Hello from Kauai...

We made it to Kauai, after a long day of travel. We had a five-hour layover in Los Angeles, which I didn't think would be too bad. After all, it's the Los Angeles airport -- one of the largest in the country, right? So it must be huge -- there must be all sorts of shops and restaurants and long, meandering hallways to explore. When we landed, we met up with Eric and Debbie, who'd arrived first, and decided to get some lunch at a Chili's (there's one hour down...) and then made our way to the gate, where we discovered our flight would be 45 minutes late taking off (okay, so only 15 minutes down...). So with all that time to waste, we decided to take a walk and see what was in the airport. What we discovered was that we appeared to be trapped in a tiny little terminal that consisted of two bookstores, the aforementioned Chili's, and, inexplicably, two Starbucks. (Honestly, when you can walk the entire length of the terminal in two minutes, is it really necessary to have one Starbucks situated 30 seconds beyond another? Those West Coasters must reeeeaaaaallly love their coffee...) Needless to say, it was a rather boring few hours at LAX...

But we arrived safe and sound... and I have to say the flight from Los Angeles to Kauai was one of the best flights I've ever been on -- practically zero turbulence, and a perfectly smooth landing. Although it was a little strange when the pilot asked the flight attendants to prepare for landing, and I looked out my window into absolutely nothingness. All I could see was stars... the runway didn't appear until about two seconds before we landed. Hey, at least it DID appear... (I guess the lights of Kauai were only visible on the LEFT side of the plane, and I was on the right...)

So we mostly hung out at the hotel today, which is a huge, sprawling resort. I was reading reviews on Trip Advisor before we arrived, and some people actually complained about this hotel because "it's so far to walk to your room." I have to say that after the dinner I just ate, I am extremely grateful that I had to walk a little bit to get back to my room. :) We went out to the beach this afternoon, which was nice -- the ocean is a bit crazy here, and the waves can get a little aggressive, but the water is really warm once you get used to it. I waded in for a little while and tried to stay on my feet as the waves hit me, and I was doing okay until an extra-crazy wave came along and knocked me right over. Not two seconds earlier I'd been saying that I wasn't sure I wanted to dip my head under the water because I was afraid of losing a contact lens -- and then I was underwater anyway, with salt water in both my eyes. What was really funny was getting back to the room later on and taking the swimsuit off, only to discover I had sand in places that I didn't even know I had places...

This hotel is known for its pools -- there are tons of places to swim (where you can be safe from rogue waves) and they have a waterslide that everyone discovered this afternoon. Eric and Eric were taking turns sliding down the slide and seeing who could yell the loudest continuously on the way down. I didn't try the slide myself today, but everyone was giving me a hard time about that, so maybe I'll try it some other time... maybe... (but I'm not yelling on the way down...)

Here are some pictures from today:

Parrot in the lobby of the hotel...

One of the many swimming lagoons...

A view of the lobby from the grounds...

A road on the way to the hotel, which the person at the rental car counter called a "tree tunnel"...

Yes, Eric IS holding his swim trunks...

Eric D. on the waterslide...

At dinner, before I ate WAY too much (but the chocolate lava cake was worth it...)

Off to Hawaii...

I got up too early this morning... well, early for me. And I won't be going to bed until we get to the hotel in Kauai, sometime after 9:00 tonight. 9:00 Kauai time... which means it'll be like 2 am here. So by the time we drive to the hotel, check in, and get settled, it'll be like 3 am before I get to sleep. Oh well... can't complain too much... :)

Will hopefully post soon with pictures and, I'm sure, fascinating anecdotes about our trip... or at least semi-interesting anecdotes that might possibly hold someone's attention for a couple seconds...

Almost time to leave for the airport... have a good Monday, everyone! :)

First prize...

We did some last minute shopping today at the outlet mall for a couple new suitcases – we needed some new ones before our trip. I’ve been lugging around a beat up black bag with two broken zippers – the only way to close it is to grab a hold of the luggage lock and slide it around. The front pocket is completely useless, because the zipper was ripped right off by some overzealous baggage handlers a few years ago. I’ve been making sure to buckle the whole thing up with a canvas strap every time I use it, but I’m always waiting for it tumble down onto the baggage claim conveyor belt and burst open…

We also wanted to get TWO medium-sized suitcases. We used to have only one medium-sized suitcase, plus two small ones and two giant ones. Which meant for long trips, I’d usually have to haul out one of the giant bags, inevitably resulting in an unwieldy 70-pound suitcase. They’d have to attach one of those “heavy” stickers to it to warn the baggage handlers. So instead of taking one huge bag, I thought perhaps if we had two medium-sized bags it would be easier. And since the only medium-sized bag we had was the aforementioned beat-up zipper-deficient piece of luggage lunacy, we decided to just buy two new medium bags. Makes sense, right?

It’s funny how many things we humans buy and acquire… luggage, furniture, cars, books, clothes… little knickknacks and picture frames and stuffed animals… all kinds of things that fill up cupboards and spill out of drawers and line shelves… I don’t ever even realize how much STUFF I have until I move somewhere. When you have to pack up all that stuff and actually transport it, it suddenly becomes exhaustingly clear how much of it you own…

And out of all of those possessions, which ones are the PRIZE possessions? I mean, if I have all these things that require such attention when I’m moving from one house to another, is there anything that stands out as an extra-special item? Is there anything that I wrap up more carefully than the other items? Anything I would consider irreplaceable? Something I would drape in a few extra layers of bubble wrap, just to be certain it arrived at my destination unscathed?

What’s surprising is that my own answers to those questions reveal that my “prize possessions” really aren’t the kinds of things anyone else would be interested in. Musty old books from my grandparents’ house… a little vial of pink Bermudan sand I keep on a shelf in the foyer… the black binder on my bookshelf that is full of things I’ve written over the years – some of which I’ve never made copies of (I need to make copies, don’t I? )… the carved wooden cat on my fireplace hearth that Aimee gave me as a housewarming gift when I moved into this house. And of course there are the pictures – everyone says that if their house were burning down, they would want to rescue their pictures (assuming all family and pets were accounted for). And I'm certainly no different.

In fact, the more I think about it, the more I think that our prize possessions should rarely be worth much in monetary value. Instead, they’re worth very much in emotional value – they represent our memories and our happiness and our struggles and our accomplishments. I’m sure Eric would tell you that one of HIS prize possessions is Chester the Ratty Old Stuffed Dog. I can’t imagine anyone else would understand Chester’s appeal. You wouldn’t even be able to sell Chester on eBay… and you can sell just about ANYTHING on eBay. But, as I’m certain Eric would tell you, Chester is one-of-a-kind… (and hey, he doesn’t look THAT bad for a thirty-year-old stuffed dog… ) Is he worth money? Absolutely not. But is he worth SOMETHING? Absolutely.

I could probably fit all of my “prize possessions” inside one of my brand new medium-sized suitcases. And let’s hope THIS time the zippers never break…

Lovely letter L...

I read the strangest article yesterday. It claimed that we are unconsciously drawn to whichever letter of the alphabet our names begin with. This means that without realizing it, we gravitate towards things and places for no other reason than the fact that they begin with the same letter as our names. Since my name is Lisa, I should be driving a Lexus and living in Louisville or Las Vegas, where I would be working as a lawyer and eating linguini and lingonberry pie…

The article also stated that this subconscious draw to our name-letter is so strong that students actually strive for the grade that corresponds with their name. An Alice or Adam would study extra hard, apparently, because the “A” seems so much more appealing when it’s the first letter of your name. Whereas a Carl or a Carrie would simply coast along, hoping to be average. Um, okay. So I guess I’m supposed to believe that Faisal, for example, was a complete underachiever in school? You’re telling me that he was subconsciously drawn to F’s, just because his name begins with an F? So he’d be taking a test, and think, “hmmm… I DO know the answer to this question, but for some reason I really want that F… I think I’ll leave it blank…” That just doesn’t make any sense to me…

And what’s more, the article said that baseball players whose names begin with “K” are more likely to strike out. I mean, c’mon, isn’t this study kind of grasping at straws? I mean, sure “K” is used to signify a strikeout, but what about the fact that “strikeout” starts with an S? What about the S players? What about H players – do they hit more home runs? Do B players walk a lot? Well just in case, I guess I won’t be drafting Konerko or Kotsay for my fantasy baseball team next year…

I didn’t take this study too seriously, especially after I started trying to think of “L” things that I’ve been drawn to. I dunno… I have some lemons and limes in my fridge… I do a lot of laundry… if Rick ever hears from the elusive Dell Chicago job hiring manager, we might be moving to Lincoln Park… But at the moment, I live in Austin, drive an Acura and an Audi, have three pets I named Echo, Allegro and Piva, eat a lot of chocolate, love travel, and occasionally get paid for proofreading or writing. I mean, if I was honestly drawn to things that begin with an “L,” I would’ve been suggesting we visit the island of Lanai next week… instead, I’m quite happily looking forward to Kauai…

Well, Kauai, Lanai – it’s only one letter off…

I'm waiting for someone to say "begonia"...

So last night I was watching “Bones,” which is another CSI-type show. Television has been taken over by CSI and all of its successors. But hey, it’s better than a few years ago, when television was being taken over by Law and Order and all of ITS successors. I mean, how many shows about the legal system do we really need? Law and Order, the Practice, Boston Legal, Law and Order Special Victims Unit, Law and Order Criminal Intent, Law and Order Meter Maid Division, Law and Order Royal Canadian Mounted Police… when does it end?

