Easter

Last year on this day I was walking the golden gate bridge(for the first time) with my parents. It was a beautifully clear, stunningly bright day.


My mom kept leaning over the edge, feeling the bridge give and wiggle with the weight and movement of the cars, the wind, the earth, and saying, "Feel that? You feel that in your loins! This is living!"

This year I spent the afternoon at candy land.


Ghirardelli square, actually. But pretty much the same thing. The land of chocolate, caramel, and ice cream wonder. After 40+ days of no sugar - no baked goods, candy, fruit drinks, nada - I came to binge on one thing only:


A giant chocolate chip cookie!! The last time I had one I had just driven down to SF for the first time ever and Maris and I were running around the wharf like silly tourists.


I couldn't finish it then either. This thing is DENSE. And that's as far as I got before feeling completely overwhelmed. And then I put it back into it's bag and threw it away. It turns out I really like not being addicted to sugar. I still crave it, I'm not going to lie. Especially when I'm having a bad day, or am particularly stressed. But it doesn't occupy my thoughts every single day like it used to. And it doesn't torture me not to finish something sweet anymore. Although I will fully enjoy candy at movies, birthday cake, and special occasion desserts, I won't be sitting in bed eating boxes of candy from walgreens, or buying those individual cakes at safeway + a diet coke and going at it with a fork. Yes, I know - FATTY. :)

Right now I'm hiding from the rain with Kamel, roasting potatoes, garlic, and squash. The grated parm is ready for sprinkling and the baguette is perfectly sliced. I'm watching one of my favorite heist movies of all time (The Italian Job) and dreading work tomorrow. It's been a great weekend and a great Easter.

Hope you found lots of goodies hunting eggs!

Complimentary Upgrade

How I know the weekend is going to be fabulous:

Good news!

Although you originally ordered Standard (4 to 5 business days) shipping and handling, we have given your order special priority processing in our warehouse and are upgrading the shipping and delivery time frame for your order.Your order will ship out today and be given a special priority shipping status so that you can receive your order even faster than we originally promised!

Please note that this is being done at no additional cost to you. It is simply our way of saying thank you for being our customer.

Thank you Zappos for being another reason I love shoes.

Oom Shaaanty

Yesterday I took my very first intro meditation class with my new lady friend chuck*. There will be more on the meditation experience as the classes progress (twice a week for two more weeks) and I may just graduate to intermediate. We'll see. But as for now I am realizing that my soul resides in the middle of my forehead as a bright spot of light and that controlling your thoughts, controls your actions, and in the end controls who you are. (Did you enjoy the foot notes version of class #1? that will be free, except of course if you'd like to donate, there is a box near the door)

Today I exchanged some emails with lady friend chuck*:

me: ps. my mantra for the day has been "you are a happy, bright person". hehe

LFC: mine is you are nice to everyone. there will be chocolate.

me: thank god you're not super reverent about this. It would be so much less fun.

LFC: i bet that weird dude has been chanting ommm shannnnty at work all day!

me: I really really hope so. And I really hope I can not bust out laughing when we share our experiences on tues and I Really hope his friend is just as weird. I call that positive thinking. I'm embracing the hell out of their karmic energy.

LFC: One can not help but state the obvious when talking about weirdos. That dude was odd.

me: can i put this conversation on my blog? I can take your name out if you would prefer. Do you have a particular alias you desire?

LFC: ha. sure. hopefully the dude would never see if you don't put the center name.
call me chuck. :)

me: ok, but you have to be my lady friend chuck. full on "lady friend chuck said".

And so it goes.

Shop Talk

I have been temping and writing (thank you to those who have edited my most recent stuff - I appreciate your kindness) and freelance editing. This last bit I have been doing a little less frequently than in Seattle which surprised me at first, but now maybe I have figured it out. Perhaps there are enough artists here that most people can have stuff edited for free by friends and such. I am one of those people after all. I should really be spreading out my business cards more and frequenting hip coffee shops where writers go to frustrate themselves over prose. But I digress.

I am bewildered by something I keep running up against in this editing world of mine. Now - just in case you are curious, or need something looked at, or have a friend who might need some help with the written word, let me explain how it works (at least for me). I get your piece of writing, whatever it is, it could be a book or an essay for school, or a non fiction piece you want to share with your friends. And then I look at it for grammar, word choice, clarity, structure, and I look to make sure you are saying exactly what you meant to say. I suggest where you can expand, explain, or delete sections, I ask you questions that might help you in the writing process. I basically workshop the hell out of your piece but in a more professional manner - without the comments like "haha. He's a dick" I would write in the margins of my classmates stories.

