Inspiration for the Week

"I don't know what I may seem to the world," he said before he died, "but, as to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me." An evocative simile, much quoted in the centuries that followed, but [Isaac] Newton never played at the seashore, boy or man. Born in a remote country village, the son of an illiterate farmer, he lived in an island nation and explained how the moon and sun tug at the seas to create tides, but he probably never set eyes on the ocean. He understood the sea by abstraction and computation.

extract from Isaac Newton by James Gleick

HELP!!!

My computer "melted" Sat. night!! I'm borrowing a friend's laptop to pay our bills and order the replacement parts for the computer - other than that, I won't be on-line much this week. I'll catch up with everyone's blogs this weekend (I hope).

Fav. Foto Friday

YEAH!! Someone got a bang-ectomy yesterday. And can someone tell me why it is so difficult to cut a simple straight line across a forehead?

Pruning

Today I earned my keep by pruning the overgrown
"bush"(?!) on the corner of our deck.

I also learned that I am, in fact, my father's daughter(pile 2 of clippings - yes, I got a little carried away;
apparently, it's genetic)

Nice to Meet You

I've been contemplating lately the nature of these virtual relationships we develop through blogging. Foolery mentioned her awkwardness over referring to these relationships as "friends" when she's with the friends/family she actually physically interacts with - and I can relate to that. I've gone through all sorts of linguistic gymnastics to share the wit and wisdom I gain from reading other blogs. So why is that?!!

Being a highly social extrovert, I'm friendly with everyone I meet; add "Southern" into the mix, and you get someone who's not afraid to strike up conversations with strangers at the store or on the street. But, whenever I meet a new friend, someone who becomes more than just a casual acquaintance, there's a feeling I get -- we "connect", you might even call it a form of "attraction". What's interesting to me is that I can get the same feeling from even just a few "comment volleys" with fellow bloggers. Once, I simply read a comment on, my friend, Mrs. G's blog, read the commenter's description of herself on her blog, and just felt like I'd found a long lost sister. [Really!! I even hesitated before typing "sister", but that's actually how I felt.]

Reflecting on this phenomenon, I realize that it affirms my faith in God. I'm what you might label an agnostic, who is highly religious. Words are immensely inadequate to describe my (or anyone's) spirituality, but I'll try. I mellowed from full-blown, in-your-face atheism [not all atheists are like that, but I sure was] to agnosticism in my mid-20's, then had what many would call a "born again" experience. I made it through my "fundamentalistic" phase and now find myself joyously contemplating complex questions and doubts in the protection of an abiding certitude.

Back to "blog friends" (hasn't someone coined a cute word for that yet?! I mean, other than Sarah). This ability to connect that transcends our physical reality (we utilize none of our physical senses, unless someone posts a photo or video) surely indicates that there is more to the human reality than just our physical being - we are spiritual beings as well. And that's the place where we connect on-line, no matter what we call ourselves.

Inspiration for the Week

"It is the perfection of God's works that they are all done with the greatest simplicity. He is the God of
order and not of confusion."
also
"Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things."
Sir Isaac Newton

this post inspired by my recent viewing of this awesome program

Happy Fathers' Day!

Ahhhh... it doesn't get any better than a best friend,
an ice cold O'Douls, and a soccer game.Unless, of course, it's followed by a couch snuggle with ALL your children.AND an amazing dinner with the "adopted" family members too.

Fav. Foto Friday

Three years ago, Pouran and her best friend transformed themselves into their favorite animals, with a little help from some downloaded mask patterns and a HUGE love for their respective critters.

What's in a Word?

sur•re•al [suh-ree-uhl] - adjective
1. going to a college dive-of-a-bar in some alleyway downtown to watch your kids play a "gig"
2. having your favorite 80's angst music (The Smiths) piped in as filler after their set

YEAH!! School's Out!

Now we can do alot more of this in the morning!

Inspiration for the Week

''Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way...''
- Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

Why Do We Do It?

I've just spent the afternoon in tears, contemplating the immense spiritual impact (cost) of war. If you want to know why, listen to this (on the far left, click "Listen"). [WARNING: it'll be a "deep cry" inducer] Join me in praying EXTRA hard this Tuesday.

