Saturday, November 29, 2008

Dolla Dolla Bill Y'all

Hey folks, KISS MY FACE offered you all 30% off at their webstore:

The promo code is at the end of this article I mentioned them in...you may remember it. If you already read it, snoop around elsewhere on the CarrieAndDanielle.com site for cool stuff to read. :-) You won't have to look too far.

P.S. I LOVE Kiss My Face. Fabulous products.

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Meditation is for Meditators

Talking is for do-ers.
Just saying
....
(Click to see me latest on CarrieandDanielle.com)

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Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Monday, November 24, 2008

Sponge Breakfast

CAUTION: Breakfast making and bath tub cleaning don't mix. Just ask Gina, who was making French toast and handing the sponge to Regina. Oh sad fate of the naked bread, never to be bathed in its French Toast future.

It wasn't fun cleaning the tub with cinnamon egg yolk either.

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Sunday, November 23, 2008

Antibiotics Kill Even Pride

REGINA: Pema, do you have acidophilus?

PEMA: No but I have fixyourpussilous.

(Mama said there'd be days like this. Be prepared, with these two supplements in the herb cabinet: 1. Oregano oil capsules, and 2. Cell Food trace minerals.)

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Love School

Maybe to a degree we teach people how to love us. If love fails, is it we, personally, who have failed to teach our partner how to best love us?

If we are not loved the way we want to be loved, should we not take it upon ourselves to teach our partner how to love us?

And if they fail, do we call it a personal failure because they have not learned from the best person to have taught them?

Do we take any accountability for that?

No doubt, it takes a willing student. But I've always found that a student's capacity to thrive increases with the enthusiasm, commitment, creativity and drive of the teacher.

As a chronic single person who finds plenty of reasons not to date people past a certain knowledge of them (something to the effect of: we'd never get along, that would drive me crazy about him, no, no, that's dangerous, and i would never want to deal with that the rest of my life...), I wonder if it is a matter of picking an apt candidate and teaching like my love depended on it.

Friday, November 21, 2008

How to Be Sesame Street

Remember that little Sesame Street guy who is learning to read? Big and bold on the board in front of him is the word he is learning. He sounds out each of the letters and slowly--with so much suspense!!--pulls the sounds together to say the word:

BLOG

Buh Ll Ah Guh

BLl Ah Guh

((Meanwhile you're pinging in your seat, "blog! blog! it's blog! say BLOG!!!"))

BLl AhG

((BLOG! BLOG!! SAY IT!! (boing! boing! boing!))

BLOG. BLOG? BLOG!

And then he's pleasant and pleased and you, whew, are spent and relieved.

((Blog, I told you.))


The suspense of learning has really worn me out over the years, and my doctor suggested I do something regular to balance it out. So I turned to my pen and decided to share some tips of my own, sneak over to the teaching side a little while.

Take a peek at today's post on CarrieAndDanielle.com: Five Unexpected Tips to Get You Writing. Go ahead. Sound it out slowly. You'll be pleasant and pleased, like on Sesame Street, richer for your knowledge, like on Main Street, and maybe even a bit surprised, like on Wall Street.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

SAVE THE DATE - Jan 30, 2009

No, I'm not getting married on that date. One of my characters is!

Come visit me in Portland, OR, on January 30, where my new play TALKING DOGS will get its first public reading.

Taking place at Portland's poshest digs for theatre, Portland Center Stage's The Armory, you can grab a cocktail and pull up a chair to a wedding reception featuring five men facing various stages of divorce and dispossession, all while discovering love they never noticed, and possibilities they didn't know they possessed.

TALKING DOGS is a COMEDY. A farce. A run-around-naked good time. Oh wait, that's the honeymoon. I haven't written that scene yet.

Drop what you're doing and come play with me this winter at the first ever FERTILE GROUND FESTIVAL. I'll promise you a rose city.

Monday, November 17, 2008

Lovin' Feeling

Wanna date on the cheap without looking like a cheap date? Allow me to show you how...Check out my latest on C&D.com.

Sunday, November 16, 2008

Gut Feeling

If you pardon the typos, you might like my new post on trusting your intuition at C&D.com. I know...you knew I was going to say that.

Friday, November 14, 2008

Coffeeshop Overheard

Man: I'm not a germ phobe or anything, but--eww.

Woman: I'm not borrowing a swim suit. It's a yoga mat!

Woman (cont.): Do you have those tiny spoons? I love a good cappucino with a tiny spoon.

(Man hands her a cappucino)

Woman (cont.): That's not a really tiny spoon, FYI.

Man: Maybe you should get back to yoga and get a little more zenned out.

Other Man: Or have one of these white chocolate chip yummy cookies with coconut and cranberries...

Woman: You lost me at white chocolate.

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Eateritas

On Alberta Street in Portland, I dropped into La Sirenita to bring home dinner. The Mexican restaurant sits in between two others, La Bonita and La Playita, all on the same block.

I haven't eaten at the others, but have wondered about them. While waiting for my food, I got confirmation I was in the right place. A woman wearing a black apron that had a red embroidered "La Bonita" on it came in, got in line and placed her order.

Dinner break? Good thing she works so close to a good Mexican joint.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

In the Name of Research

I ate grasshoppers last night.

Served sun dried in a bowl with chili flakes and lime. Garnished with salsas, cilantro, and corn tortillas.

I resisted temptation to wash it down with a shot of tequila. I was on a date, after all.

The bigger story is that I'm doing research for a story that involves entomophagy. The grasshoppers were listed on the menu as appetizers, under "pre-hispanic" food. With the opportunity right there in front of me, I didn't know how I could rightly refuse it. Granted, I wouldn't kill anyone if I were writing about murder. But...I felt a little guilty thinking I would pass up such accessible research. I felt the draw of exotic adventure. And I felt curious enough, both, to say I tried them, and have an excuse to be so bold as to order grasshoppers on a date.

