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Yesterday was a weird day, sunny and windy part of the day, then there were some brief but cold and sharp downpours, and there was hail in some nearby cities but not at my home. Late in the afternoon I was taking out the trash when I saw this. It’s a terrible shot because I had to zoom a lot to see across the San Francisco Bay, but it was stunning. The sky over our side of the bay was really dark, but across the bay (I’m not certain, but I think that it’s Millbrae/Burlingame in the photo) the sun was shining and it looked like the surface of the water was glowing. Also, it appears the wet streets were shining in the sun. It was just … very striking.

Rebecca checked a Dinotopia book out from the library the other day and yesterday taught herself the Dinotopian alphabet. She made a key card first, then started hand-writing notes on index cards, but it was pretty tedious. I carved her a stamp (which is how they write in the movies/tv show, with a stamp) and now she can write pretty quickly. And she’s MUCH better at reading it than I am, while I’m laboriously looking up each letter, she’s got it down.

Some months ago, I started drinking a lot more tea than coffee. I still drink coffee, but tea is my main thing for now. I started off with Peet’s English Breakfast, which I love, but at a little over $6 for a box of 20 bags, I was kind of “meh” on continuing to buy it all the time. Andrea wrote in my comments that she likes Tetley, so when I saw it at my Safeway one day, I picked up a box and I really liked it, it’s mild but flavorful, and inexpensive. And now that I’m hooked, my freakin’ Safeway has apparently stopped carrying it! Grrrr. I picked up a box of Red Rose the other day, to try, but I don’t like it nearly as much (although Becca wants me to buy ALL THE BOXES for the little Wade figurines, we got a grey stack of books that isn’t very exciting) and I’m very irritated. Stupid store. I’ve tried Lipton, too, but it tastes burned or something, blech.

Living the Questions.  It was coincidental I read this entry on “Throwing Marshmallows” today because I started reading “Letters to a Young Poet” last night (this is my second or third reading, I love that book!).  I didn’t get to this part yet, but I’m going to find it tonight because it’s a good lesson for me right now.  Live the questions.

Firsts: Diet Coke Virgin Does Taste-Test, Vomits – Coke – Jezebel.  I loved this story.  I don’t drink soda very often at all, and it’s always either rootbeer or regular Pepsi.  We occasionally get fancy carbonated juicy drinks when we’re out, like the blood orange one at Trader Joe’s, I think that’s pretty much soda, right?  But really, 3 or 4 times a year isn’t often.  But omg, you couldn’t pay me to drink a Diet Coke.  I don’t have a “history” with Coke like the author of the story, but I think it’s pretty foul just the same.

Woman charged in breast milk assault on jailer. I read this at a moment when I *really* needed a laugh.

One thing about being a parent, for me anyway, I’ve been dreading the day when Rebecca starts listening to pop music. I don’t intentionally shield her from what other girls her age are listening to, but because we don’t have a television, I think it’s sort of happening by default. She’s watched Hannah Montana and some other shows on television at friends’ houses and told me she thought they were “sort of stupid,” (which is saying a lot for her, “stupid” is not a word we use lightly in our family). She’s had friends play popular music for her and she’s been mostly “meh” about it. I’m going to do my best to be tolerant of whatever musical tastes she develops, but for now I’m having fun introducing her to things I like.

Sometimes when we go to bed, Becca and I take my iPod with us. We have a splitter thingy so we can use two pairs of headphones. Sometimes we just put it on shuffle, other times she hunts down some song she loves and plays it over and over (and over) until my head explodes. Sometimes we listen to one of my playlists, or I surf around for songs I think she might like.

