Lord Have Mercy, We're Gonna Do This

Guess who has two thumbs and got accepted to grad school?

THIS GIRL!

I took that pic in the bathroom at Supper Club last night so I could show A-Peep my new frames.  I'm using it now because it's the most recent pic I have of me smiling cheesily into the camera.

The hills are alive...with the sound of...victory!  And with the sound of all my money and time flying out the door but that's ok.  This will be a nice little path to start on for the future.

Please make donations to the B Wright Grad School Fund.  We accept cash, checks and all major credit cards.  Additionally we accept offers to cook, clean house, do laundry, and rabbit-sit.  Your donations are much-appreciated and will be used for a good cause.

Highlights Before the Week Even Starts

Nothing like sleeping in until after 9:00 then scarfing down a Sonic burrito for breakfast.  Happy Sunday indeeeeed.

A couple more stunners from yesterday's drive:

Currently, Lucy is running laps around the couch, G is deep into an XBox game, and I'm starting a fresh New Yorker.  We are being as lazy as humanly possible before running errands later and then going to Supper Club tonight (let's hear it for my dessert: handmade coconut and macadamia candy dipped in dark chocolate.  Yeah.)

Historically speaking, my attitude is not the best on Sundays.  Something about facing a crazy week.  But today is different.  This week includes:

**Literary Society!
**A much-awaited dinner at Sushi Den.
**VAMPIRE DIARIES returns on Thursday!  My loves!

Source

**And their spin-off show, THE ORIGINALS, kicks off a season.  It'll have to be crap on a cracker for me not to watch it religiously.
**New (much, much needed) glasses with stylin' frames.
**Scheduling contract work on our library - new Before & After posts coming soon!
**Let's face it, there's more TV:  The Good Wife, Revenge, The Big Bang Theory, and more Sleepy Hollow to test out.
**Starting a new book now that I've been cajoled into loaning out the Game of Thrones one I've been "reading" and since I just finished our book for Lit Society.

Source

**And planning next weekend, of course.  Because that's how we Type A's roll.

I tallied it up - this week's activities include wine three nights in a row.  That's how you know it's gonna be a banner week.

"Fall" in love with Colorado

It was a year ago this weekend that we made the trek from Northern VA to Denver.  Via the marvelous states of Tennessee, Missouri and Kansas.  Today we took advantage of the short fall season, and when I finished my Meals on Wheels routes, we hit the road to tour the mountains in our backyard.

We made a day of it.

G researched the trees that change color in this area, and mostly they are the aspens.  They peak between the middle of September and the middle of October, turning a bright yellow then orange.  Since the weather was perfect today, we took advantage of it and drove a few hours south west of Denver.

We are very classy and stopped at a gas station general store for lunch.  I am not too proud to say that it was really good!  G had a hot dog, I had a patty melt, and we split a basket of fries while people tromped in and out, paying for their gas.

Then we started up up up into the mountains and things got interesting.  Like, um, inches of snow on the ground.  In September!  We were over 10,000 feet but still!

Look!  The Continental Divide!  In case anyone needs a reminder of what this is (cough me cough) it does not, in fact, divide the mainland U.S. down the middle.  It is the point at which bodies of water to the west flow into the Pacific, and bodies of water to the East flow into the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico.  

It was cold.  After my repeated heat strokes in Asia, I'll take it!  And I won't complain.

We then proceeded to drive back to Denver via Colorado Springs, where I saw G's nerd store, his main hangout.  I even met a couple of his peeps.  I can now verify that it does exist and he's not having an affair a couple of nights each week.

We shuffled in around 10:00 tonight and I finished up dessert for tomorrow's Supper Club.  Am now switching into the ol' pajamas for some quality time on the couch.  Am thankful we got to experience fall today (with a dash of winter).

Hope you're enjoying it too!

TGIF, people!

Told You

So I'm doing this new thing where I lay awake at night and can't get to sleep.  I get tired, wind down, go to bed...and just lay there and look at the ceiling until I get up again.

