zzzzzzzzzzzzz

i slept until 9:00 this morning, which is unheard of!

17 massages this week--i was way exhausted last night. sat on the floor and watched Clerks for the first time....

still recovering today, but i've got tomorrow off too. sweet.

you can knock the "p" off of "pms"

....hope that isn't tmi! ha. i'm lazing around today, alternating between yard work and computer dalliance. it's a little cool and overcast today, a nice switch from 85 and sunny.

(i know it seems sacrilegious to complain about "85 and sunny" but for pete's sake it does get monotonous!)

sunday i went and hosted at the sweat. while i was there i signed up to host every sunday morning until the end of may. nothing like helping out (and hosting is by far the easiest way to help out in person) to get one's mind off of the blue meanies. by the way, the new pool is complete and it sure is beautiful! if i only had a digi camera....maybe later this year....

i'm enjoying the speed of the "new" computer, plus paul sold me a used monitor that is way bigger than the one i've been squinting at for the last 7 years. it's amazing! he also told me i can buy a brand new hard drive with 40 GB memory for about 50$....i'm interested.

the reason there are no games on this dell is that he wiped it clean and only installed a few programs to get me going....norton av, internet explorer, mozilla, etc. we will tweak to my little heart's content on monday....i'm looking forward to it!

kinda sorta still here

i'm working from the "new" dell which is set up in my office alongside the sleeping astro--but none of my prefs and programs have been put in here yet. long story short, i'm working with someone else on monday and we will finish the job.

so at least i'm up and running--yippee, and thank you!--but the fact that the dell has NO SOLITARE GAME is much more of a shock than it should have been....i had no idea i was so dependent on that little ritual of "just one game before i logoff."

habits are funny things: we cultivate them--carefully, or carelessly--and then wonder how they got to be so strong!

musings from the morning 'fore the 1st cuppa's down the hatch. ciao for now!

say "goodbye" to the astro

i bought this computer just after thanksgiving of 1999. it's a gateway astro, the pc world's all-in-one answer to the iMac--remember those cool colors it came in?

i was living in a 23' travel trailer (that currently graces my backyard) in the middle of the boonies. suddenly i had access to the world through the power of electricity and telephone lines. (a computer is so much better than television--i still don't have a tv that gets stations--i use it to watch dvd's--but i am on this same computer for hours a day sometimes). meanwhile, i suddenly had email and internet and access to mind candy aplenty, all while living rurally enough to satisfy my personal desire for hermitage. ha.

this box was sold on the attribute of convenience, but it's still a monster that takes up my entire desk. it has 4 GB of memory--your entry-level iPod has more than that! and it's been faltering lately, with the memory so full that i'm now getting the "this program has performed an illegal function and will be shut down" message way too often.

chuck is here to pick it up, and transfer the contents to a new/old box with more memory and faster components, so it's going to be a couple of days until you see me here again.

maybe i'll actually get some of those boxes on the porch emptied out!

ciao for now!

blue meanies

1) pms
2) cleansing diet (except for the chocolate bar i'm having for breakfast today)
3) pms
4) my boyfriend is 1866 miles away
5) pms
6) post-big-event letdown (my boyfriend was here for 3 months, and now he's not)
7) pms
8) low self-esteem
9) pms
10) i was horribly snarky to my boyfriend on the phone yesterday, and i'm afraid to call him again
11) did i mention pms?

?happy? earth day tomorrow

Ecological Footprint Quiz (thanks to justicia for the link!)

i tried to copy/paste my results but the layout was all tweaked, so i'll summarize it and say that my footprint is 8 acres, while the average in my country is 24 acres per person. did you read that right? 24 acres per person!

WORLDWIDE, THERE EXIST 4.5 BIOLOGICALLY PRODUCTIVE ACRES PER PERSON.

wonder what the bush administration's score is?

5 days without our river walks!

