Yes, tonight I discovered the wonders of non-alcoholic beer! Perhaps at one time in my life I scoffed at such things and wondered what the f-ing point was, but that's what getting older and wiser is all about I suppose. We went to a local Mexican restaurant/Irish bar (I know!) and I got tacos and an O'douls, and I have to say - it was lovely. aaah.... it was like having an old friend back. The comfort of a green glass bottle and a glass of amber beauty with a nice head on it. yum! Tasted just like bud or miller light, and with a 0.5% alcohol, I could pretend that I was getting a weeeeeeee bit of a buzz. Good stuff. Of course beer was never my drink of choice, so I've been thinking about looking for some non-alcoholic wine. I guess they would call that grape juice (unrefridgerated). : )

So what does that say about me... I need the illusion of having a drink in front of me more than the drink itself, which is true. At home, when I really feel like I need a drink, I just put ice cubes in my martini glass (the sound of home...clink clink clink in a cocktail glasss) and put some crangrape in their and just pretend there's vodka in it. I mean, I like getting drunk too, but more than anything, it's just a comfort to have something that I think will make me feel better. And it seems to work pretty well.

with my husband. Marriages just can't sustain things like that. At least mine apparently can't. We both worked from home today to save a bit on gas... the theory being that since we usually carpool, with only one of us working from home, we werent' really saving anything. Makes sense.. So it all started out lovely, and actually it was all lovely until about an hour ago, when we had our daily spat. Do all couples fight this much? There is a lady at work who fights with her husband constantly and they legitimitely just can't seem to stand each other. I want to yell over the cubicle wall "get a divorce, lady! You'll be happier!" We don't have horrible fights, but I do feel like lately we fight a lot. Oh well... the nice thing about life is that it has a way of working itself out. Either it will get better, or it will get worse. Not much point dwelling on it.

Driving home, I noticed that wonderful thing... that glorious sign of summer...that harbinger of all things sweet and juicy was out... the "Strawberries U-Pick" sign!! Painted in red on a white background in stenciled letters and an arrow pointing toward the river. Yay! Seems a little early and I was hoping they woudl be picking while my sister is here, but whatever. We'll probably get out there this Saturday adn sometime next week because I WON'T BE WORKING... bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha ah ha. Anyhoo, I also picked the first lettuce from the garden tonight to have on a delicious black bean burger wrap with avocado and cheese. yum.

something new tonight. I've been thinking that instead of just rambling, I should have one of those...whachamacallit... a topic! I dont' have one yet, but I hope to have one by the time I finish.

Well, I was looking at my list and realized that to get them all done, I'd have to do 1 every 10 days. Sooo...since my car's inspection sticker expired a week ago, I thought maybe I'd the "take my car to a new place" one (which is a scary one for me...creature of habit that I am), but I thought better of it and just went to whole foods for lunch and bought the same sandwich I always get (grilled veggies with arugula and goat cheese). Then thought I could try a new food (also on the list)...uh...maybe tomorrow. Then, I thought..it's grocery night, I'll do the one about striking up a conversation with a cashier. A little background:

*Important news bulletin*
Hillary wears pant suits! And sometimes they are yellow! Don't you know that yellow pant suits can seriously impede the successful running of a country! Oh, and she's a bitch too, with a shrill voice. (and she doesnt' have a penis). Oh, and she's not super model attractive either. And kind of old and wrinkly. Just thought you should know.

Anyhoo, so I got a few things crossed off my garden list. 5 things to be precise. Here are some pictures.

There we go... basically I got all the clover out of this area, which was intermingled with all the periwinkle and then I mulched the hell out of it. I have no doubt the clover will come back, but what can I do? mulch, mulch, and mulch some more. There's my non-flowering flowering dogwood. Had it 3 years... 4 years? and the damn thing has never bloomed. Oh well. Would like to buy a buckeye.

on a Sunday afternoon. umm umm. Aged Cheddar, made in Maine. But I've been working hard so I deserve it. I feel like I'm finally hitting my summer stride.... being outside constantly, getting sun burned, covered in dirt all day, loving every minute of it. ahhh summer.

