Musings
-
Friday Randomness
Diving right on in here… I am sick to death of TVs every-damn-where. (If you’re not supposed to split infinitives, you’re probably REALLY not supposed to split a word in half, but I don’t care. Sue me.) I hate going to restaurants where they have a TV set up, and it’s happening at more and more places. Some decent places even. Not that Carls Jr is what I would call a decent place, but really? TV? And California Pizza Kitchen, and so many other places. There was a nice pasta place down the street, and they put in a big TV, and then it closed. Wonder if the TV did…
-
March Forth!
Today is National Grammar Day! To celebrate, I’m freely cribbing a list of grammar myths from Grammar Girl, for your enjoyment. Full credit to Grammar Girl, though I might add a few comments here and there… Grammar Girl’s Top 10 Language Myths: 10. A run-on sentence is a really long sentence. Wrong! They can actually be quite short. In a run-on sentence, independent clauses are squished together without the help of punctuation or a conjunction. If you write I am happy I am glad* as one sentence without a semicolon, colon, or dash between the two independent clauses, it’s a run-on sentence even though it only has six words. 9.…
-
At The Cusp of Woman and Black
February is Black History Month, and March is Women’s History Month, so here at the cusp I’m going to repost an oldie from my early days of blogging, about my personal hero, Harriet Tubman. Originally posted April 13, 2006. In yesterday’s post, which was a meme of six weird things about me, I mentioned that my personal real life hero is Harriet Tubman. I admire her for her grace, her courage, her determination, and her strength of conviction. She was a woman who wanted freedom, and found a way to attain it…once she had tasted the sweet flavor, however, she determined that she must free others, so she went back…
-
Sunday Morning Randomness
My heart goes out to the people in Chile, in light of the 8.8 (!!!) magnitude earthquake that hit there this morning. 8.8 is HUGE. The largest I’ve felt was 7.1, later downgraded to 6.9, in October of 1989 in San Francisco, and I seriously thought we might die. So 8.8? CRAP. The difference in initial death estimates between this earthquake and the Haiti earthquake speaks to infrastructure and building code, I think. Meaning? Money. Countries that aren’t dirt poor have a better chance of surviving huge catastrophes than countries that are dirt poor. Same as it ever was. Um, what about the trainer who was killed by a killer…
-
Mavericks
Down near Half Moon Bay (yes, very close to where we took the girl scouts to the beach a few weeks ago, but under totally different conditions) there is sometimes held a ‘Big Wave’ surfing competition called Mavericks. This year the waves appeared to be right, so the elite big wave surfers voted to hold the competition, and it was on, February 13, 2010. HUGE waves, 50 ft, which is five stories tall. You might think that if waves are going to be that big, people might stay away from the shore, but a couple of hundred people were swept off of their feet on Saturday morning, 15 of them…
-
Lovely Weekend
(Pescadero State Beach, gorgeous photo found here) This weekend, I joined Maya and her girl scout troop camping at Camp Butano, in lovely Pescadero, California. Pescadero is just south of Half Moon Bay, and we were fortunate to get perfect weather. The girl scout camp at Butano is way off the beaten path, with a creek babbling nearby. We arrived on Friday night, and layed low there. Then on Saturday we went to the beach, where we had a lovely picnic, including a loaf of amazing artichoke garlic herb bread, which was hot out of the oven. We happened to be there as the tide was going out, and there…
-
Friday Randomness
Thanks everyone for your kind birthday wishes. I had a lovely birthday, and a lovely time off from work. One of Maya’s Christmas gifts was tickets to go see Wicked, which was a lot of fun. I’m not a huge fan of the musical as a play, but this one was really fun and interesting and kept your attention the whole way through. Excellent gift, Ted! Btw, Ted wrote a great review of the show for Popdose, and he included a couple of YouTube clips that are pretty great. Along the theme of gifts that are not things, we also received tickets for dinner on the Napa Valley Wine Train,…
-
11…22…33…44!
