Silent Sunday

Twenty Questions

We've probably all played that game right? CNN had an article called 20 questions that could change your life. I don't know that they'll really change your life but some of them seem worth thinking about. You can click the link if you want to read all of them - I've posted a few below that I liked. Now you have something to think about in your spare time today!

1. Is this what I want to be doing?
2. Why worry?
3. What is my body telling me?
4. Where am I wrong?
5. What potential memories am I bartering, and is the profit worth the price?
6. Where should I break the rules?
7. Are my thoughts hurting or healing?

Musical Monday

Oops forgot to post earlier today! My sister always liked this song when we were kids. She may still like it actually. How about the short skirts? I thought clothes today were revealing! Oh my goodness that makes me sound awfully old. . . One of my somewhat secret desires is for a pair of sexy boots like she's wearing in the video. It's one of the things I promise myself when I lose weight. Oh well - one of these days I guess. There are a few people I'd like to walk on with them!

Silent Sunday

All taken last Sunday on Highway 1, along the California coast, somewhere between Monterey & Half Moon Bay!

Pictures, pictures, pictures

I finally got my pictures from last weekend into my Picasa web album. If anyone wants to look I've listed them with links below. Since there are 27 albums on my Picasa site I thought I should provide direct links! I didn't edit them so there are some that are similar and some not so great but I guess that's ok.

Taken in Monterey
At Carmel Mission
At Soledad Mission
Along California coast

January Poet: Kim Addonizio, Pt 2

My Heart

That Mississippi chicken shack.
That initial-scarred tabletop,
that tiny little dance floor to the left of the band.
That kiosk at the mall selling caramels and kitsch.
That tollbooth with its white-plastic-gloved worker
handing you your change.
That phone booth with the receiver ripped out.
That dressing room in the fetish boutique,
those curtains and mirrors.
That funhouse, that horror, that soundtrack of screams.
That putti-filled heaven raining gilt from the ceiling.
That haven for truckers, that bottomless cup.
That biome. That wilderness preserve.
That landing strip with no runway lights
where you are aiming your plane,
imagining a voice in the tower,
imagining a tower.

Kim Addonizio

I'm Back!

I had a great trip! Drove a lot, took lots of pictures, walked by the bay, went to a bookstore and two Missions, stopped numerous times along the coast, and enjoyed visiting family. I'm quite tired and glad to be home though. I was driving back to Sacramento today and I realized that for the first time since I moved here I wasn't feeling torn about leaving the Bay Area. I didn't feel like I'd left my home behind, I was just anxious to get home, to be back in Sacramento. I was even thinking that I'd be glad to get back to work tomorrow! And of course see my cats. For better or worse, this is my home and my life and despite there being things I'd like to change, I'm mainly pretty happy with it. That's a nice feeling.

I took bunches of pictures that I'm going to put into my Picasa album later and I'll share them that way. I did want to post this one. I took this on the coast yesterday about 1:30-2:00 pm with my iPhone. I know it looks later than that and I have no idea why. The sun was shining and I couldn't really see where I was aiming and without my glasses I don't see that well anyway. I figured the ocean was big and I'd just aim and shoot. I thought it was a great picture but I have no idea how I managed to take it!

Trip update

I had a nice day. I went to Soledad mission & then came back to Monterey and wandered around by the bay. There were a lot of people out. It was a beautiful day & I guess everyone was taking advantage of it. I'm tired! It took 4 hrs to get here last night and I don't think I've quite recovered. Anyway ... tomorrow Carmel mission and then I'm going to drive down the coast & go visit family. Here's some pictures. I hope they are good ones - I'm doing this on my phone & it's a little hard to see!












- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Monterey, CA

Just trying this!

I have a new app to post to my blog from my iPhone. I wanted to see how it works!