It's super fun.

I have no idea what's going on but it doesn't seem to be anxiety or stress related, so at least that.  When my alarm goes off in the morning I go into an existential crisis without my requisite 500 hours of sleep, though.

Lucy has no problem sleeping.  If you haven't noticed from the bazillion photos, this is her spot.

I finished the last Gillian Flynn book:

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn

Your eyes are not deceiving you - that is indeed a treadmill.  We joined a Rec Center that is super close to the house.  So now I can at least burn a few calories while reading instead of going into a catatonic state on the couch and ignoring all the housework that needs to be done.  Maybe I can use these newfound night hours to clean?  Probably not.

Sharp Objects is Flynn's first book, published in 2006.  And I'm proud to say she has no hyphen addiction in this one.  Must be something she picked up as she became more successful. Anyhoo, this is the story of reporter Camille Preaker who, in order to try to breathe life into her dwindling career, travels from Chicago to her small hometown in Missouri to cover the mysterious deaths of two young girls.  As she tries to get down to the bottom of what appears to be the work of a serial killer, she finds herself battling her own demons.  And - of course - finds herself in danger!

This book is every bit as good as the others, and while it has some disturbing parts and could be classified as a psychological thriller, it is not as raw as the other two.  I had significantly fewer What the ----------???? moments in this one.  Also I saw the end coming (partially) and I can't say that at all for her other books.  That's not a ding.  Her writing is witty, her characters are interesting, and the plot moves along seamlessly.

When I was young, I used to stay up way too late, tucked into bed reading Nancy Drew.  This book reminded me of those times; knowing I should turn out the lights and go to bed, but after this chapter.  After one more chapter.  Well, I might as well finish it now...

Enjoy!

Binge Reading

Rapper L and I had a recent email convo about what I like to call "binge reading," which is to say, reading several things at a time, rather than reading a single book, then moving on to another single book, etc.

What's your method?

G's is the one-book-at-a-time; mine is binging.  Right now (in addition to my never-ending New Yorker consumption) I'm plodding through a book about global warming, and plugging along on the 3rd Game of Thrones book.  But dangit if I didn't get the Amazon order of Gillian Flynn's (Gone Girl) other two books last week and immediately dive into them.  I just finished this one:

Dark Places by Gillian Flynn

Dark Places is a psychological thriller about Libby Day, who witnessed and survived the violent murder of her mother and two sisters as a small child.  Her controversial testimony helped convict her teenage brother of the murders - some say they were Satanic rituals -sending him to life in prison.  Now, as a thirty-something, she finds herself broke and aimless.  Members of an odd "fan club" of unsolved murder mysteries approach her and offer to pay her for each clue she tracks down.  Why not?  All of a sudden she has money and a purpose, but it comes at the cost of digging up her terrifying past, and it may even put her in the path of the killer she eluded all those years ago.

This is a suspenseful dive into a whodunit book; it's not a horror story, but it has some disturbing parts of a violent and sexual nature.  Flynn's writing is raw and intense (and really good); there were a couple of times I'd think to myself, "Holy Schmoly, what are you reading?" and then I was back at it because I wanted to know how it ended.  And of course I'm so addicted that as soon as I finished this one, I picked up her other published book and will probably write about it, you know, later today when I finish it.  Hardy har, but yeah, really.

Just like in Gone Girl, she is all about using the hyphens in this book.  It gets to me; it hops off the page and crawls all over my face, but I overcome it and read on.  Example:  "Most of Ben's devotees are women.  Jug-eared and long-toothed, permed and pant-suited, tight-lipped and crucifixed."

