Continual State of Becoming

My Mood...Sleepy Sleep by Salvador Dali link Rainy days make me feel so sleepy.

visited 15 countries (6%) create your own visited countries map visited 30 states (58%) -Some of those states I only drove through... I'm not sure if those should really count. -I've lived in 6 of the states (OK, TX, CO, NY, KS, VA) create your own visited states map

I saw the commercial for the new Coca-Cola flavor last night. Here is my input on the various Coke flavors: Original Coca-Cola: not my most favorite soda, I dont really care for colas too much Cherry Coke: Absolutely delicious. for the longest time this was the only way I'd drink any kind of dark soda Vanilla Coke: Greatest soda ever! A couple years ago, while I was still working at Starbucks, a friend of mine used to put vanilla syrup in her Coke. She finally convinced me to try it (knowing how much I dislike Coke), and it really was good. So when Coke came out with Vanilla Coke, I wasnt expecting it to be as good as my friend's concoction, but to my surprise, it was. The New Lime Coke: Umm... I havent tried this yet. But I did try the Pepsi with Lemon once (at the time it was really the only option I had for a drink). And the Pepsi with Lemon tasted like: Pepsi + Lemon scented dish soap. I expect Lime Coke to taste the same. Mmm... Vanilla Coke

--Dore Ashton on Agnes Martin "to make statements with the simplest of means that yet suggest the profound experience from which they come." I hope someone will say the same thing about me one day.

Ice cream is my ultimate cure for every ailment. Like tonight, for example. My husband and I had pizza this afternoon (too late for lunch, too early for dinner). And while it was great pizza, it left me with a little bit of a stomach ache. So a few minutes ago (after watching 2 episodes of The Contender) we walked down to 7-11 so I could get an ice cream bar, and I ate it on the walk home. Nothing could make me feel better than eating a Dove ice cream bar in 43 degree weather. But I do feel much better now. I dont know if it's the coldness or the creaminess of the ice cream, but for some reason, it always makes me feel better. Sore throat, headache, cramps, stomach ache... why bother with aspirin or motrin or pepto? Ice cream works just as good and it tastes even better!

So the other day I commented that I'm not much of an animal person. Despite that I think i've done a pretty good job with my dog. We got her from a rescue when she was 2 years old (that was a year ago), so she was already house broken and overall you could tell she had some training. But I took it upon myself to teach her a few basic tricks. Now I have only had minimal interaction with dogs, and really know absolutely nothing about how to train one. But I did take a semester of Psychology in college, and felt that I had a pretty good understanding of operant conditioning and some other learning methods (think Pavlov's dogs). So I decided that I would try and apply that knowledge as best I could... if it worked, great! if not, oh well. I started out with the "sit" command. This is how I went about teaching it to her: Say the word "sit" Push her backside down so she is forced into the sitting position While she is still sitting (because I'm pushing on ...

My horoscope: 'Terrific' doesn't even begin to describe your day. Whatever you do, it'll be fantastic.

Lately i've been getting back in the habit of going to the gym a couple times a week. I used to do this in college whenever possible, but it was hard to make it routine. At the beginning of the semester it'd be really easy to go at night (when the gym wasnt as crowded) because I didnt really have much school work, so I had the luxury of time . But as the semester wore on, I'd have more and more homework, and less and less time... as a result the gym quickly faded from my routine. I always figured that what little I was able to work out made a difference in my body, and it did to some extent. I would notice little hints of muscles here and there on occasion. But nothing significant. So a couple months ago, I think at the end of February, my husband and I joined a local gym. And I've been going pretty regularly... about 3 times a week. I dont really push myself too hard at the beginning because I dont want to develop an "I hate going to the gym" mentality. So I ...

I never used to be a big animal person. I still dont really think of myself as and "animal person" even though I have a dog now. I think it's because of some things that happened to me when I was young. I remember (or seem to remember... it's tough to know how accurate my memories are when they go back to such a young age... but this is how I think the following event occurred) when I was probably somewhere in between 3 and 6, my family was living in Texas at the time. In our neighborhood there was another family that had a pit bull as their pet. I seem to remember that they would leave him chained outside in their backyard a lot. Well one day, another young girl in the neighborhood somehow was attacked by the dog. I'm not sure if she walked through the pit bull's yard, or if the dog somehow got away. But I have a pretty vivid picture of what she looked like afterwards, and lets just say, there was a lot of blood. (At least that's how I remember it). Ever ...

Turns out that I actually got Petunias, not Pansies for the garden. Shows how much I know.

Warning: Reading this post may result in never being able to have a moment of silence again. Excerpts from John Cage's Silence: Lectures and Writings Pg 8: "There is no such thing as empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot. For certain engineering purposes, it is desirable to have as silent a situation as possible. Such room is called an anechoic chamber, its six walls made of special material, a room without echoes. I entered one at Harvard University several years ago and heard two sounds, one high and one low. When I described them to the engineer in charge, he informed me that the high one was my nervous system in operation, and the low one my blood circulation. Until I die there will be sounds. And they will continue following my death." p. 22 "What happens, for instance, to silence? Tha is, how does the mind's perception of it change? Formerly, silence was the tim...

Sundays go by so fast. Faster than any other day of the week.

My husband and I did a little gardening today. I emphasize little. Mostly we just pulled dirt and weeds out of our little front yard garden/bush area. Weird things we found: Peanuts Styrofoam (lots of it) Fake Leaves (ironic) I bought some pansies at the Home Depot and I think we'll plant them tomorrow afternoon. Yay for pansies.

