Veggie Cream Cheese

Posted on September 11, 2017 by Brave Thoughts

This is one of my favorite things, especially if I have good bagels to spread it on.

Start with your favorite cream cheese. I like the Neufchatel kind for some reason. Usually I will do a whole package, this time I had used some of it already, so it was maybe 6 oz.

Then get a variety of veggies. More colors == better. This batch has: 1/2 green pepper, 2 sticks of celery, 1/3 onion, 1/2 carrot, 2 cloves garlic, 2 radishes.

Cut your veggies up really small. This takes a little time, but if you have a good knife, it’s almost fun.

You want to have more veggies than cream cheese.

If it seems like you have too many veggies, that’s good. Break up your cream cheese and start mixing it in with the veggies. I use a fork. If your bowl isn’t very tall, you’ll get veggie spill-over. Keep scooping the veggies from the bottom onto the top and smash them in.

At first it seems like you will have extra veggies, but keep mixing. Eventually you will have a cohesive blob of veggie cream cheese.

It is optional to add salt, pepper, or other spices. I usually wait until I’m spreading it on the bagel or toast and then I add just enough to enhance the flavor.

 

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It starts with a Tomato Sandwich Party

Posted on September 10, 2017 by Brave Thoughts

It starts with a Tomato Sandwich Party, like all good things do.

Tomato Sandwich Party

What, you may ask, is a tomato sandwich party? It’s a community garden event. Bread from local bakeries, tasty pesto, and an assortment of tomatoes: purple, yellow, red.

I really wouldn’t technically call them sandwiches, more like a pile of tomato on a slice of bread. A pile of awesome tomato that makes you want to have your own garden. Throw in some music and lemonade and have the party in a back yard near the chicken coop.

Good wholesome fun.

Several years ago, I invited a man to go to the Tomato Sandwich Party with me, quite sure he would think it was silly and I would go alone. But he was game, and we had our first ‘just us’ date with the tomatoes and the music.

The rest of the day was us spending time together. And we still are together. So good things start with a Tomato Sandwich Party.

I don’t really know where I’m going with this, but I need to start something new.

I’m just going to put stuff out there and see what happens. I have too many words hidden away in my notebooks.

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For 2017: A Vision Board That Fits in Your Wallet

Posted on January 1, 2017 by Brave Thoughts

First, for those who don’t know: A vision board is a collection of images and/or text that represents the “vision” you have for yourself. It’s called a board because usually the images are arranged on a large piece of heavy paper or some kind of stiff material. This does allow you to glue on things that aren’t just paper, and generally get creative with your visualizing.

The whole idea is to remind yourself to visualize yourself reaching your goals and dreams – bringing into your life some combination of inspiration and the law of attraction that will make those things happen. The one drawback I’ve found, though, is that it feels too personal to post in a public place, and the vision boards I’ve created end up in a closet or a drawer until one day I find them when I’m looking for something else.

I wanted a way to have my vision board and carry it with me, too.

My answer: A Mini Vision Board Book.

There are many options for mini books out in the world – what I was looking for was something super simple. I found it – a book you can make with a single piece of letter-sized paper, that doesn’t require tape, staples or binding of any kind.

Yes, it fits in a wallet, or a purse, or a pocket. You can carry your vision board with you and have it there to regain your focus or inspire you at any time.

The book I’m using can have up to 16 pages – I used the front and back for covers and had 14 pages to work with. A double-spread page can be used for each goal/image if you can’t come up with 14 different things.

I found that you can work with the mini book in a few ways:

  • Paste or glue images from magazines into it after it is folded. This will make it thicker and might not stick together well over time if you carry it everywhere.
  • Draw your own pictures or text to represent what you envision. 
  • Start with a template in Word and add images from your computer or the Internet before printing it and folding it. A blank template with cutting and folding instructions is available to anyone who subscribes during the month of January. Just add your own images or textures to make the book awesomely yours.

Here is where I found the basic instructions for making a mini book.

