Your turn

Coolest thing ever

The Oxford Project

Read more about it here.

I got goosebumps reading about this and felt very moved for some reason.  Maybe I am missing the feeling of a small town?  It's just the idea of that snapshot of two moments in time separated by many years, twists and turns, the expected and the unexpected...wow.

I imagine a few of my loved ones who might appreciate this like I do may find a copy of the book under the Christmas tree this year.

(Speaking of Christmas gift books, this was last year's:  My Last Supper: 50 Great Chefs and Their Final Meals.  Very fun and beautiful photography).

Something to talk about

This is as important an issue, if not more important, as anything else in this election, in that it could have a much longer lasting/far reaching impact on the politics/policies of this country, in fact for the rest of my adult life.  From CNN.com:

Election could decide future of the federal courts

"The future occupant of the White House could have the opportunity to name perhaps three or four justices, which could either solidify an ideologically split bench or dramatically move it further right."

I can only hope that this is talked about more leading up to November 4.

Huh.

PETA Urges Ben & Jerry's To Use Human Milk.

My first instinct is how very weird and kind of gross that would be.  But really, is it that off the wall?

From the article: "The fact that human adults consume huge quantities of dairy products made from milk that was meant for a baby cow just doesn't make sense," says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman.

Hmmm, interesting.  I think.

Neat.

Experts "solve" mystery of Stonehenge.

I find places like Stonehenge beyond fascinating.  I can just imagine the energy you feel when you're there, a place just charged by thousands of years of people passing through.  It makes me wonder, when did Stonehenge become a mystery?  How did its original purpose get lost?  On the small scale, who was the last person to "know" what Stonehenge was all about?  What was their life like, what did they eat every day, who did they love?  On the large scale, how does something that was obviously so important to a society become obsolete to the point that no one has any clue what it's for or why it exists?  I hope to make it there one day, it's in my top 5. 

Oh, to just lay a hand on those stones and think about how they were formed, where they originated, how they were chosen, molded, hauled into place, the thought of someone at a different moment in time with their hand in the same place as mine, it just gives me chills.  I seriously just want to go up and hug one of the pillars, close my eyes and see what happens.  Feel the energy of the place course through my body.  It's just one of those places that I feel connected to for some reason, even though I've never been there.

My parents visited it in March 2006, here's a picture of my mom there, sick with a major cold, if I remember correctly, but a total trooper, as always.

I love this.

And I might buy it, or one of dozens of other fun "_____ for Obama" buttons here.

And I'd wear it to the Grateful Dead Reunion Concert for Obama if only I happened to be near Penn State on October 13.

Want to make the world a brighter place?

Here's how, from Real Simple's Guide to Happiness.  It's the little things, after all.

Happy People Dancing

This video is a Youtube sensation that I saw for the first time today thanks to my sister. It was amazing and almost moved me to tears. Created by this guy. Watch it, and smile!

Can also be seen in better quality on Youtube here (click the "watch in high quality" link right below the screen).

What's on my mind these days

So I have seriously been neglecting this blog, but that doesn't mean that I don't have a lot on my mind.  I am such a perfectionist sometimes, I'd rather not write at all than have to commit to the time and energy to fully elaborate on whatever I'm thinking about, edit the post 87 times before I post and then get annoyed about everything that I left out!  I have to work on that.

Things on my mind lately include:

1. How completely and utterly offensive I find Sarah Palin, both as a "politician" and as the Republican VP nominee.   I could elaborate on this in a big way, but I'll spare you from reading me rant and I'll spare myself from getting all worked up about it.

2. Figuring out ways to become less of a consumer.  My job is getting cut back to 32 hours (with the associated 20% pay cut) starting 10/1 and I have the luxury of being kind of psyched about this both for the free time I will have and the challenge it will present to me to modify my spending and saving accordingly.  I have spent money on things for years just because I could and I find that very annoying about myself.  (Granted I contribute all I can to my Roth IRA every year, paid off my student loans 2 years ago and have zero debt, but still).  The last 3 visitors who walked into my bathroom remarked on how many lotions and beauty products I had.  Who needs 3 shampoos and 5 lotions?  I want to get back to the basics.

3. Things I can be doing to tread lightly on this planet of ours.  Plans include: cutting out beauty products that are wasteful (mostly due to packaging but also variety (see #2)), such as my beloved Dove Cleansing Cloths and Dove Body Wash, and going back to good old soap and washcloths.  Same with cleaning products (goodbye Clorox Wipes, hello vinegar). I'm considering investing in an Amazon Kindle and will be using the library for books almost exclusively going forward (I have $50 in Amazon gift certificates that have to last me until the end of the year...no new books after they're used up until maybe spring 2009).  Finding at least semi-homemade ideas for gifts.  Making big pots of soup instead of buying soup.  I like that these ideas also tie in with #2. 

4. How much I miss Tim Russert and the perspective and excitement he'd bring to the remaining 55 days in this election.  Tom Brokaw is ok, but Meet the Press is just not the same.

5. How excited I am to read Hot, Flat and Crowded: Why We Need A Green Revolution - And How It Can Renew America by Thomas Friedman (for which I might use $15.37 of the $50 in Amazon gift certificates).  He was on Monday's Fresh Air (please listen!) and Sunday's Meet the Press and I have a crush on him.  My favorite part was when he was talking about how the Republicans were chanting "Drill, Baby, Drill" at the convention and he said "What planet are these people from?"  And also how he likened the chant to people chanting about typewriters as PCs were being invented.
 
6. How much I'm enjoying not having a car payment anymore and how my last 2 tanks got 36.5 and 35.4 mpg respectively.  And that they each cost me less than $40.  And that the decrease in price from the $45+ a tank earlier this summer wasn't due to increased offshore drilling!

7. How cool it is that Lance Armstrong is making a comeback!  The Tour hasn't been the same without him.  Yes, I am a fair weather cycling fan, I hate to admit.  But this is so exciting!

8. How bummed I am about Tom Brady's ACL.

9. How psyched I am to attend this year's Sarah Josepha Hale Award dinner with my parents to see the winner Ken Burns!

10. How much I like Shelfari and its online bookshelf where I can track the books I’ve read, what I’m reading now and what I plan to read.  This will fill the void left with me cutting back on buying books, I can at least go look at my virtual bookshelf and be happy!

11. How excited I am to see my parents, grandma, sister and this little pumpkin in just 15 days:

 
12. How great it feels to finally be working towards the career change I’ve wanted for so long (more on this in a later post).

13. How much I miss fall, and, yes, winter in New England and how excited I am to experience them up close and personal again starting next year.

14. Whether or not to become a vegetarian.  Or, more accurately, a Pescetarian, as I would continue eating fish.  I keep tossing around the idea but I have yet to commit to giving it a try.  I rarely eat red meat anymore and will have meatless days (unintentionally) more than once a week, but I still can't take the plunge.  This also ties in with #3...it would be better for the enviroment.

