Today is day 5 of ditch digging at our house and J just finished the job. It really is impressive what one man with a few basic tools can accomplish. The problem? J says that the ditch is actually one of the easier jobs in this whole process and that the hard part is still to come. Yikes.
Earth Day
This Sunday is Earth Day. We will be in Alabama visiting family and friends, but if we were in town we would head to Centennial Park for the Nashville Earth Day Festival. As anyone who isn't living under a rock or in total denial knows, the Earth at this point needs all the help from us she can get. Instead of celebrating Earth Day once a year we should all commit to do little things everyday to make the future a little brighter for the next generation. One of my New Years resolutions that I have actually kept is carrying cloth bags to the grocery. What motivated me to do this was the April issue of Real Simple magazine which said "in an average year U.S. households use about 100 billion plastic bags, 99 percent of which are never recycled. Plastic grocery sacks take between 20 and 1,000 years to break down." I admit that the first time I handed the bagger my cloth bags and they looked at me like some crazy tree hugging hippie my neck got red and splotchy, my bodily response to being embarrassed, but honestly I refuse to go through life worried about what total strangers think of me. Plus I actually feel good when I leave and my cart is full of cloth bags instead of all that plastic.
Beauty Tip
So I recently stumbled onto a great beauty find. MAC eye liner is the first eye liner I have ever used that actually stays on all day and doesn't run down my face. The one I chose is MAC Techknakohl which I admit is a bit pricier than the Cover Girl that I used before, but sometimes you really do get what you pay for.
Hope everyone has a great weekend.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Saturday, April 14, 2007
And So It Goes
On March 22, 1994 I saw Kurt Vonnegut speak at the University of Florida. After his animated thought provoking performance I came home mind racing and wrote down as much as I could remember. I also saved my VIP Pass in my journal.
I must thank one of my professors that sadly I cannot remember his name who told a class full of bored freshman to go see anyone you can while they are still alive. If you like a band, buy a ticket and go, people aren't here forever and you don't want to look back and regret an opportunity you could have experienced. You could apply this train of thought to most things in life, but it was that advice that pushed me to go see Vonnegut who at the time I had not read any of his books.
So here are just a few thoughts from that evening:
"Rush Limbaugh is a fat fool. He is Polonius in Hamlet." I could not agree more.
"Reading is a dying entertainment. People today are entertained by TV and movies."
"Reading a book is a very personal thing. The weight of the book in your hands, the turning of the pages. You can write in it, give it to someone else, throw it away, open or close it. Reading in itself is a form of meditation." At the time I had not realized how meditative reading was. In college as an English major I devoured books in a fever to move on to the next assignment, but now I read much differently, slowly, rereading sections and even writing down quotes or ideas I do not want to forget, so yes reading and cooking are my two forms of meditation.
"Computers are going to either keep you at a minimum wage job or take your job altogether. You're getting screwed by computers." At the time he said he had written all of his books on an old model typewriter.
"Basically people are here on earth to fart around."
And my personal favorite:
"I see saints everyday. Ordinary people who are living decently in an indecent society."
Not long after seeing you I read Slaughterhouse Five. From the moment I started the book I could not put it down. Your writing challenged our views on history, the past and the present and made us look beyond "given" truths. From your perspective, decency was linked to skepticism instead of faith. Always questioning, always pushing.
So farewell Mr. Vonnegut. Wherever you are now, I know you are the life of the party. Everyone wants to be around you, so full of life, sharp as a razor wit, with a rebellious sparkle in your eye which comes from staying true to yourself and challenging everything.
Happy Easter Happy Spring
I hope everyone had a Happy Easter with family and friends. We did. Apparently too much sinful fun. Our household does not embrace any particular faith. I guess some would say we are Godless, we prefer Spiritual. As we all gathered around the dining room table I wanted us to say grace. Just a moment to recognize how thankful we are for good food and good friends. Our friend A's little boy B who is three said that he would say the blessing. B is Jewish and proceeded to impress the whole table when he said the entire blessing in Hebrew. A was kind enough to translate what it meant.
Just to make the Church of Christ really fired up we also served deviled eggs at our Easter lunch which in my family is a tradition. The next day while J was telling a co-worker about our Easter and what we cooked, he was shocked "You had deviled eggs on Easter." Apparently anything devilish isn't supposed to be offered on the day of the resurrection. Hmmm wonder if it made it worse that they were topped with bacon?
I must thank one of my professors that sadly I cannot remember his name who told a class full of bored freshman to go see anyone you can while they are still alive. If you like a band, buy a ticket and go, people aren't here forever and you don't want to look back and regret an opportunity you could have experienced. You could apply this train of thought to most things in life, but it was that advice that pushed me to go see Vonnegut who at the time I had not read any of his books.
So here are just a few thoughts from that evening:
"Rush Limbaugh is a fat fool. He is Polonius in Hamlet." I could not agree more.
"Reading is a dying entertainment. People today are entertained by TV and movies."
"Reading a book is a very personal thing. The weight of the book in your hands, the turning of the pages. You can write in it, give it to someone else, throw it away, open or close it. Reading in itself is a form of meditation." At the time I had not realized how meditative reading was. In college as an English major I devoured books in a fever to move on to the next assignment, but now I read much differently, slowly, rereading sections and even writing down quotes or ideas I do not want to forget, so yes reading and cooking are my two forms of meditation.
"Computers are going to either keep you at a minimum wage job or take your job altogether. You're getting screwed by computers." At the time he said he had written all of his books on an old model typewriter.
"Basically people are here on earth to fart around."
And my personal favorite:
"I see saints everyday. Ordinary people who are living decently in an indecent society."
Not long after seeing you I read Slaughterhouse Five. From the moment I started the book I could not put it down. Your writing challenged our views on history, the past and the present and made us look beyond "given" truths. From your perspective, decency was linked to skepticism instead of faith. Always questioning, always pushing.
So farewell Mr. Vonnegut. Wherever you are now, I know you are the life of the party. Everyone wants to be around you, so full of life, sharp as a razor wit, with a rebellious sparkle in your eye which comes from staying true to yourself and challenging everything.
Happy Easter Happy Spring
I hope everyone had a Happy Easter with family and friends. We did. Apparently too much sinful fun. Our household does not embrace any particular faith. I guess some would say we are Godless, we prefer Spiritual. As we all gathered around the dining room table I wanted us to say grace. Just a moment to recognize how thankful we are for good food and good friends. Our friend A's little boy B who is three said that he would say the blessing. B is Jewish and proceeded to impress the whole table when he said the entire blessing in Hebrew. A was kind enough to translate what it meant.
Just to make the Church of Christ really fired up we also served deviled eggs at our Easter lunch which in my family is a tradition. The next day while J was telling a co-worker about our Easter and what we cooked, he was shocked "You had deviled eggs on Easter." Apparently anything devilish isn't supposed to be offered on the day of the resurrection. Hmmm wonder if it made it worse that they were topped with bacon?
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