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Wednesday, 16 July 2008

MOVED.

Here and...in real life?

New linky : http://denisejoyce123.blogspot.com/

Under construction. As am I?

Thursday, 19 June 2008

<3 Sweet Lovin! June 21, 2008

My Happy Wedding Pictures for "Zaxy."

Congratulations, cuties.

Thursday, 12 June 2008

GIANT Now-and-Laters!!

There is this amazing candy store (http://www.thecandystoresf.com/) near my office that has all kinds of nostalgic novelty candies. I have personally seen grown men squeal in delight over finding the gummy sharks in the flavor they haven't seen since childhood. Unabashed. I love places like that.

On my way home today, I decided to stop in and pick up a handful of GIANT Now-and-Laters (half banana, half mixed, if you know me) to console myself over my famously bad week I've been having at work. Yesterday, hilariously, everything I did to make myself feel better went terribly wrong. I went next door to La Boulangerie (http://www.baybread.com/polk.php) to pick up a lemon tart, and there were almonds in the crust. I found a horse in my package of Chessmen cookies (the horses have been my favorite since childhood) and as soon as I found it, the head fell off. Ryan and I went to Pixar to tour the animation studio and see a special screening of Wall*E, and I got lost driving to his office. Laughable now, but near tragedies then.

This is where I'm expected to tie everything together to form some kind of profound moral, I suppose. I really just wanted to tell an aimless story (which Ryan hates...sorry if you're reading this). But I guess I might have one. Amusingly, this is also how many of my Bible study lessons of yore came about, by chance encounters with two completely random thoughts - one fairly simple, one quasi-philosophical.

It is so difficult to be temperate. It seems to come so easy to Ryan, which is sometimes irritating for me (and then I have to struggle to be temperate again). I really admire him for that, and that quality in the person I interact with the most is really good for me to see in action daily. I see its value, but I also see its constraints...all in all, though, I think it's always good to remember what's Giant now, will not be later (eh? eh?).

Now, two things to do. 1) Take an hour or so to revisit a childhood indulgence...unless your childhood was marked by drug use and/or bouts of depression, then go ahead and disregard. 2) Stop and think about the true value of the thing that is making you want to slit your wrist and/or punch the next person you see. The actual, intricate, eternal value. Continue with your life, a more temperate, content person.

Sidenote: if anyone kept track of the James Beard awards, know that Delfina is good, but the food is really not indicative of the "best" chef in California, in my humble opinion.

Monday, 02 June 2008

June.

It's June and Wedding Season is in full swing. Even if I was totally clueless, I would know this regardless because a Facebook home page update at any given hour will render a new wedding album - or seven - from the bride, the bridesmaids, the bride's mother (how strange this world of social networks).
As of June 2, 2008: So far I've seen the same bridesmaid dress three times (David's Bridal Style #81255). I wore it to Adrianne's wedding. A gloriously stunning taffeta jungle in a bubble skirt. Then there's Style #4456, "El Clasico" in my book, as I have worn it to three separate weddings in three different colors and two different lengths over a time span of six years. 27 Dresses is really a documentary of my life. Do I mind? Not really. I love my friends dearly, and each wedding carries a special meaning or specific memory for me. Do I ever wonder if I'm forever destined to be on this end of the fiasco? Sure. Do I let it bother me? Eh...sometimes.
And if anything has the air of a terrible omen, it is a recent infection I had - oh yes - on my "commitment finger." You know, the left hand ring finger. The finger that gets the most attention in manicures, the finger that lives in infamy and is forever immortalized in innumerable portraits. Swelling, pain, and eventually, an afternoon spent entranced by the oozing of pus. I was very close to creating an album proudly displaying my newly Neosporin-ed and bandaged finger to the world. Stop grimacing, I've spared you.
Wrapping up the mockery: here is my encouragement for the ones fervently searching as well as the dear ones, starry eyed and helplessly entering into this continuation of their story of love. It is a selection from Ranier Maria Rilke's "Letters to a Young Poet:"
"And you should not let yourself be confused in your solitude by the fact that there is something in you that wants to move out of it...We know little, but we must trust in what is difficult is a certainty that will never abandon us; it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be one more reason for us to do it.
It is also good to love: because love is difficult. For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation....Loving does not at first mean merging, surrendering, and uniting with another person, it is a high inducement for the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world, to become world in himself for the sake of another person; it is a great, demanding claim on him, something that chooses him and calls him to vast distances. Only in this sense, as the task of working on themselves, may young people use the love that is given to them."

See full text here.
Happy Wedding Season, my loves.

Thursday, 08 May 2008

redemption of the English language, part 1.

If anything drives me to pursue a career in education, it is listening to the inane conversations of students on San Francisco transportation. Recently my friend Whitney (a high school English teacher) and I were talking about her students' surprising lack of writing skills. This includes constructing a basic sentence. Right now, they are learning sentence structure at what I believe is a third grade level. Not only is this demonstrative of the educational system in Arkansas, but I believe it applies nationally to the decline in skills as simple as word usage. This is especially apparent here in listening to students' conversations on the bus - they MUST be told - "hella" is not an all-encompassing word.
Taking the vomiting risk into consideration, I decided to look it up to back up my claim. If the Oxford English Dictionary recognizes it as a word, then suck it up I must.
Unfortunately, the OED requires membership or something to look up words on their site - zzzzz. It's 2008, my friends, let's be free and loose with information. Call it the age of cyber-hippies. Luckily, I didn't have to search too much - "hella" does not exist on dictionary.com or Merriam-Webster.com.
Further research led me to urbandictionary.com, which according to the home page is "a slang dictionary with your definitions. Define your world." Essentially: You make the rules. You decide what is widely acceptable or what "works for You." And then You will end up living in your mother's basement because Your rules and definitions for Your world do not include anything dealing with proper education and speech patterns, ambition or advancement.
But I digress.
Annoying: let's go ahead and read through the other definitions before we decide that we need to write yet another definition that essentially says the same thing that's already been stated five times. Verbatim, in some cases. Brilliance. Anyway, here's my choice, as I did force myself to make one.
A multi-purpose word invented by people in north california, indigenous to the Bay Area.

Adjective: To describe a lot of something or something good.

Noun: A lot of

Adverb: Suplemental, inferrs a great quantity or that you're doing something and DOING IT RIGHT!

Interjection: An affirmation of what someone just said
Adjective: This party is hella chill.

Noun: I have hella.

Adverb: The Bay areais fuckin hella better than socal

Interjection: Nicole: Dude that shit was off tha hook
Jaime: hella!
Obviously, I am living in the wrong place to have strong feelings about this word's existence.
Regardless - the author of this entry decided to list parts of speech and examples in order to give this word legitimacy. Spelling deficiencies aside, the adverb and noun explanations are so ludicrous that I have to skim past them rather than risk a language usage embolism. I believe the introduction and widespread usage of this word is damaging to creative minds and intellectual stimulation. Instead of learning and utilizing all the beautifully descriptive words in the English language, they have boiled it all down to one - "hella." It means all. This word reigns supreme.
Imbecilic word usage begets atrophied writing. Ignorance begets ignorance.
This is hella terrible.