Yesterday was our kayaking course. I thought it was about advanced strokes but it was mostly about navigation. I learned some things (like, oh, how to use a compass). And got some damn good exercise paddling across casco bay. The instructors were good. One reminded us of our friend F. The other was cute and very earnest. Normally I dont' like really like that quality, but he was making it work for him. They have a rule that when you hear thunder you have to head back or hunker down. We heard thunder around 2;30 or so and headed back. Didn't get to do advanced rescue techniques (aka flipping your boat over and having someone rescue you) darn!! was SO looking forward to that. : ) And we learned some thigns about towing. I was the only woman in the class. The water was rough in some spots and the waves were pretty big. I didn't feel too bad about it though since the instructors were there. If it was just me & J, I would have been crying.

Call me a nerd, but I've wanted to do a labyrinth walk for years. I have no idea why.. it's just one of those things (like the nautilus) that I see and I like and then I become semi-obsessed with. I have dreams of building my own labyrinth in my side yard out of rocks and flowers. But tonight, I actually walked one! There's a church in Portland, probably 2-3 miles from where I work that has a labyrinth on a canvas and they open it up to the public once a month or so. Now, I'm not religious at all and I've probably stepped foot in a church a total of 10 times in my life (half of them at a daycare center when I was a nanny, once I went with a boyfriend on Christmas, a few times I went wtih friends when I was kid, and once to a wedding in a catholic church). Oh, and once I blew a tire on my car when I veered trying to avoid a squirrel and hit the curb... wanted to see if they had a phone but the door was locked - typical!

my head hurts from way too much exertion. I've almost memorized the whole Jessica's theme song. It's a tough one and I'm about 3 measures away. I still have to look at the music sometimes to peak, but I'm very very close. It feels good becuase it's been a real challenge and I'm almost there! I'm not even going to worry about the Enya song for now because that's easy by comparison and if I have to I could even drop that one. But I don't think I'll have to. I've got a long weekend and another 2 weeks after that so I think I'm golden.

My sister helped me come up with a great idea for a book. It needs a little fleshing out but it has the potential to be really funny. And hey, if I'm only spending a month on it, I can take the risk. No pressure, right? The plan is to start June 1 and obviously be done by June 30 with the first draft. I see it as something sort of Carl Hiaasen-ish. Funny, irreverent, a bit kitchy, but with a little bit of a message (yet to be determined).

day than a summer day today. It's cold and dreary, overcast and intermittently rainy. We were out late last night "gallactic bowling" with some friends. It was sort of fun, but I drank too much beer, ate too much bowling alley food, and well, I can't deny it... bowling kicked my ass. I started off strong with a spare, then as I got tireder and tireder (I know that's not a word) I got worse and worse and got many many gutter balls. But oh well, better than sitting home on my birthday. : )

Had sort of a crappy day at work. It wasn't so bad, but I got that feeling a few times...you know that high blood pressure feeling where you want to rip somebody's head off? Ever get that? But I took a deep breath, resorted to short sentences and turning my head, and then just blocked people out. I don't even have pms, which leads me to believe that people are just irritating. But what can you do? I'm in a bit of a spot because I've told people over and over again how NOT to irritate me but they don't seem to be paying attention, so that's it. I just can't let it bother me. Part of what bothers me is that I think maybe I'm not that good at my job. I know I'm good at parts of it, but I'm not great at everything (who is, right?) so that bothers me too. But all I can do is to do the best I can do and let the rest roll off my back.

It's funny that when summer comes and you suddenly have nothing but free time, that you find yourself with almost no free time at all. What with frisbee, planting a garden, watching Doctor Who, cooking, and celebrating two close friends getting engaged, there's just no time to post on the blog.

So, in honor of all the wonderful things about summer, here's a track that was my absolute favorite song in the world for several years when I was growing up. I would sit in my room on rainy Washington days watching the streaks run down the window and dreaming of a time when I could experience something this bittersweet. Sure, that's a little weird, but the song is so beautiful and heartbreaking, surely you can understand why.

A Summer Song - Chad and Jeremy

bleak. I can't really think of any other time in my lifetime when the economy looked so bad and the future looked so scary. I don't know if it's because I used to live in a wealthy area and didn't drive far to work, and just didn't notice things... or it really is that bad. When I was visiting VA a few weeks ago, I was going on and on about conspiracy theories and how the middle class will be wiped out and my sister said to me "what do you care? you live a good life. enjoy it." All the news coverage lately just ... I don't know... it makes me think of a Hollywood movie of a futuristic world well it all effing sucks! I don't anticipate not being able to afford food. I have a decent paying job and with carpooling, etc. we'll get by, even with the price of gas these days...but this is the first time that economic factors like that really have changed my life. My driving habits have changed (65 mph baby!), I'm carpooling, I asked my boss about telecommuting. Our expendable income has gone down...I dunno.

