If I was an abused welfare mom we'd be a better match. But I'm not.

Yesterday was Pi day.  I got to have some peach pie with fat free ice cream with Dina and Summer.  I had just finished reading Lit the night before which got me thinking about sobriety, prayer and miracles.  The presence of grace was a theme in the movie Philomena that Dina and I went to see  as well.

Of course as is typical with me thinking about sobriety led to a desire to to get drunk and last Tuesday started at the New Orleans tapas place and ended at Chopsticks II.  I flirted with a derelict but made it to bed alone.

The second book I picked up at Powell's with Mia last month is The Executioner's Song.

Deadline

Here is a woman's self-help blog about making mistakes that maybe reading will help me feel philosophical about making mistakes:  http://www.visionmagazine.com/archives/0705/mind_spirit1.html

Here is a song that can make me feel better about making mistakes but maybe only if they are intentional, not unintentional:

I turned in something today just under the wire.  Kind of frantic at the end and the document I'd been writing and rewriting over and over sent to press metaphorically with a typo, at least one that I put in just at the end fidgeting with the words.  Of course the more important more people who might see my work, the more the glaring and stupid the error feels.  But I realize I should care more when the error is significant or something more is at stake more than my ego.  But those types of mistakes, the real big ones mostly seem out of my power to avoid or too scary to confront.  If I can't manage typos in documents I prepare for work, what else is slipping through the cracks?

I feel like the clock is ticking.

I wish I could say I've learned something this year.   A lot of things happened in 1963 and we are still trying to make sense of it all. What will 2013 look like in 50 years?



Let the buyer beware?  Guys who look like Dick Cheney often make money off of death? I knew that already. 



I met some admirable new people and got to see some old friends.  Potential pain with each.  Saying goodbye feels like death to me but more sad--a dead person (dog) isn't around corporeally somewhere not being with me.  Either they are gone or they are ghosty spirits imminent.  BBC thinks the unlived moments are infinite.  But in my mind death puts an end to potential (in this realm at least) and it is the all the lost moments and choices not made when we are alive that make me sad.

So far my favorite movie of the year is Our Idiot Brother which was released in 2011.  It bought tears to my eyes.

Now I'm watching Bachelorette which seems awesome too.  There is an actress who looks like the woman in Y La Bamba and they keep saying Becky.

Nelson Mandela 12/5/13

Post by Occupy Wall St.

A day that started with fast food workers walking out, willing to work for a living wage.
It's cold here in Stumptown.  No pity.
Why do we believe it's ok for one person to profit off another?
That God shows favor by providing wealth? Who, what is love?  Not something all-knowing and everlasting in my book. Love is like a melting snowflake and the Creator is jealous, selfish, and angry and didn't make anything out of nothing.


Racial issues have been in the news.

http://www.salon.com/2013/12/02/three_white_college_students_file_racial_discrimination_complaint_against_professor_over_lesson_on_structural_racism/

I once had a complaint lodged against me for offending white men in a cultural competence training.  (It was rejected.)

http://www.salon.com/2013/12/04/new_york_times_blind_spot_on_clinton_and_race/

Can we do any better than Hillary?  Why not Michelle?

I remember the girl who came to my high school from South Africa and wonder what she is doing now.

http://www.stereogum.com/1549171/read-lou-reeds-obituary-placed-by-laurie-anderson-in-their-local-paper/news/

Nice to die old but not a vegetable admired but not harassed leaving music and poetry behind. 

Elizabeth Wurtzel can be funny.

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/music/60307/no-mr-nice-guy

It is nice to know that El Hefe truly is a great guy. I wonder about Woody Allen now, knowing that Mia was cheating on him with Sinatra.

For Halloween I dressed as my favorite celebrity gossip story of the year.