"No one can escape from illusions unless he looks at them, for not looking is the way they are protected."
— from A Course in Miracles
Monday, September 29, 2008
Friday, September 26, 2008
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
One of the best vows I've ever heard
I take Michael in contradiction and in mayhem. In grief and delight. To cherish, dismay, and split burritos with. For good company and daily comfort. For the tornado of rage and for love. I take him. I do.
—Catherine Newman
—Catherine Newman
Deep thoughts
I'm pretty sure the most important question we can all ask ourselves at such an important time in our nation's history is "Are you smarter than a fifth grader?" Coming in at a close second is probably "What can brown do for you?"
Monday, September 22, 2008
Friday, September 19, 2008
Over 1,000 hits!
Just saw that the site meter is at over 1,000 hits! Thanks for reading my ramblings, guys :)
-- Sent from my BlackBerry
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Right... Just like Al Gore invented the Internet
Why wouldn't John McCain have invented the BlackBerry? This is as good as it gets.
http://www.blackberrycool.com/2008/09/mccain-aid-mccain-helped-create-the-blackberry/
Almost makes me want an iPhone.
http://www.blackberrycool.com/2008/09/mccain-aid-mccain-helped-create-the-blackberry/
Almost makes me want an iPhone.
Another thing I wish I invented!
The Sarah Palin baby name generator:
http://politsk.blogspot.com/2008/09/sarah_13.html
Mine is Rust Mustang Palin- nice.
http://politsk.blogspot.com/2008/09/sarah_13.html
Mine is Rust Mustang Palin- nice.
Thomas Tileston Wells
Today it's been five years since my dear friend Ty passed away. I truly don't understand where the time goes. I was trying to think of something new to say today, but the words I spoke at his funeral still make the most sense to me as a tribute, so here they are.
My name is Jennifer and I was Ty's roommate for a year in Greenwich, CT while he was working in New York City. First of all, I would like to thank Ty's mom, Katie, for inviting me to tell this story today. When Katie called me a couple of nights ago and asked me to speak, I was honored. Almost immediately after I hung up the phone, I started to panic about what I would say. There are no words to adequately express the emotions we have all felt in the past two weeks. There is nothing I can say to make all of this disappear and go back to the way it was. I can only hope that sharing my favorite memories with all of you will help, in some small way, to ease the pain in our hearts.
I met Ty in July of 2002. From the moment I met him, I felt as if I had known him for ages. Talking to Ty was easy. He could walk into a room and pick anyone out of the crowd, strike up a conversation, and by the end of the night, Ty had made a new friend. Several of you are probably here because of a situation just like that. He forged connections with people all over the country. Those connections are not lost. They have brought all of us together today. They are our connections now. This is how Ty would have wanted it. After today, when all is said and done, he wants us to learn more about each other... to become genuinely interested in each other's lives, as he was genuinely interested in all of ours.
I had the privilege of spending this past Wednesday night with Shannon, Ty's girlfriend. We talked, laughed, cried, and reminisced for hours over two glasses of red wine. Several times during the night, both Shannon and myself commented that it was almost as if Ty was sitting right there with us. He is a presence that can be felt, even now. The most beautiful words Shannon spoke that night were, "Ty is teaching us so much." Truer words were never spoken. Since Ty's passing, I have seen changes in the way I have conducted my life, in the way Ty's other friends are making the important things their priorities. We are realizing that money and job titles and cars and expensive clothes are useless. What Ty had was priceless... a genuine love of life and of all the little things that make life so good. He was happy in an armchair playing XBox on a snowy December day. He was happy cooking dinner for his roommates any night of the week. He enjoyed being with good people and taking it all in. He loved watching the news in the morning and the Simpsons at night. He loved his music. Never once did I hear him complain that his life was lacking anything. He was content, happy and free no matter where he was or what he was doing.
