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*30 years ago (1975) I was a stay at home mom with two kids under 3.

* 20 years ago (1985).Master’s degree finished at last, I was teaching and being an administrator-the only year both kids lived with their father and I was trying to get myself to look for work in California.

* 10 years ago (1995) Ph D in hand, divorced and remarried, I was just back from teaching in China.

* 5 years ago (2000) I spend part of the summer in Chicago for the first time.

* 3 years ago (2002) .Back in administration with one more year of work to go, I had started writing again, and doing yoga. And found ATPO.

* 1 year ago (2004) Free at last, LJ at last, Chicago now part of my life. One novel down.

* So far this year (2005) Started looking for publishers and dabbled with writing fantasy.

* Yesterday: The great family dinner: my son and his partner, me and Bill, my ex and his girlfriend, son’s partner’s mother, father and stepmother. And aunt.

* Today. Walk in the hills with my younger son

*Tomorrow: Wander around and explore the hills and bay. Maybe take a ferry to Sausolito?

In the next year: Go to Guatemala for Spanish, maybe to India, also Dubrovnik and Budapest. Keep writing. Look at disaster relief training?

OK, meme time. But I always thought I was the Queen of Wands. Or maybe Justice.

Gust ~ 48% Water ~ 70% Wind ~ 62% Earth ~ 55% Fire ~

I want to live where the sky is big Simple and free... Let’s see... your personality reminds me of the... ...cool Sapphire, the non-red corundum, or its little brother, the Blue Topaz. Your colours are azure, indigo, and a bright yellow or gold. Interpretation: Out of the seven chakras, the Throat Chakra, which is associated with the element of wind and represents our desire to learn and communicate, seems to be predominant in you. Though this means you are probably the smartest one among your friends, it may result in feeling stressed or nervous or becoming too much of a perfectionist. You can balance it by wearing a Rose Quartz; its soothing attributes help unwind, enable you to "love thyself", and accept limitations. A Tarot references concerning your predominant element: If you are a young lass or lad and still unmarried your card is the Page of Swords. Young women, especially married ones, identify with the Queen of Swords, also known as the Queen of Spades. If you are a young, unmarried man, you are the Knight of Swords, and married or “mature” males are identified with the King of Sword, commonly known as the King of Spades. Ladies, here is your intelligent man you’ve been looking for.

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 99% on water You scored higher than 99% on wind You scored higher than 99% on earth You scored higher than 99% on fire

Link: The Elemental Balance Test written by Nitsuki on Ok Cupid

10 things I've done that no one else on my flist has done (but somehow I'll bet at least one of you has done at least one of these--hard to be unique around here):


1.Stopped a potential riot by dancing in the street

2.Put a motorcycle in the trunk of a rented car and drove from Detroit to San Francisco

3.Got really, really drunk on baijiu (distilled millet spirits) and fell down in a Beijing disco

4.Went up in the little spy chamber the FBI uses to watch postal workers handle the mail and didn't get caught

5.Drank palm wine which had been fermenting all day

6.Went backwards in a kayak down a six foot fall on the French Broad River (well, an inflated kayak--I'm not really a white water person)

7.Rode a Greyhound Bus from South Carolina to California

8.Flew in a helicopter from Berkeley to SF Airport

9.Had Dennis Kucinich spend the night at my house, and had organic oatmeal and distilled water available to feed him

10.Went to my ex-husband’s birthday party and had a good time with him and his girlfriend and both their families

So for the last week I've been attacking the living room. Got rid of grass cloth, glue under grasscloth, dirt under glue; rinsed soap used to get rid of glue; spackled holes, sanded spackle; now, spot-priming spackle. Still, very discouraging to see the bad repair jobs done by previous painters, who apparently looked on plaster and tape as mudpies and bandaids.

Still, I really enjoy this kind of work, at least for a while. It makes you very mindful to teeter on a metal ladder washing the plaster around a live wire. It also makes you come to terms with perfection, because that is what you will never achieve on the plaster walls of an 80 year old house on a sand hill near a granite quarry with daily dynamiting. But there is progress.

However, there are evil discoveries. The chimney is worse even than feared, and needs major masonry before it can handle even unvented gas logs, or even stand upright much longer. And Bill, bless his heart (southerners will know what that means), trying to open a painted-shut window not only breaks the glass but almost destroys the frame. He replaced the glass, and we'll putty and spackle the frame, I guess.

Looks like spackle is to home-repairers like me what Bondo was to the old shade-tree auto body workers. Maybe I will finally achieve a house built entirely of spackle.