Anyway, like I said, I was watching “Bones.” And I was also looking at some websites so I can start thinking about Christmas presents. I like to do most of my shopping online, and if I can, I like to order as much as possible before Thanksgiving. That way I can have a bit of extra time for anything that happens to be backordered or for when the UPS truck goes careening off a cliff and none of my packages arrive (hey, it could happen…). Of course, this year it’s going to be a bit tricky, because we’re leaving for Hawaii next week, and then Thanksgiving is the week we get back home. So I’m not sure I’ll make my “order everything before Thanksgiving” deadline. But I figured I’d start looking around for ideas, anyway. So I was surfing through this website, and came across an item called “Daffodil socks.” They were multi-colored knit socks, and had nothing to do with flowers of any kind, so I’m not sure why they’re called Daffodil socks. But never mind the why and wherefore (Gilbert and Sullivan? H.M.S. Pinafore? Anyone?) – it doesn’t matter. The point is, at the precise moment I clicked on “Daffodil socks,” a character on the TV show said, “I know what your password is – it’s daffodil.” To which I thought, “what – did he just say daffodil??” and backed up the Tivo to make sure I’d heard correctly. I mean, it’s one thing to be reading the same word that someone on TV happens to speak, but it’s another thing entirely when that word happens to be “daffodil.” Is it a sign of some sort? Should I be planting daffodils in my garden?

Wait, what am I saying – I don’t HAVE a garden. And if I DID plant daffodils in a garden, they would no doubt wither and die rather quickly. I’ve never had much of a green thumb. Okay, I’ve never had ANY kind of green thumb… unless I’ve written on it with magic marker at some point. And it’s weird, because I come from a very green-thumby kind of family. Mom’s parents AND dad’s parents always had gardens. There were always fresh strawberries for the homemade vanilla ice cream we used to eat at family dinners (I believe I may have even eaten a few of those strawberries myself, back before I developed my bizarre aversion to seeds…) and there were always homemade stews and pies and jams and jellies – made from fruits and vegetables straight from the garden. Not to mention flowers and trees and vines and shrubs… you name it, my grandparents have all grown it.

And mom picked up at least a bit of this love of greenery – I remember plants scattered throughout our house when I was a kid. Spider plants and aloe plants and African violets… I even have a memory of digging a hole in the dirt for some kind of flower bulb… a tulip maybe? I planted it out in our backyard by the pool… I can’t remember if it ever actually grew into anything. (I’m guessing no, since I’m the one who planted it…) And mom still hates to see weeds anywhere. There have been many times when she is out in front of my house, and can’t seem to help stopping by the front walk to pluck offending growth out of the ground. Whereas I, in contrast, don’t even pay much attention to such things (which I suppose would explain why I always kill the plants I’ve tried to grow…).

So I really hope all this “daffodil” nonsense was just a coincidence… because by tomorrow I will have forgotten that I was even considering the idea of planting a flower…

And I didn't even have popcorn...

As mom pointed out, it’s no longer Friday – which I think was a nice way of saying, “update your blog already!” Hey, I do a better job than SOME people… (Nick and Cindy, I’m lookin’ at you… :))

So I made the mistake of watching the last little bit of “United 93” on HBO this weekend. I have, up until this point, successfully avoided every movie made about September 11 – but it was almost over, and whatever was on next apparently interested me, so I thought, “eh, I’ll just catch the last few minutes…” And of course it’s the LAST FEW MINUTES that are the worst, because the movie ends with the passengers storming the flight deck and the image of a green field filling the windows as the plane spirals toward the ground. All this movie did was remind me that I am STILL completely unable to watch any sort of 9/11 stories without dissolving into sad tears. And I NEVER cry over movies… but I have immense problems with watching the final moments of crashing planes, or even the ASSUMED final moments of the people on flight 93. There’s that part of your brain that KNOWS when something is “just a movie” or when it’s real – and I still have a problem with the 9/11 movies because they’re too real…

Isn’t it weird how prolific technology has become – to the point that terrible disasters can be watched live, in vibrant color, on everyone’s television sets? September 11 was horrible enough, but what made it even worse was the live news coverage. There are so many cameras out there now – even on cell phones – that someone not only “accidentally” caught footage of the first plane hitting the World Trade Center, but the second plane was recorded from every conceivable angle possible thanks to all the news cameras in the city being on the scene. That’s probably why it’s so much harder for me to watch a movie about it now – because I SAW it happening in real time. I KNOW it was real. Whereas I can watch, say, “Titanic,” and not be quite as dismayed by the images. I mean, the Titanic disaster was definitely real – but no one was there to film it and replay it over and over again. I wasn’t watching that ship sink as it was happening… so it’s easier to feel more removed from it…

Fortunately, my brief depressing movie-viewing was countered by a couple really funny movies. Rick and I watched “Knocked Up” and “Meet the Robinsons” this weekend. Two very different movies, yet both were hilarious. If you’re under the age of, oh, I’ll say forty-five, and haven’t seen Knocked Up yet, you have to see it. (Or if you’re OVER the age of forty-five and don’t mind a movie with bad language, rampant drug use, and a reminder that forty-five year olds aren’t automatically admitted to the “cool” night clubs anymore, you should also check it out… :)) And Meet the Robinsons was great – I think I liked it more than Rick did, because there were a few parts where I was laughing hysterically and Rick was staring at me with a look of confusion on his face. Okay, so maybe not everyone will appreciate the humor as much as I did. But it’s a REALLY funny movie, and appropriate for all ages… under forty-five, over forty-five, whatever…

Well, I should go add some steps to my pedometer… I had over 18,000 steps yesterday – it was a good walking day. But I have yet to hit 2000 today… I’d better get moving…

Friday random thoughts...

Well, Halloween is over, which means it is officially the start of the Thanksgiving/Christmas season. I saw the very first holiday commercial of the year yesterday – for, strangely, Boston Market. I would’ve thought the frontrunners in the race for early Christmas commercials would be department stores or Toys R Us… but no, it seems that Boston Market has won. So everyone is getting coupons for free roasted chicken this year – my shopping is done…

I’m already wondering how my Christmas tree will fare this year, what with Piva in the house now. She has a habit of chewing on just about anything she finds intriguing. When that tree goes up, she’ll be gnawing on branches and batting at ornaments… and, quite possibly, launching herself from the couch into the middle of the fake foliage, where she will no doubt attempt to wrestle it to the ground. I wouldn’t put it past her… she’s already launched herself at ME several times, apparently because I resemble some sort of human-sized scratching post. Yes, Christmas is going to be interesting…

So we have about a week and a half until our trip to Kauai, and I’m pretty happy with my eating/working out/weight loss progress. We had dinner at Rick’s parents’ house last night, and his sister asked if I’d lost weight recently – it’s always nice when people notice. Right now, I believe I’m at the lowest weight I’ve been in about ten years… and I’m only a few pounds away from weighing the same as when I met Rick back in 1992. Hopefully we’ll be walking and swimming a lot in Hawaii, because there’s no way I’m skipping out on the Hula Pie…

Does anyone else hate those stickers that people put on the back of their cars that advertise their kids’ names and extracurricular activities? And are those popular anywhere else but Texas? Sometimes I wonder if it’s a Texas thing, because I can’t remember seeing them in New Jersey or Chicago or any of the other places I’ve visited recently. Texans ARE rather proud of their kids’ participation in extracurricular activities. I only need to look across the street at the 20 million dollar HIGH SCHOOL football stadium to know that. Only Texans would spend that kind of money on a high school stadium. And those stickers on the back of cars really annoy me, because why would you want to advertise your kids’ names and interests to the whole world? It just doesn’t seem like a prudent idea… too many crazy people out there…

I just got over a cold, which I’m sure I caught from Rick… it’s weird, because my immune system is usually so much stronger than that. I’ve now had TWO colds this year, which hasn’t happened in years and years… like probably since high school or something. But perhaps this was a particularly strong strain of the cold virus, because it lasted much longer than my colds usually last. So that’s IT for the rest of the year. And maybe for next year, too…

Did anyone hear about that flight to Denver where both pilots FELL ASLEEP, and they didn’t wake up until the air traffic controllers were trying to get a hold of them to tell them their plane was approaching the airport too fast? That’s just great. Super. I REALLY want to know about this stuff a couple weeks before I get on a plane to fly to Hawaii. I mean, honestly, that’s like a scene from a sitcom or something – where two people are in some kind of vehicle, and the camera shows a shot of the person on the passenger side sleeping peacefully, and then it slowly pans to the driver’s side and THAT person is asleep too. And then of course someone wakes up and begins yelling hysterically, pointing out the window at the tree or street sign or (in the case of an airplane) mountain the runaway vehicle is about to hit. It’s funny when it’s a sitcom… not so funny when it’s an actual commercial jet…

Well, I pretty much have nothing interesting to say today, do I? :) Hope everyone has a good weekend…

Scared?

Ah… Halloween… that time of year when I lock the gate to my front porch, turn off all the lights, and sneak off to dinner at a nice restaurant where I can wile away the hours and not deal with the candy-seeking, costumed children. Is that mean? Nah… what would be mean would be to actually answer the door and drop one of those “why we don’t celebrate Halloween” pamphlets into the kids’ bags. I always hated it when people did that… just leave your lights off if you don’t want to give away candy. Don’t present the ILLUSION of a house with candy only to hand out a paper pamphlet that will immediately find its way into the garbage once the night is over…

Of course, I think the whole idea of Halloween is rather bizarre and confusing. I mean, 364 days a year, we tell kids NOT to take candy from strangers. A wise admonishment, I think. And then Halloween comes along, and all of a sudden we’re ENCOURAGING kids to take candy from strangers. Talk about mixed messages… :)

I can’t remember ever really being all that enthralled with Halloween, even when I was a kid. I seem to remember thinking it was quite strange to knock on people’s doors and expect them to simply give me candy when they didn’t even KNOW me. It was a bit embarrassing, really – why should I assume that anyone would want to give me Hershey bars and Tootsie Pops and candy corn when I haven’t so much as properly introduced myself? Wouldn’t that be rather presumptuous of me?

