Category Archives: music

Andrea, at Fret­ting the Small Stuff, tagged me for an 8 things meme. So, here goes…

8 things I am pas­sion­ate about

1. My Bet­ter Half. He taught me how to really love.
2. Find­ing some­thing to laugh at every day.
3. Cook­ing for peo­ple I love.
4. Eat­ing food that’s been cooked for me, as an expres­sion of love by a loved one, or as an expres­sion of self love. (I take myself out to eat when the BH is oth­er­wise occu­pied.)
5. Chil­dren grow­ing up poor.
6. Hon­esty. I don’t care if you messed up. Just admit it, and I will for­give you. Lie to me, and I may not.
7. Read­ing. Can’t get enough. Books, blogs, news­pa­pers, cereal boxes. What­ever, really.
8. Me time. I love my fam­ily, I love my Bet­ter Half. But I over­stim­u­late, and then I need to be alone. Inter­rupt my me time, and you get a mean BLC.

8 things I want to do before I die

1. Go to Paris again with the Bet­ter Half.
2. Be pub­lished, as an essay­ist, colum­nist, or poet.
3. Have some­one famous appre­ci­ate my cook­ing.
4. For­give myself and oth­ers and find con­tent­ment.
5. Take a cook­ing class with a cook­ing lumi­nary, like Jacques Pepin.
6. See New Zealand.
7. Spend some time with a kitty (My Kitty), who sits on my chest and purrs as I read a paper­back with one hand, and pet him/her with the other.
8. Spend a year with­out wor­ry­ing about work in the mid­dle of the night.

8 things I say often

1. “Voice mail, please.” I hate the phone at work.
2. “Tell me how you really feel.” I am not sar­cas­tic. No, not at all.
3. “I love you.” To my Bet­ter Half, all the time. Since my Mom’s recent break­down, my brother now says it to me, and I say it back. It’s amaz­ing– we haven’t really talked for years, and now it’s all bet­ter, all of a sud­den.
4. “Are you busy for lunch?” I try to get out of the office at lunchtime, to catch up with my cowork­ers and do a lit­tle breath­ing.
5. “How are you?” I really want to know.
6. The f-word, in all its vari­a­tions. Lawyers all swear a lot, but I seem to pep­per my con­ver­sa­tion with the f-word very lib­er­ally.
7. “Jack­ass.” Usu­ally while in my car.
8. (The silent look of disappointment/disapproval, over the top of my glasses.)

8 books I’ve recently read

1. The Blue Sword, Robin McKin­ley (a con­stant re-read)
2. The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pol­lan
3. Selected Poems, Vol. 1, Mary Oliver
4. The Gift of South­ern Cook­ing, Edna Lewis & Scott Pea­cock (soup chap­ter)
5. The Sec­ond Child, Deb­o­rah Gar­ri­son
6. Jesus and Bud­dha, Thich Naht Hanh (another re-read)
7. The End of the Alpha­bet, C.S. Richard­son (still work­ing on it, actu­ally)
8. The Oxford Ency­clo­pe­dia of Food, Alan David­son (selected entries)

8 things I could lis­ten to over & again

1. Mozart’s Requiem
2. “Mr. Brown­stone,” Guns n’ Roses
3. any­thing by the Beastie Boys
4. “The Impres­sion that I Get,” The Mighty Mighty Bos­stones
5. “Ghosts are Good Com­pany,” Bishop Allen
6. “Some­thin’ Extra,” Car­rie Rodriguez & Chip Tay­lor
7. “Hurt,” Nine Inch Nails
8. “Sweet Baby James,” James Taylor

8 things that attract me to my best friends

1. Hon­esty, even if it means telling me some­thing I won’t like.
2. A sense of humor.
3. An appre­ci­a­tion of my cook­ing.
4. Self-awareness.
5. A will­ing­ness not to scream and cover their eyes when I drive. (Fine, you try dri­ving with the Bet­ter Half.)
6. Curios­ity about the world.
7. An appre­ci­a­tion for wine-induced laugh­ter.
8. An appre­ci­a­tion for the Bet­ter Half. Love my spouse, love me. Not the other way around.

I’m not going to tag any­one, but I’d be inter­ested in see­ing what you have to write.