What I’m reading:

  • Shifter by Brian Haberlin, Skip Brittenham, Brian Holguin, Kunrong Yap
  • Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters (audio)

Courses I’m taking:

  • Machine Learning (Coursera – Stanford)
  • A Life of Happiness and Fulfillment (Coursera – ISB)

Things I have been putting off:

  • This blog post
  • Car maintenance
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This must be where I’ve been hiding out…

Posted on December 18, 2016 by Brave Thoughts

Welcome to Gingerbread Village!

Our little community (and we mean little) features several custom cabins for your enjoyment. Take a look around and start planning your next getaway!

The Village itself features six gingerbread cabins on tidy, shiny aluminum foil lawns with a few gingerbread trees that do not shed leaves in the fall. All of the buildings are edible, and we anticipate that we will have to rebuild next year.

Cobblestone Cottage:

This little beauty features a Goobers-style cobblestone face on one side and a lovely colored sprinkles walkway leading to the simulated door. The roof has a heart-shaped pattern that can only be seen by our aerial photographer.  This cabin has window outlines on three sides, for stunning views of gingerbread walls.

  
 

Smarties Shack:

The name is alliterative, but this is no shack. This charming little cabin has Smarties all around and an impressive lawn with mature trees. Adding to the luxury offered here is the larger longer sprinkles on the walkway and the double door that you could imagine opening into the back yard.  This is the smart choice.

Licorice Lodge:

This cabin will add a little twist to your stay. The licorice highlights on the corners and roof make this cabin stand out and say Stop! A quaint sugar sprinkle sidewalk leads to a solid door outline. You could probably smell the strawberry scent from inside.

  
 

Peachy Place:

This one is for the sweethearts. Large peach rings practically overwhelm this little cabin, but it’s sturdy construction holds up. Note that this cabin actually has a doorknob, and looks like you might pass right under that peach ring if you used it.

 Them other cabins:

If you’re looking for something less fancy and slightly less sugary, these cabins still have a lot to offer. Fancy lines and dots on the roofs and special features like a solid door or an attic porthole give you plenty to appreciate.

  

Okay, so some of you can do these things in your sleep. This is my first time doing any kind of gingerbread house, and I had the opportunity to TRY it, so why not? I had fun. I didn’t try to straighten the edges of the cookies, so there are plenty of gaps and some very well-vented rooftops. Which is one reason I am posting this: it isn’t perfect, and I’m trying to get past thinking I have to have things perfect before I can share them.

Hope you enjoyed it!

What I’m reading:

  • Ways to Disappear by Idra Novey
  • Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters (audio)

Courses I’m taking:

  • Design Patterns in C++
  • Machine Learning
  • A Life of Happiness and Fulfillment

Things I have been putting off:

  • Car maintenance
  • Planning a trip home

 

 

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Desperately Seeking Awe

Posted on September 28, 2015 by Brave Thoughts

There is a note in my notebook (good place for it):

awe is good for you

The source of this one was an e-mail, one of those mailing lists I was on where they send you inspirational notes along with a sales pitch for a workshop. My  vague recollection is that they were saying that awe was good for you like eating well is good for you – it has an actual physical effect.

It took a couple of days for the meaning to really sink in. I realized that without knowing it, I had been finding awe in little things and apparently doing myself a lot of good. Some might call it distraction. Others would call it listening to my inner artist. I probably called it ‘appreciating fleeting moments’. But after I read that e-mail, I knew it was awe. Yay, me!

And as a few more days went by, I began to watch how people behave when it comes to awe. I think, on some level, most people know that awe is good for them. They feel it when they experience something special, like Christmas morning or a spectacular fireworks display.

And then they try to recreate it.

They mean well. They want to share this good thing with their kids and their friends. And sometimes they succeed. But sometimes they go overboard, and instead of awe you have awful.

Because awe is a gentle, kind thing. It isn’t blasting your eardrums for an entire hour. It isn’t rushing around, desperate to check things off a list. Awe comes to you without warning, without effort. It makes you smile.

At least my kind of awe works that way.