Anyway, it’s better to go out for dinner ONE night and skip all the candy-giving, instead of having bags of leftover candy lying around the house – which I would, no doubt, eat with absolutely no discretion whatsoever, leaving me with feelings of remorse and possibly an upset stomach. And I’ve been doing so well with eating right and exercising lately – best to not ruin a good thing. At least not until I go to Hawaii… and then I plan to ruin it all… :)

Weirdest piece of mail ever...

So we got the mail on our way back from lunch today, and in addition to this month’s issue of National Geographic and the usual bills and ads, there was a small, nondescript envelope in the box. The return address was some place called the “Neptune Society.” And on the front, in cheerful blue script, the envelope offered a “free pre-paid cremation!” (Um, I’m sorry – did you say free pre-paid cremation?) I had to read it a couple times to make sure I hadn’t misread. Like maybe it said something about a free pre-paid coffeemaker… or free ice cream? Crayons? Cranberries? Creamsicles? No… nope… it was definitely cremation…

So I opened the envelope and read about how cremation is becoming a more popular funeral choice for Americans, and this “Neptune Society” holds a drawing every month for a free cremation. Last month’s winner was some guy named Albert England (who may or may not continue to live among us on this mortal plane…). And apparently Rick (as it was addressed to Rick) could be this month’s winner! Hooray cremation! (The fact that “free pre-paid cremation!” ends with an exclamation point is somewhat disturbing to me…) I’m still trying to figure out why this organization is called the “Neptune Society.” Neptune is the Roman god of the sea… what does that have to do with funerals and cremation? Unless it’s an allusion to the fact that some people request their ashes be scattered at sea… scattered at sea with Neptune…

My favorite part of this bizarre little mailing is a bit of fine print at the end which reads, “please accept our apologies if this letter has reached you at a time of serious illness or death in your family.” Because I guess winning a free cremation is only fun when you don’t actually NEED it… :)

Cue the music...

I’m listening to a CD that Eric made for me last Christmas – a compilation of “Chicago” songs… songs that either mention Chicago, or were sung by people from Chicago. A little Frank Sinatra, a little Elvis, plus some Snow Patrol and The Fray and My Chemical Romance. Eric, like me, has this great eclectic musical taste – interests spanning the centuries. Depending on my mood, I can be listening to anything from Bach to Beethoven to Billy Joel to Barenaked Ladies to Beck to Beyonce – and it’s not unusual that I might listen to a song or two from each one, right after another, just to mix things up. Gotta keep it interesting, right?

When I think back on how many times music has been a presence in my life, I sometimes wish I could have my very own life soundtrack. I mean, all those people in movies and on TV get soundtracks – why shouldn’t we have them in real life? Some situations just seem to lend themselves to soundtracks – watching a sunset (something nice and soothing, or perhaps big and dramatic)… waiting in line at the DMV (a kooky, silly song would be just the thing to illustrate the absurdity of the DMV)… running into a good friend (cue the happy music)… or perhaps someone you wish you HADN’T run into (Simple Plan’s “Vacation” is coming to mind). Of course, everyone would have a different soundtrack, and all that music would just create one big mishmashed cacophony…

There are so many memories in my life that are linked to music. Like helping my mom make Christmas cookies in our first house on Pioneer Drive… although I’m not sure how much I “helped” when I was little. Maybe it was more like I watched my mom make Christmas cookies, and then “helped” her lick the batter off the spoon… and then soon afterward I would “help” her sample the frosting and then “help” her eat a few cookies to make sure they were just right. But there would always be Christmas music in the background – the Christmas cookie-making soundtrack consisted of Barbra Streisand’s Christmas record, and I believe a singer named “Evie” who appeared on her album cover with 70’s feathered blond hair. I can still remember Barbra’s extra-fast version of “Jingle Bells,” which I’d always try to sing when the record was playing. I haven’t heard that particular arrangement in a while, but any time I do hear it, it immediately takes me back to that kitchen on Pioneer Drive…

When I was a senior in high school, that B-52’s song “Love Shack” was really popular. And for some reason, when it got to the part about “juke-box money,” I would always hear “don’t forget to bring your juice box money.” I think maybe because kids used to play that song after school when they were hanging out in the cafeteria… don’t even ask me why kids were hanging out in the cafeteria after school… But it would be playing in the cafeteria, and I would think about that juice box I’d brought with my lunch that afternoon, and then there it was in the song – juice box money. And I still think of my school cafeteria when I hear that stupid song… and cran-apple juice boxes…

Some songs make great road-trip songs… I remember one time when I was riding in a car with Dave and Eric, and they both sang along to every word of Billy Joel’s “Scenes From an Italian Restaurant.” All seven and a half minutes of it. And as I sat quietly in the back of the car, I couldn’t help but wonder how many other times they’d sung along with that song… I mean, they had it down pat. Something told me they’d been practicing before I got there… I’ve always preferred to listen to music when I’m driving in a car, as opposed to, say, listening to talk radio. Talk radio just doesn’t provide the right road-trip soundtrack…

So what would be my blog-writing soundtrack? I suppose, like the rest of life, it would change on a daily basis. Today, it happens to be Frank Sinatra, Elvis and The Fray…

More random thoughts...

This morning I had to toss poor little Piva into a cat carrier and haul her off to the vet to be spayed. She was NOT happy about that. Actually, at first she didn’t seem to care that I was stuffing her into a tiny little box… and even after the door was closed, she silently sniffed around for a few moments before realizing I wasn’t going to let her out. And THEN she got upset. I hate taking animals to the vet… our pets trust us and love us unconditionally – so it’s heartbreaking when you can’t explain to them what’s going on, or why you’ve suddenly seemed to turn into a bad guy. But the great thing about pets is that they forgive and forget very quickly… so hopefully tomorrow Piva and I can put this whole ugly incident behind us…

Well, I must say that I am very, very disappointed in the Cleveland Indians. I thought Cleveland was supposed to rock… I was obviously sorely mistaken. (By the way, mom – I hope you called Mr. May and let him know how bad his team is… :)) I am now (temporarily) a Colorado Rockies fan. Although I would’ve been rooting for the Rockies even if Cleveland had won… but now that Boston is in the series, I’m REALLY rooting for the Rockies. So here’s hoping the entire Red Sox team develops some disorienting altitude sickness symptoms… even when they’re playing in Boston… :)

I just saw the weirdest commercial – it was for some kind of new cheese that contains “live and active cultures.” Like yogurt… it’s supposed to be good for the digestive system. Okay, whatever, that’s fine… that’s not the weird part. The commercial shows people munching their cheese cubes in various places – someone is sitting on their porch having a snack… another is eating in the kitchen. And then in the final shot, someone picks up a beach tote with a package of cheese cubes poking out the top and strolls down the beach. Because obviously one of the first things that comes to mind when we think of the beach is “cheese.” I mean, I know I love to pack a bunch of cheese cubes to take with me when I’m going to be laying out in the hot sun for a couple hours – swimsuit? Check. Flip flops? Check. Beach towel? Check. Big ol’ bag of cheese? Check. (Do advertising agencies even THINK before they create these things? Who takes cheese to the beach?? Or does EVERYONE take cheese to the beach, and I’m totally missing out on something? Guess we should pack some cheese to take with us to Kauai…)

So I believe I’m coming down with a cold – probably the same one Rick just got over. My normally super-strong immune system has been rather lackluster lately. I just had a cold a few months ago. I rarely get more than one cold in a year, so this is strange. I believe Rick is trying to pay me back for that cold from a few months ago, which I contracted first and then quickly passed along to him… so now he’s returning the favor…

It’s actually been COOL here the last couple days… it’s only 56 degrees right now, and sunny with cloudless blue skies – this is the perfect kind of autumn day that we rarely see here in Austin. It actually FEELS like October for the first time all month. It makes drinking cups of hot chocolate and watching TV underneath a fuzzy blanket seem season-appropriate. (Otherwise, I have to turn the A/C way down and waste energy, and Rick hates that… :))

I guess that’s all for today… I need to go put my cheese in my suitcase… I don’t want to forget to pack it for Hawaii…

Friday randomness...

It was 60 degrees when I got up this morning. 60 degrees! So I immediately threw on a long-sleeved shirt, knowing full well the thermometer would climb throughout most of the day – by the time I went out for coffee, it was already 71… and now it’s somewhere between 76 and 91, depending on which thermometer reading I want to believe. (How can there be such disparity between readings, you ask? Yes, I often wonder that myself… Well, “91” is what my thermometer out by the pool equipment is saying… I tend to think it's usually off in the early afternoons, because the sun is directly hitting it…) But I am hopeful that this morning was a sign of cooler weather to come…

So I was disappointed that the Cleveland Indians were not able to clinch a spot in the World Series last night. Ever since the Yankees got knocked out of the running, I’ve been hoping for a Rockies/Indians series. The Rockies because they’ve never been to a series, so they might as well have a chance… and the Indians because a) they beat the Yankees, and it’s always best to say you were defeated by a GOOD team; and b) because I certainly don’t want Boston in the series. But either way, whether Boston or Cleveland makes it, I hope the Rockies win it all…

I have decided that whoever first created birthday cake ice cream should be awarded a Nobel Prize. If Al Gore can have one, then the person who dreamed up the creamy, vanilla icing-flavor of birthday cake ice cream should definitely get one. It’s only fair…

Does anyone else find it really strange that decorating front yards for Halloween has suddenly become trendy? I can’t remember anyone really decorating for Halloween that much before the last few years. I mean, sure, people might’ve carved some pumpkins and tied a few cornstalks to their front porch, but that was about it. And now, all of a sudden, people throw giant light-up jack-o-lanterns on their lawns, stretch fake cobwebs over their trees, and cover their houses with twinkling orange lights. And I find this kind of excessive decorating for such an inconsequential “holiday” to be extremely annoying. What’s next? Will Wal-Mart start selling giant, blow-up lawn hearts for Valentine’s Day? Will we see big light-up beer mugs on St. Patrick’s Day? Personally, I think this sudden interest in Halloween decorating stems from an impatience to start decorating for Christmas… October is obviously too early for Christmas decorations, so people do the next best thing – decorate for the silly Halloween holiday. Just be patient… Christmas will be here before you know it…

Well, Joe Torre is no longer with the Yankees, which makes me a little bit sad. But at the same time, I’m interested to see who might replace him. Will it be Don Mattingly? Or Joe Girardi? Or someone completely different? I’m sort of hoping for Mattingly, but I think Girardi might be good, too. I just don’t want to see a Lou Piniella-type in the dugout… that was one thing you could always say for Torre – he almost always managed to keep his cool, no matter what was going on out on the field. Piniella, on the other hand, has always had a penchant for throwing monumental tantrums… tantrums from which many toddlers in candy aisles could take pointers (start taking notes, two-year-olds… okay, learn to write, and THEN take notes…).

