A Stone Girl Blog first

It was fun and interesting for me to read many introductory blogs from my fellow Holidailies participants on (and around) December 1. One thing that struck me was a common theme that seemed to be running through our first-of-the-month blogs. Many of us are bloggers who aren’t blogging. We started our blogs 10 or more years ago, maintained them for a good while, and then let them lapse. There are varied reasons for this for different people. I think the factors that resulted in my blog’s neglect included moving back to California, having kids, and changing blogging platforms. Many old sites that used to host blogs and blogging communities are defunct, and with them went a sense of community that many of us had, visiting each other’s blogs regularly. I’m glad I was able to transport a lot of my content to WordPress, but it’s not the same around here. Having kids affected a whole host of habits I used to have, for what should be obvious reasons. There are just not enough hours in the day and days in the week to work, maintain a house, and take care of two kiddos. If I’m not out of time by the end of the night, I’m out of coherent brain cells. I suppose I should also blame short-attention span social media distractions for taking up my time (because they don’t really engage my brain cells).

Another theme I saw in a blog I read that I feel I share is somewhat related to the desire to remain under the world’s radar. Maybe not completely anonymous, but at least innocuous enough to not draw negative attention from anyone who would do more than start a flame war. Which, by itself, is something I can barely survive anymore. My flameproof suit shows much wear, enough in spots that I get singed and stung more easily than I like. Sure, I’d love to share stories, ideas, and opinions and learn about what other people think and why. Is it worth it to debate back and forth, either in a civil manner or not? Sure. I can withstand a few flames still. Is it worth it to receive menacing messages or personal insults, or anything more severe? Not right now, it’s not. Not during a time when I’m focused on my work and family. Maybe if I decide to dedicate my life to writing, researching, reaching out to people, or actually trying to influence other people. Possibly then. But not when blogging is supposed to be a good outlet, a good funnel for my scattered thoughts, and a good way to keep in touch with others. So, I think I’m happy to stay under the radar, for now. Which doesn’t mean I won’t continue to post opinions and political thoughts and rants about how hypocrisy sucks. I’ll still do that. But you know what else I’m going to do? Something I’ve never done before. I’m going to post a picture of myself. Most people who read this blog would recognize me. It’s not a big deal if a few “strangers” could someday do so also. I don’t know what I was trying to accomplish by trying to stay out of sight for years. I think it’s a fallacy for any of us with any significant online presence to think we can stay anonymous to everyone. And you know, I’m ok with that. For now. I may delete this blog tomorrow. Ha! But I’ll bust out this little pic my hubby took of me earlier this year when we were hiking around Jack London State Park. Which, by the way, is an awesome little spot in itself to walk and hike and take in some nature. But, if you are a fan of the author, it’s a fantastic place to visit. Learn his history. See his home, the ruins of his dream home, and the beautiful home his widow built after he died. The Park just re-opened The House of Happy Walls home, and I’m looking forward to going back to see it again in its new design. Great little State Historic Park in northern California. Relatively easy for little kids to walk around, and they host some fun events throughout the year.

And with that, I bid you goodnight. Here’s looking at you, kids.

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A Pandora Introduction

I was working a little late in the office tonight, so I turned on my Pandora station for some background music. I have several stations on Pandora (yes, I still use Pandora). Some are seeded by only one song or artist. A few are seeded by a mix of specific songs and favorite artists. Tonight’s selection was my station. The one I named “Stone Girl’s Tunes.” I created this station in February 2007. I listen to it all the time. Pandora reports that, through the years, I’ve “thumbed up” 602 songs and “thumbed down” 905 songs while listening to my station. Tonight, for the first time in a long while, I looked at the list of songs and artists I chose to seed my station. Like my blog introduction, I feel my Stone Girl station is still a fairly good representation of me. I’ve discovered some new now-favorite musical artists in the last few years. I’ve outgrown a few from my old list. But it’s a good list and a good station. And it is, perhaps, another good way to introduce myself to others and perhaps to learn more about you. What songs, which musical artists, seed the music station in your life?