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Sacramento

Some numbers for you

Here's a few interesting statistics about the Internet from Royal Pingdom:

• 107 trillion – The number of emails sent on the Internet in 2010.
• 294 billion – Average number of email messages per day.
• 89.1% – The share of emails that were spam.
• 255 million – The number of websites as of December 2010.
• 1.97 billion – Internet users worldwide (June 2010).
• 152 million – The number of blogs on the Internet (as tracked by BlogPulse).
• 25 billion – Number of sent tweets on Twitter in 2010
• 2 billion – The number of videos watched per day on YouTube.
• 35 – Hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute.
• 5 billion – Photos hosted by Flickr (September 2010).
• 3000+ – Photos uploaded per minute to Flickr.

The Emperor of Ocean Park

I finished my first reading challenge book: The Emperor of Ocean Park by Stephen Carter. This is for the To Be Read Pile Challenge. I bought this, I don't know, two or three years ago because it sounded interesting but I never got around to reading it. It's a long book - the paperback version I have is 824 pages. So first a brief synopsis and then I'll tell you what I thought!

The story is narrated by Talcott Garland, an upper-class African-American law professor whose father Oliver, a well-known judge and disgraced Supreme Court nominee, dies from a heart attack. Oliver Garland's death unleashes a series of events that force Talcott to investigate the secrets in his father's life. The investigation is entangled with a mafia-like figure, the FBI, police and assorted political and legal characters. Talcott's investigation, led by his late father's mysterious clues, ends up risking his life, marriage and friendships.

So there's your very brief synopsis. I didn't want to write a lot and give away any details of the story. I did like the book. As I said, it was long and probably could have been a little shorter but that's ok. There's a lot of emphasis on race in the story and at first I thought it was too much but it really is central to the way things play out. Talcott can be a little annoying, kind of smug and a bit too moral but overall he's a pretty engaging character. After 824 pages I was fairly fond of him!

If you like mysteries and/or legal thrillers I'd definitely recommend this. For me there are a couple of tests for recommending a book: 1) How fast did I read the book (which indicates how engrossed I became in the story)? and 2) Would I read another book by this author? In answer to number 1 - pretty fast. It took about a week, which sounds embarrasingly slow, but I had to work and do bunches of other stuff too! And would I read more by Stephen Carter? Absolutely. I've already requested a couple from the library.

Musical Monday

Silent Sunday

Letting Go

Well I finally did my New Year's Eve letting go ritual. A week late but that's ok. It isn't easy to let go of emotions. I knew that from the beginning but what I didn't realize was how angry I am about some things still. I thought that I could separate out the good memories from the bad and just let go of the bad. It doesn't seem to be that simple though. In some cases it is, especially stuff from the past year. I decided not to go with burning anything so the negative stuff from the past year I just let kind of float away. Most of it doesn't have especially strong emotions tied to it - mainly it was mistakes in judgment and I mostly had to forgive myself and not be so critical. That was the easy part.

Some of it was feeling deserted by a friend who died and I decided to let go of those feelings and only focus on the good memories of which there are plenty. Again, pretty easy.

Far more difficult is reconciling my belief about who I am with some of my actions. Judgment mistakes are easy enough to forgive - we all make them. But what if you've done something that you knew was wrong from the beginning but did anyway? I'm not trying to be mysterious - it's just not something I can post but I'm trying to work out how to deal with it and stop being angry at myself. One of things I realized in doing this ritual was that while I thought I was angry at a lot of other people, mostly I'm angry at myself and I need to find a way to let go of that, forgive myself and move on.

So how about it? Without details, does anybody have advice? How do you accept that you did something incredibly hurtful to another person, that goes against something you strongly believe (or thought you believed) and in all honesty, knowing everything I know now, I'm afraid I'd still make the same choice. Is that confusing enough? Yet, yet, yet . . . I truly believe I'm a nice person, I'm a good person and - I don't know. I really don't know.

The other hard one is trying to let go of disliking myself for being overweight. I'm trying to find a way to say I'm ok the way I am right now but I still want to lose weight. Every once in awhile I'll manage for an hour or so and then I go back to blaming, criticizing and beating myself up about it. And to compensate for that misery what do I do? Yeah you guessed it - eat.