15. How much I love Vanity Fair magazine.  It definitely has a liberal bent, which I love of course, but the articles are just so well written and on such unique and interesting topics, I usually read it cover to cover.  I highly recommend picking it up sometime or checking out the website.

16. The circle of life.  2008 has had life and death, illness and wellness and I am just doing my best to tune into it all, celebrate it all as a part of being human and do the best I can to make my days count.

So yep, that’s what’s been on my mind lately, at least on the surface of it!  I will probably make many of these topics into entire posts as time goes on, but for now I just wanted to get something out there!

For the record

Just wanted to clarify something about my last post.  I absolutely 100% DO believe that John McCain was tortured as a P.O.W. in Vietnam.  I wasn't at all trying to discount that by posting the blog.  It was more a comment on the Bush Administration, who McCain seems to have closely aligned himself with for some odd reason as his campaign has progressed.  Just for the record.

Worth noting

Happened upon this facinating blog post yesterday at The Daily Dish called Does Bush Believe McCain was Tortured? when it was linked to on my favorite liberal blog Daily Kos.  The author Andrew Sullivan noted that the torture John McCain endured as a POW in Vietnam would not be defined as torture by the Bush Administration.  Text posted in full below.

In all the discussion of John McCain's recently recovered memory of a religious epiphany in Vietnam, one thing has been missing. The torture that was deployed against McCain emerges in all the various accounts. It involved sleep deprivation, the withholding of medical treatment, stress positions, long-time standing, and beating. Sound familiar?

According to the Bush administration's definition of torture, McCain was therefore not tortured.

Cheney denies that McCain was tortured; as does Bush. So do John Yoo and David Addington and George Tenet. In the one indisputably authentic version of the story of a Vietnamese guard showing compassion, McCain talks of the agony of long-time standing. A quarter century later, Don Rumsfeld was putting his signature to memos lengthening the agony of "long-time standing" that victims of Bush's torture regime would have to endure. These torture techniques are, according to the president of the United States, merely "enhanced interrogation."

No war crimes were committed against McCain. And the techniques used are, according to the president, tools to extract accurate information. And so the false confessions that McCain was forced to make were, according to the logic of the Bush administration, as accurate as the "intelligence" we have procured from "interrogating" terror suspects. Feel safer?

The cross-in-the-dirt story - although deeply fishy to any fair observer - is in the realm of the unprovable. But the actual techniques used on McCain, and the lies they were designed to legitimize, are a matter of historical record. And the government of the United States now practices the very same techniques that the Communist government of North Vietnam once proudly used against American soldiers. When they are used against future John McCains, the victims will know, in a way McCain didn't, that their own government has no moral standing to complain.

Now the kicker: in the Military Commissions Act, McCain acquiesced to the use of these techniques against terror suspects by the CIA. And so the tortured became the enabler of torture. Someone somewhere cried out in pain for the same reasons McCain once did. And McCain let it continue.

These are the prices people pay for power.

Very interesting.

Rainbow bright

They say you should strive to eat many different colors of produce, something about different colors containing different nutrients and antioxidants.  I find that variety in my diet makes a huge difference as if I'm not careful, which I wasn't for the past 12 months or so, I can lose all interest in a former favorite and lose out on its particular health benefits.  So as I was unpacking my groceries recently, I was pleased to discover something from each shade of the rainbow:

Red bell pepper and carrot for Spicy Chicken with Snow Peas recipe found here.  (It was delicious).

Roma tomatoes for my new favorite Melted Cabot Cheddar* on Whole Grain Toast with Tomato and Avocado and also BLTs. (*I don't care what anyone says, the funky orange cheddar that is most common out here is not the same.  Thanks Grandma for always sending us Cabot cheddar as a gift!). 

Bananas, strawberries and blueberries just to eat plain or in my cereal.

Cucumbers and clover sprouts for salads and sandwiches. (Plan to try growing my own sprouts sometime and will surely document it here if I do, it's supposed to be incredibly easy.)

Red grapes just because I love grapes.

And our hot sauce collection just for show.  Just in case you're curious, my favorites are Cholula and the green jalapeno Tabasco.

I love food and have been trying to cook more lately.  Recipes are kind of like books to me...there are just so many out there and I sometimes like to keep some of them just hanging out there, anticipating the day I finally get around to them.  Next on the list to try are:

Lemon Spaghetti (will use Whole Foods' 365 Brand Whole Wheat pasta which is amazing, try it!)

Turkey and Artichoke Stuffed Shells with Arrabbiatta Sauce (yes I love Giada)

Roasted Red Pepper and Tomato Soup (using jarred peppers and canned tomatoes, of course)

I can be a little experimental too, I found and modified to my liking an amazing turkey chili recipe and have been making a really nice mustard vinaigrette lately (white balsamic, shallots, dijon mustard, herbes d'provence, salt, pepper and olive oil).  All of this food talk is making me hungry!

What are your favorite recipes?

A little support

I was pleased to discover that Time Magazine agreed with the closing sentiments of my last post, that checking tire pressure is a totally reasonable suggestion when it comes to dealing with the energy crisis.

The Tire Gauge Solution: No Joke

I think this stuff's really important so I am going to copy some of the text below:

Politics ain't beanbag, and Obama has defended himself against worse
smears. The real problem with the attacks on his tire-gauge plan is
that efforts to improve conservation and efficiency happen to be the
best approaches to dealing with the energy crisis — the cheapest,
cleanest, quickest and easiest ways to ease our addiction to oil,
reduce our pain at the pump and address global warming. It's a pretty
simple concept: if our use of fossil fuels is increasing our reliance
on Middle Eastern dictators while destroying the planet, maybe we ought
to use less.

The RNC is trying to make the tire gauge a symbol of unseriousness, as
if only the fatuous believed we could reduce our dependence on foreign
oil without doing the bidding of Big Oil. But the tire gauge is really
a symbol of a very serious piece of good news: we can use significantly
less energy without significantly changing our lifestyle. The energy
guru Amory Lovins has shown that investment in "nega-watts" — reduced
electricity use through efficiency improvements — is much more
cost-effective than investment in new megawatts, and the same is
clearly true of nega-barrels. It might not fit the worldviews of
right-wingers who deny the existence of global warming and insist that
reducing emissions would destroy our economy, or of left-wing
Earth-firsters who insist that maintaining our creature comforts would
destroy the world, but there's a lot of simple things we can do on the
demand side before we start rushing to ratchet up supply.

We can use those twisty carbon fluorescent lightbulbs. We can unplug
our televisions, computers and phone chargers when we're not using
them. We can seal our windows, install more insulation and adjust our
thermostats so that we waste less heat and air-conditioning. We can use
more-efficient appliances, build more-efficient homes and drive
more-efficient cars, preferably with government assistance. And, yes,
we can inflate our tires and tune our engines, as Republican governors
Arnold Schwarzenegger of California and Charlie Crist of Florida have
urged, apparently without consulting the RNC. While we're at it, we can
cut down on idling, which can improve fuel economy another 5%, and cut
down on speeding and unnecessary acceleration, which can increase
mileage as much as 20%.

