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A Whole Bunch of Nothing
When I am really feeling something, the words just pour out of me, and I end up with ridiculously long blog posts. And then there are nights like tonight. There are things I am thinking about, but nothing that has my passion. Everything I have started to write tonight I have then deleted. It just was not quite what I wanted. But I feel like I have to get something down after 3 weeks away from my writing night. So now you get bits and pieces. I gave myself permission to stop reading After Alice, the newest book from Gregory Maguire. We went on vacation last week, a vacation…
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Why I am Voting for Hillary Clinton
WARNING: This is long, and rambling, and unapologetically political. Do you remember the SyFy show Warehouse 13? I have heard it became a really good show, and hey, Felicia Day was even in it for a few seasons. But I could not bring myself to watch it. I wanted to watch it. I wanted to love it. It seemed made for me/us – and then I watched the pilot. The two main characters are introduced thusly – we have a female FBI agent who has worked all of her life to become an agent. She has focused her life on her job and become the best. And no one likes…
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Book Review: The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
I am not certain I can truly write a review of The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. I can tell you it is a memoir, well written, and engaging. I can tell you I chose to read it because a friend “gushed” about it on Facebook. But I cannot honestly review the content of the book, because it gets all caught up in my emotional reaction to it. Which, in a way, is a sign of a pretty great book. The Glass Castle is the story of Jeannette’s childhood with her dysfunctional parents and too functional (by necessity) siblings. My friend who loved it so much raced through and proceeded…
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Book Review: The Girls of Atomic City by Denise Kiernan
The Girls of Atomic City by Denise Kiernan is my favorite kind of history book. It takes the backdrop of a major even in history – in this case the creation of the atomic bomb – and puts in front of it the stories of everyday people who were involved. This is not the story of Oppenheimer or Fermi, though they are in here. This is not the story of Roosevelt or Truman, though they are obviously part of it. It is the stories of a few young women (and men) who worked in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, not even knowing what it was they were working on, and how those…
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This is Why We Need to Talk About Money
I used to have a blog dedicated to personal finance, and I still talk about finances here for one reason. I believe it is very important that we end the stigma on talking about money. Money is a necessity in the current world and not understanding it puts people at a significant disadvantage. If the only person who ever talks to you about how mortgages work is the shady guy trying to sell you a bad mortgage, then how are you supposed to know it’s a bad mortgage? On some level, the student loan crisis has been great for this. It has gotten more people talking about the costs of…
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New Project Coming … Sometime
Remember how I wrote about needing to find a new love? A new project or story or character to fall in love with? I think I have an idea. Well, actually, I had an idea, and I started working on all the technical aspects of it, because setting up web pages is fun, while actually writing is hard work. But thinking about how much writing I wanted to have done before I officially launched the new project seemed daunting. Because it needs to not just be written but critiqued and edited. And that is when it occurred to me. I have a ton of writing done and critiqued (though it…
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Book Review: The Country of Ice Cream Star by Sandra Newman
I honestly am not certain how to review The Country of Ice Cream Star by Sandra Newman. I found it via Slate’s Underrated Books of 2015 list and saw that it was a YA dystopian novel. That’s perfect for me. Sara Goldsmith, who recommended it on Slate, thought that perhaps the reason it was underrated was the invented dialect in which people speak. I am here to tell you that is the number one reason to read the book. The dialect is beautiful. It may take a few pages to really get into it, but once you do, it just seems perfect. I cannot tell you how many times, while…
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Snippets
I said to someone at work last week that it was like my childhood was dying. Leonard Nimoy’s death last year hit me harder than the ones from this year, but still. Between David Bowie, Alan Rickman, and today Glen Frey, and numerous others crossing my FB page, it really is that the music and actors I grew up with are leaving this world. Of course the hardest part about all of it for me is that they are all about the same age as my parents. And while C and a number of my friends have lost their parents, I still have both of mine, and I am honestly…
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Parenting Fail for the Win??
Today was day of mixed parenting emotions. Pop Tart had a rough day, and while it is nice to still be able to cuddle her after a bad dream, that (and other) parts of the day make me afraid that she is never going to be able to be an independent adult. If she has a bad day, she thinks the rest of the world should bend to what she wants. She loses all ability to understand that she still has homework and chores and those need to get done regardless of what her day was like. She made the choice to put off clarinet practice until today, and then…
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Our Prosper Experiment – 9 years in
You know that old saying about being able to make the statistics say whatever you want them to say? I have been thinking about that today as I have been working with the returns on our “investment” in Prosper, made back in March 2007. Since I have not posted about it on this blog before, I will give a very brief overview. For more details, you can click on the links to my 4 previous Prosper updates. In 2007, we had “extra” money lying around and decided to invest in peer to peer lending. We chose Prosper. We transferred over $3,000 and happily began making loans. Then over the course…