(44 graphic found here) Today is my birthday, and I’m turning 44! I’ve always kind of liked the 11 birthdays, when the two digits of your age are the same. Which got me to thinking about what I was doing at these different stops along my life so far. When I was 11, we were living in Campbell, CA. It was probably the worst year of my childhood, though not for any definable reason. All I know is, we were all pretty miserable and stressed there. The kids were kind of snotty, but I made a good friend. I liked my teacher. Richard was in jr. high and having a…
-
Friday Randomness, Now on Tuesday!
(photo found at SF Gate, here) Does anyone else still get a newspaper delivered to your house, as opposed to looking for your news online? We are suckers and pay quite a bit to support this dying industry. Sometimes I wonder why, and other times, I’m glad. Today I was glad, as I saw the picture above, which I might have missed if I had been looking online. The story is that the San Francisco Ice Co. donated 10 tons of ice to the San Francisco Zoo, which the zoo had blown into snow for the Polar Bears, who look like they’re LOVING it, don’t they? Doesn’t the bear in…
-
Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow!
(picture courtesy SFGate.com) We got a dusting of snow on our local mountain ranges last night. We often get one or two dustings a year on Mt. Diablo (shown in the picture – this is actually the hills at the base of Mt. Diablo…the top is covered in clouds right now. Cherry found a webcam, so if you look soon, you might see the whole thing here…Thanks, Cherry!), but rarely as low as this. Some places as low as 350 feet got a bit of snow. Sadly for us, we live lower than that, so we just got rain. Still, it’s nice to drive around and see it in…
-
Feeding the Hungry
Today we did kind of an amazing thing. Maya is taking a class in school called “Teens Around the World”, which I would describe as sort of a Global Studies class, where they learn about how people, mostly children and teens, live in other parts of the world. They are learning a lot of compassion and caring, and are sometimes moved to tears. They are thankful for what they have. They want to share with others who aren’t as fortunate. In this spirit, the class decided they wanted to put together lunches for the homeless, and deliver them to people on the streets of San Francisco. So we parents donated…
-
Happy Thanksgiving, Everyone
It’s Wednesday afternoon, and tomorrow’s Thanksgiving. I got up early and went to the grocery store before it got too crowded and insane. Came home and started some cooking. Sweet Potato Pudding? Check. Homemade Cranberry Sauce? Check. Green beans prepped for my favorite green bean dish (green beans, steamed, then sauteed with butter, then tossed with Gorgonzola cheese and toasted walnuts. Yum.) Check. Pumpkin pie and pecan pie purchased? Check. All that’s left to do tomorrow is make my Grandma’s Fruit Salad, put together the green beans, and enjoy a lovely feast with the family. And, of course, stop to think about what I’m thankful for. That is a long…
-
Friday Again
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFnIP2NT5Yc[/youtube] I guess I’m not doing NaBloPoMo this year, huh? Figured that out already, haven’t you? Also, it’s starting to look like I probably won’t finish my book challenges for this year. I mean, I might, but I’m just not sucked into reading right now. More interested in sitting in front of the TV most nights. Pathetic. And my passion for blogging is at a low point right now. Not terribly interested in reading, not terribly interested in writing. None of it. Pathetic. I’m afraid I’m boring the hell out of you. I mean, so many bloggers right now are singing this same tune. Not motivated, miss the heyday, think…
-
Veterans Day, part II
Just saw this video on Suebob’s blog, and I had to share. Nothin’ like doggy love, is there? [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysKAVyXi0J4[/youtube]
-
Ted is a Good Sport
So for years, whenever I make a batch of cupcakes, Ted likes to amuse the family by cramming a whole cupcake into his mouth. It’s amazing. Today, Maya went to a birthday party, and brought home a HUGE cupcake for Ted, and double dog dared him to shove the whole thing in his mouth. He’s a pretty good sport, so he went for it. WARNING…if you’re eating or drinking anything while watching this video, it may end up all over your computer screen.