And that's just the low-hanging fruit. There are other ways to reduce
demand for oil — more public transportation, more carpooling, more
telecommuting, more recycling, less exurban sprawl, fewer unnecessary
car trips, buying less stuff and eating less meat — that would require
at least some lifestyle changes. But things like tire gauges can reduce
gas bills and carbon emissions now, with little pain and at little cost
and without the ecological problems and oil-addiction problems
associated with offshore drilling. These are the proverbial win-win-win
solutions, reducing the pain of $100 trips to the gas station by
reducing trips to the gas station. And Americans are already starting
to adopt them, ditching SUVs, buying hybrids, reducing overall gas consumption. It's hard to see why anyone who isn't affiliated with the oil industry would object to them.

Yeah, that's what I meant.

Taking responsibility

Time for a politics post.  I have kept these to a minimum recently because I get extremely worked up about it all and I know everyone doesn't agree with me.  Even though that shouldn't matter since it's my blog and I can write whatever I want!  But I've found that it is one of those topics that it is best to keep to myself for the most part.  I do a lot of assuming when it comes to who believes what and have gotten myself in a bit of trouble, or at least an uncomfortable conversation, a few times recently because of it.  Anyway.

John McCain has turned into a monster.  How's that for an inflammatory opening statement?  He used to be his own character, conductor of the straight talk express, someone who told it like it was and wasn't afraid to go against the grain of his own party to support something he felt strongly about.  But he seems to have lost sight of that over the past couple months while going head to head against Barack Obama in the presidential campaign.  The more I listen to him, the more turned off I am by his negative campaign tactics and smug attitude.  I think it's mostly a result of his campaign not having a whole lot of ideas or answers when it comes to what the nation needs, so they are reduced to attacking Obama on such trivial things as his "celebrity status" and patriotism.  Not that patriotism is a trivial topic, I just think there's no basis to attack Obama on his patriotism whatsoever.  Most recent case in point, from CNN.com:

McCain Camp Mocks Obama's Comment on Inflated Tires

In a nutshell, the McCain campaign took a minor comment in a talk Obama gave about his energy plan, that people should make sure their tires were properly inflated as it can make a difference in gas mileage, and they just ran with it like the village idiots.  They handed out tire pressure gauges with "Obama Energy Plan" on them to the press corps, implying that this was Obama's answer to the energy crisis.  Well this just infuriated me.  For one, THAT IS NOT HIS ENERGY PLAN.  Yes, he wants to decrease dependence on oil, foreign and domestic (offshore drilling).  In my mind, forcing innovation is not a bad thing.  People don't really look for alternatives unless they absolutely have to and I truly believe that expensive gas will force innovation into clean energy sources that will have long and far reaching benefits for us all.  Secondly, do they really think the American people are ignorant enough to fall for ridiculous statements like this and the Paris Hilton/Britney Spears commercial (which McCain defended and claimed to be proud of)?  Obama says inflate your tires and that'll solve the gas crisis.  He's a brainless, vapid celerbrity and nothing more.  If McCain would just put out some ads that talk about what HE stands for and what HIS plans are, instead of just attacking every other thing Obama says, maybe I could take him seriously.  As we all do, I respect his service to this country, both in the military and in the Senate.  But I have zero respect for the way he's run his campaign to date. 

The point I intended to make when I started this post, was so what if Obama suggested that people check their tire pressure?  That is a completely legitimate thing for people to do if they want to make sure they are maximizing their gas mileage!  It doesn't add up to much, my (new) tires were quite underinflated recently and it knocked my gas mileage down by about 2 miles per gallon, but it's still something.  I don't think it's unreasonable to ask Americans to take some responsibility and make sure they are doing everything they can for themselves instead of relying on the government to come to their rescue and bail them out for their irresponsible, entitled attitudes and behaviors.  Don't even get me started on the housing bailout...

Only in Vegas

I have had a handful of "only in Vegas" experiences in the 5 years that I've lived here. Two immediately come to mind. First, the drag queen P.R. temp who took a liking to me and showed me the glamour shots from his Cher impersonation show (he did his own makeup!). And then there was the time that I was at a stoplight near the Stratosphere, it turned green and the car in front of me didn't move. I looked around to the driver's side to see if I could see anything and a hand popped out of the window and dropped a pair of purple ladies' underwear out onto the ground. Someone wasn't where they were supposed to be last night! And then, there's this:

Yep, pledge $250 to Nevada Public Radio during their "Summer of Extraordinary Experiences" (I can't tell you how sick I am of hearing that phrase) and you can choose a thank you package that includes a wedding at Treasure Island! Gotta love Vegas.

Justification

I am a total homebody and have been for years. I just love being at home, relaxing and puttering about, with my books, husband and cats. I don't get to spend a whole lot of time doing this during the week, due to full time employment and various other week night commitments. When the weekends roll around though, I do my best to minimize my plans to be out in the world. It's just so busy here, literally and figuratively, and it wears me out! Vegas is just overstimulating at times with all the colors and lights and enormity of it all. Plus I find that my downtime goes way too quickly when I'm out and about, whereas when I'm at home the time tends to pass at a more leisurely pace. Though it really doesn't, obviously, it just feels that way. Ah, perception. Anyway, I think this is one of the reasons I've always liked dreary days, I consider myself a rainy day girl at heart. When it's overcast, there's no feeling of "must get out to take advantage of the nice weather" though in Vegas, with +/- 350 sunny days a year, I don't feel this pressure the way I did when I lived in Boston. So today's DailyOM horoscope really spoke to me, I love it when I find more justification for being a homebody! I think perhaps this could have also been the world's way of reminding me that even though I'm busy right now, I need to make sure to spend some restorative time at home, the place I feel most comfortable, relaxed and at peace.

July 31, 2008 The Comforts of Home Taurus Daily Horoscope You may feel increasingly fatigued as you address your worldly affairs today and thus grow more and more reserved as the day wears on. Pleasant thoughts of home, family, and good friends can divert your attention away from your duties, preventing you from fulfilling the outer-world goals you had hoped to accomplish on this day. Making the most of this low-key mood can be as simple as putting aside those obligations that are not vital in order to retreat into the refuge of your personal space. Whether you immerse yourself in meditative activities that require freedom from distractions or take care of domestic chores today, you will likely feel a potent and satisfying sense of serenity. The many comforts of home become overtly apparent to us only when we make an effort to seek them out through our choice to indulge our craving for quietude in our own private spaces. Our houses, apartments, and rooms can often seem like nothing more than a place to meet our basic survival needs unimpeded by worldly distractions. However, hidden in our homes are pleasures we ourselves have integrated into our lives based on our individual value systems. To enjoy them, we must only commit to using our personal spaces as more than simply way stations between worldly obligations, and then begin exploring the numerous ways we can pamper ourselves in the relaxing atmosphere of these most personal refuges. You will feel utterly rested and renewed today after rediscovering all the comforts your home has to offer.