So here’s my little plea to the world: Share the awe, not the awful. Remember that joy doesn’t need to explode. Remember that gifts are best when you don’t expect them. Remember that special moments are there for us every day. Remember that

awe is good for you

Sign says Malfunction Jct

Take the time to notice the world around you…

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Cell Phone Awareness Day

Posted on September 9, 2015 by Brave Thoughts

As I struggle with the impending loss of my cell phone, we are going through periods of alternating lucidity and coma-like unresponsiveness. Sometimes it is working fine, then it will not respond for hours at a time.

I say ‘we’ as if the phone was a person – is this odd, or does it secretly feel right? We do have relationships with our phones when they are so infused into our lives, with us most of the time.

I’m losing my dear friend Droid 4, who has been with me for over two years of slide-out full-keyboard bliss. This is my friend who wakes me up in the morning with a silly whistling tune that annoys my husband, This is my friend who makes sure I get to my meetings on time.

I’m declaring Cell Phone Awareness Day.

I’ve been noticing the ways I use my phone every day – because I find myself reaching for it or thinking of taking it out for some purpose, then realizing it isn’t there for me.

  • There are no alarms. I have to remember to do things, wear my watch again, and use the clock-radio to wake up.
  • I can’t play solitaire in bed to wind down before I go to sleep.
  • I can’t send a text to my hubby at 3 a.m. when he is on night shift and I wake up and can’t get back to sleep.
  • I’m suddenly very dependent on Facebook and e-mail to keep in touch with people. I realize I don’t have some phone numbers anywhere else.
  • Those minutes I have while my bagel is toasting can’t be filled with a reddit fix.
  • When I’m reading a book and run into an unfamiliar word, I can’t look it up instantly. I remain ignorant because I’m too lazy to find my long-neglected dictionary.
  • Without the phone, I am forced to use a flashlight or turn on a light to make a quick note in my notebook at night.
  • My husband can’t text me to let me know he is working late. I can’t text him to let him know I’m on the way home from a party.
  • I can’t look up that web page I made the other day.
  • I have to use paper and pen to make a list.
  • I see something that would make a great picture, but I have to let it pass because I don’t have a camera handy.

In a couple of days, I will have a replacement phone. It just won’t be the same. I’ll have to get to know this new phone. I’ll have to download all the latest versions of the apps I’ve been using (the ones I didn’t update because they worked just fine). I’ll have to use the screen keyboard for everything.

I suppose one day it could feel like an old friend. Maybe. We’ll see.

Maybe.

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Everything She Would Miss

Posted on September 6, 2015 by Brave Thoughts

There was an article somewhere about a little girl with a terminal disease. They were giving her a big birthday party and trying to give her the things in life she would miss because she probably wouldn’t make it through the year – a prom and a wedding. She was dressed as a princess.

My first reaction: life isn’t just about being a princess and getting married. If they really wanted to show her what her life would have been like, they would have to throw in some of the not-so-great stuff that makes those other things worth it – yeah, that wouldn’t make a good party for a five-year-old.

But it got me thinking: what would it be like to really show her everything she would miss? Life isn’t just about being a princess, but sometimes it is. Sometimes you feel amazing and special. Sometimes you hurt so bad it feels like it won’t get better. And then it does get better.

If someone had given me a party when I was five, trying to show me all the things my life would be, what would that look like?

Playing ghost-in-the-graveyard at my grandmother’s house, being in the hospital with appendicitis for a week, falling off my bike and getting a scar on my knee, having acne, visiting Niagara Falls (for the attractions, then for the amazing river), getting a college degree that didn’t do much for me, then getting a degree that changed my life, dating a ‘good guy’, then dating a ‘bad boy’, then finding the man who really ‘gets’ me and marrying him, being introduced to deep fried turkey (nobody should die without experiencing this), having a job where the customers wanted to talk to the man in the shop because they assumed he knew more than I did, having a job where I was respected for my skills, finding out my dad was dying, watching my nieces and nephew grow up, snowmobiling at night, snowshoeing at night, getting a great job, getting laid off, being at the controls of an airplane for a few minutes, whitewater rafting, being in a car accident, seeing the most amazing meteor shower…

There is no way to explain how complex and wonderful life is.

