Hikaru Dorodango - The Ancient Art of Mudballs

This is sooo cool! I am going to do this as soon as I get a chance. Hikaru Dorodango are balls of mud (!), molded by hand into as perfect a sphere as you can get it, dried, then polished with more dirt to a depth of shine that seems impossible. The process is simple and straight forward, but the results are pure magic! Check it out here: http://www.dorodango.com/about.html

I'll let you know how it goes.

Take a Beating Sunday

My teams lost. Totally bummed on both the Padres & Chargers. And I don't want to talk about it any more - it's just too painful. Yeah, I know, dontcha just hate those people whose lives rise and fall with their teams score? Me too. I've become kinked from living in an all male household. Fall Sundays are all day sports fests, broken only by frequent trips to the frig for beer and only slightly less frequent sojourns to the bathroom to expel all that beer. Between games or at a convenient half-time we barbeque then eat in front of the tv with our fingers. We don need no steenkin forks! Ours is a vegetable and carbohydrate-free repast. MEAT. Ribs of every variety, fish, weenies (for all the kids), chicken and of course, no Sunday Game Day is complete without the shrimp appetizer. Every once in a while, as a concession to the women, a bag of chips (carbohydrate!) and a tiny bowl of guacamole (vegetable/fruit!) is thrown on the coffee table as an afterthought. Woohoo!

I'm striving for balance in my life and still looking for my inner girl. But I'm not gonna find it on a Sunday at my house.

Done! Fini! Case Closed.

I quit my job. I did not give 2 weeks notice. I have never done that before. I am responsible. I am considerate. I do the right thing. Well...mostly. I absolutely unequivocally HATED my job. It was none of the things I'd been led to believe throughout the interviewing process. My first thought upon waking was 'how can I get out of going to work today?' If I could only have a car accident and maybe break an arm! On my way to work I began to unravel; dizzy, unable to breathe and my heart would pound in my throat. Just getting through the work day was an exercise in doggedness. By the time I was out of there I was exhausted. Bone weary and mentally wasted. It wasn't that the work was so demanding - it wasn't. It was that I HATED it and the energy expenditure of that was greater than my reserves. The work was boring and pedantic, involving little creativity, interaction or even thought. Did I mention I hated it?

I resigned on a Tuesday. My eye stopped twitching! I feel great! I'm broke and I don't care! I think I'll go to school and learn Web Design. Maybe. I might decide to twirl signs on the street corner. ? I don't know what I'll do but it for damn sure is going to be something I enjoy. Life's too short.

Bling for Uber-dummies

$90.00 for a bottle of water! Water for the uber-rich. Doesn’t it trigger your gag reflex that some people have so much money to waste and so much ego to feed they will buy water that comes in ‘limited-edition, frosted and corked bottles, hand-decorated with Swarovski crystals’. It’s called Bling H20. The founder of Bling H20 says “he noticed that you could tell a lot about a person by the bottled water he/she carried.” Like what? They drink water? Some people are pretentious douchebags? Shallow people need to flaunt their wealth to fill their self-esteem gage? Some people are so insecure they use a water bottle to define themselves? The world needs a reality check paid to the order of all the countries around the world that don’t have clean water to drink.

Let me be the first to say I waste money and I buy things that are frivolous. But this doesn’t seem simply a matter of making a frivolous purchase. I think it goes deeper than that and is indicative of root societal problems. I understand buying comfort, beauty and ease. But this is none of those. It’s a symbol of decadence to which many will ascribe lest they be found unworthy. To me it's not so much a matter of the haves & have-nots; it's about emptiness, a bald and desolate spirit striving to fill itself and settling for banality.

Sorry for the dive into the philosophical - it just struck me as a sort of social compass and it seems we're going in the wrong direction.