Quote of the Day

"First keep the peace within yourself, then you can also bring peace to others."

-Thomas à Kempis, German mystic and religious author (1380-1471)

Maybe that is why there's so much turmoil in this world, people don't have much peace within.  I know there are days when all I do is struggle with myself internally.  Hence my drowning-out-the-annoying-people-at-work choice for today: Mindfulness for Beginners by Jon Kabat-Zinn.

Something that does bring me some peace is the thought of a pea tendril.  I have heard of them before, but encountered them sometime over the weekend, I think in the recipe for a salad.  It is the end of a pea plant that coils around some sort of support structure (in my parents' garden, a length of wire fencing), but apparently brings a wonderful fresh, subtle flavor to dishes, both raw and cooked.

Here are a couple photos I tracked down on the web.

I just love the thought of these things, bursting into life with energy and purpose.  I think it is a beautiful name, just saying it in my head calms me.  Maybe I've found my mantra? 

What sort of things bring you a bit of peace?

A study in contrasts

Barack Obama speaking to 200,000+ people in Berlin, Germany yesterday (AP Photo):

John McCain speaking at...a Pennsylvania grocery store in the dairy aisle? (AP Photo)

 

Yep, that's what he's doing. Who do YOU think is more likely to change the world?

(Disclaimer: I was already planning on posting the Berlin picture and had seen the dairy aisle picture, but took the contrast idea from last night's Letterman show. I just couldn't resist.)

Animal Vegetable Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

Barbara Kingsolver has been one of my mother’s favorite authors for as long as I can remember. I have always kept my eyes peeled for any new books she may be putting out because I know they would make a great gift for Mom. Early last year, I happened upon her newest book called Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. She is known for her novels, but this is more of a “year in the life” type nonfiction book chronicling her family’s attempts at eating locally and living sustainably for an entire year. Their first step was to move from the desert of Tucson, Arizona to a farm they’d maintained as a summer residence in the lush green farm country of Virginia. A good first step, as I know from experience that there’s not much that grows in the desert!

This book was just wonderful, I enjoyed it from start to finish. There was so much interesting and practical information inside, from how to start plants for your garden indoors in late winter, to a step by step guide to making cheese at home (apparently it is very easy!), to seasonal menus and recipe guides, to resources for heirloom seeds, to short informational essays by her husband and college age daughter. There’s information on growing your own alfalfa and bean sprouts in a jar on your windowsill. They grow so many exciting varieties of vegetables, fruit and flowers. They raise chickens and turkeys. They support other farmers in their community and learn from Amish friends. I laughed out loud more than once (turkey sex, anyone?) and found it just so inspiring. The one glaring omission was pest control…I am 99% sure that their garden is totally organic, yet she doesn’t really mention the gross bugs the flock to gardens! I got so excited about potatoes, they grew several different varieties in the book, and I asked my dad why he never grew potatoes in his garden and he said it was because potatoes are very buggy plants and that potato bugs are gross! I imagine she didn’t do it intentionally, but the thought crossed my mind that maybe she wanted to inspire people so much, that perhaps she glazed over the nitty gritty grossness that bugs bring to an organic garden. Or maybe they’ve just figured out how to manage pests in an organic manner, but she definitely didn’t share the details!

A big part of this experience for them was that they had to learn to live without, something most Americans (myself included) have long since forgotten was even an option. I think they each got one special item that they could continue to buy, for example her husband chose coffee, but it was fair trade/shade grown of course. And there were a couple staples that they stocked up on such as olive oil, but they really did it, they ate things that either they grew, or was grown/produced within an hour of them for an entire year. She talks a lot about how disconnected we have all come from the sources of our food and what produce is in season at what time of year. This really hit home for me, as I tend to eat whatever produce I like all year round just because it is available in the stores! Well, maybe I don’t eat berries in the winter, but that’s just because they’re too expensive, not because I am consciously avoiding that which is not in season and therefore has likely been trucked in from thousands of miles away utilizing precious fossil fuels and adding carbon emissions to our atmosphere.

My parents have had a garden since before I was born. My dad designed and built a greenhouse that is attached to our house when I was really young so that even in the harsh New England winters, we could still have fresh greens and cherry tomatoes and so he could get a jumpstart on his sprouts for the garden. To me, garden fresh produce was the always the norm and the canned, salty, gray green beans and peas served in the school cafeterias made me gag. At this point though, I can’t say that I truly remember the taste of a tomato fresh out of the garden, still warm from the sun. My dad swears that garden fresh celery actually tastes like something, instead of just water and crunch. So I am lucky to be more familiar than most with these concepts and yet I still feel so far away from it all.

It doesn’t help that I live in the desert and could not do all that much at this point since there’s not a whole lot grown locally. I have always felt lucky that we live so close to California, but honestly I felt lucky because in my mind it resulted in cheaper produce, not the fact that it was probably much fresher having traveled a shorter distance or the fact that the overall environmental impact was lower since the truck emissions were lower for the same reason. It’s a bit overwhelming to think how far away from it all we’ve gotten as a society not to mention how much it would take us to relearn how to appreciate and make this stuff a priority again, to re-establish that connection between that which nourishes and sustains us and our responsibility to tread lightly as human beings…to “live simply so that others may simply live” ~ Mahatma Ghandi

So you can probably tell just how inspired I was by this book. I highly recommend it to anyone and everyone, particularly those who don’t know where to start when it comes to some of this stuff and those who maybe have a tomato plant or two, but feel too overwhelmed to try much more. There’s a lot of work involved, but the payoff is just so enormous. There’s a lot to know about this and a lot to learn and this is a great place to start. I’ll finish with saying that your motivations don’t have to be to save the planet to learn more about sustainable living. They can be as simple as wanting to save a few bucks, and in this economy, I imagine we all do. A packet of tomato seeds costs a dollar or two and one plant may produce dozens of tomatoes during its lifespan. (Unless of course, it is my dad’s 13 year old cherry tomato plant in the greenhouse in which case it probably produced thousands). I hope you’ll consider picking up this book, you won’t be sorry.

They also started a website, which can be found here.

Next up for me, in terms of food books at least: The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan.

Train of thought

"Remember that combination box of Popsicles that has the banana, blue raspberry and root beer flavors?  I remember always having that one growing up, yet I hated all of those flavors," I say to my husband this evening after we finished watching the movie Friends With Money (which by the way, was very good).  He thought that was an incredibly random thing to have remembered in that moment, so I traced my train of thought and here it is:

1. I'd really like a Popsicle right now.


2. I know we still have dozens of them from when there was a good sale 2 summers ago (or was it 3?).


3. I wonder what flavor I would grab out of the freezer (we took them all out of boxes to save space).


4. What I'd really like is one of those twin pops that you break apart in the middle and have 2 separate ones, cherry would be nice.