Here is where my distress comes in: They always want me to like their work. And not just like it, they want me to "feel connected" to it. And they want that kind of feedback. They don't understand that it doesn't matter if I like it. And the thing is - it's not like I do or I don't. Some of the stuff I read needs a lot of work, yes. Some of the stuff I read isn't going to be published anywhere and it's not often that the writer even intends that. But it really doesn't matter because this is a job. I edit. I love editing. I don't assign a value to a stranger's work. I don't get invested. I try to make it as clean as I can and then I give it back. I try to explain that, sure, their work is fine but it doesn't actually matter what I think, but they don't want to hear it. They want more. They want me to feel what they are working on. Is this because I'm working with amatuers? It must be. No writer I know pesters their editing friends for positive feedback. That's not why we get things looked at in the first place. I know where I rule. I want to know where things suck.

So I mix in positive with negative feedback, but I was doing that anyway. And I fake it. But it's bothersome to get the pestering emails "What do you think? Do you like my work? Is it good?" It's a school paper on a topic I don't care about. Sure. It's fine.

Lauren Life List Vol. 1

So I've been watching the Life List idea spread through the internet like wildfire and I have been kind of reluctant to join because I felt like I had immediate goals but no long reaching goals. Part of that, I think, was because i was in grad school and I couldn't see past next week's assignments, let alone personal goals for myself beyond my desire to sleep that night. But I have to admit that Maggie Mason of Mightygirl has finally gotten to me. She does things! She is doing things! People pay for her to do things! (nice for her, not so much a reality for me, but that's ok.) And now that I am a tad bit freer than I was a year ago I'm thinking maybe I can squeeze some of this in. If anything I'll have a nice list going a year from now. So every once in a while, if I've thought of enough new things, I'll post them here. Maybe some of you would like to join in and help me achieve some goals, maybe some of you have information on how I could achieve some goals. Either way it would be awesome if you could hold me to it. And so it begins:

Go to Greece
Attend a feminist rally in DC
Publish a book
Have more than one child
Take surfing lessons
Spend time in South America
Own a Dog
Go on vacation with my best friends
Do a 3 day walk for breast cancer
Work in the writing industry

*In no particular order of course.

American Politics

So the main issue between Rep and Dems = they can't agree on how to run the country best, right? And right now it's all wrapped up in how the country spends it's money... Or more accurately the republicans are mad at how the Dems spend money and the Dems are mainly mad at republicans over social/military issues and how they spent ALL of the money during the Bush Admin. But then there are some republicans - the neo christian/neo "patriot" sect who believe less government is better (which is one of the founding principles of why we broke from Britain and is not the crazy part) except if the republicans are in office and then all the wire tapping, all the fear-based policy, all the military spending, all the conservative censoring of television (FCC) and other media outlets, all the church based politics in the world are free game. To me, if you are up for all of that government (which seems intrinsically negative), it's downright crazy for you to be against other government interference that ends up helping people, increasing individual liberties, etc. And it's not just that people disagree with one or the other, but it's the intensity at which the neo-crazies are disagreeing. It's no longer policy or money, it's life or death for those people. To the point where a conservative blogger named Solomon Solly Forell posted a tweet just after the vote on healthcare calling for the direct assassination of Pres Obama. They went on to encourage other American's to drop obama if they had a clear shot. You can see screen shots of these tweets by clicking HERE.

The thing is - I'm sure this person is not the only one thinking this, and not the only one saying it out loud, or on the internet. But really? You want to kill a guy over a healthcare bill? And even if it's not the only thing you want to kill him for, (being black might be part of it... so cliche... such a tired reason, really) in this case it was the straw that broke the camel's back? Healthcare was the thing that just .... poof.... pushed ya over the edge? And even if... let's say... MOST conservatives aren't willing to pull the trigger - because only really crazy people actually do that - the crazy people are still calling themselves conservative! Crazy democrats (you know the one's hanging off of bridges to save seals or the ones living in trees on Berkley's Campus? You know the ones...) have the decency to at lease call themselves the green party. At least they make the distinction. AND they aren't trying to kill anyone, except maybe themselves because who lives in trees? I mean c'mon... you know there isn't a toilet up there.

Masthead Me!

Behold the beautiful art of Regina Perez. Soon to be tattoo artist. Pretty sweet likeness too, right? Minus the calves - i have calves that no boots can contain. Hooray! I have a customized masthead! Finally! Other items for you to peruse on my blog: the pictures of me (so self centered this one) that rotate through the months of the year. Once the year mark passes for any month the pictures are removed. It's a rotating year-in-the-life-of. Also I have a list of blogs that I frequent that are not the famous ones (dooce, mightygirl, finslippy, etc) - those people don't need more readers, but my people do! I've been playing around with have a list of books I'm currently reading with links to where you can buy them, but then it becomes embarrassing when I've lingered on one for far too long. I had a fairly routine quiz that appeared on my side bar, but eh... I kept forgetting to cycle them through and i ran out of things to quiz you on. I'm trying to class up this joint, ya know? :) But if there is something you'd like to see, let me know. In the mean time YAY MASTHEAD and thank you Regina!

If you'd like to see more of Regina's art you can check out her flickr here.