Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Sweet Tea

My sister is back from Canada! She survived! (narrowly). The pics from her trip are insanely beautiful, all crystal clear blue sky, white snow-topped mountains, and perfectly symmetrical conifers. I really miss snow, I haven't seen it in years. Every time I go home it gets too warm for it. I'm really more of a lounging-on-a-tropical-island type of person, but I love the hush that falls over the world with a fresh snowfall, and watching big fat snowflakes drift down from a dark sky into the light before disappearing again into a blanket of snow is a pretty good definition of peacefulness.

Maybe that's one reason Texans seem so foreign to me, they don't really understand, at their deepest levels, the ebb and flow of seasons. Where I grew up, there are 4 distinct, individual seasons, which balance each other and share time equally. I've always claimed summer as my favorite, but living in it year round just isn't right. It needs to be balanced by a winter, and separated from it by a spring and a fall, each in their own time and each with their own personality.

On the other hand, man do I hate the cold! I've considered moving to the equator, Texas is too cold for me sometimes. Like today, I think it got below 60! In February!

Although today was a good day, I got a free cookie! I went to pick up lunch with friends at McAlister's, they have sweet tea! We were getting it to go so I gave them my name and then we hung out for a bit. A few minutes later, a guy called my name and I started to walk over but this lady got there first, grabbed the bag, and like booked it out of there. So I was like, that's weird, maybe another me?, but my friend was like, we should check that out. So we went up and asked, and they didn't have another me, so one of the guys who worked there ran outside and almost threw himself in front of the lady's car to stop her, and talked to her, and got the bag back. Her name was like Lauren, she just really wanted my lunch I guess. But I go there so often (they have sweet tea!) most of the guys there recognize me, and the manager felt bad and gave me a free cookie. And more sweet tea!

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Strawberry Perl

Are you tired of plain old vanilla Perl? Try new strawberry Perl! Garenteeded to make your day a little sweeter ;) Have I mentioned lately that I love Perl? That it is the coolest language ever? And that I have admin rights on my computer at work?

So this is my new workout schedule:
Monday - Stretch class, lots of yoga poses
Tuesday - Belly Dancing class, followed by Kickboxing if I have any feeling left in my legs (not today)
Wednesday - Step class, since I do need remedial lessons in it
Thursday - Ballroom dancing class with boyfriend!

I will be so active! I miss how good I used to feel when I was kickboxing, so now this gives me lots of stuff to do. I'm not focused on losing weight per se, it'd be nice but I just want to move around after sitting in a chair for 8 hours every day.

My little sister's new house. Yes, that's her name over the door. Because she is actually an incarnation of Strawberry Shortcake. (She should really like strawberry Perl then!)

Friday, February 1, 2008

Links

This is an awesome idea: a playground for septuagenarians. That's the cutest thing I've seen all day.

This is also an awesome idea: Don't shoot wolves, President F*ckhead. Can it be clearer that he wants to destroy the world? Seriously.

In better news, my mom is doing great. She was shocked with a defibrillator this afternoon, which put her heart back into its normal rhythm right away. She'll be in the hospital until Sunday or Monday, so they can make sure it stays that way and get all her meds straight, but she should be fine. My sisters said when they went to see her, she proudly proclaimed, "Look! I've got rhythm!" and sit-danced to prove it, so she must be feeling better lol.

In other good news, my sister found a great house in North Carolina! It's huge, beautiful house, 4 bedrooms, 3.5 baths, 2 stories plus a basement, on 4 acres, on a mountain, across the street from a lake, close to places they can work, and 10 minutes from an Applebees. Many of the other houses they had looked at were right across from trailer parks, or 30 miles from a gas station, so when they saw lights on the way to see this house they were very excited to be back in civilization. They will be moving as soon as they can sell their current house, which is also beautiful so hopefully it will go quickly.

My family reminds me of this fabric. We are very easy-going and loose, until one of us is hurt or threatened. When that happens, we all band together instantly, to protect or support as needed, until peace is regained. But I'm far away, still affected by every major creasing, but unable to lend my support and be supported in turn directly.