Bake Night is good for the soul.

Long week + short-staffed at work + fave student + juggling multiple priorities = brain fry. If I sit on the couch, I will be asleep in minutes. I love my latest book, Night Train to Lisbon, but I'm having trouble concentrating - and it's one that needs my full attention. The solution? Bake Night!

Honey crinkle cookies, courtesy of Cooks.com .

They probably would look better with turbinado sugar on top,

like the recipe called for, but I didn't have any. Oh well.

Oooh, are these good!

I'm just sayin'.

I just watched a segment about Hob Nob Hill Cafe on the TV show "Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives" and got excited about the fact that TH and I ate there! I am so easily amused.

Ready?

The Spring semester begins Monday. Am I ready? I'm not sure.

• My "favorite student" is back again, and hopefully this will be his last semester! He's due to graduate in May.
• Paperwork is pending for many of my workers. I'm wondering who will actually be able to work.
• This is my sixth semester, so I feel really confident about my skills in this job. I want to communicate that confidence to the students I work with.
• I've got lots of extracurricular activities this year. I hope I can stay balanced.
• I hope this semester is better than last!

Back and Better than ever!

Just back from a vacay in SoCal. TH and I had massive fun, ate lots of good food, and took lots of pictures - all the ingredients for a great time.

The happiest people on earth

Cap'n Jenny and her pirate treasure, yar.

El Indio in San Diego. Best. Mexican. Food. EVER.

Feeding the lorikeets at the Wild Animal Park.

Ummm...

Feeding the rhinos at Wild Animal Park.

Feeding the...oops, no...watching the cheetah run at Wild Animal Park.

Feeding the humans at Hob Nob Hill Cafe and Bakery.

Slight Pause in Programming

I'll be without a computer for most of next week, so there won't be much in the way of posting. Meanwhile, here are some topics to keep you occupied:

• Which is harder: learning to play a sport well, or learning to play an instrument well?
• If you could have a superpower, what would it be and why?
• What is your favorite book, EVER? (Including children's books)

Discuss!

I'm just sayin'.

I really don't like the word "ginormous."

Progress!

On the "won't-quit-my-day-job" new hobby front:

Yes, there is some improvement to my knitting. Some. I'm still not thrilled with it (since it's not perfect and all), but in a strange way I'm enjoying the freedom of being a novice. Yay me.

On the "whip-my-butt-into-shape" exercise front:

I've moved on to week 4 in the running plan. This means I now do the following pattern:

• 3 minutes jogging
• 1.5 minutes brisk walking
• 5 minutes jogging
• 2.5 minutes brisk walking
• 3 minutes jogging
• 1.5 minutes brisk walking
• 5 minutes jogging
• 2.5 minutes gasping, limping, and cursing my way to the locker room.

OK, so that last part isn't technically part of the plan. However, I take pride in the fact that I have successfully made the shift from mostly walking, to mostly jogging. Yay me.

Happy New Year!

And it's 2009.

I'm reading a wonderful, intense, spiritual, mystical book by Beatrice Bruteau entitled, "Radical Optimism: Practical Spirituality in an Uncertain World." It's an awesome book. Here's a section that I just finished (excerpted from Chapter 4).

We have developed a cult of the descriptive self, our own personal image industry... conventional categories that we use as a kind of shorthand for organizing our affairs for particular purposes that we may have chosen: getting acquainted, identifying people, carrying on a conversation while waiting for the bus. But all these descriptions could be otherwise and that person, the real person living inside, would still be there with the same interior sense of "I am, I am here, I am now, I am I."

It is this interior sense of actually existing in this moment as a sheer "I am" that is the real living person. This person is undefined, indescribable, and transcendant of all categories, roles, and descriptions. ... Because it is not defined or confined, the real person is not limited by contrast with beings possessing different definitions. It does not identify itself by seeing how it is distinct and different from others.

...Once we see that our deepest self, the real person in us, is not limited to being any one particular image-self but is actually a child of God, one who simply says "I am I, here, now" - once we really grasp that, all need for this elaborate and expensive defense system evaporates. Then we are free to love others, to will abundant being to them, to all. We no longer have to struggle to maintain a favorable balance of trade in our interactions with them in order to keep a good sense of self-feeling. Our sense of feeling good in being ourselves does not come from any kind of contrast or comparison with others. It comes directly and immediately out of our realization of being a creative act of God, simply unique and absolutely precious.


Questions that I'm asking myself, and asking you to consider, in this new year:

• What would it take for you to see yourself as connected to all other beings, as being a creative act of God, as being worthy and of value just because you exist?
• What would it mean to your 2009 to see others without the distinctions that they choose, or that the world puts on them - liberal, conservative, Christian, Muslim, foreigner, immigrant, gay, lesbian, criminal, victim, black, white, druggie, normie, etc.?
• How would the liberation described by Bruteau change your life on a daily basis?
• And how would it change the world?