5. I remember having those growing up, it was hard to break them evenly.


6. I also remember that gross combination box that had the weirdest 3 flavors in it, banana, blue raspberry and root beer!  I wonder why my Mom always got that box?

The End.

(PS.  In searching for an image of the box on Google Images, the one that came up had lemon-lime instead of blue raspberry, but I swear I remember it right.  Anyone else remember?)

Wall-E

So I am not usually one for animated films, they just don't usually appeal to me.  I don't go to a lot of movies anyway, so when I do I choose wisely and knowing me that often includes the latest indie film, long anticipated book adaptation, foreign film or must-see blockbuster like the upcoming Dark Knight.  However when I started seeing trailers for Disney/Pixar's latest project Wall-E, I knew I'd end up going to see it, which I did, by myself, on the 4th of July while my husband played video poker.  It was just wonderful, I really enjoyed it.  First off, Wall-E has to be the most endearingly quirky animated character of my lifetime.  He is the last robot on Earth and goes about his job of trash compacting while collecting odds and ends that he thinks look interesting or useful.  He has a pet cockroach and watches the movie Hello Dolly regularly.  He eventually comes across a live plant, some sort of sprout, and dutifully puts it in an old workboot and takes it back to his home for safekeeping.  This turns out to be the key to re-establishing human life on Earth, as a female droid named Eve (he calls her Eeeeeeva) discovers and reports back to the spaceship/cruiseship that has been home to all the humans for the past 700 years.  You see, humankind had created so much garbage that the planet could no longer sustain life and so they set off for space while the robots went about cleaning up our mess.  700 years later, Wall-E was the only one left and it looked like humans would never return home.  Lots of other stuff happened but I don't want to spoil the entire movie because I think everyone should just go see it!  The animation was incredible, just so realistic.  Even though animated movies are usually marketed as children's movies, this one had some very grown up messages.  We have to take care of our planet, or we might just lose it and be destined to spend our lives obese and oblivious on a spaceship not knowing the joy of summertime watermelon or the smell of leaves in the fall.  Oh, didn't I mention that this was the fate the humans in the movie had ended up with, prior to Wall-E's discovery of the plant?  Realistically speaking, we may actually be headed for a human-created Ice Age which could wipe out life as we know it.  But that's a post for another day.

Happy Birthday Monkus!

Today is my husband's birthday, which he happens to share with our cat Lily. He hates birthdays so I am going to focus this post on the cat's birthday instead. Her given name is Lily but she has a whole host of nicknames which are all variations of her *real* name which is Monkus. If you met her, you'd know that this just fits her. She is kind of skulky and snarly but can be the sweetest cat in the world too, at least to me and my husband. If she doesn't know you, all bets are off. She turns 9 years old today, I can hardly believe it. I got her when she was a tiny 8-week old kitten from my best friend's grandmother whose outdoor cat had a litter. They were outdoors in a rabbit cage and I walked over not knowing how on Earth I'd ever choose, but she just stood up and walked over to the edge of the cage and meowed at me and made it an easy decision. I love cats, I always have, and have had several over the course of my life. She is special though, she is so full of personality and my husband and I have invented quite the life for her. She's in a jug band, drives a Dodge Neon, has a pet hamster named Bunt Single who travels the world, thinks some weirdos named Larry and Willy are out to get her and was the inspiration for a new word: skronky. My husband and I are the only people who truly know what that means, but it's a combination of skulky, snarly, edgy and slightly neurotic. She is a terribly messy eater, she takes big mouthfuls of food and dumps them on the floor and eats about half the pieces before going back for another mouthful. She loves to curl up next to my hip in bed and is the best player on the face of the planet. I can get her leaping 2 feet in the air chasing after a toy on a string, it's hilarious. She loves popcorn and tuna water and knows the smell of yogurt and the sound of a piece string cheese being opened from anywhere in the apartment and comes running. And she HATES our other cats. I know she misses the days when she was our one and only. She is truly the best and so I hate it when her birthday rolls around because that means she does, in fact, age. And not totally gracefully either, I've noticed that she seems to eat a little less and wind up a bit longer to jump on things. But she's only 9 and always has been and always will be an indoor cat, so I expect her to be around for many years to come.

Here are a few pictures of her through the years:

As a tiny kitten

"Monkus: The Early Years" in Brighton, MA

I call this one "Organic Monk"

With "Pop-up Beano" in the background. (More on Beano in another post).

Monkus as mountain goat

~Just the two of us~

Lounging

And last but not least, my all time favorite. "Say Cheese Monkus!"

How Many Licks?

I just had a Tootsie Pop for the first time in probably 10 years.  It was good.  I always bite them, I love the way the hard candy gets mixed in with the tootsie roll center.  I also enjoy straightening out the waxed paper wrapper which usually remains in the shape of the lollipop, it has such a satisfying crinkley texture and can be seen below.  Notice the Indian shooting the star in the lower right corner, when I was little I always thought this meant you could turn in the wrapper for a free one at our local mom & pop store Coronis's Market, though for some reason I never actually tried.

Video Games Live

My husband surprised me and took me out for what ended up being an amazing and very unique experience last Saturday night. I knew he had something planned, as he asked me to block off that night, but he didn't tell me why and I didn't ask, as I love his surprises. He told me where we were going as we arrived at the Henderson Pavillion, a very cool outdoor performance center about 3 miles from our apartment Turns out he got us tickets to a concert called Video Games Live where the Las Vegas Philharmonic was going to be playing music from video games! That's right, video games. While they were playing the music from everything from Super Mario Brothers to Halo to Warcraft to Tron, there was a screen above the stage showing the games in action. They even brought a few members of the audience up on stage to play the games live while the Philharmonic played the music to go along with what was happening as it was happening. The music played during the show sounded *exactly* like it does when you play the games, they even got the dog laughing at you after you missed the duck in Duck Hunt! It was really one of the coolest things I've ever seen. The concert tours the world and I believe that they get local symphonies and orchestras to play the music, it's not one group of musicians doing the whole tour. You can read a recap of the night here. They even have a CD coming out on July 22, which you can pre-order here if you're interested. A huge thank you to my husband for surprising me with this, it was just so neat and I had a great time.

I'm not sure how many people know that there are composers whose focus is solely video game music, but I had no idea. What a cool job. I am not much of a "gamer", my parents would never buy us a Nintendo when they were all the rage in the late 80s/early 90s. We had a Gameboy for about 4 months until it got left/stolen in Cancun (the verdict is still out on which), but for the most part had to play Super Mario Brothers and Sonic the Hedgehog at friends' places. So video games aren't all that intuitive to me and I don't feel particularly drawn to them, despite the fact that my husband has an Xbox, a Wii and even Guitar Hero. I have played Sonic a few times on his old Sega and like some car racing games and play Burnout every so often, but I digress. The video games of today are insanely cool, the graphics are amazing and the music is beyond epic in scale. A lot of it is booming classical music and it's beautiful. It's a far cry from the bleeps and bloops of Frogger, Donkey Kong and the original Super Mario Brothers and Duck Hunt that I remember growing up.

