Goddess's Gift of Artistic Talent

The Tarot has long been a passion of mine. I read cards when I was a kid....then again as a teenager, then kept the fire of inquisitiveness all through my 20s, 30s and now my 40s. I have acquired quite a few decks and told quite a few fortunes using the Tarot. I collect different decks and study their images to see what the artists' interpretations are of the 78 doors of wisdom. It's a wonderful passion to have. To read tarot cards for people and to study their images and absorb the interpretations of hundreds of different artists, but now, I've got a new high. :)

Well, my friend, Holly Glenn, whom I work with and at one time lived with (in that plantonic "roommate" way), has begun her own Tarot deck. It is wonderful! I am posting her first card here, and also a link to her website is on the right side of this page under my favorite links so you can watch the progress of this deck. :) This will be the one and only time I post one of her images here - you'll have to check her website to get a fix of her latest.

Look at that card! Look at that face! Full of knowing and intelligence yet as innocent and fresh as friggin' spring rain. Strength. This card depicts the purest of that attribute. The ability to know, to reason, to maintain and direct with reason those impulses which, if not controled could utterly consume you. To feel gently confident and aware of the world around you. Look how keen her eyes are. There is nothing that will get past her, and yet there isn't a drop of menace in her. She simply doesn't need it.

Isn't it amazing? And I have to say that this is a really cool experience for me because, well, I've been collecting and looking into artist's interpretations of these 78 mysterious cards for friggin' 25 years now - and now here is an artist that I know and care about making her own interpretations of these cards tangible to me. It really is difficult to describe the experience. I saw one of her cards "in progress" this morning - the Death card, and it blew me away. It was so surreal to see this card whose incarnation I had studied in dozens of different decks to now be presented through her fresh eyes. It's a knockout.

I'll be writing the book for this deck. She didn't ask me to, I volunteered. I will start it when she is halfway through the majors. It will be a labor of love and an honor to participate in the project. I'm really looking forward to it.

So, the Goddess's gift of artistic talent definitely has been given to Holly - she is the vessel through which moves the divine force of creation. But that gift is also a gift to those of us who it touches and moves.

So....
Thank you Goddess...
Thank you Holly....

This is going to be a lot of fun.

Az

Ode to a Brownie....

Brownie, oh brownie,
How sweet and chocolaty...
brownie, oh brownie,
Oh what you do to me....
Brownie, oh brownie,
with tiny bits of green,
Brownie, oh brownie,
You make me feel so serene...
Brownie, oh brownie,
If only I could have another,
Brownie, oh brownie,
Please don't tell my mother.

Okay...well the above SUCKS ASS. But the confection that inspired this entry was WICKED WONDERFUL! It was given to me by a friend last night. I loved it! Thank you GOD, GODDESS and M! (You know who you are.)

The only problem was that I didn't heed the advice I was given along with the heavenly confection. And, thinking that it wasn't working after 45 minutes, gobbled up the whole thing. Man....did I ever get a surprise about 3/4 of an hour after that....HE-LLO! WOW! I thought the Care Bears were dancing around the living room! (not really, but, had they shown up, it would not have been much of a surprise.) Woooo! I felt like if I leaned forward, I'd fall over and just keep falling and falling and falling. I could feel every muscle in my body, tense, relax then tense again....and I had non-stop chatter in my head. Straight trippin, that's the only way to say it, baby.....

Thanks again! Sure cleared out the cobwebs in my head too!

Az

Happy Friggin' Valentine's Day Ya'll

Well, here we are again, another Hallmark Holiday. I have my problems with these things that feed the florists and the card manufacturers....but then again, there is a place for it in society. Especially a society like the one we live in today where it's hard enough to remember to say hello and be there for your family that LIVES IN YOUR HOUSE , much less have time to acknowledge your friends, your extended family, your parents, etc... Valentines Day is a good holiday for not only acknowledging your sweetheart, but taking the time to say "Be My Valentine" to all your friends as well. Remember how we used to do it in school, with all the cheesy valentines and the white bags and the construction paper? That was pretty cool. So, I've made you all a Valentine to remind you of those times. Here it is:


Happy Valentines' Day ya'll, and may you get a great big kiss from that special someone or someone(s) on your heart throb list. I know I will be getting my share! OH! Was that out loud?

