The Big Picture puts the spotlight on Mexico's drug war. Stunningly sad and sobering, even for a person who is at this point fairly desensitized to these kinds of images. Don't click on the graphic content links if you don't want to see dead bodies.

Read this column during my lunch hour. Educational and touching at the same time:

Rosemary, or Rosmarinus officinalis, is a fascinating plant, and its praises have been written of since the dawn of time. In Latin, rosemary translates to "dew of the sea" -- "ros," meaning dew and "marinus," meaning sea. In parts of the world with little rain, all the plant needed to survive was humidity from the ocean, which explains its popularity throughout history in Mediterranean, Italian and Greek cultures. It is said that Aphrodite rose naked from the sea with blooming branches of rosemary wrapped around her body.

Coca-Cola the way it is meant to be enjoyed

Somewhere

Enjoyed this movie even though, really, Sofia Coppola, must there be another another trip abroad where the characters are mystified by the language and culture? And another scene where the audience can't make out the profound words of one character to another? Run out of ideas much?

The Pretender

Caught between the longing for love
And the struggle for the legal tender
Where the sirens sing and the church bells ring
And the junk man pounds his fender.
Where the veterans dream of the fight
Fast asleep at the traffic light
And the children solemnly wait
For the ice cream vendor
Out into the cool of the evening
Strolls the Pretender

Sing it, Jackson Browne. Love this song.

Friday night notes

- Friday night. I'm munching on a chocolate bar, forget calorie counting. Who knew Target made such good chocolate?

- I think a present for a one-year-old's birthday party is still basically for the parent. A one-year-old is NOT going to read the card. Still must get a cute card, though.

- I'm feeling very old lately. It's like I never feel rested. Last Sunday I took a two-hour nap. I slept just under eight hours last night and still feel wiped out right now. Early to bed, early to rise makes a woman...tired.

- I wonder if I am losing the ability to see myself with any degree of objectivity. Maybe I need to be a little more judgmental about myself. Not as in harder on myself, but as in trying to be fair and look at both the things I'm doing well at and the things I'm not doing so well at.

Yellow wallpaper

On Friday we talked about "The Yellow Wallpaper" in my reading group. The feminist tale from 1890 was my choice.

In reading about the life of Charlotte Perkins Gilman I saw a lot of what I wanted to do with my life when I was younger-- to be a "social reformer" and a writer and a feminist.

It made me feel disappointed that the vision of myself of "superfeminist" was never realized. Now I ask myself, when was the last time I changed a person's mind about anything? When was the last time I believed in anything enough to try? Ugh, how jaded I am...

When you're young, a student, an idealist with not much to lose, you really don't realize how much is at stake for those who rock the boat. But we owe them so much.

Love getting home from work before 5 p.m.

So I'm over the sore throat but now I have the worst runny nose I've had in a long time. Even Claritin isn't able to stop it. It was embarrassing to go to work having to blow my nose every five seconds and sneezing all the time. But I also didn't feel bad enough to stay home.

Guitar class dropout

- I'm nearly over my sore throat. I got it on Sunday and started feeling better Tuesday night. A new record for recovery, so it seems.

- I'm in search of my next project since I dropped out of guitar class. Every week something seems to come up, and I don't feel an urgent need to go since I already know the basics of playing.

- I wonder if getting older necessarily means a more lonely life. Maybe the key to not feeling bad about it is to lower expectations and realize that this is how it is, not just for me but for most people.

- A mug of hot tea sounds really good right now.

Lucky find at the library today: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.

From Time, "Are America's Best Days Behind Us?":

It's not that our democracy doesn't work; it's that it works only too well. American politics is now hyperresponsive to constituents' interests. And all those interests are dedicated to preserving the past rather than investing for the future. There are no lobbying groups for the next generation of industries, only for those companies that are here now with cash to spend. There are no special-interest groups for our children's economic well-being, only for people who get government benefits right now. The whole system is geared to preserve current subsidies, tax breaks and loopholes.

Today's quote

Psychoanalysis is that mental illness for which it regards itself as therapy.
-Karl Kraus

Healthy Bite

I went to Healthy Bite for lunch today. The good thing about Healthy Bite is that they don't serve you too much food. I tried to count the number of bites in my gyro sandwich. About ten. It was a good sandwich -- tasty, filling, and not slathered in grease.

Still, the "side item" was a pickle, and after finishing the gyro I found myself wanting that pickle to be a side of potato salad or chips. But of course, that wouldn't be healthy.

Ah, Healthy Bite, thank you for not forcing me to wreck my diet.

On another occasion, I ordered a sandwich and they brought me a side of baby carrots with some tzatziki sauce on the side. That might have been nice here, too, though the sauce was in the sandwich this time so maybe not.

Windy, ugly day. Welcome to spring.

