Musings
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Heads Up
I’ve told you once before about my cousin, Tony, who is in prison, convicted of a murder that, tragically, he did commit. Tony has been in prison now for just over 30 years, and is a very different person than he was back then. Tony’s mom, my Aunt Lori, recently began reading my blog, and had emailed me to ask if I might print and mail Tony the 3 part story about when I met my father for the first time. I did so, and wrote him a letter as well. Upon returning from our vacation in Oregon last Monday, I found a letter from Tony, including some lovely pictures…
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Happy Birthday Cherry!
Today is my dear friend Cherry’s birthday! Happy Birthday, Missy! Cherry is a wonderful, giving, (too) hard working, friend. She loves to cook for her friends, go out with her friends, hang out with her friends, whatever…just bless us all with her company. Thanks, Cherry, for being the wonderful person that you are. Now, if you look at Cherry’s post today, you’ll see that we celebrated Cherry’s birthday in style on Sunday at Fenton’s Creamery in Oakland, where the smallest ice cream they serve is still as big as your head. Maya and Jackie shared a 3 lb. banana split…(she has the ‘before’ photo on her post) But they finally…
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Our Amazing Dinner
Friday evening, Ted, Maya and I were invited to dinner with our friends, Pat and Beatrice, and their friend, Unita Blackwell. If any of my 5 daily readers are familiar with the civil rights movement of the 1960s, specifically the voters rights movement in the south, you may have heard of Mrs. Blackwell. I am not terribly familiar with that movement, though I admire the hell out of it, and I see a strong correlation between the struggles of the black people in the south, and their success, and the struggles of women and gays, as well as the anti-war movement. So to meet a pioneer in this movement is…
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Sunday Morning Thoughts…
I just got up, looking at a few blogs, and the first two I came to had some interesting coincidences… 1st, my mom’s blog talked about the sexualization of children, about how dressing young girls in adult’s clothing, and visa versa, is dangerous because it sends very confusing messages to the world. This reminded me of when I was a girl, and I wanted to get my ears pierced…I wasn’t allowed, because my mom said that earrings were a symbol of being a certain age and maturity, and so I didn’t get them done until I was 16. I’ve put a lot of thought into when to allow Maya to…
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It’s The End of The World As We Know It….
Oh God, the day has come…We are truly in the final days, the days of apocalypse…and what proof do I have, you may well ask? Well, I’m truly ashamed, but within the span of one week, 1 WEEK I tell you, I have found myself agreeing with both George W. Bush AND She Who Must Not Be Named. Before you pass out, or rush to have me committed to a mental institution (which, truly, I beg you to do should I ever TRULY agree with these spawn of Satan), allow me to say that I only agreed conditionally… 1st, on Monday, we were having breakfast at our hotel in Ashland,…
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Ode to Forest Park
When we go to Portland, Maya’s favorite thing to do is to hike in Forest Park. She told me that Forest Park is her favorite place on earth. This most recent trip was no exception, and happily, Ted was able to join us this time, and I think he may be hooked as well. For Maya and I to enjoy hiking is definitely saying something, because we are two girls who do NOT like to get hot and sweaty. Sadly, there is almost no way to hike around here without getting hot and sweaty, because there are simply not enough trees to keep you shaded. So the sun is beating…
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Convoluted Vacation Wrap Up
Hello Bloggy Blog Blog Blog, I’ve missed you so. I’ve posted, sure, but it’s not the same as actually writing something NEW, and I haven’t been reading my friends’ blogs, and I haven’t been commenting, and boy, I have a LOT of catching up to do. Let me start by saying, I’m still Biff, because I’m thinking…One Week Ago Right Now…I was getting ready to go to Seattle…on vacation. Sigh. So, today I’ll tell you what we did on our vacation to the Pacific Northwest. (Mostly Portland.) We left home and drove to Ashland, where we hoped to see a play, but we got a bit of a late start,…
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Stupid Human Tricks
Cherry and I were discussing the time I murdered a salmon in Alaska…I was telling her that my SIL and I hit the fish in the head with a rock, hoping that would be kinder than leaving the poor fish to flop around and suffocate in the open air. This brought up the topic of suffocation for pleasure…how some people like to suffocate themselves just to the point of almost losing consciousness, because it gives them a high. This reminded me of a very stupid trick my girlfriend Neva and I used to do, when we were in the 6th or 7th grade. I don’t know where we got the…
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How To Be Annoying….