Peaceful Musings after 1:00 a.m.

That crazy Canuck buddy of mine says I have "a nice ass." Well, that's mighty sweet of you Gwynnie, and I wish you Goddess-speed in your travels and will see you next in March.

So my little "church group" bid farewell to some of our number this even. They are forming their own group and will no longer be part of our core family. It was a bittersweet time. We are all happy that they will have their own group since they had to travel such a long way to attend services with ours. But we will miss their energy and their presence. Ah, but the wheel turns, doesn't it my friends?

The wind was really blowing today. I took my daughter out for a little quality mom and daughter time today and we went to a park in Edmonds where we got out of the car and experienced the power of the wind and watched the big Douglas Firs sway back and forth bending with the breath of the great Mother.



Today's picture is of a special spot that I have about 3 miles from home. It's a place I've been going to for years and I call it my "cathedral" - it is my cathedral in the real world like my web page is in the virtual world. It's very peaceful there and the beauty is so overwhelming that it brings tears to your eyes.

Well, it's after 1:00 am, and there's not much more to say. But yet, Gwynn, you did say I have a nice butt, and for that , I thank you! ;)

Bright Blessings,
Az

Do What You Love, and No Tellin' What You'll Wind Up Drivin'

Hi-deee Ho! Well, it's January 24, 2006 and all is right with the world. I am at work, lunch time just beginning for me - the first part of which I will take to write a few words on ye olde blogspot. The picture you see here was taken on Sunday when my daughter and I went out for coffee and were driving around together. I mortified my 16-year old by chasing these old dudes down and leaping from the car and asking if I could take their picture. This is the result:


The camera, however, did not capture the look of absolute joy that was on these guys' faces. This is an accomplishment for them. They are building this car themselves, it is a work in progress and you could tell that them taking it out for a spin was some kind of victory dance. Maybe it was the first time it had been out of the garage. I regret not sticking around and asking them more questions about it, but hindsight is always 20/20. At the time it seemed enough just to get the picture. It was also pretty amusing to have my daughter all hunkered down in her seat, writhing in her embarrassment over her over-bold mom. :) She is also a Saggitarius, but not yet a full-grown one. Time will show her the nads she needs to do stuff like this, and how much fun it can be.

I just wanted to show off these old geezers who are making a cool little car and totally enjoying themselves.

Ciao and blessed be, baby!

2006 is Well Under Way

I haven't read a single piece of news since the beginning of the year and I can't actually say that I intend to. Keeping up with current events was one of my loosely formulated notions which passed for a sort of resolution this year. Let's see, I want to keep more informated (yeah....) about what is going on in the world around me, lose 20 pounds of fat and take on 100 pounds of confidence - you know...THAT sort of thing.

Keeping up with current events, however, is a double-edged sword and I know it is. I remember from the days when I was politically active and, by virtue of being vocal and interested, wound up being a delegate to the state convention for the party I was interested in at the time (no...I can't tell you which one that was because I can't fucking stand the idea of ever having been so sheared off at the ears as to have been a registered, card-carrying Republican. Blech, kak!)

But, again, as ever, I digress....back to the double-edged sword: I think you can actually cause your blood pressure to rise to dangerous levels by keeping up with what's going on out there. Those bumper stickers that say "if you're not pissed off, you're not paying attention" are absolutely 100% CORRECT. And, who the hell needs that kind of grief in their lives. My life is full and busy without knowing what's going on, but then there's a rub there. The rub is that this friggin' country could be invaded tomorrow and I wouldn't have any idea what was going on. I wouldn't be able to see it coming, because I've had my head in the sand so long I don't know which way the wind is coming from.