Ty and I had a brother/sister kind of relationship. He was really the only brother I've ever had. A few days before Ty was to move to Hawaii, he stopped by my new apartment to say goodbye. We talked for hours, just like Shannon and I did the other night. After a few cold beers and lots of reminiscing, Ty stood up to leave. The last words he spoke to me were, "You've been good for me, girl." With Ty around, it was often easy to forget that I actually had a real name. For a year, I thought my name was "Girl." "You've been good for me, girl...." Looking back on those words now, I'm honored that Ty believed I brought something special into his life, whatever that may have been. Looking back now, I see how much he has taught me about life, about relationships, and about how the little things add up to the big things.
Ty loved his family. He loved his girlfriend. He loved his friends and his free time. He lived a short but full life, and his legacy is us. His personality and vibrancy are not lost forever. We have all been touched by Ty. We are all of us changed, for the better, for having known him. In Ty's words... "he's been good for us." Now, the best gift we can give Ty and his family... is to be good for each other.
I would like to read the following on behalf of one of Ty’s dearest friends. The words of this song, “Brokedown Palace” by the Grateful Dead, have brought comfort to many of Ty’s friends over the last couple of weeks…
"Broke-down Palace"
Words by Robert Hunter; music by Jerry Garcia
Fare you well my honey
Fare you well my only true one
All the birds that were singing
Have flown except you alone
Goin to leave this Broke-down Palace
On my hands and my knees I will roll roll roll
Make myself a bed by the waterside
In my time - in my time - I will roll roll roll
In a bed, in a bed
by the waterside I will lay my head
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
to rock my soul
River gonna take me
Sing me sweet and sleepy
Sing me sweet and sleepy
all the way back back home
It's a far gone lullaby
sung many years ago
Mama, Mama, many worlds I've come
since I first left home
Goin home, goin home
by the waterside I will rest my bones
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
to rock my soul
Goin to plant a weeping willow
On the banks green edge it will grow grow grow
Sing a lullaby beside the water
Lovers come and go - the river roll roll roll
Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
to rock my soul
Ty, we love you and we miss you.
Friday, September 12, 2008
I had never seen this video
until today. This was the first Daily Show with Jon Stewart after 9/11/2001. I was moved to tears, especially since I was standing at Ground Zero just last night. And he's right about the new view...
What the?
Site of the Week
This is a pretty cool site. I can't afford anything on it right now, but if I could, I would buy... everything.
http://www.kangaroomstorage.com/
http://www.kangaroomstorage.com/
Cynic
I forgot about this until just now. Before we went to Ground Zero and to dinner last night, Nicole and I were standing on a corner (of course) and a handsome man in a suit came over and interrupted us to tell us that we are "two of the most beautiful women I have ever seen." We thanked him and he kept walking. My first response? "Wow, that was nice. And he wasn't even asking us for money?"
The towers in blue
This one was taken right at Ground Zero.
Yes, I took these. No, they haven't been touched up. Used a setting on my camera that only picks up the color blue. Surroundings are black and white. It really was this beautiful. I believe Teeny called it "Gotham City."
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Still the best piece I've ever read about 9/11...
I Just Called to Say I Love You
The sounds of 9/11, beyond the metallic roar.
by: Peggy Noonan
Friday, September 8, 2006 12:01 a.m.
Everyone remembers the pictures, but I think more and more about the sounds. I always ask people what they heard that day in New York. We've all seen the film and videotape, but the sound equipment of television crews didn't always catch what people have described as the deep metallic roar.
The other night on TV there was a documentary on the Ironworkers of New York's Local 40, whose members ran to the site when the towers fell. They pitched in on rescue, then stayed for eight months to deconstruct a skyscraper some of them had helped build 35 years before. An ironworker named Jim Gaffney said, "My partner kept telling me the buildings are coming down and I'm saying 'no way.' Then we heard that noise that I will never forget. It was like a creaking and then the next thing you felt the ground rumbling."
Rudy Giuliani said it was like an earthquake. The actor Jim Caviezel saw the second plane hit the towers on television and what he heard shook him: "A weird, guttural discordant sound," he called it, a sound exactly like lightning. He knew because earlier that year he'd been hit. My son, then a teenager in a high school across the river from the towers, heard the first plane go in at 8:45 a.m. It sounded, he said, like a heavy truck going hard over a big street grate.
