Kansas Women Bloggers has a Photo a Day challenge every month intended for Instagram, but I thought it might be fun to do it on my blog this month instead, particularly after I fizzled out with NaBloPoMo in November.
December 1st – What makes you smile?
Here's a preview of the whole month's worth of subjects.
I cooked all day, despite the fact that I had bought many of the food items for our Thanksgiving meal pre-prepped. Oh, and I completely forgot to serve the Waldorf salad, so that's getting donated somewhere tomorrow.
By some miracle of orchestration, I managed to get everything on the table before 5:00 p.m. By 6:00 p.m., I'd put away most of the leftovers and run the dishwasher for the second time today (it's on its third run right now).
We had a lovely group of guests with plenty of interactions with the cats and dog. Dr. Jones only jumped on the counter once, which is a holiday miracle.
I hope you had an enjoyable Thanksgiving as well. If you're in the mood for leftovers, I can hook you up tomorrow.
Before we all descend into a frenzy of calories and chaos tomorrow, I wanted to take a moment to wish all of my U.S. friends a Happy Thanksgiving. I hope you have a day filled with happiness, joy and reflection along with as many slices of pie as you want.
I'll be cleaning and cooking all day and then hosting a lovely combination of family and friends. I'm looking forward to it all already.
Namaste.
(I know, I'm not usually a "namaste" gal, but it feels right today.)
Since the advent of this blog and social media in general, I have tended to keep my deeper feelings offline. I imagine that my political leanings and sense of social justice can be read between the lines, but I've rarely been overt about them. However…
There is systemic and pervasive inequality and unfairness in this country that has been worsening steadily throughout my lifetime. I need look no further than the state where I grew up to see the fallout from one egregious example playing out right now.
I can tell from reading my Facebook feed that a lot of people, particularly those in a position of relative privilege, are having difficulty grasping what is happening and why. Here's a short interview with Jamilah Lemieux of Ebony Magazine that I think really says a lot.
I'm also observing many people who, willfully or not, can't seem to observe this situation from other perspectives. Chuck Wendig wrote what I feel is a very powerful post about cultivating empathy.
I'm not quite sure of what my role can and should be in trying to address these societal ills, but this article has some very reasonable suggestions. Most of them are just a start, but it's vital to educate yourself, even if only in service to not being part of the problem.
If you're feeling helpless and want to do one simple thing right now? How about a donation to the Ferguson Public Library?
I completely understand the impulse to despair at the state of things in our country right now. I'd be lying if I said I hadn't had some serious conversations about moving away and starting over somewhere else. But no. That is not the solution, it's just an avoidance of the hard work it is going to take to find solutions.
These problems we have—and they are numerous and far-reaching—can only be solved by people standing together to make changes happen. That means demanding accountability and true representation from government leaders, rolling up our sleeves and working to give all communities an equal chance to succeed, and resolving not to rest until wrongs are righted.
That is far, far more easily said than done, but it must be done. It must.
Photo source: BZ Tat
I just recently had my first ever microwave burrito. I KNOW! How could I have lived [mmmph] years and never experienced the glory of this foodstuff?
The answer to that question lies in an anecdote from when I was a teenager.
One day I was at band practice when a horrible odor arose from behind the drum kit. It swiftly made its way across the basement practice room until the song came to a halt as everyone gagged and fled upstairs. The drummer rather proudly admitted that he had eaten two microwave burritos from the convenience store up the street before practice, which then resulted in the worst fart that I have ever had the displeasure of experiencing. Seriously, it was like chemical warfare.
From then on, microwave burritos were nothing but the punchline to a fart joke as far as I was concerned. They never even entered the consideration set of things I might purchase to eat.
That finally changed when I was buying my umpteenth set of Amy's frozen meals to take to work. I get that brand a lot because they have a good number of dairy-free options, the ingredients list looks pretty much like something you would make at home, they're fairly cheap, and their food is actually really good. However, I end up buying the same four or five things over and over, so I was casting my gaze a little wider to see what else they had that I could eat when I spotted their burritos.
I bought a couple of them and stuck them in the freezer for later. When I finally got around to heating one up, what a revelation! It took less than two minutes to heat up and it tasted really good. Yes, I burned half my taste buds off with the volcanically hot filling the first time around, but that lesson was easy to absorb.
Of course I could make a big batch of dairy-free burritos and freeze them myself, and maybe I will someday. But in the meantime I have a new favorite snack that, fortunately, does not affect my digestive system in the same way that befell my erstwhile drummer. We can all be glad of that.
Photo "Amy's vegan burrito" by jkaty27, used under CC license.
Ever since I was a kid and I first got my hands on one of those label makers that embossed letters onto strips of sticky plastic, I've enjoyed labeling or marking my stuff.
As a musician, I've learned the hard way that small, portable pieces of gear and accessories have a tendency to get absorbed into other people's collections unless they're tagged somehow.
For a while I was marking everything with orange electrical tape, but I think my latest turquoise zebra-print tape is cooler and easier to spot. I bought it to mark my chargers for BlogHer this year, but I've gone on to also put it on my luggage and the music gear I carry to gigs.
So far it seems to be working. I haven't lost anything marked with it yet.
This afternoon I got a henna tattoo on my hand. Thinking ahead to tonight's gig with my band, I asked her to draw a skull with something swirly around it:
A little girl saw it and said it was scary, but to be fair, I don't know for sure whether she meant the design or my wrinkled and wizened hand. Perhaps both.
Of course, once the skull design was a fait accompli, I remembered that I work a corporate job in an office when I'm not cavorting around on stage. No one would blink an eye at a skull pattern on my mic hand. A skull on my mouse hand? Well, at least I've been there long enough that they know me by now.
This week certainly seemed to fly by! That's a good thing because I am tired. So tired.
Tomorrow night I have a gig with my band, so the weekend will feel equally short, particularly when you factor in the fact that I'll be spending most of the day playing Warrior Knights on Sunday.
My fundraiser for the foster cat is going well and it's over the halfway mark. He's putting on weight and being very friendly. I have a terrible suspicion that he might have ringworm, but we'll deal with that separately.
For now, I just need to get some sleep and think about getting a few errands done before a brunch I have tomorrow. Good night!
It's been so cold and crappy, I needed a reminder that it's still nice somewhere. In this case, Jamaica. This was taken about eight years and one week ago. I think I'm overdue for a repeat.
Having Sooty the foster cat around has caused me to notice that not everyone pronounces his name the way I would expect.
To me, "soot" rhymes with "foot." However, a lot of people are pronouncing his name as if "soot" rhymes with "loot." So I'm hearing his name coming out as a couple of syllables shy of "Sussudio."
A little Googling for "how do you pronounce sooty" reveals a majority opinion that agrees with me, so I must have just randomly stumbled across an anomalous handful of speakers.