Musings
-
Soundtrack to Love…
For several years after we first married, I would find my thoughts drifting back to July of 1993…”last year right now, we were driving to the pier to pick up the discounted wine for our wedding reception…” or “2 years ago now we were on the plane to London to start our honeymoon…” That sort of thing. Well, as the years pass, I find my thoughts going back to specific days less and less, but for some reason today I was thinking about 17 years ago, when we took the train from Amsterdam to Paris, for the last part of our Honeymoon. We bought coach tickets, but decided while underway…
-
Friday Randomness ~ Vacation Edition
We’re on vacation! Last Thursday, we flew up to Portland to spend time with my family up there. We had a lot of plans, some of which were realized, and some of which were not. Maya’s a big fan of the TV show, “Avatar: The Last Airbender“, so we intended to see the movie version after our arrival. Ted and Maya passed out, though, and by the time they finished their nap, we still needed to have dinner, so it didn’t happen. And to tell the truth, the reviews have been SO horrible (like, wondering if this is perhaps the worst movie ever made, that kind of thing), that she…
-
Now I know where she got it….
Back before Gen went blind, this is the kind of playful she was. She loved to run around and sometimes spin. Now I know where she gets it…she’s half Sheltie! Watch some doggie and baby fun. Genevieve would say that maybe this dog is Mommy, since she says that about all Shelties. But I’m thinking this dog might be too young to be Mommy.
-
Messing Up
I updated my theme here on the old blog, and lost my book reviews and blogroll and so on. Looks like I have some work to do to fix it, but I’m not in the mood right this minute. I hope I can remember all of my friends blog urls, since I don’t use a reader…I just come here, click the link from my sidebar, and get there that way. Sigh.
-
Friday Randomness
Happy Friday everyone. I went to the grocery store today and got Gen a HUGE chewie thing, which you can see her enjoying in this picture. Had to snap a shot, since she looked so funny with her butt up in the air and her face down on the ground. She loved it. Hope we don’t pay for it later. She has a very sensitive tummy. Tomorrow I’m going with Maya’s scout troop to Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, a place I’ll take over Disneyland any day of the week. The rides aren’t as good maybe, but it’s not NEARLY as crowded, it’s tons cheaper, it’s right there on the beach,…
-
Mistaken Identity
My dear friend Cherry is having her baby today…as we speak, she’s going in to O.R. for her c-section, and I’m expecting a call and can hardly contain myself! Breath, J, breath. OK, but of course Cherry having her baby reminded me of when I had my baby, lo these many years ago. I wanted what any new mom wants right then…my mom. So we planned for my mom to fly from Juneau, Alaska (where she was living), to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (where we were living). At this sad point, I hadn’t seen my mom in about 3 years. A few weeks after Ted and I were married in ’93, my…
-
The Ultimate Urban Legend?
(picture found here) From Wikipedia: An urban legend, urban myth, urban tale, or, more accurately, a contemporary legend, is a form of modern folklore consisting of apocryphal stories believed by their tellers to be true. As with all folklore and mythology, the designation suggests nothing about the story’s factuality or falsehood, but merely that it is in non-institutional circulation, exhibits variation over time, and carries some significance that motivates the community in preserving and propagating it. For a hundred and fifty years, hearing the words, “Donner Party” has meant one thing. Cannibalism. I’m not sure when people learn about the Donner Party in other parts of the country, but if…
-
Friday Randomness
(This is a lovely hookworm…want this in your intestines? The answer…perhaps. Find out more, below.) I’m behind on this whole blogging thing. I’m behind on my book review, having finished ‘The Night Listener‘ and ‘This World We Live In‘, but I haven’t reviewed them. I’m halfway through ‘Three Cups of Tea‘, but I left it at cheer-leading tryouts last week, and it’s lost, so I went to get another copy from the library. Now I’m finishing up ‘The Bride’s Farewell‘, and then I’ll get back to ‘Three Cups of Tea‘. So I guess you’re going to see a lot of book reviews around here in the near future. I have…
-
April Come She Will
April come she will When streams are ripe and swelled with rain; May, she will stay, Resting in my arms again June, she’ll change her tune, In restless walks she’ll prowl the night; July, she will fly And give no warning to her flight. August, die she must, The autumn winds blow chilly and cold; September I’ll remember. A love once new has now grown old. ~Simon & Garfunkel, April Come She Will. Listen. God, I really do love them, and the poetry of their lyrics. It’s April already…how did that happen? Not sure. But April makes me think of this song, and of my mom, since her birthday is…
-
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…