I guess that’s it for this semi-seasonal Friday afternoon. I hope you all have a great weekend! :)

A cat truce?

I think there may have been some progress made in the Allegro/Piva relations in the household today. They’ve been tolerating each other over the last few weeks, but Allegro has seemed to mostly just want to be left alone – if Piva gets too close, Allegro will hiss just to let her know who’s boss… but then she’ll slowly slink away and find a quiet place to curl up and sleep. Piva, on the other hand, is a bit of an instigator – she will purposely hide underneath the cabinet in the front hallway and wait until Allegro walks by, at which point she’ll pop out and take a swipe at the surprised (and by this time, fairly annoyed) Allegro. This behavior has resulted in a few vocal feline arguments, which generally end with Piva retreating back under the cabinet and Allegro stalking off with her head held high and an obvious air of “I am the QUEEN of this house.”

So I found it strange this morning as I was eating my bowl of double chocolate cookie crisp (yes, I sometimes like to revert back to childhood when I eat breakfast… actually, I don’t think I ever HAD cookie crisp when I was a kid, so it’s only fair I should eat it now…) that I was hearing the pitter-patter of little cat paws all over the house, but nary a hiss. And sure enough, when I went to investigate, there was a blur of gray as Allegro ran down one hallway, followed by a blur of white as Piva ran in pursuit… not a minute later, the white blur headed into the bedroom, and the gray blur followed. Soon they both ended up in the living room – Piva on one side of the couch and Allegro on the other – and to my amusement, Allegro was crouched behind the couch in “ready to pounce” mode. If I’m not mistaken, these two cats were actually PLAYING together… as opposed to annoying each other, which is more often the case. This gives me hope that they’re finally learning to make the most of their situation – surely Allegro will like the idea of having company when we leave for a week in Hawaii next month, right? Well, that’s what I’m hoping, anyway…

I was planning on writing a bit more today, but time got away from me and I need to go hop on the treadmill for a little while… actually, I’ll probably turn it on and walk on it. Hopping on it just gets boring after a while… :)

Brrr... chilly... sort of...

Well, we’re halfway through October, and this morning it was finally cool enough for a long-sleeved shirt. Of course, I’m so used to throwing on a t-shirt in the morning that I just automatically dressed as usual… and then when I stepped outside to head over to Starbucks, I was slightly taken aback by the chilly temperature and the misty rainfall. Autumn is here! (Maybe… it’s never really a certainty in Austin… but I am tentatively saying that autumn is here…)

So in an effort to escape this endless dreary, cool weather (I mean, it’s been like this ALL MORNING) we have a trip to Hawaii planned for next month. We’re going to the island of Kauai, and I can’t wait – especially because we finally convinced Eric to come along with us. After years of making up excuses like, “I’m highly allergic to pineapple” and “beach sand gives me a rash” and “I’m afraid of those guys who twirl fire batons at luaus,” he is at last coming with us to our lovely 50th state. And in addition to Eric, Eric and Debbie will be joining us, as well. Which is great, because they have had an absolutely INSANE few months, and nobody deserves a few days of lying on a beach and not worrying about anything more than they do.

I’m really looking forward to seeing Kauai… I think there’s a perception that all the Hawaiian islands are pretty much the same, and once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. But they’re actually all very different. Maui was the first island we visited – it’s popular, so it’s more “touristy,” and surprisingly crowded. Maui is interesting because the island is sort of divided by the Haleakala volcano – everything west of the volcano is desert, and everything east of the volcano is rain forest. And at the top of the volcano, it’s only about 40 degrees because of the high altitude – something Rick and I failed to account for the first time we visited. I think I have a picture somewhere of me at the top of Haleakala in a tank top and a pair of shorts, smiling painfully in a way that says, “just take the stupid picture so we can get back down to sea level where it’s warm…”

We visited the Big Island a couple years ago, and like its name implies, it’s the biggest of all the Hawaiian islands. It’s much less touristy than Maui, so you get more of a sense of being out in the middle of nowhere. The island is the youngest of all the islands, so much of the volcanic lava that formed it (and is still forming it) hasn’t yet turned into soil of any kind. There are huge fields of black lava, and when you’re driving around on the island, you get the sense of being on another planet at times. It’s like you’ve landed on Mars and Mars happens to have some great resorts and an ocean – who knew?

And last year we went to Oahu, which I think has been the least “Hawaiian” of the three islands we’ve visited. It’s the most populated island, of course, with Honolulu right in its midst… so you don’t always feel like you’re out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean thousands of miles away from the mainland. In fact, the traffic in Honolulu is HORRIBLE, and if you have to drive through it, it feels more like plodding your way home through rush hour traffic than a drive to an island resort. And Honolulu is just like any other city in the country – except they have Hula Pie (which, as I mentioned in my posts when we were on Oahu last year, is a dessert created in the heavens by the fire goddess Pete herself…)

And what I’ve heard about Kauai is that it’s much more “Hawaiian” than some of the other islands. It offers much of what people think of when they think of Hawaii – more lush greenery, and flowers, and waterfalls… and fewer deserts, and traffic jams, and moonscape lava. So it should be interesting to see a new island. I mean, it’s tough to visit all these Hawaiian islands and report back on their unique qualities, but if someone has to do it, I guess I can… :)

It's fluffy pink carnage...

This scratching post had a fuzzy, springy ball on top of it, presumably so cats could bat it around playfully and entertain themselves. Well, Piva decided the fuzzy ball should be eradicated from the household, and took the measures necessary to make that happen. This little cat can be totally insane sometimes… (she also just jumped up on my keyboard and typed “y6rf”… I’m sure there’s a message in there somewhere…)

So this morning I check the news and see that Al Gore was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for his environmental work and for raising awareness of global warming. Um, what??? Who makes these decisions? You gave a Nobel Prize to Al Gore? Seriously? I mean, I thought it was bad enough when his pseudoscience-fueled, inaccurate bit of documentary claptrap, “An Inconvenient ‘Truth’” (a word he apparently uses quite loosely…) won an Academy Award. Don’t even try to tell me there wasn’t a better documentary out there that deserved the award. Why is it that even the entertainment industry is ruled by politics? And now apparently, so are Nobel Prizes.

First of all, what in the world does global warming have to do with peace? Al Gore has done NOTHING to further the cause of peace on this planet – if anything, all of his pontificating has been DIVISIVE and the cause of much more arguing and conflict. And second, I’m really starting to get annoyed by all the global warming talk. And don’t get me wrong, I am 100 percent FOR finding cleaner energy, and more efficient energy, and conserving water, and recycling, etc, etc. I mean, it just makes sense to want the air and the water to be clean, and to be as efficient as possible when using energy, and to reuse things that can be reused. However, I just don’t understand using the “stop global warming” tagline in an attempt to persuade people to be more environmentally conscious…

But then, I usually try to look at it logically – we know, without a doubt, that our planet has already been through cycles of warming and cooling. We KNOW this. It’s a scientific fact. We also know that when these changes were taking place, the earth was either devoid or mostly devoid of human life. Therefore, we can safely conclude that the roads weren’t clogged with SUVs, no one was using hairspray, plastic jugs weren’t piled up in landfills, and no one left the lights on when they exited a room. We can also safely conclude that whatever caused the planet to warm up and cool down was a NATURAL phenomenon. One that could not be stopped or changed. Whatever was to happen, was to happen.

So here’s the problem I have now – now the planet is covered with human beings, many of whom seem to think said planet revolves around them. They also seem to forget that the planet has been evolving and changing for eons, long before any of us humans existed – we had absolutely nothing to do with the weather patterns, or the sea levels, or the size of the glaciers. And yet what happened to those weather patterns? And the sea levels? And the glaciers? They CHANGED. They evolved. In fact, they’ve probably been continually changing and evolving for as long as this world has been circling the sun. But NOW, there are humans who seem to believe that THIS particular climate configuration is the ONLY one that should ever exist, from now until the end of time. That unless we do something, other generations of humans may have to contend with a DIFFERENT climate. That unless we do something, we might actually have to CHANGE our maps to reflect differences in land masses and bodies of water. That unless we do something, the world is going to change and evolve again… Well, duh. Honestly, what did you THINK would happen? The world’s climate would hit a certain point, and then, for the first time since the dawn of creation, it would settle into a holding pattern?

And I’m not saying that we humans don’t have any impact on the climate, or that we aren’t possibly accelerating change – I'm sure our very existence has an impact on the world. I just think that it’s rather naïve to assume that we are the ONLY reason for climate change, and that we can bring it to a screeching halt if we all just hold hands and drive hybrid cars. Yes, there are definitely reasons to find cleaner energy and to preserve our resources – but if you think it’ll stop the climate from changing or prevent the need for updated maps in the future, you’ll be very disappointed some day.

