Inexhaustible Interest in Life

I stepped back to take a look at my computer area this evening…I hadn’t seen the forest for the trees and I realized what a pigsty it is. Well, you know what they say, messy desk equals organized mind, or something along those lines.

Every piece of this clutter represents an item or idea that I want to know more about, or raw material for something I wish to create. Especially important is blog fodder (articles, photos, items that I want to share with others). It seems like blogging has taken over my life as I attempt to create a post every day. I haven’t had Writer’s Block yet, and this mess is part of the reason why. Here’s the clutter rundown for today:

• New Yusuf CD (by the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens). Haven’t heard it yet, need to give it a spin in the CD drive while I write. I did hear the first song, it sounds almost like vintage Cat. I loved his old stuff, so soothing and spiritually refreshing, so I thought I’d give him a try, even though he’s embraced a totally different lifestyle now.
• Brotogeris Society magazine – periodical about my favorite species of birds. Gobi is one of them.
• Chewed up plastic bag – Sometimes I just get so frustrated with my computer that I keep this bag on hand instead of tearing out hair… (just kidding -that’s Gobi’s work!). Inside the bag is the sum total of all my cousin Ron’s family memories in loose photographs. Some of his old army photos have interesting stainage on them – I really, really hope it’s just beer or food residue and not some kind of biohazard. I promised to scan these photos (after rinsing them off) and create a CD slideshow for him for easy computer viewing. It’s tedious going, a lot of work. At this rate he will never get the photos back and will wonder where they went to…
• HP printer cartridges – here’s a tip: never listen to the printer when it asks you to change the cartridge. Milk those puppies for all they’re worth. I use mine until I notice people with blue faces or an absence of black tones…in other words, the sci-fi look.
• Creative Zen mp3 player – combine it with Napster and you’ve got a friggin’ universe of music at your disposal.

How I love learning! And I learn so much from you guys out there. Your blogs are another constant source of continuing education!!!

Wordless Wednesday #1

Wanna join Wordless Wednesday? Go to the Wordless Wednesday website to get added to the list of those participating.

Quail Botanical Gardens

These photos were taken at Quail Botanical Gardens in picturesque Encinitas, California. I spent the day in that lovely city with my hubby Bill and our friend Marcia. It’s located just north of San Diego, right on the coast.

This place has plants from all over the world planted together in their respective biomes. In this photo, I am standing by very large stalks of bamboo. Have you ever tried to remove bamboo from the ground? It’s almost impossible to do by hand. And the stuff grows something like 1/4 – 1/2 inch a day (someone correct me if I’m wrong), so it’s a very hardy plant. Bamboo wood products are available that are very hard and sturdy (they make excellent floors) – plus the products are biologically sustainable because the stuff grows so fast, they can harvest the plants and have another batch ready to harvest soon after.

A little story about this photo is that on the day we were at the Gardens, there were actually monks there. Yes, Asian monks were strolling down the paths enjoying the views. So here are these monks, and they are walking by the giant bamboo, as well as other Asian plants, so it looks just like a setting in Asia – I wanted so badly to take a picture of these guys amidst that perfect background, but I was too shy to bother them. Hubby agreed we should leave them in peace. So I could have had a really wonderful foreign-looking shot, but at least my karma is intact!

Here I am in “Hawaii”, recreated beautifully by the Garden staff:

All in all, a cheap way to travel the world in a few hours!!

Punchline!

Here is another comedy gem from my blog buddy Shaymus. He’s a crackup and his blog makes me laugh when I’m blue!

Seb, put Rambo up to the screen…is he laughing??

With teeth like that, I say keep the dog as happy as possible…

It’s petty, but it’s how I feel right now…

I received an email from a longtime friend of mine who shall remain nameless. I have here changed the name to protect the guilty; I shall call this person Sue. Sue and I have known each other since high school, so we are very much familiar with each other. She has always been rather moody and broody, but I have learned to ignore that part of her personality as she has so many good qualities. She moved to the Midwest last summer with her family to pursue a new job opportunity.

Recently, Sue has had health problems – severe long term health problems requiring hospitalization. I spoke to her on the phone the other day and she’s hanging in there.

So today I get this group email from her about how happy she is in her new home and how thankful she is that all these people in her town and in her church who barely know her are so kind to her, bringing her meals, inviting her and her family to Thanksgiving dinners, etc. I think that’s wonderful. But then she says that this would never have happened in California, where often people don’t know their neighbors and keep to themselves, that they are too busy with their own troubles to concern themselves with others (“except for her friends who ‘of course’ would help her”).

So why am I just a teensy bit offended? Because this email felt like a little slap in the face. Sue has always been a person who complained about people not visiting or calling her, but she never calls back, or visits, or even responds to emails most of the time. Maybe I am deluding myself to the status or quality of our relationship.

Or maybe I just need to work on myself a little bit. It should not bother me this much – this is her path in life. There is a reason for the things we say and do. I have free will as does she, and if the friendship is no longer satisfying, it’s OK to let it be, or end it. I choose to let it be, as we have been friends for 30 years. But I know I will not be doing much of the calling or emailing until I feel that she actually wants to reciprocate. This is not a vindictive response, but a realistic one.