What is the point of this discussion....absolutely none. Like the rest of this blog, it is a wank. A way to get it out of my head. Blogger is a penseive for the masses - Professor Dumbledore's got nothin' on us, baby. Instead of sticking a wand up by our ears and trailing the thoughts out of our heads into smoking cauldrons, we put them on blogspots where they are never read nor accessed by anyone (except perhaps those who are with homeland security and are completely bored out of their skulls from having to look at this idiotic drivel all day) except perhaps by ourselves. We may want to go in and look at these thoughts again someday, and that's what the blogger is good for.

Thank you, blogger. I appreciate the fact that I can divest myself of my mental crappola in a public forum and come back and see it later.

Az

Another Phase Complete

Well, the picture here is of me with a group of friends who have completed a year-long class. It was a journey of learning about lots of esoteric stuff and about each other. It was an experience in committment without monetary or tangible personal gain of any kind and it was a great time. I will miss seeing these crazy people and wish them all well on their respective life paths.

This weekend also FINALLY saw the end of the Christmas 2005 happenings. Thank goodness! Kristopher's family was not all in the area for the actual holiday so they wound up scheduling their gift giving event and dinner for January 7 - and we showed up for a while, but had to leave quite early (and before Aunt Pat's beautiful roast came out of the oven which was a shame) to go to our last class.

We got gift cards to Trader Joes, which we turned into food today, and gift cards to Half Price books which we promptly burned through this evening. I got another Astrology book. This one has TABS. :) and a book on a Bardic journey. One of my new year's resolutions is to read a lot more - a thing that is made even easier by riding the bus to work every day, which was another of my new years resolutions in order to save money (the husband and I were spending an obscene amount of money on parking) and also I want to learn a lot more about astrology this year. It's going to be a bumper year for witchcraft in general, I think. Lots of cool stuff to do.

I had lunch today with my friend Karen and her friend Linda (whom I knew from being in one of Karen's fashion shows). We had such a good time and I did a little shopping at Victoria's Secret which made me feel very girlie indeed.

It was a great day. My husband tells me it is time to go to bed and the clock on the wall is chiming midnight to back him up. Blessed be all, and to all a good night.

Az

Welcome to 2006

Wooo Hooo! It's 2006, and I think it's going to be a really great year. I woke up on New Year's Day and the first thought in my mind was the following:

2004 was a year for betrayal and pain
2005 was a year for coping and managing
2006 is going to be a year for healing and growing.

I feel like this was a message from the Goddess within, which is why I've chosen this image to post. I was going to write a blog entry about the New Year's party that Kristopher and I attended, which was held at our friends' Jaime and Melanie's house, and post a picture of my drunken husband standing beside his friend the host and another one where he appears to be finishing off a half-gallon of vodka, but I ultimately decided that I would share this story instead.

Maybe I'll post the drunk pictures later - but right now I feel like 2006 is going to be about something finer. It's going to be about spiritual and personal growth - it's going to be about wounds healing and becoming faint memories, it's going to be about helping people and giving attention to family and friends and spouses and children.

Blessed be to all who read this. I know it's corny, but fuck it....sometimes life just gets you all mushy inside.

Az

Christmas 2005 Fades into History....

Well, the Christmas and Yule holidays are done. We all had a great time, and, like most of the holidays since we've owned our house, the event was held here. That's pretty cool, and I love it, but I am indeed glad it is done.

Andrea, Kristopher and I all agreed to open one present on the night before Christmas Eve when everyone else was due to make their appearance. Mostly because I thought Kristopher was going to explode from excitment, which I found very adorable and endearing.

Here is a picture of him opening his remote control Evo, which was a 1/14th scale model of the car from 2 fast 2 Furious. I thought he would love it, and he did. Take a look at his face:


Next, we have a picture of Andie opening her pre-Christmas eve gift. It is a charm bracelet with all manner of kitty charms on it. Andie volunteers for the Purrfect Pals organization and sure loves her kitty friends. It was a very appropriate bracelet for her and I think she liked it quite a bit.


After this festive bit of present opening, oh! and I opened one too, it's just that I was taking the pictures and didn't get a photo of the beautiful amethyst earrings purchased for me by my sweetie. Anyway, we headed over to our friends' house where we took and polished off a bottle of Vanilla Rum. It was definitely some good stuff.