I just think someone should come up with a more logical argument for why we need to take care of the environment – you know, start with something like, “drinking clean water is good for you” and go from there…

It's only a game (right, dad?)...

Sigh… once again, my baseball team, my real-life heroes, my Yankees, have let me down and broken my heart, leaving me with the empty, disappointed feeling of a long looming winter with no baseball. Not to mention the question of whether Joe Torre will be manager next year. Personally, I don’t think Torre should be punished for mistakes that Brian Cashman has made. For years he’s done nothing but shell out millions of dollars for players who don’t play up to their hyped standards. And then finally, this year, we start to see some NEW talent from the Yankee farm – like Shelley Duncan and Joba Chamberlain – and what happens? We come back from 14 games behind Boston to win the Wild Card spot. Perhaps we should’ve been looking for those new guys all along? Hmmm… about time Cashman figured that out (and I’ve always thought it was interesting that his name is CASH man)…

And Torre didn’t do a bad job in the postseason games – he was pulling pitchers quickly, before too much damage had been done, and making some good lineup decisions. But the one thing Torre can’t do is go out there and SWING THE BATS for these guys. Your pitching can be stellar, but if the offense isn’t there, what’s the point? But even yesterday, when we had 12 hits and three home runs, it just wasn’t enough. (It would’ve helped, of course, if someone had a hit a home run one of the gazillion times we had runners in scoring position…) No, I guess it just wasn’t meant to be this year…

And somewhere in the midst of my Yankee mourning, I figured something out – sure, a World Series win this year would’ve been great, but wouldn’t a win NEXT year be even better? Next year is the final year the Yankees will be playing in the old stadium… the stadium where I saw my very first baseball game… where I used to sit in the stands right behind Dave Winfield and listen to the sounds of the rowdy fans in the bleachers below… the stadium where I used to eat knishes and giant pretzels… where I was certain I was the Yankees’ clandestine good luck charm… where Bob Sheppard was the announcer and somehow still is… where I watched a tattered American flag from the 9/11 rubble wave tenaciously over the outfield and felt the concrete floors shake from the force of fifty-five thousand loyal fans cheering their team come hell or high water or anything else you can throw at New York… Yeah, a win would’ve been great this year. But a win next year would be phenomenal…

On another topic entirely… Rick and I thought our house was about to be hit with a quickly-falling plane last night. We were hanging out in the house – me in the family room and Rick in his study – and I heard a roaring noise somewhere off in the distance. At first I thought perhaps it was the TV, but as it got louder and louder, I realized it was coming from outside. And not only that, but the roaring began to sound not unlike the sound of the crashing plane on Lost – engines revving erratically, air wooshing past a fuselage… I seriously thought the thing was going down. So I jumped up from the couch and ran to the back porch door, almost afraid to look outside – but by the time I’d opened it and taken a peek, the plane had passed overhead and kept on going. I never even SAW it – so who’s to say it was actually a plane, anyway? UFO, perhaps? Little green men from Roswell, New Mexico? I mean, it went from sounding like a plane crash waiting to happen to sounding like nothing but crickets chirping so fast it seemed really strange. Rick ran outside as I was standing on the porch in bewilderment, looking for the plane that no longer seemed to exist, and asked if I’d heard the plane that was about to crash. We both stood in the backyard for a couple minutes, waiting to hear a distant “boom” and flash of light, but it never happened. We even searched the local news websites a little bit later, quite certain we’d be reading about a downed plane somewhere in the county. Or at least about a spaceship full of little green men…

Guess we’ll never know what it was that flew overhead last night… but I suppose just because something seems like it’s about to crash and burn doesn’t mean it can’t land safely and climb into the skies at another time. Which is exactly what the Yankees will do next year… :)

A few random thoughts...

So it’s October 4th, we’re well into the “autumn” season, and we have yet to see a day where the temperature hasn’t hit 90 degrees here in Austin. This is one of those times when I really miss the northeast – where, even when the afternoon temperatures would climb, at least the evenings would be cool… at least there was a HINT of the cooler weather to come. At least you could begin to haul out the long-sleeved t-shirts and jackets, knowing sweaters and wool coats weren’t far behind. But here, I’m still wearing flip flops for goodness sake. Give me a reason to put socks on… c’mon… just one pair of cozy socks…

My mom and I decided to trek over to another Seattle’s Best coffee shop this morning – a bit of a drive compared to our old standby, but we figured we might be able to discover some of the reasons behind the demise of our favorite shop. We ran into the girl who used to manage our Seattle’s Best, and now she’s the manager of this other shop. Apparently, our beloved Seattle’s Best had been losing money for quite a while, and they were struggling to keep the place open for the benefit of its loyal patrons. And then another Starbucks opened a few stoplights down the street (a Starbucks with a drive-through, no less… much more convenient for morning rush-hour commuters…) and our new toll roads opened (meaning people are now taking completely new routes to get to wherever they’re going) and the poor little Seattle’s Best was unable to withstand the lack of business. Such is the world of competitive, designer coffee, I suppose…

Anyway… so last night I was watching CSI: NY… let’s see… there are now three CSI shows, right? One in Las Vegas, one in New York, and one in Miami. When are they gonna create a CSI that takes place in some totally random town? Like CSI: Duluth. Or CSI: Boise. I can’t be the only one who’s curious about the crime rate in Boise. How DO they keep all those potatoes safe? But I digress… so I was watching CSI: NY, and for the hundredth time since I started watching all these CSI shows I wondered – do you suppose REAL crime scene investigators constantly state the obvious when they’re working together? Like last night, two CSIs were analyzing the contents of a syringe, and they discovered it contained cortisone. So one of them immediately says, “cortisone? An anti-inflammatory?” and the other one says, “Yeah, for arthritis and things like that…” And I couldn’t help but think, okay, you guys are supposed to be experienced professionals… you KNOW what cortisone is, you KNOW what an anti-inflammatory is, you KNOW what people with arthritis might take to help their condition – are you REALLY going to bounce the obvious off each other? No, of course not – they write this ridiculous dialogue into the show for the benefit of those of us in the viewing audience who’ve never heard of that mysterious stuff called “cortisone.”

Well, I don’t have very much of interest to say today, so in closing I’ll just say this: GO YANKEES!!!!

Where oh where has my coffee shop gone?

Well, regular season baseball has come to an end. I’m rather sad about that… I am now stuck with a mere handful of football games to keep track of – mainly UT and Rutgers (who both performed quite poorly this weekend). I AM, however, excited about the post season, and hoping the Yankees can keep some momentum going. Too bad the Mets were knocked out of the running yesterday – I was looking forward to the possibility of another Subway Series. Oh well. :)

And I must say congratulations to Ed and Greg, who came in second and third place in the fantasy baseball league, and will, therefore, share in the monetary winnings. Congrats, you guys! Someone came in first place, too, but I can’t remember who… all I know is that his team name is something like, “I am the King of Universe, Bow to Me You Minion Peons.” Eh, it was probably no one too important…

So this is when the stress starts – every game the Yankees play from here on out will be filled with tension and nail biting. And possibly jumping rope. I mean, THEY won’t be jumping rope… but I might. Jumping rope is a great way to expend nervous energy when watching a playoff game. Too… much… stress…

Another sad thing happened this past week – our Seattle’s Best closed down without warning. One day it was business as usual, and the next, it was “no more caramel lattes for YOU!!” The shop was cleared out, the doors were locked, and that was it. No explanation was given for why my morning caffeine rush would apparently now be forever denied. And it’s interesting that the shop should close down just as another Chicago possibility opens up. We’re STILL waiting to find out whether or not we’ll be living here in Austin in a couple months, or whether we’ll be shopping for sweaters and hats and gloves and relocating to Chicago in the middle of winter.

And the reason it’s interesting that the Seattle’s Best closed down is that it originally OPENED just a few weeks before we moved back to Austin from New Jersey several years ago. Rick moved back here before I did – I stayed up in Jersey a few months longer, packing and waiting for the house to sell. Rick would call me every day, or send emails – and, invariably, he would tell me how great it was going to be to live just a couple miles from Seattle’s Best. When I finally joined him back in Austin (in a temporary apartment while our house was being built) the Seattle’s Best became a daily haunt – the people in the shop already knew Rick, and would have iced caramel lattes ready for us when we walked in. When we moved into the new house, I’m fairly certain I had a cup of Seattle’s Best coffee to energize me as I lugged boxes and furniture from the apartment. When friends and family would come visit from out-of-town, we’d head over to the Seattle’s Best and hang out around a wooden table, reading newspapers and talking and sipping mochas and cappuccinos. We knew the names of every person who worked in that shop, and grew to consider many of them friends. It was “our” coffee shop.

So in the wake of its abrupt closing, I have to wonder if it’s not a sign of some sort – the Seattle’s Best opened up just as we were moving back to Austin… so what does it mean that it’s closed now? Hmmm… I guess, just as we’ve been doing for so long, we’ll just have to wait and see…

Hey! A new post!

Wow, I’ve been MIA for a whole week… my poor blog has been abandoned and neglected. But in my defense, it CAN be difficult to keep this thing consistently updated. I mean, you guys should try it some time. You would all fail miserably. Mwahahahahaha! (Evil dictator laugh… that is NOT to say that I’m an evil dictator, of course… I just happen to laugh like one…) :)

So in case anyone hasn’t heard – the Yankees have clinched a spot in the playoffs! They’re moving on to the post-season! And, if by some miracle they can manage to win their last few games, and Boston loses theirs, they might even be AL East champions again. (Well, now that I’ve brought it up, I’ve completely jinxed it… so that won’t happen. I’ll just be happy with the wild card spot.)