They were less crunchy than I thought they would be. Not a lot of taste. They felt scratchy in my mouth. They were indeed little carcasses. I couldn't bring myself to pick one up and eat it by itself, or any part of it that had fallen off in the bowl. Actually, there was a moment there, as I sat and chatted with my date, grasshopper-stuffed tortilla rolled in my hand, that I glimpsed in my peripheral vision a bug sticking out of my food!! I jumped. Then realized I just hadn't taken that bite yet. I tucked it back in the taco and took a deep breath, allowing myself only a half second to wonder what the HELL I was doing.

As we left the restaurant, my date joked, "Ah, grasshoppa-eater, you have come so far."

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Gray Skies All Day


The thing about Portland is that it's morning all day long. At least that's what my history in SoCal tells me, where coolness and clouds clear out by 9am.

Under the perpetual morning skies of Portland, I have no indicator of time passing. Now that I work from home, I am prone to wake-and-work--I fire up the laptop before getting out of bed in the morning. I eventually move the work down to my basement office, but somewhere along the way, I forget to change out of my pajamas. And pink slippers.

You'd think when it's 9pm and nearing bedtime again, I would be happy for being that much closer to ready for it. Truth is, it's jarring. "Dark outside? But I'm still in my P.J.'s. Bedtime? I just got out of bed."

Today, I put on a bra and called it progress.


Photo Credit

Sunday, November 9, 2008

Addiction

Sometimes the substance is a person and abuse feels nothing like the word.

Saturday, November 8, 2008

Sound Play

I had a funny experience. Actually, I had a fun experience and parenthetically encountered a funny one. Portland hosts a literary festival called, Wordstock. It's a weekend of readings by authors from all over the country. Before I moved to town two months ago, I signed up to volunteer. I'm a word nerd.

Last minute, I got a call to pick up an author at the airport. It was Stefan Fatsis, book author, writer for Wall Street Journal and New York Times, but more importantly, to me, NPR commentator. I'm a radio junkie.

Back story, I have better aural recognition than visual. So when I picked up Mr. Fatsis and accompanied him to baggage claim, I couldn't help but laugh at the ten years of radio listening that stood up in my memory on hearing him speak.

Better, when I sat at dinner and asked him about his latest book, in which he, a sports writer, plays on an NFL football team in order to write about the experience, I reverted to the memories that began the evening, but with a slight Alice in Wonderland twist: I was now sucked INTO the radio, one of the radio hosts, interviewing Stefan Fatsis, sports writer and NPR contributor, who diligently, dispassionately answered questions in the clipped and animated way I had heard from OUTSIDE my radio for years.

God that can warp a person's brain.

Shortly, I forgot the man was Stefan Fatsis, and he became some cool guy again, who'd flown into town to talk at the literary festival.

But the funniest part came this morning, when I called Mr. Fatsis to let him know Regina and I were on the way. Regina sits on the Wordstock board, and we were taking him to breakfast. If you've heard the man's radio segments, you know he is always in conversation with the host of the show. You know that his inflections are all over the sound map, making for an interesting listen. And if you're at all like me, you notice the way he gets off the air...like the thing is over and he's had enough, already. His sign offs are unmistakably complete: "BYE, BOB." He'll say it with a flat directness. I love these goodbyes. They always make me laugh.

Our brief phone conversation ended this morning. Stefan Fatsis signed off...and there I was spinning in ten years of radio again, but this time they were distilled into my phone: "BYE, PEMA."

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Content of A Man's Character

Gina heard this on the radio today, paraphrased. An African-American man was interviewed out on the street in his town, in response to yesterday's landslide vote to elect Barack Obama President of the United States:

"This election was the biggest event since Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. That piece of paper was supposed to free us. But we weren't free that day. We were sent out of slavery with nothing. No jobs. No property. No rights. Some of us no families. We weren't free that day. We were freed YESTERDAY. Nothing this significant has happened since the Emancipation Proclamation."

Can't help but hear MLK's voice: "Free at last, free at last. Free at last."

And Obama's acceptance speech last night: "Because of what we did on this day, in this election, on this defining moment, change has come to America."

Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Harvard Professor of African-American Studies, was on Oprah today, and repeated what his 95 year-old father said to him over the phone: "This is the greatest day in the history of the Negro and I am glad to see it."

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Everybody's Doing It

I love election day! I love that I can fill in the bubbles on my ballot (which I am doing right now!) knowing millions of people all over the nation are doing the same thing today. Our nation has football and baseball games that bring fans together in hope and drive. We send athletes to Olympic games that pull our heartstrings in solidarity, and serve to expand our collective minds about regular folk all over the world. We have holidays that bring us closer to our families and help us reflect on feelings of love throughout the world. And we have election day...every four years the opportunity to cast our individual votes, raise our hands to be counted in a great and prosperous democracy. It is a perfect reflection of individuals coming together to form the community that is our United States. No matter how our opinions and passions differ, we vote together, to make our aspirations for our country a reality. Today, regardless of our differences, we are a community. Get out there and feel it today! It inspires!

Monday, November 3, 2008

Prop H8te

"Religions and their believers are free to define marriage as they please; they are free to consider homosexuality a sin. But they are not free to impose their definitions of morality on the state. Proposition 8 proponents know this, which is why they have misdirected the debate with highly colored illusions about homosexuals trying to take away the rights of religious Californians. Since May, when the state Supreme Court overturned a proposed ban on same-sex marriage as unconstitutional, more than 16,000 devoted gay and lesbian couples have celebrated the creation of stable, loving households, of equal legal stature with other households. Their happiness in no way diminishes the rights or happiness of others."

LA Times Editorial 11.2.08