Interesting article about the new way of practicing psychiatry:

Then, like many psychiatrists, he treated 50 to 60 patients in once- or twice-weekly talk-therapy sessions of 45 minutes each. Now, like many of his peers, he treats 1,200 people in mostly 15-minute visits for prescription adjustments that are sometimes months apart. Then, he knew his patients’ inner lives better than he knew his wife’s; now, he often cannot remember their names.

Hmm, I thought all psychiatrists were like Dr. Paul Weston in "In Treatment."

This is the manifesto of Mother Monster

Gotta say the video is much better than expected after hearing the song. I prefer the parts where she's not dancing around in her underwear:

Story of my life right now

4 Non Blondes know what's going on:

- I'm not sure if buying navy blue shoes for work was a good idea. The secretary asked me going down the stairs if they were comfortable. I said yes. Comfortable, but I've never had blue shoes before and think the idea is kind of weird. Maybe what the secretary meant to say was, what are doing wearing blue shoes?

- $41.67 to fill up my car with gasoline. Ouch.

Fulfilling expectations vs. mastery

After my last guitar class I remember why I finally got out of school: after a point a class doesn't make you better at something but encourages mediocrity. Passing a class means doing enough to get a C. Or in my case, I'd always fulfill the teacher's expectations to the letter and get an A. In this case, that means doing the blues scale at a slow tempo with the rest of the class. Passable in the teacher's eyes and technically correct, but very boring and not something most people want to hear.

Fulfilling the teacher's expectations and truly mastering something are usually two very different things. Mastery is playing every note with emotion and precision, and having people actually want to hear you play instead of covering their ears. Mastery takes struggle, time and practice, finding mentors to challenge you at every point to be better, and not settling for mediocrity. I have fulfilled many teachers' expectations but there have been very few disciplines I've cared about deeply enough to try to master. Writing is probably the one I've struggled with longest, though "mastery" is not the word I'd use for the point I'm at with it.

It's during the night that I think about dying. I've written about this before, that I sometimes think about God and/or the supernatural when I wake up during the middle of the night, involuntarily. I wonder what the mystery of death is, why we are alive at all, what these years on earth and this experience means.

Maybe I wake up thinking about this because I don't think about it much during the day, when I'm tasked with so many things, or would rather watch reality TV than contemplate more profound matters. Even if I do think about these things during the day, it is so much more immediate during the night, like death is right there waiting, it's just time that separates us.

I think about losing people and what that would mean. It's such a difficult thing to think about. My parents, what would I do if they weren't around?

I hope I won't have to contemplate my own death in an imminent way for a very long time, but there are cancers and heart attacks, car accidents, etc. What will I go to my death bed regretting?

Morning person

So I challenged myself to wake up 20 minutes earlier every day this week. This has predictably made me feel more tired in the evenings. By 9 p.m. I'm struggling to stay awake. On the other hand, I feel way more productive. Traffic isn't as bothersome in the mornings and I get to work earlier. I can have 20 minutes to myself in the morning where I don't feel panicked and the TV isn't blaring the headlines five minutes after I wake up. Time in the mornings is such a valuable commodity. It's like every minute between 5 and 8 a.m. is worth 5 minutes in other parts of the day. Does this mean I'm turning into a morning person?

The last in a great series on NPR titled "Women in War." Army Brig. Gen. Heidi Brown describes what happened after nine soldiers under her command were killed:

"I had my driver drive me over to him, and we just bear-hugged one another and he wept. And I let him, and I just bit my lip because I knew that I needed to be strong. Did I want to? You bet I wanted to cry," Brown says.

But as a woman, she felt that she couldn't.

The audio is better at conveying the emotion, of course. Oh, and coincidentally Heidi Brown is from El Paso.

Vacation days

One of the best parts of my vacation was getting to read Just Kids straight through for hours in the car from Del Rio to Alpine. Speeding by seemingly endless hills of yellow grass and scrubby bushes under blue skies and sunshine. So far from Patti Smith's NYC but I was transported. I want to be an artist, too...don't we all?


Maybe in 30 years I can be that honest about what happened in my 20s. But I think I might not even remember by then.

What is Toronto????

Watching Watson defeat Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter on Jeopardy! was depressing (not to mention boring). Geez, what a know it all. A human would at least let them have a couple right so as not humiliate them. Yeah, it's just a game and Watson is just a computer program but I was delighted when Watson got Final Jeopardy wrong. Yay for the humans.

Item discussed and agreed upon at the coffee shop yesterday: Everyone has about three friends they can depend on.

The dreaded V Day

So Valentine's Day is coming up and I made my coworkers laugh when I said it was my least favorite holiday. Would my attitude change if I weren't facing another V Day alone? Probably. A few things occurred to me this week:


1) I am skeptical about relationships working out, probably because my parents' failed. I don't really have an up-close model for a healthy relationship. My parents were possibly unsuited for each other from the beginning but somehow stayed married and had three kids and then split up in a horrible way. I'm terrified that's the way it'll be with me. I tend to remember the awfulness of the end, not the good parts.