So, the next day brought Christmas Eve and the rest of the family. Kristopher's mother, his brother and my son and daughter-in-law.

This next picture is of my grown son, Tim, opening a Nerf gun that I got him. He is an autonomous adult with bills and a wife and all the rest of the hassle that the rest of us have, but he's still my little boy, and I thought he could use a toy. And, from the look on his face, I think maybe....just maybe, he agrees.


There aren't a lot of pictures of me, and that I am quite okay with. However, I didn't want to get left out of the festivities altogether, so here is one of the nifty presents that I got from my mother-in-law and my brother-in-law combined. I am holding it up like a trophy:


And, last but not least, a photo of Kristoper with his brother and his mother sitting on our sofa.


Christmas was a great time, and one that shall go down as one of the better ones I've had in my 40 years. However, I must say that I am not unhappy that it is over and done with. It is a lot of work every year, but well worth it.

I will tell you, however, (whomever is reading this if anyone) that I rested on Christmas day itself, but the next day (today) busied myself the entire day wrapping and putting away every Yule decoration in the house including the outside lights and wreaths. NO sense in dragging the holiday on any longer than it already goes, and, for the most part, that stuff had been up in our home since about December 1. So, in my book, it was time. I drive around the neighborhoods and see the die-hard Yulers with their decorations on that will be lit until New Year's Eve, and I am grateful for them, but still can't seem to stand that for myself. I think it is the same gene that makes me put everything in the suitcase away as soon as I am back from a trip and get the suitcase tucked back in the attic or the rafters or wherever it came from.

Anyway, OCD nothwithstanding, I must say, in the words of Tiny Tim in A Chistmas Carol....God Bless Us, Every One. And I mean that. May we all be blessed with the good sense and manners to be thankful for the things we have, and may we be blessed with the spirit of generosity to share those things with those less fortunate than ourselves and with the inate understanding of how to make our world a better place.

I'll be talkin' to you.

Az

Krikey! It's almost Christmas!

Well, I'm back again. I thought I was gonna wait until after the gift-giving madness to put up another post, but why wait. The fun just never stops! Work today has been about as hectic as I've seen it in a long while - and we were counting on some blow off time with the supervisor gone! :)

My friend and co-worker had to run out of here like his clothes were on fire because he got online and found out that someone was making big withdrawals from his bank account and when he tried to call his bank to get it corrected, they kept hanging up on him. Poor bastard. It's not like he and his wife have a lot of money either. I hope it get straightened out quickly and doesn't cost him a lot of money. He's such a nice guy....what a friggin' drag man.


So, I'm posting a new picture today - largely because I don't really want the Willy Nelson Bush-Face to be the first thing I see when I log on. Maybe that's what spurs these super-bloggers. They take a look at the shit they've posted and decide that they need to bury it!

This picture expresses pretty much how most people feel after the year-end holidays are done. I was very fortunate this year in that I got an abundance of holiday spirit - and not that it couldn't get squished....I'm pretty sure that a run in with something like my co-worker is looking at would squish it really good for me....but the normal flurry isn't going to squish it or put out its light in any way. So, I'm thankful. I'm thankful for the return of the light....the promise of longer days and shorter periods of darkness. The promise of spring and of the summer to follow. Yeah....all that good witchy stuff.

Stay tuned. I'll write more later.

One Down, One to Go

Hello all....I am checking in after getting one Yule celebration done and while looking forward to another.

My witchy family had their doin's last night and it was a good time. I got a siler Bacchus wine caddy that slips over a bottle of wine and lets you pour it as if it had a handle. It's pretty cool. We had a good Yule service as well. Jumped and chanted and carried on like fools. It was a goo dtime.

Yule is the time of year when we Wiccans celebrate the return of the light to earth. The "birth" if you will, of the son of the Goddess - the son who will eventually grow up to be her consort at the time of Beltaine. It's a great time.

