Monthly Archives: October 2007

Laura sent me the words to this song the other day. The words are really sweet but I hope to never hear the song. So true that kids just grow up far too fast…

Flying By

Three a.m’s again and again
Comfort the cry
Man, it’s flying by
Swings and slides and tricycle rides
Skinning up knees and falling out of trees
It’s like it’s never gonna end
But it’s flying by
You better hold on tight to those little lives
In the blink of an eye it’s out of sight
I know, I know to go so slow
But it’s flying by
Then it’s braces and boots and bad attitudes
Boys and phones and every change in moods
Trying times, man, but you’ll survive
And it’s supposed to be home at ten
You’re late again
Where the heck you been
When you’re yelling and screaming
It don’t seem like it’s flying by
But it’s flying by
You better hold on tight to those changing lives
In the blink of an eye they’re out of sight
I know, I know it seems so slow
But it’s flying by
There they go on their own
Flying by
You’re waving good bye with a tear in your eye
I know, I know you go so slow but it’s flying by
They come back home and what do you know
Them kids have got some kids of their own
You can’t believe how much they’ve grown
And where the time’s gone
You look in the mirror there’s gray in your hair
You’re wondering how the world did that get there
It just ain’t fair how it’s flying by
You better hold on tight to that sweet, sweet life
In the blink of an eye they’re out of sight
I know, I know it goes so slow
But it’s flying by
When it’s hospital beds
Last words said, did I do enough
Holding hands and being there for the leaving
It’s a line of cars parked on a hill
Family and friends perfectly still
A prayer and a song as they lowered it down into the ground
You better hold on tight it’s a short, short life In the blink of an eye it’s out of sight
I know, I know it seems so slow
Continue reading →

I was zapping through the channels this morning when I got, far too early thanks to Emmy. I stopped for on Good Morning America when I saw these really cool paintings. They are really different, colorful, vibrant, alive! They are done by Marla Olmstead, a painting prodigy who started painting just before her second birthday. Her dad gave her some of his paints to play with so that he could paint without being distracted too much by her. She soon progressed from paintings the size of a standard sheet of paper to canvases larger than herself! She’s 7 now and has had paintings sold internationally for upwards of $10,000. If you check them out, you’ll see why she’s becoming so popular. She uses everything from brushes to spatulas to ketchup bottles to her fingers to apply huge amounts of paint to her canvases. It’s incredible what she can accomplish…but after all she is a descendant of Fredrick Law Olmstead, the landscape architect who designed Central Park! Her paintings are all simply signed, “Marla”. Sometimes with the R reversed. Definitely a site worth checking out www.marlaolmstead.com Continue reading →

At Harvard University last night, awards for the most improbable research were handed out. The prize in medicine was awarded to Brian Witcome and Dan Meyer for their study on the side effects of sword swallowing. Apparently even inclued a live demonstration!

The peace prize went to the Wright Lab of the U.S. Air Force for their “make love not war” research and development of a “Gay bomb” designed to make enemy soldiers sexually irresistible to each other. Also with love on their minds, Patricia V. Agostino, Santiago A. Plano, and Diego A. Golombek from Argentina received the prize in aviation for their discovery that Viagra aids jet lag recovery in hamsters.

Some past winners attended as well. 2006 winner in medicine Francis M. Fesmire, best known for his research on the “Termination of Intractable Hiccups with Digital Rectal Massage,” and MIT graduate Gauri Nanda ’05, winner of the Ig Nobel economics prize in 2005 for her invention of “Clocky” — an alarm clock that runs away and hides, forcing its owner to actually get out of bed to turn it off. Perhaps on my Christmas list…

All this happened and I just watched survivor. The world is sometimes just passing me right by! Check it out www.improbable.com Continue reading →

Everywhere you look, leaves are falling in shades of yellow, oranges and reds. Fall has arrived. Nature’s last hurrah before winter. I remembered this autumn poem and thought I’d post it here…

John Keats (1795-1821)
TO AUTUMN.

1.

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

2.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

3.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
Continue reading →

It seems as though our world is in a constant struggle for success, for happiness, for one-upping each other. We are all caught in the search for the unattainable, true happiness which everyone seems to think comes from success. Perhaps it’s the other way around…success comes from happiness. How can one possibly acheive success when they are unhappy. After I had Emmy, I learned just exactly what “unhappy” was — as a condition, a state of being that really seemed as though it would never end. It makes you realize just how good “happy” or even normal or average can be. Here’s some words from the Dalai Lama on attaining happiness. He certainly looks at things from a different angle than most. Maybe that’s what we all need…

“Consider the following. We humans are social beings. We come into the world as the result of others’ actions. We survive here in dependence on others. Whether we like it or not, there is hardly a moment of our lives when we do not benefit from others’ activities. For this reason it is hardly surprising that most of our happiness arises in the context of our relationships with others.

