Just regular folks.

Okay. So I’m out 19.22 on the Bed, Bath and Beyond gift card. I got the collander cause a) it’s stainless steel (yum) and b) our plastic collander is pretty darn crappy and it’s _huge_. Too big for our bachelor single serving pasta needs. Sorry. I couldn’t resist the chocolates. I have one left. 😛 They are good.

// Editted out….

I think my shopping mode has changed recently. I’m definitely looking for more enabling items. Basically instead of upgrading things that I already have, I’m trying to get things that would help me do things I couldn’t possibly do with the stuff I have now… I guess I broke that already with my collander purchase tho.

Thanks Folks! 

So today I had my day off, which doesn’t happen very often. I think for the first time in 3 years I was without either one of my children for 12 hours, I had a really nice time.

We all went on a nice walk in the morning, then I headed to my piano lesson. I thought I practiced pretty much this week, but it was a poor lesson as I was slopping and a bit underprepared. My teacher throws me for a loop beacuse he keeps asking me to take on new pieces. I remember when I was little, it was a big deal to have two or three new lines of a piece done each week. Now every week, there is a lot of improvement that needs to go on on each piece (lots of comments about rythmn, voicing, pedaling, dynamics, fingering, phrasing, etc, etc, etc.) and also whole new sections to learn and new pieces to learn. This week in particular, I felt like I had a lot of new pieces and I’m still struggling to get the notes together.

Then I went home and by this time, Jeremy, Vince, Edda and Ruby were on their way to Bard. I spent 2 hours cleaning up our study, which was and still is a disaster area and trying to get my silly palm pilot to sync with Yahoo. Not working yet.

Then I went to a 4 pm concert that my piano teacher was performing in. It was pretty hilarious, I had a great time. These were 5-10 minute pieces given by the faculty of the Dutchess Community College. There was the asian guy who played the electric guitar with the strobe light behind him, there were the vocalists who sang about Matthew Shepard, there was the soprano who had about 10 oddly dressed groupies who sang songs about peace, there was a fiddler and there was a trio (piano, violin and cello) that my teacher was playing in. Richard, my teacher, was the ringer.

Then I had a wonderful restaurant dinner by myself. I ate very slowly and quietly by myself and had a great meal at Antonella’s. Then I went to Lora Bonser’s house where I went to a Body Shop at Home party. Lora lives in a beautiful house in the woods. It’s pretty hard to find, especially if you have a erroneous map like I do. I also almost ran over a dog on the way there. Bought some lotions and stuff and came back home at about midnight.

Jeremy came home and told me about their day at Bard, the highlight of which is: Vince now pees outside in the yard instead of the toilet. He has marked with his pee both Katherine and Bob’s house as well as our front porch.

I had an interesting conversation with Frank tonight. Honestly, I’m not sure I follow him all the time, but I do know that he thinks very differently than a lot of people out there. Anyways, one thing that he said stuck with me. He always tends to think about what his priorities are 10 years from now and tries to act accordingly. So right now, he’s 24, and he thinks about what his priorities would be at 34. Somewhere on the list would be, money, character, family (I’m guessing).

Of course, I can’t help but think about what my priorities are 10 years from now when I’m (oh god) 39. 😛 I would think character, family, money – in that order. I feel like I’m moving towards my character goals – growing and learning and experiencing life. I’m not sure I’m moving towards my family goals. Money, well, I feel like I’m moving away from that goal too since I have no money.

On the topic of getting married, Frank calls this issue “The Looming Deadline”. It probably applies more to women than men, but basically it goes like this: People hold out hoping to find “The One”, but when see that they are 32 and not likely to find “The One”, then they might relax their stringent requirements in order to get married. Why not just relax your requirements right now and avoid the fate that you’re setting yourself up for when you are 32? But people won’t do that and they walk knowingly into their least desirable outcome.

Am I doing this too? Choon says I’m too picky about women. But I’m not sure that Frank’s scenario applies in my case.

Click Me and Turn on Sound.

Compliments of Suzanne Frischkorn.

A new book meme circulating around the sphere is going by the name “123.5,” and its rules are these:

1. Grab the nearest book.

2. Open the book to page 123. Find the fifth sentence.

4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

5. Don’t search around and look for the “coolest” book you can find. Do what’s actually next to you.

“Men were driven by it, in his opinion.”

Vince and Jeremy use our meat grinder to grind turkey thighs for tonight’s tamale pie dinner.

Vince and Edda in the reading nook of the East Fishkill library.

This is Vince’s 4th day without a nap. I think the napping era may be over. I am a grouch because of this. I want, I need the nap. Oh well, at least he goes to bed at 8 pm not instead of 10:30 which I guess is an improvement. Also the move to Germany and Singapore is up in the air again, I don’t know the timing or anything again. Perhaps that is also why I’m in a sour mood.

heh, sweet. I forgot I just got a new scanner! whee! There’s the x-ray of my shoulder on 3/2. I’m going into the doctor’s again next Wednesday morning. We’ll see what they say, tho I’m a little worried. The bone is still flexing a bit. I’m going to keep on wearing hte slipg when i sleep. I think that’s when my bone is out of shape the most.

My Broken Collarbone 

So the fire truck stopped by this morning. Apparently someone had called about some steam coming off the roof of the house. Nothing seems to be on fire tho. One of my roommates locks his room, so I couldn’t check it out at all. The steam seemed to be coming out of a vent from the next door neighbor’s house. The fire dude said it was probably the shower or the dryer going. Oh well. pretty exciting!