Fav. Foto Friday

Popsicles on the steps of the Dept. of Agriculture building in D.C. (before hopping on the Metro home).

Freestylin'... R-R-R-Random

While walking the dogs the other day, I spotted this in the grass and oddly enough, my mouth started watering. No, I'm not on the "starvation diet" - it was one of those forgotten memories from my youth that suddenly came flooding back. You see, I spent some time in the Air Force after high school. Don't believe me? Oooo... scary, huh?!! (Mrs. G, I hope you managed to escape that particular haircut.) One of my favorite Air Force experiences was S.E.R.E. training, which involves:
S. = Survival (how to live off the land)
E. = Evasion (how to avoid being captured in enemy territory)
R. = Resistance (not divulging secrets when they imprison you)
E. = Escape (yeah, right)

For "Survival", we learned cool stuff like: making a tent out of your rain poncho, how to kill and eat rabbits, finding and boiling water when you have NOTHING, the amazing taste of slowly "grilled" (over a lighter or match!) crickets and grasshoppers, figuring out where the heck you are, and, the one that triggered this whole thing, how heavenly it feels to come upon a wild strawberry when you've been subsisting on crickets and grasses for a couple of days!


p.s. the span of time between the Prom photo and the knife photo -
4 months, WOW!

What the heck... I'll play

We'll, everybody's all in "prom mode", so when Mommy's Martini launched the prom carnival, I figured "What the heck, I'll play." Only because this is one of my all-time favorite memories, AND it's not like I have 15 things I REALLY SHOULD be doing instead! :-)

So, we moved to Alabama the summer before my Junior year (Army brat), and shortly after school started, I managed to luck into dating him:

(shameless plug for gorgeous boyfriend)

But, by the end of that year we were no more, because I was all ego this and "you don't own me" that. Which is a real shame, because I truly loved him. Senior year was rocky, and we were on-again-off-again many times (due to my early-onset menopause), but when it came time for the Junior-Senior Prom, there was only one person I would go with - him. Senior Prom was just too special to me to be spent with anyone else. If the story ended there, it would have been the perfect romantic, fun-filled, best ever time I had in high school. But it was even better.

You see, my sister had a boyfriend, a true love, also. He was from somewhere up north, because, while the folks around him were like "Hey y'all", he was "youse guys" every other sentence. They were both sophomores (read: banned from the Prom), which would have been meaningless, if it weren't for the fact that my family was moving to Pennsylvania that summer [which, for those of you geographically- challenged, is VERY far away from Alabama. The down-side of being an Army brat]. I can't remember exactly how it happened, but I'm sure there were tears involved, which any little sister knows is the FASTEST way to a big sister's heart. I talked it over with "him", and we came up with a brilliant idea: "he" would take my sister to the Prom as his date, and I would take my sister's boyfriend as mine. After separate romantic dinners (I still get wistful when I see a Red Lobster), we met up outside of Prom, and "switched" partners. The site of "him" entering the Prom with my sister, raised a few eyebrows (small town), but they signed in and went on through to find a table. When her boyfriend and I waltzed in a few minutes later, everyone knew what was up, and most folks didn't like it. We each danced with our "official dates" for the first dance, then played switch-eroo for the rest of the evening. Chaperones kept periodically coming up to us to ask who our date was, and we've have to stop dancing and point them out across the room. Folks were furious, some schoolmates too, but the four of us had one amazing evening!
(My sister's the gorgeous one in the green dress, with the perfect hair and the "professionally" applied makeup, who was a tomboy that somehow always managed to look picture-perfect. I am the one with the perm-gone-awry-80's-do, AND the gorgeous date!)

Official Prom P.S.
Guess what I just found while looking for my Air Force photo? Junior-Senior Prom (literally, she was a junior, he a senior) the very next year. Recognize the dress?!! Hands-down looks better on little sis, though she did opt for the sensible heels this time. And how can you tell it was still the 80's?! ...more hair than face!

Inspiration for the Week

"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time."
* T.S. Eliot