I’m not a big believer in playing hooky…mostly I try to keep Maya in school on school days, and do our vacationing on vacation days.  If we end up going on a vacation to visit family during the school year, the school gives Maya an ‘Independent Study’ assignment, and she works on that while we’re gone.  The reason for my strictness on this has nothing, or very little, to do with my Puritan ancestors and their work ethics, and more to do with money.  I was on the school board at Maya’s school, and I know how much each absence costs the school.  If kids are sick, or out for…

Good News:  Though Maya has been sick pretty much since last Saturday evening, she was feeling well enough yesterday to go on a field trip with her class to the Marine Science Institute in Redwood City, about 1.5 hours from here. Bad News: Taking her was a tactical error on my part, because last night she was completely wiped out, and I’m going to keep her home again today to prevent a total relapse.  That makes three days of school she’s missed this week. Good News: It looks like we may be able to swing a slightly larger overpriced piece of California Real Estate than we currently have, a townhome…

Aerobic workout with Gilead….check High Fiber cereal with antioxident (and yummy) fresh blueberries for breakfast….check 30 minute nap added to daily schedule….check* Did you see the latest, that a 30 minute nap every afternoon, if you can manage it, is good for your heart? Here is one we’ve all been waiting for: A Harvard study has found that a regular afternoon nap could reduce the risk of cardiac death by 37 percent. First we learned that a glass of red wine is good for the heart, and now so is the midday snooze. For the wine, we have the French to thank. For the nap, we can thank the Greeks.…

Nothing big today… We saw the film, Proof, the other night. It was OK…not GREAT, not sucky. Mostly what I thought was that Gwenyth looks like the movie star version of my sister, Maya, which made me think of Laura Dern looking like the movie star version of me, and wondering who the movie star version of my sister, Melissa is…maybe Emily Longstreth, whom I thought looked like Melissa back in 1989, when she played Kevin Bacon’s girlfriend, Susan, in “The Big Picture”, which was a great movie, by the way. I’m not sure who else Melissa looks like. Someone, I’m sure. That got me to wondering about my brother,…

Well, I hope to hell that you all are wrong about the water that’s been leaking from the microwave being some kind of radioactive waste, because both Ted and I have already cleaned it up several times, with no gloves, just towels.  I put the microwave in the backyard this morning, since the counter was completely wet again this morning, and I don’t know if we can legally just throw it in the trash or not… Where do I buy a geiger counter, anyway? 

Has anyone ever heard of a microwave oven leaking water?  I have never heard of this, but ours definately is.  It’s not even plugged in, hasn’t been used in a day or two, but it put out a HUGE puddle.  This has happened several times, and ruined several of my cookbooks.  We’re going to trash the thing and get a new one, since it’s almost surely cheaper to buy a new one than to get this one looked at, and we’ve had it for maybe 10 years, but I think this is VERY weird.  Today, I heated up some soup on the stove at about 11:30.  The counter was dry,…

  “Scruples…They are unbearable to me, because I have suffered too much from scruples…” ~ Anaïs Nin All of this talk of infidelity and morals has me thinking…thinking about how some people see the ties of marriage as a pair of shackles, see the mores of society as beneath them, as not appyling to them, because they are ‘free spirits’, and thus, somehow above it all. I try not to be judgemental of folks for the way that they choose to live their lives.  If someone wants to have an open marriage, as long as everyone knows what’s going on, OK, whatever.  If, for example,  Anaïs Nin feels stifled in her…

Did anyone see this on the news or in person?  We didn’t go to SF to watch, but WOW, that’s a big ship.  So big she had to sail around the Cape, because she won’t fit through the Panama Canal.  Whew.  Photo courtesy the SF Chronicle, and you can find more pictures here.