a sculpture made of dirt
I am thankful for generosity and for the way it spreads. I love seeing how one act of generosity can inspire many others. Generosity is, of course, not alone in this, and any number of wonderful behaviors can do this -- it's a way that the world can be made better by everyday people. And things that just regular folks can do to make the world better are the best ways to do that, because that's what the vast majority of us are. And just regular folks regularly give money, time, energy, and passion to individuals and projects that they believe in, because giving is, in fact, a wonderful experience and engagement with one's world.
 
 
a sculpture made of dirt
I am thankful for novelty and the wide, wide world. I have seen such a tiny slice of it all, and it's just amazing. I hope I never get tired of exploring it, both in its breadth and in its depth.
 
 
a sculpture made of dirt

Always, always, always my greatest thanks and sense of blessing is for and from my family, my friends, my loves. All the details of my life are dressing to the main dish of the people who make my days more joyous, more curious, deeper, weirder, more hilarious.

You all hold my hands when I need comfort. You tell me jokes and make me laugh. You give me a home to come to and be who I am, even when I don't know who that is. You challenge me to be better, you inspire me to do and reach for more. You give m the gifts of approval and discontent.

My people are, when I get down to it, the root of who and how I want to be in the world. Connected, intertwined, supportive and supported. And always with both laughter and tears, sweetness and bitterness, sunshine and night.

I am blessed and lucky and thankful for you.

 
 
I'm feeling: Thankful
 
 
a sculpture made of dirt

Today, I give thanks for sweet, blessed sleep, which I didn't get quite enough of last night, but which I think I'm actually getting better at recently.

I've always been a pretty sound sleeper, but a fickle one, finding sleep elusive at bedtime, and requrung of significant coersion and sneaky tricks in order for it to drop by. But, wow, is it great.

Sleep is this magical thing that happens that makes everything better. It makes me smarter. It makes me kinder. It makes me friendlier, funnier, and more forgiving. Getting enough sleep makes me happier, physically more comfortable, emotionally more resilient, and causes me to poop gold leaf. Okay, not that last thing, but sometimes I feel like I am enhanced with magic powers when I'm well rested.

Sleep is also easy to take for granted, especially as a person who doesn't have kids. But this year, I'm learning a new trick that's making sleep and me get along a lot better, and it's awesome, so it's like having a renaissance of our little sleepy love affair.

I think I'm gonna go take it to bed right now, thankfully. G'night!

 
 
a sculpture made of dirt
24 November 2009 @ 03:58 pm
My office-drawer condiments/spices rack contains:

* salt
* pepper
* ground cayenne
* cayenne flakes
* cider vinegar

What's in yours?
 
 
a sculpture made of dirt
I really, honestly thought that I was not going to be one of those people who, after getting an iPhone, was all, "OMG, the iPhone totally changed my life!" But I was wrong.

It's not just the iPhone itself, but the way people think about it and using it. There's this whole category of augmented reality apps that, more than flying cars or other scifi ideas, make me feel like I'm living in the future. That I can be standing downtown in a city I've never visited before and hold up my phone and have it tell me where I can get a good sandwich, a tasty drink, or have my coat tailored ... this is magic! It can also tell me about the history of landmarks near where I am or the geology of the area. Suddenly, the world is full of information that I can access right where I am. This is incredibly awesome.

It's this ridiculous toy, and also a whole new way of thinking about ... all kinds of things. I love the crazy ideas people pursue with it. I love the social networking apps like foursquare and buzzd and loopt. It's ridiculous, and it's fantastic. What's not to love?

Also, I'm surprised by how much I like having access to my email when I'm on the bus or waiting at a cafe or in those in-between times. This leads to my spending less time in front of my computer at home, which is wonderful.

So, I'm thankful for being wrong, living in the future, creativity and ingenuity, and less time at the keyboard. Awesome.
 
 
a sculpture made of dirt
24 November 2009 @ 12:27 pm
"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle." Albert Einstein

Share with me a quote or sentiment that makes you feel happy or inspired!
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I'm feeling: cheerful
 
 
a sculpture made of dirt
24 November 2009 @ 10:41 am
"Somewhere, someone is flying."
 
 
a sculpture made of dirt

This year, like the past several years, one of the ways that I'll be celebrating Thanksgiving is by posting about some of the things for which I'm thankful this year, and all the time. Life is, even at its most challenging, full of unexpected riches of blessings that I want to call them out to myself here. I know many of you do this at other times of year; anyone who's so inclined should feel free to join me in this.