Last night was sort of a combo night, but here’s a list of songs she either sang along with, asked for a repeat of, or tapped feet/ clapped/snapped/head-bobbed to, and then requested I put them on *her* ipod (which isn’t a “real” ipod, just a cheapie mp3 player):

Non je ne regrette rien – Edith Piaf
Home – Magnetic Zeros
Saving Grace – Everlast
My Eyes – Dr. Horrible Soundtrack
Defying Gravity – Glee cast
Nth Degree – Morningwood
Elephant Love Song Medley – Moulin Rouge soundtrack
Abantwana Basethempeleni – Ladysmith Black Mambazo
Heart & Soul – T’Pau (hahaha, who remembers that song???)
Temptation Inside Your Heart – Velvet Underground
Memories Are Made of This – Dean Martin
Alice’s Restaurant – Arlo Guthrie

Let me tell you, I couldn’t help be tickled to see her hitting the pause-rewind-forward to try to memorize the words to an Everlast song, heh.

I finished another one of the Percy and the Olympians books and have requested the next one from the library. I’m enjoying the series. Rebecca and I are reading Akiko and the Planet Smoo series and liking it Very Much, we just picked up books two and three at the library today. I also finished Dismantled by Jennifer McMahon. It’s one of those books that I have a hard time saying I liked a whole lot, but I finished it really fast, it kept my attention. I just started Drucula Un-Dead by Dacre Stoker (relative of Bram even), an impulse pick-up from the library. I love the original, so I was wary of this, and I’m only about 50 pages in so it could go badly, but so far it’s pretty good (oh hahaha, I just looked at the amazon page and the reviews are mostly pretty grim, doh!).

Today’s song has been in my head off and on since I first heard it on Daily Coyote in a video of Charlie and Chloe. The talking part in the middle reminds me of Mickey and Sylvia.

I don’t go out for coffee that much. It’s ’spensive, yo! I go out by myself once a month or so, hang out at the coffee shop with a book and my ipod. Or sometimes Rebecca and I will “do school” at a cafe for a change of scenery. Twice in the last couple of weeks, we’ve been caught in the rain and stopped in a coffee shop to wait out a downpour. Last week we went to a Starbucks, today we went to Peet’s (I much prefer Peet’s!). What follows is me and Ed texting about my coffee:

A: Don’t be tempted by the dark cherry mocha at starbucks, it tastes like a mocha spiked with cough syrup.
E: Ew.
A: Raspberry mocha at peets is yum, tho.
E: Starbucks pretty much sucks now, they should just merge with jack in the box or something.

I first saw The Chieftains at Guinness Fleadh in 1998 (where I saw lots of awesome music! Tracy Chapman and X! It was awesome and the beer was good, they had Bass, too, I didn’t have to drink the dark stuff). They are such a delight to see live, the music is fabulous and the guys are funny. Ed took me to see them, and that was even better, we saw them in Santa Cruz at the civic auditorium, it was very small and more casual. One of the guys was showing us photos of his cat, heh. I was listening to the An Irish Evening while I was kneading the bread. Will the bread be different for all the happy music?

The song above is one I first heard done by Jerry Garcia & David Grisman. If you search for Shady Grove at youtube, you come up with some interesting stuff. Doc Watson’s version is wonderful and there’s a surprising version from The Andy Griffith Show, the vocals are purposely over the top, but the musicians are fab.

Symphony Space – Selected Shorts.  Tonight is B.D. Wong reading Sherman Alexie and it’s fabulous.

It’s been a … week. PMS on top of stressful crap, I’m sort of a wreck. I baked a cake today. I don’t have a photo of the cake.

I’ve been watching Brothers & Sisters on DVD. I’ve never been very interested in it, it was just an impulse thing from the library and it turned out I like it a lot. I absolutely adore Sally Field, she’s so flippin’ funny. And in her 60s, she manages to look like a teenager, jeez. The guy who plays Justin looks a lot like my brother, it’s freaky! In one episode there was a song I loved, Ellen McIlwaine singing Steve Winwood’s song “Can’t Find My Way Home,” which is absolutely amazing. I couldn’t find it online, but here’s another one, god she’s fantastic (video qualities were pretty iffy for most of her live songs, lots of them cut off before the song was really over, ugh!).

I made this spider a couple of weeks ago. Rebecca and I got a book about bugs, and drawing bugs, from the library, and this was my favorite (of the ones I did). I did a cute little caterpillar, too.

I don’t know if you read novels or the magazines
if you love the hand that feeds you
I assume that your heart’s been bruised
I’d like to know you