my problem comes from the way I sit at the computer. Well, people HAVE been known to make fun of me and the way I sit at the computer, because I hunch over…

  • Short and Sweet

    I have to keep it short and sweet today…Maya has homework that she forgot about last night, so I have to wake her up soon to do it. I have a deadline at work. And, most importantly, my friend Rosemary is coming into town from Pennsylvania! HOORRRAY! So I’ll be hanging with her and her family this afternoon and tonight, before she departs for Lake Tahoe. Sigh. Nice weekend ahead. So, in the political turn that this blog has taken in the last two days or so, I’ll bring this up. Then maybe no politics for awhile, OK? OK. There’s a law suit that has beenn filed by the National…

  • Cancer Sucks…and so does Senator Enzi.

    On the heels of the loss of Dana Reeve to lung cancer, comes the news that Ann Richards has cancer of the esophagus. God bless her, Ann Richards is an amazing woman, and was the (democratic) governor of Texas before George Bush. Some blame her for losing that race, thus giving GW the chance to run for President. Others blame Clinton for letting his pants down (literally), thus creating the Republican backlash that was heard throughout many states, and, they say, caused Richards to lose to Bush. Without going into the miserable ‘what ifs’, all I can say is that I have the utmost respect for Richards, and I hope…

  • New Shoes

    So I’ve been having some problems with my back as of late…a pain right next to the shoulder blade. Mostly I ignore it, because I’m lame that way. Anyway, recently it has started to spread down my left arm, through the elbow and the thumb. Ouch. One night, I couldn’t sleep because of it. Well, only little infant babies have an excuse to come between me and my zzzzs, so I decided to finally do something about it. What to do, though? Go to the doctor? The chiropractor? Physical therapy? All good options, with me leaning more toward the chiro or the PT. For no real reason other than I…

  • Happy International Women’s Day!

    I just found out here that today is International Womens Day. I also found out that some of my friends count on me to keep them up to date on the weighty issues of the day, issues that do not involve cheerleaders or their injuries. To bring the two together, allow me to point you to a column by the always brilliant Molly Ivins, in which she discusses the abismal abortion situation in the ‘great’ state of South Dakota. Lest you feel that South Dakota is alone in their goal of outlawing abortion, similar laws are being considered publicly in both Missouri and Mississippi. For more reading about International Women’s…