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Have an extra $5? Looking for good Karma points?
Then click over here. POW has a good idea…Read the story, click the COTA page, and do what you can. Just a thought. Happy Friday!!
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Why I’m Moving to Vancouver….
I was walking the other day, listening to a podcast on my beloved iPod. The podcast was of an NPR show, To the Best of our Knowledge, and it was about Canada. One of the segments was with a sociologist, Michael Adams, who wrote this book. It’s all about how the values of the United States are not the same as the values of Canada, and how that is becomming more and more the case as time goes by. For example: In the mid-1950’s, 60% of Canadians told pollsters they went to church each Sunday: the proportion in the U.S. was only 50%. Today, only 22% of Canadians claim weekly…
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This Book Is Stressing Me Out
I decided to read The Woman Who Walked Into Doors, by Roddy Doyle, because Maya has a couple of his children’s books, and they are really clever and well written and smart. So I thought I would try one of his novels for adults. This book is pretty amazing, especially since it’s written by a man. That sounds like a pretty sweeping statement, I know, but he really seems to GET a lot of the nuances of being a woman, especially about the pressures put on us by men regarding sexuality and so on. I mentioned some of this in an earlier post. Well, I am now at the part…
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Sometimes I Miss Philly
You may never hear me say this again, because it doesn’t happen often, but sometimes I miss Philadelphia. We only lived there for 2 years, from 1994-1996, and I never considered it ‘home’, so when I say I don’t miss it often, I’m not saying it isn’t a great city. It is. But when we lived there, I spent a lot of time being homesick for San Francisco. We would come home for Christmas, and we would both just hate the idea of going back to Philly, with its cold, cold winters, and the humid, sultry summers, so far away from our friends and family. But after awhile, we started…
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My Thoughts, Exactly.
Or, close, since I didn’t know about the dinner. But there’s a pattern here. Anyway, Echidne of the Snakes, a lovely liberal blogger, has a great post about the Hunting Accident, which sums it up pretty well, I think.
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Maybe it’s time to stop with the jokes?
The second story, when combined with the first, make for some pretty bad timing, wouldn’t you say? Hunter Shot by Cheney Has Heart Attack White House Finds Humor in Hunting Mishap
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Happy Valentine’s Day
Why do we celebrate Valentine’s Day? Is it so Hallmark, FTD, and See’s can make money? I think it’s right behind Christmas and Mother’s Day as big money makers for the retail industry. You can’t turn on the radio without hearing ads telling you to buy your wife a pearl, diamond, or ruby. If you’re not married yet, the pressure is to get engaged, NOW, on Valentine’s day. Mostly, though, it’s a completely manufactured holiday, full of all of the pressure of shopping and buying, reservations at fancy restaurants and romance. Now I know these things don’t have to be stressful…but for many people, they are, and the burdon seems…
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Weekend Wrap Up
This was a lovely weekend, which started with a brand new Sofa and Mattress set on Friday afternoon. Yay! The sad story of our old mattress is that it was a King, but to get it up the stairs of our low-ceilinged townhome, you had to kind of bend it…which may be part of why it was hurting our backs, that it got damaged somehow when we moved in. Or, it could just be that it was about time for it to die….it was about 9 years old. So, new mattress came, King size, a week ago, but it couldn’t fit up the stairs. 🙁 So they took it away.…
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Trifecta of Neuroses….
Sunday afternoon, I watched a DVD and did some ironing. I hate ironing. But I hate that pile of unironed clothes even more, so…anyway, I watched part 2 in the trifecta of woman’s neuroses, “Babyfever”. These movies can be kind of scary, when you realize just HOW neurotic some women are about food, babies, and I’m assuming, shopping. Maybe we all are to some extent. On a small sidetrack, I read a book a couple of years ago called “Wasted“, about an anoretic and her experiences, and the two things that struck me the most were her comment that she STILL doesn’t know any women who are completely normal about…
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I got tagged…
I got tagged for a brand new MEME by L. Here goes: 1) What was the last thing you prayed for? I prayed for Autumn’s Mom’s Mom to get a job. I am an athiest, so I don’t know how much it will help. But I prayed for my mom to get a job, and she did, so I figure, it can’t hurt. 2) What was the nicest thing you ever did for someone else? I gave birth to my daughter. How can you top that, giving someone life? I try to be a nice person, generally, but I don’t know how much I succeed. 3) What do you think…
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Blogarreah
I had a dream last night, that Maya was at a Girl Scout sleepover, and the parents were all there chatting, snacking, drinking and having a party. There were also people there from an old job I had, and other kids/parents from the school, that aren’t in the Scouts. Well, at one point, Ted said, I wonder how Maya’s doing, and I went outside to check. I saw two kids from the school, Robert and Chanel, and I said, “Have you seen Maya?” Robert said, “She’s in the corner of the yard with the rest of the girl scouts, lighting up.” So I went over to see what was going…
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Welcome to Good Burger
Thursday nights are yoga nights for me…which means that sometimes Ted cooks, but usually he takes Maya out to dinner, and then comes home and brings me something to eat from wherever he went, and I eat it when I get back from yoga. Mmmm. Dinner, yoga, and Lost on TV (recorded from Wednesday night)…my favorite night of the week. Well, this week he brought me back a burger from Mel’s on Main Street (sounds like we live in Happy Day’s land or something). I have to tell you, it was the BEST BURGER I’ve had in FOREVER. Sooooo good. Still hot, which means they must have gotten home right…
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Maya’s Mom
Since I live in California, I am contractually obligated to take a yoga class, so I do. I don’t want to fall behind on my committments, and then have to pay some fine or something. Well, I’ve been taking yoga for almost 2 years now, just once a week, and I love it. Thursday night is my favorite night of the week. My teacher not only gets us all bendy and twisty, she teaches us some pretty cool stuff about the philosophies of yoga. I’ve taken yoga before, at the gym, and none of the other classes I’ve taken actually take 10 minutes at the beginning of class to talk…
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What will $1,030,000 buy around here?
After I ate lunch at my desk, I thought I would get outside and enjoy this beautiful springlike weather we’ve been having, so I went to the store and got some M&Ms (peanut, if you care), and walked around the block. I remember when this house was renovating their yard last summer…looks like they did the inside too. It’s a very pretty house…but come on, it’s just a house. In the suburbs. If you have a cool million + some change, it can be yours. And what about this fancy ‘staging’ and website? Wow…real estate can be pretty intimidating, yeah?
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Blame Canada?
Recently, Maya was working on a report about the California Missions for school, and we were reading about how the early explorers of ‘Alta California’ were looking for a passage between the Pacific and the Atlantic, which would be VERY valuable to them in getting wealth from the area back to Spain. They never found a route, though, and instead colonized California. Cut to the modern day: We have found a passage, through the Artic Ocean, called the Northwest Passage. It is seldom used because it is frozen over for much of the year, and the route is exteremly hazardous. One consequence of global warming appears to be that in…