I'm thankful for bad judgement. Well, questionable judgement, really. Not the bad judgement that's marked by that one-drink-too-many (sorry, y'all) but the questionable judgement that's marked by staying out too late on a school night because life's too short to always be reasonable and prudent. This is a spirit that's central to who I want to be for myself, to take life by the lapels, fling it into the hottub, and dive in after it with a bottle of champagne in each hand.

Most of the time, I think I'm much more measured than that, but I'm getting better at letting myself go with those moments of questionable judgement and seeing where they lead. It's often somewhere beautiful, profound, and unexpected.

And, yes, sometimes it's not so nice. But those things teach me something important, too, about myself, my friends, loves, and family.

I guess it would be contradictory to hope that I get better at having questionable judgement -- would that tranform it into a weird kind of good judgement? So instead I'll just hope that I can keep closing my eyes and making the leap in ways that work out, because it's a hell of a thing.

 
 
a sculpture made of dirt
23 November 2009 @ 02:37 pm
Today, I am plagued by the sense that something's wrong. Not something big or deep or major. More like ... a piece of spinach between my front teeth, or the back of my skirt tucked into the waistband of my tights.

It's extremely unsettling.
 
 
I'm feeling: shifty
 
 
a sculpture made of dirt
23 November 2009 @ 01:44 pm
Here's the game:

You comment, I give you a letter, and you come back with three adjectives starting with that letter that apply to yourself, three that apply to me, and three that apply to some other person of your choice. Or, if you're feeling lazy, just three that apply to yourself.
 
 
a sculpture made of dirt
22 November 2009 @ 09:15 pm
Today, I woke up with no plans at all and a borrowed car.

I traded a few minutes in the car and some money for a bunch of ingredients, and then I brought it all home and:

* baked four squashes
* roasted two chickens
* cooked gobs of delicious mushrooms goodness
* took apart the chicken carcasses and turned them into
* chicken stock
* two pumpkin pies
* a duck

In a little while, I'll convert the stock and chicken bits into soup, eat some duck, and then return the borrowed car.

Do I really have to go to work tomorrow? I would so love to stay home and come up with a whole 'nother batch of kitchen chaos.
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a sculpture made of dirt
22 November 2009 @ 08:32 pm
If you were a fruit, what would you be?

Extra bonus: Why?
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I'm feeling: chipper
 
 
a sculpture made of dirt
20 November 2009 @ 10:26 am
Don't like what's coming? Turn into a bouncy ball.
 
 
a sculpture made of dirt
19 November 2009 @ 01:12 pm
What is your favorite substitution for bacon on those occasions when you can't have bacon proper?
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a sculpture made of dirt
17 November 2009 @ 10:31 pm
Truffles taste like _______________________.
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I'm feeling: sleepy
 
 
a sculpture made of dirt
16 November 2009 @ 01:58 pm
I read this poem the other day, and it just grabbed me and hasn't let go, so I'm sharing it with you:

Curiosity by Alastair Reid )
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I'm feeling: thoughtful
 
 
a sculpture made of dirt
16 November 2009 @ 10:38 am
When we're feeling sad or down, we say we're feeling blue. What colors go with other moods? Happy? Tired? Excited? Angry? ... others?
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I'm feeling: curious
 
 
a sculpture made of dirt
15 November 2009 @ 06:04 pm
People talk about "toxins" in the body a lot. For example, people who do herbal cleanses talk about how fiber helps carry toxins out of the body. I've heard for years that massage releases toxins and that's why it's so important to drink extra water afterwards.

What are these toxins? Are we talking about things like lead and mercury, or are they more like magical particles, or something else entirely? I know that bioaccumulation of, say, heavy metals is a real health issue for many people, but ...
 
 
a sculpture made of dirt
15 November 2009 @ 05:54 pm
Well, that was awesome.

Today was [info]dilletante's and my blindfolded ballroom experiment (take 1), and it was a lot of fun, I thought! And our guinea pigsattendees seemed to think so, too. You can read [info]dilletante's comments and observations here. Attendees should feel free to comment here, there, or in email.

My hope was that it would be interesting and useful enough that people would want to come back a second time when we knew more about what might work and not work, and I'd say we definitely achieved that! I had a ton of fun, was pleased with how our exercises and the general shape of the workshop went, and we have lots of ideas about how to do it next time.

Stay tuned for future dates.
 