Once you get past that (if you can get past that) the writing is so dead-on:

"She sat me down in a living room that seemed stuffed:  chairs, sofa, rug, pillows, curtains, everything was plump and round and then layered with even more material.  She bustled in and out a bit, calling over her shoulder instead of standing still, asking me twice what I wanted to drink.  Somehow I knew she'd try to give me dirt-smelling, crystal-happy, earthen mugs of Beebleberry Root Tea or Jasmine Elixir Smoothie, so I just asked for water.  I looked for liquor bottles but couldn't spot any.  There were definitely some pills being swallowed here though.  Everything just plinked off this woman - bing, bang! - like she was shellacked."

I also appreciate that Flynn's novels are set in the Mid-West/South.  She talks about Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas; she captures the culture and the people and the landscape in a fair way.  It's nice to not read about huge, metropolitan cities all the time.

If you are looking for a thriller in all senses of the word, this is a good one.  Enjoy!

"Everything is a God"

In Hong Kong we spent much more time talking about religion with our guide than we did in Singapore.  Katie is Chinese and she described herself and her family as superstitious (in a nutshell) - a little Buddhism, a little Confucianism, and a little Daoism.  The three main religions of China/Hong Kong.  She and her family basically try to cover their bases (her words, not mine) with all the available gods + feng shui.

**My caveat for this post is that I don't know very much about any of these religions and I'm too lazy to look them up.  I'm summarizing what I learned while there, but I know this isn't a comprehensive description of any of them.  Also, I know some Buddhists who - I think - don't follow any of these beliefs.  So, you know, grain of salt and all that.**

Katie told us that to the Chinese, basically "everything is a god."  You've got your kitchen god, your relationship god, your literature god.  And on and on it goes.  (Although they are not quite to the Hindu level of gods; the Hindus have hundreds and readily acknowledge that there are plenty more where those came from.  It's easy to see why Christianity would be simple to the point of ridiculous to them.  Three Gods, all in one package or whatever?  So really just one God?!  Easy cheesy!)  The two "main" or most prevalent gods are:  the goddess of mercy/forgiveness and the god of protection.

Goddess of Mercy and Forgiveness

Here is a depiction of her from a Hindu temple.  She has many arms and hands so that she can help those in Heaven, those on Earth, and those in the Underworld.

The God of Protection

One particularly intriguing god, to me, is the relationship god.  He binds people together with red ribbons, bringing them close to each other, providing love in their lives.  That's a beautiful idea to me.  Here are a couple of pics of him and his red ribbons...

Look at that fish at the upper left corner: Dr. Seuss anyone?

When we visited the Wong Tai Sin Temple in Hong Kong, I learned a lot about how they pray (again, I *think* this applies more to one religion than another but since I can't remember which one it is, I'm just going to go with it.)

When a person has a wish, they bring it before the appropriate god.  I was like, don't you mean a prayer?  A request?  Or like, a goal?  But Katie kept saying a wish.  Anyhoo.  Say I wanted to know if I should go back to grad school or not.  I would take a canister full of popsicle-stick looking prayer sticks, numbered 1-100.  I go to the temple and bow down to pray to the appropriate god, all the time shaking my canister of sticks.  When the first one falls out of the can, I scoop it up, write down its number (say, #31) along with my particular question/wish, and take it to a fortune teller there at the temple or elsewhere.

See the girl in the pink dress?  She was praying, and a stick came out.  I caught this picture of her as she was standing up.

I think she is showing her stick to a fellow worshiper.  I was trying to be respectful while still trying to capture all this.  I'm sure I looked like a fool - these are the lengths I will go to for this blog, people.

Other worshipers burn incense and pray...

It was so hot and incense-y that we both got sick.  Like, wondering if I was going to hurl in the bushes, sick.  Like, plugging my ears, nose, and closing my eyes next to a wall, sick.  Just looking at these pictures sent me running for a water bottle.