& my butt is threatening to take over the entire living room! you never know what something is doing for you until you stop doing it--and i'm ready to start walking again! angus will see the vet again later today, and i hope she gives us the go-ahead to begin exercising again. it's been a long week, worrying about him while i'm gone--mostly that he'll chew the bandage off. so far he's been pretty good about it!

to my favor, i've taken a few yoga classes recently, and yesterday i even went swimming and did just less than a half mile. my shoulders have a tendency to dislocate when i start exercising, until the muscle has built up around the joint sufficiently to support the bony anatomy.

i had a super busy weekend (for me, a self-described "urban hermit"). my teachers Geshe Michael Roach and Christy McNally were in town for the 4th in their series on Spiritual Partnership, on friday and saturday nights. it's always a very emotional event when i see them.

Krishna Das was here for a workshop during the weekend as well, and all 3 of them appeared in a concert together on sunday night. i went to that but didn't stay very long....it was very crowded and i was uncomfortable on the floor. but it was so wonderful to see the 3 of them onstage and hear Krishna Das' amazing voice up close and personal! his tabla player is awesome as well.

and last night, Robert Thurman was at the U of A, giving a lecture on the "Politics of Enlightenment," and was hugely entertaining in addition to being an amazing font of knowledge. before the lecture there was a book signing, so i took my copy of Infinite Life and had him autograph it for me. he is very accessible, affable, and at least one other adjective beginning with the letter "a"!

later this month the 2nd class in the Dharma Essentials courses begins with Lama Marut. chris and i took the first when he was here; they meet once a week for 4 weeks. Lama Marut was ordained by Geshe Michael and used to teach Comparative Religions at UC (not sure which campus). he's a very invigorating teacher and i look forward to hearing him again.

so, buddhism emphasis weekend for me. time to get my ass back on the cushion!

angus' adventures

the other day after our river walk, i noticed angus licking his paw a lot. that's usually indicative of a cut or something, so i got down and gave it a good look. he had split one of his nails and it had torn all the way back to the base, exposing the quick (OUCH). it was quite tender and he didn't want me messing with it. (i still have scars on my leg from the last time i cut his nails, so i didn't want to mess with it either, believe me!)

a call to the vet to see if i could super-glue it back together ended with my making an appointment to take him in yesterday. the vet took one look at it and asked me, "can you leave him for a few hours? we'll need to give him some local anesthesia and trim it all the way back." well, of course i could leave him for a few hours, and i was glad i had been able to get him in before the weekend.

i return to pick him up later and he's so groggy he can hardly stand up. i'm thinking they had to knock him out all the way to do anything with that toe! poor guy, he has a big bandage all around the foot up to his knee! i can hear him walking because the bandaged leg makes a "thud" sound on the ground. he was out of it all last night--very uncharacteristic for this little superball of a puppy--who, by the way, now weighs in at 44 pounds! no wonder it knocks the wind out of me when he pounces on me in the mornings!

this morning he is almost back to normal, and i've explained many times that he musn't chew the bandage off. it's freakin' SATURDAY and all you pet owners know that one definitely doesn't want to visit the vet during emergency hours. i have to go to work soon....fingers crossed that he leaves it alone!

the funny thing is, i took my quarter jar to the bank yesterday and was amazed at how much was in there. i figured i could send some to chris to help finance his next plane ticket (much easier for him to come here than vice-versa)....that, plus the vet bill yesterday, has wiped out the total amount that was in the quarter jar....so i am thankful that i've been saving quarters for the last few years!

today the jar has 2 new quarters in it. starting over yet again....every single day.

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in honor of all the brou-ha-ha about immigration recently, i rented A Day Without A Mexican last night. it's funny and very thought-provoking.

make it a wonderful day!

no camera for photo sunday :(

so here's saturday's recipe today!

Chicken Zowie Salad

1 12.5 oz. can chicken
1/2 C. diced celery
1 apple, chopped
1 C. pineapple chunks, cut smaller (i used frozen instead of canned)
2 T. raisins
2 t. sesame seeds

Combine above ingredients in a bowl, then stir together:

4-5 T. mayonnaise
1-2 t. curry powder (depending on how much you like curry)

Pour over chicken mixture, toss to coat. Garnish with more sesame seeds if you like!

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and here's your laugh for the day:

A tourist walks into a curio shop in San Francisco. Looking around at the exotica, he notices a very lifelike life-sized bronze statue of a rat. It has no price tag, but is so striking he decides he must have it.

He took it to the owner: "How much for the bronze rat?"

"Twelve dollars for the rat, one hundred dollars for the story," said the owner.