Maybe to a five-year-old, being a princess is all of this. Maybe I’m wrong to think she needs to know anything beyond what she already knows.

May her life be full of love and beauty. And yours, too.

 

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Corpse Pose

Posted on August 2, 2015 by Brave Thoughts

I.

I’m supposed to be melting.

Melting like candle wax, she said. But I’m thinking: It’s just yoga. Why is it so hard? How can my muscles be so tight? I can’t reach as far as I used to, can’t fold as tight as I used to, can’t hold my balance for two seconds.

I’m looking at the geometrical things on the ceiling: squares, rectangles, circles. And I’m wondering how long we have been lying here. Are we going to spend a third of the class in corpse pose? She did say it was a very important part of the practice.

It only feels like wasting time because I’m not good at it yet. I have to learn to melt.

II.

This time she didn’t say to melt. She gets us into the corpse pose, and then we hear her walk to the door and leave.

In my mind, I see her going out for a smoke break. Maybe because most of the people I’ve known who leave at inappropriate times are being controlled by a cigarette habit. At the same time, I doubt this is true.

I am a terrible dead person. I feel all fidgety and I want to look around at the other people pretending to be dead. I have to adjust my pony tail because it is a hard lump under my head. The polished wood floor is cold beneath my right hand.

After an incredibly long time, she brings us back to life and reads a quote – the one that she had printed out when she left the room.

III.

This time my corpse is contained within the space allotted by the mat. The air feels cold and I know the floor will be colder.

We have a different instructor this time, one who doesn’t believe that dying is the most important part of the practice. She has led us on a complicated trail of poses that I could not begin to attempt. I spent much of the time in the simpler poses that led to the harder ones, waiting for the flexible folk to finish and come back to something I could do.

Still, I can see that I am improving, if only a little. Here and there something is easier than it was before, and this makes me feel less frustrated and hopeless.

IV.

Back to the original instructor. She has given us the suggestion that we send positive thoughts to both our inner and our outer selves. The focus has been on accepting our abilities, whatever they are.

This causes a struggle in my brain, as it is having trouble forming a positive statement that doesn’t sound like a backhanded compliment: “You’re doing fine, considering how much you’ve let yourself go.” After a minute or so, I give up on this.

It’s so quiet and it takes so long this time that it begins to feel like a kindergarten nap time. Only much quieter, because we are now adults and can’t giggle and fake snore. I get restless and I take a peek at the silent teacher. She is sitting up, her glasses bright with the reflection of something on her smart phone.

I move my dead arms, crack my dead neck. I look at my neighbors. The younger one is also fidgeting.

When you are ready, slowly come back to life.

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The Satisfying Snare

Posted on April 12, 2015 by Brave Thoughts

I know, I know. I should have been writing. But one too many people at LTUE mentioned something called “reddit“, and I innocently ventured into a pleasing pit of quicksand from which I have yet to escape.

It started with “WritingPrompts”, which was okay, but certainly not the this mysterious thing that deserved being mentioned over and over again. The posts were tame and controlled.

Then I must have run into some acronym I didn’t understand, and the fun began. I wasn’t the only one who hadn’t figured it out. Suddenly, I found posts with hundreds of snarky comments that had me giggling out loud.

I began exploring: “TodayILearned”, “NotTheOnion”, “Mildly Interesting”. I kept reddit open in the browser on my phone and returned to it whenever I needed a break.

One week I discovered “IAmA”, and spent my free time reading Q & A sessions with miscellaneous people.

“GetMotivated” took another week or so. Of reading about getting motivated. Clearly, it didn’t work for my writing. It did make me feel good, though.

I don’t even know how I found “ProgrammerHumor”, but I’m glad I did. I get the jokes. I understand the frustration. And I reconnected with something I’d forgotten about.

I followed a link to a humorous blog post: “A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages“. As I was reading through the footnotes, there was a reference to an article by Verity Stob.

“Verity Stob?”, I asked myself, “Where have I heard that before?” Something in my brain was poking at me from a distant past. It sounded so familiar.

Googled it. Yes, it’s a pseudonym. A catchy one that stays in your brain for over a decade.