Sadly, however, the end of regular season baseball is also the end of fantasy baseball. It was a disappointing year for me, as my offense started the season with all the power of a hamster in a little plastic ball. They scampered along for a couple months, struggling mightily, until they finally remembered they were men (I think) and not rodents. But by then it was too late, and I was firmly entrenched in the bottom half of the league. A few weeks ago, I took heart in the fact that I was quite safely in eighth place. I mean, I OWN eighth place. Eighth place is MINE. (No, it’s not quite as satisfying as ending up ten points out of first place like last year, but oh well.)

I’m just happy to see the Yankees in the post-season again, in another year when everyone counted them out in the middle of the season. But that’s something that I’ve learned about the Yankees – unless they’re wallowing in last place, twenty games back, with half the team on the DL, you CAN’T count them out. You never know what’s going to happen with them. Which is one of the reasons it’s so much FUN to follow them if you’re a fan. (And if you’re not a Yankee fan, it’s probably aggravating and annoying… and that’s why you should be a Yankee fan… come to the daaaaark siiiiide…)

Of course, when I first started following the Yankees, they weren’t very good at all. They were nowhere near the top of their division, they lost games every time my dad and Eric would go to Yankee Stadium, and I didn’t understand what the big deal was about baseball. It wasn’t until I went to a game myself – until I saw the Yankee Stadium grass and swore it was greener than the rest of the grass in the world – that I started to truly appreciate baseball.

And what’s more, the Yankees WON that very first game I attended. They also won the second game I attended. And the third. Even though they were playing horribly overall, I was convinced that my presence in the stands was the catalyst that brought them good luck. Even at that early juncture, before I understood all the rules or knew all the players’ names, I recognized the value of some good old fashioned baseball superstition. It was ME – I was the reason the Yankees won games. I was their good luck charm, and they didn’t even know it. Eventually they DID lose a game when I was in attendance, of course. Which left me trying to figure out what I’d done differently to change the course of the game…

Don Mattingly was playing when I first started following the Yankees… and Dave Winfield… and Rickey Henderson. And a couple guys named Mike Pagliarulo and Dave Righetti, who were known by the nicknames “Pags” and Rags.” I actually might never have known that had it not been for an unbelievably annoying ad that constantly aired in the New York/New Jersey metropolitan area. It was a “come to Yankee Stadium and support your last place team!” kind of ad, and at the end, a little kid in a ball cap would exclaim, “Pags! Rags!” in a gratingly jarring way that made me want to throw Righetti’s baseball right at his or her little head. Apparently, I was supposed to set off to the stadium so I could see Pags and Rags in action, and that little kid wanted me to know how exciting it was. And that ad was SO annoying that I STILL remember it. Pags! Rags! Argh! Shut up!

Fortunately, it didn’t deter me from my Yankee addiction, and I can’t wait for the post-season to start. And if the Yankees lose, I’ll know exactly why – it’s because I (their good luck charm) wasn’t there…

30-minute post...

So the other day when I was in that Borders bookstore looking for the meaning of “Chindogu,” I also browsed through the cooking section. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular – I just like to try new things once in a while, so I wouldn’t mind finding some sort of unusual cookbook with some interesting recipes. As I passed by various titles (“1000 Indian Recipes” – yum, that sounds good… “The Biggest Loser Cookbook” – well, the recipes might be good, but do I really want to feel ridiculed by my cookbook? “The Cheese-Lovers Cookbook” – hey, I know what dad is getting for Christmas!) I found myself in the middle aisle, next to a table piled with books by a single author – Rachel Ray.

And I suddenly realized, as I shuddered at the sight of those books, that Rachel Ray is my Matthew McConaughey. Now, for anyone who hasn’t already heard, Eric REALLY doesn’t like Matthew McConaughey. I mean, he can NOT stand that guy. If you show Eric a picture of Matthew McConaughey, he might very well rip it out of your hands and shred it to bits. Or, if he happens to be near a fireplace in Montana, he’ll just burn it:


Yes, he really WAS burning a People magazine with Matthew McConaughey on the cover. And, if you ask me, he was relishing the experience just a bit too much. Pyromaniac…

And it’s not like there’s any real reason why Eric dislikes Matthew McConaughey so much. I mean, sure, Matthew McConaughey WAS in that horrible movie “Contact”… a movie which should be forever relegated to the bargain DVD bins at Best Buy. But hey, he was also in, um… uh… wait a second, I’ll think of something… uuuhhhhhh… okay, truthfully, I’ve got nothing… But regardless – is a lackluster movie career reason enough to hate the guy so much?

Anyway, like I was saying – Rachel Ray is MY Matthew McConaughey. Because for some reason, I can’t stand her. She annoys me to no end. The mere sight of her picture on the cover of cookbook after cookbook in the middle of Borders made me want to knock over the table on which they were perched. And I’m not sure WHY I dislike her so much. Maybe it’s because she has an irritating habit of saying the word “delish” about five times during every one of her shows… maybe it’s because she maddeningly calls extra virgin olive oil “E-V-O-O – extra virgin olive oil” (yes, she says it in its entirety every time she pulls the bottle out) instead of simply saying “olive oil” or even “EVOO”… maybe it’s because she’s loud and obnoxious and has this bizarre way of over-pronouncing half the words she uses (“I LLLLOOOVVVE garlic!! It’s SO GOOD!!! I LLLLOOOOOVVVE it!!!!”)… or maybe it’s just because her so-called “30-minute meals” would actually take the average person a good hour to cook.

The point is, there’s no really good reason for why I can’t stand Rachel Ray – just like there’s no really good reason for why Eric hates Matthew McConaughey. But as long as pictures of both of them continue to exist, we’ll have plenty of fires to keep us warm in Montana…

Yes, I'm talking about baseball... and cats...

Well, judging from Greg’s comment underneath that post a couple days ago, apparently my blog is really boring unless I’m talking about fantasy baseball. But he’s right – my own team didn’t do so well this year, and I am firmly entrenched in eighth place at the moment. So I’ll just have to talk about Greg’s fantasy baseball team. HIS team is great. Greg’s team is super special. All hail Greg and his super special fantasy baseball team. Actually, if it was REALLY great, he’d find a way to finish in first place instead of third… because why should Tim the Self-Perceived Doer of No Wrongs in Fantasy Baseball Land end up in first? So I’m rooting for you Greg – find a way to make up that 250 points between you and first place… c’mon, you can do it… :)

Of course, even more interesting than fantasy baseball right now is REAL baseball – the Yankees are finally starting to show their determination to make it to the postseason. Which I’m sure is thanks in no small part to the Yankee Voodoo that Eric and I seem to have perfected over the last few weeks. There’ve been a few close calls – Rivera loading the bases in the ninth inning, that sort of thing – but we’re trying to save up the really potent voodoo for the postseason games.

Speaking of the postseason (assuming the possibility that Boston will be there), did everyone hear about that kid in Boston who got Shelley Duncan’s autograph, but he and his mom got all bent out of shape about it because the autograph said, “Red Sox suck! – Shelley Duncan”? Oh come on – you actually go out and contact the media because a Yankee player wrote “Red Sox suck” before his autograph? If David Ortiz signed my notebook, and it said, “Yankees suck! – David Ortiz” I’d be like, “awesome! David Ortiz signed my notebook! And he has a sense of humor!” If this kid wants to be Red Sox fan for very long, he’d better get used to hearing things like that… it’s just part of the Red Sox/Yankees rivalry. If I had a nickel for every time I heard “Yankees suck”… well, I’d have a whole bunch of nickels… If your feelings are gonna be hurt by a silly “Red Sox suck” autograph, then maybe you’d better go be a Pittsburgh Pirates fan or something...

Actually, I have a theory about this whole autograph uproar – I don’ t think the kid was upset at all. His mom, maybe – but only because moms like to try to shield their kids from disrespectful language like “suck” (although if that’s the case, you’d better never attend another Red Sox/Yankees game… I’ve heard worse than that from the mouths of nuns and boy scouts…). No, I don’t think it was a matter of being “upset” about the autograph – I think this kid realized that he had something cool, and the more media attention it received, the more money he could get when he sold it on eBay…

Okay, that concludes the “baseball” portion of this post. I shall now move on to a subject that is much more boring – namely, cute and cuddly kittens. Allegro and Piva are getting along a bit better now, as is evidenced by this picture:


They still have occasional arguments, however – like the one they were having this morning at about 6:30. I think what usually happens is that Piva likes to hide under the black cupboard in the foyer, and when Allegro walks by, she’ll jump out. This does NOT make Allegro happy, and much hissing and spitting ensues. Piva will try to hiss back, but she’s still so small that it ends up sounding more like a little sigh… and it’s much too adorable to be intimidating in any way. And really, how could you EVER be intimidated by this face?

They also have packing tape... and bubble bath...

