Real Simple/ Real Life (Mine)

So what do those “celebrity questionnaires” reveal about me? That I’m not a celebrity or that none of us are all that interesting when asked about our favorite brand of toothpaste or toilet paper?
Here, I “bare all” and answer the questionnaire given in Real Simple of September 2006 (the actually interviewee is not a celebrity either).
1. What makes you laugh? My cat chasing a super-ball around the living room (just this minute).
2. What’s your favorite possession? My wedding ring—it was my grandmother’s.
3. What superhuman power would you most want to have? I guess wisdom doesn’t count as a superhuman power. How about telepathy?
4. What did you want to be when you were little? A scientist like my father. Boring.
5. What’s your motto? Do as I say, not as I do?
6. What would you do with $1000 in spare cash? Go to Paris for the weekend.
7. What’s your simplest pleasure? Reading a good book.
8. What would your “I’d rather be. . .” bumper sticker say? I’d rather be on vacation.
9. What’s the craziest fashion trend you’ve ever followed? Starting a Blog.
10. The big question I’m currently wrestling with is. . . How to balance work, family and leisure needs.
11. Would you reather be a little smarter or a little sexier? Tough one. For now I'll go with smarter.

So did anybody learn anything? I doubt it.

You're So Vain

Actually, what this is referring to is the map on the right margin of the blog which places a dot for the location of anyone who looks at this blog. This is a fun widget to look at and imagine what the person in Singapore thought if they actually looked at the blog they hit on while surfing.
But what I do, much more deeply, care about is the total absence of hits from Africa. Not because I need an African audience. I'm sure they and billions of other people have better things to do. It is because to my uneducated eye it means that most of the people of Africa do not have access to the wonderful tool that is the internet. We talk about a computer literacy divide in the United States but look at the map. An entire continent that isn't surfing. Of course it isn't just the lack of computers or internet access. There are problems that are much more severe and pressing, such as poverty, AIDs and malaria.
But it is something we should all think about as we play on the web. Is it really "World Wide?"

Globe Mallow

This flower was seen near Zion National Park, Utah. To the best of my knowledge it is a Globe Mallow. I am submitting the photo to Lensday theme "Orange". At least it is not a pumpkin.

Singing in the Car

Le Temps de Vivre
Paroles et musique : Georges Moustaki
© Manèges
1
Nous prendrons le temps de vivre
D'être libres mon amour
Sans projets et sans habitudes
Nous pourrons rêver notre vie
R
Viens, je suis là, je n'attends que toi
Tout est possible, tout est permis
2
Viens, écoute, les mots qui vibrent
Sur les murs du mois de mai
Ils te disent la certitude
Que tout peut changer un jour
3
Nous prendrons le temps de vivre
D'être libres mon amour...

Teaspoon Tuesday asks for some songs to sing in the car. On occasion I like to indulge in some old French music I first learned while in high school French class. Georges Moustaki was a favorite of my French teacher and many years later I managed to dredge up enough memory of his tunes to find some tapes. Just this summer, I bought one CD (found in Italy). His music all reads as very 60’s to me. I looked Moustaki up on Wikipedia just now (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Moustaki) and discovered that he was born in Egypt. This I didn’t know. To me he was quintessentially French, but what do I know.
My rough translation is as follows:

We will take the time to live
To be free, my love
Without projects and without habits
We will dream our life.

Come, I am there, I only await you
Everything is possible, everything is permitted

Come, listen to the words that reverberate
On the walls of the month of May
They say to you the certainty
That all can change one day


Like most things, it sounds better in the original French.

A bientot.

