Posts
All Comments
I have had a really good run with this blog for the last year. I've made good connections with people and lived through some big changes. The time is right to move on, though. Goodbye my friend. May you live on in cyberspace forever.
Please join me over on my new blog and add the new feed to your feed reader. See you there!
Fall has always been a time of change and new beginnings for as long as I can remember. It's always seemed odd to me that people set goals at the beginning of a new calendar year, right in the darkest and coldest time of year. Fall in Las Vegas is actually a great time weather-wise. The temperatures drop to the 70s and 80s and the days (as usual) are nice and sunny. It gets dark pretty early here because we are on the eastern edge of the time zone, but the trade off is the nearly perfect weather.
So in keeping with the idea of new beginnings, here are my goals for the next few months. I am trying to keep the goals fairly simple and attainable because sometimes I get expecting too much and then I just throw my hands up.
1. walk 3 to 5 miles, six days a week
2. use my juicer to make a delicious green drink every morning
3. dedicate at least one hour a week to taking photos
4. spend time creating jewelry and give myself full permission to mess up
5. start my Etsy store
6. do yoga 3 times a week
7. launch my new blog with NaBloPoMo (will link to it and all that good stuff)
Are there things you want to accomplish in the next few months? How do you keep yourself on track and accountable?
(In other important news, it looks like nature/scenery is barely eeking out the majority over good food/drinks in the very scientific Why do you love fall? poll. The race is still tight, though, and there are still 13 hours left to vote, so it's really anybody's game.)
.jpg)
I am in the midst of getting things set up to (finally) start my Etsy store. I'm going to sell photos and jewelry primarily. I have ordered a bunch of stuff to get started with, and I hope to launch it within the next month or so.
I'm also (again) thinking about switching blog names. I'm tired of this one, and I'm not going to use it for my store name. I'll keep you up to date if/when I switch over or if I decide to keep this one, too... Yes, I'm kind of dragging my feet on this. :)
I feel like all I've been doing for the past few days is research, buy, and research some more, but I think I'm getting somewhere! Hope you are having a good week.
As the weather starts to make itself bearable and the sun casts its golden last rays of light earlier and earlier each day, I find myself wanting to carve out a space for myself. Pretty quickly that turns my mind to the (peach) guest bedroom, which I feel I've been letting go to waste. Now, don't get me wrong. I love to have guests. But honestly, we don't get all that many who stay at the house. Really only a couple of times a year. So to me it felt like that room was dwarfed by a double bed and because of that I haven't been using the peach room at all._1.jpg)
Before my mom visited in June, JP put our old desk in the room for her to use. We were going to get rid of it months ago when we got the new desk, but it didn't feel right. I'm really glad we didn't because it's gotten a great second purpose. I'm turning it into my creative space on which I'm not afraid to get messy and paint right over again and again..jpg)
Pushing the guest bed into the corner was easy and will be easy to readjust when guests do actually come to town. In the meantime, it has cleared up a good amount of floor space for me to do yoga or meditate whenever I please, which I plan to do at least a few times per week.
It's so nice to be in the process of tidying up this area of the house. Right now I consider it a meaningful work in progress. Having a dedicated space to go to will help me get back in touch with the part inside that I tend to neglect too often.
My first voice post (on Blogger anyway). This was one of the only features I really liked on Livejournal back in the day. The site that I'm using is Snapvine and it's the awesome price of free.
Read more...
I got tagged by Karen to write up five things I love about my state, so here goes.
1. Location. Before I came out here, I am pretty sure I thought Las Vegas was in the middle of nowhere. That is so not true. We are within a four hour drive of the California coast (LA, OC, San Diego), AZ (Grand Canyon, Flagstaff, Sedona), and southern Utah (Zion, Bryce Canyon, Cedar City). Four hours sounds like a long time to drive, but with most of it freeway driving and the speed limit set at 75 in general, the time goes by pretty quick. A seven hour radius includes Santa Barbara, Lake Tahoe, Salt Lake City, Phoenix/Tempe, and Moab (Canyonlands/Arches). Plus, the Hoover Dam and Lake Mead are about half an hour from the house.
2. The weather. At least for a decent part of the year. Sure, summer gets a little monotonously hot, but lucky for us Mt. Charleston is right north of town and is a great place to go cool off on the weekend. Once fall hits and until about April/May, the weather is fantastic. The is almost always shining, meaning the car is never cold, and because of the lack of humidity, temperatures up to even 95 are not that bad. My skin gets dry, but I'd take a tether to lotion any day over the oppressive humidity back East.