2) I wonder if a relationship is something you should try to make happen, or just let things happen by chance, or fate, or whatever. I'm going to be 29. I feel this sort of urgency, like if something doesn't change in my life fairly soon maybe I will *never* find the right person. That wouldn't be the worst thing that could happen, I suppose, but it's a scenario I'm pondering more often now.


3) Does every relationship have to have "forever" as its goal? I would say I'm into commitment but forever is scary even for me.

Water pipe is finally getting fixed. Yay!

- I don't know how I ended up being shipped "Disturbia" and "Dawn of the Dead" in my Netflix. Really, that's what comes up when I don't update the queue?

- I could probably write 10 pages on why I'm not happy right now. But I feel like I should be happy: the power's back on, the pipes aren't frozen, the house is warm and cozy. Maybe if I keep counting my blessings it will bring me out of this foul mood.

So I went to sleep with my contact lens still in my right eye. I couldn't find it anywhere in the bathroom and also couldn't find it in my eye. I assumed it fell down the drain. Well, I woke up in the middle of the night and dragged myself into the bathroom and saw the contact lens tucked in near my tear duct. Very disgusting.

Notes from the cold, part 4

- Today's weather seemed downright balmy compared to last week. Sunshine, warmth and clear blue skies, that is the El Paso I know and love. That frozen, icy landscape of last week, NO, that isn't my city.

- Water service is fine now, but the part to repair the backyard pipe is out of stock in every store. So we're still turning off all the water to the house most of the time to avoid a possible disaster.

- No more water restrictions at 10 p.m. tonight, but I feel bad thinking that is a license to start wasting resources as usual. Wouldn't the world be better off if we all took a 5-minute shower every other day instead of a 15-minute one every single day?

Notes from the cold, part 3

Not so cold today but El Paso residents are being told not to take showers, do laundry, wash dishes, etc. because of a shortage caused by the cold weather. Apparently the water utility "may have to resort to enforcing the restrictions through law enforcement," according to the linked article. Wow.

Somewhat surprising quote from an interview with Oprah in (where else?) O Magazine:

In recent years I started to feel that, Gee, television has lost its mind ... Television doesn't make me feel good. There's nothing about it that makes me feel good. I literally do not have it on at any time in my personal space, be it in the office, be it in my makeup room. If I walk in and it's on, I will say, "Turn it off," unless it's something I need to know or need to hear.

Which is why she decided to start her own network, of course. And I'm sure her current talk show is also an exception to this, right?

Here's a great song I heard on oldies radio last week. The announcer said it was written by Neil Young, which I never knew before. Nicolette Larson does look like she's having a lotta fun singing it:

Notes from the cold, part 2

- The power is back on, no more rolling outages. The last one was Friday morning.
- No water at the house since Thursday presumably because the pipes are frozen. I fear the ice in the pipes melting because I think we are likely to have a pipe burst.
- The sun is out but I'm still not too eager to venture outside. Today's high is supposed to be 46 degrees.
- Update: The water is back on but the bad news is that the backyard sprinkler pipe broke. Our yard maintenance guy put a temporary cap on it, allowing for a hot shower and load of laundry before tonight, when another freeze might pop it off and we're back without water. Woo hoo for a shower, though, and more good news is that there don't appear to be any other leaks.

Notes from the cold

- 7 degrees today. WHOA, THAT IS COLD. Cold even by northern standards.
- My car's engine hesitated in a scary way I've never heard before it started up.
- Slow ride to work this morning. I occasionally got slightly tripped up on ice at stoplights but my car didn't go into a tailspin at any point, thank God.
- Just want to remind some drivers: a stoplight that has stopped working means you treat it like a four-way stop NOT drive right through like it's green.
- Rolling blackouts are not fun.
- I don't know when I've seen this town so deserted at 5 p.m. The drive home during the usual rush hour seemed more like a drive home at midnight.
- This weather makes me appreciate creature comforts. Electricity is the life-blood of our comfortable lives - cable TV, thermostat-controlled heat, refrigerated food, the Internet, microwaves, hair dryers. I miss that stuff when it's gone.
- 7 degree weather + no electricity = dangerous combination.

So I narrowly avoided traffic disaster this morning at UTEP. I couldn't figure out the roundabout (what's all this about yielding?) and was so distracted I went through the crosswalk when a student was going into it. It was lucky I didn't come close to hitting the poor girl. The next was coming out of the parking garage and having another car almost back into me. Fortunately the driver stopped in time. Otherwise I would be fuming and probably not writing this post because I'd be dealing with how I was going to get to work tomorrow. Ugh, I hate dealing with traffic. Today showed me I need to be more vigilant.

I bought a book for $0.01 on Amazon (well, plus $3.99 shipping and handling). Hope it is not a reflection on the book's quality, ha ha.