 
I'm feeling: happy
 
 
a sculpture made of dirt
13 November 2009 @ 04:33 pm
I am fascinated that, as of now, the responses to my previous post are:

a) women agreeing with me and
b) men with "clever" or loophole comments
 
 
a sculpture made of dirt
13 November 2009 @ 04:05 pm
ANNOUNCEMENT:

I'm tired of the "[adjective] [thing] is [same adjective]" formulation now.

I know that snuggly cats are snuggly, flirty girls are flirty, tired baby is tired, and hungry dog is hungry. Can we move on, please?
 
 
I'm feeling: tired
 
 
a sculpture made of dirt
13 November 2009 @ 02:45 pm
A thing that used to happen to me more, but doesn't happen often these days -- thankfully -- is the situation where someone does something that makes me wildly uncomfortable, in a way that I don't know how to respond to in the moment (don't want to be rude, or am so surprised I have no response, or whatever) ... and so I end up laughing.

Laughter is curious, because though it often means something funny or joyful, it can also signal discomfort, or awkwardness, or pain, or any number of other feelings, of course, but because it's primarily about humor and funniness, when it comes up in those other settings, it feels incongruous, and sometimes weird or rude in its own right.

My best example of this is from the religion class I took my freshman year, titled The Dead, Dying, and Mourning Self. One session, we had a mortician as a guest lecturer, talking about his experiences dealing with families after the death of loved ones. A student a couple of seats away from me started laughing. And, of course, as soon as he'd laughed even a little, it was so inappropriate, that it made him laugh more. And he was trying so so hard not to laugh, and that only made it worse. Well, we all could see what was going on there, and it was painful! Suddenly, though, the person sitting between me and him started laughing, too. The guest lecturer kept talking; he was, after all, talking about the many responses people have to emotionally fraught situations! And gradually, the hysterical laughter spread to about half the class. In retrospect, it's funny, but at the time, it was just horrifying. Both versions of it, though, involve laughing about it.

But, anyway, it's been a while since I was laughing because I was around someone someone doing something so inappropriate or appalling that my only possible response was laughter. I had that experience this week, though, and I didn't like it any more than I remembered.

But something struck me about it:

Because we normally laugh when something's funny, I worried that my uncomfortable laughter sounded approving. It was in response to a sort of macho play at status and showing off, and if the person doing it heard me laughing, I think he surely would have read it as a success. And furthermore, I was unhappy with myself for finding it funny ... until I realized that what was making me laugh was discomfort rather than humor. But because we take cues about our mood on the basis of our external reactions, that's a confusing moment.

And that made me think about when I was a teenager, and had those experiences ... and probably wasn't able to make that distinction to myself, much less to the people around me.

To my knowledge, nothing horrible came of that, but it made me really glad to know more about myself and human nature than I did then.
 
 
I'm feeling: uncomfortable
 
 
a sculpture made of dirt
13 November 2009 @ 11:10 am
If this isn't the cutest thing you've seen all day, I want to know what was:
Cut for extreme cuteness )
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a sculpture made of dirt
12 November 2009 @ 11:50 am
Dear Internet,

Yesterday, I took a vacation. Instead of going to work, I drove (well, passenged) 5.5 hours to Montreal with [info]moominmolly and Natalie, spent about the same amount of time kicking around the city and looking at bugs, then drove back to Boston, arriving home shortly before 2am.

While we were away from Boston, we:

* ate tasty beef jerky
* discussed major and minor life events
* cracked jokes
* giggled
* watched a lot of vidoes (actually, just N did this)
* were hassled by a Canadian border guard about the possibility that M was kidnapping N out of the country
* were impressed by Canada's careful security procedures ("Do you know this woman?" "Yes." "How long have you known her?" "Six or seven years." "Is she telling the truth?" "Yes!" "Okay, you can go ahead.")
* drove by an extraordinarily stinky sewer truck
* navigated Montreal largely without the help of our magical phones
* discussed making a lampshade out of cockroach wings
* ate a delicious meal at a restaurant with amazingly bad service
* bought pain killers that are not available in the US
* dropped off a box on [info]lightcastle's doorstep
* drove around in well-signed circles trying to get back on the highway
* panicked about a lost passport
* unlost the passport
* took a wrong turn at nowhere and therefore took a different route home
* got really tired

It was great.

Next time I go to Montreal, though, I think I'd like to spend a night there.
 