3. The scenery. The valley is surrounded by mountains that rise up out of nowhere. Red Rock Canyon is right west of town and has beautiful sandstone and limestone formations. Valley of Fire (about 45 minutes north) is much larger and has stunning red rock formations. And the sky in the desert. You can see so much of it in the wide open. The scenery isn't quite as spectacular as Utah or Arizona, but it's more than you might think.
4. The hours. Going out late is not a problem. It's also easy to go out on a holiday here. It's a 24/7 kind of place -- very different from most places.
5. Entertainment. It's everywhere here. There are shows ranging from comedians to Broadway, to impersonators, to Cirque du Soleil. The Lion King is replacing Mama Mia in Mandalay Bay next year. Of course, the shows do tend to be pricey but there are often ways around the full cost. Plus, there is always local entertainment -- like shows at the Henderson Pavilion -- that is much more reasonably priced.
I'm not going to tag anyone in particular, but consider yourself tagged if you read this and want to play along. :)
10 Things I'll make illegal if you vote me President:
Have you checked out the enormity of YouTube lately? It is unbelievable how much it has grown in the past few years. There is a whole lot of silly and bizarre, but there is also a decent amount of interesting and inspiring, too.
Over the weekend, the stars aligned and JP and I took our long awaited day trip to Utah. Nothing compares to the red rocks of southern Utah. The land there is awe-inspiring. Before I moved out here, I never understood why people lived in the Southwest. Wasn't it just hot desert wasteland? Now I know better because I've been there.
I am reading Thomas Friedman's Hot, Flat, and Crowded, and while it's heavy stuff, I find it very informative. I found the end of the chapter called Global Weirding especially powerful. It seems silly to make climate change a political issue at all, but I understand that people can be slow to accept daunting news. I hope this issue gets to a point where it is not a political one, but a human one. We all will be affected by climate change no matter our party affiliations, no matter our religious beliefs. In fact, I think it's fair to say we already are.
Read more...Hot, Flat, and Crowded, pages 138-139:What could be more crazy-radical -- more Trotskyite and more reckless -- than standing in the face of an overwhelming consensus among climate experts and saying, "I am throwing my lot in with the minority. I am going to bet the farm, my future, and my kid's future that the tiny minority is right -- all other consequences be damned"?California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has tried to keep the Republican Party from making climate skepticism a plank in the GOP platform, put it to me this way: "If ninety-eight doctors say my son is ill and needs medication and two say 'No, he doesn't, he is fine,' I will go with the ninety-eight. It's common sense -- the same with global warming. We go with the majority, the large majority."I am with the ninety-eight. I am convinced that climate change is real. But we not only need people to accept that it is real, but also to accept just how real it could be -- that the dice may come up sixty if we don't act now to begin mitigating and adapting. We need, as EchoTech's Rob Watson says, to "use the one faculty that distinguishes us as human beings -- the ability to imagine. We need to fully grasp the nonlinear, unmanageable climate events that could unfold in our lifetime. Because if we hit the wall, there will be no seat belts or air bags, and we will end up being a bad biological experiment on the planet."Mother Nature "is just chemistry, biology, and physics," Watson likes to say. "Everything she does is just the sum of those three things. She 's completely amoral. She doesn't care about poetry or art or whether you go to church. You can't negotiate with her, and you can't spin her and you can't evade her rules. All you can do is fit in as a species. And when a species doesn't learn to fit in with Mother Nature, it gets kicked out." It's that simple, says Watson, and that's why "every day you look in the mirror now, you're seeing an endangered species."
I have become obsessed with GoodReads lately, especially since I now have ten friends. That is a whopping 80% more than I had just a few months ago. I spent, admittedly, a good part of the weekend going through friends' lists and random lists, and those sparked memories of books I've read. I'm sure it's still just a fraction.
Oprah has a new book. I had it on my library reserve list already, so I am 43 instead of 530 billionth.
Cassie linked to these powerful pictures of Hurricane Ike. Seems like the media has forgotten about the Houston area far too soon.
Speaking of Cassie, she has a new blog where she plans to write about her crafty endeavors and more. Go and say hi. She is the best.
I don't like to get too political on el blogo, but this disturbs me. Seriously, is it November yet? I'm pretty sure this election season has been going on since I was five.
Some useful advice on how to get tickets to your favorite daytime shows.
I'm sure just about everyone in the world knows about it by now, but just in case you've been living in a cave, SparkPeople is the best for tracking all things health/fitness related and it's FREE.
I want this car someday.
Happy Friday!
Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. ~Eckhart Tolle
I'm ready to clear away the clutter in my life, both the physical clutter and mental clutter. My desk has been piled with books and useless papers for too long, and I am finally going to go through it all. Today. The desk is just one of the surfaces in the house where it is so easy to let things accumulate. I can be a tidy person when I actually keep up with it, but once I start to let it go, it just goes.
This is the physical manifestation of how I felt during school this summer. I had to keep up the appearance of having my stuff together despite the fact that things were out of control. This summer was pretty trying with having to go home to Maryland and help my mom deal with things in the face of my father's abandonment. Things were out of control, but I still managed to keep it together enough to get A's in my classes.
I've felt pretty cluttered emotionally, too. The situation with my father has been a grieving process that I am sure will continue to surface at times. I have had a few dreams lately that I've woken up from in tears. This is normal, I know, and I have tried to embrace what I am feeling at the time. Bringing my attention to the emotions that surface actually causes them to subside. This makes me less emotional in the long run. Fighting the emotions only makes me feel worse.
I am really trying to make an effort to be present, which is difficult at times. But I know that when I manage it, I feel whole and complete. Eckhart Tolle says that "life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness." It is not beneficial for me to look at myself as a victim. There is a reason that this has happened and it is for the betterment of my own evolution and what I bring into the world. Sometimes it seems so much easier to wake up and be angry, hurt, and frustrated. But those are the days when I feel at my worst, when my ego is constantly in my head, having imaginary conversations that don't get me anywhere.
Tolle also says, "If the shutters are closed, the sunlight cannot come in." On the days where I allow myself to become victim, I completely close the shutters, and I am alone in a dark room. I think we all can relate to those days where we've wallowed in our own darkness, sometimes just for the useless sake of wallowing.
My surfaces inside and outside need some serious purging and arranging. I've used the clutter in my outside world to put off dealing with the internal clutter for too long, and that's about to change. I am going to start on the outside, where it's easiest. Then I am going to go deep and get through the emotional gunk so that my inside is clean and shiny and where I need it to be.
This was extremely slow going from the beginning for me. I was confused by the general storyline for a while, then I was just disappointed by it. I also have issues with the brutality Meyer's lead male character exhibits toward Wanda, the female lead. And that she just stands there and takes it because she loves him. I don't buy the whole "I looooove him with all my being, so whatever he does I will take, even if he slaps me across the face so hard it shoves me into the wall." It is all just so unbelievable and completely not empowering for women. It is a very black and white (and disturbing) way of viewing women and men and their gender roles.
This book is touted as being for adults, as opposed to the Twilight series which is written for a YA audience. I find that the character development is no more advanced than it is in the Twilight series, maybe even less so. There is so much irrational internal dialog that I had a hard time relating to the main character at all. And maybe that is because Meyer decided to make her 20 years old. I don't consider myself all that old, but I do think it is a stretch to think of the main character as an adult. I mean, gosh, we wouldn't want her to be, like, 25 or something. She would be all dried up.
I actually think this may have something to do with Meyer's Mormon upbringing, in a culture where many young women do get married and settle down at 20. This may also be the reason that there is no sexual action in the book whatsoever -- at least in the first half of the book. Again, it is the pattern of the lead male character having to exert his otherworldly restraint and put the kibosh on the wild and hormonal female lead. This may be explained away in a YA book (although I think a lot of YA books do touch on the subject of S-E-X), but not in a novel supposedly written for adults.
All in all, there is just way, waaaaaay too much filler. There is no reason for the story to be over 600 pages long. It could easily have been told in 330 pages -- the point that I just put the book down and stopped reading. There are way too many books out there to spend another 300 pages on a story so lackluster.
- I have sold off the majority of my textbooks. I was thinking I might keep a couple, but let's be honest, am I really ever going to even crack the covers again? Not unless my degree is rescinded and I have to take business writing and English grammar all over again. *shudders*
- I am toward the middle of a book I am not enjoying too much. I'm considering letting it go, but my perfectionist self starts chiding me for not completing a task. This is something I need to work on.
- My mom has found a full-time job she seems to enjoy with decent pay. That is empowering and just lovely and I am very happy for her.
- After having a Twitter account for nine months or more, I am finally getting the hang of it and updating regularly. It is actually kind of fun.
- Between Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, GoodReads, e-mail, and all the blogs I read, I feel like I have crossed into the realm of social networking overload. It is a little out of control. My order of importance: e-mail, GoodReads, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace. Whew. Also, after becoming a social networking connoisseur of sorts, I am pretty sure I hate MySpace.