This morning my church pastor said flirting is a sin. Not sure if I agree.

My post on fasting got linked on reddit. Hmm, that's weird...

Interesting article on the new "global elite" and income inequality from The Atlantic magazine:

Meanwhile, the vast majority of U.S. workers, however devoted and skilled at their jobs, have missed out on the windfalls of this winner-take-most economy—or worse, found their savings, employers, or professions ravaged by the same forces that have enriched the plutocratic elite. The result of these divergent trends is a jaw-dropping surge in U.S. income inequality. According to the economists Emmanuel Saez of Berkeley and Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics, between 2002 and 2007, 65 percent of all income growth in the United States went to the top 1 percent of the population. The financial crisis interrupted this trend temporarily, as incomes for the top 1 percent fell more than those of the rest of the population in 2008. But recent evidence suggests that, in the wake of the crisis, incomes at the summit are rebounding more quickly than those below. One example: after a down year in 2008, the top 25 hedge-fund managers were paid, on average, more than $1 billion each in 2009, quickly eclipsing the record they had set in pre-recession 2007.

Vineyard Spam Salad

I saw an ad for this recipe in my Gmail and had to click on it: "Combine grapes, Spam, pea pods and onion in a large bowl." Grapes and Spam? It sounds odd but also sounds like it could be tasty. I wonder who comes up with this stuff and why it is appearing in my Gmail.

One more day of work, I think I can make it. I spent my lunchtime walking around downtown, as I sometimes do. I went to San Jacinto Plaza specifically to see the new monument to presidents Taft and Diaz meeting in El Paso. I like to see the Mills Building and the progress of the big parking garage. Things are happening downtown, that is exciting.

I sometimes wonder if there's anything that makes me interesting anymore. Hence the walks downtown and the reading of books at my lunch hour. Trying to put the interesting-ness back into my life.

I've posted 1,001 times to this blog. This is 1,002.

I wonder if there's a measurement for how much less tired you are by waking up 15 minutes later? It's a little experiment I'm trying.

I was mesmerized by yesterday's Oprah. Really, what an amazing story.

Fasting, part 3

Last day of fasting. I really didn't feel hungry this morning, maybe because I had a feast of brownies and ice cream the night before. I was also too late for work to think about my lack of breakfast much. I have to admit that not eating breakfast is a time saver.

I didn't feel starved before I ate my lunch of sandwich and fruit. But as the afternoon wore on I did feel hungrier than usual. I almost caved and bought one of my coworkers' chocolate bars that she sells to raise money. But I thought, while not technically breaking the fast, no, that would not be in keeping with the spirit of it. Then my other coworker delivered about ten boxes of Girl Scout cookies to another coworker. Oh, torture, I wanted to stuff my face with thin mints. But I resisted the junk food and am currently waiting to eat a healthful dinner.

I'm happy to be done with fasting, even though in its own way fasting is sort of addictive. You get a little dizzy, you do feel "holier-than-thou" when you see people around you eating normally or eating too much. And OK, I'll admit it, weight loss is not a bad benefit. But I don't feel like I got into the praying component of praying-and-fasting enough so that it was truly a means to get closer to God. I think feeling smug about your holy actions isn't what Christianity is about, and that is the feeling I got while fasting.

I was in Las Cruces yesterday. My sister and I ordered bubble tea and she gave me advice about dating. I listened and didn't say anything. Actually, I said, "I think I'm going to be old and just have a lot of dogs." Yeah, I think that sums it up right now.

I went to this bookstore, which was cool but I decided against buying anything. Funny, I downloaded a FreeBooks app on my iPod touch that has a mind-boggling array of books available to download, and now I wonder how long real live bookstores are going to be around.

Time goes by so fast on the weekend. I always envision myself spending a few hours on the weekend getting lost in music or in books and magazines, but it usually doesn't happen like that. I'm visiting people or doing chores or too amped up to just sit, which is what I do all week. My main accomplishment today was doing laundry. Ha ha, that is funny but also not funny. At least I actually went somewhere this weekend, even if it was just to Cruces.

Oh Saturday, so full of possibilities...

Purchased this weekend on iTunes

"Chasing Pavements" by Adele
"Back on the Chain Gang" by the Pretenders
"Forever Young" by Bob Dylan
"Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)" by George Harrison
"Dance the Night Away" by Van Halen

Fasting, part 2

Second morning I fasted. It wasn't so bad this time, maybe because I got in some exercise this morning and thereby raised my metabolism some. I didn't feel that hungry, that is until lunchtime when I dug into a large turkey club sandwich and ate more of it than I usually would. Then still felt like I could eat more during the afternoon. Oh no.

Once again I didn't spend the whole morning praying, but before I left for work I did have a moment of refocusing. Like, one morning a week, can't I stop grumbling and stop thinking of gratifying myself and instead think of others and of God? I need to refocus like that more often.