My list, from 2007.

Artists:

• Imogen Heap
• Kosheen
• Lijie
• Art of Noise
• Fool’s Garden
• Maktub
• Ella Fitzgerald
• Paul Simon
• Tears for Fears
• Maura O’Connell
• Cause & Effect
• Rob Zombie
• David Lanz
• Delerium
• Sting
• Third Day
• Hungry Lucy
• Scorpions

Songs:

• Santa Cruz by Fatboy Slim
• Home by the Sea by Genesis
• (Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay by Otis Redding
•  Haunted by Poe
• No Mermaid by Sinead Lohan
• Fear by Sarah McLachlan

 

Holidailies #3

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Compulsions

Compulsions.  We all have them.  At least one or two.  What’s yours?

Mine is door locking.  At home.  I don’t worry so  much about car doors.  I have a friend that does.  Check and rechecks them.  Will check them, walk half-way across a parking lot and then run back to check again.  Silly huh? 

But at home?  I’m the same.  I’m a compulsive door-locker at the end of the day.  I guess I don’t trust people enough to leave my home doors unlocked.  My sister may disagree with me as she has had words with me about leaving mom’s garage door open.  But, generally, I run to my front door to lock it.  At night, I check my doors.  Then, I check them again.  Before I go to bed, I check them again.  Occasionally, I’ll jump back out of bed to check again.  If I’m home and Sweetie walks out the door, I lock it after him.  If he forgets something and tries to run back in, he’ll walk right back to the door and *whack* into it as he finds out that I have, indeed, locked the door right after him.  While staying with my mom, I know she sometimes like to keep a sliding glass door open at night to cool off the house.  Security-wise she is probably ok since she is surrounded by neighbors and the screen door has a lock.  I try and respect her choice.  I try and ignore it.  I do.  Sometimes I succeed.  But most of the time?  Nope.  Can’t do it.  I run to the offending door and squeak it shut after Mom goes to bed. 

Not that I don’t miss a door sometimes.  I do.  Usually not the front door.  But I woke up one morning a while ago to realize that I didn’t check the doors the night before and Sweetie left the garage door open all night.  This just feeds and fertilizes my natural compulsion to check and recheck. 

I think there are a couple of seeds to this compulsion.  One is probably from my father who was generally quite security conscious.  The other has to do, I think, with my sleep paralysis.  Since I sometimes panic because I fear that someone has crept into my home while I am paralyzed, it helps me to know for sure that I’ve checked all the doors and someone can’t just walk in without my hearing.  Not that this helps most of the time, but that’s still partly where it comes from. 

As compulsions go, I don’t think mine is the most irritating.  Sweetie can laugh at me as I open the garage door for the 5th time in a night to recheck the garage door.  But other than running the risk of waking someone up from loud creaky doors closing, I don’t think I’m hurting anyone. 

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I play poker and drink rum…

…nothing really wrong with that.

I was thinking about it tonight as I joined a couple of co-workers for a quick drink after work. 

My co-worker and the bartender are great wine aficionados.  They spent a bit of time talking about food and wine, and wine, and wine making.  All good stuff.  I like good wine.  But I will admit I do not have a very sophisticated wine palate.  My senses just aren’t that stellar and the appreciation of the subtleties of wine are lost on my sub par sense of taste.  So, I honestly don’t know oakey from woody or whatever the proper wine terms are. 

So, there they are talking food and wine.  And I’m talking about how the World Series of Poker just started up in Vegas and how I’d love to watch some of it.  Then, I ask the bartender if he has any rum from Belize, which of course he does not.  Don’t know where I’ll find any after I finish the wonderful bottle my dear friend just gave me after her wedding.  It just tastes soooooo much better than regular rum.  Buttery and vanilla-y and yum.  1 Barrel.  Where do I find that in the States?

Anyway, I thought it was funny.  Wine and food.  Rum and poker.

