Musings
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Omaha Steaks
For quite awhile now, we’ve been sending my Grandma and Great Aunt Omaha Steaks as a Christmas gift. They’re on a very limited income, and this is an easy way to make them feel spoiled. A few years ago, I found out that my Great Aunt doesn’t really LIKE steak much, so now we mostly pick the seafood items, with a few steaks thrown in for Grandma, who DOES like steak, though she likes it so well done it probably tastes like a hockey puck. No matter. This year when I was planning my gift giving, I decided to send some Omaha Steaks to my brother, Richard, and his wife,…
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A Day in the City
Ted and I are both fortunate enough to be able to take the week off between Christmas and New Years, and it may be my favorite week of the year. Don’t ask me about that when I take time off in the summer, because I may change my mind, but for now, let’s say this is the best. The lead up to Christmas is one of hustle and bustle, with hurrying here and there, buying gifts, going to parties, wrapping gifts, sending cards, decorating the house, making latkes (for Hanukkah, which we also celebrate, because we’re atheists and can do whatever we want), enjoying Stollen Bread on St. Nicholas Day…
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Friday Randomness ~ 11/11/11
First off, let’s take a moment to thank all of the Veterans this Veterans’ Day, for their patriotism and service. There is a sad, lovely poem written during the First World War, by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, a Canadian soldier and surgeon, after he witnessed the death of a friend. Lieutenant Colonel McCrae died of pneumonia during the war, in 1918. “In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below. We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were…
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Fall Back…
Love it or hate it, it’s that time….Daylight Saving. Fall back, meaning that you turn your clock back an hour and get an extra hour of sleep. You’ll come home in the darkness, and perhaps it shan’t be quite so dark when you’re trying to awake in the morning. I like the evening sun, but I also like the morning sun, so I wonder if perhaps the answer isn’t to be found so much in fiddling with the clock and nature, but rather with moving closer to the equator. Either that, or following our bodies’ clocks, which would be closer to sleeping more in the winter and less in the…
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Body Image for Girls
Starshine wrote a post a little while ago about the hyper-sexualized advertising she sees at the local mall, and brought up her concerns about raising her sons to be respectful of women and not objectify them, when they are surrounded by these images. She brings up a good point, and it’s important to raise our boys to understand that this is just advertising, and that the majority of women and girls do not go around in their underwear, with ‘come get me’ looks permanently on their faces, bent into unnatural positions. It’s a fantasy, and not even one that’s very interesting or original. As the mother of a daughter, my…
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Friday Randomness
I don’t have a lot to say, but I feel like I should say something…I mean, I like blogging, so I need to blog, right? OK. Here are a few random thoughts coming through my head right now. Is anyone else exhausted by the coverage of the anniversary of the attacks on September 11th? I know I am. That day will never be forgotten…it was a horrid horrid day, and it was captured on video, played over and over again for all to see. I don’t want to see those buildings falling, or people jumping to their deaths, or people covered in ashes, or the desperate ‘have you seen this…
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Bodega Bay
We decided not to take a regular vacation this year, partly because money is kinda tight, and also because Genevieve isn’t thriving, and we would feel weird asking anyone to take care of her for several days. Blind, kinda confused, not a lot of appetite, questionable tummy issues, etc. And since we live in a beautiful part of the country, we have been mostly staying close to home, and adding in a few day trips. Monday we went to San Francisco to see Another Earth, which was really good. Wednesday, we drove to Bodega Bay. I’d never been before, and Ted hadn’t been since he was 5 or 6. Bodega…
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Yay New York!
(photo found here) Someday, equal rights to marriage for all will hopefully be the law of the land everywhere. For now, at least, gay and lesbian couples can get married in New York. (That’s 6 states that have gotten there before California. People think that’s strange, but California is actually a very conservative state, with the exceptions of the Bay Area and the greater Los Angeles area.) Good going, New York! Just in time for Pride Week, too. Rocking good news.
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Miscallaneous
Back in February or March, Issa mentioned on Facebook that she was going to do the 30-Day Shred. What, I thought, is the 30-day shred? Perhaps I even asked her. Or perhaps I looked it up. Either way, I thought it might be good to mix up my workout routine a bit and try something new. I’m pretty good about taking walks, but I need something that builds a bit more muscle, and gets my heart rate up higher, since I rarely walk as fast as I could/should. It’s cheap on Amazon, and the reviews are great, so I went ahead and ordered it. The first time through, I really…
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Royal Wedding
Today is the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, and I wish them every happiness. After the unhappy marriage of William’s parents, it feels like a happy ending to see a couple with a chance of happiness, even under the ugly microscope that follows the Royal family. I’m sure we’re all tired of seeing stories on the news, magazines, etc. And by now if you’re in the least bit interested in this story, you’ve seen the wedding, you’ve seen the dress, and they’re partying like it’s 1999 at Buckingham Palace. So, what do I have to say about it all? I wish them well. I think about the ugly…
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Legion of Honor
Maya had Spring Break last week, and I took a few days off to spend with her. Originally, she wanted to paint her room, but when I told her how much work that is (moving furniture and cleaning being most of it), she decided she didn’t really want to do that anymore, and could live with the sage green color that she has previously described as ‘mucus’. Undaunted, I insisted that we clean her room anyway. Which didn’t involve moving any furniture, but it did involve getting mounds of dust off of her toys, pulling 2 years worth of backpacks and paperwork out of the closet, going through her books…
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Playing Hooky
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NpJ4fUhFRU[/youtube] Last weekend, Maya asked if she could miss school on her birthday. My first reaction was, No, go to school. Then I thought about it and realized, who cares if she misses a day of school to celebrate her birthday? I mean, if a teacher is absent, they just show a movie in class, so if they can waste her time (once in awhile…not ragging on her school…it’s a good school, with very dedicated teachers), then so can I. Anyway, it seemed like SUCH a good idea, that Ted and I decided to take the day off as well. So we took a vacation day from work, and went…
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Getty Mansion
(you can click the picture of Marilee and Me, if you’d like to see us with the tops of our heads intact…) Last week, on a stormy, windy, rainy Thursday afternoon, my friend Marilee called me and asked, “Would you like to go to a high society fundraiser at a billionaire’s house tonight?” Her +1 had been forced to cancel at the last minute, due to a child with croup, and she thought we might have a great time. My first reaction was, um, no, it’s RAINING! It’s WINDY! I want to stay home and have a cozy dinner here. But by the time she finished telling me about the…
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Update in Pictures
I thought you might like to see what’s new around here. These photos aren’t going to win any awards. But they’ll give you something to look at, since you took the time to stop by, right? My Chicken Pot Pi, for Pi Day on Monday. I tried to cut a cute pi symbol in the top, but it oozed yumminess from inside, so you can’t really see the symbol. You can see Ted presenting the pie, however, with his model hand. That’s a hand like a model, um, not a fake hand. This is Maya’s little frog, Buffy. She is about a year old. Maya received her as a gift…
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Thinking of Japan
The pictures from Japan are so horrifying, they boggle the mind. I mean, when it was Haiti a few years ago, the pictures were unimaginable and tragic, but Haiti is such a poor, destitute country, that somehow it gave me a false impression of security. But Japan, Japan is a wealthy industrialized country, one where large earthquakes are expected and planned for. But an 8.9…that’s impossible to plan for. By comparison, the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake was 6.9, and the 1906 San Francisco earthquake was 7.9. (To read more about the Richter magnitude scale, and learn the difference between a 6.9, a 7.9, and an 8.9, click here) And of…