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If so, I recommend you get your car detailed, like I did yesterday.

Shiny!

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This wisdom and warning courtesy of John Muir (via my sister Sally).

Below: El Capitan in Yosemite, which businessmen wanted to to blast for its granite until it was put under the protection of the National Park Service.

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I was at McDonald's with Eve and the kids this evening, and Ryan and Lindsey were playing in the big play area while Eve and I sat in the main dining room. This particular McDonald's has a spectacular play area, a really huge, tall conglomeration of bridges, tunnels, slides, and so on. So here's the scene:

[Lynn and Eve eating fries]

[Eve looks into the play area and spots a child shimmying up a pole on the outside of the play structure]

Eve: I wouldn't let my child do that.

[Short pause]

Eve: That is my child.

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I am psyched that Stephenie Meyer's stand-alone novel "The Host" is being made into a movie.

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In the weeks leading up to the release of New Moon (November 20, cheries!), we need to focus. Get in game condition. CONcentrate.

So HERE is a little amuse-bouche---a pretty darn entertaining interview of Jackson Rathbone's band 100 Monkeys.

And Jackson himself is pretty darn handsome in person.

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I love that they're including a cut by the band The Editors.
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This Hummingbird Dance is one of my favorites of all time.

Hok was one of my favorite male dancers, and the choreographer, Wade Robson, is right up there with Mia Michaels. I love also that in the So You Think You Can Dance venue, you can hear the audience react/clap/gasp at the work of art they're seeing, unlike in most professional dance venues.
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This guy.

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I'm reading this book, A Vindication of Love, and the author talks about how we need to experience great heartache if we're going to experience great joy. I resist this idea, but I have to admit its parallel in the physical world. Jay got back from his kidney stone surgery today and was in quite a bit of pain. He took some Dilaudit, and in about a half hour it kicked in. And there is truly no joy like the joy of relief after you've experienced physical pain.
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I like this quote from Cristina Nehring on how loving someone deeply makes you vulnerable:

"When we fall in love, we hand our partner a loaded gun."
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I am NOT ready for 80s fashions to come back. I hated shoulder pads back in the day, and I still remember the moment in the early 90s when I first saw Marc Jacob's menswear-take on women's pants, with the lower waist, tab front, and no pleats.

And now pleated pants are rearing their ugly head, along with the occasional shoulder pad. I can handle the more subtle takes on this look, for example:

THIS:






















OR THIS:






















OR EVEN THIS:

























But honestly, I'm gonna kill myself if I see this walking down the street:






















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Most of the time, I'm all "Hell is other people." But every once in a while, I do think, "Humanity, you so funny. I heart you." As when I saw the below:

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I was reading in The Week again about the increase in gun and ammo sales following Obama's inauguration. And it dawned on me that this is the right wing equivalent of saying "I'm moving to Canada." People aren't really concerned that Obama is going to outlaw guns; it's obvious he's not. But it's a way of saying "My candidate lost, and I'm pissed about it."

Saying "I'm going to move to Canada" seems an infinitely healthier way of dealing with disappointment than buying guns, but okay.
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This really is one of the cutest things I have seen in a long time.

Click here

or go here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMbww-nCVQg

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Friday night we saw the movie "(500) Days of Summer"---really good movie, about a guy more in love with a girl than she is with him. It was a pretty fresh take on movie relationships, though it had a few movie cliches. Example: The scene in which the guy stuck in a dead-end job has a breakdown at a work meeting and tells everyone just what he thinks of this job, then storms out. Also: Every movie character has a job that they have accepted in lieu of pursuing their REAL dream (to be an architect, to open their own flower shop, to design and sell their homemade jewelry). And their stuckness in their job reflects their stuckness in their life/relationship; they often must often learn to pull themselves together and pursue their dream job before they can have a successful relationship. Cf. The Runaway Bride and many, many others. Can't someone just be an insurance agent for once? Without any other hidden creative talent?

Saturday Eve, Mary, and I celebrated Mary's birthday. Mani-pedis, dinner at PF Changs, coffee and dessert outside at the Cheesecake Factory. Many, many hours of talk.

I saw my first hummingbird out on the deck today. They're so small! Then when we took Rocky for a walk down by the stream, we saw a family of deer. Gorgeous day today.
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More Update

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Stones, smashed to pebbles.
Husband, better.
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