Nor is it so remarkable that our greatest joy should come when we are motivated by concern for others. But that is not all. We find that not only do altruistic actions bring about happiness but they also lessen our experience of suffering. Here I am not suggesting that the individual whose actions are motivated by the wish to bring others’ happiness necessarily meets with less misfortune than the one who does not. Sickness, old age, mishaps of one sort or another are the same for us all. But the sufferings which undermine our internal peace — anxiety, doubt, disappointment — these things are definitely less. In our concern for others, we worry less about ourselves. When we worry less about ourselves an experience of our own suffering is less intense.

Continue reading →

Last night’s weather was ccccrrrrazy! It was nice when we got home from work. Then, it started pouring rain. Then snow. Then thunder snow storms –which I’ve never quite seen before–then back to rain and thunder. Then it started to snow in chunks — sort of a cross between snow, hail and rain. We, of course, took Emmy out to play in it. She made the funniest face! Sort of grimaced baring her teeth and hid under the edge of the garage with Mark. He did end up taking some pics although I’m not sure how well they turned out. The snow was so weird — it felt like styrofoam in my hand! Really hard to have a snowball fight with, although I’m sure we’ll have enough snow for that before you know it! I hate winter, I hate snow! P.S. I think we’re putting up our Christmas tree this weekend! Woo-hoo! Continue reading →

Urban Word of the Day
www.urbandictionary.com
October 03, 2007: Man Stand
The act of a man standing outside a shop while his wife/girlfriend/partnershops inside.
Man Standing involves looking into space, at other women, or in the case of multi story shopping centers, leaning on the railings of an upper floor watching the people below.

As we will be Christmas shopping soon, Mark needs to practice his man stand. Continue reading →

Okay, I stumbled across this link on http://www.tequilasource.com/cuervoreserva/ looking for the msds for tequila for Mark. Long story, doesn’t make any sense…
Anyways, it’s really kinda cool. Jose Cuervo has had an artist’s collection of their tequila that comes in a different box every year. This pic and excerpt are from this year’s reserve collection but they’ve been doing it for years and years. Forgive me if you’ve seen this before. Perhaps I don’t go tequila shopping as often as I should! I love how the artist describes his work as extremely melancholic…my work would be too if it was on a tequila bottle! Isn’t tequila the origin of melancholy and the “sadness of the universal man”???

José Cuervo Reserva de la Familia – 2007
Pedro Friedeberg – Artist – 2007 Collection
Photograph of tequila bottle and decorative box. Jose Cuervo Reserva de la Familia Tequila 2007 Collection in a box designed by Mexican artist Pedro Friedeberg.

Each year Jose Cuervo uses a different Mexican artist to decorate the box holding the Reserva de la Familia tequila bottle. For this 2007 collection Jose Cuervo presents Pedro Friedeberg.
“Creation is a subconscious and mysterious process. My work is extremely melancholic and I believe that all great work must have some sadness of the universal man, who has not been able to discover the mystery of existence.”
Pedro Friedeberg was born in Florence, Italy in 1936. At the beginning of World War II he came to Mexico where he acquired Mexican citizenship. He studied Architecture at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City and Fine Arts in Boston and Paris.
His painting and sculpture have been exhibited since 1959 in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Madrid, Barcelona, Paris, Munich, Hannover, Lisbon, Tel-Aviv, Guadalajara, Mexico City and Monterrey anomg other cities.
Continue reading →

Julian Beever is a sidewalk artist based in the U.K. whose work has spread through Europe and the U.S. He also does murals and other stuff but the pavement art is, in my opinion at least, the neatest. The subject matter has varied to old masterpieces to Batman and Robin rescuing him from a skyscraper to well, you have to check it out. When his pavement art is viewed at just the right angle, his works are 3-D and uncannily real. He draws it distorted so the pieces makes no sense from the wrong angle. Check out the following link: http://users.skynet.be/J.Beever. Check out the pics of some of them from the wrong angle…definitely weird! Continue reading →

I now have an account and will TAKE OVER THE WORLD!!! MUAHAHAHA!!! Continue reading →