I used to own a movie (back when there were "videotapes" called Bodies, Rest, and Motion. It was one of those independent films where not much happens, but for some reason I liked the movie. It's about a couple who moves to Arizona and then once they get there, they break up and the guy starts dating someone else, who he now lives with. The guy and his girfriend are still friends iwth the ex. So that's just the background, nothing has actually happened yet. Ok.. now the boyfriend decides he wants to move to Butte, Montana. Girlfriend doesn't really want to go, but she's a nice, peaceable girl so she will follow him. They get all packed up, hire a painter, quit their jobs...at the last minute boyfriend tells her that he's going alone. And he leaves. She's stunned. The painter shows up and they start chatting, get high, and have sex. He goes on about love. She gets up in the morning and leaves, not waking the painter. The painter decides he will find her.

Frost
Originally uploaded by m.Lee

bleak. And I'm not just talking about the weather, though that applies too. Dreary! So what's wrong?

Well, first, those creepy crawly, bitey, nearly invisible fiends are back..the bird mites! J has been talking about them for a few days and I thought it was just psychological. I even did that little finger thing around the head that means "koo koo" to him a few times. But he finally had me check his back, and sure enough, there was what looked like a speck of dust sitting there. DOH! I'm not even sure the birds have left the nest yet... ?? Anyway, I'm pretty sure the cats brought them in with them from the porch, so at 10 pm last night I bathed the cats, had my 3rd shower of teh day while J took off all the bed stuff to wash and vaccuumed. Then I locked the cats out, but I still woke up with bites. I've been itching for a few nights, but with sunburn and skeeter bites, etc, etc. I pretty much itch all the time.

Oh well... we will vanquish again. Second, unbeknownst to me, J did a radon test down in the basement and surprise! we have high levels. Ok, that was sarcasm. Given the fact that radon comes from granite and we dynamited out a ledge of granite to build our house...not too shocking. But I still didn't want to know! Now what? Ugh.

New Old Clothes!
Originally uploaded by mlee.etsy.com And I couldn't be happier about it. Looking for an extra curtain we should have that we need now I stumbled upon a bin filled with spring and summer clothes from three or more years ago. And for the first time in all those years they fit. This is the smallest I have been in ten years except for the summer that I biked into a job downtown five days a week.

I'm not done yet but I am feeling excited and ready to keep getting in better shape. For me it is not about weight loss but about losing inches and toning. I want to be healthy.

dealing with stress. I want a cocktail! No red wine! A goddamn cigarette!!!! ARGHH. I honestly can't tell if my life has recently gotten really bad or if I just can't deal with it without my vices. I've officially turned to food for comfort...having a smoothie right now. Today was really hard. BUT, the good news is that I now have PMS so I actually have an excuse to be a grumpy bitch.

And now i'll try to use logic to make me happier. I have a job that pays better than anything else I'll ever find in this godforsaken state. If I could learn to get along with my coworkers again (which could be a real challenge now that I know them for the bratty, self-centered egotistical twats that they are) and could just accept the fact that I"ll never get any respect or recognition, I'm sure I could learn to be happy there again. Are you convinced? Yeah, me neither, but what's the option?

Now that I'm home from work, I can finish what I started in Part I.

-----

Sunday Morning - The Big Day

After nearly killing Jeff, we spent the remainder of the day relaxing and drinking some beers. Figuring my task was not nearly difficult enough, I stayed up until about 2 AM chatting and drinking beer after beer. By the time Jeff and I stood up to go to bed, the ground was actually spinning.

Real smart move. I went to bed and woke up with a well deserved headache.

A couple of aspirin, two bottles of water and three cups of coffee later, it was time to face the hour of my reckoning.

Sunday Afternoon - Meet Your Partner

Sorry for the blogless week, everyone. Internet connectivity was pretty-much inexistent at the Westin Diplomat in Fort Lauderdale, and I found myself pulling 16+ hour days all week.

