Summer Review

What a whirlwind of a summer we had! It was fun and in some cases exciting, and at the same time, it was also not the restful summer I am used to. I am not starting the school year feeling rested, but it's okay. It was worth it.

Summer was fun because:

1. We went to Disneyland.
2. I went to summer camp.
3. We adopted a new puppy.

It was exhausting because:

1. I worked too much.
2. I was gone a lot.
3. We went to Disneyland.
4. I went to space camp within a week of Jason going to San Francisco for a conference.
5. We adopted a new puppy.

I know, blah, blah, blah. busy. blah, blah, blah, work. blah, blah, blah, tired.

The story of my life. Anyway, here are some pictures to illustrate the fun:

Happy new school year, everyone.


 

Best Gift of 2009

Gwen Bell asks the following question for today's prompt: What's a gift you gave yourself this year that has kept on giving?

I could be repetitive here and say it was the happiness and peace of mind that my focus on practice brought about, but I don't like repetition nor do I see the point of repetition in blogland.

This question can be taken figuratively or literally, of course. Maybe the best gift was letting go or maybe it was a new coffee pot.

I am going to take this prompt more literally and talk about two things I spent money on that were for me. The first, which rings in at less than five dollars, is this coffee cup. It sounds silly, I know, but there's something about drinking coffee out of a mug that is both pretty and that also happens to fit nicely into your freakishly small hands. It's a gift that I appreciate every morning when I take that first sip of steaming hot coffee.

The second was a retreat, but not a meditation retreat. On my weekend birthday, three of my four best girlfriends and I attended a scrapbooking retreat at Saint Mary's retreat center in Virginia City. This was a special gift for me for a number of reasons: I got to spend quiet time with my close friends, I met some cool people, I got a lot of scrapbooking done, and I discovered the very cool place that is Saint Mary's. I scampered back to Dharma Zephyr to tell them about this place, since we just recently lost our gorgeous retreat center. They were already onto the site, which means we're going to have at least a couple retreats there in 2010. It's such a cool, old place, complete with ghost stories and creaking hallways, and it's surrounded by rolling fields of brush, which makes it incredibly quiet and relaxing.

My goal for 2010 is to do a residential retreat, but if none work out for me, I just may rent a room at Saint Mary's for a weekend and do my own, personal meditation retreat.

Besties: Trip and Restaurant Experience

So I listen to this podcast called "Zen is Stupid," which you might think is odd for a Buddhist-type like me, but the title is misleading. The two gabbers, Gwen and Patrick, are Buddhist, although their podcasts are not always about Buddhism, per se.

I was intrigued by their most recent podcast in which Gwen explained her December blogger challenge of bests. For each day of the month, she posts a topic for which you can blog your best of. I will start with the first two topics: best trip and best restaurant moment.

I will sum up the trip in pictures, rather than a rambling bloggy message:

Quick digression: Can Blogger not figure out an easier way to post and move photos in a blogpost? Good Lord!

Now to my best restaurant experience: I'm sure all you parents out there get this, but most of my restaurant experiences involve crayons and/or play areas, which means I don't really get a lot of great meals out. I'm usually pretty excited when I can sneak a bite of my son's chicken nuggets without my husband seeing. But I was lucky enough to get two really tasty meals out: one at Z Bistro, a french bistro in town, and the other at La Strada, a famous Italian restaurant in Reno.

All I ordered at Z Bistro was borscht, but it was lovely to the eyes and to the taste buds. I also got to enjoy the company of my mom and my aunt Ilse.

My lamb at La Strada was heavenly. Pure heaven, I tell you. It didn't hurt that I had a great glass of wine to go with it and that the entire evening (dinner and the Bill Maher show) were a complete surpriseby my husband.

So, more to come later.

Ashland, OR

We went on our annual trip to Ashland as chaperones for the theater group at our school. Because we take the kids (our progeny, not our students), Jason and I have to take turns seeing plays. This year, I saw two, he saw one. Short reviews are below. If you get to Ashland this summer, we recommend all three shows. This is the first summer in ten years of Ashland trips that I would say this.


Fences by August Wilson - This is a story of a black man living in Chicago in, I think, the '60s. He is angry at the world and sort of creates his own hell. There was a line by August Wilson in the playbill that said something like The streets he walked in were an ocean of his own making, and he was drowning. Most of my stories are about this man. That's a paraphrase, btw. It perfectly sums up the main character of this play - he feels compelled to believe the world is set against him, that he hasn't been given a fair shake, and cannot enjoy the wonderful family he has. The script is amazing. The story touching. The set incredible. I am a sucker for an amazing, detailed set, and this one definitely fit that bill. Overall, I thought the acting was good. A couple actors weren't as strong as the others. The wife tripped on her lines a couple times - not a big deal really; she was very strong outside of that. The actress who plays the younger daughter wasn't that strong. The lead, who was a regular on Night Court, was phenomenal. He was believable as this character in every way - physically, emotionally, in demeanor.

Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream - Jason saw this; I didn't. His overall impression: the play was fanstastic. The costumes, the acting, the interpretations. The fairies, for example, were gay men dressed in fishnet muscle shirts. An over-the-top, but still appropriate to the script performance.

Altar Boyz - I saw this. It was playing in the cabaret theater, not the main theater in town. It's an hilarious comedy about a Christian boy band and makes fun of the boy band mentality. Fun, nothing that will change your world. Sometimes the singing was a little off key, or so say the music peeps at my table, but it wasn't so obvious to me. The kids laughed uproariously at this show.

Unfortunately, I gave away my playbills to a student, so I don't have names to share. In short, if you love theater, Ashland will be a good summer trip this year.