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Walking Away
I keep hearing about people who are underwater on their loans, and who might walk away from their homes in order to save money. I just read this on Yahoo, where four people who are underwater discussed their decisions to stay or not stay in their homes. It seems a bit disingenuous to me, becuase of the four people they interviewed, they found two who would not walk away from their homes, and two who are considering it, but they didn’t interview anyone who is definitely planning it. There must be some folks out there who are walking away from their mortgages, so why didn’t they get some of them?…
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Road Trip Weekend
(front row: Liz, Tracy, and Cherry; back row, me and Dorothy) One upside of blogging is the wonderful people that you meet, and how they can go from being just comments on your blog to being people that you genuinely care about, and sometimes, people that you get to meet in person. Cherry, Liz, Dot, and I were friends before we started blogging. We used to work together in a previous life, and happily, we’ve stayed friends all these years later. We’ve made friends with Tracy and Gina through blogging, and we’ve been fortunate enough to meet them in person. Cherry and I went to Tracy’s wedding shower, and Cherry…
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Happy Birthday, LaLuna!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glNjsOHiBYs[/youtube] Happy Birthday to a wonderful Sister-In-Law, La Luna! I hope all your birthday wishes come true. (The recording is from when the Beatles were on a BBC show called “Saturday Club”, which is who they’re singing Happy Birthday to. In case you’re trying to figure that one out.)
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Just In Case
If fate were trying to kill you, how would you escape its deathly grasp? If your solution were to change your name, disguise yourself by dressing and acting differently, and protecting yourself by obtaining an imaginary dog, a greyhound named Boy, then you might be David Case. David is 15, and lives in a suburb of London with his parents and his baby brother, Charlie. One day he saves Charlie from jumping out of a window to his certain demise (Charlie was wanting to fly like the birds), and rather than feeling blessed and fortunate, he instead snaps and decides that Fate is out to get him, and his best…
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Wordless Wednesday ~ First Tulip of the bunch
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Paddy Clarke, Ha Ha Ha
Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha is the story of a ten-year-old Irish boy in 1968. The book is told in Paddy’s voice, and Roddy Doyle captures the confusion and attempts to make sense of the world that go along with being 10, suppositions and extrapolations that children make. Paddy on death and religion: When Indians died – Red ones – they went to the happy hunting ground. Vikings went to Valhalla when they died or they got killed. We went to heaven, unless we went to hell. You went to hell if you had a mortal sin on your soul when you died, even if you were on your way…
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Meme Monday
Because I’ve got nothing else this morning, and still I want to post something. Maya got a super cute haircut over the weekend, but she won’t let me take a picture for the blog. I finished my book last night, but don’t have time to write up a review right now. I’m going to go observe small claims court later this morning, as our homeowners association is being sued, and it seems like it might be kinda fun and interesting to watch. So, for now, you get a meme that I took from my Facebook & real life friend, Connie: 43 Things about me!* 1. Do you like blue cheese?…
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The Album Cover Project
Do you Facebook? I Facebook. Through Facebook, I’ve reconnected with some old high school friends (wait, that didn’t come out right…they’re not old…or wait, maybe we’re all old, I’m not sure.) Anyway, I’ve reconnected with some great guys that I knew in another lifetime, back when I was still trying to figure out who I was, and I was mostly shy and awkward and so on, and they were mostly friends of my brother, but let me hang around anyway. One of these guys is Darin, who actually left High School before I started, so I didn’t know him quite as well as the others, but he is a great…
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What, Me Worry?
(Alfred, found here) I’ve been unemployed for 3 weeks now, and people keep asking me how I’m doing…am I worried, am I stressed, am I OK? I’ve gotta say, thus far, I’m fine. I’m sleeping well, feeling fairly relaxed during the day, doing OK. I don’t have as much time for reading/blogging/watching TV/going to movies as I expected to have, but I guess that’s fine. I run a lot of errands, I volunteered at Maya’s school yesterday, I take walks or bike rides in the middle of the day. I look for work, but there isn’t much out there right now. I have a few job leads, which will hopefully…
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Making sushi rolls
(I totally wish these were mine, but no, the picture came from this site) Maya’s history class is studying medieval cultures this year. Right now, they’re studying medieval Japanese culture, and they had ‘Japan Day’ today in class. The kids worked in stations, learning about Japanese brush painting, scroll making, origami, and sushi making. Since I’m out of work, I decided to volunteer, and I was assigned the sushi station. We went to a quick training session on Monday, where they showed us how to make the sushi rolls. They gave us a recipe for sushi rice, asked us to finely slice a million bits of carrot and cucumber, and…
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The Elegance of the Hedgehog
(cover found here) I LOVED this book. Really, really loved it. So charming and quirky and wonderful, I suspect I’ll be buying it as a gift for a few people, and recommending it to many others. The Elegance of the Hedgehog is the story of Paloma and Renée, two inhabitants of an elegant apartment building in Paris. Paloma is the youngest daughter of a wealthy couple who inhabit one of the apartments, and Renée is the building concierge. Both Paloma and Renée hide their true selves from the world around them, fearing the consequences if people find out their secrets. And their secrets are the same: they are both fiercely…
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He’s Just Not That Into You
A movie taken from a book taken from an episode of Sex and the City (remember when Burger is talking to Miranda about the guy she’s obsessing about, and he says, “He’s just not that into you”, to which Miranda is greatly relieved, because it means she doesn’t have to obsess and try to figure the guy out anymore) doesn’t seem too promising, does it? And yet, there’s a lot of talent lighting up the screen, and at some level, I found myself wondering why. I like all of the actors in the movie, but none of them came off very well. The premise that successful, beautiful women have nothing…
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On A More Cheerful Note…
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrlSkU0TFLs[/youtube] This cracks me up, and if it only mentioned all of the memes on Facebook right now, it would be perfect. 🙂 Happy Saturday!
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People Suck
I just received a phone call from a tissue donation organization, wanting to know if I wanted to memorialize my mom because she donated tissue after she died. I said no, it’s too upsetting to think about, and hung up. But it brought that whole crappy conversation back, and made me realize, yet again, why people suck. My mom wanted to be an organ/tissue donor, so when, a few hours after she had died, I received a phone call from said organization, I said yes, that’s what she would want, I give consent. You would think that would be it, wouldn’t you? Hell no, in this era of litigiousness, when…
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Friday Randomness
This week was the first in which, for at least part of the week, I was home while Ted was at work and Maya was at school. I don’t think this has ever happened to me before, when I wasn’t working. It seems like it should be similar to while I was working, but nope, it isn’t. At least not yet. The biggest difference is the freedom that I feel. On Wednesday, instead of working, I cleaned, I went to the grocery store, I took out the recycling, I gathered our tax information together, and I went to a movie. I really enjoyed the whole day. And when I picked…