 
I'm feeling: happy
 
 
a sculpture made of dirt
11 November 2009 @ 10:46 pm

 
 
a sculpture made of dirt
11 November 2009 @ 11:10 am

 
 
a sculpture made of dirt
10 November 2009 @ 03:51 pm
You know what they say, "_________________________________________________."
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I'm feeling: calm
 
 
a sculpture made of dirt
10 November 2009 @ 10:45 am
Boston area folks:

Who's planning to go to Dust and Illusions at MIT on Thursday?
 
 
I'm feeling: mellow
 
 
a sculpture made of dirt
07 November 2009 @ 12:32 pm

I'm relaxing onthe couch with a lap full of Kitty, listening to music that makes me happy and contemplating eventually getting up and being productive ... but not feeling rushed about it. It's pretty darn great.

What's awesome for you today?

 
 
a sculpture made of dirt
05 November 2009 @ 02:27 pm
As people who have had to deal with me around bedtime with any regularity or who interact with me after a bad night of so-called sleep know, I have intermittent but significant problems with insomnia. I'm lucky because it's intermittent, and I rarely have more than two bad nights in a row, and the vast majority of my nights are fine, but good sleep is hugely important to my mood and functioning (how do you people who are parents survive??), so when I have a bad night or two, I'm not all that much fun to be around.

You are getting sleepy ... )
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I'm feeling: awake
 
 
a sculpture made of dirt
05 November 2009 @ 11:47 am
What muppet are you, and why?
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I'm feeling: chipper
 
 
a sculpture made of dirt
04 November 2009 @ 02:21 pm
While I was in California, [info]contessagrrl and I passed a cute hippie boy playing an instrument neither of us had ever seen before but the sound of which made my ears (and the rest of me) blissfully happy.

Thanks to the internet and [info]contessagrrl's excellent google-fu, we learned that it's a <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/hang_(musical_instrument)>hang [drum]</a>, invented about 10 years ago by a couple of Swiss guys. It sounds kind of like a cross between a steel drum and a xylophone. Or like a steel drum that's been rubbed in aural butter. It's awesome, and I want one. Unfortunately, they're expensive and kind of hard to get your hands on.

This YouTube video shows that you have to be a hippie boy to really get the hang of it, though.
 
 
I'm feeling: sleepy
 
 
a sculpture made of dirt
04 November 2009 @ 01:27 pm
What is your favorite non-chocolate candy?
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a sculpture made of dirt
03 November 2009 @ 11:28 am
Say you were giving pointers to someone considering starting a small business. Where would you send them, what book(s) would you recommend, and/or what tips would you give?
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a sculpture made of dirt
02 November 2009 @ 12:59 pm
Good: Beef beet mushroom soup.

Bad: Beef beet mushroom iPhone soup.

[ETA: my phone is okay. *phew!*]
 
 
a sculpture made of dirt
02 November 2009 @ 12:28 pm
Poll #1479848
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 78

Which is weirder:

View Answers

talking to your television
34 (43.6%)

talking to your cat/dog
1 (1.3%)

neither of these is weird
41 (52.6%)

both of these are equally weird
2 (2.6%)

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a sculpture made of dirt
02 November 2009 @ 12:23 pm
Some phrases just work for me, in a way that I can't fully explain. Most recently, I noticed this about the phrase "ice cold" as applied to beverages. We were walking by a bar advertising ice cold Miller on their sidewalk sign, and though I don't particularly care for Miller, I found myself almost mystically drawn toward the bar.

Ice cold milk, ice cold soda, ice cold beer, ice cold gin ...

What is it about that descriptor that makes it so nummy?

What are other phrases that are similarly magical?
 
 
a sculpture made of dirt
01 November 2009 @ 04:19 pm
Cost of appendix extraction to my insurance company: $18,000. Cost to me, $126 plus $75 copay.

*phew*
 
 
a sculpture made of dirt
[Reposted with a confirmed and settled date!]

Hey! Want to be a guinea pig for a dance-and-sense-based experiment? Join me and [info]dilletante for a Blindfolded Ballroom workshop. It's just what it sounds like, and we've never done it before, so it will be a learning experience for everyone. If it's successful (which is to say, if it's interesting), we'll almost certainly do another, but it's too soon to make promises.

You don't need ballroom experience, just a willingness to play in your body and experiment with a partner in a dance context. You don't need to bring a partner; we'll probably be switching people up over the course of the workshop.

This will be November 15, 12:30-1:30 PM in studio 1 at the Dance Complex in Cambridge. RSVPs would be greatly appreciated, and if you have ballroom experience, a note about that in your RSVP may help us in our planning. (You don't have to RSVP to both of us, though you're welcome to.)

Yay!
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I'm feeling: chipper