Back in my sordid days as a front desk clerk at a fancy hotel in SF, (OK, they weren’t really sordid…I just say that to give myself street cred) I had a VERY annoying coworker whom I shall call Biff, because, well, his name was Biff. Really, his name was Jason, but he went by Biff. Why anyone with a perfectly good name like Jason would go by Biff is beyond me. Maybe there were too many Jasons in the family, and that was his family’s way of telling them all apart. Maybe they read too much Superman. (Wasn’t there a character named Biff in the Superman comics?) Anyway, in…
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Our Weekend So Far
Yesterday, Maya had a pretty cool art class, where they got to learn some cartooning skills from a Pixar animator. She really liked it. Ted and I took the opportunity to go see Scoop, which is the newest Woody Allen movie. Ted LOVES Woody Allen. I like him OK, but not like Ted does. That’s ok, I’m game for a good movie now and again. 😉 At one point during the film, however, I discovered that my husband has become an old man. I’m not sure exactly when it happened, but the evidence came forward when Woody Allen was asked what his religion was…he said “”I was born into the…
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My French is, How You Say, Tres’ Mal
I work at a small ‘virtual company’, and by this I mean that we all work from home and communicate mostly via email, sometimes via telephone. The company wasn’t always like this, but some of my coworkers have always been in other parts of the country, and we are mostly on an email basis. One of the VPs, whom I shall call ‘D’, for some reason emailed me once using a word or two in French. I don’t know if that was the start of our French email relationship or if something I said triggered him, but I went along with it. I went online, found a free translator, and…
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Enough Light Banter!
While listening to my beloved iPod last week, walking the dog, enjoying “To the Best of Our Knowledge”, these questions were raised: What do you live for? What would you die for? What would you kill for? The answers were interesting. Most folks said they lived for their families, would die for their families ,and kill for their families. Some folks said they lived for art and love, would die for their ideals, and wouldn’t kill for anything. Me? I’m not sure. I’ve thought about it quite a bit over the last few days, and here are my answers, some lighthearted, some not so much: I live for: Kisses from…
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Churning….
Ever have one of those days when your insides are just all jumbled, and you feel tense, and although nothing bad really happens to you, you’re pretty much ready to snap? No, me neither, but if they DID, I wouldn’t be a fun person to be around, and I wouldn’t want to be my husband or my child. 😉 A bit more seriously, there was a time not long ago when I felt like this much of the time…tense, on edge, pretty much unable to relax. I decided to take a yoga class to try to help me through this problem…maybe if I could find the right class, one that…
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Congratulations, Achebe!
Our 20 year old Volvo passed a major milestone on Friday….he went from 199,000 miles over to 200,000! It’s kind of like his birthday or something! If he were human, I’d buy a cake. But, since he’s a car, I’ll just say, “Good Going, Achebe!” (And yes, he was named for the famous Nigerian author, Chinua Achebe…I read a book of his in grad school (Things Fall Apart) and I was pretty blown away by how DIFFERENT it was from the other things I was reading, and I always liked the name. I hope the author isn’t insulted that I named a car after him…I mean, Ted named his mom’s…
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Sweet Relief
Take a peek at this…it’s the view toward San Francisco, from the Lawrence Hall of Science in the Berkeley Hills. Maybe I’ll pull this post later, when the view changes, but right now, it’s all foggy foggy sky, which is sweet relief, and bringing cooler breezes out our way.