The Winner of the "Needs to Get a Life" Award

Incidentally, this is my 50th Blog!!! I wasn't sure if I would persevere but it is coming along. We'll see if I'm still going in one year.
No, it is not me who needs to get a life. Or maybe I do, but I'm talking about someone else.
I've been stuck for a topic for a day or two plus too busy with back-to-work woes. Then life gave me a prime rant topic.
Yesterday I was dropping my son off at a class and had double-parked due to lack of parking spaces. Unfortunately I was too close to the car beside me and D. opened the door into the car next to us. Equally unfortunately the car was occupied. Mr. T. as I'll call him got out of his car and inspected the site that was touched by D. It appeared he found some mark because he then came up to the passenger side of my car.
Nice lady that I am I rolled down my window. He then went on a rant about the damage to his car. I said apologetically that I'm sorry, my son was nine and made a mistake. This wasn't good enough for T. The rant went on so long that I became a bit riled up myself. Not for myself but because I felt he was picking on a little kid who made a mistake. Kind of like the people who chew out one's kids for kicking the seat in front of them in an airplane. I mean I'm trying to keep them under control but what am I supposed to do, put barbiturates in their milk?
Mr. T. keeps on raving. "The car isn't even mine" he says. "And I only have 20,000 miles on my car", he says. I reply, "I thought it wasn't your car." "It's my father's." I wish I had thought of something smart to say like "what man your age needs daddy to buy you a Lexus?" but I don't think that fast.
When Mr. T. threatens to call the police, I feel a need to take decisive action. First I tell him derisively that the police will laugh him out of town if he calls them to tell them a 9 year old kid put a mark on his car. I also call him an unprintable name. Unfortunately the 9-year-old already knows mommy uses bad words. I go inspect the mark on his car. It has to be at least a milimeter long!!! Mr. T. tells me there is not a mark on the car. This I doubt. 20,000 driving miles in urban Chicago lead to marks. In Chicago, we park by the touch system, i.e. back up until we touch the car behind us. I look at his back bumper--marked up everywhere. I'm tempted to tell him my car has fewer miles than his but refrain. Mr. T. never stops ranting but my remark about the police changes his tune. Macho men do not like being mocked by the police. He now threatens that he has my license number and wants my insurance information. He also tells him that someone like me is obviously divorced. While I'm trying to figure out a meaningful come-back (after all I've been married for 17 years), Mr. T. gets back in the car and drives off. I fleetingly wondered if he was going to ram my car but was reassured that that would leave a really big mark in "his" car.
The encounter left me shaking (rage, adrenaline, fear, embarrassment). I needed to cool down over hot Starbucks. As I say, some people need to get a life. Or not drive expensive cars in the city.
Yours,
Sarala

Leaving on a Jet Plane. . . .

Old classic songs make for catchy Blog titles, don’t they?
Actually, I am returning home from a successful trip to San Diego. That city lived up to its promise of sunny days and mild temperatures. You’d think with all my grousing about Chicago weather that I’d love to move to Southern California, but I had quite my fill of living in Los Angeles, thank you.
My great-grandparents and grandparents made the traditional flight from the New York and Detroit to warmer climes and never seemed to complain about it. I was born in L.A. and went to high school in the “Valley” at the time that the phrase “Valley Girl” was something to make girls like me cringe. But I spent too many years in the Pacific Northwest to adapt fully.
The lack of weather became boring. I think it was Johnny Carson who said that L.A.’s 4 seasons were smog, fire, mud and heat. In fact, in the valley, it was usually just smog and heat. You needed to be well-to-do enough to live in the hills to suffer from mud-slides and forest fires. There were no forests and no mud in the valley when I lived there, only concrete. Rivers were concrete washes with murals painted on the walls. Playgrounds were asphalt. Even grass wasn’t. It was something called dichondra.
We never had snow days at school. We had smog alerts and heat days. Weather reports used terms like “inversion layer” and “Santa Ana conditions.” I remember the day the wind blew away the smog and I realized for the first time that there were mountains near my home that actually had snow on them in the winter.
But it was the culture that bothered me the most. My husband says Chicago kids cut school to go to Cubs games. LA kids cut school to go to the beach. Your value is measured by your clothes, tan and car. Tanning came easily but I never had a cool car or clothes. My mother owned the ultra-chic Ford Granada and we lived in trendy Van Nuys. Women in LA buy whatever sub-zero rated winter coat is fashionable in New York and actually wear it out-of–doors although the only sub-zero in LA is a refrigerator brand name.
The cultural highlights of my youth in LA were getting to see the back lot of Warner Bros Studios (family connection) and having my photo taken on the set of The Waltons. I saw James Caan filming a movie and my high school was used as a movie set. Emergency was once filmed in the parking lot nearby. I was able to line up to see the first 3 Star Wars movies before my peers in the Midwest.
It was in LA that I saw my first flasher (yuck). I learned that oil spills make the beaches sticky (double yuck). I took classes at UCLA and called USC, the University of Spoiled Children (abbreviated U$¢). Needless to say we hated their football team. Rumor (probably false) had it that gang initiations involved assaulting USC men and raping USC women.
Well, this rant is long enough. It has to end before I arrive in Chicago and freeze my tuchus off after all.
Signing off for now.

Autumn

Today I leave San Diego, land of eternal summer, and return to Autumn in Chicago, where Halloween costumes have to be covered by winter coats.