I must admit something that I haven't made known before, other than to JP. I am completely bewildered by all of the New Kids on the Block hullabaloo. I think my love affair with them lasted for about a year until I moved onto bigger and better musical acts, like Mariah Carey and Ace of Base (come on, I was ten, and who doesn't like a little Ace of Base?). I just have a hard time witnessing the uproar that their comeback has created among grown women my age and older, women who are buying tickets to see them in concert.
There is just something wrong when 36+ year old has-beens can electronicize their voices and come out with an album with a song called Sexify My Love. Are you kidding? Just typing that makes me feel like I am going to break out in hives caused by massive creep factor. I guess they are trying to reclaim their former fans and pick up the next generation of young'uns. At 40. Ick. I'm just sayin'.
You have probably seen them somewhere recently because they are like a bad case of head lice that just won't go away. But just in case you haven't, here is a video of their embarrassing, awful-sounding initial comeback performance on the Today Show this summer (it is in three parts, if you want to go that far).
Here are the books I've read in 2008. I'm going to keep updating it. I've become addicted to GoodReads recently. If you're so inclined, feel free to add me as a friend.
I am surprised how many I've managed to read considering that most of the reading I've done this year has been of the textbook variety. I am shooting for 50 by the end of the year. It is a lofty goal, but even if I'm close I'll be pretty amazed.
1. White Oleander - Janet Finch ****
2. The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger ***
3. The Road - Cormac McCarthy ***
4. The Power of Now - Eckhart Tolle *****
5. The Other Boleyn Girl - Philippa Gregory ***
6. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini ****
7. The Good Earth - Pearl Buck *****
8. The Glass Castle - Jeannette Walls ****
9. Empire Falls - Richard Russo ****
10. Shopgirl - Steve Martin ***
11. Eat, Pray, Love - Elizabeth Gilbert ****
12. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith ****
13. A New Earth - Eckhart Tolle *****
14. The Probable Future - Alice Hoffman ****
16. Twilight - Stephenie Meyer ****
18. Writing Down the Bones - Natalie Goldberg *****
19. New Moon - Stephenie Meyer ***
20. Eclipse - Stephenie Meyer ***
21. Water for Elephants - Sara Gruen ****
22. The Host: A Novel - Stephenie Meyer * DNF
23. A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini *****
24. The Secret Life of Bees - Sue Monk Kidd ***
25. Many Lives, Many Masters ****
I had to take a break from my studying to share this. Honestly, as someone who can never identify lyrics completely right, I think these are right on.
I am sad to report this, but the car JP and I have been driving since I moved to Las Vegas over four years ago is seeing its last days. It is a two-door 1999 Chevy Cavalier that JP actually bought new two years before he came out West. We discovered over a month ago that the transmission is dying.
Ok, the truth is that I am not really sad at all to see this car go. There is nothing salvageable in it. The paint is flaking off. The spare tire in the trunk had to be cut out when the lug nuts holding it in place rusted. When it rains, the trunk leaks so water pools down in the spare tire area. The passenger's side seat won't slide up anymore (it is two-door). The padded part on the back of the steering wheel is worn down from gripping. The visors are frayed and broken. The AC only runs very cool when I have my foot on the gas, making stoplights particularly painful in the summer. The radio doesn't work. Even the seat belts don't work right. We actually came up with a list of 32 things wrong with the car.
From what I have learned, buying a car and then running it into the ground is the most financially wise move to make (rather than trading it in, leasing, getting new wheels, etc.). We have run it into the ground so hard that there is nothing left of it. It truly is the most ghetto of cars. The funny thing is that I am sure people assume we are poor, which goes to show you should never judge people by their cover. The only thing I might miss a little bit is not having the most ghetto car in the lot and not worrying about what happens to it.
In the hopes of heading off a complete meltdown of the other car, on Saturday we test drove a 2008 Mazda MAZDA3 sedan and a 2008 Honda Civic sedan (we are done with two-door cars FOREVER). The MAZDA3 has an awesome hatchback that, with the back seats down, would put small SUVs to shame. Overall, though, the Civic drove nicer and was roomier. Good on the environment, cute, easy to get around in, good engine... It seems like a solid car that will fair far better than the Cavalier has.
We went with the EX model, which is about the top of the line. It even has a moonroof and a six speaker stereo system that sounds fantastic. It is a bit of a splurge, but we decided that we might as well get something we really like since we intend to drive it until it dies. I am hoping that we get a good fifteen years out of it!
Meet Ruby, the newest member of our family, so named because the beautifully sparkly red color reminds me of Dorothy's ruby red slippers. I never thought I was a red car person till I saw this shade.