Review: PopCo

PopCo is the kind of book that makes you think. Shouldn't all books do this? Yeah, I've read other books that made me think about big corporations and environmentalism and exploitation of Third World workers. But it's a rare novel that also ties in cryptanalysis, Gödel, and the Monty Hall paradox. Let's also reminisce about being a teenage girl and unpopular, shall we? Scarlett Thomas does know how to make me wince but in a good way. My only complaint is the ending feels a little too simple for a novel that until that point I thought was pretty complex.

Someone stole my sandwich from the work refrigerator AGAIN yesterday. Lesson: Never leave a peanut butter sandwich in there. I ended up paying $11.74 for a sandwich and coffee at a Downtown coffee shop. I waited about a half hour to get my sandwich. I find the sandwich thief irritating but mildly amusing. Kind of disturbing to think, though, if someone will just steal someone's lunch like that, what else will they steal?

I found this piece in Time to be pretty mean but I can't say I don't agree: "The very existence of her website suggests Paltrow assumes we are eager to sit at her knee. She has said she wants to share the wealth of opportunities she's had — from talking novels with Christy Turlington to staying at the best hotels — and she does, magnanimously, in e-mail newsletters signed, 'love, GP.' The implication is, Of course you'd like to be me."

Finally, something at Quizno's I enjoy: the chicken caesar salad.

Fasting

My pastor is urging the entire church to fast during a three-week period. For those of us who are new to it, he said fasting one meal a week for three weeks would be OK. So I decided to do it today. I skipped breakfast. No oatmeal squares with milk today.

It's pretty weird to change your eating habits. I would say I'm a person who gets used to a certain routine and dislikes change, especially when it comes to eating and sleeping.

I think the fasting period had the intended effect, in that I felt groggy all morning. I watched with a newfound envy as my boss ate a banana during our morning meeting. It looked so good. I was afraid my coworker would offer me some of her caramel popcorn and I wouldn't be able to turn it down. But she didn't offer, which I suppose was good.

I usually take my lunch around 1:30 but by 12:15 today I felt lightheaded and like I might pass out if I didn't eat something. My body was going into that stage where it felt like it was eating itself. So I broke the fast and wolfed down my peanut butter and banana sandwich. I felt kind of bad about it, like I was caving in to the flesh while I was doing it. It's only a sandwich, not a sin!

I wonder how people don't eat breakfast. How do they function? I felt about 10 times worse than I usually do in the morning by not eating breakfast. I suppose you can get used to anything, though.

Did fasting bring me closer to God? I don't know. I successfully denied the flesh. I didn't eat for a specific purpose, and that purpose was not losing a few pounds. But I didn't have time to pray or read the Bible during the morning rush at work. I'm not sure if God appreciated what I did. I didn't hear a voice.

If I had the whole day off, maybe I could go through the whole fasting, praying and meditating sort of thing. But during a workday I just felt more hungry and tired than I usually do, not more enlightened. I think this time the purpose was more symbolic. I'm supposed to do this two more times. Is it terrible to say that I'm really not looking forward to doing it again?

Sunrise photo from earlier this week

"In Treatment: Season 2" may be the most brilliant TV I've ever watched, and I don't say that lightly. The deathbed scene and the plight of the child caught in his parents' divorce I found most affecting, but all five plotlines just grab your emotions and never let go. The last disc is triumphant for a change. Paul finally gets the upper hand, reaffirms the value of his occupation to himself and his patients and reminds us, if you don't recognize the patterns in your life, how can you ever hope to change?

So it's the end of the week and I barely feel human. No more work. Please. I don't want to talk, a couple of hours of TV time sounds really, really good right now.

Toddler in the lunchroom

There was a toddler in the lunchroom today, which is fairly unusual. Several of the female employees were hovered around him and the mom, who had a big stroller with her. He looked maybe two, cute little boy with brown hair dressed in a sweater vest.

I read the paper and kept to myself, eating my leftover beef and potatoes and then a yellow apple. A funny thing happened, though -- the toddler went past all the women making a fuss and his eyes landed directly on my apple. He stretched out his little arm like he wanted some. I didn't know what to do -- Give him the apple? Give him a piece of the apple (hard to do lacking a knife)? Fetch him a cookie instead? Somehow I think he liked the color of the apple and really wanted to play with it more than he actually wanted to eat it.

I ended up awkwardly covering up the apple with a paper towel and waited as one women went to look for a ball to distract the toddler. For a minute or so it looked like he might cry. *Oh no please don't cry* Fortunately he didn't. *whew* I know from babysitting experience that toddlers have short memories and he would probably soon be on to something else. Which was true, in this case.

Still, am I total jerk because I didn't give him the apple and instead ate it all myself? Am I lacking in maternal instinct or plain old generosity? It's the kind of situation I don't have the grace for but wish I did.

- Enough with January, already. I'm tired of the cold and driving home in the near-dark. I need some sunshine.

