sunday's spiritual thought...

The future belongs to those who

believe in the beauty of their dreams.

Eleanor Roosevelt

sunday's spiritual thought...

Be a good listener.
Your ears will never get you in trouble.

-Frank Tyger

sunday's spiritual thought...

As we express our gratitude,
we must never forget that
the highest appreciation is not to utter words,
but to live by them.
- John Fitzgerald Kennedy

sunday's spiritual thought...

It is always possible to be thankful for what is given
rather than to complain about what is not given.
One or the other becomes a habit of life.
Elisabeth Elliot

sunday's spiritual thought...

Treat everyone with politeness,

even those who are rude to you –
not because they are nice,
but because you are.
~Author Unknown

sunday's spiritual thought...

Let us be grateful to people

who make us happy;

they are the charming gardeners
who make our souls blossom.
Marcel Proust

sunday's spiritual thought...

Being considerate of others will take your children

further in life than any college degree.
~Marian Wright Edelman

sunday's spiritual thought...

Life is short

but there is always time for courtesy.

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

sunday's spiritual thought...

Being defeated is often only a temporary condition.

Giving up is what makes it permanent.
- Marilyn vos Savant

sunday's spiritual thought...

God has two dwellings:

one in heaven, and the other in a
meek and thankful heart.
Izaak Walton

sunday's spiritual thought...

Time is too slow for those who wait,

too swift for those who fear,
too long for those who grieve,
too short for those who rejoice,
but for those who love,
time is eternity.

-Henry Van Dyke

sunday's spiritual thought...

It doesn't matter which side of the fence
you get off on sometimes.

What matters most is getting off.

You cannot make progress without making decisions.

Jim Rohn

sunday's spiritual thought...

Belief always precedes action.

James Allen

more saturday shenanigans...

still trying to pack as much entertainment as i can into the last remaining saturdays before i commence working with my client again...

just a few of the over 600 bag pipe players at the annual scottish highland gathering and games in pleasanton

tossing the caber (apparently this guy plays softball in walnut creek, where i scorekeep)

the previous week-napa's bbq, blues, and brews festival

sunday's spiritual thought...

Believe while others are doubting.
Plan while others are playing.
Study while others are sleeping.
Decide while others are delaying.
Prepare while others are daydreaming.
Begin while others are procrastinating.
Work while others are wishing.
Save while others are wasting.
Listen while others are talking.
Smile while others are frowning.
Commend while others are criticizing.
Persist while others are quitting.
Pray while others doubt.

By William Arthur Ward

sunday's spiritual thought...

Act as if what you do makes a difference.
It does.
William James

what a difference five minutes can make...

so i was getting breakfast, after cashing a check this morning at the wells fargo in pinole, when i saw several police cars flying by me in the other direction. i also happened to see several ARMED policemen blocking off the road ahead of me. i didn't really think that much of it, but when i continued to see even more cop cars rushing in the opposite direction as i made my way home, i knew something had to be up.

and it was.

here is the story.

i don't even want to imagine what would have happened if i had gone to the bank a few minutes later...

why can't i have every saturday off?

working on saturdays is good for my paycheck, but it does make it so i miss out on doing tons of fun stuff...and since i'll be off for the next few, and have been for the past couple saturdays, i have been trying to making the most of them by doing the following:

going to san francisco food festival:

banh mi and pad thai tacos from the peached tortilla

by FAR the highlight of the day-pork belly blt from good food catering (also pictured is their delicious pulled pork sandwich)

meeting up with old hawaii friends, who were on a west coast tour with their band

driving down to explore monterey

visiting the aquarium

can't wait until next week!!!

sunday's spiritual thought...

You can take anything away from a man

and he will survive,
but take away his hope
and he will die.

-anonymous

sunday's spiritual thought...

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet.
Only through experience of trial and suffering
can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired,
and success achieved.

Helen Keller 1880-1968

hey you in the back row...

hey jackass-

turn off your freaking phone during yoga class. you're not so important that you can't have it off for one measly hour. how can i tell? well you're working out in the middle of the day in a man-tank top. oh yeah, and you're wearing crocks. enough said.

did anyone else hear that?

it's the sound of this year whizzing by. i truly can not believe it's already august-if only for the fact that i've been so busy stalking other people's blogs that i forgot about my own.

this loss in the blogosphere time continuim for me might also be because i have entered my normal spring-fall schedule of having three jobs-managing a doctor's office part time, working with my autistic client, and scorekeeping/playing softball. it doesn't sound like much, but it adds up to about 70hrs a week on average. (and according to my landlord, who is constantly bitching and moaning about his supposed 70hr/week schedule, that is a lot)

hopefully it will all be worth it, as i have begun to plan my next trip to here...

boiling frogs...

apparently the nbc affiliate in utah has banned the upcoming show 'playboy club'. now granted i'm probably not going to watch this show, no matter where i live, mostly because it sounds trite...and also because i'm not an 18 year old frat boy. but the fact that they're refusing to air it? it's on network tv after all, so there's pretty tight limitations on what they'll be able to show. hmmm...it's a bit over the line if you ask me, as someone who believes censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself. i mean isn't that what free agency is all about? don't we, as an lds culture, pride ourselves on making 'good' choices and encouraging others, especially those in our families to do so as well? and who are we to take that choice completely off the table for others? here's a small blurb on the subject.

can't wait to spend thanksgiving with the muppets...

killer allergies...

is anyone else suffering as much as i am this year?

my allergies haven't been this gnarly since i was 7 and would get bloody noses that would last for, what felt like, forever.

at least that phase has passed, and now i just have to deal with eyes that won't stop itching, and near asphyxiation from congestion in my sleep.

how much allegra/claratin/loratadine/antihistamines can you take before it becomes a 'lethal' dose?

escape to l.a. ...

it's been about five years since kathleen and were both at this beach, so we thought we'd take a commemorative picture, to document the occasion:

what brought us there? why her little sister's wedding!