To have a friend, you have to BE a friend…

Marlon Spins in His Grave

Just for the heck of it, I tried this “Celebrity Look-alike” website. Allegedly, these are the celebrities I resemble. OK I admit it, it’s an old photo of me (that’s me on the left at age 19). But never in my wildest dreams did I think I looked like the young Marlon Brando. I used to get comments that I looked like Princess Diana, but Marlon…ah ah.

I don’t mind the Kyra Sedgwick one, as she is one of my favorite actresses.

Pocket Change

What do you do with your pocket change?

OK, you just got some change back from the vending machine. You carelessly drop it into your pocket or throw it into your purse. You really don’t think about it much, it’s just loose change, right?

Well, consider again. At the end of each day before going to bed, my husband empties out his pants pockets before throwing his pants into the laundry hamper. We have a little blue piggy bank on a table in our bedroom, and each night Bill puts his change in the slot in the piggy’s back. Night after night, more change is added till the pig is full; then we head to the CVS Pharmacy and throw the entire pig’s worth of change into a counting machine. We get a little ticket to take to the cashier, who hands us the amount counted by the machine in actual bills of green.

Last time we did this, we got $172.00 and some change out of the deal. This enabled us to buy our little parrot, Gobi (as a matter of fact, one of Gobi’s many nicknames is “Loose Change”).

It is really a wise financial move to save your loose change. There are so many things you could do with the money: Buy a pet, fund your IRA, save for a rainy day, put in your glove box to pay for future tolls, make an extra mortgage or car payment, buy that new Eels CD you always wanted, etc.

 

What’s Your World View?

HAPPY THANKSGIVING, EVERYBODY!!! Would you believe I am having Japanese food for Thanksgiving dinner. That’s because I dropped the ball on making a reservation somewhere else, so now we’re eating sushi and soy beans!!!

Just a quick post today…I took this quiz and found it to be pretty accurate for me.
What’s your world view??

You scored as Idealist. Idealism centers around the belief that we are moving towards something greater. An odd mix of evolutionist and spiritualist, you see the divine within ourselves, waiting to emerge over time. Many religious traditions express how the divine spirit lost its identity, thus creating our world of turmoil, but in time it will find itself and all things will again become one.

Cultural Creative 100% Idealist 100% Postmodernist 75% Modernist 69% Existentialist 63% Materialist 50% Fundamentalist 38% Romanticist 25% What is Your World View? created with QuizFarm.com

Cory’s First Day of School

On Monday, Cory went to school for the first time. He’s a Montessori student now. This little guy could not wait to go to school, he’s very intelligent and needed the stimulation. As you can see on the photo below, he did not want to leave school either. His first day was a little difficult – he didn’t know the routine or the songs that the other kids knew by heart. But he will learn quick. We’re sure he’ll soon be teaching the other kids how to do things. He didn’t want to nap with the other kids – there were too many exciting things to do and learn!

Now his mother Candace and Grandma Shirley will get some much needed time to themselves during the day!

Car-B-Ques

A few weekends ago, my husband and I went to Trader Joe’s for some noshes. We love the “Chevalier Noir” cookies.. but I digress.

There was a bit of a back-up getting into the parking lot, and then we saw why. A large ladder truck was on site from the fire department putting out a Ford Explorer that had somehow caught fire. A large crowd was gathered around watching, some with cameras , others holding their children by the hand trying to get to their cars.

Around here, we call such flaming vehicles “car-b-ques”. You will hear this term on the traffic reports on the radio whenever there’s a car fire.

I hate Fords. Any Ford product is on my Shitlist. My prejudice against Fords started in the 1970’s when it was discovered that an unknown ability of the Pinto was that it would burst into flames when struck from behind. This was apparently because of the construction or location of the gasoline tank. I remember seeing some sort of documentary on this and how the fault was due to the beancounters figuring that it was cheaper to pay the occasional lawsuit than to fix the problem on thousands of cars. I was outraged by this and vowed to NEVER buy a Ford.

Our friend Dave who has colorful names for everything calls the Ford Explorer the “Ford Exploder”. He was once a Ford owner and vows never again.

Other car-b-ques I have known have been old Volkswagen beetles (70’s vintage) and Datsun (now Nissan for the young folk) Z-cars (from the  80’s or 90’s I think). We are personally acquainted with two people who parked their Z cars to go to the store and upon coming out, discovered their cars in flames. Good thing they were not sitting in their cars at the time; good thing no children were in the car. I don’t know what the problem was with these Z’s or how it was addressed.

The burning Volkswagen started because the fuel line was too close to some heat source in the engine compartment and somehow ignited.

The last car-b-que I am personally acquainted with was when a burning van sitting at the top of a very steep hill rolled downhill and hit my mother’s car. Ironically it was a burning Volkswagen van and my mother’s car was the Ford! Her car’s hood was pretty scorched and major repairs were done, but it was fixed. My mother was in the car when the van crashed into it, so she needed some repairs, too.