EmIs4Motivation

I’m feeling motivated to blog again. 🙂

Just finally adding a digg account, though that’s an experiment and I may set up something different in the future. I need something to aggragate all the other blogs I want to check out. I know that is an easy thing to find, just somewhat time consuming.

My time seems to just slip away from me these days. It’s all work Mon-Fri, so on the weekend I want to have nothing to do with planning, being some place at a required time, being responsible, even. Maybe that’s why my house is a slum and my back yard is turning into a jungle.

K. Not sounding so motivated now. …

Motivated to reach out into my world and find out what other people are doing. And conveniently, I don’t have to leave my couch. Course at this location I can here my husband “playing” through all the downloadable songs for Frets on Fire, a guitar hero ripoff he found online. (The xbox is getting fixed now.)

EmIs4Months

It’s been months since I wrote. Not sure why. Been doing lots of video, actually, at work. Maybe just needed to change gears.

But I have been cooking.

Here’s my stuffed pepper recipe. It’s easy.

1 red pepper

pkg yellow rice

can black beans

can diced tomatoes

Cut pepper in half lengthwise. Clean out seeds and trim insides. Put a little bit of oil in bottom of cassarole dish. Heat oven to 350 or 375 and put cassarole dish in oven while cooking rice and beans. Follow package instructions for rice and stir in beans when rice is done. Heat for a minute or two. Spoon rice and beans into pepper shell. Dump tomatoes over peppers. Put in oven and cook for 10 minutes or so until heated through.

Eat. Ta da. Easy stuffed peppers. And it’s pretty good for you and a no-meat meal.

Mariscos

I’ve noticed quite a few of my posts involve food. There’s a reason for that. I’m a big fan. Fortunately, I’m not a BIG fan. But I could stand to lose a couple of cookie pounds.

Anywho, I was spending time at a marine lab in Boca Raton this week where this British film crew is trying to do the March of the Penguins with loggerhead turtles. They were waiting for the little critters to close their eyes to show they had safely made it to the Sargassum Sea. (which really isn’t a sea. I think you see it called a bed of or mat of sargassum. But it’s the reason Columbus actually made it to our shores — well, the shores of the Hispanola — and didn’t get tossed overboard. So its crucial stuff, especially to sea turtles.)

So later someone says the film crew is thinking of naming their main character Maria. She, being Cuban-born, thinks this is a boring, common name. And I say, reminds me too much of mariscos. Ha. I made a joke in Spanish. Sort of.

Maize

Incredible man.

Norman Borlaug, an elderly agronomist  credited with saving the lives of 1 billion human beings worldwide, more than one in seven people on the planet. The news story I was reading was talking about the fact that though he’d saved a billion people with his science, he was unknown. And at 93, he’s probably not showing up in People. And it asked why we don’t have scientist as celebrities, as Albert Einstein was in his day. The man was truly brilliant. And he was, actually, appreciated in his day. (Reminds me of all those authors who weren’t and some who were, like Ernest Hemingway, who has had to regain his recognition because the academic elite decided he was too popular. Anywho.)

He revolutionized farming. And I celebrate him. Having grown up on a farm, I always found the govermment interference confusing. And always wondered how the world could be starving, when we were being paid not to grow stuff.

And I loved the farm. It sits idle now. But that smell of a freshly turned field, the acrid smell of dirt that has sat for a few months after something grew there. Growing something new. It is something that a city/suburb person cannot understand.

Magic

Oh, my goodness. It’s over. I have finished the Harry Potter books. I think I am glad that my one prediction, that Harry would beat Voldemort but lose his magic, did not come true. Because Rowlings set that up as such an important thing for him, since he lost his parents and lived with people who gave him no love, I decided it would be more cruel than death to do that to him.

This whole creation of Rowlings has captivated me from the time I picked up the first book. I guess two of them were out at the time. Although she builds an enchanting world of magic, embues people with the stuff of dreams, the key to the stories is the friendship and the common truth and valor of ordinary, good people who are extraordinary when life calls for it. Good triumphs evil. And it isn’t always easy. Usually it is only accomplished through doubt, fear and sacrifice. Ultimately the hero realizes to do less than try is a worse doom. Friendship and love.

