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Showing posts from January, 2015

A Small Fish Steals My Heart

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Death-defying Alpha Meet Alpha. Who, two years after the very tragic deaths of Frank and Andy the goldfish, now resides in the bowl that was their home. Who last Friday was, for all intents and purposes, knocking on Death's door himself (after only a week of being in his new home!). Lying sideways on the bottom of the bowl. Very obviously gasping his last breaths. My colleagues saying, "Ummm, yeah. He's not long for this world." But I wasn't about to give up on him. No. Not this time. Not Alpha. So I put warm water in a smaller container and transferred Alpha to it. I put food in the container. You know, just in case he made it and was hungry. I set him on the heater in a colleague's office. And we left campus for the weekend, all of us thinking we would return on Monday to face a sad scene. Monday morning, my colleague came to me when I arrived to work, and said, "Alpha lives!" Stunned, I followed her to her office. I peered into the contain

Taking Advantage of Warmer Days

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The weather improved enough during the last week, with temps reaching the upper 30's during the day, the sun shining on and off, melting most of the snow and ice, that the possibility of getting out for a ride became reality Friday and yesterday. I get all giddy thinking about riding, and once I'm on the bike, I revel in the wind against my cheeks, the warmth of the scarf around my neck, and the strength of my legs as I pedal. Even this morning, as I stood looking out over the back deck, watching the rain come down, my thoughts went to riding later today, in the rain. I want to feel the rain, listen to it splatter up, spit high into the air as the tires of my bike roll along the road. I was rolling along all happy Friday morning. I'd not ridden my commuter to work since reporting back three weeks ago, first because the temperatures were in the single digits and the real feel was in the negative double digits, then because we had a good snow that covered the roads, turned

This

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Sunrise

Grocery Buying Blues

Whenever Hubby and go grocery shopping, I feel like I'm living Groundhog Day  as soon as we walk through the automatic doors. I pick up organic onions and Hubby says, "Those are a dollar more a pound than the regular onions. Why can't you just get the cheaper ones?" I pick up organic potatoes, and hear Hubby say, "Geez, those are expensive." And so it goes for the entire shopping trip. By the time we reach the check out, I'm exhausted from trying to explain why I buy organic when I can. After paying the bill, I get to hear about how we're paying too much for groceries because I insist on buying organic. Yesterday, before even reaching the check out lane, I had arrived at the point of just being tired of hearing it. Hubby and I definitely part ways when it comes to food. I'm deeply concerned about how our fruits and veggies are grown. I'm just as concerned with how animals are treated before their lives end so that we can eat. Yesterday, my

Eating Well

Since January 1, I've cooked each evening except one, and that night was a "everyone is on his/her own night." Each evening, I worked to include herbs and spices, and each meal save one was given the thumbs up. The save one meal didn't get a thumbs down; it received a sideways thumb, and I think that was because I didn't get the black beans pureed the way they needed to be for the black bean soup to be creamy. I tried to puree the beans while they were too hot, and well, putting hot food into a blender then turning it on just isn't a good idea. Even though I was pressing down on the lid to prevent it launching to the ceiling, it still popped off. Black beans spewed everywhere. As if the first try wasn't enough, I made a second attempt. Yeah, not a smart move. The lid took off like a rocket, allowing black beans to splatter across cabinet doors, my sweatshirt, this computer, and my exposed wrist, which burned and now sports a nice red welt. It was carnage.

The Care of all Creatures

As I was standing in the kitchen this morning, putting together the ingredients for a dark rum, dark chocolate chip banana bread, I heard Hubby begin talking to me from the living room. He was telling me about California passing a law concerning how chickens are caged. Chicken farmers there now have to make sure the cage in which a chicken is kept be big enough for the chicken to stretch its wings. I could tell by the tone of Hubby's voice that he thought this new law ridiculous, and as he continued, bringing up how the farmers are going to have to spend a lot of money to make the required changes, how the price of eggs is going to go up, and how there will be an egg shortage because of this new law, I could feel myself becoming annoyed. Right in front of me were the lovely brown shells of two eggs I had just used in the banana bread batter. Those eggs came from hens that run free, that greet us when we step from our car, that I've watched chase bugs across the yard. Happy hens

Hello 2015

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I'm starting off the New Year with a very, very, very rough draft of my short story collection finally completed. The last story of the collection took me three years to write. I started over writing it four times as the first three attempts just didn't capture what I was hoping for. Months between starts and stops passed by. Then, recently, just before the end of the semester, as I was calculating grades for one of my classes, the way to write the story presented itself to me. I started writing it the first day of break.                                                                               Today, putting the last period in place on that story was one of the most satisfying feelings I've ever experienced. I still have a lot of rewriting to do to get everything right, I still need to find someone who will read the entire manuscript and give honest, no-holding-back advice, and I definitely have a lot of leg work to do to find a publisher who is willing to give it