Verity Stob wrote (and still writes, I am happy to discover!) satirical articles on programming. I’m sure I found her during the time I was reading articles from Dr. Dobb’s Journal, but I can’t even remember how or where I had access to Dr. Dobb’s at the time.

I still enjoy Verity Stob’s articles, now in The Register – yet another way to spend some time if you’re a geek looking to avoid writing.

Some day I think I hope to find a way out of this satisfying snare, but it might be a while…

 

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Another Word for Joy: Lesson 4 – Vision

Posted on December 14, 2014 by Brave Thoughts

No Ideas for Creative Endeavors (NICE) presents:

Another Word for Joy: Lesson 4

I need a new vision board. I made one some time ago, and I thought it covered the many things I wanted, but now when I look at it, I see the flaws. It included “planning a trip”, but then we only planned it and didn’t take it. It included some phrases and images that were merely a reflection of what was going on in my life, not what I wanted to happen.

I am ready to imagine something better. I am ready to visualize a dream. I am ready to take the first step toward making it happen.

When we “see” a goal or dream in our mind, we are more likely to achieve it. When we put it onto paper or into a vision board, we are anchoring the images more solidly.

This is one way that Joy is linked to vision. The magical workings of the eye and brain are another part of the story.

Welcome to Lesson 4: Vision.

What an amazing gift we have in vision. Our eyes take reflected images and flip them around and send signals to our brains that make it possible for us to move through a busy and complicated world with ease.

We take this for granted until something causes the images to blur: we might now need glasses to see clearly.

But there is also another dimension to vision: time. We can see what is happening right now in front of us. We can see something that happened years ago. We can see into the future. You might call these memory and imagination, in an attempt to make them appear less “real”, but the impact these visions have on our lives is very real, and very important to what we do in the present.

Why do we keep pictures of people we’ve known and places we’ve been? Why are we fascinated by sunsets? Why does a grey sky make people gloomy?

When we are looking for Joy, we can find the answers in what we see, with our eyes or in our mind.

Homework #1: What we see

Carry a pen and paper or a smart phone with you as you go about your day. Try to be aware of the images you are experiencing as your day progresses. Some of them will be in the physical world, in the present. Other images might be of the past or a dreamed of (or feared) future. When an image causes you to react with a feeling, make a note of the image and the kind of reaction you have to it. What images cause positive feelings?

In this lesson, your goal is to learn how vision can enhance your experiences of joy. Whether the vision is “real” or in your mind, images have great power in our lives.

How do we reach our goals? We imagine ourselves doing it, and then we follow through. We teach ourselves through vision how something will look when we have finished, and then we work toward that image.

If you’ve even taken a brief look at this blog, you’ll know that it isn’t as easy as that. Sometimes there is a lot of struggle that goes on in between. But when we are striving for Joy, it is worth the effort.

Homework #2: What we imagine

It’s getting close to the new year. Many people see this as a time to start new things, reach for new goals. For this exercise, go farther than picturing yourself starting something new – picture yourself at the moment you complete your goal. This can be any goal you have, even if it is not a New Year resolution. Try to imagine as much detail as possible. Write down any details that surprise you as you think of them.

Back to the eyeballs and nerves and the stuff that goes on in our heads. I have a very specific belief about vision: that there is a link between vision and life itself. Why? Because when my dad was dying, he didn’t want to wear his glasses.

This was a guy who couldn’t see anything clearly without them. I can’t imagine not wanting to see things clearly. I look forward to getting new glasses that bring everything into focus. This is one of the best parts of life. To me, not wanting the glasses was a sign. A sign that he was letting go of the joys of life.

Maybe he was just tired, but I gave it that meaning and I’ve kept that with me for a quarter of a century. And if I ever don’t want to see things and I don’t smile when you put a camera in my hand, you should start getting my headstone ready.

I just realized that this might give the name of the link in the Bonus section a different meaning… but it has nothing to do with this sad story of mine.

Bonus #1

How about a link to a site on Vision for Life?

For Lesson 4 credit, you must either post your Homework answers as a comment or send them to me in an e-mail.

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