I'm including a rather obscene picture here that was sent sent to me and to the husband by a friend of ours. It was one of a whole album that of people who did body painting for a painted body jamboree in Florida. I'll bet this chick didn't get any sex while she had this thing on! :)

Anyway, just wanted to say "hi."

Happy Holidays again....
Az

Bizarre Universe

I've been intending to write a post about one of the wierdest things that has ever happened to me, but I've been crazy-busy like everyone else and so have just now found the time.

Allow me to tell you a little story about a funny thing that happened to me on the way back from singing at Pike Market on Friday, December 2.

I was with my good friend Susan and we were walking down the street together, back toward our office. Susan was wearing reindeer antlers on her head even though we were about five blocks from where we had been perfoming and she bqsically just looked like a middle aged woman wearing huge antlers and walking down the street. We were talking about how ridiculous she looked when we were approached by a beautiful, young, African American woman. She was dressed stylishly in suede cloth pants, nice boots, and a tailored jacket. Her hair was long and straight, she was wearing a spunky little hat on her head and she walked right up to me and said, "you look like a nice person. You deserve a gift." And she handed me this:


Okay. I'm thinking 'this is weird.' But the tea basket was nice so I extended my hands and took it from her - then I asked her why. She looked at me and she looked at Susan and she said, "well, it was a gift for my husband. But he's out to lunch with his secretary who he's having an affair with, so you get it." I was so stunned. I didn't know what to say. So, she leaves it in my hands, waves goodbye to Susan and I and says "have a nice day." When I found my voice again I called down the street after her that if she wanted to kick his ass, I had some time. But I don't think she heard me. At any rate, it was an odd thing to happen to me - at least I thought it was odd and it was extra coincidental and synergistic since I had done battle on the same side of an affair as she was on and looked at it much differently.

I tucked the tea basket under my arm and Susan and I went back to work. For several days it sat in my office unopened. I wasn't sure that I wanted to keep it, given its origins and I certainly didn't want to keep it if it was destined for someone else. (we witches put a lot of stock in the purpose and patterns of things)

Okay....here's what I noodled out that this was about, or at least the meaning I assigned to it.

1. It showed me that there is a different way to look at things. That you can know that someone is betraying you and you can hold your head high and just go on about your life - not allowing the betrayal to get you down. (No, I am not so naive as to believe that this young woman didn't later get upset and do a lot of crying or had not already done a lot of crying on the subject before she tea'd me - but she was definitely going to be A-Okay no matter what happened, and THAT is what I think I was meant to see.

2. She was gorgeous. All I could think about was how beautiful she was and what kind of moron would be double-dealin her. This made me feel better about the whole self-image thing that gets crushed when someone has an affair on you. I am not physically inadequate - I am not unlovely....my husband's bad decision was just that - a bad decision and it would have been that way no matter WHAT I looked like.

3. She was the embodiment of the Goddess - showing me in a real life example what strength and self confidence can look like in a situation like this.

So...that was enough for me. I decided to keep the tea basket for my own and absorb at least these lessons as I ate and drank its contents.

I've been getting steadily better since August - and this was another good-sized stepping stone. How very odd....I would really love to thank this young woman. And I do. I thank her in words and feelings woven into the great tapestry that is our collective destiny. I thank her by drinking tea out of the little gold teapot that came in the basket and thinking of her and wishing her well. I thank her by growing in self-confidence and scraping off another layer of hopelessness and helplessness and arming myself with the shield and sword of confidence and healing.

It is definitely a bizarre universe, and I for one am grateful.

Blessed Be.

And then there is that

Can you believe it's already December?????

Hi everyone! Well, with Thanksgiving behind us, we still have a lot of holiday-ing to do. today marks the first day of the official month of Christmas. While I am a pagan and don't celebrate Christmas in the Christian sense of the word, I certainly enjoy celebrating the secular elements of Christmas and combining them with the witch's sabbat of Yule - which is the celebration of the returning of the light. Lemme tell ya, at this lattitude, the return of the light is something to celebrate indeed! And it goes really fast. It seems like one day you're watching it get dark at 3:00 p.m., and then, just after Yule, it starts to get later and later. Living in the Pacific Northwest is a wonderful thing. Our house is totally decked-out for the holidays.
We have lights and garlands and a beautiful tree that already has PRESENTS UNDER IT! YAY!

