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I made some dough and left it to rise in the late afternoon sunshine. The resultant rolls it made were sweet and fluffy - the perfect accompaniment to our tofu burgers!
An unremarkable moment for this date stamp...
Today turned out to be an unwanted day off (i.e., unpaid), so I started off the day by doing my laundry. As I passed the Ukrainian Catholic Church on the way to the laundromat, I noticed the three mosaics on the front. The picture doesn't do it justice. It's much gold-er looking, and alas, the tall building across the street blocks the sun from really hitting it and making it truly sparkle, but it's still a beautiful work of art that I'm sure church-goers find inspirational. In fact, when I passed by on my way back from the laundromat (still before 12 noon) I saw that an ice cream truck driver had parked his truck by the church and was standing in front, praying (the gates were locked). An interesting Queens scene.
A day of meetings. One runs into the next. The morning... becomes a blur. Time flies when you’re having fun? Run out, grab a bite, run back, continue to work. Another Power Lunch at the bottom of the Food Chain.
Fullness of day met vulnerably, its loveliness revealed as an orange, peeled and sectioned, through threshold and window lattice. Mouths of words
Eat and learn.... When we were getting ready to move to Shanghai from Louisville, Kentucky, we were advised by other expats to bring as much of our favorite U.S.-snacks as possible as they might not be available in China. Or, if they were, they'd be expensive — at least twice the U.S. price. It's hard to pay nearly $5 U.S. dollars for a bag of goldfish crackers, when I was paying $1.69 in the States. It doesn't matter how much my three kids beg me to buy them. I started exploring the local supermarket for alternatives. Through constant buying and trying, I've found some great snacks not just from China, but other countries as well. The mini ice cream cones in the photo are a very popular brand in the U.K. The muesli from Germany is excellent with the locally made peach yogurt. The chocolate-coated digestive cracker from Korea is not too sweet and has great chocolate flavor. The red bean mochi from Taiwan, while not as good as freshly-made, are still tasty. The foods themselves are not so different from what we ate in the U.S., yet the unfamiliar characters or different words on the packaging spark conversations among my children about where the food could be from. Snack time then turns in to a mini geography lesson, and all of a sudden we're learning about the rest of the world — one snack at a time.
While people are wrapping up their days at GMT 5pm, our little corner of Singapore is asleep...well, almost! The whole world seems ensconced in darkness and the only things visible are the time on the clock radio and the lights on the baby monitor. It's nice basking in the silence of the night after a chaotic day of toddler activities, daily chores and American Idol. See you in the morning Singapore.
Note: Art La Flamme is on leave from his duties in Tikrit, Iraq. This photo was taken from his home on base at Oahu, Hawai'i.
Well, as befits the run up to a Bank Holiday, the weather is gearing down for the occasion - pretty overcast and a bit chilly, so I'm indoors tidying up my storyboard files. Fred, my very able artist's model was pressed into service for the fight scenes and is now offering his opinion on the resulting sketches.
I spent the day writing and doing admin tasks, taking breaks to stare out of the window and up at the clouds.
Well, 11:00 is when the phones are turned on at my job, so here's the phone. To the right you'll see the wall of the cubicle - not quite sure why there's a bottle of white-out behind the phone (I don't think I've used white-out since college). This is the moment before the onslaught - the first two hours are always the busiest. Lucky for me that with the economy being the way it is, people are still interested in going to the theatre at all.
Another day — another 50¢ (and that’s before taxes).
Today is two days before the 135th Kentucky Derby. A former Derby horse, Perfect Drift, grazes by a parking lot at Churchill Downs. If memory serves, he came in third in the 2002 race. I thought, how wonderful to have already completed your best run!
This image perfectly captures the last four years. Sunlight pouring out of the east, lighting the way to school (straight ahead for five blocks), or the ocean (turn right at the stop light).
5 days, 4 runs, 30 miles. My soles are like alligator skin. I managed to get a blister on the arch of my foot. And I have a blister on a blister, on a blister that has now popped.
But these aren't complaints; this is my reality. I'm a runner, and these things won't stop me.
A couple of weekends ago, you took a trip to the nursery to purchase some annuals. On the face of it, buying the flowers was a necessity: the yard was starting to look long in the tooth, abandoned, as if its owners had already begun checking out, moving on. A sprinkle of color underneath the olive tree would suffice — some reds and whites and a dash of impatiens whose petals resembled an Orange Creamsicle seemed to make all the difference in the world. And while it was true that the neglected-looking yard did need sprucing up, the need to plant flowers went beyond aesthetic.
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