Currently Listening to:

Okay, I'm not a very artsy person... but I think i've been coming up with some great ideas lately. And if I were artsty enough to pull them off, I totally would. Arsty Idea #1: If I were a painter, here's an idea for something I could do with my paintings. I would hire a bunch of people and take them to an art museum. Next I would give each person one of my paintings along with a harness so they could strap it to their back. I would then instruct each person to find a blank spot on a wall and stand against it. This way my paintings could be veiwed by all the museum-goers, and I dont think I'd be doing anything wrong. It's not like I'm hanging my artwork up on their walls. It's merely normal people who happen to have a painting strapped to their back. Arsty Idea #2: Lately I've been reading a lot about Minimalism (which I love). And one of the things I've learned is that the title of minimalist artwork is often times just as important as th...

Well it's finally here... the first day of Lawn Mowing for the year. I was actually going to mow yesterday, but I went out to run some errands first. When I came home my dog had destroyed the kitchen trash. There was spagetti sauce, dried rice, and papers everywhere. I ended up spending a good amount of time scrubbing the floors after that incident... and just never got around to mowing afterwards. Which means I have to do it today. No more putting it off. My plan is to crank up the BebePod and hopefully that will make it all a little less painful. I went grocery shopping the other day, and as usual I bought a carton of orange juice. Unfortunately I usually get Tropicana's Calcium Plus Vitamin D (no pulp), and they seemed to be all out the day I was there. I usually go on Monday mornings when they are restocking... i find that the grocery store isnt as crowded then; but the downside is that not all the new food is put away yet, as was the case with my orange juice. So instead, ...

This weekend my husband and I went over to my parents house for dinner. Mostly because we hadnt seen them in a while, but also because we didnt have much food in the house. So while we were there we played some card games with my sisters. Uno Attack : Have you heard of this game? It's like Uno only there's this contraption that throws the cards at you (instead of drawing them from a deck). It's an appropriate name for the game. WARNING: If you plan on playing this some time, wear protective eye gear, as we had several close calls with flinging cards. Dont think cards pose any threat? Ricky Jay (magician/card trick guy) can fling a card into a watermelon, and I think an eye ball is much softer than a watermelon. I wonder if the Uno people got the idea for this adaptation from seeing one of Ricky Jay's shows. That being said, it is pretty funny to watch people freak out as a handful of cards are spewed at them.

Ossifying : To mold into a rigidly conventional pattern "Very frequently no one knows that contemporary music is or could be art. He simply thinks it is irritating. Irritating one way or another, that is to say keeping us from ossifying." -John Cage

It's so nice out today. sunny. not too hot. My husband and I walked into town and had lunch at a chinese place. Not the greatest food ever, but I really like their wonton soup. Then we stopped by a wine shop and got a couple bottles of dessert wine. They didnt have the particular one we were looking for, so the lady working there suggested two alternatives. We got both. A lot of people in our neighborhood are out working on their yards today. Planting new flowers, landscaping, cleaning up a bit. We decided to put that kind of stuff off until next weekend. I hope it rains. For the rest of the day I'm going to try to do some more spring cleaning (I'll spend all day cleaning up inside... it's the outside work I dread). Then I have some tax stuff I need to figure out (yay, more accounting related work). But I had a really nice lunch.

The Sunken Cathedral (or La Cathedrale engloutie as it's known by in its original French title) by Claude Debussy is my all time favorite solo piano piece. Click Here to Listen I actually played it my final semester at college. I remember the first time i heard it was in one of my theory classes my sophomore or junior year and I instantly fell in love with it. I decided then that I would play this piece at some point, but i didnt want to just hash my way through it and come out with an ameteurish take on the piece... I wanted it to sound the best it could. I wanted to be able to play it the way it deserved. So I decided the best thing to do was to play other stuff by Debussy first. I wanted to get a feel for his style and see what he was about. The first Debussy piece I worked on was First Arabesque . It's a pretty popular song, and very beautiful. The hardest thing about this piece was getting the rhythm right (damn those triplets over eighth notes). For about the first week...

I used to read non-stop when I was younger. In fact I would get in trouble for reading at what my parents and teachers considered to be inappropriate times. I'd read first thing in the morning before going to school, I'd read on the bus on the way to school (the years I rode the bus), I'd read during class (inappropriate time), when I got home, and for a few hours before I'd go to bed (inappropriate as well-- depending on how late it was). And I'd read just about anything. I'd go through all the books we had in our house and read as much as I could. I'd make the biggest dent in the books during the summers when we moved. Since I'd be in a new environment (and since I dont enjoy hot weather much), i'd spend most of my days reading book after book after book until school started and I made friends again. But then sometime in high school i think, I just stopped reading. I dont know why. I mean, I would read the required books for english, but th...

As I'm sure most people are aware, the pope passed away today. I know his health has been declining lately, but this still seems sudden to me for some reason. I just wanted to share a short story on the subject. I spent 7th through 9th grade living in Germany (my father was in the Army at the time). The summer before my freshman year of high school I went on a missions trip to Poland with my youth group. We spent a week and a half helping out at an English camp for Polish high school students (or the equivalent of). I had a great time there, made a lot of friends with the Polish students, who I found to be very open and very down to earth. I was assigned to assist the advanced english class. I mean these kids could speak english just as well as I could, maybe even better. We spent most of the day having conversations about different topics such as Communism, school, teenage life, family, politics... really anything that happened to come up. So for a week and a half I spent time wit...