- I passed on the key lime pie at work today and I am glad I did.

- Inertia is a powerful thing. Hard to change the status quo, isn't it?

I probably should not have eaten half a box of jelly beans.

I can see the steam rising from the balcony as the snow melts.

It's 2011? Really?

It's snowing again

My new favorite at Starbucks: the caramel brulee latte.

I've been thinking about what would make me really happy in the new year, and the thing that popped into my mind was writing. Sometimes I think it's so stupid to write these posts that no one reads. To vent my emotions through writing when no one will listen seems like a personal failure to me sometimes.

I think about all the meetings and parties and dinners where I've sat silent and listened and just waited for it to be over after having given up hope of getting a word in edge-wise. Maybe this is a bad thing, but it seems my whole life I've had a different way of connecting. Writing is what makes me feel alive. This is where I can say what I want to say. This is where I can be myself. Even if it's stupid or needy I *need* to write.

It disappoints me that I have stopped developing as a writer. Being a writer is being an artist, it's developing your skill with practice and with reading and appreciating things that aren't crap. I can still write a paragraph (fortunately) but I feel like a tenth-grader could out-write me at this point.

I'm not sure what this means, if I'll do another month of writing a blog post every day, or start working on some long essay-type posts, or try to get published somewhere. But I think part of why I have felt so lifeless is because I've stopped writing. Time to wake up.

Favorite things I watched, read, listened to in 2010

(Yes, I know, not all of these were actually released in 2010):

Books

The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing

Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language by Eva Hoffman

Where Men Win Glory by Jon Krakauer

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife by Lisa Miller

Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith by Kathleen Norris

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson

The Path to Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 1 by Robert A. Caro


Movies

Inception

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1

Broadcast News

Cemetery Man

Cinema Paradiso

The Best of Youth

The Social Network

Departures

District 9

Devil



TV

Prime Suspect

Top Chef

In Treatment

Chopped

Castle

Music

Yay for the year of the iPod Touch!

Begin to Hope by Regina Spektor

"Baby, I Love You" by Aretha Franklin

"Whatcha See Is Whatcha Get" by The Dramatics

Bach Double Violin Concerto

"Alejandro" by Lady Gaga

The Overture & The Underscore by Sarah Blasko

"Labios Compartidos" by Mana

Something I listened to on the drive home:

But Sister Anna Joseph Van Acker says she's weary of shallow relationships rooted in texting and Twitter — and finds the depth she's looking for in God. "He has the love you don't find by someone leaving a message on your Facebook wall," she says. "It's way better than someone saying, 'I'm eating pizza for dinner right now,' or whatever your Facebook status says right now. You don't get fulfilled by that. Ultimately, all you want is more. And here, we're thirsting for more, but we're constantly receiving more as well."

- Somehow the kitchen now has about a million cookies in it, and I feel obligated to help out by eating them. I think I might gain 10 lbs. by the end of the holidays.

- I had a super-productive day in which I cleaned the fish tank and the bathroom, did laundry, washed the car, and finished my Christmas shopping. Wow, I am usually more of a slacker.

- Mark Zuckerberg, Person of the Year. I have to say I don't see him as a likeable person, but then again my perception of him is based on his "60 Minutes" interview and Jesse Eisenberg's portrayal in "The Social Network." Also if there is something I find annoying or too intrusive about Facebook I always personally blame Mark Zuckerberg. I don't know if that is a fair thing to do...

Have a listen

Three-day weekend to look forward to. Ugh, why am I so cranky lately? I go to bed early but somehow feel like I never sleep enough.

I'm trying to be less of a Grinch: I signed up to make cookies for the office holiday party.

I complain sometimes but in all honesty 2010 turned out to be a pretty good year.

Maybe another resolution for 2011 should be to to post more links and more well-informed opinions and not just these tired musings. Oh, but how I love tired musings.

This is hilarious.

So I feel like I'm inching closer to being a recluse, despite a few attempts to engage. Another resolution, stop being a recluse, but it's hard to get motivated. I feel like I'm stunningly awkward when I try to talk. I can never say the right thing. I am tired of trying.

- What a creepy story.

- "Bea Arthur was a truck-driving Marine," says The Smoking Gun. Not explained is why she denied her service even when she was in her late 70s. Hmm...

- 140 page views this week. Thank you, Sun Bowl searchers.

It's taken me awhile to truly appreciate Christmas lights, but I think this is finally the year.

Any volunteers?

Something I've been thinking about lately: I should volunteer more. Maybe it's because I'm shy and not a natural leader but I tend not to volunteer for things. Looking for volunteers in the church nursery? No, I'm not good with kids. Money to buy winter coats for children? Nope, I'm trying to save. At work, looking for people to bring food for a potluck? Well, I could but what if people don't like what I make?