My birthday is nestled in December pretty soon. I dont want to make a big fuss, but I guess we're going to have some friends over, which is just dandy with me. So long as I don't ahve to do any of the cooking, buying or cleaning up after. I love being a Saggitarius. It makes life plenty interesting to be of the sign known for mutable fire. That means that you're passionate about things, but you're not a pit-bull when it comes to getting and idea stuck in your head.

I'm sitting at work now about to finish up for the day, but thought I'd check in with my blog spot on this the first day of the official month of Yule.

Blessed Be Everyone! I'll upload some pictures of the Holiday window I'm painting when I get the design more firmly set in my head.

Az

Turkey Day 2005 - call it a Wrap!

Excellent. Thanksgiving 2005 went off without a hitch. We had 15 people here in our little castle in Lynnwood - all to a sit-down style dinner with linen napkins, water glasses and salad forks, baby. It was a good time all the way around. Today is the infamous "busiest shopping day of the year" - which means that I will be avoiding all retail establishments as though they were giving away e-bola at the door. My daughter, who is turning 16 years old tomorrow, wants to go get her nails done anyway - so I guess I gotta be down for that.

I've got all of the Fall decorations in a bag and am preparing to take them out to the garage and put up the Yule decorations. It is an endless parade of decorative stuff around this house from the beginning of October onward. :) Maybe one of these days I will hit the pinnacle and have stuff up for every different sabbat of the witches wheel year. The ones that come in the fall are so similar that you can pretty much leave up the same stuff from August on through until you change the stuff to Yule and just basically stack the Halloween stuff in on top of it. Maybe that's what I'll do in 2006.

Yesterday, my husband's grandmother stamped me with her seal of approval. :) Nice to know the family likes you and wants to keep you around. I've added some pics here of my loving family on Thanksgiving. The first picture is of my brother in law and his fiance. Aren't they cute? Got engaged about 2 weeks before Thanksgiving. I told my brother-in-law that it was just like hi yto rig it so that T-Day dinner with the fam is his engagement party! He countered with a "no it isn't. we already had our engagement party ....friends only." Ouch! OOooooOoOo... Wow! Happy Turkey Day mutha-fucka!



The two psychos basting the turkey are my children- Andie and Tim Allen. This is also a photo I'd like to call "best thing about the holidays."
The large man with the knife standing above the turkey is my husband.
I avoided taking pictures of the rest of the family to keep from embarrassing them on the internet. I'll leave that job to my daugther's blog at MySpace AndieBabe>

Happy Holidaze all ya'll. I'll be writin' atcha.

Az

For Fuck's Sake!

This has been one of the longest weeks in many, many a moon. First, the furnace went out, and this is after our having just gotten all new top-o-the-line windows and doors installed in our little Lynnwood castle. So, the husband stayed home the first day with it while a technician came out - we came home later that evening nad it was fuck-all cold in the house again, so I wound up staying out the following day with it, only to have a service man show up at the tail end of the day and tell me that he wasn't prepared to do the job, and that I needed to find someone to "camp out" on it. Doesn't that sound good? Doesnt' that sound like a metric butt-load of money? Anyway, so the next day the husband stayed home from his job again. It's like parents alternating over who's staying home with the sick kid, only there's no sick kid....just endless waiting for the service guy. The good news is that the next one who came out DID in fact come prepared to work and did the whole job for a mere $100. We got off light.

So, I'm here at work now, trying to get prepared for a major week ahead of me and well, frankly, I just can't seem to strap it on to care. My computers in my training room are not working properly. Looks like it might even be some weekend warrior action for me. Oh joy. :( I wish someone would pay me what I make doing by computer job for weaving baskets or drumming or something. :) That'll be the day, huh? I'm not likely to hold my breath for it though.