I had some freelance proofreading work for a couple days, courtesy of Jen up in Chicago (thanks Jen! :)). I read through a catalog full of journals and calendars and photo albums – which, to be honest, was a lot more interesting than the freelance work I get every year from my previous employers. They like to inundate me with 40-page annual reports every winter, each one prefaced with a desperate plea of “is it possible for you to get this back to us today?” Um, no. (Actually, that's not true. It IS possible now and then, especially if I don’t drive all the way home to proof… last year I picked up a report from the bank and then drove to a Starbucks a couple miles away, where I fueled up with a triple-shot caramel macchiato and knocked the whole thing out in three hours flat. I then triumphantly returned the report to the bank, where I was greeted like the hero that I am and carried back out to my car on the shoulders of grateful typesetters. I’m pretty sure that’s the way it happened, anyway. Although I MAY have been imagining that “hero” stuff because of my caffeine high…)

Anyway, the catalog was a nice change from my usual proofreading work. And although I found plenty of reasons to wield my Red Pen of Corrections, I only found ONE misspelled word in the entire catalog. One. I hate it when that happens. I mean, on the one hand, it can mean that whoever typed that thing was a very good typist and speller… but on the other hand, it can mean that I missed all the OTHER misspelled words. What if there were fifteen misspelled words, and I only caught one? What kind of horrible proofreader would that make me? I just know that somewhere in that catalog, “stationery” was spelled “stationary,” and I totally missed it. I skipped right over the stationary stationery. How could I have missed that? Sigh… (I suppose there’s also a possibility that I’m being paranoid…)

After I finished proofing the catalog yesterday, I looked at FedEx’s website to see where I should go to return it to Chicago. And I was happy to see a “Pak and Ship” store listed on the website, located right across the street from my neighborhood, barely a mile away. Well, that would make everything quite easy and convenient. So I went over to Pak and Ship… but as soon as I walked in, I had a bad feeling about the place. It seemed less a packing and shipping store and more a Hallmark and bath store. I’m not sure you should ever see tubs of “body butter” for sale at your local FedEx shipping establishment. What’s more, the store was manned by an older couple, who were apparently going for a “mom-and-pop” atmosphere. But I went ahead and showed Pop what I needed to FedEx, hoping the racks of birthday cards and tubes of hand lotion were simply a façade for what was, in reality, a very professional business. However, my hopes began to fade when he took one look at the catalog and said, “oh, I’m not sure we have a box for that…”

So I waited patiently as he rummaged around on a shelf and pulled out a “small” FedEx box, then held it next to the catalog and said, “nope, that won’t work.” I explained that the catalog had arrived in a MEDIUM box of the same type, assuming he could return to the shelf and bring one back to the counter. Instead, he mumbled something about “I’m pretty sure we don’t have any of those boxes” and disappeared into a back room. When he returned, he confirmed that they had NO medium FedEx boxes in the store, but if I wanted to, I could buy a larger plain cardboard box and use that. But seeing as I was hoping to look at least SEMI-professional with this proofreading job, I declined the plain cardboard box, worrying not only about how a non-FedEx box would look, but also having a slight suspicion that Mom and Pop would slip some jam and Pepperidge Farm cookies into the package…

I ended up going to Kinko’s… specifically, FEDEX Kinko’s – it seemed like a much better choice, considering the fact that “FedEx” was right there in giant letters on the sign over the door. They had plenty of FedEx medium boxes and FedEx airbills, one of which I filled out with several bits of information in the wrong spaces, so I had to cross things out until it looked like it had been filled out by a ten-year-old. As I carried the box to the counter, all I could think was, “these people are SO going to think I’m an idiot…” Is it really THAT hard to fill out a FedEx airbill? Oh well… at least I found a real FedEx box…

Is anyone else having a strange craving for Pepperidge Farm cookies? Maybe I’ll head over to the Pak and Ship… I mean, at the very least I can pick up a tube of lilac hand lotion…

I'd like to see them try to make a movie out of this...

I have finally finished Salman Rushdie’s “The Satanic Verses,” after several months of on-again off-again reading (pausing now and then to read more “mindless” books that required little thought), and searching for commentaries on the text that would not only help me wade through the myriad metaphors, but also translate the many random Urdu/Arabic/Hindi words scattered throughout the story. And now that I’ve finished it, I have to say – wow. I’m not sure what I expected before I started the book, but it turned out to be so different from anything I could’ve envisioned. Completing the book was like reaching the end of some kind of fantastic journey – a trip where you saw so many amazing things, and learned so many foreign customs, and collected so much knowledge and so many memories that you’re almost loath to return to your mundane, everyday existence. There were so many threads woven into this book’s story that I feel like I could re-read it immediately and catch more details I missed the first time – this is part of the reason I took so long to finish the entire book. There were days when I would read a mere 30 or 40 pages, and feel like I’d devoured a wealth of creativity and thought-provoking images. This is not the kind of book you want to speed-read… skip over a sentence, and you might miss something profound…

It’s hard to even say what the “story” was about in this book. The concrete part of the novel is thus: (and this, by the way, is a technique quite often employed by Rushdie in his writing – the use of an introductory phrase, followed by a colon: “This happened: He observed this: Listen:” etc…) Two men – Saladin Chamcha and Gibreel Farishta – are on a hijacked plane, which terrorists blow up over the English Channel. So, at thirty thousand feet or thereabouts, Saladin and Gibreel tumble out of the sky, hurtling toward the earth, obviously in a situation that no one could ever conceivably survive. So what happens? Why, they both survive, of course.

But that is where the “concrete” part of the novel ends and the “what is going on here?” part begins. After they fall to the earth, Saladin and Gibreel both undergo strange metamorphoses – of course, it’s not always clear what is supposed to be a “literal” metamorphosis, and what is merely symbolic or imagined. Saladin, the more reserved of the two, begins to change into a devil-like creature, complete with horns and hooves… while Gibreel – an outgoing, arrogant movie-star – begins to change into a halo-crowned angel (namely, Gibreel the archangel). But is Saladin LITERALLY growing horns and hooves? Does Gibreel LITERALLY have a visible light glowing around his head? Or are these descriptions meant to reflect some of the emotions the men are now internalizing after their brush with death? Is the whole thing simply an illustration of the “evil” and “good” inside all people?

At times the answers are obvious – like one particular passage where Gibreel is certain his archangel status has transformed him into something larger than life. He feels it is necessary to have the attention of the London populace, but even as he looms over the city, casting a gigantic shadow on the highway and watching tiny cars zoom below him, no one pays him any notice. So he decides to take drastic measures and heave his giant feet onto the highway, where he is certain he will crush several cars – but at least then he’ll have everyone’s attention. What results, of course, is not Gibreel crushing a car, but rather a car almost crushing the very-normal-man-sized Gibreel. At other times, however, the answers aren’t as obvious – Saladin does, in fact, take refuge with a kind family who are willing to hide him even when he begins to take on the form of a man-goat, and they do seem to see in him the same things he sees in himself. Eventually, though, his appearance returns to normal – although the “evil” that was awakened inside him later appears again in an attempt to destroy Gibreel.

Saladin and Gibreel take on an “archenemy” type relationship – Saladin hating Gibreel because the latter man never attempted to help him during his bizarre metamorphosis… and Gibreel, convinced he is the archangel, certain the changed Saladin is his enemy. And woven within the entire novel are Gibreel’s “dreams” – stories within the story that at times seem random, but upon further reflection are very subtly and skillfully intertwined to the rest of the book. There is SO much that happens in this book, and, I would guess, so many different interpretations of what everything means…

And I thought it was funny that as I neared the end of the book this morning, I came across this passage, spoken by Saladin Chamcha as he attempted to secure a visa: “’I’ll tell you who I am,’ Chamcha bellowed… ‘I’m the poor bastard who got blown up by terrorists, fell thirty thousand feet out of the sky because of terrorists, and now because of those same terrorists I have to be insulted by pen-pushers like you.’” Interesting, isn’t it, that I should not only read this particular passage on 9/11, but also that this book was written back in 1988? Apparently the disruption of people’s daily lives because of a handful of cowardly, moronic idiots has been a problem for quite a while now… in fact, The Satanic Verses touches on so many timely issues – racism, religious fanaticism, political disputes, actors and actresses in obvious need of rehab – that at times I totally forgot I was reading a book that was written almost two decades ago.

I’d have to say this was one of the best books I’ve ever read, if only for the fact that it’s one of the most INTERESTING books I’ve ever read – it’s unlike anything else in my personal library. I doubt I know ANYONE who would actually sit down and read the entire thing… which is too bad, because it would be fun to discuss it with someone else who’d read it. But in order to read this book, it probably helps to be slightly nutter-butter to begin with – because then all the bizarre imagery doesn’t HAVE to make sense. If it’s a bit nonsensical, so what? It is, in the end, a book about life – and since when does life make sense anyway?

I have nothing to say...

Slow week… I guess I didn’t have much to write about. And the same goes for today – so here are my Saturday random thoughts:

Well, we have now left the house several times while Piva was out of her room, trusting that Allegro won’t eat her in our absence. And so far, everyone has been in one piece when we return home. I think Allegro is starting to understand that this new creature is here to stay, so she is beginning to tolerate her slightly, while still proclaiming her superiority whenever Piva ventures too close. But right now at this moment, Allegro is sleeping peacefully in her favorite place on the couch, and Piva is in the foyer batting around a little fabric mouse with a bell on its tail… (And Echo, as usual, can’t hear a thing, so it’s all good…)

Speaking of Piva, she has an annoying little habit of walking across the computer keyboard when I’m trying to use it. Which means I’ll be typing along quite nicely, and then suddenly she’ll hit the precise combination of keys to cause everything I’ve typed to disappear… or five random windows will pop up… or the Quicktime player will start running… or I’ll simply end up with a word like, “owyeoirh9—uje” at the end of my sentence…

Eric and I have been honing our Yankee voodoo this week, preparing it for possible postseason necessity. It’s actually been eerily on target this week – it began with a game a few days ago when our pitcher walked two batters in a row with nobody out. I sent a hasty Yankee Voodoo text message to Eric, and was immediately rewarded with a pop out and a double play, so the opposing team never had a chance to score. The same sort of situation seemed to be panning out in the next inning, so again I sent my voodoo message… and once again the Yankees managed to work their way out of a sticky inning. I then realized that what we really needed was OFFENSE voodoo – so I sent my voodoo text message. And the Yankees scored TEN runs within the next two innings. The next day, I was a bit late with my voodoo messages, so the Yankees were losing 2-1 as they went into the seventh inning. So I sent Eric some Yankee voodoo, and WHAM – eight runs in the seventh inning. And yesterday my voodoo messages were rather sporadic, thanks to eating dinner at Rick’s parents’ house and me leaving my phone in the living room. But I managed to send enough voodoo to ensure a 3-2 Yankee victory. I only have about a half hour before they play again… I’d better get my cell phone ready… (Eric?? Get the voodoo dolls and pins!)