(pre-apologizing for the fuzzy pics...my flash was being temperamental)

homemade cake by sarah, another one of kathleen's sisters

it's legit!

guess who caught the bouquet?

and my personal favorite moment of the weekend, while cruising around in seal beach:

i also got to help my friend jessica pick out her wedding dress! sadly, i didn't get any pics...but trust me, she looked amazing. *sigh* always a bridesmaid...

sunday's spiritual thought...

Let the resurrection joy lift us from loneliness and weakness and despair to strength and beauty and happiness.
~Floyd W. Tomkins

this year's 'hairspray'?

i can't wait for this movie to come out:

does anyone else get a 'hairspray' vibe from the trailer?

...and not just because they were set around the same time.

this year's

i love a good play on words...

from one of my favorite shows, 'house':

Moriarty: "I don't care about semantics."
House: "You anti-semantic bastard!"

sunday's spiritual thought...

We are what we repeatedly do;
excellence then is not an act,
but a habit

Aristotle

byu honor code honored?!

i have to be honest, when i was in school, i didn't always agree with the honor code, and i especially didn't agree on how it was enforced in certain circumstances. however, the author of this article makes a great point that the honor code shouldn't be considered a 'cruel dictate from a mercileus father. It is a moral compass to guide us through a dangerous world.'

the article further lauds byu for its unwavering pursuit of 'educat[ing] the spirit as well as the mind.'

i think brigham young would be proud.

here kitty, kitty, kitty...

yep, i'm a cat person. roll your eyes if you will. it's not that i don't like other animals, i just happen to prefer cats. you can imagine my excitement when i saw that this was coming out in a week:

sunday's spiritual thought...

Education is when you read the fine print.
Experience is what you get if you don't.

Pete Seeger

sunday's spiritual thought...

You can never cross the ocean unless you have

the courage to lose sight of the shore.

Christopher Columbus

sunday's spiritual thought...

You see that a man is justified by works
and not by faith alone.
For just as the body without the spirit is dead,
so also faith without works is dead.

James 2:24, 26

rain, rain, go away...

it's beginning to look a lot like hawaii 2005 here in california...oh well. hopefully all this moisture will help the hills from catching on fire this summer.

in honor of the weather, a little musical tribute for your viewing pleasure:



ps: did you know that in the original 'singing in the rain' gene kelly had a 103 degree fever while filming the most infamous scene? and that they had to add milk to the 'rain' to make it look better on film?

sunday's spiritual thought...

In the confrontation between the stream and the rock,

the stream always wins - not through strength

but by perseverance.

H. Jackson Brown

week in a day=genius

i have to say that i find rachel ray to be one of the more annoying personalities on the food network-her little nicknames for everything, the fact that she laughs at her own jokes every two seconds...i practically have to watch her show on mute. however, when they introduced the new cooking channel, they also introduced rachel's first cooking show in 8 years: week in a day. the premise is simple, spend a few hours in the kitchen, and you'll have prepared a five day's worth of dinners that can be reheated later on. can i just say that i LOVE this idea. i always have tons of spare time on sundays, and find that i am super busy during the week, making preparing a nice home cooked meal difficult. hopefully the cooking channel will keep this show on for a while, because i find myself picking an choosing certain meals from each episode, according to my personal tastes.

getting back into the groove of things-sunday's spiritual thought...

Kind words can be short and easy to speak,

but their echoes are truly endless.

-unknown

take me back to that little grass shack...

i had a mango passion fruit cupcake from here today, and it looked a little something like this:

it was delish, and made me miss the aina.

this pretty much sums it up....

for those of you who didn't watch the super bowl on sunday (and to be honest, i was one of them) here's what you missed-

according to the multitude of comments i've seen on fellow michigander's facbook pages, this was the high point:



and here was the lowest of the low points:



apparently they also played some sort of football game somewhere in between these two events...but what can i say? i'm from michigan. detroit lions=fail.

damn you IRS...

to put it more accurately-damn you, one of my current employers, for not informing me that you were taking a smaller amount out than you should have been for my federal taxes. this is the first year i've had to owe money on my federal return, and i'm not happy about it...especially in light of the fact that you're paying me barely above minimum wage for a job that i know should pay almost twice as much. i was really hoping that i could add another bill to pay onto the long list of debts i already have.

oh, and to top this weekend off, juneau got sick in her crate, so i had to spend all day sunday cleaning it out.

hope your weekend was better than mine!

hello world...

well the holidays have come and went...

and now it's a brand new year!

let's hope it's a good one:)