Musings
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Truly Yummy Cheese
I found myself at Whole Foods the other day, hovering around the lovely cheese department. Can I just say, cheese is good food. Yay cheese! So, there I was, snooping around, and I spied my all time favorite, heretofore only available in restaurants, cheese, Bermuda Triangle, made by Cypress Grove. OK, I lied just there, and Cherry knows it, because I’ve told her of seeing it at a local grocery once in awhile. But the difference is, at the local grocery, I would have to buy the whole long triangle of cheese, whereas at Whole Foods, they’ll slice off as much or as little as I want. At $21 a…
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Go, Ted, GO!
* Yesterday was pretty awesome, because Ted had the opportunity to fill in on his favorite radio show, Forum, on KQED. I’ve gotta say, he kicked ass, and totally rocked that joint! I am SO proud and impressed. Check it out on his blog, where you can click over to a link and listen to him interview folks on the very different issues of ‘the geography of happiness’, and the destruction of CIA videos showing interrogation techniques. Awesome. *Funny the images you can find, just by searching images for ‘Ted’. 🙂
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Jammies?
This morning I woke up and contemplated not getting dressed. Just staying in my jammies all day, watching tv maybe, reading my book, taking it easy. Then I got out of bed, jumped in the shower, and got dressed. I’m just not the ‘all day jammies’ type of person. Even when I’m sick, I like to have my shower and get dressed. Even if I’m not planning on leaving the house, I really like to feel like I could leave if I wanted to, and I just don’t feel that way without a shower and clothes. How about you? How often do you stay in your jammies and lounge around…
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Sure Lock
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aikg6OP3jwU[/youtube] Ted brought this tasty morsel home from work today…his coworker sent it to him, and he showed me, and it’s pretty funny. Perfect solution to a girl with nothing much to say today, but still wants to post on her blog…
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A Day at the Aquarium
Way back in March, Maya received gift certificates for the Monterey Bay Aquarium as a birthday gift. Between girl scout activities, school activities, trying to sell our house, trying to avoid crowds, etc., they have been sitting in a drawer since then. When we decided to take 2 weeks off from work for Christmas and New Years, we decided this would be a good time to make use of the tickets. And yesterday, finally, we did. We started out late, as befits a family on vacation, and stopped for a late breakfast on the way. I’ll tell you, I’d move to Monterey in a minute. It’s so pretty there, and…
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Untitled…
Have you ever cried the make-up off of your face for someone you don’t know well, have only met once or twice? Sadly, I did exactly that today. An ex-coworker of mine, who I liked very much, lost her daughter to suicide last week, and the funeral was today. All I could think of was what a sad, tragic waste. What a beautiful, loving person she was, 22 years old with her whole life ahead of her. Surrounded by family and friends who loved her very much. Her mother’s sobs ripped my heart out of my chest and stamped it into the ground. I cannot imagine anything worse. (No picture…
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If you haven’t got a ha’penny then God bless you!
From the John Denver/Muppet Christmas special, one of my all time favorites: Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat Please put a penny in the old man’s hat If you haven’t got a penny, a ha’penny will do If you haven’t got a ha’penny then God bless you! Which brings me, sadly, to the point of this post. I read yesterday, and then heard on NPR later in the day, that donations to charities are abysmally low this year.  The newspaper article was mainly talking about gifts of toys and clothing, both new and used. The radio story (from The News Hour) was about donations of food to food…
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Eat Poppa, Eat! Nobody Likes a Skinny Santa!
I assume you’ve all seen that some folks have decided that Santa is too fat. He should provide a better example to children, they say, by exercising and eating more fruits and veggies, fewer cookies and cheese sandwiches. (Maya tells me she learned that in Europe, kids leave cheese sandwiches for Santa, rather than cookies and milk…I have no idea if this is true or if someone pulled her leg.) Then I read on my mom’s blog that there’s a group called “Keep Santa Fat“, and you can go to their website, sign a petition to keep Santa from going on Atkins (watch out, Rudolph!), and a pound of food…
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Happy Birthday, Richard!
Today is my brother Richard’s birthday, and even though he doesn’t read blogs (I don’t think), and certainly doesn’t read mine (he’s too busy making groovy cg art on his computer), I’ll wish him a wonderful birthday here. The sucky part of living so far away from your family is that you can’t be with them on special days. Like today. If they hadn’t all deserted me by moving to Alaska, we could all go out to dinner tonight, and he and I could tease our poor mom mercilessly, or, perhaps, his lovely wife, Kathy, my mom, and I, could all gang up on Richard and tease him mercilessly. Ted…
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A Random Post About Not Much…
This picture is of a Christmas Stollen, which is supposed to look like the swaddled baby Jesus, and which you enjoy for St. Nicholas Day, December 5th or 6th. (The 6th is St. Nicholas Day, but the eve is when you maybe eat the stollen? Not completely clear, though I do know it’s yummy.) Not much to write about today, but I thought I’d say hi to let you know I’m still here. Last night was nice, went to dinner with my friend Neva, whom I’ve known since 6th grade. It’s funny to be two women in your 40s when you’ve known each other since you were in your early teens, because you…
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This Too Shall Pass
When Maya was an infant, the baby books said that if you want your child to go to sleep easily every night, put them in their crib full, clean, dry, burped, and slightly awake. Be careful what bedtime routines you start, because the child will associate them with bedtime, and while you may enjoy rocking your child to sleep at bedtime every night, you may not wish to do it every time the baby wakes up during the night, often every 2 or 3 hours. What they don’t tell you is that they will soon grow out of the phase of wanting to be rocked to sleep, and you will…
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Almost finished…
Loyal readers know that we’ve been trying to sell our condo for almost 7 months now. You know that we had it on for just over 3 months, took it off the market, put maybe 10k into updates, and put it back on the market in late September. In all this time, we have had exactly one offer. One offer that was so crappy it was insulting. One offer that, had we taken it, we would not have been able to afford a big enough down payment on a new place, and thus would not be able to move, so what’s the dang point anyway? So here we are, going…
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‘Tis the Season for Sharing
Dee tagged me for a timely little idea she had. I won’t call it a meme, though I’m doing it for meme Monday anyway. Dee wants me to help get the word out about a charity that she is passionate about, which got me to thinking about the charities that I am passionate about, and people I love are passionate about, and how at this time of year, some folks do some end of the year giving in the name of loved ones or so on, and heck, maybe someone might not know about one of my favorite charities. So, not only am I going to tell you about Dee’s…
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Stupid Tire
Have you ever noticed how difficult it can be to see a black tire with no rims on a black road on a dark night on the freeway? How if there are no other cars around you to shine their headlights, and no streetlights, a tire might just sit in the middle of the road, waiting for you? No? Me neither. Until Monday night. On Monday night, Maya and I were taking Jackie home after Enchanted, and I was going about 70 mph (practically the slow lane around here), when I heard and felt a huge BANG!!!, and then I saw a tire go flying off to my left, and…
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The Ghost of Thanksgivings Past…
I’m sure that we must have celebrated Thanksgiving when I was a child in Alaska, probably with lots of friends, music, and laughter, but I don’t have any specific memories of Thanksgiving during those years. Halloween and Christmas, yes, but not Thanksgiving. My memories of Thanksgiving are of holidays at my Grandparents’ house. My Grandparents’ house was a place where you had to walk on eggshells & be careful what you said, because my grandfather (whom I loved dearly) had a very sarcastic tongue, and a perfectly innocent conversation could quickly turn ugly. Add to that some pretty divergent political and social beliefs around the table, and it’s a recipe…