In defense of my cultured side, I also play piano, can eat a five-course meal with good table manners, and I love love love the Academy of St. Martins in the Fields.  And I do like wine.  And wine making.  I’d just rather watch a professional poker player than wine maker.   

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My Poor Hubby

This exchange from an episode of 30 Rock illustrates well the sort of behavior of mine that my poor Sweetie has to put up with on a day-to-day basis.

Jack says something to Liz (Lemon).

Liz starts ranting on and on and on about some old memory of hers.

Jack says:  “Lemon, this is a part of our problem. I give you a simple managerial suggestion in a professional context and I get back the second half of a Judy Blume novel.”

I’ve given up trying to pretend that I don’t babble incessantly to my husband. I do.  I’m a babbler.  My good friends know this about me.  Nowadays I just sidle up next to Sweetie and say something like: “Honey, do you have time for the second half of a Judy Bloom novel?”

Bless his heart, he usually says yes.

But you know I’ll rant about it when he says no.

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Living on the Edge

I’m not a downtown kind of girl, I’ve figured out.

I thought about this as I drove down the hill to go grocery shopping the other day.  I hate traffic.  I’m don’t think I’m unusual in this dislike.  Haven’t heard a lot of people lately who mention “Oh, I was stuck in this nice bit of traffic yesterday.  It was quite pleasant.”  The saving grace in that situation is, of course, good music.  If I’ve managed to stow a couple of good CDs in the car, a longer car ride can be quite bearable.  Of course, I’d prefer a long car ride along the coast, or up Haleakala to the Kula Lodge for some nice breakfast.  That sort of thing. 

Speaking of music, here’s a song to keep you company during this blog trip.  I like this:

So, what have I done?  I’ve found a new route to Costco that involves driving about a mile in the opposite direction, then going down the hill, then driving back towards town.  If traffic in town is light, my new route is about the same time.  If traffic in town is heavy, I save myself a bit of time.  But that doesn’t matter to me as much as the bliss of LESS traffic.  I don’t use this route for the grocery store (yet) because it would really be out of the way.  But it’s been so much nicer to drive past sugar cane and empty fields instead of track homes and the mall.

Because, about a mile away from my house, I’d be in the middle of sugar cane fields.  When I look up at the sky at night, I see stars.  I live on the edge of town.  And, as I thought to myself on the way to Costco, I realized that I’ve lived near the edge of towns my whole life.  Granted, most of my life has been spent in relatively small towns.  I think I’ve mentioned that – growing up, even though I technically lived in “town,” the area across from my home was grape fields.   I climbed the tree in my back yard (a lot) and on a clear day, I could see the Sierra mountains.  If I got in my car, I could be in wide open fields in two minutes. 

I went away to college to an Ag school in the middle of ag land.  Not hard to get away to open fields from anywhere in town.  Even when I lived in the dorms, I was close to empty fields.  I lived on the west edge of town.  I lived on the east edge of town (at least, it was the edge of town back then.  There’s a few extra miles of homes to the east nowadays.)  I lived on the south edge of town. 

Even when I made my way to Sacramento, I still managed to find a neighborhood on the edge of town.  Some days, after a bad day at work or a heartbreak of some kind, I would get in my car and seek solace in wide open space.  And that wouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes from my home.  I visit friends who live in Sacramento neighborhoods who are socked in by suburban development.  You get off the freeway and have to drive another 15 to 20 minutes through crowded streets to find their home.  I sometimes think that if I lived in those areas, I would suffocate.  If I were to climb up to the top of my roof (another thing I used to do quite often) and could not see open space in at least one direction, any distress I felt would just be multiplied.  I guess you could call it my “Heidi Syndrome.”  Take the simple country girl and stick her in the middle of a city and she wilts.  She wanes.  She weakens.   I am half Swiss.  I need my alps.