Remember the numbered prayer sticks?  Each number corresponds to a general topic/general fortune area.  You can even buy the numbered topics, as seen on these cards:

But you don't have to buy a card if you don't want to.  The Wong Tai Sin Temple is very popular; worshipers from all over the world visit while in Hong Kong.  There is a huge building behind the temple that looks exactly like a multi-story rental/storage unit building.  Fortune tellers are set up in each "room" and you can visit whomever you want.  They will answer your question (for a fee of course) by using the corresponding number of your prayer stick, while also perhaps reading your palm or even your facial features.  We walked around and saw many charts (think astronomy charts - incredibly detailed) analyzing nose structure, how close eyes are together, ear placement, etc.

Lots of observations about these religious practices.  It sounds awfully complicated to me.  A couple of things that struck me: 

(1) Having to go to a temple to pray.  As a Christian, I believe that God is everywhere at all times, and that He is all-knowing.  It is liberating for me to know that I can talk to him whenever I want, and ask Him for things informally.  This is an incredible blessing.  Instead of "everything being a god," it is more like, "God is everything." 

(2)  It is liberating to only keep track of three aspects wholly encompassed into one God.  I can see how this would be hard to wrap your mind around if you believe in many gods:  why pray to a male god for mercy when I could pray to a female?  Why pray to one general god when I really need specific help for school; instead, I need to pray to the god of literature.  And so on.  At the same time, as a Christian, it is my opinion that a god, by definition, is all powerful.  A God sees all, knows all, is everywhere all at once, and doesn't need help for anything.  Anything less than that is a subpar god, not worth believing in.

(3)  Faith is worthy of respect.  Although I don't believe in the faith practices that I witnessed, we made every attempt to give respect to the people.  To them, it is serious.  How would I feel kneeling in church, with someone photographing me?

(4)  These faiths are peaceful.  There was no bitterness, no violence.  This is going to sound insensitive but I'll just say it: I don't get scared sitting next to a Buddhist on an airplane.

(5)  I truly appreciate getting to experience other religions.  It is so different from reading about them, or hearing about them.  It is easy to get sequestered into my own little bubble of beliefs, but if I do that, I can't reach others and they can't reach me.  The religion aspect was one of the most interesting parts of the entire trip - both cities.

Fortune tellers - hundreds - set up behind the temple

Don't throw up.  Don't throw up.  Just take the picture.  Breathe in, breathe out.  Don't throw up.

Later in the day, we toured Chi Lin Nunnery.  Remember how I told you that I'm not a planner/researcher?  The whole time, I was expecting a Christian nunnery.  Um, it was Buddhist.  Heh.  So clueless sometimes.  When I heard the chanting, I was like, Hmmm?  Is this a different version of a Gregorian Chant?  LOL.

The grounds were beautiful.  This was one of the greenest, most serene and pretty places we saw in Hong Kong.  Nestled right in the middle of the city!

And hot.  The gardens stretched all around the nunnery and were the highlight, but we only saw about a quarter of them.  We walked around for about an hour and it was all we could take.  We had to go sleep it off for several hours in the hotel.

The Wong Tai Sin Temple and the Chi Lin Nunnery are worth a trip.  Thoughts about religion?  Anyone?

Sharks on a Saturday

Happy Fall, peeps.

Could you die or what?  That picture is so cute.  Most of the pics I get of her look more like this.

Yes, she is chewing on the pumpkin; it's the only hope I had to get a shot.  Notice she is keeping a close eye on me.  And on her spotted buddy, the stingray.

Today we went to the Denver Nature and Science Museum to watch a 3D/IMAX documentary on Great White Sharks.  It was great!  For those of you who haven't done a shark cage, this is very close to the experience; phenomenal underwater shots that are clear (not jerky, murky, or overly assertive).  You can even hear toddlers screaming in the background.  Oh wait, that was just the movie.  **sigh**  Restless, screechy babies and toddlers in a documentary about preserving Great White Sharks?  Why, people?  Why?

I would recommend the film, though.

It featured the Great White Shark Project we toured in South Africa!  They are credited as one of the most effective protectors of sharks today.  A few of our own pics to jar the ol' memory...

G with sharks a year ago

G with sharks today

Then we came home and ate some of this to celebrate the end of summer.  Bring on the fall.