Have a great weekend.
Az

Rainy Day People

Howdy,
Well, the rain has come to Seattle in earnest. Some feel it more than others, but most are just a little more sleepy, just a little more reluctant to leave their warm beds for the cold, soggy commute, and maybe even a little more depressed or at least contemplative. I am all of the above. But, as a computer trainer, I do have some down time where I can catch up on my reading (of things like the Outlook 2003 manual) - not that interesting, but still, it feels good to be able to get to some of that stuff. In my tradition of witchcraft, Samhain (Halloween to those in the secular world) is the new year. It marks a time of reflection and contemplation of the accomplishments of the year before and of the seeds you wish to sow for the coming year. I think of friends and family - of all the people I've known who have influenced me and touched my heart. Some of it makes me sad, some makes me laugh, but all of it makes me feel extremely lucky. Especially that little red-head in the picture here. Well, she's not a red-head anymore. This was taken last summer at a company picnic - but I don't have very many pictures of us together so it will have to do. She's a wonderful little muffin and I can't believe she's turning 16 on November 26. She's going to have a birthday party with a bunch of her friends on the 19th - so I'm sure she'll feel like she's all grown up then - but she's still just a baby.

So that's about it. I have to get back to my riveting work now as my lunch break is just about over, but I wanted to check in post-Halloween (which, by the way was a gas) - we went to a Halloween wedding, went to a Halloween party, decked out the house and went in costume to work. Can't beat that! If I were writing this post from my other machine I'd stick up a picture or two. Might have to do that later anyway, even though Halloween is gone for another year. Anyway, Blessed Be, and be sure to check out my website for my Thanksgiving page which will have all kinds of recipes and after the event, some pics for the family to see.

Halloween is coming

I'm getting so excited that Halloween is right around the corner.
Today is October 20th - or for at least another 45 mintues it is. Tomorrow is my husand's birthday and I have taken the day off with him. I'm hoping he has a really good one. I have made apumpkin cake for him and will be icing it with a lovely cream cheese icing made from scratch - as was the pumpkin cake. HIs mother, brother and his girlfriend are going to join us for a dinner of cornbread and stew. I'm excited to have a little party for him and we'll even eat off of cool little Halloween plates and I'll have the table all decked out with some little Halloween favors.

So that's about it. I just finished one of my big project windows last night and am waiting fo rit to dry. It is a Halloween theme window and I'll be sure to put up a picture of it when I have it. 'Til then, nighty night.

Today is Thursday

So I finally took the 15 minutes that was necessary in order to figure out how to get the hideous pink off of my blog. Yay! I work in the tech field (and am at work now, as a matter of fact) but have been so busy I haven't had time to farkle around with it. My company is in the process of rolling out new software to all the end users (about a thousand of us)and we have BEEN working on this crap for about a year now. It's only an advance to another version of the production software, but all of these programs have to work in concert and have to work well enough that we don't have people calling the Help Desk and screeching that we have deliberately sabbotaged their work. This is a challenge. As I see my co-workers become more and more apathetic about whether we EVER get anything done or not, I think I am gaining a broader view of why there is so much apathy in government and politics in general. There are just too many people involved to get the cart moving. We've proven time and time again historically that war can motivate us as a unit - bring us together and help us reach heights of productivity that we didn't believe possible. What the hell is up with that? We have to have a war to come together as a people? We have to have a threat to our homeland to find the wherewithall to give a damn? Yeah...I guess that's it. Maybe that's what that micro-brained re-tard in the Whitehouse was thinking when he declared war on Iraq. (Okay....you're right...I'm giving him too much credit. We all know what that was about....yep...money). Okay then, what am I talking about today? Nothing really. I guess I need to go back to my work and try to polish the stuff that I do have for the day when we do roll the product out. I guess I'd better practice what I preach and fight apathy with all my brain cells. But it's getting harder every day.