ETA: ( The Senior Meme )

Name a CD you own that no-one else on your friends list does:

My friend Doug’s homemade but wonderful CD Spammaps--himself and his stuffed pig singing low-down blues (he wrote them, too, but his wife dressed the pig in a slinky dress).

Name a book you own that no-one else on your friends list does:

Just got The Web That Has No Weaver, an explanation of Chinese traditional medicine. But if someone has that, I’m sure no one has Charleston Receipts.

Name a movie you own on DVD/VHS/whatever that no-one else on your friends list does:

I hope someone does have Chushingura (The Forty Ronin), but I doubt it.

Name a place that you have visited that no-one else on your friends list has:

Besides Cameroon? I can name a lot of weird southern places, but have you Californians been to Philo, in Mendecino County?

Name a piece of clothing that no-one else on your friends list has:

A Women in Black tee shirt? An ankle-length black satin apron?

Name an occupation that you've had that no-one else on your friends list has had:

I was a spy for Shoney’s. Unknown to the staff there, I’d go in and eat like a normal person (if eating at Shoney’s is normal) and observe to see if the floor was clean and the servers came and asked if everything was OK, etc. Then Shoney’s reimbursed me. A very strange job.

So here are questions from ladystarlightsj and my answers:

( Click me! )

So let me know if you--anyone--want questions from me.

Invent a memory of me and post it in the comments. It can be anything you want, as long as it's something that never happened.

If you're not exhausted with this, that is...


PS: Meme from ann1962 and apologies for taking a similar great JM icon from desdemona_x

Won't tread on your turf too long!!

The questions in this interview come from knullabulla The answers come from me:

1) If a movie was made based on your life, would your character be: the hero, the villain, the side-kick, the henchman, or the comic relief? What genre would your movie be (i.e. sci-fi, comedy, romance, etc.)? Why?

I’d be in a strange independent movie, with long periods of odd people doing incomprehensible things, interspersed with handheld clips of the real me…probably something like American Splendor. But with film clips of 60’s protests and travel footage, so a little more diverse than AS. Probably rated NC-17. I’d be the protagonist of course, but hardly heroic (see comparison to American Splendor). Sort of the anti-heroine, always winding up in some place I didn’t intend to go when I started out. Closer to comic than to tragic…

2) I hear that you practice yoga. How would you encourage a newbie to begin practicing?

“Come to yoga with an empty stomach, bare feet, and an open heart.” That’s my teacher quoting somebody, don’t know who. To me it means that yoga will act on much more than your body, but you need to come without preconceptions. Can’t think of what’s harder to do—sort of like not thinking about a green tiger.

I’m a great believer in going to classes, because it’s really hard to know how to make your body do some of those things without someone to guide you. And I worry that people will hurt themselves by trying to be too extreme. If you can afford classes, then the next thing is shopping around until you find a teacher you like and trust. Sort of like looking for a therapist or a house—you need to find one that really suits you. If you can’t go to a class, you can get videos—Rodney Yee is good. And his book, The Poetry of the Body, is good, too. But doing it from a book seems impossible to me.

3) We all have vices. Which of your vices would you never ever be willing to give up?

Hmm. Well, the ones that hurt other people, I really would like to give up. And some things are so patently bad that you know even when you’re really enjoying them that they need to go—cocaine, adultery, and fossil fuel engines, to name a few. Not hard to let those go.

But some vices seem so innocent. Ironic I should get this question, because I was just realizing last week that one of the major vices of my life, one of the hardest to let go, is reading. I think it’s a vice the way I do it, because I read addictively. Of course it’s fun and mentally challenging and I learn a lot—but it’s definitely a way of numbing myself to the world. And shutting out other people. (But then, come to think of it, that's how I'm reaching you, right?)

Are habaneros and garlic vices?



4) If you could live life through the eyes of one fictional character, who would it be?

It’s always the last one I read, so right now, it’s Sheri Tepper’s Beauty, from book of same name. She had a life! Adventurous, smart, sexy, one committed relationship but lots of interesting friends and possiblities, travelled to very strange worlds, and, like Buffy, saved the world. And was magic.

There are a lot of other books I really like, but I definitely wouldn’t want to be ANY of the characters in them. Like Perfume, for instance.


5) If you didn't have any responsibilities to attend to, and money was no problem, what would you be doing right now?

Always easy for me to answer. I’d be in the ocean. Somewhere warm and sunny, with great rolling waves, and dolphins. Maybe occasionally I’d get out and eat, and go to visit another ocean.

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