Has everyone heard of that Burning Man festival in Nevada? It’s like this big gathering of people who fancy themselves artists (I’m sure some of them are… and I’m sure some of them are just people who do things like throw cans of paint at a pile of garbage cans while hula hooping in Marie Antoinette costumes, in an obvious display of anarchic, anti-government, George W. Bush-is-a-moron-and-should-be-impeached, we’re-serious-artists-and-you-just-don’t-get-it-man displays of “artistic expression.”) The whole thing culminates in the conflagration of a giant wooden man, which, I suppose is also some kind of “artistic expression.” Well, this year, some guy decided to set fire to the giant man a few days early – and he was arrested for it. Now, let me make sure I understand this correctly – a guy set fire to the guy who’s supposed to be set on fire, only it wasn’t the right time for the guy to be set on fire, so the fire-setting guy was arrested… right? Um, huh?? If the giant man is supposed to burn anyway, and his burning is an artistic expression, then who’s to say that burning the man a few days early isn’t ALSO an artistic expression? I mean, if the whole festival is about anything goes, breaking all the rules, expressing yourself, then how can there be any justification for arresting the Burning Man Early Burner? Just seems a little nonsensical to me… (but then again, I’ve always hated fire…)

Well, the UT game and the Yankee game are about to start, so I’m off to send voodoo…

Stupid pretentious flip flops...

Over the weekend, we ate at a McCormick and Schmick’s restaurant that recently opened in Austin. This is not to be confused with Smith and Wollensky, which is a steakhouse… McCormick and Schmick's specializes in my worst culinary nightmare – seafood, seafood and more seafood. (Incidentally, on a side note: the last time we ate at a Smith and Wollensky – in Chicago – it was HORRIBLE. I doubt I’ll ever return there again. Especially when a couple blocks away there is a perfectly wonderful Morton’s steakhouse, where I’ve had three perfectly delicious meals in the last few months, not to mention three perfectly decadent chocolate lava cakes… the Smith and Wollensky across the river pales in comparison… just FYI… in case anyone happens to find themselves in Chicago in the future – Morton’s = good steak… Smith and Wollensky = horrible, inedible, meat by-products.)

Anyway… we ate at a new McCormick and Schmick’s that just opened in the Domain – the Domain is a big shopping center/apartment complex establishment that popped up a few months ago in north Austin. (At least that’s the way I see it – there’s so much construction in Austin that buildings seem to appear from nowhere and the roads are constantly changing direction…) The Domain has a lot of high-end shops like Neiman Marcus – Rick and I went in there once to see why Neiman Marcus was such a beloved Dallas landmark, and I think we decided it must be because so many people in Dallas want so many OTHER people to know how much money they have. If you say, “I bought it at Neiman Marcus,” what you’re really saying is, “I paid about 200 percent more for this than I actually had to, but I’m, like, totally rich and the tag says Prada so it’s, like, super worth it, and anyway, my chihuahua told me I HAD to shop here – didn’t you, Princess Puppy Paws?” Seriously, while we were wandering around the store, we saw various 150-dollar t-shirts (t-shirts – you know, those things you can get for 15 bucks at Gap?)… and, I swear to the Hindu elephant god Ganesh, a 200-dollar pair of flip flops. FLIP FLOPS for goodness sake. Yeah, I don’t think I have a need to prove my loyalty to overpriced, self-important fashion designers THAT much…

But I digress… I believe I was talking about the McCormick and Schmick’s, which, like I said, is famous for its seafood. So out of the dozens of items on the menu, I was left with a tiny little “steaks” section. I ordered something called filet mignonettes – I was worried my meat would arrive tied up with strings in a puppet theater, but it actually turned out to be quite good. Three very small filets, served on a bed of wild mushroom risotto. I was happy to discover that this almost-exclusively fish restaurant could serve quite a decent steak, as well. (My only complaint is that I saw NO chicken or vegetarian options on the menu… which means if I ever go back, I’ll really only have one option for dinner…) This was the second really good restaurant we’ve tried in the Domain – we tried one a few weeks ago called the Kona Grill, which serves all kinds of sushi (I didn’t try any, obviously) and specialized in a macadamia-nut encrusted chicken (finally! Somebody who serves chicken! :)). The chicken was extremely good, and I also had these really yummy avocado eggrolls as an appetizer.

So after these rather good dining experiences, it was interesting that Rick discovered a blog yesterday that was written by “food critics” (really, I think, just people who like to complain) who denounced the Domain and every culinary establishment within it, proclaiming all the food to be “bland.” Their assessment was that the Domain is filled with pretentious Dallas-wannabes who pay too much money for their purchases, and then proceed to pay too much money for “bland” food. And while I can definitely agree that shops like Neiman Marcus have an annoying air of pretentiousness, there are plenty of down-to-earth shops in the Domain, as well. I’m sure there ARE people who shop there simply to show off designer-names to their friends, but there are just as many financially-strapped couples and unassuming families with kids and strollers who are out and about for the fun of it.

And what I found really ironic about this “food critic” blog was that immediately after condemning the “pretentious” shops, patrons and restaurants of the Domain, several of the critics declared their oh-so-obvious knowledge of all-things-food by pointing out the fact that “I used to live in New York City, so I KNOW what good food is supposed to taste like.” And don’t get me wrong – I adore New York City. And I HAVE eaten in some great restaurants there. But I’m also not so “pretentious” myself that I can’t recognize good food in AUSTIN when I stumble across it. Just because Austin isn’t a giant metropolis doesn’t mean we don’t have a few chefs who know how to cook…

Apparently we also have people who are willing to shell out 200 bucks for a pair of flip flops… but I’ll just stick to eating in good restaurants…

Weekend random thoughts...

Check it out – I finally figured out how to add a picture to my profile… and it only took me, like, five thousand years. Or two years… something like that. Not the best picture when it’s squished down into that little box – the pixels are too pixely or something. (Yeah, I said pixely… it’s a word… sort of… kind of… maybe not…) Anyway, it looks better at full size, but I guess it’ll do for now. Maybe I can find a picture that works better…

So today we were out driving home from Best Buy, and we saw a carpet cleaning truck. Underneath the name of the company it advertised a “24-hour emergency” phone number. And I couldn’t help but wonder – what kind of horrible thing would you have to spill on your carpet to warrant an “emergency” call to a carpet cleaner at, say, 3 or 4 in the morning? I mean, what could possibly happen that would cause you to pick up the phone in a panic and demand, “I need my carpets cleaned NOW!” as opposed to mopping up whatever you could with a roll of paper towels and making a mental note to “call that carpet place first thing tomorrow”?? If you really need your carpets cleaned that badly, I think there might be something going on in your house that the rest of the public doesn’t want to know about… or possibly something the police DO want to know about…

Yankees lost to Tampa Bay tonight – I don’t know what it is about Tampa Bay, but that team could lose every other game of their season and STILL manage to beat the Yankees with some ridiculous score like 17 -1. Tonight it was only 9-1, but really – why do the Yankees have such a problem with this team? They just managed to sweep Boston and now they let TAMPA BAY walk all over them? That just doesn’t make any sense… oh well. Yankees are only 5 and half games behind Boston, and Boston is losing tonight (hopefully they won’t stage a last minute rally)… and Seattle lost, too, which is good, because they’re one game behind the Yankees in the wild card race. I’d just be happy to see the Yankees in the playoffs, no matter how they got there…

I keep hearing about this whole Owen Wilson suicide attempt thing… I’ve heard people derisively remarking that Owen Wilson had so much money and fame and a great job, etc – so why would he want to kill himself? It always amazes me that people still buy (no pun intended) into the myth that money makes everyone happy. Money can only buy temporary THINGS, and that’s it. And “things” can be nice and all, but no matter HOW nice they are, their appeal always wears off. Always. Which is why people who DO believe that money can buy happiness are constantly buying MORE things. Once you have your shiny, sparkly prize, it starts to look a bit more dull and tarnished… so out comes the credit card and another possession is acquired and maybe THIS one will be the one that brings true happiness – but of course it’s not. It never is. When I think about what in my life has made me TRULY happy, more often than not people and relationships are involved. Even when money is required – like for travel, which is one of the things I love most – it’s the people who are with me and the experience itself that bring happiness. So it doesn’t surprise me that someone who’s perceived to “have it all” might, in actuality, be extremely depressed. Money really CAN'T buy happiness…

So I’m sort of half-watching Snakes on a Plane on HBO, and it’s making me never want to fly again. I mean, not only is this plane completely overrun with poisonous snakes, but it’s flying through the worst turbulence ever. Actually, this would be a great in-flight movie… it would probably freak out all the passengers. I was flying somewhere once, and the in-flight movie was “Panic Room” – that movie with Jodie Foster about the guys who break into her house and she locks herself in her protected room – and at a particularly suspenseful part of the movie, the plane started flying through turbulence and I could see lightning from a storm in the distance. And instead of being really scary, it actually made the movie better – we were bouncing around and lightning was flashing outside and Jodie Foster was frantically running from the bad guys and I was like, “argh! She’s not gonna make it! Run, Jodie, run!” In fact, I think if I HADN’T been on a plane flying through turbulence when I watched that movie, I wouldn’t have liked it all that much…

Wow, tomorrow is already September 1st… which means school is back in… which means I can finally once again go to the mall during the week and not feel like I’ve stumbled into the middle of a school field trip to the Gap. Actually, I don’t go to the mall all that often… but when I do, I prefer it to be as uncrowded as possible…

I guess that’s about all the random stuff I’ve got right now. Hope everyone has good weekend. :)