I think too about the sounds that came from within the buildings and within the planes--the phone calls and messages left on answering machines, all the last things said to whoever was home and picked up the phone. They awe me, those messages.
Something terrible had happened. Life was reduced to its essentials. Time was short. People said what counted, what mattered. It has been noted that there is no record of anyone calling to say, "I never liked you," or, "You hurt my feelings." No one negotiated past grievances or said, "Vote for Smith." Amazingly --or not--there is no record of anyone damning the terrorists or saying "I hate them."
No one said anything unneeded, extraneous or small. Crisis is a great editor. When you read the transcripts that have been released over the years it's all so clear.
Flight 93 flight attendant Ceecee Lyles, 33 years old, in an answering-machine message to her husband: "Please tell my children that I love them very much. I'm sorry, baby. I wish I could see your face again."
Thirty-one-year-old Melissa Harrington, a California-based trade consultant at a meeting in the towers, called her father to say she loved him. Minutes later she left a message on the answering machine as her new husband slept in their San Francisco home. "Sean, it's me, she said. "I just wanted to let you know I love you."
Capt. Walter Hynes of the New York Fire Department's Ladder 13 dialed home that morning as his rig left the firehouse at 85th Street and Lexington Avenue. He was on his way downtown, he said in his message, and things were bad. "I don't know if we'll make it out. I want to tell you that I love you and I love the kids."
Firemen don't become firemen because they're pessimists. Imagine being a guy who feels in his gut he's going to his death, and he calls on the way to say goodbye and make things clear. His widow later told the Associated Press she'd played his message hundreds of times and made copies for their kids. "He was thinking about us in those final moments."
Elizabeth Rivas saw it that way too. When her husband left for the World Trade Center that morning, she went to a laundromat, where she heard the news. She couldn't reach him by cell and rushed home. He'd called at 9:02 and reached her daughter. The child reported, "He say, mommy, he say he love you no matter what happens, he loves you." He never called again. Mrs. Rivas later said, "He tried to call me. He called me."
There was the amazing acceptance. I spoke this week with a medical doctor who told me she'd seen many people die, and many "with grace and acceptance." The people on the planes didn't have time to accept, to reflect, to think through; and yet so many showed the kind of grace you see in a hospice.
Peter Hanson, a passenger on United Airlines Flight 175 called his father. "I think they intend to go to Chicago or someplace and fly into a building," he said. "Don't worry, Dad--if it happens, it will be very fast." On the same flight, Brian Sweeney called his wife, got the answering machine, and told her they'd been hijacked. "Hopefully I'll talk to you again, but if not, have a good life. I know I'll see you again some day."
There was Tom Burnett's famous call from United Flight 93. "We're all going to die, but three of us are going to do something," he told his wife, Deena. "I love you, honey."
These were people saying, essentially, In spite of my imminent death, my thoughts are on you, and on love. I asked a psychiatrist the other day for his thoughts, and he said the people on the planes and in the towers were "accepting the inevitable" and taking care of "unfinished business." "At death's door people pass on a responsibility--'Tell Billy I never stopped loving him and forgave him long ago.' 'Take care of Mom.' 'Pray for me, Father. Pray for me, I haven't been very good.' " They address what needs doing.
This reminded me of that moment when Todd Beamer of United 93 wound up praying on the phone with a woman he'd never met before, a Verizon Airfone supervisor named Lisa Jefferson. She said later that his tone was calm. It seemed as if they were "old friends," she later wrote. They said the Lord's Prayer together. Then he said "Let's roll."
This is what I get from the last messages. People are often stronger than they know, bigger, more gallant than they'd guess. And this: We're all lucky to be here today and able to say what deserves saying, and if you say it a lot, it won't make it common and so unheard, but known and absorbed.
I think the sound of the last messages, of what was said, will live as long in human history, and contain within it as much of human history, as any old metallic roar.
Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal
The sounds of 9/11, beyond the metallic roar.
by: Peggy Noonan
Friday, September 8, 2006 12:01 a.m.