I'm currently writing an impassioned plea to the Suns to stop sucking -- and yes, a 24-10 team can and does suck -- but in the meantime, here's a brief Worst of the Night post with a little something extra: What is possibly the worst and most bizarre Larry Bird commercial of all time (as previously discovered by Matt Watson of the AOL Fanhouse).

It has recently been suggested, in the New York Times and the Christian Science Monitor, that Barack Obama would have profound difficulties in dealing with the Islamic world if he is elected president because he was born to a Muslim father and then raised as a Christian, making him an apostate. This, the stories claimed, make him eligible for the death penalty or assassination under Islamic law.

The spectacular ignorance of Islam in these stories has now been documented and refuted here by Abdullahi Ahmed an’Naim, one of the smartest Moslem intellectuals working today. He notes:

MAY DAY
by Phillis Levin

I've decided to waste my life again,
Like I used to: get drunk on
The light in the leaves, find a wall
Against which something can happen,

Whatever may have happened
Long ago—let a bullet hole echoing
The will of an executioner, a crevice
In which a love note was hidden,

Be a cell where a struggling tendril
Utters a few spare syllables at dawn.
I've decided to waste my life
In a new way, to forget whoever

Touched a hair on my head, because
It doesn't matter what came to pass,
Only that it passed, because we repeat
Ourselves, we repeat ourselves.

I've decided to walk a long way
Out of the way, to allow something
Dreaded to waken for no good reason,
Let it go without saying,

Let it go as it will to the place
It will go without saying: a wall
Against which a body was pressed
For no good reason, other than this.

the not so elusive blee smile
Originally uploaded by m.Lee My baby is a happy little caterpillar today. She's a bit of a stinky caterpillar to be honest because I am afraid to give her a proper bath by myself. But I cleaned her up as much as I could getting into her chins with a wet cloth and then lotioning her up good.

While I was sitting at the Orlando International Airport with a few hours to kill before my flight yesterday, thought it would be interesting to write about my experience from the morning.

Prelude to the story: think about how much airport security blows. The hassles, the lines…must be an easier way, right?

It's the dream of every kid who can't get enough of dinosaurs--a dinosaur FREE with every purchase!

It's Friday, time to be dragged along with Mom on boring errands. To sweeten the deal, Mom takes her small boy for donuts first, and to his amazement the sign on the door says "BUY A DOZEN. GET A DINOSAUR." When the shoplady leads a real tricerotops out, Mom is aghast. "How are we supposed to get THAT home?" she gasps. Little does Mom know that getting one home is the least of her problems.

Triceratops in tow, Mom forges on with her list, only to find that there's a stegosaurus instead of stickers at the pediatrician's office; it's a pterosaur in place of a balloon at the barber's. All around him the delighted kid sees boys and girls proudly leading their new dinos. It's a dino-rama of a day.

First of all, sorry for being away, it's end of the semester, student papers to read, proposals to write, conferences to attend -- blogging always ought to come first, but I'm just irresponsible I guess.

Anyhow, today's Sunday Sermonette concerns the greatest peculiarity of our faith-based politics. That is the idea that politicians have to continually proclaim their piety, but it doesn't matter what they actually believe, as long as they are religious. This was the essence of Mitt Romney's big speech last week -- in America, it doesn't matter what religion you believe in, as long as you believe in one. He was introduced by George Bush the First, who is on record as saying that atheists should not be permitted to hold public office in the United States.

2007 in a nutshell
Originally uploaded by m.Lee I often have felt like I wasted a lot of 2007 due to my rather difficult pregnancy. First I was tired all the time, followed by some sort of flu that lingered for a solid three months. Then about two or three good weeks before the horribly puking up acid reflux got out of control. Then the pregnancy induced hypertension and finally going twelve days late.

The most horrifying idea is that what we believe with all our hearts is not necessarily the truth.

-Dr. Elizabeth F. Loftus, Professor of Psychology

My future mother-in-law came for a visit last week and through the weekend to help finalize a lot of the wedding plans. It was a very accomplishing weekend and I think everybody feels that things are coming together nicely.

During lunch yesterday before she left for the airport, she asked me a very simple question. "How long have your parents lived in Georgia?"

Without too much hesitation I answered that it had been over ten years. For the last few years I have distinctly remembered them moving to Atlanta right around the same time I left for college.