My Friend Karen

Well, one of my really good friends left the company that I work for on Friday. It was time....there were issues....there were things there should not have been in 2005. There were things that should not have been in the Pacific Northwest - a chunk of America that never knew slavery and supposedly not the prejudices we faced, attempted to overcome and are still licking the wounds from in the South. But happen they did. The reality is that we have a long way to go before the majority of the world is color blind. We have a long way to go before people understand that there are some wounds that you can't poke with a stick and expect them to not hurt. A long way indeed.

My friend called me today and she told me that she was happy - she sounded happy and I am happy for her. There's a picture of her here in this post - she's the beautiful African American woman wedged between the two over-fed whities. I teased her on the phone today and told her that I was going to upload this picture to the Internet and tell the world (well, the three people that read my blog) that she left so she could avoid getting whatever it was that caused these two white women to puff up like this. ;) (No, I don't eat cornstarch!)

KL, we are sisters, you and I. We've seen things and felt things that let us know where the other one is comin' from in our hearts and in our heads. You've held me and told me it's going to be alright when I thought my world was caving in on me. I've prayed for you in my way, and you have prayed for me in yours. We've seen fire and rain, baby....and I'm so very happy for you that you have removed yourself from a situation that was simply bringing you down. Praise the Great Power that moves the moon, and sets all the planets in motion - I'm looking at my fireplace with a big roaring fire in it at the moment. I am sending you the good vibe. That means my love, and my sincerest wish and prayer for you to have a successful and enriching life. Not that I'm not gonna kick your ass if you don't call me now and then, because I will. But I'm setting my wish for you here in cyberspace so it's recorded somewhere. Like a spell, I have set my good thoughts and wishes for you in motion by writing these words.

Blessed be -

On the Lighter Side

So I went to my daughter's school this evening for an open ouse. It was pretty cool. My daughter is fifteen yearsl old and goes to a pretty large high school - she has six classes a day on a campus the size of a small airport. Her first class in the morning, very early - like 7:30 - is an English class. This English class is taught in a sort of portable barn-like building attached to the greenhouse at the school. It is separate from the main building and seems kind of cold and dank. Th teacher is a native San Franciscan who is kind of a hippy, dopy chick type. She's a drama teacher most of the time, but teaches english as well. She was nice enough, but I could tell that, as an English teacher, there was quite a bit lacking. Oh well, hopefully she will make it through the curriculum of Holocaust victims, Lord of the Flies and Midsummer Night's Dream.

Her next class is Integrated math with a very sensible seeming Asian guy for a teacher. Not too much you can bullshit about in math. you either get it or you don't, byou either do the work or you don't. Nice enough guy.

Third period finds her in Spanish class with a young male teacher who has them build up points for class by collecting pesos (pesos are the measure of credit given for doing extra curricular stuff like watching the Spanish channel). She seems like she's going to do fine in that class.

Next was Chef's class where she has an anal retentive hun for a teacher who is a "portions" Nazi. Very bizarre. My daughter has been cooking and learning and doing very well with all the stuff she does, but she only got shit for cdredit because we put the recipes up on a web-site, and apparently they needed to be "typed, double spaced, one sheet of paper." Okay then.....

Next was her World civics teacher who just about made me crack up - what a SPAZ this guy is. I doubt she's going to learn much of anything in that class. He was just all over the place. He didn't string together a coherant sentence the whole time we were in there. He was so nervous and spastic that it was comical.

And last but not least was her chemisty teacher who was like a wet piece of white bread.

It reminded me of my high school days. Some teachers good....most atrocious. These people are influencing our kids lives and most of them are there just to collect a paycheck (I'm not faulting them for that....we've all got to make a living) and some are there to feed their own egos and others are there because they simply don't know what else to do with their lives. Then, there are a rare few who really care....who really get fired up about teaching....who really have the capactiy the will and the drive to make a difference in these kids lives. And to those, I met two of them tonight...potentially three...I say thank you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for showing my kid something positive and giving her the idea and the fire to follow her dreams and her heart. And to you others I say, have a heart....reevealuate what you're doing....wake up....look at how important you are to the kids you teach. Look at the potential you have to shape the future for all of us through them. Wake up! Wake up!

Goodnight everybody,
Az