It’s not that I don’t like a good city.  OK, I don’t actually like many cities.  I love San Francisco.  That may be it.  I just need to be able to clear my head in open air.  And since I don’t often know when the need to clear my head will arise, I guess I have this instinctive need to be near open space.  Maybe it stems from my girlhood plans to run away from home.  That plan involved the mountains and my bike.  It was going to be a long ride, but I knew I had to get up to the hills.  I’ve had many recurring dreams over the years that end in me running as hard as I can towards hills and trees for solace.  I don’t know what I will find.  But the search for peace of mind always seems to start there.

I don’t know where our next move takes us.  Right now, Sweetie and my #1 and #2 choices are both fairly small-townish.  It will be easy to be near trees, hills, and open space in both these spots.  Who knows.  We could end up somewhere else.  I could suck it up and thrive in a boxed-in, artificially-lighted, urban home.  I could survive away from the edge.

If I own a helicopter.

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Confessions of a Comic Book Collector

Sweetie and I went to watch Iron Man yesterday.  Enjoyed it.  As far as superhero origins, I didn’t love it as much as Batman Begins.  But I liked it, and I really like Robert Downey Jr.

As we sat watching the credits, I turned to Sweetie and asked “So, is it cool yet to collect comic books?”

For you see, I am a closet comic book collector.  And by “closet” I mean – I literally have closets full of comics.  Here in Maui.  Back at my mom’s house.  You may call it “nerdiness”, but I call it “diversifying my retirement portfolio.”

Not a bad thought considering a comic book like “All Star Comics” # 5, which sold for $0.10 in 1941 is valued today at $6,000 (see www.comicspriceguide.com).  Of course, it would have to be in mint condition to catch that kind of money.  That happens to be the oldest comic book I own, but mine is worth about $300.  All told, I have about 2,000 books and most of them are only worth their cover price.  It’s hard to find older books in good condition, but I try and pick up a few when I can.  Yes, I’ve attended a couple of comic book conventions.  No, not The Biggie.  Maybe someday.

Why comic books?

It all started with a little gem of a book called “Sandman” by Neil Gaiman.  During college, my boyfriend at the time was a comic book reader/collector.  He introduced me to Sandman, and I fell into one of the best written stories and set of characters I’d ever seen.  I could go on and on about Sandman and Neil Gaiman.  Oh wait, I already have.

Anyway – back to college.  After my boyfriend and I broke up, I was left to buy the books for myself to keep up with the story arc.  And I guess, once I started, I got hooked.  Comic book collectors will advise “Buy what you like to read” when collecting.  This is because there are soooooo many titles to choose from – so many books – it’s hard to know what will catch on in the future.  So you might as well buy books you enjoy.  And so I have, over the years.  Plus or minus a few hundred random books.  Which is not to say I’ve read them all.  No one can compare to Sandman.  Although one of my current favorites is Fables created by Bill Willingham.  Awesome books.

For someone like me – all these Marvel superhero movies excite me – not just because I enjoy a good movie, but because I’m hoping for increases in my books’ values.  Incredible Hulk?  Yeah – I got some.  Iron Man – Not a lot, but I own a few.  Batman?  Of course.  Ghost Rider?  Bring it on!!  By the way – did you know one of the most well known comic book collectors is Mr. Nicholas Cage himself?  Bet he had a blast playing Ghost Rider.  Which enables him to buy books like Action Comics #1, currently valued around $580,000 for a Near Mint copy.  Not something I will ever see in my lifetime.   But hey, I’m happy with my Marvel Spotlight #5.  Yes, I’m a huge nerd.

So, I confess.  That is one of my hobbies.  I may not ever make a big profit from it, but at least I’ve read some good stories along the way.

Back in the movie theater, Sweetie just smiled at my question and said “Well, I married you didn’t I?”  Nice. I collect comic books.  I’m not ashamed to admit it.

And – if you haven’t seen Iron Man yet and plan to – sit through all the credits.  There’s a little extra suprise scene at the end of the movie that sounds promising.  And made me think “cha-ching!”

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