The tourist gave the man twelve dollars. "I'll just take the rat--you can keep the story."

As he walked down the street carrying his bronze rat, he noticed that a few real rats had crawled out of the alleys and sewers and began following him down the street. This was disconcerting, and he began walking faster. But within a couple of blocks, the herd of rats behind him had grown to hundreds, and they began squealing.

He began to trot toward the Bay, looking around to see that the rats now numbered in the MILLIONS, and were squealing and coming toward him faster and faster. Concerned, even scared, he ran to the edge of the Bay, and threw the bronze rat as far out into the Bay as he could.

Amazingly, the millions of rats all jumped into the Bay after it, and were all drowned. The man walked back to the curio shop.

"Ah ha," said the owner, "you have come back for the story?!"

"No," said the man, "I came back to see if you have a bronze Republican."

well, i'm in waiora!

congratulate me! i just became a distributor for waiora, the company who is marketing the zeolite formula! cheesis k. reist, i never thought i'd see the day when i joined an MLM--but of course i have a good reason....

when my friends (roy and mb) told me about the product they outlined 3 different ways to get it:
1) buy it retail (really ridiculous),
2) join for 10$ to become a "preferred member" and get the product at "wholesale" (which is what i did), or
3) join for 30$ to become a "distributor," get the product at "wholesale" and then i get to sell to others, etc.

i had no intention of selling this to anyone else until i had tried it myself so the 3rd option seemed like a long shot. i'm not much of a marketer.

2 weeks after i became a "preferred member" i got an email from the company with a *new* price structure. apparently LOTS of people joined at the 10$ level to get their liquid zeolite at cost, and the company figured they could make a little more money on those who just wanted an easy way to get the stuff they want.

here's the *new* price structure:
1) pay retail (still ridiculous)
2) pay 20$ to become a "preferred member" (new folks only) and then pay 10-15% over the wholesale cost for the product, or
3) upgrade to "distributor" and keep the price the same as it has been.

now i thought this was a load of crap, but the answer was obvious. so now i'm a distibutor, AND i'm going to plug "my" new website right here and now!

(drum roll please)

http://www.mywaiora.com/315101

go check it out for yourselves, if you dare!

but just so you know, i will say the NCD (natural cellular defense--their name for the liquid zeolite) is making a difference in me. exactly how, i'm not sure. but i do feel different and have had other people say that i look clearer since i've started using it.

this is really hard for me since on one hand i really don't like MLMs, but on the other hand i've tried this product and it's doing something for me, something good enough that i want to be able to continue to get it at the cheapest price possible.

OH WELL!!!!

:)

for you

click HERE

and enjoy!

it's been a week now,

and something big has shifted within.

i'm simply ok with everything.

what a f*cking luxury, to piss and moan about my lover's being gone--while so many many people on this planet are grappling with mere survival for themselves and their families.

meanwhile, in this very country, lots of peoples' lovers have been sent to iraq....so how much sweeter could my life be than what it already is?

(this is not to say that i don't still piss and moan about my lover's being gone. but i do have a sense of perspective--and a sense of humor--about it all, on the good days.)

i've been meditating more and whining less. think there's a correlation?

i've also been taking a liquid zeolite formula that seems to have been clearing out a bunch of stale garbage from my physical body. i don't know a lot about it, but bought it even though it is sold through an MLM. (i abhor them on principle--but some of them do sell awesome products!) it's also pretty expensive, but people i respect have been giving the product good reviews. gabriel cousens is a naturopathic md and raw foods advocate who runs a healing center a couple hours from tucson called Tree of Life, and he's written a nice endorsement about it. and the folks who recommended it to me personally are in their 60's/70's, but look and act about 15 years younger.

i've been juicing carrots/beets/gingerroot/apples/spinach/cilantro/celery in various combinations as well. seems as though a spring cleaning (in the form of a short fast or monodiet) is soon to come--and it's been Y-E-A-R-S since i did anything like that!

my work is also getting better and better. i think i'm finally getting out of my own way. ha!

thanks to all of you for all of the supportive and kind words. i am amazingly blessed to have found this circle, and envision visiting as many of you as i can in the next few months. planning a road trip to st. paul would allow me to include new mexico, iowa, and minneapolis in the itinerary!