But then I think what a sad world it would be if everyone were like me. $0 to buy coats. No office potlucks. Nowhere for kids to go at church. I always assume "someone else will do it." Oh, that nice lady who doesn't have a regular job, she will do it. Those people making buckets of money will donate, my co-worker who's a lot bossier than me will take charge of the meal. But I know that's a bad attitude to take. Maybe someone will step up, but what if they don't?

I also kinda think volunteer projects are a lot for show and often to pad people's resumes, but even if they are for show, well, good things are still being accomplished. And many people do have a genuine spirit of generosity about the work.

So this is something to work on, an early New Year's resolution.

I had a conversation last night where I know I sounded really depressed. To the point where my friend asked me, "Are you OK? You seem down." And I said I'll be OK, I just need to sleep. Which was true, since I had one sleepless night this week, then worked the early shift Friday and was pretty wiped out by Friday night. Strange things start to happen when I don't sleep.

But I have to admit my emotional state hasn't been OK for awhile, and it goes beyond one sleepless night. I need to be more honest with myself than I've been.

I ask myself, what do I need to do to get out of this state? I make plans to do x, y, and z and hope they are the right prescription to move forward. That's all I can do, really.

My new favorite chore: handwashing sweaters.

Have you ever had something so good or so bad happen to you that you don't want to put it in writing, not even in a private journal? It's a rare feeling for me, since writing is what I typically use to cope. But some things I just don't want to relive, and others I just don't want to reduce to sentences. My version of speechlessness.

Water bottle

I left my water bottle at the coffee shop yesterday. I shouldn't have even brought it to the meeting but I was forced to take it inside since I was running late. I set the shiny green metal bottle with the black plastic top to my left side. I listened a lot, asked a few questions, laughed when appropriate, took a few notes. Then I left. I dropped the paper cup that had held my coffee into the trash, walked back to my car.

It was on the drive home that I realized I didn't have it. If I had it it would have been dumped on the passenger seat. At the stoplight I reached for it but didn't feel the cold metal. I even dipped my hand down to the floor of the car in front of the seat. Nope. Darn it, darn it, darn it, I am such an idiot.

I got home and I was dead tired but I forced myself to Google the number to the coffee shop. I told the guy where I was sitting, he went back to check but said he didn't find anything. *sighs*

It's just a water bottle, right, not like I lost my purse or wallet....but my mom gave the water bottle to me. It was an unexpected gift, she returned from Walmart one day and said, 'Which one do you like better, the green or the blue?' just like when I was a kid. A week earlier we had been talking about not using so many plastic water bottles during the week, and here she was being thoughtful. I knew these water bottles were not cheap. How could I be so stupid? I could only hope that one of the people in the meeting had picked it up and was possibly going to return it to me later.

And then today, well, that was exactly what happened. My co-worker strolls in, says I bet you didn't think you'd see this again. Aww, I could have hugged him. My faith in humanity (other than Mom, of course) is restored. Sometimes we mess up, and sometimes it turns out OK anyway. There is goodness in this life.

This is something I've often wondered about: Why are siblings' personalities so different? Here's an interesting theory I heard via NPR:

The second theory has a slightly confusing name; it's called the non-shared environment theory, and it essentially argues that though from the outside it appears that we are growing up in the same family as our siblings, in very important ways we really aren't. We are not experiencing the same thing.

"Children grow up in different families because most siblings differ in age, and so the timing with which you go through your family's [major events] is different," says Susan McHale, a researcher at Pennsylvania State University. "You know, a parent loses a job, parents get divorced. If you are three or five years behind your sibling, the experience of a 5-year-old whose parents get divorced is very different from the experience of a 9-year-old or a 10-year-old."

My lasagna is in the oven. Or should I say my attempt at making lasagna. I ran out of filling by the third layer. Oops. And who knew it would take so long to prepare? I started at 3:00 and got it in the oven at 4:30. Plus one hour of baking time. Which is why you'll never see lasagna on 30-Minute Meals.

Update: Lasagna turned out good but not exceptional. I think a Stouffer's ready-to-bake lasagna is about as good.

I ordered a fake gingerbread latte at Starbucks today: decaf with soy milk. Coffee without the buzz, it's not quite right...

Wow, so it *is* that time of year. Again. My blog friend Stu introduces Review 2010.

I'm alive, not dead.

I'm excited: In Treatment is back. Gabriel Byrne talks about why he hasn't gone to therapy himself: " 'This is the thing I have a problem with. Can you pay for true empathy? True intimacy, true empathy, true compassion. I have a problem saying, "Can I pay for that?" Should I pay for that? Shouldn’t I be finding those things in my life with people I know? Maybe that’s why I haven’t gone to therapy.' "

I finally bought a new black sweater today. My old sweater was getting pretty faded and had two buttons missing since last year when I started bringing it to work almost every day. Yes, every day, even in the summer, since the office is so cold all the time. I think it's time for my co-workers to see me in something new. Good-bye, sweater, you served me well.

