Friday, May 1, 2015

7ToF: You Walk Like an Ace Now

1. Here is the heron that visited the pond out in front of our house for a couple of days last week:


2. The post title: song ID anyone? Dean is off today, so we went to the new Thai restaurant for lunch. That song came on while we were eating and I was impressed to find out that he knew every single word. Sometimes you can still surprise each other after 30 years. Practically 31, our anniversary is at the end of the month. The Thai food was good, but having my own private Beach Boys concert? Priceless.

3. The other significance of the post title (you walk like an ace now, you walk like an ace now), is that I participated in a 100-mile challenge in April. Everybody else was running or riding their bikes, so I was at a major disadvantage since my knees allow neither of those activities. I made it to 61 miles walking, though, which is not bad considering that the weather sidelined me for several days earlier in the month.

4. Have I told you about volunteering at the Food Bank? I've been working a four-hour shift on Tuesdays since last fall. It's really fun, but also a lot of hard work. I don't think I've had a job that was purely manual labor since I was in high school (work crew at Pine Cove, as I know several of you remember). I'm in charge of restocking the coolers with milk/yogurt and deli products. On Tuesday nights I can barely even sit up I'm so tired. It's great. If you're looking for a place to volunteer, I highly recommend calling your local food bank.

5. Another in my collection of Easy Recipes that Are Far More Amazing Than They Should Be: a friend of mine told me about gluten-free peanut butter cookies that a co-worker brought to their office that were about the best cookies she'd ever had. I thought I bet the recipe is on the internet because OF COURSE IT IS (here you go). The reason they're gluten free is because they're flourless. If you don't want to click on the link, here's what you do: stir together 1 cup peanut butter, 1 cup sugar, 1 teaspoon vanilla, and 1 egg. I also added a couple of shakes of salt and about half a cup of mini chocolate chips, and I used half brown sugar and half white, just because I like the flavor of brown sugar. Bake at 350 for ten minutes. Yum.

6. Interesting Things to Read Around the Internet Department: The Moral Bucket List. David Brooks' list of things that moral people do appeared in the New York Times a couple of weeks ago. I'm not sure I agree with all of it, but I was really intrigued by his idea that there is a set of skills that you can learn to develop inner character. "Résumé virtues are the skills you bring to the marketplace. Eulogy virtues are the ones that are talked about at your funeral — whether you were kind, brave, honest or faithful." The religion of my childhood concentrated on whether or not you believed the right thing--i.e., getting your theology straight--rather than making the world a better place. This column is purely secular talk about creating meaning by living a richly moral life. Maybe a bit preachy at times, but also thought-provoking.

7. I went through quite a bit of torment over posting a picture of myself --these pictures have been on my phone for weeks while I decided whether or not I wanted to post them-- but I wanted to make a point. The picture is two halves--the top half is me before I put on my makeup, the bottom half is after. I was going to tell you about what a huge difference it makes and how silly it is that I can't make myself do it most days because the time difference between the two pictures is six minutes. How can I not have six minutes to do this?

Then I spent twenty minutes cropping the pictures, merging them into one file, uploading them, etc etc, and during the upload, blogger stripped out most of the resolution. So now the two pictures look almost exactly the same. So really, what's the point? You can tell I have mascara on, but not much else.

But I did all that work. So here you go: this is the first and possibly only time I will post a picture of me by myself in this blog.  :-)


Happy weekend, Happy May, happy happy.

3 comments:

FayzerNZ said...

Hello new friend. I've spent the last half hour or so of my Sunday evening reading some of your blogs. It's too bad you live on the other side of the world because I bet we'd get on like a house on fire. Anyhoo... loving the blogs :)

Laurel said...

hey, BeaN---Personally, I think you look great in both shots, but if it's 6 minutes and very little agony to get picture #2, I think it's a dramatic change! Isn't it odd how a little mascara can change a blonde's appearance? I like your hair too--- but what I most want to say is that I see you in Pell Mel after looking at these shots---not just a Dean clone like I had thought before! Weird! And, it's the eyes…..

BarbN said...

Thanks, Fay! I wish you lived closer, too! Or actually, I wish I lived closer to you because I'd love to visit NZ.

Laurel, thank you! I can count on one hand the number of times someone has told me that PellMel looks like me. But yeah, it is kind of dramatic what a difference makeup makes when you're pale.