signs of times

on the eve of the SAT language with listening test J2 receives an urgent request to borrow our trusty portable CD player.

it appears that portable CD players have become extinct on store shelves. iTunes has taken over the world.

splinter skills

what some people do on facebook that defy the concept of networking:
they only:

1. make new friends, or
2. play games, or
3. wish people "happy birthday".

put up your own status update, puh-leeze!

calendar countdown

why this is my favorite time:
1. thanksgiving
2. christmas
3. baking (other people's, i mean)
4. the colors
5. the weather (for a bit anyway)
6. HOM going on leave
7. food network (see #1,2,3,6)

one for the books

lovely windy fall day today.

the best way to enjoy these

 is to stay indoors

next to a sunny window and

next to the portable heater.

morbidity

the 'phone rings. the caller id says hospital emergency. my heart goes pitter-pat. the voice asks for dr so-and-so. my heart stops skittering.

i love wrong numbers. 

malodor

the house smells of kimchi, on account of J2's breakfast of kimchi and gingerbread cake. 

we are nothing if not unorthodoxly odoriferous.

two books

i'm working my way through these:
poorly made in china - paul midler (2008)
the cost of discipleship - d bonhoeffer (1948)

an american in china and an anti-hitler german in the second world war, both in their thirties. i begin to think it is unfair to toggle M with B simply because it shows him up in such a supremely unflattering light. B writes elegant strong prose with minimal superfluity. M is jejune by comparison and brash to boot. B's thinking is clear organized and logical. M has some logic i am still trying to decipher. also, B is clean. i expend energy anticipating M being off color.

having my expectations of american writers shaped by robin wright paul yergin and thomas friedman is unkind to paul midler i suppose. investigative journalists are not busy businessmen. but then neither are they a wartime theologian, and that one holds up well enough. i guess what i'm saying is, if you don't write well, and you write commercially, get help.

just call me Princess

the fellow at the counter at the pizza store/ deli/ cellphone repair shop/ helpline wants my first name to put me into the line waiting for service. 

all i say is, why? 

i get that we are all equal and do not lord it over one another. are we therefore intimate?

the agony & the ecstasy

reading this week:

indulgence in death - j d robb
poorly made in china - paul midler
insights on romans - c swindoll
the cost of discipleship - d bonhoeffer

11.1.11

just for the fun of it.