A cool bonus that those of us in Vegas got that night, was the guy who played the music from Super Mario Brothers on the piano while blindfolded on YouTube was at the show and did his thing live. Here's the YouTube video that apparently sparked quite the sensation a couple years ago:

Who doesn't recognize that music! The video isn't sped up or anything, he really does play it that fast.

A quick sidenote to the show was the water they were selling at the concession stand. It was 104 degrees when we left our house to head to this outdoor concert. It really was comfortable after the sun went down, it is dry heat after all, but that's just hot. Anyway, the bottles of water that we bought came partly frozen so the water stayed cold a lot longer while the ice slowly melted. I assume this was intentional and thought it was absolutely brilliant.

So anyway, I really wanted to write about the show because it was just so cool and unique and I'm not sure how many people know about it, so keep your eyes peeled in case they swing through your town, you won't be disappointed!

The Power of the Commercial Jingle

Whenever I hear Für Elise by Beethoven, I always hear the words to this in my head:

This commercial probably started airing 20 years ago...or even more, yikes! I guarantee there are lots of people my age who remember every word, which just goes to show the power of a good jingle.

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

I just read Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert and enjoyed it very much. It's been on my list for awhile now, and my mom happened to read it recently and sent me her copy. It's about a woman in her mid-30s who goes through an awful divorce, a deep depression and really just loses touch with who she is in the process. She is a writer and decides to go spend 4 months in Italy (to eat), 4 months in India (to pray) and 4 months in Bali (yes, to love...though that's not really her plan). I love to eat, I think of myself as fairly spiritual (or perhaps that I would like to be spiritual) and of course I love to love, so this book was right up my alley. I referred to it recently as the mac & cheese of comfort food books. Ms. Gilbert is a great writer and keeps things pretty light throughout the story even though she's writing about a pretty dark time in her life. I felt most in awe of her amazing 4 month stint at an ashram in India and the amazing places she was able to go through meditation. In the same way that I feel really inspired by endurance athletes and the physical places the human body can go when properly trained and nourished, I was truly amazed to read of the mental, emotional and spiritual places Liz went to during her incredibly rigorous and devoted meditation practice. Makes me feel that I could get there too, if I only find it in myself to try.

My only really notable meditation experience took place in July of 2002 when I was on a 5 week post-college graduation trip to Europe with my family. I was sitting in Westminster Abbey in London, alone in the middle of one of the long wooden pews. My mother, grandmother and another friend were exploring the cathedral, but I just wanted to sit for a while. I am not sure what happened, but as I was sitting there, I suddenly felt a profound sense of peace. It was a fairly noisy, bustling afternoon, yet I couldn't hear any of it. I just sat, my mind empty and totally content. I have no idea how it happened and have yet to experience something similar, but I have never forgotten it. It does make me think that if I could only get myself to start, to try, that meditation could be something very powerful for me.

So anyway, I highly recommend this book to anyone who is looking for an interesting, fun, quick read, particularly if you are interested in Eastern religions and world travel.  I am going to end with a passage from the book that details a Zen concept that I truly enjoyed (from the last chapter, pages 329 and 330):

"My thoughts turn to something I read once, something the Zen Buddhists believe. They say that an oak tree is brought into creation by two forces at the same time. Obviously, there is the acorn from which it all begins, the seed which holds all the promise and potential, which grows into the tree. Everybody can see that. But only a few can recognize that there is another force operating here as well--the future tree itself, which wants so badly to exist that it pulls the acorn into being, drawing the seedling forth with longing out of the void, guiding the evolution from nothingness to maturity. In this respect, say the Zens, it is the oak tree that creates the very acorn from which it was born."

I Heart My Honda

My Honda = black 2003 Honda Civic LX, 4 doors. Totally plain vanilla, but has served us well. Here are the top 5 reasons why I love this car.

5. If I hadn't bought it when I did in mid-2003, I doubt Alex and I would have moved to Las Vegas when we did (late 2003), or at all. We didn't own a car for most of the time that we lived in Boston. I finally bought one because I could, and because I hated feeling trapped in the city. Vegas has shitty public transportation, so we definitely needed a car to move here and I'm not sure we would have bought one just so we could move, but since we already had one, the decision was easy. And life is good here. Though if I'd known we were heading to the desert, I wouldn't have chosen a black car, that's for sure.

4. It's a standard and so I can do a lot of coasting in neutral therefore saving gas. Which I do.

3. The person who filled up at the gas pump before me the last time spent $80. I only spent $42. And I only have to fill it up about once every 2 weeks because...

2. I got 36.394 miles per gallon on my last tank of gas.

And the number one reason why I Heart My Honda....

1. It's paid off!

Rest in Peace, Tim Russert

 I just found out that NBC News' Washington Bureau chief and moderator of Meet the Press, Tim Russert, died today at age 58 after collapsing.  This makes me very sad, not just that he died at such a young age, but because I have enjoyed his political commentary for years now, on the Today show and elsewhere.  I started watching Meet the Press this year, during the primary season, and he was just like a kid in a candy store each Sunday, especially in light of all of the crazy stuff going on.  He loved politics more than any analyst I've ever seen and all in all, he truly seemed like a good guy.  I'd set our DVR to record all new episodes of Meet the Press starting in January and hadn't been watching them lately, I've just deleted them after about a week.  I still have the episode from this past Sunday saved though, I'm so glad since it turns out it will have been his last one.  In light of what will be an historic general election season for President, his voice, insight, knowledge and boundless enthusiasm will be sorely missed by me and millions of others, I'm sure.  I'm just so bummed that he won't get to see how it all plays out.  Rest in peace, Mr. Russert, and wherever you are now, I hope it's always an election year.

Can't you just picture it?

222 days and counting...

Does this count?

Caught an edition of the Unger Report on NPR the other day, called Finding a Way to Evolve: "Oprah Winfrey isn't changing — she's "evolving," the media mogul recently told a magazine. And our humorist Brian Unger is following suit as he examines the path of personal evolution."