Review: Where Men Win Glory

Where Men Win Glory, the biography of NFL player turned Army Ranger Pat Tillman who was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan, is classic Jon Krakauer. Misunderstood subject with grand ideals? Check. Painstakingly documented journey? Check. Grisly and tragic ending? Check.

The book is a character study of Tillman, who Krakauer paints as super masculine yet soft hearted through research and interviews with family, friends, and fellow soldiers. Those around him said Tillman was a man who lived to challenge himself. He was a hard-driving if undersized safety for the Arizona Cardinals. After 9/11 he suspended his NFL career, giving up millions of dollars and a comfortable life with his wife Marie to fight in Afghanistan, where he would meet a horrible end.

Tillman doesn't come across as a saint (check out how much he curses), but he does seem like the rare person who was motivated primarily by principle rather than by money, power or fame. In the last chapter Krakauer compares Tillman to Friedrich Nietzsche's Ubermensch, "an exemplary, transcendent figure." In the end Tillman does seem like a sort of superman, a real-life hero of legend.

Besides chronicling Tillman's life, the author offers the clearest description of the lead-up to the war in Afghanistan I've read. Krakauer tackles the cover-up of the true cause of Tillman's death with ferocity, and it's truly stunning to learn about the details. It makes me wish all journalism could be like this, cutting straight through all the B.S. with a laser light. As with Krakauer's previous books, it's heartbreaking and gut-wrenching, but it's the truth.

Ahh, a day off. I was starting to forget what one of those feels like.

"Hope is the thing with feathers"

Gosh, I wish I didn't have to get up this early

"Why, my God, why"

Coffee shop show

Sunday night. I'm sitting at a coffee shop determined to inject some culture into my life. My sister V. and I find seats near the window on the corner of wooden table. On the other side of the shop a band is setting up to play.

While V. gets coffee for her and soda for me I examine three pieces of art, pages of newspaper with the Virgin Mary painted over them. Through the paint a headline is visible: "3 slain in Juárez." In one frame the section title of the page, "Borderland," has been modified with paint so it is now "Murderland." Art from a newspaper, hmm...

The bands start to play. We listen and don't actually see the bands since we don't want to surrender our seats. The first is high energy and pleasant, the second is totally forgettable. We actually get out of our seats for the third. The band is arty with jangling guitars that put me in a trance and lyrics that I can't really make out but seem esoteric. The lead singer looks about 20 and has red hair. After the set he mingles with the crowd. He points out to me and my sister that we have the same shoes (they're not the same, but both pairs are black flats).

This place is hipster central. Skinny jeans and carefully sloppy hair. I'd say average age is 21. It seems like a lot of people here know each other. Everyone's drinking beers in short rounded brown bottles.

The last band starts up. The band is called Women and when I first saw the show advertised I thought it was an all-female band. That would have been cool, but no, it's four guys from Canada. Like the band before they also start with the jangling guitars but every once in a while they whip out some amazing Beach Boys-style harmonies. Ooh, nice. I don't know crap about music but V. later points out that they sound a lot like My Morning Jacket.

It's late and my sister and I get going only partway through the set. She's heard enough and I've put in a full day at work and am really tired. We flee Hipsterville and drive home in Mom's car. Do I feel more cultured? Slightly. A few more of these and I might know something about it.

The secrets of Mad Men Season 4 finale revealed. Don never picks the smart one. Finale was good but I gotta say I didn't like this season quite as much as the previous ones.

So...I really need to update this thing. Friday, my second day back at work and I'm already tired. I guess that's what happens when you wake up shortly after 5 a.m. It was so dark I had to turn on all the lights while I was getting ready, and I even put my car heater on for the ride to work. I hate to admit it but it really does feel like October now :-(.

I'm up and I'm down and I'm both excited about life and cynical about its sameness.

I wonder how God would judge my life. If I'm wondering about it you know I can't be optimistic.

At the corn maze

Me trying to figure the way out of the Mesilla Valley Corn maze.

A pumpkin patch! Haven't seen one of those before.

Oh, Regina Spektor, she gets it every time *sighs*:
this is how it works
you're young until you're not
you love until you don't
you try until you can't
you laugh until you cry
you cry until you laugh
and everyone must breathe
until their dying breath

this is how it works
you peer inside yourself
you take the things you like
and try to love the things you took
and then you take that love you made
and stick it into some--
someone else's heart
pumping someone else's blood

and walking arm in arm
you hope it don't get harmed
but even if it does
you'll just do it all again
on the radio
you hear november rain
that solo's awful long
but it's a nice refrain
you listen to it twice
cause the dj is asleep
on the radio...

Does this thing still work? Finally, on my day off, an hour when I don't feel so overwhelmed. And all I can think is that a nap would be really nice right now.

26 views of the site this week. I think it's a record low. Hello, anybody out there?