Everyone remembers the pictures, but I think more and more about the sounds. I always ask people what they heard that day in New York. We've all seen the film and videotape, but the sound equipment of television crews didn't always catch what people have described as the deep metallic roar.
The other night on TV there was a documentary on the Ironworkers of New York's Local 40, whose members ran to the site when the towers fell. They pitched in on rescue, then stayed for eight months to deconstruct a skyscraper some of them had helped build 35 years before. An ironworker named Jim Gaffney said, "My partner kept telling me the buildings are coming down and I'm saying 'no way.' Then we heard that noise that I will never forget. It was like a creaking and then the next thing you felt the ground rumbling."
Rudy Giuliani said it was like an earthquake. The actor Jim Caviezel saw the second plane hit the towers on television and what he heard shook him: "A weird, guttural discordant sound," he called it, a sound exactly like lightning. He knew because earlier that year he'd been hit. My son, then a teenager in a high school across the river from the towers, heard the first plane go in at 8:45 a.m. It sounded, he said, like a heavy truck going hard over a big street grate.
I think too about the sounds that came from within the buildings and within the planes--the phone calls and messages left on answering machines, all the last things said to whoever was home and picked up the phone. They awe me, those messages.
Something terrible had happened. Life was reduced to its essentials. Time was short. People said what counted, what mattered. It has been noted that there is no record of anyone calling to say, "I never liked you," or, "You hurt my feelings." No one negotiated past grievances or said, "Vote for Smith." Amazingly --or not--there is no record of anyone damning the terrorists or saying "I hate them."
No one said anything unneeded, extraneous or small. Crisis is a great editor. When you read the transcripts that have been released over the years it's all so clear.
Flight 93 flight attendant Ceecee Lyles, 33 years old, in an answering-machine message to her husband: "Please tell my children that I love them very much. I'm sorry, baby. I wish I could see your face again."
Thirty-one-year-old Melissa Harrington, a California-based trade consultant at a meeting in the towers, called her father to say she loved him. Minutes later she left a message on the answering machine as her new husband slept in their San Francisco home. "Sean, it's me, she said. "I just wanted to let you know I love you."
Capt. Walter Hynes of the New York Fire Department's Ladder 13 dialed home that morning as his rig left the firehouse at 85th Street and Lexington Avenue. He was on his way downtown, he said in his message, and things were bad. "I don't know if we'll make it out. I want to tell you that I love you and I love the kids."
Firemen don't become firemen because they're pessimists. Imagine being a guy who feels in his gut he's going to his death, and he calls on the way to say goodbye and make things clear. His widow later told the Associated Press she'd played his message hundreds of times and made copies for their kids. "He was thinking about us in those final moments."
Elizabeth Rivas saw it that way too. When her husband left for the World Trade Center that morning, she went to a laundromat, where she heard the news. She couldn't reach him by cell and rushed home. He'd called at 9:02 and reached her daughter. The child reported, "He say, mommy, he say he love you no matter what happens, he loves you." He never called again. Mrs. Rivas later said, "He tried to call me. He called me."
There was the amazing acceptance. I spoke this week with a medical doctor who told me she'd seen many people die, and many "with grace and acceptance." The people on the planes didn't have time to accept, to reflect, to think through; and yet so many showed the kind of grace you see in a hospice.
Peter Hanson, a passenger on United Airlines Flight 175 called his father. "I think they intend to go to Chicago or someplace and fly into a building," he said. "Don't worry, Dad--if it happens, it will be very fast." On the same flight, Brian Sweeney called his wife, got the answering machine, and told her they'd been hijacked. "Hopefully I'll talk to you again, but if not, have a good life. I know I'll see you again some day."
There was Tom Burnett's famous call from United Flight 93. "We're all going to die, but three of us are going to do something," he told his wife, Deena. "I love you, honey."