It got me to thinking because I recently made what felt like a big change in my life. For the past 11 years, I have used the exact same toothbrush, no not the *exact* same one, but a clear, plain vanilla Oral B brush. I have no idea why I latched onto this particular model, but I would literally buy out a store's supply when I could thinking maybe I could use the same model forever. Very weird, but I prefer to think of it as quirky. Anyway, this model has been discontinued for about 3 years, or at least I could never find them, and I ran out of the soft bristle version in my stash about a year ago and the medium bristles are pretty rough, so I decided that maybe it was time to step out of my comfort zone, bite the bullet and try a new toothbrush. My husband is the King of the Bargain and gets free-after-rebate stuff all the time from drugstores, I don't think he's purchased a toothbrush, deodorant or shampoo in the 7 years that I've known him. One of the recent free toothbrushes was an Oral B Cross Action, Soft Compact Head with a bright pink handle and so the other night, I tossed the clear one and went for it. All I can say is that I am sure I have been missing out on some pretty innovative toothbrush technology over the years! The cross action bristles, the ergonomic handle that just fits so well in my hand! Thank you Oprah, for helping me to feel alright about celebrating this strange yet momentous change in my life. Odd? For sure. But an evolution nonetheless.

Huh?

I just read an interesting article about Barack Obama in this month's Esquire magazine called "The Cynic and Senator Obama" by Charles P. Pierce.  I enjoyed it and wanted to email it to my husband, so I used the "email this article" function on Esquire.com.  After I entered my email, my husband's email and hit send, this popped up:

Um, what?

Ready & Waiting!

I bought my ticket today and my friends and I are already planning on partaking in a few special cocktails here beforehand.  We've been waiting a long time for this and now that it's so close, it's that much harder to wait.  All I can say is that it better be good!

N wonder women have so many image issues

Words of wisdom

I am a bit of a packrat. I keep things. Lots of things. Things that have significance only to me. I often keep these things in my purse or wallet, tucked away where I forget that they're there and then rediscover them at random times. I just switched to a new purse (a smaller one, trying to declutter) and in doing so also had to get a smaller wallet. This forced me to go back through the wallet I've carried for several years, a travel wallet I bought in 2002 prior to a 5 week trip to Europe that had lots of areas to stash things. One of the things I found was an old Magic Hat #9 bottle cap that has the words "Be Here Now" on the underside that I got on a beer sometime early in my college days (Magic Hat had sayings on all of their bottle caps once upon a time, I imagine they still do). My mind has been getting away from me a bit lately, so that was a nice reminder to take a deep breath and get back into the present. Here it is:

I also have a set of ticket stubs from Rocket from the Crypt's last concert ever that my husband and I attended in San Diego on Halloween 2005 and a guest pass to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston that my husband gave me right after we started dating. So they are things that just feel good to have with me, that have good vibes. Another thing I found was a note card, folded in half and soft from wear, on which I'd written the following words in black ink:

"Ask yourself some questions on your true desires and the meaning that you want to give to your life. Don't hesitate to start a phase of introspection and inner searching to discover your personal legend. Give philosophy a bigger place in your search for happiness."

This was a horoscope that blew me away when I read it, probably sometime in mid-2000. It was one of those times when I really needed to hear something like that and I wrote it down and put it in my wallet because I always wanted to remember it. Here I have rediscovered it in 2008, many miles (both literally and figuratively) away from where I was when it first seemed significant and it is just as good a reminder now as it was then, it really brings everything into focus for me. The philosophy that I believe needs a bigger place in my search for happiness is Mindfulness, I have studied it a bit (in this book) but really need a refresher...phase of introspection, here I come.

This just about sums up my accounting career...

Atonement by Ian McEwan - book review

So. I finally finished Atonement last week. I’ve been wanting to read it for ages, it is an award winning book (National Book Critics Circle fiction winner in 2002) and spawned a hit movie. I am someone who must read the book before I see the movie and I am not someone who likes to analyze a book (hence the book club I helped found where we read books that are coming out as movies and instead of sitting around and talking about the book, we just go see the movie and then get drinks afterwards), I just want to read and get absorbed. I have heard such good things about this book for so long that I was psyched to finally start it. I was still psyched when I was 50 pages in, thinking that it must pick up soon. Slightly less psyched on page 100 when it was still “setting the scene”. It finally picked up around page 200. I am not someone who can stop reading a book once I’ve started, I gut through it even if it’s awful. Atonement wasn’t awful, the prose was beautiful but nothing really happened for a really long time! I kept at it and ended up getting into it on a recent flight to Boston (for the marathon trip) and finished it on the way back home, but wow. I know most people won’t stick with a book like I will and I’m thinking maybe my expectations just got majorly inflated due to the amazing reviews that both the book and movie received. All in all, looking back, it was a great book. It was very well written and the storytelling is very smooth. But Part I was so long and the pace was so slow. Since the movie was apparently so amazing and got nominated for so many Academy Awards, I almost think this is one case where it’s alright to skip the book and see the movie.

Now The Time Traveler’s Wife, on the other hand…read this book! It’s coming out as a movie later in 2008 and I am cautiously optimistic, but the book is just so wonderful, one of my favorites of all time and it would be a shame to skip this book and see the movie, which could end up a total butcher job, and miss out on the story as it was initially created.

Finally some good news!

Obama takes early lead in Guam caucuses.

May Day!

Happy May Day!  The calendar I chose for 2008 is called "Space Views from the Hubble Space Telescope" and I flipped to a new month this morning and there is the coolest new image for May, the Cat's Eye Nebula.

Is that not the coolest looking thing? It is approximately 3,300 light years away from Earth. A light year is a measure of length, not time, and is the distance light waves can travel in a vacuum in a year or approximately 5,878,625,373,183.61 miles.  One of the things I find the most fascinating about viewing things in space is that the light waves that hit our eyes and allow us to "see" stars/nebulas/galaxies etc at a precise moment, actually left or departed the star/nebula/galaxy hundreds or thousands of years ago.  In the case of the Cat's Eye Nebula, the light waves that are producing the image in our minds left it 3,300 years ago. Therefore, it very well could be (and perhaps is) long gone in "real time", like at this very moment even though we are looking right at it! Crazy.  Time is relative when you're talking about space anyway. I have done some very lightweight reading on quantum physics and it is fascinating stuff if you can wrap your mind around it. I found a quote (how fitting!) that sums it all up nicely: "Quantum Physics: The dreams stuff is made of." Indeed.

Isn't it ironic?

The Atlanta and Fulton County water districts have proposed a 15% rate increase to offset revenues lost to water conservation. So citizens will be monetarily penalized for doing the right thing. Doesn't seem fair, does it?

Residents Who Conserved Water Now Asked to Pay More.

A Sad Goodbye

Rest in peace, old friend.

Phil Chapman April 5, 1951 - April 6, 2008

Comments:

Oh Chloe....I'm so sorry....I hope Phil is on a peaceful journey now. xxxooo

Posted by: Katie | April 06, 2008 at 03:07 PM

I am and was very sad to hear about Mr. Chapman's passing, what a great soul.

Posted by: Rich | April 07, 2008 at 10:31 AM

Thanks for the kind comments. The world lost one of the good guys yesterday. He was a very unique and special person and my family will miss him very much.