Reading Challenges

Here's a quick update on where I am with my reading challenges. When I finish each book I'll post a review and link to the appropriate blog.

Vintage Mystery - Starting Whose Body by Dorothy Sayers tonight!

To Be Read - I was going to read them in the order listed and I've actually started Giving Their Word by Steven Ratiner but it's going to be a slow read for me. Meanwhile I jumped down to The Emperor of Ocean Park by Stephen Carter. I started reading Monday night and I'm  283 pages into the 824 page story. I love long books and I'm finding myself thinking about the story at work and wishing I could be reading!

50 States - I still don't have my list complete but I'm starting with Alaska (I was going to go alphabetically but I found this book...). I'm reading a book called The Last New Land: Stories of Alaska Past and Present edited by Wayne Mergler. It contains stories, poems, memoirs, and folklore about Alaska. I had intended to read a mystery set in Alaska which would have been a nice fast read. Then I was at the library and saw this and now I'm stuck. . . oh well it's a good book! 

A few pictures

Some pictures from my walk this morning. It was foggy & cold! The last one is Pippin watching out the window for me. Or maybe just sitting in the window but I guess I can interpret it anyway I want!

January Poet: Kim Addonizio, Pt 1

I didn't do a great job with December but that's ok, we'll revisit Emily Dickinson later this year. Meanwhile onto January 2011. Kim Addonizio was born in Washington DC in 1954. For whatever reason, she got smart and now lives in Oakland, which while it isn't Sacramento, I can say nothing negative about because I have relatives living there. That was quite a sentence wasn't it? Anyway I love her poetry. It has a lovely edge to it and I'm always thinking, yes, I agree! when I read her stuff.

Some of her books include What Is This Thing Called Love, Lucifer at the Starlite, and Ordinary Genius. The poem below was the first one of hers that I read and it's still my favorite.

What Do Women Want?

I want a red dress.
I want it flimsy and cheap,
I want it too tight, I want to wear it
until someone tears it off me.
I want it sleeveless and backless,
this dress, so no one has to guess
what's underneath. I want to walk down
the street past Thrifty's and the hardware store
with all those keys glittering in the window,
past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old
donuts in their café, past the Guerra brothers
slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly,
hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders.
I want to walk like I'm the only
woman on earth and I can have my pick.
I want that red dress bad.
I want it to confirm
your worst fears about me,
to show you how little I care about you
or anything except what
I want. When I find it, I'll pull that garment
from its hanger like I'm choosing a body
to carry me into this world, through
the birth-cries and the love-cries too,
and I'll wear it like bones, like skin,
it'll be the goddamned
dress they bury me in.

My New Cookbook

I've been collecting old cookbooks for a long time. I have a lot that belonged to my mother and some that belonged to my grandmothers. I don't cook anywhere near as much as I used to (which is probably good) but I still enjoy the cookbooks. My daughter and her boyfriend got me a really cool one for Christmas. It's called The Ford Treasury of Favorite Recipes from Famous Eating Places. It's from 1955 and was compiled by the Ford Motor Company for travelers. The pictures in it are wonderful so I thought I'd share some of them. Some I just picked at random, but I've been to a few so I included those! I've been to The Nut Tree, Cliff House, The Palace Hotel, and Anderson's Pea Soup Restaurant.

I didn't disappear. . . .

I've been sick! I've had a bad throat & sinus infection and some kind of stomach upset. I'm finally starting to feel a little better today. It's been a miserable few days though. Aside from a doctor visit and feeding my cats about all I've done is sleep. I should be amazingly well rested but I still feel exhausted.

I didn't do my New Years Eve letting go ritual. I felt so sick that night that I didn't think it was a good idea to add any emotional stuff to the physical. I was kind of upset but I started thinking today that I'll just do it this weekend. So I'm off by a week - I've always been a slow starter!

Anyway I'm glad to be feeling a little better and I hope everyone else had a better New Year's Eve/Day than I did!