These were people saying, essentially, In spite of my imminent death, my thoughts are on you, and on love. I asked a psychiatrist the other day for his thoughts, and he said the people on the planes and in the towers were "accepting the inevitable" and taking care of "unfinished business." "At death's door people pass on a responsibility--'Tell Billy I never stopped loving him and forgave him long ago.' 'Take care of Mom.' 'Pray for me, Father. Pray for me, I haven't been very good.' " They address what needs doing.
This reminded me of that moment when Todd Beamer of United 93 wound up praying on the phone with a woman he'd never met before, a Verizon Airfone supervisor named Lisa Jefferson. She said later that his tone was calm. It seemed as if they were "old friends," she later wrote. They said the Lord's Prayer together. Then he said "Let's roll."
This is what I get from the last messages. People are often stronger than they know, bigger, more gallant than they'd guess. And this: We're all lucky to be here today and able to say what deserves saying, and if you say it a lot, it won't make it common and so unheard, but known and absorbed.
I think the sound of the last messages, of what was said, will live as long in human history, and contain within it as much of human history, as any old metallic roar.
Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Lipstick politics
If Sarah Palin happened to be a man, no one would care about the lipstick on a pig comment. People need to calm down. It's a common phrase in politics.
-- Sent from my BlackBerry
Searching for jobs
If anyone has any ideas, please let me know! Here's my resume *
* I'm awesome, creative, kind, lovable, cute, and to top it all off... very smart and extremely funny :)
My salary requirements: $200,000 and a hug a day.
Seriously, if you have any ideas, I'd love to hear them.
* I'm awesome, creative, kind, lovable, cute, and to top it all off... very smart and extremely funny :)
My salary requirements: $200,000 and a hug a day.
Seriously, if you have any ideas, I'd love to hear them.
Friday, September 5, 2008
In bed
Does anyone else sleep with a book in their bed? Am I weird? I mean, I know I'm weird, but is this one of the reasons why? For most of the summer I was ripping through books (one a day sometimes) and now I'm stuck on Tom Brokaw's BOOM. So, I've been sleeping with Tom Brokaw for quite awhile now. Seriously though, is it abnormal that I almost always have a book in bed with me, or do people do that?
The Last Lecture
Instead of a site of the week this week, I wanted to put this on here. If you haven't watched it yet, you must. It is long, but worth it.
Hey hey
Every time I'm at the beach I have an insatiable desire to act out the opening scene from The Monkees TV show. What does this say about me? More importantly, what does this say about us as a nation?
-- Sent from my BlackBerry
Underage voters
I just heard a kid on the beach say "Obama." Well, it's pretty clear to me who the 4-and-under demographic is siding with.
-- Sent from my BlackBerry
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Best line of the night
Andrea Mitchell: "Well, you can say that at least this group of Republicans knows how to throw a party."
Keith Olbermann: "Or at least throw a balloon."
-- Sent from my BlackBerry
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Sarah Palin's shoes (part deux)
Because you're all nuts and you know you want to know, here are the shoes. And yes, the shoes are really called "Naughty Monkey Double Dares."
http://tinyurl.com/6afdzw
I stand by my original observation. They're cute shoes.
http://tinyurl.com/6afdzw
I stand by my original observation. They're cute shoes.
I just ordered this - will be standing at my mailbox until it arrives
from moveon.org...
Want a free Obama button? MoveOn's giving them away totally free--no strings attached. I just got mine, and wanted to share the opportunity with you.
Want a free Obama button? MoveOn's giving them away totally free--no strings attached. I just got mine, and wanted to share the opportunity with you.
Click this link to get a free Obama button:
http://tinyurl.com/5mnkwo
Wear it proudly :)
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Flat pennies
For some reason, my dad is obsessed with these penny flattening machines. Needless to say, dad broke the machine and did not get a flattened penny.
Petty Theft
You know you're in trouble when your first thought upon entering a doctor's waiting room is, "Let's see... what magazines can we steal from here?"
-- Sent from my BlackBerry
Monday, September 1, 2008
American Hats
I just wanted to check... has everyone taken off their Republican hats and put on your American hats? Because the Republicans are very concerned about this. If you ask me, the Republicans at the convention should take off their cowboy hats and call it a day.
-- Sent from my BlackBerry