I think I’m still overwhelmed with what all happened, having finished it less than a half-hour ago, so I’ll just say that I didn’t feel some of the emotion I would have expected through the last part of the book. She stretched it through all the months of them accomplishing nothing and moving around while they were on the run, turning on each other, learning important things about who they were, of course. But then the last third was just non-stop with revelations and not as much feeling. Maybe I just read it too fast.

And I missed some of the logic with the wands. I’m going to have to go back and reread some of that, I guess. The friends were left hanging a bit at the end. I’m not sure she mentioned Luna again. I expected Neville to get to kill Bellatrix, but he did get his moment of valor, which I felt certain would happen. I was right about Snape and Draco. And I knew a Weasley had to die. I thought it would be Arthur. I was pretty sure one of the horcruxes would be at Hogwarts and decided it would be in the Room of Requirement before she even revealed what it was. And as soon as she did, I remembered the bust because of the thing at Luna’s house. Anywho, it was the wand part that I had trouble following and we he was revealing who its master was, I didn’t totally follow that.

Rambling now and it’s late. I can actually sleep tonight, as I was just getting to the bookstore this time last night to buy the book.

Muggles

Rereading all the Harry Potter books has consumed me since the 4th (well, except for a weekend in Key West). I actually want to finish in mull the possibilities, but I’m not sure that I will. I love the fact that these are children’s books, but they are about such essential things that they appeal to many people. Yes, I’m one of those “kids” who was at the bookstore at midnight to get the book. Was like 400 page in by dawn.

I’m hooked. I want Harry to live. I think he’ll lose his magic. He’ll do his heroic thing and then he’ll just be a regular person for the rest of his life. Will he be a muggle again? Inside us all is a magic that we have to stamp out to get rid of. Some have.

I want to believe my magic is still there.

Muscles

Takes no time to start losing the tone if you’ve been working out and quit. The writing muscle is just as bad. I find I have the desire to do this blog, but the daily doing of it is much harder than I expected. Now some of that is just laziness and some of it is having a bit of an unreasonable expectation — after all, I don’t check my home e-mail nearly as often as I tell myself that I do.

But the muscle needs work. And it needs some calesthenics and it needs some aerobic activity. And I haven’t commited to that yet. Though I really think I’m getting myself to that point.

I have a premise of a story. And Kathryn (my protagonist) has joined my going-to-sleep thoughts and my in-the-shower thoughts. Both are key times for imagining and planning and provoking. So … maybe I’m building up to this in the same way that I built up to quitting smoking.

At first, there were just days I thought I don’t want to feel this dried out hacky feeling. And there were times I would take and drag and think, this isn’t enjoyable at all. And there were days I’d think, I could be happy if last night was the last time I smoked. And finally it was. Well, at least for the last seven months. I couldn’t certainly imagine circumstances that pushed me back into that comfort zone. But I made it through Ernie being in the hospital. And I made it through the past pleasure points of sitting at an outside joint listening to a band while the person at the next barstool blew smoke in my face. And I’ve made it through dozens of days now at work and after when I really could have used a cigarette.

So … maybe there is a point that your mind and body just senses that you reach the highest swell of high tide and when that tide recedes, you’ve left the burden behind.

MEXICO BEACH

The best place on earth when spent with my family at a beachfront cottage. Sublime.

I am tanned and relaxed. And have a new cache of shells. Spent time with the kiddies. Ahhhhhhhh. (The ahhh isn’t really from the time spent with kiddies, but it was excellent in a different way.)

I’ll add photos when I get them edited.

Mucus

Bleck. This should have been posted June 16 when I was mired in the mucus. It postponed my beach trip.

But at least I was here for the hubby’s first day of his new job last Monday. He sulked. Hopefully this will get better.

And my conclusion from nasty cold: the OTC medicine isn’t worth it unless you actually get it from behind the counter and sign the anti-meth thing. It ticks me off to be treated like a drug-addict criminal just to get a decongestant that works worth a damn.

AMore

Little creative license here for the slant rhyme in the Em Is 4 M… theme …

Our fifth anniversary vacation was an big trip to Europe framed by a Mediterranean cruise (Barcelona to Venice). It was LOVELY.

And here’s some MORE photos: