In a shameless act of voyeurism, I've been keeping an eye on my next-door neighbor. I'm on the second floor, so my balcony and one of my windows directly overlooks his yard. His backyard looks like a total wreck - dead plants everywhere, no grass, several failed attempts at landscaping. I sympathize with him that much; I've never been able to get ( Read more... )

I’ve been in North Carolina for almost a month now. Last night I sat at a Memorial Day picnic on a muggy evening, watching kids bounce around on one of those giant inflatable castles. There were lightning bugs and the air was humid and the grass was long and the branches of the trees shifted in the slight breeze. It felt right. Everything here ( Read more... )

I used to get really impatient behind old-people drivers. I mean, they veer all over the road and they're slow and they put on their turn signal roughly fourteen years before they turn, and have all sorts of other irritating characteristics that I'm sure everyone's familiar with.

About a month ago, after mostly impatiently waiting for a big old ( Read more... )

To all my yoga teachers out there....I just have to say.....

I'm sorry.

I'm really really sorry to have forsaken you and left the yoga world for such a long time. But, you can rest assured, I am paying for every single day I took off. I can do about half of the poses I used to be able to do. My shoulders currently feel as though someone tried to ( Read more... )

Why, oh why, is it that when I finally find any kind of beauty product that I'm really satisfied with they discontinue it??

Victoria's Secret, I'm taking back the nice things I said about you. How dare you discontinue my favorite shampoo? Now I'm forced to sit here looking at the online ordering form to figure out how many bottles I could ( Read more... )

One of the recent movies I've rented from the evil empire of NetFlix was Baraka; it's a highly visual documentary, largely dominated by ethereal music. I'd seen it years and years ago in some music class. I don't remember a thing about the class itself, but I've remembered this movie since then.  I put it in tonight as I was doing random cleanup/ ( Read more... )

the Religious Studies world:

I was (politely) accosted by a younger undergrad after my Protestant Reformation class. In this particular class, which is an upper level undergrad course (I'm one of two grad students), I make it a somewhat usual habit of kicking up a fuss about various inconsistencies in the lectures or texts. Not because I need to ( Read more... )

My life, as I’ve known it thus far, has been marked with an incessant restlessness. I’ve always pushed beyond my limits. The methods have changed over the years: push relationships to exhaustion. Push exercise until exhaustion. Push academics until I’m worn thin.  The reason is always the same: with bone tired comes a slight feeling of rest.

I ( Read more... )

Whoa. I'm in love. Seriously in love.

It's not even with that skulky guy who walked past me smelling like better than my daily yerba maté the other day (that's really saying something). No, I'm in love with the technological wizardry and bountiful plenty of Blockbuster Total Access.

I tried to resist your charms, Total Access. I even (sorry to ( Read more... )

God bless Victoria's Secret. And not because they make fabulous lingerie and underwear (which they do) and not because they have gorgeous women in their catalogs who make you think that you would also look that good in that dress (there should be no blessing on that account); no, the reason God should bless Viccy C's is because they have actually ( Read more... )