Posted by: Chloe | April 07, 2008 at 12:26 PM

I'm sorry to hear about Phil - he will be missed.

Posted by: Sara | April 07, 2008 at 12:28 PM

I always got a kick out of saying 'hi' to him in the hallways at school back in the day. By far one of the most intelligent people in our neck of the woods, and usually I'd make a point to say as loudly as I could "Hey Mr. Chapman!!!" He would always smile, say hello and keep trudging along in his usual attire of a polo shirt and that backpack he always had around his shoulder. Bright, bright man.

Posted by: Rich | April 08, 2008 at 06:32 AM

Oh Chloe, he looks like a lovely man. I send my condolences...

Posted by: Louise | April 11, 2008 at 05:55 AM

Tread Softly

One of my favorite quotes popped into my head this morning, so it's time for another Quote of the Day post! It also made me think of another quote that I just love, so 2 for the price of 1 today.

"Take nothing but pictures. Leave nothing but footprints. Kill nothing but time."

-Motto of the Baltimore Grotto (caving society)

"Travel light in life. Take only what you need: a loving family, good friends, simple pleasures, someone to love and someone to love you, enough to eat, enough to wear and a little more than enough to drink, for thirst is a dangerous thing."

-Unknown

Earth Hour - March 29

Heard about this neat event today through my daily Ideal Bite email. So for all 5 of you who might read my blog between today and tomorrow, please consider participating. Every little bit helps!

From Earth Hour US:

On March 29, 2008 at 8 p.m., join millions of people around the world in making a statement about climate change by turning off your lights for Earth Hour, an event created by the World Wildlife Fund.

Earth Hour was created by WWF in Sydney, Australia in 2007, and in one year has grown from an event in one city to a global movement. In 2008, millions of people, businesses, governments and civic organizations in nearly 200 cities around the globe will turn out for Earth Hour. More than 100 cities across North America will participate, including the US flagships–Atlanta, Chicago, Phoenix and San Francisco and Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver.

We invite everyone throughout North America and around the world to turn off the lights for an hour starting at 8 p.m. (your own local time)–whether at home or at work, with friends and family or solo, in a big city or a small town.

What will you do when the lights are off? We have lots of ideas.

Join people all around the world in showing that you care about our planet and want to play a part in helping to fight climate change. Don’t forget to sign up and let us know you want to join Earth Hour.

One hour, America. Earth Hour. Turn out for Earth Hour!

About Green

Green has always been my favorite color, and today's Daily Om newsletter spells out why much better than I ever could:

March 24, 2008
Unifier Of Opposites
The Color Green

Green is a combination of the colors yellow and blue, each of which brings its own unique energy to the overall feeling of the color green. Blue exudes calm and peace, while yellow radiates liveliness and high levels of energy. As a marriage between these two very different colors, green is a unifier of opposites, offering both the excitement of yellow and the tranquility of blue. It energizes blue’s passivity and soothes yellow’s intensity, inspiring us to be both active and peaceful at the same time. It is a mainstay of the seasons of spring and summer, thus symbolizing birth and growth.

Green is one of the reasons that spring instigates so much excitement and activity. As a visual harbinger of the end of winter, green stems and leaves shoot up and out from the dark branches of trees and the muddy ground, letting us know that it’s safe for us to come out, too. In this way, green invites us to shed our layers and open ourselves to the outside world, not in a frantic way, but with an easygoing excitement that draws us outside just to sniff the spring air. Unlike almost any other color, green seems to have its own smell, an intoxicating combination of sun and sky—earthy, bright, and clean. In the best-case scenario, it stops us in our tracks and reminds us to appreciate the great experience of simply being alive.

Green balances our energy so that, in looking at it, we feel confident that growth is inevitable. It also gives us the energy to contribute to the process of growth, to nurture ourselves appropriately, without becoming overly attached to our part in the process. Green reminds us to let go and let nature do her work, while at the same time giving us the energy to do our own.

My First Favorite Song

A little 80s pop to start the week.

Save Yourself

My husband told me about an amazing program TD Ameritrade is offering right now in conjunction with "internationally acclaimed personal finance expert" Suze Orman called the "Save Yourself" program. Basically, you sign up for an account with TD Ameritrade before March 31, make 12 consecutive monthly automatic deposits of at least $50 (the first being within 30 days of opening the account) and at the end of the 12 months, TD Ameritrade will deposit a $100 bonus into your account. Not counting the interest that will be earned over the course of the year and assuming you deposit the minimum $50 a month for a total of $600, the $100 bonus will result in a 16.67% return on your savings! Including the interest the return will be close to 20%! The account has no maintenance fees and is FDIC-insured.

Click the link to read more and sign up and remember, you only have until March 31 to open your account:

http://www.tdameritrade.com/saveyourself/syopen.html

If you can afford it, it is so worth doing! Feel free to email me with any questions.

Springtime

Happy First Day of Spring! Otherwise known as the Vernal Equinox, today the sun is positioned directly over the equator and theoretically, there is nearly an equal amount of day and night. To mark the occasion, a few random spring-related items:

First, a quote:

And Spring arose on the garden fair,
Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere;
And each flower and herb on Earth's dark breast
rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.
~Percy Bysshe Shelley, "The Sensitive Plant"

Next, a book:

I heard about the book Chasing Spring: A Journey Through a Changing Season by Bruce Stutz on NPR not long after it came out in early 2006, promptly bought it and it's been on my bookshelf ever since. I am not someone who can read more than one book at a time, but I suppose I can break this rule if I can read the book in its entirety in one weekend, so maybe I'll go for it this weekend to celebrate the new season.

Last, my name:

Chloe, Greek in origin, has several meanings: green shoot, blooming, verdant and is also another name for the Greek goddess Demeter, the goddess of agriculture. I decided several years ago, based on this combination of definitions, that Chloe can also mean a goddess of spring. I decided this around Halloween, when I was trying to think of a costume and came up with this:

And one with the Grim Reaper for contrast:

Everyone at the party we went to thought I was a bride! Disregard the '94 on the first picture, they are from 2000. And they are scans of actual pictures, hence the poor quality.

There is also a full moon tonight, so lots of interesting vibes out there today. My yoga teacher told us to make sure to spend a little bit of time outside to soak it all up.

Vegas in Bloom

I was a little hard on the desert flora not too long ago, and totally forgot about the blooming trees that grace this city for about 10 days each spring. The summer sun scorches everything and there's nothing left by fall or winter, so it's pretty easy to forget these 10 days a year when Vegas is in bloom. Those of you in colder climes take heart, for spring is on its way!

Here are some shots of two different flowering trees, I have no idea what they are:

And a budding tree for good measure:

Note that I took these pictures on Sunday 3/9 and the pink blossoms are almost totally gone now, wine-colored leaves on the tree have taken over. I intended to post these much sooner, but things got a little hectic. At least now blogging takes the place of exercising as the first thing to go when life gets crazy...