Monday Questionnaire
"I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me" edition


1. Share a compliment you've recently received.

2. You're at a party, maybe you've had a few, and you hear yourself say, "Guess what I can do?" What particular talent, stunt, or bit of derring-do follows?

3. Name someone who admires you.

A Few Things That Are Really Great

• hot water bottles to warm the sheets before getting in
• cats (even when they steal your spectacles)
• Bartlett's Dictionary of Familiar Quotations
• Trader Joe's
• Buddhism

UPDATE:

• cured meats

Why So Quiet.

It's hit me that I'm about to finish school, start a business, wean myself from the corporate teat, and get married, all really soon. Meantime, work is devilishly busy, but I'm lacking the will to focus on it; and I'm finishing up classes in what has, in many ways, been a frustrating semester. Money and time are both tight. It's a lot to handle, and I've started to crack at the seams, a little.

A few close friends, including our own Eric, have leant a kind ear and encouraging words, for which I'm grateful. I think that sometimes you just have to let yourself crack a little.

Sometimes...80% is enough.

A Brief List of Don'ts

1. Do not put CHICKEN in QUICHE.

Wednesday Writing Assignment

Argue pro- or con- the following Zen aphorism:

Sometimes 80% is enough.

Misc. Observations

Sometimes I'm typing away at my computer only to realize that I haven't clicked a field to type in, thus rendering all my typing useless. I wonder where those lost letters go.

My email SPAM has been hawking "high-end" discount watches rather than V1@gra or male enhancement (otherwise known as pen1s enlargement) of late. For this, I am grateful.

Monday? Questionnaire.

1. Are you going to hand out candy this year? If not, why not?

2. Fill in the blanks: "There are two kinds of people in this world. Those who _______, and those who _______."

3. Do you have a song running through your head right now? What is it?

This is what stress looks like

I found a single, deathly white, wiry hair when blow-drying the other day. I plucked it out, but I still feel stressed.

Thursday Writing Assignment
Since I never seem to get it done on Wednesday...

Imagine one thing in your day were different, be it big or small: Maybe you didn't get your morning coffee, you ran out of pet food, it's snowing outside, or your office burned down. Rewrite your day with that change and its effects.

Monday Questionnaire

1. How do you deal with stress?
1a. Does it make you sleep and eat more or less?

2. Would you rather that your favorite consumable item be unavailable forever, or only available in a crappy form? For example: If you love coffee, would you rather that you can never have coffee again or you can only have 7-11 coffee for the rest of time?

3. What's the weather like where you are today?

Some Things I've Cooked This Weekend

Not that it can possibly compare to Emma's list...

*sweet potato ginger soup (a joint effort with G.)
*cardamom whole wheat pancakes (oh so good)
*delicata squash stuffed with tofu & onion
*toasted squash seeds (from the aforementioned delicata squash)
*oatmeal cookies

I'm feeling positively Amish. Some things I'm planning on preparing today for the week ahead:

*corn muffins
*tomato sauce
*tomato-basil soup

It's rainy, so what better than to make good things to eat?

UPDATE: The corn muffins got baked, but I didn't get to either of the tomato products.

The Prayer Flags

It's the first cold, wet day of the year. Yesterday, when it was warm and wet, still like an August storm, I hung the Tibetan prayer flags my friend brought back from Oregon on the balcony. They are bright colors against the leaves, which are still too green for October. It was very windy, so they sent lots of prayers up to the heavens. It was too windy, maybe, and so this morning the flags were hooked on the balcony above, stuck and unable to pray. As I pulled them down and then tied them a little more taut, so that they wouldn't fly too high and be snared again, my hands turned pink and prickly-numb. The balcony, already dark brown, was streaked with mud from too much rain in my plant pots. The fiesty little cat tried to get outside, even though it's too cold and wet for her; she doesn't listen to reason. She's from the East, like the flags--her mother a Siamese--but she was born here, not Oregon. My hands and the cat became streaked with the contagious cold mud, but the wet flags are smartly flapping again. It's good that they can pray for me, because I don't know how, now that I don't believe in the church.

Alas

I've been too busy to blog. Things are heating up at work again, and my after-work schedule is crazed, too. I guess I'll rest--and blog?--when I'm dead.